Transcript of Unpacking the Bipolar Messaging of the Iran War | EYES ON GEOPOLITICS New

Hey, what's up guys? This is D. Uh, do us a favor and check out our Patreon page. It's patreon.com/theTeamHouse. 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, uh, and you help support the show and support what we're doing here. Um, 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. Uh, so we appreciate it, and, uh, we appreciate you guys listening. Thanks a bunch. Hey everybody, welcome to another episode of Eyes on Geopolitics. I'm here with Andy Milburn, Mick Mulroy, Mark Polimeropoulos, and myself. A lot happening as usual. You guys missed, uh, we were talking offline about the next Whitefish Security Summit, so check that out. It's going to be February 24th to the 26th. Of next year. So take— keep an eye out for that. It's going to be exciting. Um, guys, how are you? It's great to see you.

Um, a lot happening per usual. Um, a lot of confusion too. It's just been kind of like messaging chaos over the last week. We left off our last episode, we were talking about the naval blockade that was being announced. Um, it doesn't seem to be much of a blockade, frankly. The Strait of Hormuz seems to be de facto shut still. Um, ton of mixed messaging. Like, we had the Treasury Secretary Bessent on Friday talking about extending sanctions— the way— getting rid of the waiver on sanctions for Iran and Russia for selling their oil. That was Friday. Happens last night or a night ago, that waiver was extended. So we really have no clue what's going on, frankly. JD Vance— not JD Vance, maybe JD Vance, but Jared Kushner and Steve Wirkoff— I put them together because they're just like a one blob of ineptitude— are heading back to Islamabad tomorrow, possibly with JD Vance. We don't know. There's some mixed messaging there as well. That just as we were getting online about an hour ago, it's been going on. Anyway, a lot happening. Where do you guys— what are you guys tracking? What do you guys want to talk about exactly?

Mick, you go first.

Well, there is a lot. I mean, we all thought somewhere mid last week that we were headed toward an agreement because there was so much positive statements coming out of the White House that you're like, this is great. I mean, they're going to give up all their HEU and we can fly it to the United States and the strait's going to be open. And, you know, I was certainly hoping that was the case, but it turned out not to be the case. At least the Iranians said it wasn't the case. And if they say it wasn't the case, then obviously it's not. Because they're the other part of the, you know, the process when it comes to ending a war between the two countries. So, you know, the first thing, and not that anybody's listening, but it just doesn't help to try to do negotiations publicly through social media. It just hardens both sides. They get angry at each other and it makes the negotiator's job more difficult. Really would be better if we just let this field marshal who's flying all over the world from Pakistan to Tehran and now coming to the United States to do the needful back-channel negotiations and both sides willing to compromise because the alternative, I think, is pretty clearly going to be an escalation.

I don't think President Trump wants to leave this with just, you know, yes, we did a lot to reduce their military capacity. I think the New York Times article that just came out kind of questions exactly the numbers that we've been saying, but we have reduced it. So that's good. Ballistic missiles, suicide drones, obviously their Navy and Air Force. We're not going to get to a regime change. So just take that off the table. And then we can't leave the Strait of Hormuz closed or that's a failure. It just is. There's nothing that you can spin to say that it won't be. They didn't have it before. If they end up with control of the Strait, and being able to hold the rest of the world ransom with 20% of their energy supply, that is a, that is a big failure. So what are we going to do from here? We're either going to come up with a diplomatic resolution to this that's acceptable to both sides, or I'm guessing we're going to start using ground forces to try to secure the strait and potentially recover the HEU, which they don't seem willing to give up.

And so, and then one last point, when it comes to the agreement, right now, the only thing different from the JCPOA that we're hearing publicly is that you won't have the ability to enrich at all. Under the JCPOA, they could, but only up to 3%, which wasn't weapons grade, but they did have the ability to enrich. We're not hearing any discussion on ballistic missiles. Restrictions. We're not hearing any discussions on not funding terrorist organizations, also known as proxies. When I was in the Pentagon in 2018, that was the biggest reason we, we were told that we needed to get out of the JCPOA. It did include those two things. So if it— this doesn't include it, I mean, just by definition, there's going to be a lot of, I think, critiques on what this was all about if essentially we end up just getting back into the JCPOA. And certainly if we release, you know, the $20 billion in funds that they have and reduce and eliminate the sanctions. I did understand the argument at the time that it didn't include ballistic missiles and proxies. Our position in the Pentagon was like, well, let's address it separately.

But that's what we were told. That's why the White House decided to unilaterally withdraw. So I'll stop there. But it, I think we needed better agreement than the one we got out of, or we are really going to have to question what this was all about, uh, from a foreign policy decision-making process.

Yeah, it's kind of interesting that the center of gravity is now the Straits of Hormuz, right? It's the most— it's the most consequential arena in this conflict, uh, and it's not, um, the nuclear issue. It's not Yeah, any of those things that we were, I want to say, kind of brought up with to focus on, right? I mean, Mick at a higher level than me, but I was a planner focusing on these plans, and then at SOCSANT I was focusing on the immediate problem of Iranian malign influence in the region. And blocking the Straits of Hormuz was a contingency that we discussed should we go to war, and it was a disadvantage, and there were plans to— there were plans to mitigate it. We recognized that it would be a blow, and those plans, though, depended heavily on coalition support in the region, which we seem to have discarded, to say the least, right? So, I mean, the— and, and just last thing, uh, that, uh, that I'll say is that, you know, Liddell Hart's— Liddell Hart was a British, uh, he was a British First World War veteran and a strategist, and he said, look, the object of war is a better peace.

You shouldn't go to war unless you can ensure that you secure a better peace. And I, and, and I, I was optimistic for a while that maybe we would see a better peace because we've grown up under the shadow of Iran in the region, and perhaps that was going to be curtailed, but it couldn't be curtailed in the ways that we were doing it alone. Um, and, and, and destroying, for instance, the Iranian Navy was— it was almost irrelevant, right? Because it was the mosquito fleet that was always a danger to the Straits.

It was—

it wasn't the big surface vessels, it was the small boats, it was the mines, it was the, the drones. Drones were a recent development, and the ballistic missiles. And, um, And now, sure enough, you know, Iran's not contesting the Straits through conventional Navy. Uh, its regular Navy is gone, um, but it was never the decisive factor. So they've, they, they've employed a distributed asymmetric— I hate using that term, but it is an asymmetric approach. It's built around these small fast craft, shore-based missiles, drones, concealed launchers. And we've done little to nothing to remove that threat. If you, if you look at the Wall Street Journal and New York Times recent articles, uh, that quote our own intelligence community saying that at least 50% of the missile launchers are still intact, thousands of drones, and an unknown number of small boats— the small boats didn't even figure in our BDA announcements. Um, and that, and so that's how we are where we are.

So I think a couple things. One is just overall, I don't think there's any silver bullet for this. I mean, I was trying to think this morning is, okay, you know, so we— it's very easy to critique everything that's happening, and we will do so. There's actually, you know, when you talk about, okay, we're in this right now, we're stuck. And as we've said many times here, and Mick, I love when you kind of said, hey man, we actually, you know, we want the US to win, we're on Team America here, like But we're kind of in a shitty situation and I don't see any really great options for the following reasons. One is the military option is not working. Let's just be very clear on that. And of course, we can talk for the entire program about the Pete Hegseth press conferences. But even Dan Cain, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, when he comes out and he talks about all the great things US military is doing, Then you have on the side press reports saying that Defense Intelligence Agency says 40% of the drones are still there and 6% of the missiles, whatever it is, they still retain a lot of the capability that frankly during these Pentagon briefings, nobody even addresses and you don't get any questions because the Pentagon press corps, at least the normal ones have all been kicked out.

But I'm not sure what the option is right here because the Iranians really believe they can outlast us. You know, it's a race in time. Between when the Iranian economy collapses, whenever that may be, versus when the US economy, you know, inflation, price of gas, and then the world economy, when we kind of have had enough. And the Iranians think they can outlast us. And so even if it just ends up being kind of this test of patience. Now, Mick, you raised something which is interesting, is that, you know, some of us can kind of go and say, all right, these negotiations, just like everything with Iran, is going to be kind of this interminable set of round after round after around. But if Trump does get impatient, and I think he will, and, you know, what is the military escalation? Is that really going to be boots on the ground, which is going to cause US casualties? Does— I mean, you know, as we've talked many times before, the Pentagon will do it, of course, because it's still in control of the military. They will execute based on what they are told to do.

But this is going to be pretty politically explosive in the United States and for Trump as well. And so And actually, I don't think he wants to do this. But again, what are the options that are left? And kind of the, what would seem to be the thing that is going to end this, which is gonna be really dissatisfying 'cause it's not gonna certainly account for the Iranian support for proxies or the ballistic missile inventory or the Iranian people and regime change. It would be kind of a JCPOA 2.5. I mean, a little bit stronger. And that's where we all thought this was heading. I think it was last Friday. I mean, my God, everyone, and we're all a victim of this, who were doing media stuff, things seem to be going in a direction which is kind of a strength in JCPOA. There are people arguing about, you know, what's the, you know, what is this, the time in which, or is there a set time in which the Iranians could then, you know, start to begin enrichment again was 20 years versus what we said, 5 years, but then everyone kind of backtracked from that as well.

On the best case scenario, it turns into an agreement like that. Trump will get lambasted on this. And then worst case is, I don't know what we do. Or there's going to be ground operations with significant US casualties. This is one of those foreign policy challenges. And for all of us who do speak in the media, of course you kind of analyze the situation, but then at some point you say like, okay, this is what I think we should do. And on that note, there's not a lot of great options. I don't know what you guys' thoughts are, but it seems to me we have boxed ourselves in into a really tough situation, a bit of a pickle, and there's no kind of quick silver bullets that's going to get us out of this.

So on that point, Mark, and throw it to everybody, of course, but like, so we keep talking about, all right, so we could seize some of the islands to open the strait. We could potentially launch this which would be a really complex special operations to get the HEU. On the Strait though, so if we did it and we were successful, the Marines land, seize the islands, like how do we get out of it? Like how do we, what, what comes next? I mean, you have to, you have to think, you know, 5 steps ahead and how it actually advances your overall policy because we know if you tell Marines and Rangers to you know, take something, they're going to take it. They probably, to your point, Mark, take casualties. So this is— that's horrible. But then like, so we're going to live there? I mean, we're going to just permanently occupy the street so that it's open? I don't know. That's a question. And then the HEU recovery mission, by everybody's estimation, is going to be— would be weeks. They would, of course, mass forces against us. It could be We could be creating our own Alamo is what I'm concerned about, or Thermopylae, depending on how far you want to go back.

So these are really big decisions. It isn't just like I'm pulling a trigger and it's just going to happen and it's going to work. And of course, Iran's going to retaliate for either of those things substantially against our partner countries in the region. So it just—

How do we get out of it? So the question is— Think about your previous role as DASD when you were sitting in the Pentagon. You would have been asked if there were to be a National Security Council meeting, there's probably not, but you would have been there. What is your recommendation? I don't know what the silver bullet— there is none. So, you know, what would you recommend we do?

There is none. Double— well, I mean, start with— I mean, it's easy to say, but double down on diplomacy. You know what I mean? Like, it's not in our interest to go to escalate. It's not. I'm not just being nice to Iran, right? I wish the regime would get wiped off the face of the earth. But, um, these are decisions that aren't— it isn't— I think some people get too comfortable with, okay, we launched a military operation to kill bin Laden or Baghdadi or catch Maduro, and it's just the easy button. It's not the easy button. And this is definitely not the easy button. This is something that we could get stuck in a quagmire, and I don't want to see that happen. So I don't know how we can It has to be better than the original JCPOA, I think, to make it viable for the United States. But we need to accept that it might not be the perfect solution. Andy, what do you think about what we do if we actually took these islands?

I mean, I've written about it, and I think it's an appallingly bad idea, uh, because yes, we can do it. It's militarily feasible, as you point out. There's two questions to ask. The first is, what for, right? What is the strategic gain that gives us? And secondly, what comes next? Uh, we've anchored ourselves to it. We've become fixed targets. Uh, we've, we've forfeited all the advantage that we have, uh, without the options of a— and you've got to keep forces there, right? And even then, they don't keep the Straits open. I mean, we've talked about this. It did with, with the range of, of ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, with the range of drones, you're not doing anything by sitting on terrain.

Yes.

And, and you're— and the uranium seizure mission, even if, even if we pulled it off, right? And let's just say— and we're all tiptoeing around, so let's say on the right side of classified, of course, as we always do on this show— but even if hypothetically You can do this in a week, right? With only 1,000 guys on the ground, plus heavy equipment, blah blah, all the stuff that, that, uh, you can read in open sources required. Then what? So what? We, we take the uranium, right? It's not— but the program itself, the expertise is still there. The centrifuges are still there, if we're to believe our own intelligence community reports, many of them being buried so deep. Yes, some of them have been buried also by the air campaign, but they're recoverable and they can be back in business. So we haven't destroyed the program and at great risk. Yeah, no, so I agree. I mean, the only option now is diplomacy. And there's one other factor, a couple of factors, right, that are also affecting this. The effects on the regime of the war have not been favorable to the United States. Rather than, you know, the conflict by killing that top layer.

And I'm not saying, you know, sometimes that's a good tactic. But the problem is that in this case, that we've strengthened the hardline elements within the regime. If you'd believe, again, open source reporting by Wall Street Journal, New York Times, internal dissent has been suppressed. And in some cases, it's been It's been subjugated under this feeling of patriotism and the feeling that they're being attacked by an external country, right? So they've, to some extent, we've united the country behind a harder line regime, and the Revolutionary Guard has increased its influence. It's isolated from the effects of, uh, of the economic blows against— ostensible blows against Iran itself because of the way they distributed their wealth. We've learned that from John Hackett. So we're not— again, we haven't achieved a better peace. It's perhaps still within our grasp. There's no doubt that Iran is feeling the pressure, otherwise they wouldn't be showing up in Islamabad, but not to the extent that we think they have.

You know, there's a great— there's a Washington Post op-ed by a former agency case officer, Mark Fowler. I think it was last week. And he said something that I thought was great. And he said, you know, as we, you know, when we are running around operations and you, you know, when you first recruit an Iranian asset, when you sit down and obviously you secure their agreement to work, you know, for the United States, not against their country, against their government, of course. And then you come up with a salary. And in our old world, Mick, we would say, okay, you're going to get paid $1,000 a month. There we go. Write a cable. That's it. But in the Iranian's mind, that was just the beginning of the negotiation over his salary. And so, you know, these are master negotiators. And so it was funny because then later on, as you're handling the asset, when you say, hey, here's your $1,000 for your, you know, this money, he's like, oh, no, no, no, I want $2,000. Well, wait, wait, we agreed a month ago. He's like, yeah, that was a month ago. So, you know, these are negotiators and the Iranians probably can wait us out.

And I guess something, Andy, you said I think is really important. The question that we should ask ourselves, I'm still a romantic. I did this job for the agency and I still believed in American exceptionalism. You know, whether we're talking to the Kurds or the Syrians or our Indij personnel in Afghanistan, I believe the Americans were the good guys. So the question now you have to ask yourself is, are the Iranian people today actually better or worse off since this war started? And I don't know the answer to that. Because there's no talk of the quote, "Help, it's on its way," from Trump. I mean, to me, that was inspiring. I was like, "I'll get behind this." And we're nowhere there. In fact, if there's an agreement, if there's a JCPOA 2.5, let's say, there's going to be sanctions relief. You're going to infuse cash into the Iranian regime and they might actually survive longer. So just something to throw out. Last piece I think—

They probably will survive.

Probably will.

Yeah.

Last piece on this, and it's something that I felt guilty about. So, you know, we all do our TV shtick. And we were all, Friday was a day of incredible optimism. Mick, I don't know if you were on, I certainly was. And I look back and I'm like, I wish I hadn't said what I said, which was, hey, we may be closer in agreement. I think it was all bullshit. And you gotta ask yourself, okay, what happened here? Was it, couple questions for you guys to consider. Was it this struggle within Iran between the hardline elements, you know, Vahidi, the IRGC chief versus Arakchi, the foreign minister? Was it an actual struggle there for what's going on? Was it bullshit spewed out by, quote, sources of the US national security media, some of us included, that we bought the nonsense about the optimism that it was coming from, you know, and Kushner and Witkoff have half the US press corps on speed dial. So was it that? And was that BS designed to kind of push a narrative that things were getting closer, you know, maybe to influence a deal? And so, or was it, or, and was it, you know, Trump market manipulation?

The stock market went up dramatically. Oil prices fell. Helps the US economy. Or is it a combination of all those? But I do think, and it won't happen, but I was thinking back like, man, like we were just totally snowed by this optimism on Friday and it looks like it was all BS or some elements certainly were. So what are your guys' thoughts on that? Because I was totally guilty in that. And I look back now and I'm like, man, I shouldn't have said what I, I should have been, much more cautious, saying like, hey, this is interesting. This is coming from the US side. Not so sure what's going to happen. But I was not that. And I think I fell into that trap a little bit. Thoughts?

Yeah, I do think that like diplomacy—

sorry, there is a different system in Iran right now. They have, you know, power brokers like you already mentioned, Araghchi, the foreign minister. You also have this guy that's the new head of the National Security Council. Uh, Zoghodar, I think is his name. I'm told— I don't know much about him, but I'm told like he was such a hardliner that like Qasem Soleimani wouldn't work. Like, he was saying this guy's too intense. So think about that.

Yeah, right.

Yeah, so we're not— we're dealing with the regime.

Yeah, calling you a psycho.

Exactly. I mean, Trump has said that, that he's dealing with people who are reasonable. I mean, he comes out and he spews this shit out all the time. He says, we like the people we're dealing with, we're good. What's he talking about?

I don't know. 'Cause if he's the ultimate guy, and obviously the new Supreme Leader has both lost his entire family and is apparently seriously injured because of the strikes. I can't imagine him being any less hardline than his dad that we just killed. I mean, I think we have to accept that we're in a— we have a regime that's going to be even more hardline than the old one. It is. Uh, they're likely, if we get to an agreement, which we all want, to your point, Mark, um, that's gonna maybe permanently install them as the, as the governing body of Iran forever, right? Because they're going to have sanctions relief and our agreement is with them. So now we're not going to have an incentive to see them deposed even though they're absolutely horrendous. So all that stuff's out the window if we get to an agreement. Yeah, it's a challenge. And are we promoting this idea that everything's rosy? So I think that's the US's view is we just keep saying it so that it'll actually happen. I just think eventually, and we're probably already to that point, people just don't listen to it.

They just say, okay, let's see what actually comes out of it. What's written and what's agreed to. I was on a bunch of foreign media yesterday and all, and with people in Tehran who are obviously pushing their side. And they're like, none of this stuff was agreed to. It's all made up. And we don't know how to get to an agreement if there's not even going to be a baseline of honesty and something that's actually written and published. And I argue with these folks all the time because they just promote the regime, but It's hard to argue with that one. Like, unless there's a written agreement, why would anybody believe it's— that's actually, you know, public that says this is what we agreed to, open the straits. What does open mean? Open doesn't mean Iran gets to charge $1 million and have everybody go through their territorial waters and they decide whether you go through. Open is an international waterway that has just like it was, but there's got to be a definition and they've got to actually put down in writing what they're agreeing to, because this is clearly not working, um, the way it is.

Hey Andy, can you go over the disposition of U.S. forces now, just from open source? You know, where are we in terms of— is there, is there a third aircraft carrier battle group there? Like, where are they both mused there? Where are we in terms of this buildup? I saw something on— again, it's on open source, it's on, you know, on Twitter— that there, there's continues to be this pretty significant airflow of assets from the United States. Maybe the audience will— yes, kind of go over exactly what's— what our order of battle is, if we can say it in an unclassified way.

Yeah, I mean, I'd have to pull Mick in. I haven't— I haven't been— I haven't been counting the order of battle here in the Middle East, uh, but certainly there's been no return of units, so anything that's come has been additive. I haven't I didn't know there was a— I wasn't tracking— there was a third carrier. I know we've flown significantly in the last couple of weeks. We've flown more tankers out here. And I say that's significant because it's a really interesting aspect of the air campaign. Or maybe it's just interesting to me because I'm a geek. But, you know, Iran wasn't Iran knew they couldn't, they couldn't shoot our aircraft out of the skies en masse. So they went after critical enablers, right? They went after, I think Duhaye called them the, the nest and eggs of airpower. In our case, those are the tankers, right? The C, they, I'm sorry, the KC-135 fleet that's aging, a limited number of airframes. So went after our AWACS aircraft because of course they play a key role too. We've got a limited number and they went after our acquisition radar here in the Gulf and they were pretty successful.

You know, you can look on open source what they did here in Prince Sultan Air Base to the AWACS and tankers and they destroyed acquisition radar in Jordan and Bahrain. Um, so, so we've had to replace those, but we've— but if the reports are to be believed, we've replaced them en masse. I mean, we've— we must have very few tankers left back in the States. Uh, we flew a ton into Ben Gurion Airport, of all places, the other day. Uh, so ostensibly it looks as though we're preparing for further action, and, and that's why you see all this, um, this suppressed hysteria on Twitter. But I agree with you guys that I don't sense that, not that I have any great insights, but I don't sense that from this administration. They have nothing to gain at all by escalating militarily. I mean, we have reached the limits of what we can attain through a military campaign. That's the bottom line. And so, yes, there's certainly been reinforcement of military capacity here in the Middle East, but I think that's largely for show. And it's certainly at cost of the long-suffering soldier, sailor, airman, and Marine who has stuck out for an extended period of time.

And if reports are correct, even the Navy is running short of chow, which tells you how desperate things are. But, you know, on a serious note, on the diplomacy, I'm not a diplomat by background, but I think diplomats will tell you that it's obviously an iterative, you take small bites, right? When things appear to be as they are now, you don't go for your ultimate objectives right away and decide after a 21-hour conversation you're done because it's not going to happen, right? You have to calibrate your expectations accordingly, and you have to accept the conditions for a comprehensive agreement, as we've just been talking about, are not present because of the perceptions of both sides that both are the victors. So I think the likely outcome, and the one that we, United States, have to accept is, you know, if progress is made, it's going to be— they've got to develop an interim framework, something that stabilizes the immediate situation, in Straits of Hormuz, and yes, perhaps Lebanon too, without resolving these underlying issues. So it might be a temporary arrangement on partial sanctions relief, some form of de-escalation in the Straits, and with agreement to talk about an arrangement on nuclear activity during the next talks.

So the— on the— your question, Mark, I think the 11th MEU is going to be there within a week, maybe a little over a week. And then the USS George H.W. Bush, it's gone through the Gibraltar, it's gone through the— it's in the Med somewhere. I'm sure some of our audience knows, but I do try to keep track of it because that's— I mean, if you talk— if when you listen to the Iranian commentators, um, that's what they think this is all about. This is, this is all just churn until, until we get more forces there and it's, it doesn't actually amount to anything and it's just a delay.

Can you blame them though?

I don't blame them because, you know, we attacked them right in the middle of negotiations.

Why?

I do think that the White House, right? I do think the White House actually wants an agreement though. So I don't think they want to use 2 Buze and, you know what I mean? But the other alternative is just to double down on this blockade. And I do think the blockade's having Putting pressure on the regime. My only question, and this is for an economist, probably more than, than us, but so if we just double down on the Strait and we completely block 20% of the world's oil supply without any end in sight, and we're not going to try to force open the Strait militarily because it's too risky. It's, I mean, what is that going to do to global energy prices if they just accept that it's going to, and then what if they start Houthis get in the game, you know, and they start— I don't know if they can completely block the bomb, but I think they can certainly make it difficult. We know that. So, and then we're just stuck here. We're just stuck with— and then they're going to have to do something because if you cut them off entirely, they're going to have to do something to change the game.

So it's the Houthis, it's attack, you know, Qatar, UAE, the energy facilities in those countries and Saudi, like all the issues that we're trying to deal with as they shifted this from a conventional military fight to kind of like a, you know, asymmetric economic, uh, type fight of attrition get magnified, right? I mean, there's nothing coming out of the strait. There's nothing that goes through the Bosphorus. I mean, that would be Oh, the other thing about the aircraft carrier is it actually went— I think I'm wrong, I think it went all the way around.

Yeah, right, the Horn of Africa or something crazy, isn't that right?

Look it up while you guys talk.

The bottom line on that, I think, is that— so, so one of the things though, you know, I think Dee kind of chimed in there and he said, well, hold on a second, each time, you know, we've seen this build up, we've used it. We saw the buildup in Venezuela use it. And so while it makes no sense for there to be escalation right now, I mean, there is a buildup. And, you know, we can't kind of discount that, you know, Trump's Truth Social post only, what, an hour or two ago when he threatened now to once again to destroy all Iranian, what was it, was bridges and power plants. Kind of, you know, more of this kind of infrastructure Armageddon. And so, you know, I think that there is reason to be concerned because when Trump has threatened these things, he actually has carried them out. Although this time it seems to be, you know, perhaps this is the next, obviously you guys would address this better than I would, as opposed to ground forces on Karg Island or, you know, or anything like that. You know, the next step in any escalation would be some kind of bombing campaign against infrastructure targets.

You know, maybe that's what, as you climb the escalatory ladder, that's what the Pentagon is recommending versus kind of something that, which of course is going to lead to world condemnation. There's going to be talk of, you know, is this war crimes, et cetera, et cetera. But, you know, maybe that's what's next on that kind of the menu if these talks in Islamabad don't go anywhere.

So it's off the coast of Namibia. It's going around Cape of Good Hope, uh, for the Wall Street Journal, and it'll be in the, in the area at the close to the end of the month, if not the first week.

Gonna be a lot of, a lot of C-6 sailors going around the Cape there. That's an unusual move for the U.S. Navy.

Clearly, they did that.

That says a lot.

Yeah, that's right. That's a force protection move, which doesn't really— I mean, okay, but that's not what you really want to project in terms of—

Yeah, it's not confidence-inspiring. Also, like, what's next on the menu from the DOD is arguably war crimes. Says— I kind of— says how far this has gone, like, out of control, frankly. I mean, Andy mentioned it before about, like, when they game this out. Strait of Hormuz was the number one thing to worry about, right? The asymmetric threat, the fast attack boats and stuff like that. Not so much their destroyers or whatever frigates or whatever they have. Not so much their two F-14s from 60 years ago. Um, and so we knew this going in, and up until we started bombing at the end of February, on the table was a supposed deal that was better than the JCPOA. In terms of like uranium enrichment and stuff like that. So I think like just going at it and bombing and attacking Iran with Israel, it doesn't— hasn't really benefited our position, I would say, at all. Especially now they're like, oh, if they don't have another 24-hour session and everyone goes home upset, everyone's maximalist on either side because everybody thinks they're winning and nothing gets done. The next move is just to bomb bridges and power plants.

Like, that's insane to me. Or grab Karg Island for an extended period of time to squeeze their oil revenue, like, while our Marines are getting fucking incoming the entire time. Like, how many— like, there's got to be a casualty, uh, assessment on what that would look like, and it can't be good at all. There's no way we can protect all of them. Just have 500 Marines just sitting there protecting an island while they're catching not even strays. They're catching direct fire like all day, every day. I just don't know how any of it makes sense, frankly.

So the 11th gets there, uh, mid-May according to Cyber Overlords.

So I, I think, yeah, I mean, I think the military buildup there, you know, and I, I get everything you guys have said is correct, but I think the military buildup there is a red herring. I think it's a I think it's a show of force to back negotiations, and I think obviously we have to, we have to back what we said about forcing the, the blockade, or whatever we're calling it now, the straits. But, uh, I, I don't for a moment see us resorting to using ground troops, Marines, and, and any capacity aside from in maritime interdiction operations. Yep, just, you know, all the reasons that we've said, it just, it would be such a, a strategic faux pas, uh, that I'm, I'm pretty sure that, that all the generals who haven't been fired yet are advising, and admirals are advising strongly against it. And, um, and I think, uh, you know, again, you said earlier I wasn't a diplomat. Another thing I'm not is I'm not an economist. Uh, but, but I'm fascinated by reading about the impact of the war, uh, and, and a little bit dismayed because even if the Straits are opened, uh, the way that it's been explained is that the risk premium is already being built in, right?

So even if, even if oil is physically moving, prices are going to remain elevated because of a persistent geopolitical risk, uh, that the Straits will close again, or there's going to be attacks on tankers' infrastructure. And so insurance rates go up, costs go up. And that's— we're not insulated ultimately from the effects. Fuel costs, transportation costs, energy costs. The IMF has downgraded global growth forecasts, raised inflation expectations across the globe, and warned of a global recession now. I mean, I don't think that's just posturing. I mean, these are all realities. So I'm I'm hoping and I'm thinking, I mean, these things are, these are, are the factors that affect this administration, right? I mean, the, the economics of all of this are, could well be disastrous.

Well, the writing is on the wall in terms of the midterms. Like, they, you know, everything that all polls are projecting, that the Republicans are going to get wiped out in, and possibly definitely the House and possibly the Senate too. So the writing is definitely on the wall. They see this is happening. And like you mentioned, like everything going up, fertilizer is going to go up, which means food's going to go up. We had an economist on a couple of weeks ago talking about all the things that are like second and third order effects that are affected by the Strait being de facto shut. I don't think this administration really cares, frankly, about the midterms. I think they care about getting a win in the press. And I think this whole thing is like, frankly, and this is super cynical, like, like, this is content. And it's crazy.

Well, I think there's a, there's an argument to be made that the, you know, and that, you know, the midterms are already lost. And so this is kind of, and I subscribe to this a little bit. I mean, this is kind of legacy-defining stuff for Trump, Venezuela, Iran, and Cuba. I think there's some element of truth to that. And so, you know, with that in mind, I think, you know, maybe the administration is willing to risk that economic pain if they can get a win out of Iran. The problem is the enemy gets a vote and we're kind of stuck. And, you know, great line, there's no easy button right now. I mean, for all accounts that you read in the press, who knows if it's true or not, that Trump and even Hegseth, which is amazing, or maybe not, is surprised at Iranian resiliency. Now, they shouldn't have been. If they had Iran experts, they would've said Iran and Iraq fought a brutal war and the Iranians suffered terribly. And I think the Iranian regime is certainly willing to sacrifice kind of the wellbeing of its people in perpetuity for this. But I do wonder that kind of just the calculate, you know, Trump wants a win in Iran and perhaps that the losses in the midterms are already baked in, won't matter at this point.

And you can make an argument, again, Let's say there's a win, let's say Iran capitulates totally. They give up every, energy prices are still going to be brutal. Americans don't give a shit about foreign policy. So Trump could get this win, but if gas prices are still high and not even come November, it doesn't even matter at November, it matters when, this summer. I mean, at some point the midterms are, they're gonna, the Republicans are gonna say it's lost no matter what, it's too late because Andy, I think you noted the residual effect is just, is gonna be, it's gonna take months and months. I mean, we're talking, I think KLM just announced they're gonna run outta jet fuel soon.

Yeah.

And so, but there is a notion that Trump is doing this as something for his legacy. And the problem with that is his legacy is to do anything that Obama didn't do or not to do anything Obama did. And so what would be the right agreement now, just, and it, because you have two sides and there's gonna have to be compromise, would be a kind of a JCPOA 2.5. It's pretty obvious. And that might not even be, you know, in terms of, I think it's abandoning the Iranian people. There's no doubt about that. And you might not address the proxies and the missile inventory. But just in terms of the actual nuclear side of things, there's probably something that all of us in a vacuum would say, yeah, that's actually fine. We can probably live with that. But I don't know if Trump can politically too, because—

They have to convince him it's a win so he can go out and crow.

But anything that's going to come out of his mouth, if it's a compromise, is going to be The people like us are going to say it's a strength in JCPOA. We did this, all this for that. So I think that puts Trump in a bind as well, because even this kind of the art of the deal guy, when there is a deal to be had, might not take it because he's going to get criticized. And you do have, D, your favorite subject, you do have a very noisy pro-Israel contingent, especially on X, the Freedom and Defense of Democracies crowd who, you know, it's a maximalist position on everything. And that's, I mean, Lindsey Graham, Obviously he's not part of any kind of lobby group, but Lindsey Graham has been kind of thrown—

He isn't? You could have convinced me.

No, but I'm saying, but Lindsey is warning in the press, hey, no capitulation, kind of like Obama. So I think there are some constraints politically from Trump, from his right, that he's boxed himself into. I mean, you can't have JD Vance go to Pakistan, offer 20-year, delay in enrichment. And then Trump literally publicly the next day saying, I don't like that.

So I think what happened— I think what happened was that was based on like releasing that $20 billion that's frozen. And once somebody put out that test balloon online, got a lot of, a lot of heat from like the, like the groups you were talking about.

You can't offer it.

And then I think that's literally what happened. That's why they yanked it away. I'm really— I think they're throwing up test balloons. That group that you mentioned, they put it out and they start shitting on it, pick up a little bit of steam, get some calls from some donors. Adelson calls up, is like, what the fuck? And they pull back. That's what happens. It's— I think it's that simple. There's no strategic—

possible.

Yeah, it makes negotiations impossible. You can't—

I mean, that's what's happening. Yeah, it's, it's fucked.

So you guys bring up a really interesting point. If you narrow it down to what are the US interests, right? What really are our interests, not Israel's? And I get it, Israel's an ally, blah, blah, blah. But first of all, you know, a couple of comments. In the Jigpoha, we didn't really determinedly go after proxies or ballistic missile inventory at all. It was all focused on nuclear, right? The nuclear piece. Because we realized that we couldn't, even back then, we couldn't materially affect that for any extended period of time through an air campaign. The only reason now, the proxies, when we talk about the proxies, let's talk about the proxies that we United States care about. And this is an argument, obviously I have not, and so I invite pushback. We care about the militias in Iraq, right? Because of their influence potentially on the Iraqi administration and the threat to our own forces in the region because they have proven historically not to be friendly. Right? We should care about them. And we care about the Houthis because of the mischief they get up to now and then by, uh, in, by closing the Bam.

Hezbollah, we care about Hezbollah because Israel cares about Hezbollah. Now, in fairness, we care about Hezbollah, we say, because of stability in the region. We care about Hezbollah because we want Lebanon to be a functioning democracy. And Hezbollah threatened Hezbollah. Hezbollah threatens that, right? But bottom line is we don't really care about Kibbutz. That's not the reason we care about it because of Israel, because Lebanon's good. Lebanon goes to shit in a handbasket and we don't make a concerted effort to help Lebanon. We care about Hezbollah because the Israelis are telling us Hezbollah's an existential threat. Do we care about ballistic missiles coming from Iran? No, those were never a threat to us. Really, honestly, I would argue never a threat. Our guys in the region were at a threat from the militias launching fucking drones and everything. Yes, they were provided by Iran. But you see what I'm saying, that we set these goals that we couldn't achieve through an air campaign that weren't even that important to us. And the core issues were going after the particular proxies that concern us, but most of all, that nuclear program. And I think that's what we need to focus on.

And by the way, reduction of proxies, yeah, it makes sense. We talk about going after the source in Iran to dissuade them. Iran's never going to be dissuaded from support for the proxies. Iran's always going to see that as a great way to strike back, an asymmetrically strong way, because trying to prove that they're doing it and interdict that flow of lethal aid has proven really difficult. So the solution is to go after the proxies themselves, and I'll shut up in a moment, but that isn't, but you can't do that purely through a military campaign as the Israelis have found out again and again and again, right? Hezbollah is deeply embedded in the economic and the political structure of Lebanon. Unless you have a concerted reconstruction effort, unless you you give the UN there a different mandate or even insert another peacekeeping force to back the government of Lebanon and call it a building public capacity effort, you're not going to affect Hezbollah for any long period of time. And mowing the grass, killing thousands of civilians, destroying civilian infrastructure just means you're setting conditions to have to go back and do it again in a few years.

These are lessons that the Israelis have not learned. But I feel as Americans, as United States, we need to be smarter than that. And now, now our interests too. What are our national interests?

And I think that, you know, the negotiators now, Andy might agree with you, at least it sounds like they do in the sense that they're only talking about the nuclear issues. They haven't heard anybody talk about—

And the straits.

Yeah, well, that Yeah, but, um, I imagine Blinken and Burns and—

that's right—

uh, President Obama's like, wait a minute, that's what we did and you guys criticized this and now you're doing the same thing. And they're not including ballistic missiles and proxies that I— that at least there's no discussion of it, uh, publicly. Uh, again, in the Pentagon we thought, okay, well, let's keep the agreement, but then if they're doing things, uh, on the ballistic missile side or certainly the proxy side, why don't we just address it separately, right? Like, by looping, they get together, you make it almost impossible to get to an agreement, which isn't anybody's interest. So it's— that's right, I'm not advocating that you have to include it, but that's the whole reason why we got out of the first place. So there's going to be a lot of— I think part of it is just, it's almost like nowadays our policy is so tied to domestic politics that it can't stay consistent because it's all about trying to get a political advantage over your political opponents, which means you can't agree with anything they say, even if it was in the interest of the United States. Like, the whole concept of, you know, politics ends at the water's edge, you know, Bennington, etc., that's like gone.

Like, it's now, it's like it's just all wrapped into it. And people, they don't even, you know, and there's been a lot of talk about this, people who are adamantly opposed to wars in the Middle East are now for a war in the Middle East. It's like Well, what is it you stand for? I mean, I can understand, I can disagree with people, fine, happens all the time, but it's really hard to disagree with somebody that actually doesn't believe what they're saying. It's like, well, what is it? Are you opposed to the, what are we saying, $6 trillion in foreign wars over the last 20 years? Or are you for it now, but simply because it's in, you believe it's your political team?

I think that hypocrisy is just going to be pretty kind of laid pretty bare if there is going to be an agreement. Because as you guys noted, that, you know, when, when you see the criticism of the JCPOA, it is, it is a lot of it has to do with the lack of attention on the ballistic missile inventory and the proxies. I mean, that's just, it's like the receipts are there. So it's going to be interesting to see how, how people react to that now. There also was the, you know, the, the, and this, this goes along, by the way, exactly, you know, Trump's negotiating style. He actually, if you think about it, he would be like, those are too hard, let's not do those. We're going to go on the one thing that we probably can agree on, which would be some kind of a nuke deal. And so, but the hypocrisy is, is pretty stunning. I mean, Andy, I push back just a little bit. I mean, I don't have to tell you this, you know, obviously the Hezbollah, the, the history of Hezbollah's, um, record of killing Americans is, is, is pretty acute.

And so you know, that's— so I, I do think they're, you know, Hezbollah is still an organization. There still are Hezbollah plots, and we, we still, you know, there's active counterterrorism operations that go on against Hezbollah, arguably, of course, not, um, to the same level of threats to US forces in the region from Iraqi Shia militias. But, but I do— I wouldn't discount, you know, Hezbollah threat to Americans. That's still—

I would argue—

being killed by Hezbollah in the last 5 years, how many American servicemen have been killed by Hezbollah?

Also, I would argue too that a lot of the American people don't even know where the fuck Hezbollah is or can point out Lebanon.

I really do. I mean, I mean, Hezbollah—

Wild. No, I don't. I totally disagree with you on that.

Hezbollah did kill 241 Marines, but that was 40 years ago. I mean, that's like when I came in the Marine Corps going after the Japanese because they killed, you know, it's, it's history. We, I, listen, I'm overstating this just for the sake of argument. Of course, I'm not a Hezbollah. Of course, they need to go. They need to go. They're destructive to the entire region. What they've done to the country of Lebanon is, you know, I don't think people realize, many people don't realize that. So I don't want to get on the tangent of supporting Hezbollah. They need to be eviscerated, destroyed. What I'm saying is mowing the grass is not the way to do that. And And I'm agreeing with you guys. Yes. So we narrow it down. I mean, a version, a modern version of, of speak softly and carry a big stick is go into these negotiations willing to compromise. And, but there's stuff that we can do behind the scenes, right, that we've done before, we could continue to do to bring pressure on that ballistic missile program and do real things against it. And against the proxies, especially against the proxies, without resorting to this massive air campaign that looks good in press, you know, in press conferences, but achieves very little.

And you bring up a really good point because one thing that we don't see as much of, and I think it's, and I have a theory on this, I don't think President Trump likes covert action because he can't brag about it. Yeah, true. But there's a part of this action, you know, that I think, and again, none of us are in government right now, but so many of these things could be kind of handled, you know, quietly behind the scenes with very aggressive covert action plans. And I don't, you know, I don't think it happened during the Biden administration. I don't know what's going on in the Trump administration. I think probably a lot of our covert action resources are folks in the Western Hemisphere and Mexico. I mean, Mick's old crowd is probably all brushing up on Spanish right now. And so, but I don't think this goes in line with what Trump likes. Like covert action doesn't work for him 'cause he can't talk about it. That's not fun.

And it takes time, right? I mean, it takes time and patience to get it in place and to see effects.

Yeah, that's where I go with all of it.

That's where you need to go. And I'm a dirty liberal, like, commie. And I'm saying that's where you need to go. Like, hit Russia back too for the fucking Havana stuff. Like, all behind the scenes, behind the scenes. Hit the Iraqi, the Iranian militias in Iraq. Hit Hezbollah. Like, do it covertly.

Yeah, we should be the best in the world in doing that stuff.

And it should be continuous. If you look at the Reagan type of the way he did national security, had a very robust military but didn't use it that often. But he was nonstop on the COVID side.

Right.

Like that's, you know, that's the traditional Republican approach. The one I promote, I guess.

I would argue, I mean, never sell weapons to Iran to fund some covert action.

That's a specific thing. It's a concept I'm talking about. I'm just saying it's, it is what softly and carry a big stick. And the big stick isn't used that often because it doesn't necessarily, uh, help the U.S. overall. But the COVID stuff, the, you know, that's continuous.

Colombia were both ultimately success stories, right?

Afghanistan, you know, against the Soviets. I mean, there's all sorts of examples. Some of them are going to work, some of it isn't going to work, but that's just You know, it was after the Soleimani strike.

You know, all of us were kind of shaking our hands and shaking our heads saying, why wasn't this done under Title 50? Why in the world was it done under Title 10? Why brag about it?

Just people just brag about it because he was in Ukraine. He was doing—

no way Trump can do that. He just—

he was getting impeached for Ukraine, bro. That's why he did it under that title. That's why.

But you get a— I mean, covert action eventually comes out, right? So you get credit historically if that's what your big issue is. So, I mean, But, but I, I agree with Mark, but that's— you've got to be speaking of COVID action though. So what's going on with all these scientists we get— we're seeing killed? I don't know, but it's starting to be like it go beyond just conspiracy theories.

I think it's 11, 11 or better.

What is going on?

Because that—

what I mean, when does it become a statistical possibility this many Right? I'm just throwing it out there because, you know, we obviously do it. Israel does it. We're at war with the country who, you know, has incentives. And then all of a sudden we're seeing all these scientists, uh, I'm just throwing it out there. Don't have any evidence.

Social media, I haven't followed it, but yeah, I followed it tangentially, like on the periphery. I don't know.

You should be all over this. This is up your alley.

No, it's not up my alley at all, but stuff you like this. Aren't they UFO people? Is that why?

There's a bunch of nuclear scientists, I think.

Oh, getting clipped. I don't know who's got who benefits. Cui bono, right? Isn't that the question? You like that line?

How they think it's going to help them, but except for the fact that we're doing it to them, right? I mean, how many Iranian nuclear scientists end up getting offed? I'm just bringing it because if, you know, obviously somebody who has authority needs to review it. If it's a threat, we need to We need to address it. I guess that's my point for bringing it up. Like, the FBI needs to start— okay, um, wait a second, it's not going to change our nuclear status.

Now you brought up what we had to talk about.

Yeah, like, you walked right into that one, bro. How do you expect the counter-intel and the FBI to be fucking doing a good job? The guy's passed out in his fucking office. They're trying to knock the door down and wake him up.

That Atlantic story was as well-sourced as you can get.

And they got a dozen sources, Mick.

Can someone send that to me?

You know my rule, man. I mean, I don't talk about friends. Like, I know Cash well. We did a lot of stuff together when he was a prosecutor. If you guys ever become director or something, and I'm not going to get on here and talk about you guys.

Just that all I know. Okay, so let's switch. But I have a good way to make Mick not feel uncomfortable about this because one of the things that we've seen, it's a little bit of a shift here. One of the things he's seen is this incredible, and I hate it, I won't retweet it, won't repost it, but you watch it with some, you're like, they're pretty good, is this Iranian propaganda campaign with all this stuff they're putting out with the Legos. And they just had one with Cash and he's with his hockey shirt on, holding a beer, passed out. But the Iranians are crushing us on propaganda. Do you guys know what I'm talking about?

Oh yeah, totally.

And it's concerning because, you know, Trump, the Trump administration, the State Department cut off the office that was supposed to counter this stuff. The JC—

Global Engagement Center. That's right.

Yeah. And so we're getting killed on this thing. And it's, so I'm really conflicted because just, you know, it's, when I say impressive, I hate even saying that, but you're looking at, it's pretty sophisticated. It's showing a nuance of kind of US politics. It's really hard hitting, it's working. And these are spread all over the place on TikTok.

Millions.

What are your guys' thoughts on that?

Yeah, I've just written about that actually. The information domain, we are losing. We're losing at the strategic level. And that's a good— it's kind of interesting when you— the BBC did a documentary about that. And again, and I'm just talking about what came out in this documentary. I don't know for sure, but The argument, but what it appears happened is that, you know, you removed this upper layer of the IRGC who are, you know, their pedigree went back to the revolution, right? I mean, that's not an exaggeration. I mean, Soleimani or the Iran-Iraq War at the very least, the '80s. But they were, you know, tough guys, but they were rooted in that kind of thought pattern. So when it came to propaganda, it was very It was cumbersome. It was, you know, it was mullah.

Boomers got— the boomers got wiped out.

Boomers came up and they're like, hey, we know how to reach the American or the global population. And, and then they— those TikTok videos are— I mean, they're masterful. I mean, in a way that you rarely see propaganda and you see— and they're doing something that propaganda really does. Pulls in an audience, the adversary audience, but that audience is pulled in not laughing at the propaganda. They're laughing along with the messaging, which is very unusual. You think about Second World War, the Brits had someone called Lord Haw-Haw, you know, it was a traitor basically, used to broadcast, and it was forbidden to listen to him. Brits used to listen to him because he was funny in a way that was not intended. He was just a ridiculous figure. Hanoi Jane, right? Famous too. GIs used to listen to her, but it was kind of laughing at her. But people are watching these videos because they were genuinely very entertaining and funny. And like all good propaganda, there's a kernel of truth in them. And some of them—

I have a heart. I like it, but then I hate it because I can't stand the Iranians and I want to see them, the Iranian regime gone. But it's impressive. And you're right, Andy, this is not from the old stodgy, you know, 1980s crowd.

Yeah.

I think, did I see somewhere that this might even be being produced in the West?

Yeah.

California or no?

Well, there's a couple of commits. So what happened is a copycat So there's an American copycat producer of these Lego videos, and they're being produced for domestic political reasons, right? Not pro-Iranian, but they've seen how impactful they are when the Iranians release them. So of course, you may see a video circulating now called "What Should We Do with the Drunken Hegsteph," right? And it's set to a Dropkick Murphy song, and it's It's actually pretty funny. And there's another one.

Why is it going to be a Dropkick Murphy song?

Great band. Oh, Dropkick Murphys. Yeah.

And there's another one about—

I love it. Eric is as anti-Trump as you can get.

And the company, it's one dude. He's in Montana, right? And I think he attended the Whitefish Security Conference and got the idea from there. And it's called Ponder.

He's the keynote speaker next year.

Yeah, but the ones that— the original ones are being produced outside Iran, but by Iranians. Okay. By companies that were contracted by the Iranian government. And so they're hip, they're savvy, they know how to get these things out. They're fluent English speakers. So they understand, you know, it's AI, but it's very clever AI.

Yeah.

Because they're putting in the right language models, the right terminology.

Andy, did you say you wrote on this recently?

Um, no, I, I wrote about, uh, ends, ways, and means strategy in the, uh, in the campaign, and, and I talk about the information domain and how we were losing in the information domain.

Amazing.

And how we, how we got rid of some of the key capabilities too before the war. It's not just, uh, the GEC, but you talk about minesweepers. In September, we decommissioned, uh, the 5 last 5 Avenger-class mine countermeasure ships in Fifth Fleet, actually in the US Navy, and send them back. That's why we're so dependent on coalition countries to help us do minesweeping. So we made some bad choices that have made us vulnerable. But yeah, that's a great point, Mark, the information war. We're way behind.

D, we need a— we need an eyes-on video like that, AI-generated with those little Legos.

Yeah, yeah, we can make that happen. It's probably easy now.

I think, I think that should be your homework for this week.

I don't do homework, bro. I don't do— I haven't done homework in 35 years.

It's a really clever one. You can look it up. It's called Your Country's Run by Pedophiles. And, and the Don't look that up.

No, no.

Gonna get on a list.

But the song and the chorus is so catchy. Yeah. My colleagues were kind of humming along to it in the van.

Yeah, that's what's good about it. Yeah. I mean, that's how you know. Also, I think the issue with especially like the MAGA, the entire MAGA sphere and why they're having so much trouble with the info is because they're fracturing, right? Like half of them, you know, really are not, not into like the wars and stuff like that. And also, I think they're putting a lot of, a lot of stake into the CENTCOM briefings and the CENTCOM Twitter. Like, nobody believes that shit. You want to make something funny, easy to understand, not like, oh, we destroyed 600 of these today.

Yeah. So, D, you'd be really good at this. I mean, think about it. Yeah. Well, you know what?

I just want to mention one thing because I've been on my tirade the last couple of episodes about these Pentagon briefings. Because I think just Hegseth is just, and with his kind of the religious kind of tones was way out of control. And then I was kind of criticizing even perhaps the chairman. But the one thing that Admiral Cooper and Dan Caine, the chairman did last time, which I thought was really good and smart was highlight just kind of the role of the airmen and the sailors. And I think that's something that is actually positive to do. And because, you know, we do have to kind of keep in mind that there are people out there in harm's way. And so you guys know what I'm talking about when it was just so many kind of just little different vignettes. And I actually, I do think that is useful. It's far more useful than, you know, than Heg says kind of JV football speeches. Um, which now tinges with some kind of religious connotation, which is just— it's beyond cringeworthy right now. But just wanted to kind of throw that out there, highlighting the role of individuals who Cooper and Kane kind of come across in their travels.

Um, that kind of appealed to me. I like that I'm saying something positive about one of the briefings. How about that?

Yeah, well, our military is the best in the world.

I mean, I'm all biased, but it's always— it's always the fallback, isn't it, that, you know, you eulogize the soldier, sailor, Marine, but it doesn't really get us anywhere if you're sending them to more potentially for the wrong reasons, I'm saying. You know, I mean, we eulogized them all the way through Iraq and Afghanistan, but we were still killing them for a cause in ways that— I mean, I'm overstating the case. It's an all-volunteer force. I don't get teary-eyed about casualties, uniformed personnel, but I do think there's an obligation to make sure we shed their blood. It's in a coherent cause and for strategic gain. Right. And that's the part that I think perhaps Congress is missing right now.

Well, I mean, you do have 300 injured plus and 13 Americans killed in action. So Trump's going to own that. You know, whatever happens on here, that was on his watch, his decision. So I think it's—

end of April, would it be the 60 days, right? Yeah. So that's when—

I think, yeah, right around there because it's like everyone's I don't think this industry rats ass in the Congress is just nonexistent.

So technically, you're right.

Well, the Congress both voted like both houses, Senate and the House of Representatives both voted against reeling in.

I don't understand.

Yeah, yeah, it changes when—

Totally. Yeah.

I don't understand how you abdicate your constitutional responsibility. Right. No one's saying you must stop the war. They're saying, hey, by the War Powers Act, you need to put the— Congress needs to vote on this. Right.

Yeah, that's what I'm looking up. But that's my understanding. In 60 days, they have to actually take an affirmative step.

So I think people are conflating the, hey, this is unpatriotic if you oppose the war. No one's saying that. They're saying you just need to ask the questions. Right. What are the— What's the strategic outcome? What's the end state desired? Are we going about it the right way? Blah, blah, blah.

Just do your fucking job.

It's a healthy mechanism.

So then at the end of 60 days, according to the War Powers Act, the president has to do one of three things: get congressional authorization to continue, end the military action, or withdraw forces from a conflict, which seems to be the same thing to me. But so this is specifically saying that at the War Powers Act, they have to take an affirmative step to continue. It's not just, we're just not gonna vote. No president has ever agreed that that's constitutional. Not sure why the Supreme Court hasn't decided that. Seems kind of important.

Is there an argument to be made that like when they called for the ceasefire, bombs stop dropping, that 60 days resets? Is there an argument there?

I don't know. I don't know what constitutes end of hostilities according to the War Power Act.

I mean, this is the same Congress. This is the same Congress that voted to confirm Hickseth as SecDef, as Tulsi as DNI, as Kash as FBI Director. They're not going to do anything. I think the only time, only reason they would do, only way they do something if US ground forces are introduced, that I think people would become very uncomfortable with that.

But I mean, you would hope that that would guilt them enough to do their fucking job.

No, I agree with Mark.

I mean, they don't, but they don't. And even if you add in the days that we're at, uh, whenever it gets to 60 days, if they don't actually vote to continue, then they've just voided that act, right? The act is no longer—

it sets a bad precedent, that's for sure, that like the act is like basically we don't, we don't even go by it for a long time.

I mean, that's, you know, I don't think we've ever used to do things over it because it, and say that we weren't bound by it, but we did like the briefing, the gathering and all that stuff. Yeah.

There was a vote. It was an authorized use of military force after 9/11. Right.

Yeah. And we extended that all the way to our operations in Syria, right? In 2018. But technically there was a congressional authorization. There isn't now. Like this doesn't have anything to do with the 9/11 tax, right? We can all agree.

Yeah.

I think Congress got used to being lazy in exercising that constitutional obligation in the Global War on Terror. Because yes, the AUMF was just extended almost without discussion for 20 years.

This is a perfect thing for you two lawyers here. It's this notion that I think the White House subscribes to and Trump does, the notion of the unitary executive. You know, it's a very powerful executive branch that does kind of supersede legislative and judicial. I mean, that's the theory that people on the, some on the right have. And I think that the White House certainly is exercising that. There's a ton of research on that.

They gave it a fancy name, essentially means that we have some—

No, I haven't heard that. That's an interesting— That's a really, that's an interesting observation.

I think the federalist democracy, yeah, it's the idea of, you know, the unitary executive. There's a lot of, Yeah, it's a fancy word for dictator.

It's just, it's a fancy word for not constitutional, not under our Constitution. That's like, our Constitution clearly says the president's commander-in-chief. So once it's authorized by Congress, you have to have one individual that's in charge. But it's not that they, that the president, regardless of what your political position, can decide to go to war, you know, and be the commander-in-chief. That's clearly not what it says in the Constitution.

This is an excursion though. According to the press, right? Yeah. No, Mick, Mick, this is, Mick, you are showing your old, true, and I would say good, classic, righteous, old-school Republicanism here. That's the way you feel.

Constitutional, yeah.

Constitutional Republican. But that's not, I think, the theory of many who are in power. And that's unfortunate. Because by the way—

Well, remember that theory only holds when they're in power. Like they're not gonna promote the unitary executive theory when, you know, the next Democrats.

And exactly, that's the thing that I don't understand sometimes, that this, this all can be turned around.

I wouldn't either.

Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, it's, it's easy to— they're full of shit. It's okay to say it. It's okay to say it.

Both sides are full of it. Both sides.

I don't know what side is, what side is pushing for a de facto dictator, you know, a unitary executive to do whatever he wants. Like, I don't see like Cory Booker calling for like Biden to be the unitary, you know, executive. You know, let's be real here. Let's be real. But anyway, yeah, they're full of shit. It's fine. We can admit it. And Congress is useless.

I think there's a growing—

I'm proud of us.

We had to be part of—

we had an elevated, relatively intelligent conversation without John.

I'm surprised by that too.

And I got to do—

we had to look a lot up though.

I know.

When I, when I I do want to say, when I tuned in though, you were talking about, um, Man Ass Thursday and, uh, and, and wiping—

that was offline, Andy. That was off the record.

Yeah, that was—

yeah, I can steal something from you today.

There's very nostalgically from the agency, guys.

No magic easy button is going to be a quote I use later on on TV. That's really good. I like it. I'm not gonna say this is for my friend at ABC, Mick Mulroy. I can't say that.

You can't say that on NBC?

You could say your friend Mick Mulroy, but I will credit you on that.

And let's also just go back. We'll say one thing on this, D, that for those of us who spent a lot of time in Afghanistan and made it through unscathed gastro-wise, a quick trip to Pakistan to the Serena Hotel where all these negotiations are taking place would engender a massive bout of dysentery. From like 24 hours on the ground. So I'll take my Afghan—

That's what we were talking about.

—Pakistani time any day.

I've got to follow up with a story to that, Mark. So the Saudis here are very close to the Pakistanis. In fact, according to the local media, a whole bunch of Pakistani soldiers arrived here. So they have an exchange program. Good friend of mine who's a senior Saudi naval officer did a tour with the Pakistani Navy, and I asked him about that. And he said, yeah, they, you know, he said, yeah, yeah. I mean, you know, Saudis are very polite. He's like, yeah, they're nice people, blah, blah. He said, but you know, on the ship, their toilets, there is no system. It just goes into the sea. Literally. Anyway, before I get attacked, that's— I'm just quoting, said something about that. And I thought we would bring the tone of the conversation back to toilet humor since we have 2 Marines and D here, and 2 Marines and 2 Greeks. It's naturally where these things gravitate. Yeah, ass.

And anyway, uh, anything else, boys? That was a great episode.

We haven't talked about what's going to happen in Cuba. I know, that's next.

We should do Cuba next week.

We have to, we have to wait something actually happens.

It's on. Hey, there was just a big team there from the US government, including probably some of our old friends, Mick, so They were just in Havana and they've been squeezed.

We've been squeezing Cuba pretty hard over the last like, uh, few months as well. Oh, everything's okay. All right guys, do us a favor. If you want any of the links of the guys, the links are down in the description always. And if you're listening on audio, they're also down there as well. Um, best place to support the show is patreon.com/theTeamHouse. You get episodes ad-free and early. That's it. As always, guys, I appreciate it. Thank you.

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