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Speaker 1: Thanks a bunch. Hey everybody, welcome to another episode of
Speaker 1: Eyes on Geopolitics. I'm joined today with Jack Murphy, Jason Lynes,
Speaker 1: Jonathan Hackett. I believe the Muscles from Brussels is coming.
Speaker 1: Andy will be here shortly. Uh yeah, A lot going on.
Speaker 1: We're doing a double double whammy this week of Eyes
Speaker 1: On's because, uh, you know, obviously the war continues against Iran.
Speaker 1: A lot has happened. I don't even know where I'm
Speaker 1: gonna start. I'm literally haven't decided yet, but let's start
Speaker 1: with Let's start with the fact that they picked a
Speaker 1: new Supreme leader, which is Kamani's son, his second son,
Speaker 1: but they don't know if he's if people are alive,
Speaker 1: because they bomb the Council what is it called, Council
Speaker 1: of Experts, Assembly of Experts. Yeah, they bombed that when
Speaker 1: that was going on. So it really seems like we
Speaker 1: really want to negotiate with whoever comes out on top
Speaker 1: of this. A lot's been happening. There's like so many things.
Speaker 1: I think six service members have died and I think
Speaker 1: twenty plus have been wounded. On the American side, Iran
Speaker 1: keeps continuing to hit all the Gulf states around them, targeting,
Speaker 1: mostly targeting. They are targeting civilian stuff like infrastructure and
Speaker 1: stuff like that, but they're targeting a lot of military stuff.
Speaker 1: Like you see some satellite images of our bases in
Speaker 1: and around the area. They don't look like they're doing
Speaker 1: super great. Word is is like another big wave coming
Speaker 1: from us from on our side on Iran, And I'm
Speaker 1: sure it's been happening all day. Another big part of
Speaker 1: news was there's an article that came out like literally
Speaker 1: like maybe an hour ago, two hours ago, talking about
Speaker 1: that the US has been supplying arms to the Iranian
Speaker 1: Kurds since last year and with it supposedly like a
Speaker 1: ground thing is supposed to start within the next couple
Speaker 1: of days. They asked Israel and the US if they
Speaker 1: would provide, you know, fire support. There's no word on
Speaker 1: whether we agree to that. So yeah, a lot's happening.
Speaker 1: And I'm sure I missed that. I mean, I'm sure
Speaker 1: you guys all saw like Rubio and Pete hag Seth's
Speaker 1: press conference. I mean, Marco Rubio just basically let the
Speaker 1: cat out of the back, saying that we knew Israel
Speaker 1: was going to hit them, so and we knew that
Speaker 1: they were going to attack our base, so we just
Speaker 1: hit them too. It's like, I don't I'm not a
Speaker 1: conspiracy theorist, but Israel runs our shit. Let's be honest. Okay, guys,
Speaker 1: what do you have.
Speaker 4: Well, I'll say that today when they're meeting with Martz Trump,
Speaker 4: you know, he fixed that. He mentioned that he had
Speaker 4: a feeling that Arom would attack the US and that's
Speaker 4: why it wasn't because of Israel telling Rubio anything.
Speaker 1: He had a feeling like what he read like the
Speaker 1: tea leaves he went to a psychic or if they was,
Speaker 1: if there was real intelligence about that happening, they would
Speaker 1: be fucking leaking it from a week before.
Speaker 3: The I mean, the thing is, like the lies they're
Speaker 3: telling us aren't really meant to be believed, And it's
Speaker 3: just this interesting sort of separation with reality that twenty
Speaker 3: years ago they had to lie to us about WMDs,
Speaker 3: about you know, fighting for freedom, all these sorts of things,
Speaker 3: and today they don't have to do that anymore. They
Speaker 3: just have to produce social media content and enough of
Speaker 3: Congress and enough of the population of the United States.
Speaker 3: I mean, even though this has very low approval, there's
Speaker 3: no real anti war movement in this country.
Speaker 5: There hasn't been since like maybe the seventies.
Speaker 3: So I mean it's interesting that like they don't really
Speaker 3: have to make the case, and Congress, you know, some
Speaker 3: of them have said belatedly, you have to make the case,
Speaker 3: but he doesn't really have to if he doesn't want to,
Speaker 3: it doesn't seem so I'm not really sure what we're
Speaker 3: doing here, But I mean, it's scary times in that regard.
Speaker 3: It feels like a lot of the safeguards are off.
Speaker 4: I'm concerned about the Americans that are in the Middle East,
Speaker 4: like civilians, because a lot of this kind of scattershot
Speaker 4: announcement over social media. The State Department's been doing that too,
Speaker 4: and they haven't been doing very good job coordinating evacuations
Speaker 4: with people. And actually Rubio just pleaded this afternoon with
Speaker 4: media organizations to help amplify the State Department's messaging about
Speaker 4: the evacuation plans, because it seems like the State Department
Speaker 4: no longer has the ability on its own like it
Speaker 4: used to municate to people in country, because it must
Speaker 4: have been dismantled. I assume.
Speaker 2: One of the he was he one of the embassy's
Speaker 2: put out something that said, hey, don't come here, we
Speaker 2: can't help you.
Speaker 1: Yeah think no, I'm Jerusalem.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that doesn't invoke much confidence.
Speaker 1: And he said, like, we're not going to help anybody
Speaker 1: get out, like if you want to jump on a
Speaker 1: bus and head to fucking Egypt, Like that's what we
Speaker 1: said to people, which is fucking insane.
Speaker 4: Yeah. I remember in two thousand and eight in Lebanon,
Speaker 4: we had the conflict there and we were doing a
Speaker 4: neo with civilian votes. Yep, what's neo sorry, combatant evacuation.
Speaker 1: Yeah, uh, I mean, I don't know where you guys
Speaker 1: want to take this. I mean the messaging is absolutely
Speaker 1: absolutely pissed poor. I think Trump came out or sent
Speaker 1: since you sent me this, Jonathan, right where Trump said
Speaker 1: something sent something over to like the Congress in terms
Speaker 1: of like you know what they're what there's what the
Speaker 1: aims are. And number one on the list is ballistic missiles,
Speaker 1: which outside of our bases that are in the area,
Speaker 1: have no threat to the United States, continental United States
Speaker 1: and Alaska. They definitely can't hit. And the second, the third,
Speaker 1: I think the fourth on the list was a nuclear weapon,
Speaker 1: which by all accounts, they were not continuing their progress
Speaker 1: on building a nuclear weapon. Rumor is that the negotiations
Speaker 1: were at the point where Iran was offering to give
Speaker 1: up all their sixty percent uranium to the United States
Speaker 1: to bring it to us, let us like refine it
Speaker 1: back down, and they would only refine up to one
Speaker 1: point five No sunset clauses either that we're in the
Speaker 1: JCPOA number one and we still fucking bomb them over
Speaker 1: the weekend as well. Nanna, who was charping everywhere on
Speaker 1: Israeli media, saying how the negotiations were essentially a ruse
Speaker 1: to get our you know, get the one aircraft carry
Speaker 1: and the Mediterranean and stuff like that, and get things
Speaker 1: in position and move whatever that we had to move.
Speaker 1: So it's like, were we down for the negotiations? Was
Speaker 1: it ever a fucking think for them, like to try
Speaker 1: and denuclearize your on, Like they're just fucking playing us,
Speaker 1: And that's a fact.
Speaker 4: Like I'll jump in there on the missiles actually, So
Speaker 4: I was talking to somebody about this today. So before
Speaker 4: the conflict started, there was an estimation of between fifteen
Speaker 4: hundred and three thousand ballistic missiles of any range whatsoever,
Speaker 4: including short range, medium range, long range, and they're firing
Speaker 4: about a rate of twenty five per hour if you
Speaker 4: do the math on that. If it's a sustained rate
Speaker 4: twenty five per hour since Saturday morning, that's five days
Speaker 4: of missiles in their entire arsenal of every range. Some
Speaker 4: of those are going to fail, some of those are
Speaker 4: not in good condition, some of those are not operationally ready.
Speaker 4: They have eighty thousand drones. They can produce up to
Speaker 4: three hundred drons per month if we haven't destroyed their
Speaker 4: drone production facilities, which is kind of a concern more
Speaker 4: I think than the ballistic missiles. Especially, it's a lot
Speaker 4: easier to destroy a transporter, erector launcher or a missile
Speaker 4: a fixed missile site than it is to destroy, you know,
Speaker 4: drones that are very tiny that it can actually penetrate
Speaker 4: through airspace. But if that's the number one reason that
Speaker 4: this conflict is going on, that's a very finite military
Speaker 4: objective that could easily be communicated to the world about hey,
Speaker 4: we're going to destroy these facilities, this number of facilities
Speaker 4: without and it doesn't really reveal anything. I remember during
Speaker 4: the except speech, she was, you know, very cagey about
Speaker 4: saying anything at all, and even shot down that. I
Speaker 4: think it was an NBC reporter that asked him, you know,
Speaker 4: what's the military objective? And he kind of got upset
Speaker 4: to her for asking that question. He said it was
Speaker 4: like a legacy media ploy to ask this type of
Speaker 4: question to like in formn the American public about the injectives.
Speaker 3: I'm surprised Seth didn't say that having strategic goals is
Speaker 3: gay and woke.
Speaker 4: Right. Yeah, Well, he did say that there's no need
Speaker 4: for rules of engagement anymore.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, stupid rules of engagement and politically correct wars.
Speaker 4: But he also called the last twenty years of conflict
Speaker 4: dumb wars, which medi I mean that kind of offends the
Speaker 4: nearly four thousand service members that died fighting in those wars.
Speaker 1: Wasn't he didn't he serve in those wars too?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Yeah, like and a lot of this, I mean, part
Speaker 3: of it like to put a thumb on the veteran community,
Speaker 3: you know, those of us who did serve in the
Speaker 3: War on Terror years. And I know there's a huge
Speaker 3: diversity of views out there amongst veterans. It's not monolithic,
Speaker 3: but I do notice a lot of them supporting this
Speaker 3: campaign as sort of not a pragmatic policy decision, but
Speaker 3: as a catharsis for what they experienced throughout the war.
Speaker 3: Part of it is, you know that the Iranians legitimately
Speaker 3: were targeting American soldiers during the war that happened. And
Speaker 3: then part of it, I think, in my opinion, is
Speaker 3: that the wars failed and there's an attempt to regain
Speaker 3: some dignity and some honor in the aftermath of two
Speaker 3: failed conflicts. But I'm not sure that that is enough
Speaker 3: in of itself to legitimize or justify fighting a new
Speaker 3: war because the last one was dumb. I need a
Speaker 3: little bit more to go on than that.
Speaker 4: I mean, in the alternative, we could do something kind
Speaker 4: of like Kosovo and Bosnia, where we captured and arrested
Speaker 4: the top level folks. I mean that's Delta Force did
Speaker 4: a lot of that capturing in the nineties. Bring them
Speaker 4: to justice internationally, not just for the United States, but
Speaker 4: internationally because there were a lot of NATO allies and
Speaker 4: Iraqi partners that were killed and maimed from those explosively
Speaker 4: foreign penetrators, and instead of bringing them to justice, we're
Speaker 4: just dropping bombs.
Speaker 3: And yeah on that too. You know the whole concept.
Speaker 3: If you're going to do an assassination, right, if you're
Speaker 3: going to take out the leadership, we're calling it a
Speaker 3: decapitation strike. You know that makes sense if, for instance,
Speaker 3: you know the Minister of Foreign Affairs, he's number three
Speaker 3: in line. I don't know that in Iran. I'm just
Speaker 3: making an example, and you've compromised him. He works for
Speaker 3: the CIA, he works for Masad whatever, that it makes
Speaker 3: total sense to take out number one and number two
Speaker 3: because you're going to move your guy up into the
Speaker 3: number one position. But from what our own government has
Speaker 3: been telling us, they're blowing away the entire succession plan
Speaker 3: that they had in mind. They're killing all of these people. Okay,
Speaker 3: I mean, is it killing for the sake of killing.
Speaker 3: We're on the record saying we're not doing nation building,
Speaker 3: we're not doing these long.
Speaker 5: Wars, we're not doing forever wars.
Speaker 3: Well, actually Trump did say we can fight forever today,
Speaker 3: but it's ostensibly a break with the past, with the
Speaker 3: past conflicts. But I just don't see any like cohesive plan.
Speaker 3: And I think that's because there is no cohesive plan,
Speaker 3: that all of this is just being done off the cuff.
Speaker 4: And it feels like there's a tension between General Kane
Speaker 4: on the military planning side and then the policy side,
Speaker 4: where General Kane seems to have a very deliberate military,
Speaker 4: at least at the operational level, maybe not strategic, but
Speaker 4: the operational level is it clearly seems to be well
Speaker 4: formed from you know, as well formed as it can be,
Speaker 4: but there's no connection into that and strategicainst states, and
Speaker 4: it seems like there is no desire to have a
Speaker 4: strategic against state attached to this operational activity.
Speaker 3: And like to get into the ground game because I
Speaker 3: do want to get to the Kurds a little bit
Speaker 3: since we're on this topic. But again, when you're going
Speaker 3: to launch some sort of an air campaign like this,
Speaker 3: and by the way, I don't think we've ever transitioned
Speaker 3: to country or regime to a democracy with an air
Speaker 3: campaign alone. I don't think that's happened since you know,
Speaker 3: the last eighty years, if ever. But when you do
Speaker 3: something like that, you know it should work in tandem
Speaker 3: with an unconventional warfare strategy that you have a shadow
Speaker 3: government in waiting that you have built up, and at
Speaker 3: least from the people I've spoken to over the years,
Speaker 3: we have no shadow government in Iran like that doesn't exist.
Speaker 3: There has been operational preparation of the environment. A lot
Speaker 3: of that has to do with non assisted recovery routes
Speaker 3: that hopefully we never have to use.
Speaker 5: But as far as the.
Speaker 3: Ground game, I mean, yeah, the news that came out
Speaker 3: today about the Kurds in western Iran, it's the PAK
Speaker 3: and then there's one other group over there too, one
Speaker 3: Kurdish group. The last I knew, it's been a while
Speaker 3: since I've looked at this, So forgive me if I'm
Speaker 3: a little off. It's yeah, yeah, thank you, and the Kurds,
Speaker 3: I mean this whole notion of greater Kurdistan, right.
Speaker 5: So I was in.
Speaker 3: A gun runner's office for the PKK about ten years ago,
Speaker 3: and this dude had a map up on the wall,
Speaker 3: and that map showed how they perceive Kurdistan and the
Speaker 3: boundaries of Kurdistan for them went from the Persian Gulf
Speaker 3: on the Persian side in western Iran, up the side
Speaker 3: of the Persian Gulf into the area of northern Iraq
Speaker 3: that is currently Kurdistan, which is currently Kurdish held, into
Speaker 3: north East Syria, the area that became called Verjava, and
Speaker 3: up into Turkey, southern Turkey connecting to the Mediterranean. Now,
Speaker 3: that is a huge swath of land connecting the Persian
Speaker 3: Gulf and the Mediterranean that they perceive, as you know,
Speaker 3: their homeland that they would like to turn into a nation,
Speaker 3: or at least some factions would like to turn that
Speaker 3: into a cohesive Kurdish country, even though even Abdellah Ojalon
Speaker 3: has kind of backed away from that in so many
Speaker 3: ways and looked at other alternative forms of government rather
Speaker 3: than creating a Kurdish nation state. And I don't know
Speaker 3: what you guys have been heard or may have read about.
Speaker 3: I do know that the CIA and Masad have both
Speaker 3: been playing over there. I mean all the way back
Speaker 3: to the nineteen eighties. So it's not really a surprise
Speaker 3: that these guys have gotten weapons shipments. But how you know,
Speaker 3: John or Jason, I mean, how would you assess their
Speaker 3: fighting capability on the ground, I mean, can they constitute
Speaker 3: a credible threat to the Iranian regime.
Speaker 4: So this goes back to nineteen forty six when Mahabad,
Speaker 4: which is the provincial area where a lot of these
Speaker 4: Pijack guys are coming from, in Lake Urmia, which is
Speaker 4: the major water feature there, they had a separatist revolt
Speaker 4: against the Shah at that time. They survived for two
Speaker 4: years as an independent state under that conflict in nineteen
Speaker 4: forty six. It's very interesting thing to read about. Encourage
Speaker 4: listeners to REBA. It's something that helps you understand the
Speaker 4: Kurds a lot more. The Kurds that fought that rebellion
Speaker 4: back then were the Barzani family and one other family.
Speaker 4: They were the end of their two year conflict in
Speaker 4: Iran where they had independence ended when the Brits helped
Speaker 4: raise a shah push them west out of the country
Speaker 4: into northern Iraq. And that's where the current Barzani family
Speaker 4: came from. And that family has been obviously our close
Speaker 4: contact for many conflicts, as you mentioned, and those are
Speaker 4: the combat tested Shmiriga that everybody knows. The ones inside
Speaker 4: Iran never got that combat exposure, and they had and
Speaker 4: had an opportunity to get real good tactical training that
Speaker 4: they would need to actually work together in a coordinated way.
Speaker 4: And the other problem is Pjack that the section of
Speaker 4: the Curds that's in western Iran so large, there's a
Speaker 4: couple of different Kurdish groups like Congred Jail for example,
Speaker 4: and some others. With this one p Jack, which would
Speaker 4: be leading the charge is an arch enemy of Turkey,
Speaker 4: and Iran has actually allowed Turkey to do air strikes
Speaker 4: inside of Iran back in twenty sixteen seventeen to push
Speaker 4: back PJACK fighters away from Turkey's border. So it would
Speaker 4: be very hard to imagine that a NATO ally Turkey
Speaker 4: would allow Pijack to have any power in Iran. And
Speaker 4: I don't know if you've seen the media. But Netanyahu
Speaker 4: has already said that Turkey is a potential enemy of
Speaker 4: Israel soon, so that might even be another problem, like
Speaker 4: another movement on the chess board of Okay, where does
Speaker 4: the threat move around? Now that the Curds are coming
Speaker 4: into the picture, Turkey is getting upset? What does that
Speaker 4: mean for Israel? Pushing north and they just occupy southern Lebanon,
Speaker 4: They're probably going to occupy southwest Syria. So I'm looking
Speaker 4: like bigger picture at the region of what does this
Speaker 4: mean if Pijack gets these weapons. It sounds so simple
Speaker 4: that give these cards these weapons that fight, but there
Speaker 4: are major ramifications regionally, especially for Turkey if the Pijack
Speaker 4: gets these weapons. And I don't think we talked about
Speaker 4: the previous episode. I don't think of the National Security
Speaker 4: Council that there is this level of understanding of which
Speaker 4: Kurds are which and what happens is this group of
Speaker 4: Kurds something and there's another group of Kurds that has
Speaker 4: total opposite political view like in Rojava. There's even two
Speaker 4: different ways of looking at government in Rojava. One of
Speaker 4: those is that completely decentralized almost like socialist system and
Speaker 4: the other is kind of like a federalized state system,
Speaker 4: even in Java, which is in Syria, and the Pijack
Speaker 4: are not the leading Kurds are not the only Kurds
Speaker 4: in Western Duran. You know, there are Sunny Kurds, there's
Speaker 4: Shia Kurds. There are other Kurds or Animists, you know,
Speaker 4: and the religion is very important for them because, especially
Speaker 4: with the way the terrain works, when you're isolated in
Speaker 4: a certain area, your religion and your culture and your
Speaker 4: lang whould become your identity. And you can't just say
Speaker 4: that all these guys are Kurds and here's some weapons,
Speaker 4: because they might instead of going against the far enemy
Speaker 4: in Tehran, there's a closer enemy across the mountain.
Speaker 3: You know, How does the relationship between the United States
Speaker 3: and Turkey hash out in a time where, you know, ostensibly,
Speaker 3: if we're going to supply weapons and you know, war
Speaker 3: material to p Jack when the United States seems that
Speaker 3: our policy.
Speaker 5: Right now is that we don't really care about NATO anymore.
Speaker 4: That's a great point. Actually, today, Trump said, in response
Speaker 4: to Spain, So Spain doesn't want the US using Cadiz
Speaker 4: or Rota, and so Trump said, well, we can just
Speaker 4: land our aircraft there anyway and nobody can stop us,
Speaker 4: which is a very concerning thing to hear from about
Speaker 4: Spain also threatening to cut off trade with Spain, and
Speaker 4: the EU quickly shot back and said Spain doesn't own
Speaker 4: its own trade outside of the EU. The EU determines
Speaker 4: trade for the EU, et cetera. So that will be
Speaker 4: an interesting development. And that's not even a far away
Speaker 4: NATO partner, that's a very close NATO and EU partner.
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, I sorry, Jack, go ahead.
Speaker 4: Oh.
Speaker 3: I was just going to point out, like in two
Speaker 3: thousand and three, we had this real big problem with
Speaker 3: the Turks and getting ten Special Forces Group across the border.
Speaker 3: They ended up having to go a lot of them
Speaker 3: through Romania, and a few guys got across the border
Speaker 3: with like some of their gear.
Speaker 5: But I mean, the Turks really made.
Speaker 3: It difficult on the SF guys to do that for
Speaker 3: the same reason that they didn't want us working with
Speaker 3: the Kurds, they didn't want us supporting the Kurds.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that happened in twenty sixteen. Part of my team
Speaker 4: was in northern Syria and they got photographed wearing WHITEPG
Speaker 4: patches and that was kind of a little bit after
Speaker 4: the time we were saying there was no forces in
Speaker 4: Syria and all that. So not only are they seeing
Speaker 4: forces in Syria, they're also seeing the WHITEPG patch on
Speaker 4: the guy's shoulder, which is you know, Turkey would say
Speaker 4: it's a paycock cup.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there was really weird stuff that happened back in
Speaker 3: those days, like when the Turks had their talk, you know,
Speaker 3: in Turkey, and you'd have like a American Special Forces
Speaker 3: and Turkish special Forces, and like, we're working with Turkey
Speaker 3: to attack ISIS in Syria, but we're also working with
Speaker 3: the Curds to attack ISIS in Syria. But we don't
Speaker 3: want the Turks to know that we're working with the Curds,
Speaker 3: and we all kind of have to pretend that we
Speaker 3: don't know what's going on here, like war mikes for
Speaker 3: strange bedfellows.
Speaker 5: As you know, all of you guys know, I.
Speaker 1: Have a question, what happens if Israel were to attack Turkey,
Speaker 1: a NATO country, What happens? What does the United States do?
Speaker 1: What does NATO do?
Speaker 4: Well? Israel is a major non NATO ally, so they're
Speaker 4: pretty close. They have nuclear weapons. Turkey has our nuclear weapons,
Speaker 4: but that doesn't mean Turkey can use them. And I
Speaker 4: think that that would kind of answer your question right there.
Speaker 4: That's how much Turkey could do.
Speaker 1: That's good. I mean, you know who this I feel
Speaker 1: like this benefits is specifically, like you see, the EU
Speaker 1: gas prices have gotten up pretty high straight AHRD moves
Speaker 1: is essentially the facto shut down. It's like at a
Speaker 1: crawl if that, so your Europeans are going to get
Speaker 1: their gas from somewhere, and it's going to be Russia,
Speaker 1: so that money goes into Putin's pocket. The weapons we're
Speaker 1: using to bomb Iran currently are not going to be
Speaker 1: weapons that the EU could buy from US to give
Speaker 1: to Ukraine to fight Putin. Yeah, I don't know if
Speaker 1: there's a fucking grown up in that room at all.
Speaker 4: And the winner here is China.
Speaker 2: She's about what your thoughts on China's role in this?
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, first of all, we've moved carrier strike
Speaker 4: groups that aren't typically in the region at the same
Speaker 4: time to that region, away from where they could respond
Speaker 4: to China. And if China's looking at this is a
Speaker 4: great opportunity to do something in the Straits of Taiwan
Speaker 4: because the US is willpower to respond to that's very low. Already,
Speaker 4: the US has already signaled very little tolerance for helping
Speaker 4: Taiwan gain any sort of independence or even pushing back
Speaker 4: and anything she is saying about Taiwan, and she has
Speaker 4: messaged that within the next three to six years he
Speaker 4: intends to incorporate Taiwan into the mainline like one, and
Speaker 4: we haven't pushed back on that. From a policy perspective,
Speaker 4: this would be a fantastic time if I was a
Speaker 4: Chinese person to push into Taiwan.
Speaker 3: Do they have the capacity to do that, like actual
Speaker 3: sea power to do that yet?
Speaker 4: So it's hard to project power obviously, or it's like
Speaker 4: one hundred miles or so. Yeah, but they could without
Speaker 4: US interference, Yeah, make it to The hard part is
Speaker 4: about the ground landing of forces. This is what the
Speaker 4: big the big problem with it taking of Taiwan is
Speaker 4: the ground forces on the western side of the island
Speaker 4: because the terrain goes up almost ninety three angle. But
Speaker 4: if they're going to use a lot of missiles, especially
Speaker 4: their hypersonic missiles that they've been claiming that they have,
Speaker 4: that could be a game changer. They could also without
Speaker 4: without US denial of the sea lanes, they could actually
Speaker 4: move around the other side of the island and start
Speaker 4: doing things on that side, because you know, Taiwan doesn't
Speaker 4: have a navy to compare to China. The navy that
Speaker 4: Taiwan relies on as the US Navy, and if the
Speaker 4: US Navy refuses to help, I had.
Speaker 3: I mean, this is not totally opro po, but I
Speaker 3: mean just reality versus perception. I had a conversation with
Speaker 3: someone who retired intelligence community guy, smart guy, you know
Speaker 3: that I respect, But he told me that, you know,
Speaker 3: He's like, you know, all of this is really about
Speaker 3: fighting China.
Speaker 5: Like Venezuela brand.
Speaker 3: It's all playing into this like four D chess strategy
Speaker 3: to cut China's you know, source of energy off and
Speaker 3: energy trade.
Speaker 5: And I'm like, I'm sorry, man.
Speaker 3: But this this feels like it's a coping mechanism for
Speaker 3: failed policy.
Speaker 5: I don't know how you can look.
Speaker 4: Plus, China's been developing its own self sustainment for energy
Speaker 4: for years now, and they're going to achieve that eventually
Speaker 4: where they don't need to rely on the rest of
Speaker 4: the world for their energy, and that's going to be
Speaker 4: a real problem for the US. Because that's what we've
Speaker 4: been squeezing him with is the sanctions on Bonnie and
Speaker 4: oil making it extremely expensive to purchase that oil, which
Speaker 4: they still purchase, it's just more expensive. But once that's removed,
Speaker 4: they can kind of go off on their own and
Speaker 4: become first a regional power, which they're already kind of become,
Speaker 4: especially in the Pacific and all the way down to Australia.
Speaker 4: And after that they're gonna look like the big boy
Speaker 4: in the room because Russia's doing all kinds of things
Speaker 4: in Ukraine, the US is doing all kinds of things
Speaker 4: in the Middle East, and China can say I'm not
Speaker 4: doing anything anywhere, right.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Also, like it doesn't look great too that there's talk
Speaker 1: about moving Patriot batteries from Korea over back to the
Speaker 1: bases in the Middle East, Like doesn't really you know,
Speaker 1: if I'm Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, the Philippines, I'm not
Speaker 1: exactly like amped about that.
Speaker 4: Do we?
Speaker 3: I'm sure like the exact numbers are classified, but do
Speaker 3: we have any inkling of like magazine depth on both sides,
Speaker 3: America versus Iran, Like who's gonna run out of Amo first?
Speaker 4: So Iran will run out first, for sure, and a
Speaker 4: lot of that has to do with the maritime prepositioning
Speaker 4: forces that the US has that previously somewhere in Diego Garcia.
Speaker 4: Others are in other places now because the British have
Speaker 4: the British government's having a problem with the Chagos Islands,
Speaker 4: which was part of Mauritius and part of Britain before
Speaker 4: that they're not letting us use Diego Garcia for that reason.
Speaker 4: But there are other places that have these prepositioning forces
Speaker 4: that can push sustainment up and replenish magazine depth. And
Speaker 4: also I think the defense industrial base not only in
Speaker 4: the United States, but if NATO decides to invoke Article
Speaker 4: five because of the strike on Cyprus, that will dramatically
Speaker 4: increase the US access to munitions, which perhaps they won't
Speaker 4: openly declare Article five. They may without declaring it, or
Speaker 4: they may just begin pushing munitions to the US to help,
Speaker 4: you know, ostensibly to protect against the Eastern Mediterranean, which
Speaker 4: the British are moving a ship over there right now.
Speaker 4: France is moving a nuclear vessel there right now. So
Speaker 4: it's possible that without that an actual vocal agreement to
Speaker 4: the world, they may begin adding magazine depth to the
Speaker 4: US themselves.
Speaker 1: Interesting Also, Cauter did just the bit of news from
Speaker 1: today Cutter did send over like three I think it
Speaker 1: was three missiles and like twenty drones and hit Iran back.
Speaker 1: So yeah, just chaos everywhere where do we go from here? So, like,
Speaker 1: are the Kurds are real? We mentioned it a little bit.
Speaker 1: Are they a real option in terms of right?
Speaker 3: Can they destabilize the Iranian regime? Can they open up
Speaker 3: a front that would you know, if they can't do
Speaker 3: it themselves, at least open up that front for political change.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Without defection at a like specific level from the
Speaker 4: current government, you're not going to be able to use
Speaker 4: a single faction in the western part of a ninety
Speaker 4: million person country.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's I'm sure the Kurds, you know, they get
Speaker 3: they get you know, antsy in their pansy whenever this
Speaker 3: kind of stuff happens. And I have to believe the
Speaker 3: Iranian Curds see this as like Rajava point two, Like
Speaker 3: this is our big moment to carve out a sloth
Speaker 3: of this country for ourselves, you know. And I'm sympathetic
Speaker 3: to the Kurds in many ways, but I mean even
Speaker 3: the political project in Rajava unfortunately is under an enormous
Speaker 3: strain right now.
Speaker 4: That's the thing with the Kurds, you know, it's not
Speaker 4: a monolith just like Iran. I mean, there are many
Speaker 4: different Kurds, many different and even their languages some of
Speaker 4: them are not even intelligible with each other.
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, they speak Sarani and Kumaji and yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah. And in the western part of the country, you
Speaker 4: don't just have the Kurds, you also have the Aziris.
Speaker 4: And the Aziris were the ones that actually had the
Speaker 4: first uprising in nineteen forty five with Soviet help and
Speaker 4: declared an independent state and actually kept their independent state
Speaker 4: until the Russians agreed with the Iranian government to tell
Speaker 4: the Aziris to stop being independent and join back to
Speaker 4: the country. So the Aziris have also been itching for
Speaker 4: an independent state. That doesn't mean an Iranian state led
Speaker 4: by Aziris. That means a separate country in the northwest
Speaker 4: of Iran. And I think the Kurds want the same thing.
Speaker 4: They don't want to rule Iran, they want to rule Kurdistan,
Speaker 4: and Kurdistan to them is very closely tied to the
Speaker 4: land that they live on, to the territory they hold
Speaker 4: which is just the west of Iran.
Speaker 2: So, talking back to what Dee was saying about the
Speaker 2: strikes and clutter, I was listening to a unnamed YouTube.
Speaker 2: He's a kind of an influencer, and he was saying
Speaker 2: that anyone who feels like this could become even have
Speaker 2: his chance of becoming a regional conflict doesn't know what
Speaker 2: they're talking about. What are your thoughts on it?
Speaker 4: It seems like it is a regional conflict, all right,
Speaker 4: I mean.
Speaker 5: Like twelve countries involved.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean it's even perhaps even like a pre
Speaker 4: World War one scenario where you have like this Eastern
Speaker 4: European problem, this web of alliances that are you know,
Speaker 4: everybody thinks that they're very well intact until something squeezes
Speaker 4: somebody somewhere and they all turn in a different way
Speaker 4: that you didn't expect. I'm not saying there's World War
Speaker 4: three happening. I'm just saying that the tangled web of
Speaker 4: alliances absolutely indicates a regional conflict has already begun. It
Speaker 4: hasn't just already begun, it's been ongoing. I mean, you
Speaker 4: think about when the Saudis and the Amoradies invaded Yemen.
Speaker 4: Is that not a regional conflict beginning, you know, I.
Speaker 3: Mean the interesting thing And I had this conversation with
Speaker 3: some people when Gaza first happened, that there were fears
Speaker 3: in the Pentagon that the conflict in Gaza could in
Speaker 3: a sense merge with the conflict in Ukraine.
Speaker 5: Not like literally merge, like.
Speaker 3: You know, you're not going to see Israeli tanks rolling
Speaker 3: across in the Kursk, like that's obvious, but from a
Speaker 3: standpoint of alliances, right, like how we're all choosing sides,
Speaker 3: that it becomes one large conflict.
Speaker 5: You think there's a possibility for that to happen here.
Speaker 4: Well, even in Ukraine, we had North Korean soldiers fighting
Speaker 4: in Ukraine. So I mean that's even right there. I
Speaker 4: mean the link between Russia and North Korea right there
Speaker 4: in Ukraine and even in Armenia and Azerbaijan. In two
Speaker 4: and it was twenty twenty September twenty twenty August twenty
Speaker 4: twenty eight, if you remember this, there was a fight
Speaker 4: in Agarna Karabak, and the Russians went in and defended
Speaker 4: the Muslims, and the Iranians went in and defended the Christians,
Speaker 4: and the Turks went in and offended. The Sunni's very
Speaker 4: interesting conflict because of who was supporting whom. The Russians
Speaker 4: and the Turks brought in Syrians from Syria. Battalions of
Speaker 4: Syrians from the same operational units the National Defense Forces
Speaker 4: which Iran created, by the way, brought them in to
Speaker 4: fight against each other in the Gorno Karabak, you know.
Speaker 4: So it's just a very interesting way that the region
Speaker 4: speaks to the world in a way that I think
Speaker 4: Westerners don't understand.
Speaker 1: Yeah, dude, that's so insane. Also, the funny Yeah, I
Speaker 1: don't know if you guys were sawny of Lindsey Graham's
Speaker 1: clips over the last couple of days, but he's talking
Speaker 1: about like saving Sunni Muslims and stuff like that from
Speaker 1: the Shias. It's like, haven't we been fucking smoking Sunnies
Speaker 1: for like since two thousand and one.
Speaker 4: Like he keeps talking about the Iran trying to export
Speaker 4: the revolution, which that was true in like nineteen seventy
Speaker 4: nine through eighty one, and when Saddam invaded Iran that
Speaker 4: ended and literally it actually ended. Inside the regime, they
Speaker 4: actually made a decision to stop doing that. And that's
Speaker 4: actually why Kamani became the Iatola and not a different person,
Speaker 4: because the other person, Monteziri, was like a very export
Speaker 4: revolution guy, and the previous, the first Iotola said we
Speaker 4: can't have that. We can't be doing that anymore, so
Speaker 4: he can't be it. He actually got disqualified for that,
Speaker 4: one of the that's a major reason he was disqualified.
Speaker 4: And Lindsay Graham remembers that, because you know your formative years,
Speaker 4: you just like keep it with you what you heard
Speaker 4: back then, and like that's what he heard back then.
Speaker 4: That's what he's continuing to believe. But you want to
Speaker 4: talk about exporting something, look at jihad. I mean Sunni
Speaker 4: saw Offi Jihadism that has literally been exported around the
Speaker 4: entire planet. I remember in June twenty fourteen, June tenth,
Speaker 4: twenty fourteen, when Isis declared caliphate in Mosul, and the
Speaker 4: same day there were Indonesians in Bali declaring Bayat to bagdaddy.
Speaker 4: You know. I mean that that is a globalized problem.
Speaker 4: And I think the except of exporting the revolution just
Speaker 4: like it's like a fantasy. Now that was true back
Speaker 4: then has not been true for years.
Speaker 3: It's like the Cubans trying to export the revolution to
Speaker 3: you know, West Africa or Central America or Angola exactly.
Speaker 4: And the Cubans did fight in Angola. They sent a
Speaker 4: couple of thousand troops to Angola.
Speaker 1: I don't know. So let's talk about the successor. They
Speaker 1: picked Kamanie's son. I don't remember his first name, Jonathan,
Speaker 1: of course, thank you. But the eighty eight, you know,
Speaker 1: the Assembly of expert Scott bombs. So I don't know
Speaker 1: if the guy made it out. I don't know if
Speaker 1: there's any word on whether he made it out or not.
Speaker 1: So what do you think happens now? Have you heard
Speaker 1: that that he has he made it out or has
Speaker 1: there any been any word about it.
Speaker 4: I haven't seen if he is alive or not. The
Speaker 4: issue is if he is alive. There's another gentleman named
Speaker 4: Ali ras Ali Raisa, Arafi and Arafi remember on in
Speaker 4: the last episode we were talking about there's a group
Speaker 4: of three people that sits like, makes the short list
Speaker 4: and then sends the short list to the Assembly of experts.
Speaker 4: So Arafi was the third guy on that. Because there
Speaker 4: was Pozeshki in the president, then there has to be
Speaker 4: a cleric, which is a Rafi. The third guy got
Speaker 4: killed in the bombing of hamedy right, so Rafi believes
Speaker 4: that he should actually be the new Supreme leader himself.
Speaker 4: And there may be a power struggle between Arafi and Mochdeva,
Speaker 4: especially because how many said he didn't want his son
Speaker 4: to succeed under him, because he didn't want to create
Speaker 4: a hereditary government. And it could be that Mochdabah was
Speaker 4: selected because Lari Johnny and ghalibaff the two IRGC guys
Speaker 4: that I've been mentioning that are the core of the regime,
Speaker 4: wanted Mochtaba because he's an easy choice, and Arafi might
Speaker 4: feel slighted. And there might be some other dynamics that
Speaker 4: we're not aware of obviously, because I mean, imagine if
Speaker 4: you're over there right now, people are freaking out and
Speaker 4: they're making decisions in a very short notice without really
Speaker 4: thinking things through. I'm curious to see that if they're
Speaker 4: not dead, what might happen in that power struggle between
Speaker 4: the clerical class and the IRGC who actually wants to
Speaker 4: run the country.
Speaker 1: I got a question about, like I guess even just
Speaker 1: in Tehran, like just the city, you know, we saw
Speaker 1: a ton of protesting happen, like five six weeks ago,
Speaker 1: tens of like ten, I don't know how many thirty
Speaker 1: thousand ish people haven't were killed by the regime. Obviously,
Speaker 1: they're not going to come out in protest right now
Speaker 1: because their cities currently getting and their country is currently
Speaker 1: getting bombed. But in terms I don't know if you
Speaker 1: heard anything in terms of chatter or something like that,
Speaker 1: is there some kind of effort being built up for
Speaker 1: when the bombing does slow down, in terms of the
Speaker 1: people getting out there and protesting or doing you know,
Speaker 1: something of pulse.
Speaker 4: Yeah, they were protesting the day before the strikes happened.
Speaker 4: Some of them went inside, but then once how Many
Speaker 4: was killed, they were out in the streets dancing. They're
Speaker 4: literally dancing and celebrating, and they have this little thing
Speaker 4: that looks like a mouse that they put up on
Speaker 4: a stick because in Iran there's this cultural reference to
Speaker 4: how Many because they think he's like the squirrely mousey
Speaker 4: guy that's always hiding. So they hang this mouse on
Speaker 4: a stick, and they're all out there with a mouse
Speaker 4: and a stick, just cheering that this guy's dead, like
Speaker 4: he's like hanging like hung with a noose, cheering that
Speaker 4: he's dead. So, and that's amidst the bombing that they're
Speaker 4: doing this because a lot of air runnings. They've had enough.
Speaker 4: I mean, if you talk to an Iranian who lives
Speaker 4: in Iran, everyone you talk to knows somebody that was killed.
Speaker 4: It is a widespread murder in January, and everybody knows somebody,
Speaker 4: and they're fed up with it. And I've spoken to
Speaker 4: a few Iranians who say, you know, we've always been
Speaker 4: concerned about Israel getting involved in Iran and all this,
Speaker 4: and like the US doing things in Iran, like with
Speaker 4: Mohammed Mossadeg in nineteen fifty three and then other things
Speaker 4: as well, and they said even that we want Israel
Speaker 4: in the US to come in and help. Now we
Speaker 4: need help, and we don't care who it is. We
Speaker 4: need this guy gone, we need this regime gone. And
Speaker 4: the concern now, I mean in January when Trump said
Speaker 4: help was on the way, and they didn't help, and
Speaker 4: then people went outside and were executed because they thought
Speaker 4: the US was coming. Like they wouldn't have all come
Speaker 4: out as much as they did if the US didn't
Speaker 4: say that. And now again the US originally said this
Speaker 4: is about regime change. Even Yahu said that, and if
Speaker 4: that's true, certain conditions need to occur, certain things need
Speaker 4: to happen to allow those people to feel safe enough
Speaker 4: to go out and continue with what they're doing. But
Speaker 4: then Trump has in the past few days said it's
Speaker 4: not about regime change, it's about fissile material and missiles.
Speaker 4: And now the people are probably wondering, well, maybe we
Speaker 4: shouldn't go out and protest anymore, because we already learned
Speaker 4: the hard way in January not to trust the United
Speaker 4: States when they say we're going to help you. And
Speaker 4: I don't want to lose my entire family because I
Speaker 4: trust the United States. Right So, I think there's a
Speaker 4: decision crossroad right now where the people are watching what
Speaker 4: is the US actually doing because there's a lot of messaging, obviously,
Speaker 4: and cross messages that don't make sense with each other.
Speaker 4: I think that people are trying to see what actually
Speaker 4: is going to happen, what's actually going on, before they
Speaker 4: make that risk a second time and risk losing their
Speaker 4: families completely this time.
Speaker 2: So in between the the the people on the streets
Speaker 2: and the upper echelons of the IRGC and the councils,
Speaker 2: is there any sense of what the average military or
Speaker 2: intelligence or security personnel. What they're thinking is, I know
Speaker 2: they're just probably trying to keep their heads down, but
Speaker 2: do you think that there's something that could spur them
Speaker 2: to turn on their masters.
Speaker 4: Yes, there's two classes of people in the IRGC and
Speaker 4: in the artes. There's one class of like professional folks
Speaker 4: that are you know, that's their job for many years.
Speaker 4: There's this thing called the Sarbazi, which is a conscript,
Speaker 4: and the IRGC and the Arteesh both have conscript classes.
Speaker 4: These are the ones that make up the majority actually
Speaker 4: of the forces. They're basically like privates that get a
Speaker 4: rifle and get a few weeks of training and they're
Speaker 4: part of the military for a year. And these are
Speaker 4: the ones that probably won't go get called up and
Speaker 4: go they're probably going to many them will stay home,
Speaker 4: and many of them are staying home. In fact, there's
Speaker 4: problems right now where, especially in the provinces outside Tehran,
Speaker 4: a lot of the Arteesh, which is the army conventional
Speaker 4: forces Sarbazi conscripts are not showing up where they're being
Speaker 4: called to go because they're concerned about what's going to
Speaker 4: happen next. And a lot of them don't believe in
Speaker 4: the government. But they're forced. I mean, it's not it's
Speaker 4: a requirement, it's not voluntary. They get called up and
Speaker 4: forced into this and they don't want to do it.
Speaker 4: And that's a big reason. The regime actually brings in
Speaker 4: Iraqi Shia militia groups or Hashtashabi groups into Iran to
Speaker 4: patrol the streets. And actually in January when the massacres
Speaker 4: were going on, there were a lot of Iraqi, Lebanese
Speaker 4: and Pakistani forces marching up and down the streets conducting
Speaker 4: their regimes activities for them, because there are not enough
Speaker 4: Iranian conscripts that will respond to the call to murder
Speaker 4: their own people. But there are plenty of Pakistani, Lebanese,
Speaker 4: Afghan and Syrian and Iraqi groups that the regime is
Speaker 4: cultivated over a long period of time called Lewa's and
Speaker 4: alia is like a battalion of foreign forces. You know,
Speaker 4: you have un which in Lada Lewa hadiary un which
Speaker 4: comes from Pakistan that are like ideologically brainwashed to come
Speaker 4: in and fight for the regime. And that's that's who's
Speaker 4: patrolling the streets with that. I didn't know that, I
Speaker 4: ergy see, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: I remember you mentioned this last time you were on
Speaker 1: when the protests were super first popping off. It's incredible, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm assuming, but I'm gonna ask, like, is
Speaker 1: the US or Israel or in the CIA or intelligence
Speaker 1: looking at like what like are they bringing in uh
Speaker 1: Shia Iraqi Shia militias into like Tehran or something, Because
Speaker 1: if they can't get contact with their conventional forces, they're
Speaker 1: gonna need somebody to backstop it, right, like, especially if
Speaker 1: the Curds starts shooting stuff up, or even just to
Speaker 1: quell protests.
Speaker 4: But you remember we talked about the Mosaic Doctrine, which
Speaker 4: is the regime's way of decentralizing command and control. They
Speaker 4: activated the Mosaic doctrine a few days ago, and that
Speaker 4: means that you don't need directions from Tehran anymore. You
Speaker 4: just need directions from Sanandaj, which is the Kurdish area
Speaker 4: near the border of Iraq, or you just need Mashad
Speaker 4: or Khlorisan, the provincial headquarters there, and there's basically a
Speaker 4: colonel or a brigadier general who's in charge of that space.
Speaker 4: And that's the highest level of command that you need
Speaker 4: to care about in this mosaic doctrine, and so those
Speaker 4: Iraqi forces that are being activated inside of Iraq and
Speaker 4: coming into Iran are being activated by the provinces on
Speaker 4: the border region that lead into Iraq. And this has
Speaker 4: been a huge problem for Iran and a huge problem
Speaker 4: for the US. But it's actually a primary avenue that
Speaker 4: Mosad is able to enter Iran without being detected, and
Speaker 4: the reason that the US is able to push Kurds
Speaker 4: into Iran because that border area between Iraq and Iran
Speaker 4: is very porous. It's not as porous as Afghanistan Pakistan,
Speaker 4: which if you've been there, you know what I'm talking about.
Speaker 4: You don't know which country you're standing in at any
Speaker 4: given point sometimes. But in the western part those mountains
Speaker 4: are so unforgiving. They actually have these people called koalbars,
Speaker 4: which are these kind of like shurpas that help you
Speaker 4: navigate through the mountains to get to the other side.
Speaker 4: And there are no border guards there. There's no border,
Speaker 4: right so, I mean there are some down in the south,
Speaker 4: especially near Basra, but as you get further up north
Speaker 4: in that border, it is completely wide open. And if
Speaker 4: those guys get the call to come help, they're going
Speaker 4: to just move across the border, you know, and unless
Speaker 4: you're unless you're watching them closely with human you're gonna
Speaker 4: have a very hard time to notice even the troop
Speaker 4: strength moving across it. They're moving across at all.
Speaker 1: Where are we in a week from now? Who wants
Speaker 1: to take a stab at that? Let's speculate mud wrestle,
Speaker 1: whoever wants to go first? Jack, you go first? I'm
Speaker 1: picking now.
Speaker 5: Oh, I mean, I don't know.
Speaker 3: I think probably over the next week we're going to
Speaker 3: probably see more of the same kind of like volleys
Speaker 3: and counter volleys of fire going back and forth across
Speaker 3: the Persian Gulf and the Iranians. I think it's pretty
Speaker 3: clear they're trying to drag as many different players into
Speaker 3: the conflict as they can. So who knows who they're
Speaker 3: going to bomb next? I mean, I guess that's part
Speaker 3: of the deal.
Speaker 4: They're going to run out of bombs, that's their problem.
Speaker 4: They're going to run out of missiles, and then the
Speaker 4: question is what do they do after that? Straight up
Speaker 4: guerrilla warfare? And I mean, looking back to nineteen eighty
Speaker 4: through nineteen eighty eight, that did start happening. They started
Speaker 4: running out of like big munitions and started just sending
Speaker 4: human beings across the field, and they would see guys
Speaker 4: dying in front of them, they just walk over the
Speaker 4: bodies and keep going. And these ideologically brainwashed guys I
Speaker 4: was talking about earlier, those are the ones that will
Speaker 4: do that. Like they will they will listen to that call.
Speaker 3: You know, there's something else that may or may not
Speaker 3: become relevant. A numbers station popped up in Iran right
Speaker 3: after the leadership cell got taken out in the airstrike.
Speaker 3: And for people who don't know, numbers stations are basically
Speaker 3: called out over shortwave radio HAM radio, and it's just
Speaker 3: somebody reciting off a series of numbers. And this is
Speaker 3: is thought that it's how intelligence agencies communicate with recruited
Speaker 3: assets that are so called behind enemy lines. So like
Speaker 3: if the Russians had sleeper cells in America, they could
Speaker 3: communicate with them this way using a one time pad.
Speaker 3: It's pretty much uncrackable. You don't you wouldn't have any
Speaker 3: idea what they're signaling to the cells. And like something
Speaker 3: like a dozen different countries around the world operate numbers stations,
Speaker 3: but the Iranians haven't.
Speaker 5: Until just this week.
Speaker 3: So the question is, what does that mean, does it
Speaker 3: mean that the Iranians are just running a psychological operation
Speaker 3: on us to get our counterintelligence people all spun up
Speaker 3: and get and keep them busy, or are they signaling
Speaker 3: to sleeper cells, Hey, it's time to hit the cachet
Speaker 3: site locations, pull out the demo and start conducting. You know,
Speaker 3: they would probably think of it as irregular warfare, and
Speaker 3: we would probably call it terrorism. And I don't know,
Speaker 3: I don't know what the answer to that is, but
Speaker 3: I think it's going to be interesting to find out.
Speaker 3: You would think that after we dropped on Solomani that
Speaker 3: they would have activated some of these cells if they
Speaker 3: had them, but nothing happened, and now we are let's
Speaker 3: see that.
Speaker 5: We're about five days into this.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so if there are sleeper cells, and you do
Speaker 3: have to contact them, climdestinely and then for them to
Speaker 3: get all their shit together and then launch an attack,
Speaker 3: maybe they have to plan it if they haven't pre
Speaker 3: planned it. Yeah, that could take a couple of weeks.
Speaker 3: But yeah, then again, I mean, it's quite possible that
Speaker 3: those sleeper cells simply don't exist.
Speaker 4: They've been using a lot of psychological warfare actually, especially
Speaker 4: in social media sending out a lot of imagery that's
Speaker 4: been AI enhanced, completely faults or from previous campaigns. Interestingly,
Speaker 4: if you look on with a VPN, if you go
Speaker 4: on Iran's news web site Tasting or irib, which is
Speaker 4: their broadcasting website, the propaganda that they're putting on there
Speaker 4: to their own people is fascinating to look at because
Speaker 4: they're claiming they're killing like a thousand Americans a day,
Speaker 4: and like, this is like wild claims that, Bob. But
Speaker 4: if you have the Internet and you can go on
Speaker 4: there to see that, you can also see other websites
Speaker 4: that show you that that is clearly not true. It's
Speaker 4: just kind of interesting to think about, like how like
Speaker 4: mentally they're approaching this situation. I have a friend who
Speaker 4: grew up in Iran their whole life, and when we
Speaker 4: were talking about the conflict in Syria, they were like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 4: Iran won that conflict in Syria, and I was like, no,
Speaker 4: the US won that conflict. And it was just kind
Speaker 4: of this interesting like understanding where they came from as
Speaker 4: far as what they were told, especially without access to
Speaker 4: alternative narratives, they believe it's just.
Speaker 2: True, you know.
Speaker 5: Yeah, It's like the people in Egypt believed for so.
Speaker 3: Long that they won the Arab Israeli war because of
Speaker 3: the propaganda, and like right, I think it wasn't until
Speaker 3: like the nineties until the truth started to come out
Speaker 3: and people were shocked.
Speaker 4: Yeah, information domain is extremely important in this campaign. I
Speaker 4: hope the US is using it.
Speaker 1: Also, what would that look like with the US using it?
Speaker 4: Well, I think they need to send broadcast messages inside
Speaker 4: of Iran using cell towers, sending out like the equivalent
Speaker 4: of a night letter basically to Iranian cell phones, especially
Speaker 4: those affiliated with the regime, especially because the Internet right
Speaker 4: now it's like ninety five percent off and the five
Speaker 4: percent that's on are regime connected families. Well that's perfect.
Speaker 4: Now you have a perfect target deck that's not going
Speaker 4: to infect anyone that shouldn't be receiving it, and you
Speaker 4: can just blast it to them all the time. So
Speaker 4: then we in Afghanistan, we used to have this thing
Speaker 4: called a dead baby book when we were doing interrogations
Speaker 4: until a period of time when Congress told us to
Speaker 4: stop doing that. But before that, we would actually take
Speaker 4: these books when we got our detainees and I wouldn't
Speaker 4: even speak to them I've just showed them the pictures
Speaker 4: of these dead bodies, and they're like from all kinds
Speaker 4: of other conflicts, but to this guy seeing this, that's
Speaker 4: from there, you know. And we would use it to
Speaker 4: the psychologically like scare the shit out of them basically,
Speaker 4: And you can be doing that all the time. And
Speaker 4: if you have anyone's been to your school, you know,
Speaker 4: like you can be exposed to an idea at first
Speaker 4: and be like, nah, that's not true. But then once
Speaker 4: it's like put into your brain like a worm, you're
Speaker 4: like wait a minute, and then it's like, wait, this
Speaker 4: is true. You know, So that there's a really powerful tool,
Speaker 4: not just psychological operations, but like the persistence of information
Speaker 4: into the space, and that person has only access to
Speaker 4: that information and you can control the way they think
Speaker 4: about things.
Speaker 2: And you think that things like the dismantling of USAID
Speaker 2: and Voice of America has hampered our ability in the
Speaker 2: information war as.
Speaker 4: Far as it's pretty clear, yes, for sure. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Also it seems like what we said before in terms
Speaker 1: of like how State Department's been really not helping other
Speaker 1: people get out of places that it was kind of gutted.
Speaker 1: At least the resources were gutted for that. Man, I
Speaker 1: don't know if you're an American around there. It cannot
Speaker 1: be even if you're in Israel, like where it's relatively safe.
Speaker 1: I mean technically it's not. They're getting pound it too.
Speaker 1: I mean they're knocking most of the stuff out, but
Speaker 1: they're still getting hit pretty hard.
Speaker 4: I know a guy that's there, He went down thirty
Speaker 4: three times into his bunker in twenty four hours.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 4: I mean it's just like super disruptive. The thing is,
Speaker 4: you don't know when the next one's coming, So like
Speaker 4: you get out of the bunk and you're like, oh, okay,
Speaker 4: that was it number twelve. Then you like try to
Speaker 4: go to bed and like boom wakes you up again.
Speaker 1: You know, Companeople were stuck in Dubai and you've seen
Speaker 1: some disruption too, like in terms of like everyday stuff
Speaker 1: like F one's I think killing their Saudi Arabia race
Speaker 1: and their Bahrain race, you know, and the quarter one
Speaker 1: is I think it's down the line, so I think
Speaker 1: there's still time for that. But like right now, like
Speaker 1: they're looking at like cancel and races.
Speaker 4: Yeah, huge economic impact, I mean not just on the energy,
Speaker 4: but like you're mentioning the tourism sector and Emirates airlines
Speaker 4: and Katar Airways. I mean the Dubai Airport itself was
Speaker 4: the busiest airport in the world, I believe, and that's
Speaker 4: turned off, you know, a huge amount of economic value.
Speaker 4: These countries are losing just by doing just by turning
Speaker 4: these things up, not even with the damage.
Speaker 1: There's a ton of like differing reports right like everyone's
Speaker 1: trying to get their information out there saying that, like
Speaker 1: there was a bunch of like satellite images of like
Speaker 1: before the strikes and after in terms of like American
Speaker 1: bases in the region, and there's a lot of American
Speaker 1: bases that have been pretty pretty heavily damaged. How do
Speaker 1: we still operate in terms of like, you know, where
Speaker 1: are we sending out like our fifteens for sorties right
Speaker 1: in Kuwait? Is it still in that on that base?
Speaker 1: And we're just like whoever's essential is there and we
Speaker 1: try and hope, like our patriots take stuff down.
Speaker 4: I think it's a lot to do with redundancy that
Speaker 4: you know, we're not going to have one golf ball
Speaker 4: antenna in Bahrain. That's it. You know, the aircraft carriers,
Speaker 4: the big decks, the lhds, they all have the same
Speaker 4: redundancy systems. There are plenty of places to land besides
Speaker 4: Qatar and Bahrain that are close by, for example Wafax, Salty,
Speaker 4: the air base and Jordan and some other places that
Speaker 4: are and they're pretty easy to land on if you
Speaker 4: need to in the last minute situation. Like I was
Speaker 4: mentioning earlier, the Link fifteen NATO communication system that the
Speaker 4: F fifteens have. Most of the F fifteens have this,
Speaker 4: at least all of ours do, and they're able to
Speaker 4: coordinate what they need to coordinate regardless of which specific
Speaker 4: piece of equipment's been knocked out. And there's also the
Speaker 4: low Earth orbit satellite communication system that's up there, which
Speaker 4: is like a mesh network, which is a pretty fascinating
Speaker 4: concept that even if some of the ground communication systems
Speaker 4: are gone, it's absolutely redundant, to the point where the
Speaker 4: pilot doesn't even realize that they've switched over to a
Speaker 4: different air system instead of the ground system.
Speaker 1: Quick question, because I was talking about it with Jack yesterday. Obviously,
Speaker 1: for like ballistic missiles, we're using patriots to knock them
Speaker 1: out right. For Shaheed drones, are they just using c RAM,
Speaker 1: so like they have to get close for us to
Speaker 1: knock them out, or I guess fighters too.
Speaker 4: But they've got some counter UAS systems on the ground
Speaker 4: that are able to work with jamming and some other
Speaker 4: things as well. The other important component that not a
Speaker 4: lot of people have spoken about, but in the space domain,
Speaker 4: there's a lot of anti satellite things we can do
Speaker 4: to interfere with the GPS that those drones use. Some
Speaker 4: of those drones have pre program coordinates in it, which
Speaker 4: makes it unnecessary to use the GPS part of it.
Speaker 4: But there are also some technologies we can use to
Speaker 4: actually take the drones over and use them. The question
Speaker 4: is does the US want to use those technologies, because
Speaker 4: if we do, we're going to reveal to them how
Speaker 4: they work. So there's that threshold of do we need
Speaker 4: to do this yet? And I think some of those
Speaker 4: more advanced cyber and offensive capabilities have not been used
Speaker 4: yet because they're probably not necessary. You can use the
Speaker 4: CRAM for a while, you can use some integrated air
Speaker 4: defense for a while. Then when things get a little
Speaker 4: bit hairy, if they even do, you could perhaps use
Speaker 4: a smaller offensive tool thanbe a larger offensive tool. If necessary.
Speaker 4: The Russians were doing this quite a bit in Syria,
Speaker 4: where they were actually using satellite jamming to jam a
Speaker 4: lot of our communication equipment in Southeast Syria. They didn't
Speaker 4: never talk about it, and we did never talk about
Speaker 4: it either, but it was pretty effective to the point
Speaker 4: where we couldn't communicate with the troops over the horizon.
Speaker 1: Also, I like to I did see where the lucas
Speaker 1: like the uh low costs. You know, it's like a
Speaker 1: Shaheed clone essentially. It's like we can't make our own
Speaker 1: we have to clone a Shahed drone? Like are they
Speaker 1: that good? I guess, I mean, I mean, I guess
Speaker 1: at this point they're ubiquitous, like if you find them everywhere.
Speaker 1: So yeah, incredible stuff, scary stuff, frankly. Uh And if
Speaker 1: you guys have the listeners or viewers don't know, I'm
Speaker 1: completely against it. Uh anything else, am me with it.
Speaker 1: Let's go, Jack. What do you got. I know you're
Speaker 1: working on something.
Speaker 2: What's up?
Speaker 5: No, I'm not not on Iran. No, I don't.
Speaker 3: I don't know that I have much more that people
Speaker 3: haven't heard already. I just you know, I guess add
Speaker 3: that you know, we are.
Speaker 5: Living in different times. We're not in Kansas anymore.
Speaker 3: The geopolitical arena is changing, the domestic political arena is changing.
Speaker 3: It's actually changing so fast that I haven't heard anyone
Speaker 3: and I'm not holding myself up that I do this.
Speaker 3: I haven't heard anyone who can articulate or grasp exactly
Speaker 3: how quickly and how profoundly things have changed, both in
Speaker 3: the United States and abroad. But you are seeing a
Speaker 3: sort of recalibration of global order taking place before our eyes.
Speaker 3: And I think we're at the beginning of that process
Speaker 3: rather than the end.
Speaker 4: And actually, Jack, that's a really good point, because this
Speaker 4: world order that we know was created by the United States,
Speaker 4: because we won World War Two. It's like we set
Speaker 4: up this entire system that is perfectly beneficial to just
Speaker 4: the United States, and in the past year and a half,
Speaker 4: we've been dismantling it rapidly, brick by brick, on a
Speaker 4: daily basis, which is crazy, because it's like this, this
Speaker 4: system is the most ideal system for the United States.
Speaker 4: Any other alternative is a lose situation for the US,
Speaker 4: just for the economy, forget defense and everything else.
Speaker 1: Were dismantling it ourselves, right, Yeah, tell me how that
Speaker 1: makes sense? Four D chess being played, Just incredible stuff.
Speaker 1: Smartest guys in the room.
Speaker 4: Somebody with a very good brain knows how to fix it.
Speaker 1: Another interesting thing, just to cap off, like there's a
Speaker 1: Chinese ship in the Gulf that's just been there for
Speaker 1: like months, right, and I guess it's like it's monitoring
Speaker 1: everything and stuff like that. So I'm sure like they're
Speaker 1: probably you know, soaking in every type of information, every
Speaker 1: information they could probably get their hands on. Also, there
Speaker 1: were some rumors talking about China. There are some rumors
Speaker 1: that are like a couple dozen cargo planes from China
Speaker 1: headed into Iran and as they were heading into Irun,
Speaker 1: they turned their transponders off. What could that is that
Speaker 1: like replenishment of like of of munitions or like what
Speaker 1: could that possibly if it's true, which probably is.
Speaker 4: It could be the h Y series missiles that they
Speaker 4: were promised that Iran purchased from China could be. But
Speaker 4: those are that hypersonic, They're claimed to be hypersonic, right,
Speaker 4: we have yet to see them actually be hypersonic.
Speaker 3: Do you think they're at any point, at any juncture
Speaker 3: in all this that you could see for see Russia
Speaker 3: or China trying to intervene in Iran the way that
Speaker 3: Russia did in Syria.
Speaker 4: I think with the current conditions now, yeah, but I
Speaker 4: real if there was an economic button, perhaps especially on
Speaker 4: the China side, if there was a real squeeze on oil,
Speaker 4: which there I don't think there is in the foreseeable
Speaker 4: month that this is supposed to last. I don't think
Speaker 4: China would. But if there was that situation where they were,
Speaker 4: out of necessity trying to force something, I think they'd
Speaker 4: probably try a diplomatic push much more strongly than a
Speaker 4: physical push.
Speaker 1: Said at all, anything else, what what do we need
Speaker 1: to look at over the next few days, Like that's
Speaker 1: really going to like put your make your spider senses
Speaker 1: go off, John, you go first, and then I want
Speaker 1: Jay and I want Jack.
Speaker 4: I would listen to what Netyahu's saying because I think
Speaker 4: the most realistic understanding of how this conflict is shaping
Speaker 4: up is net Yahu's plan, and I think what the
Speaker 4: US government is saying is not as reliable. He may
Speaker 4: not be saying the truth, but I think it's probably
Speaker 4: closer to what will actually go on than what the
Speaker 4: West outside of Israel is saying.
Speaker 2: Jay. Yeah, I was actually going to say that we
Speaker 2: need to take I think we here in the US
Speaker 2: need to take what is said by Yahoo and juxtapose
Speaker 2: that against what our own government is saying. Somewhere in
Speaker 2: the middle is the truth. And I also believe, you know,
Speaker 2: believe what your eyes are showing you and not necessarily
Speaker 2: what you're you know, what you're hearing, especially if you
Speaker 2: have that bias, because you know it's it's it's already
Speaker 2: been proven, like Jack was saying, you know they're there,
Speaker 2: we're being lied to or told certain things when your
Speaker 2: your actual brain tells you that's not true, but your heart,
Speaker 2: you know, because a bias is telling you, well, if
Speaker 2: they're saying, it's got to be true because it's my side.
Speaker 2: So you know, believe what your eyes are telling.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I'll say too, like if you read al Jazeera,
Speaker 4: then you should read Fox News, And if you read
Speaker 4: Fox News, you should read Aljazeera, and like force yourself
Speaker 4: into the other bucket that you like will not ever read.
Speaker 4: You don't have to believe what you see, but it's
Speaker 4: helpful to understand like the bigger world of what's being said,
Speaker 4: what's the narrative here?
Speaker 2: That was what a mentor of mine at the agency said.
Speaker 2: He said, if you see breaking news on CNN, turn
Speaker 2: on Fox News and listen to what they're saying about
Speaker 2: the exact same thing, then go to BBC, then everybody else,
Speaker 2: and then form your opinion from there.
Speaker 3: Jackalope, I mean what I'm watching for, quite frankly, since
Speaker 3: there hasn't been any sort of defined strategic goal for
Speaker 3: this operation, there isn't any clear achievable end state that
Speaker 3: we're fighting for. What I'm looking for is, you know,
Speaker 3: the President gets bored with this conflict. He could pull
Speaker 3: out of it right now and claim victory because he
Speaker 3: killed the aetola. He can say I did all of
Speaker 3: these great things, look how great I am, and then
Speaker 3: pull out before his administration gets dragged into a prolonged quagmire,
Speaker 3: which is something that they've clearly said they want to avoid.
Speaker 3: So I'm just kind of waiting for the President to
Speaker 3: just get bored with this thing and want to go
Speaker 3: back to building his ballroom.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but you didn't see that a press conference he
Speaker 1: did the other No, it wasn't a press it was
Speaker 1: a medal of honor ceremony.
Speaker 4: He said, he won't get bored he won't.
Speaker 1: Get bored and literally like started talking about a Yeah
Speaker 1: he saw bumblebee and got distracted.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I hope.
Speaker 1: You're right, because honestly, he could have done that right,
Speaker 1: Like the way where the negotiations were before the strikes,
Speaker 1: he could have been like this is a better planned
Speaker 1: by a million against the JCPOA I beat uh Barack
Speaker 1: cousine Obama, you know what I mean, Like I've done it.
Speaker 1: I've done it better than he would ever have done it.
Speaker 1: And he would have been right right if he got
Speaker 1: that deal. You know, there's just I hope you're right.
Speaker 1: He gets bored and like, I don't know, invades Cuba
Speaker 1: or something.
Speaker 2: I think the problem with that is, though the Iranian
Speaker 2: people are gonna pay for this no matter what we
Speaker 2: can say, we're bored, we're taking our bone, We're going yeah,
Speaker 2: and then the whatever you know government is left is
Speaker 2: going to come down on the Iranian people because they're
Speaker 2: not they can't hit us, so they're gonna smack the
Speaker 2: Iranian people.
Speaker 4: That's my thing. Like, if you make a promise that
Speaker 4: you're going to help somebody, you got to help them.
Speaker 4: You can't like maybe it wasn't good to do the
Speaker 4: war in the first place. But if you made that promise,
Speaker 4: now you can't go back on it. You have to
Speaker 4: continue forward.
Speaker 3: That's why I think it's immoral and unethical to launch
Speaker 3: an air campaign without having a you know, some sort
Speaker 3: of unconventional warfare program that's active on the ground to
Speaker 3: actually affect change.
Speaker 2: Yeah, a great a lot of people who are probably
Speaker 2: going to say in the comments, well, we do have it,
Speaker 2: we just don't talk about it. We can't talk about it. Well,
Speaker 2: it doesn't matter if we don't talk about it. If
Speaker 2: we keep saying publicly we're not going to put troops
Speaker 2: on the ground. This is not about regime scene because again,
Speaker 2: the Iranian people are listening, and whatever we're doing behind
Speaker 2: the scenes doesn't mean ship to them if they think
Speaker 2: we're not going to help, because when we're ready for
Speaker 2: them to rise up, they're not going to be and
Speaker 2: it's going to go to hell.
Speaker 1: Also, like question, like let's say we did try and
Speaker 1: do what we did in Afghanistan and I guess early
Speaker 1: two thousand and three with Iraq at the Kurds and
Speaker 1: stuff like that, with CIA and SF you know, the
Speaker 1: buy with and through stuff. How do they how do
Speaker 1: they fight the IRGC, which is a you know, established
Speaker 1: fighting for us in a relatively modern army without our
Speaker 1: like our close hair support or you know, are fire supported,
Speaker 1: or how they even think to survive.
Speaker 4: That h especially with the amount of drones the regime has,
Speaker 4: they can divert some of those drones to use against
Speaker 4: those rebellious forces.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's gonna be a crazy few weeks. I wish
Speaker 1: there was something good to fucking report on, guys. Honestly,
Speaker 1: I'm fucking done with this, you know what I mean,
Speaker 1: Like never, we never fucking do it. That's the thing.
Speaker 1: It's like, I never feel like, oh, you know what,
Speaker 1: this is actually going in the right direction at the
Speaker 1: end of a show like this. Jack Murphy The high
Speaker 1: Side incredible outlet with Sean Naylor, who literally wrote the
Speaker 1: book on Jaysack. Jack's new book is coming out in June,
Speaker 1: The Most Dangerous Man. That link is in the description
Speaker 1: to pre order it. Jason Lynes. The links are down
Speaker 1: in the description. Jonathan Hackett Iran Shadow Weapons and the
Speaker 1: Theory of a Regular War. Both books are down in
Speaker 1: the description. Were John, You're supposed to come here, supposed
Speaker 1: to talk about how I lag You see long there's money, right,
Speaker 1: like that's what. Yeah, the original plan was, Yeah, that
Speaker 1: was the original plan.
Speaker 4: But then we got that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we got a decade's worth of news in a
Speaker 1: fuck in three days. And uh, you can go to
Speaker 1: patreon dot com slash the Teamhouse and help support the show.
Speaker 1: You get both Teamhouse episodes and eyes On episodes. If
Speaker 1: you're interested in Jonathan and Jason's story, we have episodes
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Speaker 1: and you help support the show. Guys, A pleasure as always.
Speaker 1: Anything else do you guys? You guys want to say anything?
Speaker 1: Are great of a host? I am no, you don't
Speaker 1: want to do that.
Speaker 4: Okay, we have lunch with AOC yet.
Speaker 1: Wish I wish he doesn't return my calls. All right, guys, thank.
Speaker 2: You, all right, take care of Karen.
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