Speaker 1: And welcome to the podcast on this Friday the thirteenth. No,
I don't either. Black cats are fine, broken mirrors, walk
under ladders, whatever you want. Another day, well, it's not
just another day. It's a day that literally takes us
away from not completely. I have a little bit of
an update about LA, but the LA News has moved
off of the front page and now we're watching war.
And it's not a surprise, but it is. It's not
a surprise in the fact that is has been worried
about Iran for decades and literally you can go back
and there was a video I saw earlier today of
Benjamin Nette Yaho addressing the United Nations here in New York,
and this was five years ago, and he had a
like a cartoon drawing of a bomb and he had
a red pen and he showed where basically Iran was
right at the point of making the nuke bomb then.
And I long believe that they have had the ability,
they have the nuclear fission to be able to create bombs.
I think they have the bomb, and I think Benjamin
Nett and Yah who thought they did. And it is
very nervous about the fact that Iran has been expressing
its desire to completely obliterate and wipe off the map Israel. Now,
you can only take those threats so long. So let's
go back. Because Barak Obama, he thought, well, let's negotiate
and let's in fact, we'll give you a bunch of money,
let's be friends. And that did not work. And it
comes all the way up to well, even Joe Biden
tried to do that, But it comes all the way
up to the last couple of weeks where the Trump
administration has sat down with the Iranians and has tried
to say, we need you to get rid of your
nuclear bomb ability and they said, no way. And I
get that from tyrants don't want to give up that power.
I mean, Kim jungett On, he's doing the same thing.
He has nukes, and the only reason he has nukes
is because of the fact that he feels that without
them he would be toppled, he would be he would
be out, that somebody would take over that country. I'm
sure the Iotola feels exactly the same way that there's
no way that he's able to maintain control unless he
has nukes in his back pocket. So with that, it's
been it's been a very effective attack by the people
in Israel. What's interesting about Israel is coming out of this,
which is fascinating. And remember the pagers. I remember how
they worked for literally a couple of at least a
couple two or three years to get the pagers so
that the people of Hezbolah and even in Iran, all
the people on that side of the aisle would have
these pagers so that they could send a signal, and
they had an explosive in them. They killed all kinds
of people. It took years of ingenious planning to come
up with that. Well, we're hearing that this also. Israel
has smuggled weapons into Iran long before the strikes last night.
This has been not weeks or months, has been years
of planning. But again, if you keep having somebody who
is a pretty powerful country saying they want to kill
you and everybody else like you, well you're probably going
to try to start planning on how to take them out.
The IDF intercepted one hundred plus drones that Iran sent
toward Tel Aviv last night. No, and go by the way,
the two hundred fighter jets that Israel used that not
one of them was shot down because they had previously
knocked out a lot of Iran's defense systems. So all
of this took years and months and weeks down to
last night where and that two hundred fighter just that
last night, that was just the first wave in that
you've got four Iranian commanders that were killed. It wasn't
by accident. They were not only hitting nuke sites, but
they were also hitting military sites as well as specifically
targeting military leaders. They hit the military headquarters building, their
version of the Pentagon. But the nukes that they have,
and this is why I say it's the first wave,
and everybody knows it's going to be more. In fact,
as to recording this, there's word that there are more
explosions in different parts of Iran today. But they have
their nukes deeply underground. The centrifuge is a lot of
the nuclear capability that Iran has is deep, deep, deep
under the earth. And one of the things about that
is we have been asked by Israel to give them
the bunkerbuster bombs, and apparently we've said no, we don't
want anybody else to have that technology, so we won't
do it. So they have to use more conventional bombs
to try to get rid of these nuke facilities that
Iran has underground. One of the other clever things that
Iran has done is even if you have a strategic
missile that can go into a bathroom window, well, they
can send one of those missiles down one of these
silos where they have the bomb making facilities underground. But
what Iran apparently has done is that in these silos
they have knotty degree turns so that the bomb, no
matter what they have, won't make it all the way
down to where they're storing their bombs or construction constructing
nuclear bombs. So they're pretty clever too. But at this point,
it's just basically wait and see what the rest of
the attacks will be, because there's going to be more
question it. Let's start with a whole bunch of party
heads regarding military tactics. Start with Colonel Cedric Layton talking
about what happened with this attack.
Speaker 2: Takeaway from this is that the Americans had an idea
of what was going on. The Israelis probably kept them informed,
at least as far as some of their preparations were concerned.
They probably didn't give them exact details because operational security
was paramount for them as well. But this is something
that strategically can benefit the Trump administration because it not
only like beared the weaknesses of the Iranian regime, but
it also shows a possible opening for other things that
the Trump administration made want to do. This would be
the Iranians or frankly in the Middle East.
Speaker 1: And here is what Mike Pompeo thinks about what happened
last night.
Speaker 3: I will say that Israel and the United States have
shown extreme pati This has been a decade plus in
the making. What we saw take place last night now
this morning is going to continue for days and weeks.
Israelis clearly believed and I think they were right that
this was the moment, this was go time. There was
no more space to have the option to go do
what they have now done. They've done the necessary and
so I hope they will continue. I hope they will
conclude this the one place you didn't mention, Bill that
was a pretty comprehensive. There's still FODO underground, very difficult target.
I hope the Israelis are as determined to get that
as they have been. The leadership the radars, the air
force bases that you described this is the time to
make the Middle East more prosperous, safer, because in Iran
with a nuclear weapon would have been devastatingly bad for Israel,
the Golf Air of Nations, and of course for the
United States of America as well.
Speaker 1: The negotiations we're expected to continue this weekend in Oman.
What does Mike Pompeo think. Does that meeting going to
take place or not.
Speaker 3: I'd be surprised if the Rangians would show up. They've
said they're not going to. Who knows what they'll decide
after what transpires in the next twenty four hours. I
imagine that the Ayatola didn't sleep very well last night.
Let's make it clear, the Iranians aren't about to voluntarily
give up these weapons. The world's been trying to do that.
President Obama tried to do that. President Biden tried to
do that. President Trump made a good faith effort these
last three months to get the Ranians to change their ways.
They clearly continued to develop their enrichment capability, their ballistic
missile program, all the elements that held Israel and the
United States at risk, and when they wouldn't negotiate, they've
now faced the wrath of Israel, and as President Trump
has said, if they come after Americans, he'll face the
wrath of the United States of America as well.
Speaker 1: And here's Benjaminette Yahoo's last Night.
Speaker 4: This operation will continue for as many days as it
takes to remove the threat. For decades, the tyrants of
Tehran have brazenly openly called for Israel's destruction. They've backed
up their genocidal rhetoric with a program to develop oop
a weapon.
Speaker 3: Undoubtedly they've been working on this for an awfully long time.
The fact that we have evidence that there Wasraeli agents
on the ground means they were coordinating with the Iranian people,
if not some folks that are inside the Iranian government.
Speaker 5: I don't know that, but there's no doubt about that.
Speaker 3: When you set up a drone base in somebody else's
sovereign territory, you are you have got collaborators working alongside you.
Speaker 5: And I'll bet the Iranian regime today is trying to.
Speaker 3: Figure out who those collaborators are, because I'll bet this
effort continues. I doubt we've had a doubt. We've had
the last surprise from the Israelis. We saw what happened
with the pagers. We saw now what happened overnight. I'm
confident that the Israeli leadership has prepared a deep strategic
effort to do what looks to me like as much
of a success as a six day war where the
Israelis defeated three Arab forces. This was an effort of
grand strategic success. And now we have to all do
the necessary and protect Israel, protect the Golf, Arab states,
protect Europe and the United States from the response that
the Ranians may seek to muster. I'm confident that we can,
working together, achieve that and make frankly, make not only.
Speaker 5: The Gulf safer, but the whole world.
Speaker 1: So how does all of this affect you. You're not
in Israel, You're not in Iran. There is a concern
obviously about some sort of sleeper sales here in the
US to do damage here, But primarily the number one
thing that's happening today is oil prices, and so you
will you will probably see the effect of this next
time you go to the gas station. Oil prices are
the highest since January. Brent Brewt is seventy four dollars today.
It was in the high sixties yesterday. WTI crewed seventy three,
so price oil is somewhere seventy three seventy four dollars.
That is up about five bucks from yesterday. As far
as the stock market goes straight downhill, today went down
five hundred and six hundred points during most of the
trading session. The companies doing well are the military industrial
complex companies, the lock keys, the rtx's of the world.
Their stock is all much higher. And all of those
companies that are in the travel business, the airlines, the
cruise ships, the travel agencies online, all of their stocks
are much much lower because of the news out of
the Middle East. And these oil prices probably are going
to stay elevated for a little while because the Strait
of Horror moves is about twenty one million barrels a
day go through the Strait of horm Moves and that
will impact world oil prices. And that's right there where
Iran controls all of that. So be prepared for these
oil prices and gas prices to be higher for some time.
And we can't do war coverage without finding out what
our favorite general has to say about all of this.
Here's General Jack Keene.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I mean it's a comprehensive attack for sure. It's
conducted by two hundred fighters and a massade on the ground.
And by the way, the Masad effectiveness inside of Iran
for a number of years is absolutely stunning. They don't
talk about what they do, but they've actually hit nucleosites
themselves on the ground in the past. They're quite remarkable.
They probably not going to reveal much about what they're
doing here, but yeah. But the four targets thereafter are
one air defense systems, and appears a lot of the
drones that the Massad launched inside the country were targeting them,
obviously the nuclear enterprise itself. They hit seven nucleosytes and
doing that, the principal one being the one that's been
identified in the TAZ and they haven't identified the other ones.
Ballistic missiles, And this is a very key point here.
The ballistic missiles are the weapon that could damage Israel.
These drones that Iran is flying, they're not a serious threat.
It takes eight hours to get a drone to Israel.
There's plenty of time to intercept them. When they flew
over one hundred and fifty of them back in April,
every single one of them was defeated. The real retaliation
means of ballistic missiles. They've got two thousand of them
before the strike began, and believe me, the Israelis are
very very concerned about these ballistic missiles. And also the
other target is what you mentioned is the leadership target itself.
It's a missile that can travel at mock speed. It
goes into space and comes down on a target with
usually a very high degree of accuracy. And the Iranians
did fire these at Israel twice before. Once was back
in April when it was part of that massive over
three hundred missile attack and drone attack, and one hundred
and twenty ballistic missiles were fired at Israel, only four
penetrated their head defense system. However, the next attack that
Iran made, they didn't launched drones, they didn't launched any rockets,
They launched only ballistic missiles. One hundred and twenty. Excuse me,
over two hundred ballistic missiles were launched and forty of
them penetrated the arrow system, and the US that that
is unacceptable, and they were fortunately only focused at air
force baces in the desert and the Masade headquarters. Only
one person was killed. But this is why the Israelis
are very concern about these ballistic missiles. If they launched
hundreds of these ballistic missiles at one time and focused
on population centers, a different outcome could be. So one
of the primary targets here has been taking down these
ballistic missiles, so they reduced the effectiveness of Iran's retaliation.
Speaker 7: General Keane, has there been anything over the past twelve
hours that has surprised you?
Speaker 6: Yeah, well, certainly they have always sort of waited after
an attack to reassess, and it's usually a couple of
days and sometimes it's a couple of weeks. But throwing
these drones out there is such a feeble attempt. I
think they're just trying to demonstrate, mostly to their own people,
that they're doing something about this. But everybody knows that
that's easily to defeat. The main event will be the
ballistic missiles and how many of those truly do remain.
And I might say, I mean, why is Israel doing
this now? I mean it became obvious as a result
of the negotiations that President Trump's team was conducting that
the Ayatola, you know, through his negotiators, was not about
to voluntarily dismantle his nuclear program. And I think, and
I've said this from the outset, I believe in the
Ayatola's mind he believes he would rather have the airstrike
against him and recover some of that, in other words,
survive to build again, rather than voluntarily dismantle the program
that could be verified by independent inspectors. The second thing
is we all know and the Prime Minister is saying,
so Iran was accelerating their program while the negotiations are
going on their nuclear program. And the third thing, and
this is important, they were attempting to recover their air
defence systems that Israel was so successful in destroying back
in October. Well, if they take their ballistic missiles out,
they don't have much in terms of effectiveness. You know,
the air force is nineteen seventies vintage that we gave
to the shop and the reality is they don't have
any consequential navy as patrol boats and frigates. Their landforce
is large, but it's poorly led, poorly trained, and poorly equipped.
Their business has always been rockets and missiles and providing
support to their proxies. Their proxies have more better capability
and they have themselves. When you look at Iran comprehensively,
those have always feared going to war with Iran is
going to be a major event here. It has never
been that. Now. Iran does not have any military effectiveness
to stand up against the United States and Israel in
terms of an.
Speaker 5: All out war. I don't see that in the offing
at all.
Speaker 1: So it doesn't sound like there's a lot of military
umph from the Iranian folks. But Dan Hoffman, who is
the former station chief for the CIA at Moscow, has
this opinion about how strong in Iran is.
Speaker 5: Well, we're still in early days.
Speaker 8: That is a key question that Prime Minister Netanya, who
will be asking his intelligence services and frankly President Trump
will be doing the same thing to the US intelligence community,
what means does Iran have to retaliate? Look, they've got
the proxy terrorists we talked about in the region, but
they've also got sleeper agents located in Europe and potentially
here in the United States. They also hosted the leader
of al Qaeda, safel Otto, who has been making his
way between Iran and Afghanistan. Iran's links with al Qaeda
are long standing, and so we have to be prepared
for anything, and I can tell you that the US
intelligence community at this point is on high alert, mounting
a full court press, collecting the intelligence that will keep
US safe. Israel's goal was to decapitate Iran's military. They
also killed the national security official who was leading the
nuclear negotiations with the United States, Sally Shamkhani. The goal
here for Israel was to destroy Iran's means of retaliation,
but also to create the opportunity for others to be
potentially promoted into their place. I think, as President Trump noted,
maybe they will be less intransitent, less defiant, less provocative.
But at this point Israel tried everything they could, so
did the United States to bring a diplomatic resolution and
prevent the crisis that is unfolding in the Middle East.
And I would emphasize at this point as well, Look,
this is the fog of war and where we go
from here is awfully hard to predict. And for sure, US,
Israeli and our European allies, all of our intelligence services
and militaries on high alert to detect threats way out
left of boom before things get bad, and then preempt
them if needed. Iran knows that if they strike US
military bases, even with their proxies, that they will face
the wrath of our military and Israel. Let's remember historically
Israel eliminated Iraqs nuclear capability in nineteen eighty one and
Syrias in two thousand and seven. You're right about fourd oh. Look,
no atons you can get to through the air four doah.
Israel doesn't have the military capability, but they do have
their operatives on the ground, and so the question is
whether they're getting at four to oh in some other way.
And we'll have to wait in the coming days, perhaps
to gain some updates on the extent to which Israel
was able to target fourd oh. But that's a key
part of Iran's nuclear uranium enrichment, and it's one that
Israel would definitely consider.
Speaker 5: A high priority to strike.
Speaker 8: I always felt, and all the times that I've worked
with the Israelis back when I served as the director
of the CIAS Near East Division, that Israel just simply
wouldn't exist if they didn't have this extraordinary intelligence capability
not only to detect threats, but to conduct these sorts
of offensive operations. And we've seen the results of many
of them, including that pager operation against Hisbola operatives in Lebanon,
and the ability that Israel has had with pinpoint precision
to strike at leaders of Iran's proxy terrorists, including inside Iran.
Remember they took out Ismael Hainia in Tehran. So they
have this ability to fuse their military operations with intelligence
collection in extraordinary ways in the region and beyond. And
I think that's exactly what they're doing right now, and
a lot of it we're not going to see except
for the results when there are dead and senior military
officials or Iranian nuclear facilities that have that have been
blown up.
Speaker 1: So that's the military reaction. Let's get Wall Street reaction.
Rob Kaplan is the number two guy Goldman Sachs, former
Dallas Fed president. On how the markets are reacting to
all of.
Speaker 7: This, I think the market reaction, there's a market reaction.
Obviously in oil you see gold spiking. Say, the equity
market reactions are somewhat muted the tenure. Interestingly, the treasury
market reaction is somewhat muted. Normally it's the greater flight
to quality. So I think the markets are sort of
in a weight and see mode muted initial reaction, and
I think the FED will just watch this carefully day
to day to see if it's going to if it's
going to be contained, or they're going to be a
further escalation. But they'll watch it like the rest of us.
They'll watch it day to day.
Speaker 1: So beyond the react to the war between Israel and Iran,
the inflation numbers came out yesterday and the day before
and we reported them to you. They were up just slightly,
nothing to really get all that nervous about, but not
low enough for the Fed to absolutely be ready to
drop interest rates. So Kaplan was asked about what his
reaction was to the inflation numbers.
Speaker 7: Well, it tells you a couple of things. One, it
tells you if it weren't for the tariff situation, we're
in a disinflating situation. We're in a disinflating world. And
I think if it weren't for these prospective tariffs that
will flow through and are flowing through, I think the
FED would be on their front foot to be looking
to cut rates. Now, that's the first thing that tells me.
And then the second thing is that they're going to
watch how these tariffs where they're set in the next
several weeks, how they flow through the economy. But I
think if I were at the FED, it would encourage
me that after we get over the horizon, maybe the
tariff impact could be more muted than I fear, and
that over the horizon, I think the world by and
large has got an over supply of goods that's driven
heavily by China, and maybe we can get back to
taking action sometime during the fall. But I would want
to keep my options open. But that's what I would
take from these numbers.
Speaker 1: And before we get to the closing numbers for the day,
a bit of rough day on Wall Street, but let's
get up to day at least on what's going on
in California, because more protests are expected this weekend. I
thought things were dying down, but tomorrow there is this
rally against Kings or whatever it's called. There's supposed to
be a bunch of rallies on various cities around the
country starting tomorrow. Tomorrow is also when the military parade
celebrating the two hundred and fiftieth birthday of the US Army,
and it also happens to be Donald Trump's seventy ninth birthday.
So that's all going tomorrow. And then the courts have
gone back and forth on this as well, because remember
we told you, Gavin Newsom went to the court sued
the White House and said you can't take control of
the California National Guard, and a judge said, yes, we agree.
So the White House immediately appealed. It went up to
the appellate level and the appellate appellant level said to
the lower court judge, no, we're not going to stop this.
So the White House still has control of the California
National Guard for now. And with these day, this big,
this weekend of protest which are supposed to be big
and supposed to be tomorrow and Sunday that it will
be there'll be more protests. So the California National Guard,
at least for this weekend is still going to be
under the control of the President. So now let's get
to the closing numbers. It's not that I've been holding off,
it's just it's been an ugly day. It started with
oil prices absolutely spiking because of the fact that you've
got war in the Middle East and you've got Iran,
but also the straight of horror moves. As I mentioned earlier,
a key point to ship twenty one million barrels of
oil every single day. So that is disrupting things and
it's sent the market lower. The Dow Jones Industrials today
down seven hundred and sixty nine. It was down over
eight hundred points at one late in the afternoon, the
down now at forty two thousand and one ninety seven
s and P also down sixty eight points back below
six thousand, down to fifty nine seventy six. The price
of Nasdaq down two hundred and fifty five to nineteen thousand,
four hundred and six, and gold was up fifty one
dollars as you would expect flight to safety. The gold
price thirty four fifty three thousand, four hundred and fifty
three for one ounce of gold, and the price of oil,
so you would also expect, would be way up five
dollars higher, up to seventy three dollars now for one
barrel of oil. So that's it for today. We were
watching incoming missiles into Tel Aviv. A couple of them
have hit. They're saying that at least Disraeli defense forces
say less than one hundred missiles have been fired during
two waves of attacks from Iran, but at the same
time we saw a couple of them hit and they
say there are some people that are injured. So have
yourself a wonderful weekend. Happy Father's Day to all of
you dads out there, and we'll be back here on Monday.
Thanks for coming by today.