Speaker 1: And hello, how are you welcome to the Big Podcast
on this Wednesday. Today is the sixth day of May,
Year of Our Lord, twenty twenty six. My name is
Tom Sullivan. And lo and behold, this is another twist
and turn regarding the conflict with Iran. I mean, I'm
not quite there's a lot of confusion. Let me put
it that way. Actual's probably has the best somewhat exclusive
reporting on this before the market opened, about an hour
before the market opened this morning. And this is what
happens is the President makes announcements about the war and
just before the market and trying. I'm convinced that he's
very sensitive to what the stalking bond markets are doing
and he likes to give them something that will maybe
boost the markets, and it has today. But essentially the
headline is the US and Iran are closing in on
a one page memo to end the war. Well, that's
a threatch I mean, you've got you can't put on
one page nuclear issues and the strait of horror moves
and the missiles and the drones and the no, you
can't put it on one page. But that is what
we are dealing with. That came up the White House
came up up with one page memorandum of understanding to
end the war. So let me ask you something, is
this is this the president blinking? Did he just blink again?
Because there's he's he sets up all kinds of deadlines.
I mean, we had what did they call that? Uh,
it was less than forty eight hours ago about the
whole thing, about the the operations in the strait of
our moves and and all of that, and that now
all of a sudden, that's been caught, that's been called off.
So this this makes you wonder are we saying is
this the president just wanting out so badly? And is
that where other countries know that America's leadership will not
see it through. We've played General Jack Keen over and
over again, a bunch of them yesterday and a couple
of regularly, a lot of military people going, we need
to finish the military part of this. We stopped, we
stopped short. We had about two more weeks worth of
military effort, and it was called off so that we
could have negotiations. And the negotiations never went anywhere, and
people flew to Pakistan then flew back again, and so
we're not getting anywhere on the negotiations. It does seem
to me that the military strikes are going to have
to finish this off in order for this to come
to an end. But a one page memorandum of understanding
will bring the war to an end. Count me as
leary at the very lace. Anyway, it's one page, fourteen
point memorandum. Let me read this to you because it is.
It's just bizarre to me. It doesn't make any sense.
This is from last night. This is true, social the
President wrote. Based on the request of Pakistan and other countries,
the tremendous military success that we have had during the
campaign against the country of Iran, and additionally the fact
that great progress has been made toward a complete and
final agreement with representatives of Iran, we have mutually agreed
that while the blockade will remain in full force and effect,
Project Freedom, that's the one that was announced just forty
eight hours ago, and already it's been pulled. He gave
it forty eight hours to see how it would work.
Apparently didn't like it. Anyways. The Project Freedom, the movement
of ships through the Strait of Hormuz, will be paused
for a short period of time. To see whether or
not the agreement can be finalized and signed. President Donald J. Trump.
All right, that was last night. Today this morning, well
less than an hour before the market's opened, he wrote
the following, assuming Iran agrees to give what has been
agreed to, Wait a minute, hold it. I'm not laughing now,
it sounds like it. I'm crying. Actually, listen to this,
he says, Assuming Iran agrees to give what has been
agreed to, there's been nothing agreed to. This is where
he lives in a world of what he wants. Is
the way he takes this is Donald Trump, the way
he takes it just he has. I don't know if
it's dreaming or wishful thinking or positive thinking, but he writes,
assuming Iran agrees to give what has been agreed to,
it hasn't happened, which is perhaps it's a big assumption.
Yes it is. The already legendary epic fury will be
at an end, and the highly effective blockade will allow
the horror moves straight to be open to all, including Iran.
If they don't agree, the bombing starts, and it will
be sadly at a much higher level and internally than
intensity than it was before. Thank you for your attention
to this matter, President Donald J. Trump. So he starts
off by kind of his dream world or his wishful
thinking world about if they agree to what they've agreed to,
which they haven't agreed to, and then he throws a
thread in there that we're going to and he always
wants to talk really tough about it's not working. You
can threaten them, you can talk tough to them, it's
not working with the regime that's running the IRGC not
bending based on your tough talk. So that's where things
stood this morning. Now the only part of this is
once again he is threatened to bomb them if they
don't agree to what has already been agreed to, which
makes no sense. I doubt that they're going to agree
to anything. And I also doubt because he says it
over and over against the boy who cried Wolf, that
he's going to start bombing them and it will be sadly,
what do you mean, sadly, at a much higher level
and intensity than it was before. I don't believe it.
I'll be shocked to see that he actually does military
action again. He has held off, he has avoided, he's
done everything he can to stop before military action takes place.
He doesn't want to use military force. It's clear to me.
So we'll see what we've got going here. But I
think this is just another bunch of pablem I really
do so. Edward Fisher, he is a professor at Columbia,
He's a foreign relations expert. He was asked about all
of this. Let's see what he says.
Speaker 2: I think it's an admission that Project Freedom is dead
on arrival. It was not working.
Speaker 1: As you said.
Speaker 2: Yesterday we got two ships through the strait and today zero.
And beyond that, the Iranians retaliated right they struck, They
tried to strike some US warships, they blew up a
Korean vessel, a Korean cargo ship, and they launched.
Speaker 1: Attacks on the UAE.
Speaker 2: So I think this is an admission that it wasn't
working and we're still in this bind where in order
to end this oil crisis, we need to reopen the
Strait of Hormuz, but it doesn't seem like we're going
to get that absence some sort of diplomatic agreement.
Speaker 1: Okay, back to the reporting by Axios, they say that
in the current form the memorandum of understanding would declare
an end to the war in the region and start
a thirty day period of negotiations on a detailed agreement
to open the strait, limit Iran's nuclear program, and lift
US sanctions. So it's not an agreement, it's the start
of a negotiation to find an agreement. That's one part
of it. The negotiations could happen in Islamabad, Pakistan, or
in Geneva, Switzerland. Apparently that's up in the air. Iran's
restrictions on shipping through the strait, and the US naval
blockade would be gradually lifted during the thirty day period,
so it would not be overnight, and if the negotiations collapse,
US forces would be able to restore the blockade or
resume military action. I'll believe it when I see it.
So the US wants to insert a provision where any
Iranian violation on enrichment would prolong the moratorium and also
allow them to ownly rich up to a level of
three point six seven percent. Huh after it expires, which
is apparently that's being debated. Iran wance five years. We're
talking fifteen years. President has said there will never be
an expiration on enrichment, Iran would commit to never seek
a nuclear weapon. Ever, Iran would also commit to enhanced inspections,
and the US would commit as part of the agreement,
to gradual lifting of the sanctions. So there's a lot
of confusion about is this just a bunch of goggly
book about we're going to agree to agree, maybe we're
going to have negotiations. Maybe a lot of confusion about
all of this. Colonel Cedric Clayton, who's a military consultant,
says the following.
Speaker 3: And when you look at something like this happening, you
usually a Project Freedom type endeavor is done when you
can really close off the kinetic option. But in this
particular situation, we really don't have a final moment here
in the kinetic side of things. And I think Epic
Fury was terminated perhaps prematurely, just from a military operational perspective,
And as Eddie was mentioning, there are no real finishing
touches to any of this. It seems as if neither
the kinetic option nor the Project Freedom option, which is
an escort basically an escort mission I came through and
that shows that there is at least some level of
either confusion or disorganization when it comes to what the
White House is doing right now.
Speaker 1: Yeah, confusion or disorganization good way to put it. Kareem Sadjapoor,
he is the Iranian expert, and he was asked, what
do you he thought the Ron would respond to.
Speaker 4: I kind of think of President Trump as the Jackson
Pollock of grand strategy, the great artist Jackson Pollock, and
that you know, too many observers, he's just kind of
violently throwing paint on canvas. To his supporters, they will
say that's the art of the deal. He's keeping the
run in regime on its toes. And it is true
that Tehran, it's impossible for those of us who live
in Washington to read President Trump's intentions, let alone the
Irunian government and the Iron government. They've been It's not
an exaggeration to say they've been obsessed with the United
States government for forty seven years. They've been preparing for
this moment, and they're usually a pretty keen judge of
US resolve. And I think if they feel that President
Trump's resolve is waning and he wants to end this war,
you will see, John, their demands will increase, and they're
risk tolerance and provocations will also increase as well.
Speaker 1: Yeah, if they think that the president blinked, if they
think that the President wants to get out of this thing,
then they're going to up there. That gives them the
upper hand. They're then going to be able to negotiate
from a position of strength. Brett Bear, the Fox Washington
political guy, he well, he put it very eloquently. He
talked about the fact that this is aspirational. In other words,
I go back to again, it's it's interesting trying to
figure out what makes up Donald Trump, and part of
it is he lives in a world that he wishes
was reality, but it's not. It's aspirational.
Speaker 5: Yeah, now, listen, this is aspirational. And I think that
again we're in the same spot of not knowing which
Iranian leaders were dealing with. However, I think the President
is looking at this as a possibility and wants to
reach for it, and that's why he's giving it this time.
Speaker 1: Richmond. Part is key.
Speaker 5: I mean, there's a moratorium on enrichment under this plan,
and it's much more aggressive as far as making sure
they're living up to that. But the strait of removes
part is crucial, as we've talked about, and keeping that open.
I mean, we don't get obviously as much oil out
of that straight as other countries, but it obviously affects
everything it does.
Speaker 1: Indeed, I don't know what your thoughts are. Do you
think that this is the president being a clever negotiator
or is he throwing in the towel. David Albright, he
is a nuclear inspector. He's one of the people involved
in going to these sites and seeing if they have
nuclear capabilities and enrichment or whatever they might have. This
is his reaction to what's going on.
Speaker 6: Well, one is, before the war started in June, Iran
was able to build nuclear weapon if it decided to
do so within months and have high certainty it would work.
Now they aren't able to do that. I mean there's
intelligence assessments that have become public recently say they'll need
a year. I would probably say perhaps longer, but more importantly,
they the weapon may not work. That much of the
nuclear weaponization infrastructure of Iran's program has been destroyed, so
it's not just the enriched geranium that matters. That's critical,
and that's really the centerpiece of all the negotiations right now,
but the ability to make the bomb itself is important.
So I think they've been Ron has been seriously set back.
And instead of US facing a program where at any
moment Iran could decide to build a bomb quickly within months,
now we're with a program that, if it decided to
build a bomb, would take more like a year, and
there'd be roadblocks along the way that that would have.
They would be facing their own uncertainty of whether they
could succeed, and so the probability that it wouldn't work
would would be potentially substantial. So I think the war
created quite a bit of damage to the program.
Speaker 1: So as a nuclear inspector, what does David Albright think
are the roadblocks to get a piece deal?
Speaker 6: Well, there's a couple of things. One is the enriched
uranium stocks very important and those have to be part
of a deal to preferably from a US point, if
you remove the enriched uranium from Iran and that and
you want to create further roadblocks on Iran's ability to
build the bomb, and that's a very good way to
do it. Another part of it, though, is is that
Iran has to They've got to commit not to build
nuclear weapons, and and I my point of view, the've
got to admit that they do it. They always deny it,
but we know they've been working on nuclear weapons for decades,
and so you have to have a commitment not to
do it, and then you have to have some good
inspections that verify that the program has ended. And so
I think that that's and I see from some of
the reporting that the Trump administration is considering that. But
that's always one of the hardest things for Ron to
accept because I think, no matter what, they want to
be able to reconstitute to build nuclear weapons, to have
that option, if not actually implemented, and these negotiations have
to just end that ambition on the part of Iran.
The war has made that goal much harder for Ron
to accomplish. But it didn't end it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, his last words, but it did not end it.
Iran is absolutely focused on getting a nuclear weapon and
as soon as they possibly can. It may be years
and maybe weeks, maybe months, but they are focused on that.
That is why the regime has to be eliminated. They've
got to put new people in power in Iran who
will have a different attitude about things. Here's the president
last night before this big announcement was made this morning,
But this is him basically wanting Iran to wave the
white flag.
Speaker 7: Other presidents should have done this forty seven years, they've
been toying with these stupid people. That's not the way
we play now.
Speaker 1: If we do it the old.
Speaker 7: Fashioned way, and they should wave, they're very proud. Maybe
you won't see a white flag, but essentially that's already
what they are.
Speaker 1: They need.
Speaker 7: They should wave the white flag, the white flag of surrender.
Speaker 1: Well, who's surrendering here? It sounds yeah, he's waving the
white flag on his on his mind. Carl Quintinella is
one of the anchors over on C and B saying
that we're talking about a report coming out of Reuters,
extensive research done by Reuters about the capabilities of Iran
to build a nuclear weapon. It's hard.
Speaker 8: I mean, Reuters did a piece yesterday citing US intelligence
indicating that the time Iran would need to build a
nuclear weapon has not changed since last summer. So a
lot of these things we won't have answers to probably
for years.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they're still debating about the bombing that we did
with last with Israel last summer, last June, and did
we obliterate their ability to build nuclear weapons or not?
The debate still goes on. Rebecca Heinrich from the Hudson Institute,
she studies this, that's what her area of study is.
Let's see what she thinks.
Speaker 9: Well, I think that there are some who would take
the deal. I don't know that that's what President Trump
is going to want, and he wants no enrichment. But
we've significantly degraded the nuclear program and eliminated so many
of their nuclear scientists that had to know how. I'm
already confident that the nuclear program has been dramatically set back,
probably more than three years already. But the problem, as
President Trump continues to make clear, is we don't really
still have an idea of who's in control in Iran.
So even if there's some politicians that want to make
a deal, we still have IERGC militiaman shooting cruise missiles
at American Navy ships, and that is intolerable to the
United States. The Iran cannot continue to threaten and coerce
the Strait, and so to me, I think that we
might have ended epic fury, but we might have fast
and furious that may resume or may take initiative here
to eliminate those targets that still remain in Iran, to
finally eliminate the threats to the strait, and then also
eliminate those people who are standing in the way of
a deal.
Speaker 1: She's talking about military action, and you eliminate the threats,
namely their drones and their missiles and things like that,
but also the people, she said, standing in the way
of a deal. So I wouldn't be a bit Maybe
I will be surprised because I'm not sure that President
Trump is willing to use military action, but if he does,
I would think that the targets are the IRGC leaders.
Take them out, be gone with them, and then maybe
you can get down to the point where you can
negotiate some sort of deal with others. We talked about
oil and gas a lot, but there's also other products,
food products coming out of Iran and also of course fertilizer.
Manned by the name of Ahmed el Hushei is the
CEO of a company that that's what they do. They
export from Iran food and fertilizer, and this is his
reaction to the current situation.
Speaker 10: So we're still in the same kind of position of
the straight up horomos being all but shut, very limited
movements out of there. So producers like ourselves, where we
have some production in Abudawi that does typically go through
the strait of Horomos, we're looking at land based options,
but they're going to be at a much much lower
rate than our typical vessel movements.
Speaker 1: A vessel can hold thirty to fifty thousand tons.
Speaker 10: A truck to get to another port can hold about
twenty five tons, so you can imagine logistically it's a
bit of a big change for us here within.
Speaker 1: The straight up promos.
Speaker 10: So, I mean, I think as it's persistently over the
last couple of months, I think the global food position
has been We've been in a decent position because harvests
have been relatively good, weather's been relatively good, and a
lot of pre buying a fertilizer, particularly in the United
States and in Europe happened before February twenty eighth. Unfortunately,
it does continue. We do anticipate there to be a
lag effect for those that need to buy for the
new season, those in the Southern Hemisphere, those in Australia
also South Asia and Latin America. If this persists longer,
we will start seeing it in food prices because the
nitrogen fertilizer, like the arear noose, feeds about half of.
Speaker 1: The world's population.
Speaker 10: So it's quite an inelastic to that.
Speaker 1: But no surprise, they're able to get some things out.
But I thought the difference between trucking it and putting
it own a ship is dramatically different. Meantile oil and gas.
Let's look at the prices today. The average price for
gallon of gasoline, the cheap stuff four dollars fifty four
cents across the country. That's up. That's up a nickel
from yesterday. And diesel five dollars sixty seven cents. That's
up two cents from yesterday. If you look at the map,
the whole West Coast is over five dollars, and California
is all by itself it's six dollars and sixteen cents
average price for the cheap stuff. Some of the gas
in California is well over seven seven dollars, which yes,
by the way, speaking of California, so last night I
watched some of the debate between the people running for governor,
and little did I know they had what was it,
I think eight people on the stage last night, maybe seventh,
I lost track. But when if you're in California and
you're going to be voting, the ballot will have sixty
one names on it for you to choose from for
the governor. Now this yeah, sixty one two pages, five
columns wide for both pages in small font and you're
going to wander through those names. I found a couple
of names I thought were interesting that are running for governor.
One of them is Living for God and Country Dumot.
That's one of the candidates, and apparently that's his legal name.
There's another guy on there, Barack Obama Shaw. Now you
know people are going to go, oh, Barack oba I
was running And even though he dropped out of the race,
Eric Swalwell's name is still on the ballot, so you
know he's going to pick up some ballots, some votes.
In order to run for governor in California, you've got
to pay a filing fee that's two percent of the salary,
So it's four nine hundred and eighteen dollars. And I'm
thinking Living for God and Country to Mott probably doesn't
have nine hundred and eighteen dollars to throw around. But
you can also alternatively submit six thousand vallid signatures in
lieu of the price of the fee. And I'm thinking
even for living for God and country, Dumott and also
Barack Obama shaw, I don't know, six thousands a lot
of name. They must have stood in front of a
grocery store for a long time. One of the guys
who can afford that without any problem. This guy is
just a weird duck. He just is Tom Steyer. He
ran for president I forget five six years ago. He
got nowhere, is a billionaire. He made his money off
of oil and gas and coal and coal mines, and
yet he's turned into this crazy environmentalist. And yet that's
where he made his billions. Private prisons. He made a
bunch of money off private prisons. So he was very
just annoying. He has kind of an annoying personality. The
guy who seemed like mister nice guy, and I've actually
heard from people who know him he is down to
earth nice guy is Javier Bisera. He was the state's
attorney general. Then Biden picked him to be the head
of Health and Human Services, and during covid heard a
peep from him. He's a he's a bureaucrat. He's been
in he's been in Congress or in state government forever. Again,
nice man, but all he did was propose ideas that
would cost a lot of money. He's a typical Washington
guy that just yeah, no problem, we just but they
have to balance their books in a state kind of
they pretend. So he proposed medicare for all. And even
Katie Porter, the woman that has a apparently not well
liked personality, but she she was bending over backwards to
be miscongeniality. I mean, she was as nice as pie,
but she brought up I think it was her that
brought up the fact that she said She kept asking him,
are you saying you want to cover every single person
in the state of California, legal and illegal? And he said,
I'm for Medicare for all. He would not answer the question.
But even so, Medicare for all would not cover every
single person, but it would cost for forty some million
people that live in California, it would be a five
hundred billion dollar cost. The annual total spending of the
government of California is three hundred billion, so it'd be
more almost double what they spend on everything right now.
So he had terrible ideas and all he wants to
do is just spend. There was no restraint. Well there
was one, the mayor of San Jose A matt In
Mayhan I think is his name. He is very low id,
so he's probably not going to win, but he was
kind of the most moderate Democrat there and he was
talking about you can't spend more than what you bring in,
in other words, your tax revenues. You can't spend more
than that. But all the rest of the Democrats were
all about increasing revenue, increasing revenue. They use the word revenue,
but they don't make anything, so that brings they want
more taxes. It's weird. The two Democrat, the two Republicans,
sheriff of Riverside County and Steve Hilton, who used to
work for the British government then he became a US citizen,
moved here. He went to work as a commentator on
Fox and that is of course held over his head
because he first of all Republican, but he's leading in
the polls and he has some down to earth, common
sense type of ideas. So it was it was interesting
to watch. And I know this is probably close to
being petty, but I'm big on There was a book
written many many years he would call dress for Success.
If you want to be whatever profession you want to
be dressed the way that they dressed. If you want
to be a farmer, you don't wear a suit and tie.
If you want to be a corporate lawyer, you do
wear a suit and tie. So the guy the sheriff
of Riverside County always wears either some form of a
police uniform or has some badge on him somewhere. And
I'm going, you're not running for sheriff, you're running for governor.
And he has. Now this is the petty part of
my part. He has like a cheap sports code he
wears and he does. He just doesn't look like he's
a governor. He doesn't look the part. And I think
the only guy that did with a suit and tie
was in fact Tom Steier. But you want to know
something about him that's strange. He has this like a
Scottish tie that he wears. It's the only tie he wears.
Apparently he has a number of them in case he
needs to drop food on him or something. But he
wears a red Scottish high always everywhere, never anything else.
He's just a strange man. So I will be interested
to see if the people of California are smart enough
to figure out to vote for Steve Hilton. He does
seem to have the guy. It seems to be the
guy that wants to put common sense into the state.
But here's the problem with Steve Hilton. He is a Republican.
He is a conservative, He's got common sense ideas. He's
not a far right right. He's not a crazy Republican.
He's a moderate Republican. But if he gets elected, he's
got a legislature that is controlled. Both houses of the
legislature are dominated by Democrats. I don't know how he's
going to get anything done, but it would be obviously
an amazing start. And speaking of states, Ohio also had
their primary yesterday. Ramaswami, Oh my gosh, he walked away
with it. He had eighty two percent of the vote
versus his competitor at seventeen percent, so we overwhelmed them.
Also running for Senate Sharad Brown, who used to be
the Senator from Ohio. He won the Democrat nomination easily
eighty nine percent of the vote versus ten percent versus
whoever ran against him in Indiana, Trump power is still there.
Republicans still follow whatever he says. The five of the
seven spots that were up for the state Senate race,
in the races in Indiana, the Trump promoted candidate won
five of them. One of the persons that he tried
to get somebody to primary and beat him want the
incumbent one, so one person one and the second one
that he was trying to throw out of office. It's
too close to call. So it's very strong results for
the power of President Trump in local election and back
basically the oil and gas areas. Delta Airlines see what
they said. They said they're going to drop snacks and drinks.
They're not going to serve them on flights that are
three hundred and forty nine miles or less, so short
flights that's basically about a one hour flight. And if
you're on Delta Airlines, no snacks, no drinks, nope. So
that's like La to San Francisco. I mean, there's a
bunch of flights that are less than one hour and
they're just not going to They're cutting back by the
airline industry so far has announced just this month that
they have eliminated flights to the tune of two million
airline seats as they measure it have been cut from
the airline's schedul various airline schedules for the month of May.
Wall Street, well, the markets did respond to the fact
that the President was putting out some As much as
it was confusing to me, maybe not to you, but
to me, it was not apparently confusing to Wall Street
because they were very positive on the fact that any
sign of any store to breakthrough to a peace agreement,
Wall Street responds positively, and they did today. The Dow
up six hundred and twelve to forty nine thousand and
nine ten just below fifty thousand, the SMP up one
hundred and six. That's a new record, NASDAK up five
hundred twelve, that's a huge new record. Gold up one
hundred and thirty eight dollars to four thousand and seven six,
and oil right along with the rest of the markets.
Oil fell seven dollars. West Texas Intermediate crewed ninety five
dollars now for a barrel of oil. That's the lowest
we've seen in a few weeks. So that's it for today.
Thank you for coming by. We'll be back again tomorrow
and I hope to see you then