Transcript of Will More Strikes on Iran Accomplish Anything? | EYES ON GEOPOLITICS

This episode is presented by Vaer Watches. Go to vaerwatches.com/theteamhouse. Hey guys, we're back. Welcome to Eyes on Geopolitics. I'm Demetri Kontakos. I'm here with Jonathan Hackett and Andy Milburn. Jonathan Hackett, big, big week. He became a new dad. Congratulations, Jonathan.

Thank you.

Beautiful. Love is love. And that's amazing. I don't know what you say to people who just have— yeah, plus you didn't do shit. Your wife did all the work. So

Yep, she's still doing it.

Congratulations. Thank you. Andy Milburn, still jacked as always in Saudi, dodging, dodging drones and ballistic missiles. A lot happening as usual. I'm gonna start off with what's going on with Iran. There's been reports, New York Times reported it too, that the US and Israel are putting— are preparing options for another round of strikes against Iran, potentially targeting nuclear facilities, missile systems, energy infrastructure. Uh, you could tell we've seen it like on the OSINT channels, like, uh, we're moving, um, military personnel all around the region, kind of emptying out Jordan, Qatar, Kuwait. Um, the embassies also got, uh, didn't they get like an alert to evacuate all non-essential and stuff at Riyadh and other places? Um, obviously Iran says if they get hit, they're going to start hitting, you know, other Gulf facilities, data centers, AI infrastructure, anything that's American-linked. Also another, I guess not a fun fact, it's probably a shitty fact, is October was the most, um, in the Strait of Hormuz were the most attacks on shipping since the war began. Um, so who the hell knows? You hear you have, uh, Bibi Netanyahu campaigning for prime minister and stuff there. Their, um, elections are happening on Tuesday the 27th.

Um, And I don't know if this is just stump speech, you know, talking smack campaigning, but he's saying how like Iran is again building towards a nuclear weapon. We've heard this song and dance before. Last week, Hegseth showed up for an unannounced visit with Bibi Netanyahu, and it's been reported that it's to talk about potential strikes on Iran. You have the Houthis as well keep on hitting Saudi Arabia. They've hit the airport a bunch of times. We were talking offline just now how, like, you know, pretty consistent it's been. There's been fatalities. It's been ongoing. And Saudis seem to be having the same trouble we're having with Iran when they start attacking our bases and other things in the area, is they seem to be using Patriots and THAADs to knock down drones, you know, the super expensive stuff to drop down, like, the stuff that's not so expensive. So A lot happening as usual. Uh, where do you guys want to start? Andy, you go first.

Yeah, well, there's, you know, there's a ton to talk about. So, uh, you know, obviously, as always, we'll keep this open source. It's incredible how much you can learn from open source, isn't it? And I know John, uh, will, will be able to buy in on this with, um, far more expertise. But when, when I commanded, um, the siege of Sotif God, I hate that term. That sounds so— when I was— when I had the suit just sort of— In Iraq, um, one of my, uh, not an intel guy, a SEAL, uh, I'm ashamed to say, said, hey, you know, sir, we need a, uh, we need an open source— he called it a social media exploitation cell, right? I had no idea what that meant. Um, so we started one. And, you know, we got most of our intel through that. You know, I'm not talking— obviously not all of our intel. I mean, the targeting-level intel we got, we had to corroborate and get through other means. But most of the stuff, to include BDA, 100% BDA, came from that open-source cell. And then later at SOCSINT, we established the same. And I'm sure now, you know, every unit, special operations or not, is doing the same thing.

But it, and, you know, the lessons of 7 October show how much any organization can learn from open source. So with that lead-in, yeah, so it's, you know, to begin with, all, yes, the wording here in Saudi Arabia from the US State Department is, ordered evacuation of all non-emergency personnel, which is like, I think that is the second most serious. The first, of course, is evacuation of everyone as happened in Kyiv when the Russians invaded. And this was the next one down. So it's not— there's a difference between emergency and essential, right? Emergency are really the skeleton crew. So it means that the consulates and places like Jeddah being closed down, all families are being moved out, deadline this week. I won't say exactly what day. So that's significant. You can see also from the DNI's report to Rubio this week that the— I think the wording was high risk to US citizens in the region. And so you'll see the effects of that, not only ordered departure from here in Riyadh, but voluntary evacuations. And I think, I believe, and I could be wrong, but I believe ordered evacuations now in Jordan of US personnel.

State Department and their families. Flights into Riyadh, no foreign carriers are flying into Saudi Arabia right now. Very few flights out of Riyadh. I believe there's like 1 or 2 this morning. Jeddah's been the main airport. Jeddah was actually hit the other day, but got back into operation in short order. So, you know, I mean, it's incredible. how much pain the Houthis are causing, as far as not just in the Bam, but across here, across the kingdom, Saudi Arabia. A lot of foreign help here, everything from targeting to air defense. We've got Royal Air Force, British Royal Air Force Typhoons overhead. Assisting with air defense. We've got Greek and French air defense crews here, Ukrainians. So it's an international effort. On the messaging, forces, I mean, this is, again, forces arriving. It's clear that US and Israel have drawn up Plans for strikes could be after the midterms. The Israelis seem to think that it's going to occur before the midterms, maybe because they're going to kick it off, right? I mean, you've probably seen IDF have canceled leave, and there is a lot of talk about strikes beginning around the Israeli elections, which are on the 27th.

We talked about his buildup in the Gulf, 3rd Carrier Group on its way. There'll be 2nd Marine Expeditionary Unit, which really doesn't amount to much. It's going to be about 4,000 Marines here, not enough for a ground operation, but certainly messaging. And the talk is now of a short, sharp campaign, although we heard that before. The February campaign rested on the same logic. We killed the—

Yeah, I was going to say, didn't we hear that about 6, 8 months ago, 9 months ago?

So this time there's talk about going after energy infrastructure. But, and of course, you know, nuclear facilities, Pickaxe Mountain, and we can talk about this in more detail, but there's some real issues here, right? Because if we go after If we do go after energy infrastructure, it's a two-edged sword. And now it makes energy infrastructure and desalination plants throughout the Gulf potential targets at a time when interceptors are low and everyone's struggling with the air defense picture. Also, it's not going to do wonders for the price of oil, which is basically one of the fundamental main assessments for this administration to bring Iran to the negotiating table. And then as far as nuclear facilities, again, we can talk about this in more depth, but it's— no pun intended, but it appears unlikely that we would be able to reach— I mean, if Iran's got its shit in one bag, which it has shown the ability to do— that's dreadful grammar there— But it will have buried buried its centrifuges deeper and dispersed that uranium. So going after these things, it's not going to be as easy as it was before. We weren't even 100% successful before.

And again, we have the problem of interceptors, and we haven't been terribly effective at going after launches by our own US intelligence estimates, right? Anyway, So all a period of great uncertainty. And on top of that, of course, we had the attack in Karak in Jordan, 9 killed and some 40 wounded. There is talk in the Jordanian media that it's the Islamic State, but the Islamic State hasn't claimed responsibility yet. And whoever did it is still at large, hasn't been found. How's that? All right, for quick lead-in.

Incredible. That's a record for you in terms of shortest time.

Come on.

On the Jordan attack, actually, that's, that's a really big deal because the Jordanian security services like the GID, the General Intelligence Directorate, and so on, they're very good about keeping Jordan under wraps as far as security. The fact that this small Christian minority was attacked in Jordan is unprecedented. It's very, very unusual in decades in Jordan for this to happen. You know, some people might say, well, why is this going on in Jordan? And I always point to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. He's from Zarqa in Jordan. The Islamic State, some of the people that were the high-level people in Islamic State were from Jordan originally. So there's long been this kind of simmering Sunni anti-Christian activity in Jordan, but the government has kept it under wraps. And that's a big reason why a lot of those Jordanian extremists went to Iraq after the US invasion of Iraq, because they couldn't really do anything in Jordan. And Jordan was the place, you know, where a lot of this stuff, especially in the Palestinian refugee camps outside of Zarqa. And Zarqa in Jordan, just for context, is walking distance from Mwafiq Salty Air Base, which is the primary target that Iran has been striking through its surrogates in Jordan.

So again, kind of like bringing this all together, Zarqa is not this small island separate unto itself. It's a piece of this larger anti-Western puzzle that Iran is exploiting in the region. And it would not surprise me if there was some link to Iran in this attack, which sounds kind of obvious for me saying it, but understanding Jordan's security infrastructure, it's kind of a surprise that whoever was behind it was able to actually execute this attack because of how strongly Jordan clamps down on this activity throughout the country. And the GID, the General Intelligence Directorate, has an excellent relationship with the United States. So the fact that the US also didn't know what was going on is another kind of big surprise. At the same time, back to the ordered departure issue with embassies, we just mentioned that, you know, the US embassy in Jordan, by the way, it's the 5th largest embassy on the planet. The largest embassy on the planet is in Baghdad. So 2 of the largest embassies in the world are within rocket distance of each other. And these are on reduced staffing. Already. So with the order of departure, this is a special kind of U.S. State Department signal, basically drawing embassy levels down.

So all the family members go home. Also, many of the people at the embassy who are considered nonessential are also sent somewhere else in the region, usually to a hotel in another country that's safe until they're called back. So you have just a skeleton crew operating the embassy. And this, this includes some intelligence personnel who might otherwise be there, analysts, for example, or support staff who would normally be in the embassy, in the chancery, being able to update decision makers about activity happening like this, like this attack in the Christian funeral. Normally, you'd have a very robust US presence, and right now it's reduced. So we actually have a bit of vulnerability there on our intelligence gathering and reporting to our host nation partners, to our liaison partners like the GID. If we had information, we might not actually be able to see it because the people who are normally there reporting on it are somewhere else because of the larger threat in the region. And I'll just go through kind of why these departures mean something as far as signal versus noise and what to anticipate coming up with U.S. resumption of activities, possibly.

So there's 2 types of departures that State Department issues. One is authorized departure. That's a voluntary departure. So family members can leave if they want to. They don't have to. Some embassy staff will be told, hey, you're not essential. You can go if you want, but you can also stay. There's a risk. Ordered departure is different. That's when they actually send you home and you have no choice. What we're operating on right now is the ordered departure, the more serious departure. This is a signal that This is not noise. And we saw it in Saudi Arabia, where that was an ordered departure. And that's in the media. It's a publicized thing. It can't be held secret, right? There's another thing called restricted staffing. Restricted staffing does not have to be published in the media. Many of the embassies in the Middle East right now are now on restricted staffing. In other words, they're on something like an ordered departure, but they're not saying that because they don't want the public to know that. And now doing a little bit of inference, you'd have to ask, why aren't they doing an ordered departure? It's because they don't want the public tracking all of these things.

And when I say the public, that means the global public, including Iran, looking at what's going on inside the Gulf and the Middle East generally and saying, why are all the embassy staff leaving? They only do that when there's about to be a war or they see some threat or, you know, a combination of these things. So looking at that signal combined with the ordered departure in Saudi Arabia, there is something either anticipated or planned. So when I say anticipated, I mean the US expects Iran to do something, or planned. In other words, the US is going to do something. Probably one of those 2 things is coming up soon. So without making predictions or saying this will happen, these are some signals kind of blinking to me saying that something is certainly coming up. This is not the end of the war. This is not the status quo. The US is not going to stay at this level of attacks and neither will Iran. And I think we can look at the Houthis to, to further bolster that assessment because what to me is happening is Iran is relying on the Houthis to keep this conflict simmering.

and not at zero, because they have to keep some pressure. You know, when you have— when you're fighting an adversary, even if you're at a lull in combat, you still have to continue putting some degree of pressure, even a little bit, to stay at the edge of the initiative. And both sides are trying to do that in different ways. And it's likely that Iran is either planning a defensive or operation— or offensive pincer kind of concept, where if things escalate, Iran is going to attack in the Bab el-Mandeb and the Straits of Hormuz at the same time, which they didn't really do in the last iteration of this conflict. And I think they probably consciously did not do that because they didn't want to play all their cards at the same time. And we talked about this back in March that, you know, it was eerily quiet on the Houthi front. Well, that eerie quiet is now loud, and it's the loudest part of the conflict actually right now. And I think that was intentional. That was not an accident or the Houthis operating independently. Instead, this was a conscious strategic move to keep the Houthis in the back pocket.

At the beginning, and then play them later toward the election time in the US and Israel, so that there is some heat on this pot when it's time to escalate instead of having a cold pot, no one's involved. Yes, they are involved now. And they're actually leading things. In Iran, you see the IRGC actually doing planning and operational things inside of schools, hospitals, civilian facilities. They've already transitioned to doing that. They weren't doing that before. Probably the reason they're doing that is because when they expect the US to escalate to attack infrastructure like salinization plants and electrical grids and so on, and bases, they're going to be in civilian infrastructure, which makes it much harder for the US to actually strike operational facilities. So the US will be able to strike infrastructure to cripple their ability to do some things, but planning and operations will still be able to be done through IRGC operations in civilian infrastructure. So they're going to increase the cost on the US public messaging side, for strikes. So for example, if you want to strike where a general officer is doing planning, you're gonna have to destroy a school, which then gives Iran the ability to amplify that school strike.

Even though we succeeded militarily in killing that general, we also blew up a school. So I think they're thinking ahead on this about how can we cause difficulty domestically inside the United States in iteration number 2, which will probably start after the elections.

Hey, Jack,

What's going on?

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Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, it's— by the way, we'll come back and talk about Jordan because I think that's a really interesting topic. But because there's a whole ton of things that the GID have stopped, there are things that we know about and there are things that we haven't known about, but you just need to look at Jordan's position. and its demographics to understand that the GID has been remarkably successful in keeping the lid on the pot. Back to Iran, we're in this position again that, and John's laid it out really well. I mean, Iran knows that it can't win a conventional fight with the United States, so it doesn't try to. And its aim here is going to be to make the war so costly, too costly and too long for Washington and its partners. I mean, this talk about a 3-day campaign is aspirational, it's pure wishful thinking, I think. And Iran undoubtedly knows the US wants a short campaign that keeps pump prices, I want to say low, relatively low. So its counterstroke's designed, it's going to be designed to do the opposite, right? It's going to drag the war out, It's going to push up oil prices and it's going to spread pain across the region, as is already happening here in Saudi Arabia.

And it's said so openly, you know, its officials now are saying, hey, if this escalates again, it's not going to be short. So I think, you know, we're going to see a large missile and drone barrage. I mean, according to the Israelis, now, of course, they have an incentive for perhaps beefing this up. But I think, you know, John, I don't know if you can bear me out probably on this, but US intelligence estimates too suggest that Iran has between 1,000— I know it's a wide range— 1,000 and 1,600 ballistic missiles left in its inventory. Also, who knows how many, a large number of drones. No one knows exactly how many. And then you've got targets. It's a target-rich environment here. Right? We already talked about the interceptor problem. You've still got US bases, you've got, but aside from that, across the Gulf countries, let's not talk about Israel for the moment. Across Gulf countries, you've got critical infrastructure spread. I mean, Saudi Arabia is the size of Western Europe and it's got critical infrastructure, energy infrastructure, oil refineries, water desalination plants, which are a big deal. It's what all of these countries are concerned about, because they all depend to a degree above 50% on their desalination plants for water.

Iran knows all that. Iran knows that interceptor stocks are low. So its tactics are going to be volume and persistence, wearing down defenses over days rather than a single massive strike. You know, Tehran's already said they were going to go after energy facilities. We're going to go after data centers, right? Which would be a big deal. We're going to go after undersea internet cables across the Gulf. And a US official has— I forget where I read this, but estimated that the cost of those things, of just data centers, undersea cables, around $2 trillion, right? The aim is going to be to bring pressure on the Gulf states. I mean, the Houthi attacks on Saudi airports and the east-west and the Iraqi militias attack on the east-west pipeline is kind of the template. And I think we're going to see more of that. We're going to see escalation in Hormuz, mines, maybe fast boat attacks. We haven't destroyed their fast boat inventory. anti-ship missiles, which can be lobbed now from anywhere within Iran against shipping. Insurance rates are already sky high. They're not going to go down until the Iranians agree to go to negotiate a ceasefire.

That's the only thing that's going to bring them down. Not military pressure, not forcing convoys through the straits. That is a fact of life that I'm not sure, I'm not sure the administration realizes. And then you've got the proxies on every front. You've got the Houthis. We've already talked about them here, very sophisticated. understated enemy, despite what people, you know, their image of the Houthis as these flip-flop-wearing, um, you know, tribal, primitive types of

maniacs.

Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, they, they are card-chewing, you know, but they are, they're extremely resilient and tough, and, and they have, uh, as we talked about, their own indigenous, uh, capability to manufacture technologically sophisticated weapons with remarkably accurate guidance systems. They need to be taken seriously, and they're not— and, and they're not necessarily at the beck and call of Iran too. You've got Iraqi militias who've launched drones and rockets against U.S. bases and most recently severed the east-west pipeline here in Saudi Arabia. Um, you've got the potential for cyber attacks against— you know, Iran's proven to be pretty good at those against Gulf, against U.S. energy, water, banking, communication intelligence networks, um, all of these things. You know, it— I— when I read about— look, uh, Iran— John and I have spent most— a large chunk of our careers working against Iran. What we're saying here isn't, hey, we need to make peace because Iran's a good, you know, kind— no, we're not saying that at all. But the whole Sun Tzu thing of never underestimate your enemy doesn't seem to be figuring high in, uh, in, in foreign policy deliberations right now. And to cap it all, you have the announcement at the— what was that?

At Doha, at the Global Security Forum, right? Tom Barak is the US Ambassador to Turkey and Trump's Special Envoy for Syria and Iraq. And he said, look, America as guarantor of security, uh, for the last 80 years. We're no longer there. Basically, that's what he says. Um, we're going to, uh— and so he's basically saying, hey guys, you're on your own. All right. Which is not, not a message that was received well in this part of the world. And who knows? I mean, he may have, he may have been misinterpreted, but the, the clearly that the, the, the actions that are taking place Um, in consonance, it seemed to back up that messaging. At least that's how it's perceived right now by Gulf countries. Um, and this was the clearest statement yet of the shift Gulf states have sensed for the last year. Washington still wants the partnership but no longer offers, you know, this guarantee of security. And it explains why countries in the Middle East and in the Gulf are, you know, they're, they're banding together. Um, they're calling on France and UK for air defense.

Greece.

And at the same time, Barack's message is defend yourselves, and yet the US is preparing a new Iran campaign whose retaliation would fall hardest on the Gulf states. So all of this, it's not sitting easy here right now.

And it takes a lot of time to prepare your own defenses if you're a Gulf country. And for decades, the US, since let's say 1991, Consistently, the US has said, we will supply much of your security in exchange for access, basing, and overflight. So those countries developed their defenses around that idea that the US would defend in specific critical areas. And with a short period of time, the US is saying, we're not doing that anymore. So those states are now very vulnerable because they relied on the promise that we made to those allies and partners that we would fill that gap and those states wouldn't have to. I'm sure that if those states back in 1991 knew the US was not going to be there, they would have developed their own air defense systems either organically or with a different partner, let's say with Russia or Europe, or even China, to defend themselves because it's their sovereign territory. They have to defend themselves. And for this period of time—

Go ahead, John. Sorry. Yeah, I think we— I mean, part of that now was, you know, we wanted them to buy our weapons, our F-16s and our F-35s and our whatever, you know.

Right. I mean, we even saw kind of the encroachment of Russia in this calculation for these states happen with Turkey specifically about 6 years ago when Turkey wanted to buy S-400s from Russia. We said, Turkey, you can't do that. If you do that, you can't use the F-35. So there was this decision point where there was another competitor, a security competitor in the region that was trying to edge the United States out. And that was exactly what happened in Turkey. And that's going to happen again. I mean, this is how political realism works. The states in the Gulf are going to say, we are exposed. How do we defend ourselves? How can we do that quickly? And another state's going to come along, whether that's China or Russia or even the European Union, and they're going to say, we can help you at this price. And those states are going to say, we have to accept this because we can't be naked in the face of Iranian retaliation when the US has just told us that we can't be protected. And that is a loss for the United States that is very difficult, if not impossible, to recover after those states are attacked and cannot defend themselves.

Also, you are seeing China now, they're able to field their own stuff en masse. Like, um, it's— if I'm Saudi or any other Gulf country, it's probably an enticing offer. Like, you're gonna get hardware probably for cheaper, you know, on probably on par, slightly like right on par below US-level stuff. Um, it kind of seems like a no-brainer, frankly. And Frank— and China's defense industrial base is, is growing. I mean, there were some defense analysts saying that in the next coming, uh, decade or two, like China's going to be providing Russia with a lot of their stuff.

Well, not only that, you got China's Norinco. Norinco is a very big Chinese defense industrial base, state-controlled entity producing and selling directly to Yemen Houthi forces these pieces of ballistic missiles. Some of them are dual use, some of them are not dual use. And the ones that are not dual use are like pieces of tail fins and heat reflectors and things like that that are used for these strikes on Saudi Arabia right now. And there was a great Wall Street Journal article a few weeks ago that exposed this to the public so the open source can see this, that China is actually selling this stuff to the Houthis. At the same time, they're also selling stuff to the Emirates and other countries, drones, for example, certain types of drones. For a while, especially during Trump 1, the U.S. was trying to prevent that because, again, we were still competing with and also helping our allies and partners with this stuff. We actually were trying to offset those drone sales by giving them our drones with special promises attached to that to help make it more enticing. Now that's got— that enticement's gone. So states like the Emirates and others in the Gulf are going to look to China and say, hey, we need those drones now.

So very similar to actually the Iran-Iraq War, when the US was supporting both Iran and Iraq to drive them down against each other, not to help either side win. China is actually taking on a similar sort of analogous role where they're supplying both sides of the conflict, not to help either side win, But to degrade the United States in the region, that's the ultimate goal so that competitor, the United States, is weaker vis-à-vis China.

Yeah. With all the talk about the military campaign, economic pressure, as we've talked about here, and increasingly smart economic pressure focused on the IRGC and bringing that aperture narrower and narrower. appears to probably be most likely to bring real pressure on Iran and the thing most likely to force Iran to the negotiating table. The chest banging and the military movement of military assets and the campaign, military campaign itself, as we talked about, is likely to be far less for a number of reasons, all the reasons we talked about. The difficulty of conducting an air campaign, a purely air campaign to achieve the objectives that have been outlined. I'd say difficulty, impossibility, basically. And the fact that once— that is the terrain on which Iran can bolster its position as far as strategic communications is concerned. Look, we are withholding against attacks from the most advanced military country on Earth, United States, and its partner, Israel. And just that term, its partner, Israel, I don't think that the administration realizes what a what a strategic communication victory that is for Iran to be able to paint the United States as a proxy of Israel the way it is.

So all of that together, it doesn't matter what— it almost doesn't matter how effective this campaign is. But it's, as I've said, the reasons we already said, it's unlikely to be that effective. It's interesting that the New York Times talks about a 3-day campaign. I think that's probably viable. You think about it, day one, you're going after using EW, using cyberattacks on air defense command control, using, as I said, EW for space-based jamming, blind radars, satellite links, and missile defenses, all those things to take out the IADS. And then— Well, that's shaping, and then day one, you're going after destruction of the IEDs. And you'd have to hit Pickaxe Mountain, Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan on the first day with GBU-57s. But as we talked about there, Iran's very likely, unless they're incompetent, they've very likely buried their centrifuge workshops beyond the range of those bombs. They're probably you know, 80, 90 feet down in concrete. And then, you know, we talked about going after the economy militarily, power stations, gas processing plant at South Pars, petrochemical plants. But then again, that opens up, as we said, our Gulf partners to the same type of targeting.

And if we hit refineries, then again, we're not doing wonders for For the oil. And then going after missile and drone production, the missile launchers, how much more successful can we hope to be? You know, and it's just hard to see. It's hard to see. Yes, we can have clear objectives for this military campaign, but they're not likely to achieve policy objectives, which is bring Iran to the negotiating table, right? Yeah.

Well, it's interesting because our military objectives appear to be dictated by Iran right now. Because at the beginning of the conflict, we have to remember this was about nuclear facilities all the way back to June last year. You know, it's about the nuclear weapons program, ballistic missiles, the things that the JCPOA left out initially. Iran, in some ways masterfully redirected the way the US was attacking this conflict, changed the objectives, in flight. And now we are doing things that were not the stated— we had a nebulous statement of goals to begin with. Iran kind of capitalized on that nebulous state of goals and pushed us toward the Straits of Hormuz very dramatically, very quickly, and has still got us focusing on the Straits of Hormuz, not just in the military, but in domestic US discussions about the conflict. It's about the Straits of Hormuz, the price of gas, things related to that. That had nothing to do with the original salvo of strikes back in June 2025, when we were striking those nuclear facilities, which we claimed to be obliterated using very high powerful ordnance on those facilities, did not destroy them. And then we did it again on February 28th.

And as you mentioned, Andy, like this, these, these, these massively— the massive ordnance bomb, the MOAB, and all these things, the Daisy Cutter, these do destroy the soil and things like that. But if the facilities have been designed to be so deep, to be resistant to this, I mean, we're basically wasting very expensive weapons for no reason. And in fact, it's actually giving Iran even more PR victories, because they can say that our program is so strong that it survived the Great Satan's largest non-nuclear strikes on the planet, and so on. So we're almost like giving them narrative fodder to use. And they've thought ahead about this. That's why they designed these facilities these ways. And if the war is not even about the nuclear facilities anyway anymore, these strikes are almost a side quest when they were the main point to begin with. But now the point is gas prices, energy, you know, this kind of stuff that they pointed us toward, and we took the bait in some ways.

That would be somebody with like a strategic thought in their head. And I don't think— I think, uh, this White House and this Department of Defense is, uh, lacking in those people.

Yeah, we haven't really kept control of the initiative that we first started with against the ballistic missiles and nuclear material. And maybe, maybe this is a reset. Maybe this is 2.0. When we hit after the elections, we refocus on things we've had time to think about and assess what we've been doing. Maybe there will be a shift back toward the main objective to begin with, that is nuclear facilities, That is uranium enrichment and stopping the enrichment, getting the material out of the country or making it neutral and not useful by, you know, blowing it in place essentially, or regime change or something like that. I mean, these are the stated goals initially back in January, February while this was ramping up. So maybe the US will refocus back onto those things. The challenge is, you know, your enemy gets a vote, as General Mattis said, and the enemy's been thinking about this too. So they've been anticipating for a very long time. They've been licking their wounds, especially since July, Thinking about, okay, if the US does one of those 3 things that I just mentioned, how do we react and capitalize on those things in response?

And I think we've seen the past year or so, the US has been doing a poor job in understanding how the enemy is thinking about these things. And the enemy's been doing a great job thinking about how the US is going to do what it will do next, and already having a prepackaged response, both in the information environment and in the military environment to counter that.

Yeah. You know, one thing, uh, That's kind of interesting. Hey, D, I saw you asked me to log off. Was that because you were getting tired of me?

No, no, no, because your internet was unstable, but it seems to have started working again, so you're good to go.

That was a while ago. Another factor playing in, of course, is that Israeli elections are on Tuesday.

Tuesday.

Yeah, right. So And both Netanyahu and his Defense Minister Katz are saying openly that the goal of war with Iran now is to bring down the regime. So it's very different than what the US administration is saying. And Netanyahu has framed his election around who will finish the job. So, you know, it's hard to know exactly what's going on there. But, you know, the Financial Times, British paper, reported that Trump blocked an Israeli strike already planned for October 10th. Of course, the Israelis are saying no strike was planned, as they would. And they suggest the story was leaked to influence the election. Yeah, so, um, it—

but even the, even the challenger, right, the guy who's— I, I keep forgetting his name. He's a former IDF guy. He's lost a son in Gaza. He's not exactly a peacenik dude. No. You know what I mean? Like, he's not exactly like a, uh, a tankie, you know. He's an IDF guy who's like, you know, a right-wing guy as well. So like, he's probably gonna have the same animus.

There's no room for a peace movement or opposition from the left. We've seen Israel on this track since the assassination of Rabin back in, when was that, '95? And now it's kind of at its— Its apogee. Maybe not its apogee of right-wingedness. When we talk about opposition Netanyahu, the opposition Netanyahu isn't based on any desire for, you know, a 2-state solution or reconciliation or go easier on the Palestinians. It's all about internal Israeli politics.

Right, and frankly, like, the polls reflect that in terms of, like, where the general population is with that, right? Like, you know, in 2012, I read that they were just over 60%, they were for a 2-state solution. Now it's like under, it's like 26 or 27%. They've lost more than half of that support. And it's It doesn't seem likely it's going to come back anytime soon or in this generation. So, right, yeah, it's not like they're, you know, this guy's a peacenik ready to, you know, spread love and joy everywhere.

Yeah, the guy, I mean, the guy you're talking about, Eisenkot, he's, you know, I suppose the Israelis would call him center-right, but it's a different spectrum, right? Sure. For instance, center-right in Israel, if you put that in the, say, let's not mix this up with US politics, but let's say you took the UK and you took center-right in Israel, it would be far, far right of the— like be a Reform Party probably in the UK. I know that's— I'm going to be criticized for that metaphor. But yeah, I mean, obviously Eisenkot, he opposes a Palestinian state. He supports settlements. Um, but he did pledge to crack down on settler violence, which is, which is, you know, reached, uh, as you guys know, just almost an unbelievable level. Um, uh, but yeah, he's certainly not a, certainly not a liberal by any stretch.

I mean, even to like form a coalition, Eisenkot's gonna have to like flirt with the Likud and the, you know, the Jewish power part, you know, what's his face, the real piece of shit, Ben-Gvir's party.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

Neither of whom, by the way, yeah, exactly.

Part of the opposition is that the ultra-Orthodox are not participating in the IDF, and so it's not that they want less war, it's that they want more people to be in the IDF to fight war. This is part of Eisenkot's platform, is to bring in more of the ultra-Orthodox or all of the ultra-Orthodox into the eligible population to serve in the IDF. And it's that, again, it's not a peace move. That's actually an increase of IDF capability to fight.

But that's also alienating your far, far right, your social conservatives.

That law has already been passed to removed the exemption for ultra-Orthodox from the IDF. It just hasn't been fully enforced. And there's a great deal of opposition to it from, of course, said Orthodox. We don't want to serve in the IDF, but it's a significant part of the Israeli population. I don't want to misstate the percentage, but the point is this, that it's not a token exemption. And when you have the reservists being stretched to the limit as they have been over the last 3 years, having such a sizable percentage of the population who don't have to serve, especially a segment of the population that is the most bellicose in many ways and far right, then yeah, there is tension. I mean, the bottom line is, you know, Israel's ready to attack. Its air force has been training for this. It's, they've, you know, you can see in the open source, they've flown long-range drills east over Syria and Iraq, which looks like rehearsal of the routes to Iran. So they need to rehearse that. Haven't they done that a fair amount, right? And they've, again, open-source updated target lists, which now includes infrastructure that wasn't struck in earlier rounds, energy sector infrastructure.

And according to the New York Times, the IDF and US military have finished detailed operational planning covering target lists and and how the campaign would look. Apparently, it's daily coordination with CENTCOM. Timing probably points to early November after both elections, but who knows.

Right after the polls closed in the US on Tuesday night.

Yeah.

And John, what do you want to mention? I thought you wanted to say something.

Yeah, on the ultra-Orthodox thing. So there's 80,000 to 100,000 men that would suddenly overnight be eligible or required to join the IDF, which is about 20% to a 25% increase to the IDF's size.

Huge.

This is a not insignificant amount of potential soldiers that would be required to fight. So you can, you can see why there's such opposition within their community to, to letting this happen. And as you mentioned, Andy, they're supposed to be But it's not being enforced. And the concern that they have is, of course, if Eisenkot comes in, that enforcement will begin. So they'll suddenly have to join in this fight that they support vocally, but don't want to participate in, at least their families don't want them to be participating in that. So that is a significant issue there domestically inside Israel. And it's important to note that Eisenkot is Sephardic. In other words, Middle East, North Africa, Jewish origin, not Ashkenazi. which would be a significant change in the leadership of Israel at the top if Eisenkot leads, because the Sephardi community has very different views about how things are to be done. They're not doves by any means, but they have a different vision of how offensive operations should be conducted in the Middle East.

Yeah. I mean, interestingly enough, he's closer to To the US administration than Netanyahu when it comes to terms with Iran. So if we do have a clear policy, it's wanting a nuclear deal backed by force. Netanyahu wants regime change. And if Eisenkot wins, I think US and Israeli war aims are likely to come closer together, which makes it interesting. that Trump supports Netanyahu. Um, you know, and, and Eisenkot said openly he, he sees no current justification for another strike against Iran. Um, but even so, I mean, Netanyahu, even if he's a lame duck, he remains the caretaker prime minister until a new government is formed, and that could take weeks. And so he would be free to launch a strike. You know, I think, you know, Eisenkot would be, again, he's a, I'm not getting involved in Israeli politics, but he seems to be more moderate in many ways and likely to bring more restraint in the West Bank and perhaps a more pragmatic approach to Gaza based on what he has said. I mean, unlikely to bring about normalization, But nevertheless, it makes it more likely.

All right. So let's move on quick, bang out of what's going on with Ukraine and Russia. We heard last week, obviously, Starlink and Starship was cut off. It still seems to be cut off, at least that's what Zelensky is saying. And reports are coming up. It's an interesting blame game going on between the administration and Elon Musk and SpaceX as to who did it, who decided to do it. Really great news is Melania Trump brokered a ceasefire, which is great, I think, you know. But the big thing about it is Zelensky's been hitting the— making the rounds on American media for sure, like podcasts too. He's been going on and indicating his willingness to freeze the conflict where it is for the ceasefire talks and the peace talks, which is roughly almost 25% of Ukraine right now, which is taken up by Russia. Putin's still, you know, Putin, uh, saying that, you know, all these territories are Russian, uh, territory anyway. Um, Russia continues to lose a fuck ton of soldiers and equipment, and they keep throwing them into the meat grinder. It's kind of incredible in this day and age that this is going on in a modern country and the people of that country are not, uh, freaking the fuck out.

Uh, it's, it's frankly, a testament to how much they've controlled that country and made it completely politically apathetic. I want to address one thing about, like, there's this big talking point specifically by our president who, you know, like him or love him, I don't do either of those, talking about how Ukraine needs to have elections, you know, and it's just an overall siding with Russia and Putin, which is like frankly disgusting. And the fact is, like, when there's 25% of your country's under occupation, how can you actually try and have an election when the majority of your opposition, the people that would run against you in an election, are saying we shouldn't have an election right now? We should wait for there to at least be a ceasefire and maybe an end to this war before we do that. I just don't understand, especially when the other side is Putin, who's been in power for 27 years. has quote-unquote fucking elections. But like, if you believe that, I got a fucking bridge to sell you. And frankly, you're too stupid to be listening to this show if you believe that. It's incredible to me where we're at right now, where an American president is doing this and is like, we're all for freedom and democracy, except when you really like a— really like a dictator, you know what I mean?

It's fucking embarrassing, frankly. And like, even if you look at the polls in America, you know, 45% of Americans think that Putin is, you know, Putin's the bad guy in this war. You know, 33% are not sure. So even if 9% are sure that Zelensky is a bad guy, so even if you chop the 33% in half, it's over— it's bordering 60-plus percent in terms of people in America who are supportive of Ukraine. And we haven't given them any kind of support in terms of military or hardware support in over 2 years. We are— we have the Pearl Act, you know, the deal with like we sell it to NATO and NATO sells it to Ukraine. We've been holding out on the fucking Patriot interceptors, which are already made a deal for, paid for and stuff like that, and basically waiting to be sent to Ukraine. And the stuff with Starlink and like, who was fucked? Are we the bad guys? Because it feels like we're the fucking bad guys. Your thoughts, Andy?

Well, I'm not going to answer that question directly. I think just the facts speak for themselves. One thing I try and avoid doing on this podcast is ranting. I can live with that. Let's just look at the facts. All right. So Putin told Witkoff in St. Petersburg that he agrees. Don't worry, I'll talk about Starlink in a moment. But He agrees in principle to resuming trilateral talks with the next round planned in Abu Dhabi for early November, November 4th. And then within hours, Russia launches a ballistic missile and drone barrage on Kyiv, which is a daily occurrence, and then a separate strike on energy facilities across 6 regions, cutting power to more than almost a million people. Right? At this time of year, which is already pretty damn cold in Ukraine. So, I mean, this has been Moscow's consistent pattern, right? These are the facts. I'm not just expressing opinions. Say yes to talks and then keep striking. Just like, yeah, yeah, yeah. And then just keep doing what they want to do. The timing of the Abu Dhabi round is also telling, I think, because it falls after the US midterms, so Russia can wait and see what political mood Washington is in before it commits to anything.

That's no gap. All right. And then, you know, another point, the gap hasn't narrowed, right? Moscow's demands are the same as they were from the start. Ukraine withdraws from all 4 annexed regions, including territory Russia doesn't even hold yet. All right. So effectively ceding territory to Russia. Ukraine gives up NATO membership and cuts the size of its army. Well, that's not even good for NATO. We've got the most powerful, most experienced military in Europe right now. And for purely selfish reasons, it behooves NATO to get on some kind of path to bring Ukraine into the fold. All right. And Ukraine has to lift restrictions on the Russian language and Moscow-affiliated church. You know, I mean, these may seem— I mean, Ukraine, there aren't restrictions, there aren't laws against speaking Russian. It's just Ukrainian is the primary language of the country, right? So, and, you know, Kiev wants a ceasefire on the current Frontline first, followed by talks. All right, so freeze everything as now, and let's talk and negotiate, which seems reasonable. Moscow rejects any pause until a full agreement on its terms is reached, which is ironic because they're taking the bulk of casualties.

But Russia's got every reason to talk slowly. The economic pressure on Moscow has eased. Thanks to the United States. The US diesel deal gives Russia revenues, gives it a political win, and Trump has rejected new sanctions. So meanwhile, Washington's pressing Kiev to stop striking Russian refineries, right? It's

fucking crazy, Andy. You can say it. It's fucking crazy.

You can't make this stuff up, right? Ukraine's been asked to give up its best lever. Putin himself has said Ukraine's refinery strikes are costing Russia about 1% of GDP. That's the most effective pressure Kyiv has to apply in this war as its own cities get hit, its power infrastructure gets hit right before the long winter. It's using cheap long-range drones to force Russia to spend heavily on air defense, ration fuel at home, bring the war home to the Russian population, and lose export revenue. And we are pressing Kyiv to stop doing that because it's unfair. It's like, what the hell? And reportedly, along with that is a threat to the Ukrainians to cut early warning intelligence, right? Which is, you know, helping save their civilian population. I mean, yeah, the motive is global oil prices, which we drove up. I mean, let's be honest, we drove them up by initiating a war.

They were at $60 a barrel in February of 2026.

And then, you know, meanwhile, all this shit's going on. And then it turns out SpaceX restricted Starlink and the military Starshield service without warning. So Trump says the White House was not involved. But the disruption goes well beyond these long-range strikes we've been talking about. Because Ukraine's air defense system, specifically its interceptor drones, that are used against the Shaheds, the Iranian-made drones. It depends on Starshield. So those— so, you know, these interceptor drones, they fly over Ukrainian territory en route to knocking down Shaheds, and they depend on reliable links to find and kill their targets. So cutting that service degraded Ukraine's air defense while Russia was bombing Kyiv, knocking out power for almost a million people, killing civilians. And we prevented that happening, or at least SpaceX did. It's just, you can't make this stuff up, right? And then Trump announces it's time for Ukraine to get a new president. So you add the diesel deal, the refusal to impose new sanctions, the pressure over the refinery strikes, and the Starlink disruption. Moscow can see all this and knows that Washington's pressing Zelensky far harder than it's pressing Putin. And that gives Russia every reason to hold out.

How long can Russia sustain its losses? Well, I mean, that's a good question, but this isn't a war that— I mean, I think you'd have to— I listened to a really good podcast about this the other day. Interviewing a Russian expert. She is Russian actually. And she's saying, look, you can't equate pain from the war with resistance to the government. There is no correlation there in Russia. So things could get far, far worse without there being any organized opposition to Putin. I mean, the government has a firm grip on the population. Even criticizing the war will get you years in jail. Meanwhile, Ukraine's General Staff reported it's like 46,000 Russians killed and wounded in September. That's up. No, I think that was just killed. But anyway, it's—

How is that even close to sustaining the

deal? I mean, 46,000. No, I'm sorry. No, it's killed and wounded. That's right. Because it's

Even if it's casualties, let's say the guys who are hurt are out for a month or two, how is that even sustainable?

It's 100%. I mean, it is casualties per month. Okay, so that's what, 1,200 a day, 1,300 a day? I mean, it's staggering. And the numbers are going up. So that's up nearly 46% since the beginning of this year, 1,500 a day. Sorry, I did And cumulative figure is now close to 1.6 million killed and wounded since the beginning of the war. Now, those are Ukrainian numbers, but the UK MOD numbers are saying 1,200 a day. And they didn't— and that was up until September. So anyway, they're all in the same— I mean, 1,200 to 1,500 a day. That's a huge amount. Recruitment's falling behind. So they're recruiting about, I think it's 30,000 a month against losses of 40,000 or more per month. So you can see it's a problem when it comes to— they're going to have a problem when it comes to manpower. The problem is Ukraine's already having a problem. when it's coming to manpower. And the Russian economy, until the diesel deal at least, and I don't want to exaggerate the effect of that, but the Russian economy is under pressure. So oil and gas revenue down almost 20% because of the refinery strikes.

And Russia's raising taxes. So the pain on the population is certainly increasing, but there's no cliff. I mean, Russia can sustain this rate for at least another year. It still has reserves. It can raise bonuses further. And as a last resort, it can mobilize again. What is the political cost? I mean, Putin, Putin probably doesn't care, right? He's going to be in power anyway. And the higher oil prices from the Gulf crisis actually helped Moscow, although not enough to close the gap, but they certainly do help the Russian economy. So the real answer is there's no internal pressure that's going to stop the war. The real answer depends on outside pressure, Russia's ability keep going rests on its access to markets, right? And the refinery strikes by the Ukrainians and the sanctions that the United States was imposing were the 2 things that were squeezing Russia. Now we've eased one and we're pressing Kyiv to give up on the other. It's just—

John, hit me, bro. Hit me some shit. Come on.

Well, Andy pretty much covered it. The only thing I'll mention is the Starlink Starshield issue. So Starshield, of course, is a US government-controlled but SpaceX-owned low Earth orbit satellite constellation. And Starlink is used on the commercial side for very similar activity. But it's— the key difference is that the US government does not dictate what happens with Starlink. Instead, it's SpaceX unilaterally can just decide to throttle it, turn it off, turn it on, speed it up, all kinds of things. And Elon Musk claimed that The reason Starlink was throttled was because Ukraine violated Starlink's terms of service, which is kind of a crazy thing just in general, because you have a military using this capability and is able to be stopped by a private company. Well, it's actually a publicly owned company now because of the IPO, but a non-government entity is dictating what a military can and cannot do on a national level. Right. That can actually win or lose a war, which is a crazy new development that I don't think has existed in the past, that I think is an important policy thing for people to think about, not just with Ukraine. I mean, obviously, the Ukraine thing is happening right now.

But in the future, how are we going as a country and as a— in the world going to decide how do we use private entities in war for high technology uses like this? You know, in the past, let's say when Germany was launching V-2 missiles at the UK, and Winston Churchill was making decisions about What to do in the UK. You know, do we inform the public? Do we talk about the Enigma decryption and things like that? This was— these are all government decisions made secretly. And instead we have, to some degree, a similar scale of existential danger in Ukraine. And instead of a government deciding what to do, you have a private, you know, individual, a person telling his own company what to do. Again, this is a publicly owned company, so there are shareholders here. Who— this is another wild card because shareholders could actually cause shareholder litigation against SpaceX to make them stop providing Starlink services to Ukraine. This is another thing to think about. They could, they could launch litigation.

He's got litigation, he has like 80-plus percent in terms of like voting shares and stuff like that.

Without getting too technical, there are ways in the courts of equity to get an injunction against what Musk is doing for temporarily to stop him from having— from exercising those powers. while the question is litigated. So there could be a period of time, a short period of time, where his ability to decide is stopped. And there are other things legally, like there are legal tools available to interfere with the war in Ukraine in the United States by private individuals. So again, this is a crazy new development, I think, in war, where you have these private entities being able to just, like a light switch, flip on or off a military—

You know what we need to do? We need to fucking peepee whack those CEOs and tell This is what's happening, and dictate to them the fucking terms. I mean, Elon Musk too has also squeezed the DOD before with Starlink and Starshield. They've done— he's done it before, which, you know, it wasn't really reported a ton on. And, you know, it's a big deal. You see it happening kind of— I mean, you're probably not squeezing the Trump administration. They probably don't give a fuck one way or the other in terms like Trump clearly doesn't like Zelensky and prefers Putin. But like you said, it's a, it's a bigger problem, right? Like, one CEO should not have like this kind of power to be able to switch something off and on like that.

Right. And being able to say that it's the terms of service violation, like, where's the process? Where's the due process?

Absolute nonsense, bro. Like, that's an absolute fucking nonsense answer and response. I mean, you could go on Grok right now and get fucking child porn. All right, let's stop fucking around with it. Like, trying to act like Ukraine violated the terms of service. That's such an absolute fucking cop-out. from these people that like, can't even like, they don't even have the balls to like, at least, at least be honest with people and say, you know what, we're doing this for a specific reason.

Well, why wasn't, why wasn't Iran stopped from making the Lego videos on X if that was, you know, a violation of terms of service to do terrorist activity? Right? I mean, isn't that true too? Like, where was the stoppage there? They were actually amplified by the algorithms that X has on its platform. So more people saw it, Then should have probably seen it.

You got me crazy now, John. You got me crazy. At the end of the show. At the end of the show. Oh my God. Also, another fun fact, Russia obviously giving targeting data to Iran and stuff, killing American servicemen. But let's, let's throw them a fucking lifeline. Yeah, it makes total fucking sense.

Well, they did it in Afghanistan too. The GRU was giving the Taliban information about US positions.

Well, they're our adversary. We did the same to them in Afghanistan. I mean, that is just— I'm not justifying, of course, I'm not justifying what Russia did. I'm just saying— That's the game. There are adversaries.

So why are we giving them a deal with diesel? Why are we giving them lifelines?

We kill each other's personnel or we buy proxy wherever possible because we are adversaries. That's the way it is. And that's why the war in Ukraine is good for NATO and it's good for us and every single Well, you know, I know it sounds a horrific thing to say, but sadly, those Russian casualty figures are good for us. That's the plain truth. Let's stick by that course.

And let's be honest, whose fault is it?

Targeting data to the Iranians.

And whose fault is it?

The enemy.

The Russian casualty.

With the Iranians. All right. I'm not ranting.

I'm just pointing out. You froze. You froze.

You froze me.

Oh, I'd never, never freeze you, babe.

It was the rant alert.

Yeah, yeah, that's what it was. It slowed us down. Actually, it was pretty good.

It was Starlink.

Not ranting. I'm just— why would you not think that Russia is an adversary? Why would you not think that? Anyway, I mean, not you guys, but I mean, why would, why would you argue otherwise? Of course we, we work, you know, we work behind the scenes to cause pain to each other.

Even in World War II, the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact was between the Nazis and the Soviet Union. And the only reason the Soviets joined us is because the Germans violated the pact.

Yeah, right. If it wasn't for Barbarossa, we, you know, we— Britain would be— I won't go down that kind of facture. I get attacked for it.

That's for another episode. We'll get into Operation Barbarossa. Guys, anything else? We've said it all. I don't feel good about this conversation either, though. But we said it all.

Milburn?

Nothing?

Nothing. No.

I want, I want people to go and check out Andy's Substack. It's very good. It's great. He posts regularly. So check that out. The link is in the description. He did. Yeah. He's got his book, of course, When the Tempest Gathers, great autobiography. The new book is coming out soon about Israel and the Gaza War. Jonathan Hackett, new dad. You got A Ranch Shot, Weapons and Theory of Irregular War. Please go check that— those books out. The links are in the description. If you want to find these guys, all those links are in the description. And if you want to help support the show, go to patreon.com/theteamhouse for, uh, episodes that are ad-free and early for both Team House and Izon 2 for the price of one. And if you really want to help the show, go buy a Vare watch. That link is in the description as well.

Yeah, guys, do we all get one of these?

It's in the mail, Andy. I'll get you a Vare watch. Okay. But you can use it if you really want one. You can get— use the promo code The Team House and you'll get a free watch roll with your purchase.

Oh, nice.

Oh, and you're a veteran so you can get 20% off additional.

Wow. Okay, great.

I'll tell them you're a colonel too. Maybe we can get a free watch. Full bird colonel too. Send me your CV. I'll shoot it over to them. I'm sure they'll give you a watch.

Let me get right on that.

Thanks, guys.

All right, bye everyone.

Hello everyone, if you're hearing this, uh, 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. You can also watch the Team House podcast completely ad-free and early, and you can also watch it live as we interview our guests. And it's the best way to support the channel. So if you can, if you're open to it, you can go to patreon.com/theteamhouse. That link is in the description. We appreciate the supporters and we hope you would consider being one. So it's patreon.com/theteamhouse. Thanks, guys.