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Speaker 1: If you want to get the show early and ad free,

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There you can choose from where you wish to support me.

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Now listen very carefully. I've had some people ask me

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about this, even though I think on the last ad

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I stated it pretty clearly. If you want an RSS feed,

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support me there. And I just want to thank everyone.

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It's because of you that I can put out the

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amount of material that I do. I can do what

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I'm doing with doctor Johnson on two hundred Years Together

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and everything else, the things that Thomas and I are

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doing together on condinal philosophy, it's all because of you.

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And yeah, I mean, I'll never be able to thank

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you enough. So thank you. The Pekanyonashow dot com. Everything's there.

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I want to welcome everyone back to the Peaking Yona show,

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Fearos Modod returns. How are you doing for us?

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Speaker 2: I'm very well, very well, thanks for having me on again.

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Speaker 1: Oh, you're welcome, You're welcome. And another returning guest, doctor

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field House. How are you doing, doctor?

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Speaker 3: Doing well?

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Speaker 1: All right? I had two. I want to have two

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guys here. One who has done, you know, a lot

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of historical study on what's going on in Iran right

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now and Iranian politics. And Farris, who is really looking

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at what's happening on the ground today and the current

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affairs happening in Iran. So let's talk about Iran. Gentlemen, Farris,

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why don't you start us off and give us some

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first impressions of what you see happening.

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Speaker 2: Okay, Well, there are sort of several strands of protests

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that are being wrapped into this. One of them is

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protests by the merchant class, which has traditionally been loyal

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to the regime. Supportive of the regime. They get usually

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privileged access to dollars so that they can continue their business.

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And the collapse of the Iranian real the continuous collapse

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of the reel has really upset this group to a

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significant extent. And these are guys who are relatively devout practicing.

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They accept the regime as it is and they have

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bargains with it, kind of like the commercial class in

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Syria in the days of Assad, who were on good

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enough terms with the regime and could continue functioning. So

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these guys are upset over the currency crisis. There is

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a bunch of other strands relating to the fact that

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Iran is an environmental disaster zone. The dams projects that

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have been overseen by the IRGC led to a lot

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of water systems collapsing, a lot of drought didn't work

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out as planned, et cetera. That's one strand, pollution in

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the cities and how it affects people's lives. The JJEB

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issue general discontent with the regime, and this is all

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happening under an umbrella where basically the Islamic Revolution lost.

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The promise of Romeni's revolution was that they would come

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in and unify the Muslim world under their leadership and

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expel the American and Zionist presence from the region. And

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over the course of the war that started on the

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seven of October, that has been dismantled, especially with the

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decapitation of Hesbalah and its severe weakening and with the

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loss of Syria into the hands of Turkey, and so

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the regional Iranian project was something that the leadership could

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sell to the public as saying, look, we know that

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you're suffering, but we've been able to build up a

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bunch of industries. We've been able to reduce our dependence

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on imports. We developed all kinds of indigenous capabilities, and

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we're using those to show the West that we are

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its equal. And in a way, the Iranian nuclear program

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played a big part in that, because merely having the

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Big Five plus Germany sit down at the table with

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the Iranian leadership meant that Iran was now a great power.

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With their defeats in Syria and Lebanon and okay, they

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were able to hurt the Israelis in their missile attacks,

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it showed that basically this was for nothing and that

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what's needed now is a nationalist readjustment to focus on

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protecting their interest in the Gulf and in Iraq and

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protecting the Shi'a and the pan Islamist stuff. And what's

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worth remembering is that this is an old tendency in Iran.

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So some guys linked to the IRGC would tell you

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that we were serving Iran in the days of the Shah,

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we continued serving Iran under the days of the Islamic Revolution,

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and we will always serve Dan. And this nationalist strand

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was expressed in the two thousand and eight period by

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Mahmud ahmadina Zhand, who got into a bunch of conflicts

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with the religious leadership because he wanted to be more

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of a nationalist to the extent that one of his

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I believe it was his vice president who ended up

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in jail because he was saying things about how Islam

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had usurped traditional Persian culture. So this old Persian identity

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is being asserted that the Pan Islamic identity has failed.

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And these protests are different from the ninety nine protests,

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or the two thousand and eight protests, or the you know,

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twenty nineteen, twenty twenty, twenty twenty one protests. In all

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of these years, the rings experience unrest, but they still

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had a narrative of victory to spin. Now the regime

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doesn't have a justification for its existence. And the way

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that these things work, and I want to be careful

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about about making predictions here, but the way that these

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regimes operate. Is that when the guys on the ground

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lose their confidence and lose the spirit that allows them

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to go around and shoot protesters and break the back

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of protests, the whole thing falls apart. Like when law

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enforcement isn't willing to maintain order, things fall apart, especially

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in these kinds of systems.

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Speaker 3: Sorry to interrupt, but it almost sounds like a situation

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in Russia right before the Russian Revolution that you're describing.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, sort of, sort of. The defeat hasn't been that spectacular,

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and they were able to bloody these radi's nose, especially

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with the high Fight refinery attack and especially with the

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attack on the Weisman Institute, and they did manage to

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deplete fifty percent of all fat interceptors in the Twelve

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Day War, so it's not like they were helpless. It

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just wasn't enough to spin a tale of victory.

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Speaker 3: I was actually thinking more about what you were saying

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about the internal law enforcement, but right, I wasn't even

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thinking about the external threat there. But yeah, that makes sense, sir.

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Speaker 2: Right, right, Yeah, So that's a brief overview of the situation.

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Speaker 3: In Again, and tell me if I'm interrupting too much.

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But one of the questions are things that stood out

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to me as an American to the limited extent we

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have any information that you know isn't coming from Lindsey

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Graham on Fox News. Is this sounds a lot like

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what Stephen Kinser described the anti Mosedek coup by the Shah,

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or at least how that group of American scholars historians

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describe it. And again, I'm an American and I've got,

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you know, weird relations with Iran. But that's just how

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it looks to a complete outsider.

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Speaker 2: Look the Masatic thing. He had lost a lot of

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popularity internity, which is what made the coup possible in

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the first place. And now, in a sense, what's being

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offered as a reversal, it's the Islamic Republic that has

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become unpopular. Crucially, the Supreme leader saying Ali Kamini is

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eighty five years old, I think eighty six or eighty five,

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eighty seven years old, and he's delivered in a lot

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of ways, but not where it matters, Like the collapse

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in living standards is a big deal, and the unpopularity

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has become i'd say real, and you have this radical

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group within Iran and look like these Raelis are saying

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that we the MOCADE, are backing this and that we

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are helping them organize and that we are or at

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least if you believe people who say that they speak

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to them, that we're giving them starlink and we're making

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sure that they're connected and we're giving them advice and

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so on and so forth. So there is that external

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element that's involved as well. And we saw from the

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last word that these Raelis have really penetrated Iran quite deeply,

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to the extent that they had drone production facilities inside

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Iran and the Iranian television was broadcasting raids on these locations.

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So that does exist, like the sort of foreign element

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that you saw during the Masotic days that helped UH

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bring the coup to fruition, that that exists, you're you're

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you're absolutely right about that, doctor Field has. But the

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there is in both cases something real underneath it, as in,

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you're only vulnerable to this kind of external intervention if

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you have built up a series of domestic and external problems,

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and that's pretty much what the Iranians have done.

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Speaker 3: Understood. The other thing that does stand out, to the extent

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that the Mosotic coup is relevant. Is It's no secret

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that the CIA was heavily involved in their multiple history

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books about it. It was Theodore Roosevelt's grandson who is organizing

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on that, Yeah, Kermit Roosevelt. But even the people that

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the CIA was backing and sponsoring and pushing to attempt

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them to organiz as activities, a lot of those are

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guys who became anti US intervention to a huge extent.

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I mean Ruhala Komeni being the greatest example, which is

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an American. The thing I try to stress is, yeah,

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even if we are even if the CIA is directly

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engaging and influencing mobs, it doesn't mean that things are

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going to come out the way we want because they

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definitely didn't last time.

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Speaker 2: Absolutely, And although the way that I'm thinking about it

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is this now, the threat facing the Iranian nation is

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coming from as out of Asia and its alliance with Turkey.

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It's coming from Turkey and the Turkish influence over their

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northern border after the Armenia as at Aaijan War. It's

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coming from the Kurds, and pretty much everybody in the

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region agrees that the Kurds need to be kept in

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their place. It's coming from the Arabs, et cetera. It's

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coming from the evolution surgency. And so the answer to

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it can't be Panislamism and revolutionary. The answer to it

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has to be nationalistic, and a nationalistic Dan wants to

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contain Turkish ambitions and wants to contain Arab ambitions. And

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guess who shares that precise objective.

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Speaker 3: Israel, which again brings up interesting parallels to the most

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of the exactly yeah, because again the average American doesn't

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probably understand it under the shop. And again the coup

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is essentially a reassertion of the soll because it was

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a constitutional monarchy before then. Any he directly ruled as

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the executive is incorrect me if I'm wrong. But the

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nationalistic aspects, I had a question about that because my

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understanding is Persians. Ethnic Persians are a shrinking part of

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the Iranian popular to the point they're only like fifty

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seven percent today, aren't they. Yeah, with the Azaris being

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like the growing the Yeah, the largest growing aspect of

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our portion of that.

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Speaker 2: I was corrected about this the other day. I was

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of the view that the assets were twenty five percent,

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and I was told that it's closer to fifteen or

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sixteen percent, and that the Assets are the most Persianized

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of the groups that are within Idan, and Hameniti is

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half Asadi. So I don't know what the correct percentages

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are because in a country like that, you're going to

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get a lot of obfuscation. You're also going to get

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a lot of people sort of shifting identities as they

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move from rural areas into urban areas, sort of blend

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into the national Persian identity.

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Speaker 3: Just as it happens in the air world, people becomes

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Arabs when they move into the city.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. Yeah, So I don't have a lot of

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confidence in that. What I can see is that the

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Iranian regime itself was very afraid of the Armenia as

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at a Beijan war, and their interests were more naturally

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aligned with Armenia, but they had to side with the

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Assets because of public opinion.

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Speaker 3: That's an interesting case since they also have a large

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Armenian population as well, don't.

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Speaker 2: They, Yes, they do, but the Armenians don't mobilize in

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the same way because Christians don't riot in the same way.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, especially ones in Iran.

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Speaker 2: Especially ones, and I especially was in Iran exactly exactly.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, But it is my also understanding that most of

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these other minority groups in Iran, probably with the exception

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of the ethnic Arabs and Khuzistan, most there's not really

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a whole lot of separatists action other than, as you said,

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the currents in the Blue Cheese, the.

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Speaker 2: Kurds, the Belushies, the Arabs have the history of protesting

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for Arab separatism that tends to ebb and flow, and

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a lot of the Arab areas have been persianized by

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moving Persians into them. You still get some Arab unrest

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every few years, and it's still an issue. But if

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you're a sane Arab and you look next door at Iraq,

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you don't say, well, I'd like to join Iraq, Like yeah,

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Idan is an industrial powers in some senses. It builds

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its own cars, It builds gas turbines that even exports

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to Russia. It builds missiles, it builds drones, it builds

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all kinds of things. They have decent steel production, they

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have a good refining capability, they have a decent chemicals industry,

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et cetera, et cetera. Iraq is a basket case. And

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so even if you're an Arab nationalist. You're not really thinking, well,

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I'd want to join my brethren over the border because

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they are just like Iraq is a fully failed state.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, on that note, just pure anecdote. But when I

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was stationed there in two thousand and six two thousand

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and seven, I was an advisor of the Iraqi Army,

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and one of our function was you know, local expense

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accounts in which we were allowed to purchase items off

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the economy for Iraqi unit. And it was no secret

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that almost all the stuff that I purchased, the computers

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being like the best example, you know, we're talking about

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the Windows computers. You could look at me, you could

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see there were fabricated you know, manufactured in Iran, and

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we weren't. I wasn't doing business with Iran, but the

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people I was doing business with, you know, the only

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place they had to get these things was Iran. And

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it was it's no secret that you would have everything

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from computers, the beer, to the processed food to you know,

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the beer. Like I said, those are the kinds of

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things you bought in Iraq that came from Irans.

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Speaker 2: I mean that would have probably come through Dubai and

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then into Iran and then into but yeah, fair enough.

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Speaker 1: Can we talk a little bit about the color revolution

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angle here?

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Speaker 2: Uh?

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Speaker 1: John and I were talking the other day about we

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saw a video of blush allegedly the the head the

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commander of the police station at an ansharh macmood hak

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Kat just being assassinated in his being assassinated in his

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car while driving. And it seemed said he was famous

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for cracking down on anti regime blushes, and John said

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that it were that historically if he saw BLUSH activity

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he would think that the CIA was the CIA was involved.

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Speaker 2: Well, I would assume that there is a level of involvement.

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And the blush right now are incredibly useful because you

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use them in Pakistan to target the Chinese and you

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could use them in Iran to mess with the regime.

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And so if you are the CIA and you're not

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using them ALUs, then you're just not being competent at it.

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So we're seeing an escalation attacks in Pakistan that are

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targeting the Chinese. We just saw an attack in Afghanistan

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targeting the Chinese and targeting a Chinese mining company and

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burning their equipment and killing a bunch of people. And

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so there is every interest for the United States in

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using the withdrawal from Afghanistan to main to build on

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the networks that they had pre withdrawal, and to use

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that as a launchpad for destabilizing activity across that region,

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targeting both Pakistan and it on. So I would I

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don't know if they would be giving them specific targets

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and saying go after that police officer, but if they

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weren't at least training them, funding them, equipping them, they

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would be remiss.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, And just so we're clarifying, I've never worked with

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the Central Intelligence Agency and I only had tangential interaction

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with them, so I have no access to a classified

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information that I could release. But the other thing that

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I was going to say that stood out about that

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attack were literally, it's a it's a regular vehicle that

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pulls aside, and the guy shooting in ak and there,

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And the other thing I thought is this was clearly

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done in order to produce video content. Because if you're

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a serious insurgency and you're trying to eliminate security force leadership,

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you do it quickly and cleanly in a way that

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you're not going to actually compromise your own assets. You know,

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you kill people, we blow up their cars or you

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kill them at their houses, and that it just that's

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the kind of thing you would do because you want

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that video that looks like an action film out there.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, I would assume that too, because you saw them

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sort of driving up to the car and just spraying

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it with an AKA. Your objective in doing that kind

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of thing is to inspire others who would do it

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on their own, and to show clearly that you can

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reach individual commanders, and that is intended to sort of

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deter these commanders from cracking down on the protest movement

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too hard, because the message that you're sending is that

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this could be you.

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Speaker 3: Yeah. On that note, there's reports in America media, which

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again I don't trust at all, that police in some

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locations are actually joining the protesters. Do you have any

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information where we or the other and then.

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Speaker 2: Honestly, getting anything verified these days is possible. The pro

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euron accounts are showing protests that are supposedly supportive of

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the regime, and they're doing various vox pop clips where

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they're interviewing people who are saying, if you want a protest,

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it's fine, don't do it by burning police stations. And

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attacking IRGC buildings and so on. He has confirmed that

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a bunch of buildings have been attacked and burned, and

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so the videos showing these attacks look like they're credible.

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We are at an age where we just don't know

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exactly what's coming out unless you have a very robust

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network on the ground, which I don't claim to have.

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And so what we're seeing is a narrative war with

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both sides doing their best to exaggerate the support for

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their side of the story. Getting a good read on

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it is very difficult. What I can say with some

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confidence is that the regime looks exhausted and that there

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is doesn't look like it's retained the will to do this.

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And the way Jamene he phrased it, he phrased it

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as some people burned buildings in order to serve Trump

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because the American president told them to What you're saying

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is that there are factions within Iran who would prefer

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Donald Trump to you. That's a bad look and that's

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a bad defense to begin with, instead of saying that

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these are just you know, criminal elements, foreign agents, and

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we've wrapped it up and it's done. Like he's presenting

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it in a bad way. Some of the videos of

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the unrest do look quite significant, and that is happening

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in Tahran, among other places. There is also a lot

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of information warfare saying that the Iranian Foreign minister's family

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has moved to Lebanon, and that so and so has

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been attacked, and so and so is like it's difficult

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to verify. It's really hard to say with any act

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you receive what's real and what isn't.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, I was going to say it's been identified that

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confirmed in the last twenty four hours that the internet

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was shut down. Yes, so, yeah, So the one thing

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we do know is that individual civilians on the ground,

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unless they have starlik, there's very little chance that this

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is very recent as in the same day reporting.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, so, all that you have right now is what

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the protesters are posting, which, given the internet shutdown, would

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presumably be done by people who have been given internet access.

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If you remember, during the early days of the Syian

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Civil War, the first thing that was done was to

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give these protesters satellite phones, and to give these protesters

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cameras and media training and the equipment and support that

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they would need to spit a narrative that would build

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into a civil war. That was the first thing that

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was done in Syria, the first bits of aid, before

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the military stuff, before all the weapons. It was the

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media war, and Facebook helped them, and all of the

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social media giants help them. In Egypt, Google was helping

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the protesters. In Iran in two thousand and eight, it

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was Twitter at the time that was helping the protesters.

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So when the Internet shuts down, you're only left with

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the two most extreme narratives. That are the protesters who

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have been given access to the Internet by an external power.

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This time, it seems through starlink and that of the regime,

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which is still broadcasting through official media and trying to

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say it's all fine. The public still supports us da

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da da da.

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Speaker 3: Da Yeah, which I think ironically probably supports the feeds

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into the worst habits of either side, because it really

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does sort of encourage mob psychology, because everybody's going to

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interpret the worst, because why would you not.

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Speaker 2: Yep, and you keep seeing these videos either of the

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police beating of protesters or of the protesters beating up

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security forces, and this is intentional. You want to spread

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the message that this whole thing is falling apart and

390
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you want to pick a side. And incidentally, that's where

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Venezuela comes in.

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Speaker 1: Keep going, keep going with that.

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Speaker 2: So with Venezuela, what happened wasn't regime change. What happened

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was leadership decapitation to convince the regime to change its behavior.

395
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And now the Venezuelans face a choice. Either of the

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00:26:44,799 --> 00:26:48,079
US strikes them again and keeps up the embargo and

397
00:26:48,200 --> 00:26:53,000
pretty much collapses the Venezuelan economy because nobody can do

398
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anything to get oil out of Venezuela if the US

399
00:26:55,960 --> 00:27:02,519
Navy doesn't want them to. In that context, you know,

400
00:27:04,279 --> 00:27:07,759
Dulci Rodriguez could be next, or the Minister of Defense

401
00:27:07,799 --> 00:27:10,799
could be next. And it doesn't have to be clean

402
00:27:10,839 --> 00:27:13,599
and tidy kidnapping. It could just be a bomb falling

403
00:27:13,640 --> 00:27:17,640
on their heads. And so the message that's been sent

404
00:27:17,680 --> 00:27:21,720
through Venezuela is that we can touch you as individual leaders,

405
00:27:22,559 --> 00:27:25,759
and we can get you as individual leaders. And you

406
00:27:25,880 --> 00:27:29,880
have two options. Either you play ball and you governed

407
00:27:29,960 --> 00:27:33,640
Venezuela and a quarters with our wishes, or we will

408
00:27:33,640 --> 00:27:37,839
go after you as individuals and collapse your economy. With

409
00:27:37,960 --> 00:27:41,799
the Iranians, this is a little more difficult because they

410
00:27:41,839 --> 00:27:45,200
start going after Iranian tankers on the high seas. The

411
00:27:45,240 --> 00:27:48,960
Iranians could choose the suicide option, which is the Hoemus option,

412
00:27:50,240 --> 00:27:53,480
But it is a suicide option because even if they

413
00:27:53,480 --> 00:27:56,160
shut down the energy of everyone else, one of the

414
00:27:56,160 --> 00:28:00,960
consequences that everything they have also gets shut down. Not

415
00:28:01,000 --> 00:28:04,200
only that, when they start targeting golf countries, there's one

416
00:28:04,279 --> 00:28:07,880
hundred and fifty fifteen sitting there in Saudi Arabia, there's

417
00:28:08,000 --> 00:28:11,000
a one hundred Western jets sitting there in the UAE.

418
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All of these would be turned over to American command

419
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and would be used against Ita. So for the Iranians

420
00:28:22,039 --> 00:28:26,759
to retaliate to a tanker war is for them to

421
00:28:26,759 --> 00:28:29,279
trigger a suicide option. And it's the same with the

422
00:28:29,359 --> 00:28:33,119
nuclear If they try to build a nuclear weapon, like,

423
00:28:33,519 --> 00:28:40,640
it's pretty hopeless for them. They can't deal with the retaliation. Yeah,

424
00:28:40,799 --> 00:28:41,680
they can't make this.

425
00:28:41,680 --> 00:28:43,799
Speaker 3: It's not a quick I'm sorry, it's not a quick

426
00:28:43,839 --> 00:28:46,279
action either. It's not like you build one in five minutes.

427
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Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly, exactly. And they've shown that their leadership is

428
00:28:51,480 --> 00:28:57,000
so heavily penetrated by US and is raetiing intelligence that

429
00:28:57,039 --> 00:29:03,640
they themselves as decision makers can't be certain that this

430
00:29:03,720 --> 00:29:09,880
decision won't be immediately discovered by the United States, so

431
00:29:09,920 --> 00:29:12,720
they have no confidence in doing that. So they're being

432
00:29:12,759 --> 00:29:22,240
given option a suicide option b Jmeni is going to die,

433
00:29:22,839 --> 00:29:26,839
get rid of him, and change the regime yourselves to

434
00:29:26,960 --> 00:29:30,240
go down the nationalist route. And if you go down

435
00:29:30,319 --> 00:29:34,599
the nationalist route, that leads you to partnership with Israel.

436
00:29:35,759 --> 00:29:38,200
Maybe under the table, maybe over the table, it doesn't matter,

437
00:29:39,359 --> 00:29:41,680
but it does mean that your threats become your own

438
00:29:41,720 --> 00:29:46,279
borders and Turkey, and you're a functional partner of Israel.

439
00:29:47,759 --> 00:29:50,319
And so we're no longer dealing with regime change where

440
00:29:50,359 --> 00:29:55,839
the Americans come in and depatify the Iraqi state and

441
00:29:56,400 --> 00:30:02,279
dismantle the Iraqi Army. We are dealing with a regime

442
00:30:02,400 --> 00:30:07,319
change that keeps the personnel, keeps the state structures, but

443
00:30:07,519 --> 00:30:10,440
forces them to make different choices as they govern.

444
00:30:11,680 --> 00:30:16,359
Speaker 1: And those those choices would be more along the lines

445
00:30:16,599 --> 00:30:24,240
of historic Persian rather than an Islamic republic precisely.

446
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Speaker 3: At least not a pan Islamic. I mean, the point

447
00:30:27,240 --> 00:30:29,480
I would make to Americans is a lot of places

448
00:30:29,759 --> 00:30:33,359
Persians they're Muslim, and we didn't even say devout Muslim,

449
00:30:33,400 --> 00:30:37,240
but there their religiosity in terms of their politics is

450
00:30:37,279 --> 00:30:40,279
sort of like Italians and Catholicism. It's ever present, but

451
00:30:40,319 --> 00:30:43,079
it doesn't mean that the pope you know, decides how

452
00:30:43,119 --> 00:30:47,240
traffic tickets work in Italy. It's in some ways that

453
00:30:47,240 --> 00:30:50,480
would almost be better for the religious establishment, because they

454
00:30:50,480 --> 00:30:54,119
have more authority when they're not micromanaging, which has basically

455
00:30:54,119 --> 00:30:57,519
been the whole theory behind you know, European monarchs, since

456
00:30:58,359 --> 00:31:01,960
I don't know there in Westphalia.

457
00:31:03,640 --> 00:31:09,079
Speaker 2: Not just that the traditional Shi'a model didn't involve a

458
00:31:09,200 --> 00:31:15,559
very active clergy. This is a relatively modern thing that

459
00:31:16,240 --> 00:31:21,960
had origins theoretically in Iraq under Mohammad Baka a Sadhar,

460
00:31:22,720 --> 00:31:25,559
and then was adopted by the Dawa party in Iraq,

461
00:31:25,759 --> 00:31:30,279
and was adopted by Hisaballah and was adopted by the Iranians.

462
00:31:32,119 --> 00:31:37,640
So these, like the the tradition is different for the shi'ah.

463
00:31:38,279 --> 00:31:43,519
They're less active in politics. In addition, when you remember

464
00:31:43,680 --> 00:31:47,880
somebody like Ali Sistani, where does his power come from?

465
00:31:48,240 --> 00:31:50,559
It comes from the fact that he rarely ever speaks,

466
00:31:51,240 --> 00:31:54,359
and then getting a meeting with him is absolutely impossible,

467
00:31:56,599 --> 00:32:00,799
and so other people speak for him. His sons in

468
00:32:00,880 --> 00:32:03,519
law are heavily involved in the corruption in Iraq and

469
00:32:03,559 --> 00:32:09,079
all of that stuff. But he himself, in a way,

470
00:32:09,119 --> 00:32:12,640
his power comes from his silence. And you remember when

471
00:32:12,720 --> 00:32:17,799
he disciplined both Maliki and Mohtala Sadar. All he had

472
00:32:17,799 --> 00:32:21,200
to do was say that he was driving from Nadavu

473
00:32:21,240 --> 00:32:25,920
Kabella and his convoy moved at like five kilometers an hour,

474
00:32:26,880 --> 00:32:30,119
and everybody, like I think it was a million people

475
00:32:30,240 --> 00:32:34,680
who actually walked with him all the way. And that's it.

476
00:32:34,880 --> 00:32:39,200
The fighting between Maliki and sada ended because Cistani came

477
00:32:39,240 --> 00:32:41,240
to the city. He didn't say that he was going

478
00:32:41,279 --> 00:32:44,079
to mediate, he didn't say he was going to solve this.

479
00:32:44,160 --> 00:32:47,559
He didn't say what they should do. He just said

480
00:32:47,680 --> 00:32:50,880
I'm coming. What he'd done before was go to do

481
00:32:50,960 --> 00:32:54,759
Britain for treatment, if I remember correctly, when the crisis started.

482
00:32:54,920 --> 00:32:56,880
Then he comes back and says, well, I'm just going

483
00:32:56,960 --> 00:32:59,720
to take a drive, and that's it. The fighting ends.

484
00:33:01,359 --> 00:33:04,240
And so these clerics who know how to stay quiet

485
00:33:05,720 --> 00:33:09,519
end up becoming a lot more powerful than very verbose

486
00:33:09,599 --> 00:33:15,960
clerics like you know, Francis comes to mind, because of

487
00:33:15,960 --> 00:33:16,640
their silence.

488
00:33:19,440 --> 00:33:22,680
Speaker 1: We hear that they're having water issues.

489
00:33:23,799 --> 00:33:23,880
Speaker 3: That.

490
00:33:24,559 --> 00:33:29,119
Speaker 1: I think there's a water shortage there. Have we confirmed

491
00:33:29,119 --> 00:33:31,519
whether that's due to drought, whether it was due to

492
00:33:31,559 --> 00:33:37,200
anything that Israel, you know, the bombing, did or enjoy

493
00:33:37,240 --> 00:33:38,400
We have any information on that.

494
00:33:39,319 --> 00:33:42,519
Speaker 2: It's a long standing issue. It's a very long standing issue.

495
00:33:42,559 --> 00:33:46,680
We were reading about it in twenty ten something like that,

496
00:33:47,440 --> 00:33:50,160
and the IRGC's bid to build a lot of these

497
00:33:50,240 --> 00:33:53,880
dams was in response to it. But it seems that

498
00:33:53,880 --> 00:33:58,119
the dam has made everything worse. So it's not a

499
00:33:58,160 --> 00:34:00,359
new thing. I don't know if some but he did

500
00:34:00,400 --> 00:34:03,279
something to make some particular aspect of it worse. Like

501
00:34:03,599 --> 00:34:05,880
I don't have that kind of information, but I do

502
00:34:06,000 --> 00:34:08,079
know that it's a long standing issue.

503
00:34:08,280 --> 00:34:10,559
Speaker 3: It is the Middle East. Water is an issue everywhere,

504
00:34:10,760 --> 00:34:16,239
even when everything works exactly. On that note, the engineering

505
00:34:16,239 --> 00:34:18,840
capacity that the IRGC got for that, how did they

506
00:34:18,880 --> 00:34:21,239
get that? Was it just their engineers of their own?

507
00:34:21,239 --> 00:34:22,960
Do they get them from the former Soviet Union?

508
00:34:25,719 --> 00:34:29,119
Speaker 2: I don't know about that, actually, I honestly don't know

509
00:34:29,159 --> 00:34:32,920
about that in detail. What I can tell you is

510
00:34:32,960 --> 00:34:35,920
that you saw a lot of people who are connected

511
00:34:35,920 --> 00:34:41,199
to the regime studying in Western universities and that they

512
00:34:41,280 --> 00:34:45,480
did get Russian help for a whole range of things,

513
00:34:46,119 --> 00:34:50,440
and that the Uranians are genuinely creative and scientific and

514
00:34:50,480 --> 00:35:00,320
capable people. So this is built with developed indigenous capacity

515
00:35:00,360 --> 00:35:04,119
for a whole range of things, including in the oil industry. Yeah,

516
00:35:05,000 --> 00:35:08,760
and in weapons manufacturing, where was a combination of foreign

517
00:35:08,840 --> 00:35:12,920
help people studying abroad. People were studying abroad to learn

518
00:35:12,960 --> 00:35:17,000
how to do better engines for Iranian drones. We had

519
00:35:17,000 --> 00:35:19,800
people I think in Britain who were doing research on

520
00:35:19,840 --> 00:35:26,360
that on behalf of the Iranians, and they themselves are capable,

521
00:35:26,360 --> 00:35:28,800
and the chefs and people are brought to study and

522
00:35:28,880 --> 00:35:30,199
this sort of continued.

523
00:35:30,960 --> 00:35:35,719
Speaker 3: Yeah, on that note, as a digression, were the people

524
00:35:35,800 --> 00:35:37,960
that were sent behind the Shah to study in the

525
00:35:38,039 --> 00:35:40,239
US were was there any kind of acceptance of them?

526
00:35:40,239 --> 00:35:41,039
Speaker 2: Were they ever.

527
00:35:42,559 --> 00:35:45,119
Speaker 3: Treated as or accepted by the new regime? I asked

528
00:35:45,119 --> 00:35:48,000
that because I went to school who some of the

529
00:35:48,280 --> 00:35:51,960
people whose fathers were actually Iranian officers trained at American

530
00:35:51,960 --> 00:35:54,559
military academies. And one of the issues, obviously is a

531
00:35:54,559 --> 00:35:58,440
lot of the American training officers were purged, so I

532
00:35:58,519 --> 00:36:02,239
didn't know if they were ever allowed to if professionals

533
00:36:02,280 --> 00:36:04,920
of that type were actually integrated into the new regime

534
00:36:06,159 --> 00:36:06,599
as far.

535
00:36:06,519 --> 00:36:09,760
Speaker 2: As I can tell somewhere, but I can't sort of

536
00:36:09,960 --> 00:36:12,760
speak with a lot of confidence about this, but I

537
00:36:12,800 --> 00:36:16,639
think some were because some went not back, but back

538
00:36:16,679 --> 00:36:24,280
and forth, and so some ended up getting acceptance into

539
00:36:24,280 --> 00:36:29,800
the regime. Yeah, the Iran Iraq War was a wonderful

540
00:36:29,800 --> 00:36:34,519
thing for the Iranian revolution because it forced them to

541
00:36:34,599 --> 00:36:39,480
become pragmatic, and it forced them to sort of put

542
00:36:39,519 --> 00:36:44,400
a break on their own radical tendencies to focus on surviving.

543
00:36:44,480 --> 00:36:48,760
And you know, they hoped winning the war, which didn't happen.

544
00:36:49,679 --> 00:36:53,039
But the Iran Iraq War was the best thing that

545
00:36:53,079 --> 00:36:58,920
could have happened to the revolutionary regime because it was

546
00:36:58,920 --> 00:37:02,079
sort of like stalin the Second World War. He had

547
00:37:02,119 --> 00:37:05,119
to turn to the older officers and we had to

548
00:37:05,119 --> 00:37:08,360
turn to the capable men that he could find and say, okay,

549
00:37:08,519 --> 00:37:11,119
just go and do your thing and I'll sort of

550
00:37:11,159 --> 00:37:13,320
relieve you from the pressure of the commissars.

551
00:37:13,639 --> 00:37:16,320
Speaker 3: Yeah, in least the Soviet case. I mean that's how

552
00:37:16,360 --> 00:37:20,280
some of the survivings areist officers were rehabilitated. So yeah,

553
00:37:20,320 --> 00:37:22,679
I did know that the Iran Iraq War had the

554
00:37:22,719 --> 00:37:25,159
effect in part in Iran and integrating a lot of

555
00:37:25,159 --> 00:37:30,400
the minorities more fully into the Iranian mainstream, I mean,

556
00:37:30,440 --> 00:37:35,440
famously Iranian Jews. There are there are memorials to Iranian

557
00:37:35,519 --> 00:37:38,199
Jewish military dead of the Iran Iraq War, which is

558
00:37:38,239 --> 00:37:40,639
the kind of weird thing the average American wouldn't expect.

559
00:37:41,079 --> 00:37:48,119
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, exactly. And the Jewish community in Iran tends

560
00:37:48,159 --> 00:37:51,880
to speak out against Israel quite frequently. Part of it

561
00:37:51,920 --> 00:37:54,679
is that they have to. Part of it is that

562
00:37:54,840 --> 00:37:59,199
they didn't buy into the whole Zionist idea and they

563
00:37:59,239 --> 00:38:01,639
accepted that, Look, the exile is there for a reason,

564
00:38:02,320 --> 00:38:06,719
and this is still the Babylonian exile, Like there's still

565
00:38:06,760 --> 00:38:09,639
an ancient babylon as far as they're concerned. So it's

566
00:38:09,719 --> 00:38:11,840
a bit of a different tradition for them.

567
00:38:12,800 --> 00:38:15,480
Speaker 3: Yeah. As a side, I know, since the seventies there

568
00:38:15,519 --> 00:38:20,119
were some minority movements throughout the Middle East of Misrahi

569
00:38:20,159 --> 00:38:22,920
and other minority Jews either returning to the countries of

570
00:38:22,960 --> 00:38:26,960
origin or leaving Israel, partly just because there was a

571
00:38:26,960 --> 00:38:32,360
big complaint that essentially modern Israel is an Ashkenazi run institution,

572
00:38:32,559 --> 00:38:36,800
that there was huge disaffection among large part of that population.

573
00:38:37,320 --> 00:38:39,079
Speaker 2: And a lot of the conflict that you see in

574
00:38:39,119 --> 00:38:45,960
Israel today is coming from Mizrahi and Sephardig Jews asserting

575
00:38:46,000 --> 00:38:48,519
themselves against the ashke Nazi secular elite.

576
00:38:48,960 --> 00:38:52,880
Speaker 3: Yeah, and they make babies. I'm sorry, they make babies.

577
00:38:52,920 --> 00:38:55,280
So they have a majority in some places now.

578
00:38:55,519 --> 00:39:01,280
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly, And so you're seeing this change within Israel.

579
00:39:01,679 --> 00:39:05,360
And part of the explanation for it is that the

580
00:39:05,400 --> 00:39:09,840
Eastern Jews are asserting themselves against the Western Jews, and

581
00:39:10,199 --> 00:39:13,239
Natanieho is sort of playing that game and playing all

582
00:39:13,280 --> 00:39:15,800
sides in order to stay relevant.

583
00:39:15,800 --> 00:39:22,480
Speaker 1: But yes, absolutely, well, I guess when you see all

584
00:39:22,639 --> 00:39:29,800
this happening. The death of the Islamic Republic has been

585
00:39:29,880 --> 00:39:35,440
announced many many times. For those who know their history

586
00:39:35,599 --> 00:39:38,480
like you, I would assume mister field OUs knows it

587
00:39:38,519 --> 00:39:40,880
better than I do. I assume you do too. Is

588
00:39:40,960 --> 00:39:41,800
this difference.

589
00:39:44,480 --> 00:39:47,320
Speaker 2: My sense of it is that this is different, and

590
00:39:47,519 --> 00:39:54,320
also in part because there is no succession plan right now.

591
00:39:56,760 --> 00:40:00,760
If you remember the death of the Easy he went

592
00:40:00,840 --> 00:40:05,280
through the judiciary, and in his role in the judiciary,

593
00:40:05,280 --> 00:40:06,840
he would have dealt with a lot of the sensitive

594
00:40:06,880 --> 00:40:11,159
subjects and been informed of what the intelligence guys were

595
00:40:11,159 --> 00:40:15,079
doing and what they wanted then he became president, and

596
00:40:15,119 --> 00:40:20,159
he was obviously being groomed as a successor to Hamene

597
00:40:20,480 --> 00:40:24,159
as a sort of reliable religious hardliner who could take

598
00:40:24,199 --> 00:40:28,480
the mantle. He wasn't Asayid, so he wasn't descended from

599
00:40:28,920 --> 00:40:31,599
the profit of Islam, and he didn't wear a black turban.

600
00:40:31,679 --> 00:40:35,679
He wore a white turban. But he was seen as

601
00:40:36,519 --> 00:40:38,880
the kind of person who would be able to keep

602
00:40:38,920 --> 00:40:44,599
this thing together in partnership with the IRGC. The way

603
00:40:44,719 --> 00:40:51,039
that a lot of Islamic states operate is that they

604
00:40:51,119 --> 00:40:54,239
begin with a religious zeal and then they end up

605
00:40:54,239 --> 00:40:58,239
in the hands of military men. And that's what happened

606
00:40:58,239 --> 00:41:01,519
to Mambluk Egypt, and that's what happened to the ambassad Caliphate,

607
00:41:02,360 --> 00:41:06,719
and that is a lesson that keeps on recurring in

608
00:41:06,800 --> 00:41:14,119
Muslim history. And so the natural evolution of Iran is

609
00:41:14,159 --> 00:41:18,800
for the IRGC to take over even more fully. But

610
00:41:18,920 --> 00:41:23,800
the IRGC is fully loyal and obedient to Ramene. They

611
00:41:23,840 --> 00:41:28,000
wouldn't be loyal and obedient to his successor unless he

612
00:41:28,199 --> 00:41:31,679
was properly groomed and prepared and given the levers of

613
00:41:31,760 --> 00:41:36,960
power in an orderly manner. And the whole intention behind

614
00:41:37,039 --> 00:41:42,079
making an AC president was to enable that. So the

615
00:41:42,159 --> 00:41:44,679
AC dies or gets killed or whatever it was that

616
00:41:44,719 --> 00:41:48,920
happened to his helicopter, and the succession plan falls apart.

617
00:41:49,639 --> 00:41:53,079
And the only other person who understands the levers of

618
00:41:53,159 --> 00:41:57,280
power well enough and can wield them and retain the

619
00:41:57,320 --> 00:42:04,320
loyalty of the IRGC is much his son. The issue

620
00:42:04,360 --> 00:42:06,880
is that if you're going to make this into a

621
00:42:06,920 --> 00:42:12,480
hereditary thing, why not have the Shah? How are you

622
00:42:12,559 --> 00:42:17,480
different from the Shah? And so it's not a viable

623
00:42:17,599 --> 00:42:20,280
plan to put him in charge even though he has

624
00:42:20,320 --> 00:42:24,320
these levers of power, because in terms of credibility and

625
00:42:24,360 --> 00:42:27,480
public acceptance, it just doesn't work.

626
00:42:28,239 --> 00:42:30,559
Speaker 3: Yeah, I would say Islam has a weird history when

627
00:42:30,760 --> 00:42:34,360
systems become hereditary, and that usually marks the decline of

628
00:42:34,400 --> 00:42:39,079
a lot of caliphates and systems.

629
00:42:39,920 --> 00:42:42,920
Speaker 2: I mean, the Abbassids did it for a while, the

630
00:42:42,920 --> 00:42:46,039
Ottomans did it for a while. It works, The hereditary

631
00:42:46,039 --> 00:42:49,199
system works. But if you're claiming that this is a

632
00:42:49,400 --> 00:42:56,039
new thing completely and this is a revolutionary regime, you're

633
00:42:56,079 --> 00:42:58,400
going back to the most traditional thing and the most

634
00:42:58,559 --> 00:43:04,159
natural thing, which is one archy, and you can't have

635
00:43:04,440 --> 00:43:07,360
like you know, that was part of the problem in Syria.

636
00:43:07,480 --> 00:43:09,800
That was the reason that Mobadak, that was the reason

637
00:43:09,840 --> 00:43:12,400
that the army allowed to overthrow of Obadak. In Egypt,

638
00:43:13,239 --> 00:43:18,039
he was planning on making Jamal Mubadak's successor, and the

639
00:43:18,159 --> 00:43:20,840
army was like, no, who are you. We're still going

640
00:43:20,920 --> 00:43:22,360
to keep it in the mam Luke Wad is still

641
00:43:22,360 --> 00:43:24,400
going to be a general and we're going to choose

642
00:43:24,440 --> 00:43:32,159
which general and so that like it doesn't sell to

643
00:43:32,360 --> 00:43:36,599
let Muzdavahmeni become the supreme leader of Idan after his father.

644
00:43:37,920 --> 00:43:39,639
Speaker 3: Yeah, I was saying on that note, I mean the

645
00:43:39,639 --> 00:43:43,280
Plavi dynasty. They actually became the Shaw of our Iran

646
00:43:43,400 --> 00:43:47,280
because it was it. Resa Shaw's father was a military

647
00:43:47,320 --> 00:43:51,039
officer who exactly was central the coup and he it

648
00:43:51,079 --> 00:43:54,320
was probably performative, but he essentially stood stepped away after

649
00:43:54,440 --> 00:43:59,599
the coup and required there to be mass proclamation that

650
00:43:59,639 --> 00:44:02,320
he should Shaw before he actually took the throne, and

651
00:44:02,360 --> 00:44:05,239
that was probably for show, but that was part of

652
00:44:05,320 --> 00:44:07,920
how he became. So, you know, a military coup, and

653
00:44:08,079 --> 00:44:10,800
at least in an Iranian society can become a legitimate,

654
00:44:12,119 --> 00:44:14,119
a legitimate monarchy.

655
00:44:14,400 --> 00:44:19,199
Speaker 1: So if the if the regime falls and there is

656
00:44:19,239 --> 00:44:23,000
no success or, and the IRGC, I assume, will fight

657
00:44:23,119 --> 00:44:26,920
to the end to defend the regime, but there will

658
00:44:26,920 --> 00:44:29,880
be IRGC left over. What happens to them is that

659
00:44:29,920 --> 00:44:33,920
what is that the do they become an insurgency? Is

660
00:44:33,960 --> 00:44:38,079
that who Israel? Israeli and the United States planes will

661
00:44:38,079 --> 00:44:41,519
be going after after that? Is that? How does that work?

662
00:44:42,400 --> 00:44:50,239
Speaker 2: Well, this is where it gets very murky as a

663
00:44:50,440 --> 00:44:56,360
movement for revolution, Like you can't say that you're still

664
00:44:56,519 --> 00:45:02,199
a revolutionary regime fifty years into the damn thing. It

665
00:45:02,440 --> 00:45:07,159
just doesn't work after the first ten years if the

666
00:45:07,199 --> 00:45:13,000
revolution isn't done, like, that's it. It's the establishment and

667
00:45:13,239 --> 00:45:18,480
what is there to revolt for? Exactly? You've got the

668
00:45:18,559 --> 00:45:23,039
Turks becoming a power with big ambitions on They've taken

669
00:45:23,400 --> 00:45:27,960
northern Syria, they're in the process of consolidating there. They

670
00:45:28,000 --> 00:45:32,239
have very obvious ambitions on Iraq. This is a problem

671
00:45:32,400 --> 00:45:34,920
for the Iranians because you have all kinds of clients

672
00:45:34,920 --> 00:45:40,599
in Iraq. They have a plan with Katar to sort

673
00:45:40,599 --> 00:45:44,480
of develop a new kind of transport corridor and infrastructure

674
00:45:44,519 --> 00:45:50,239
corridor that would fully integrate Iraq into Turkey on the

675
00:45:50,280 --> 00:45:53,480
economic level, on the energy level, on the power level,

676
00:45:53,920 --> 00:45:56,800
all of it would go through Turkey. If you're you know,

677
00:45:56,880 --> 00:45:58,840
and this is a nightmare, and you want to do

678
00:45:58,880 --> 00:46:01,960
everything that you can to stop that and to assert

679
00:46:02,079 --> 00:46:05,480
control over southern Iraq because this is the only place

680
00:46:05,519 --> 00:46:09,000
from which you could get invaded unless Jekiska comes back,

681
00:46:09,039 --> 00:46:15,639
you know. So you have a very real problem, and

682
00:46:15,760 --> 00:46:21,159
so what is the impetus for an insurgency? So if

683
00:46:21,159 --> 00:46:25,119
the Americans are being very good at their diplomacy, they

684
00:46:25,159 --> 00:46:28,920
would be trying to reach out to the IRGC and say, look, guys,

685
00:46:29,800 --> 00:46:33,280
the top echelon has already been killed off, or a

686
00:46:33,280 --> 00:46:35,239
lot of it was killed off in the last wave

687
00:46:35,280 --> 00:46:39,800
of strikes by the Israelis. Do you want to follow

688
00:46:39,840 --> 00:46:41,920
Jmene to the grave or do you want to stay

689
00:46:41,960 --> 00:46:46,960
in power and maybe have Rasasha has a figurehead, maybe

690
00:46:46,960 --> 00:46:50,079
have one of your own as a military dictator, whatever

691
00:46:51,519 --> 00:46:56,360
you decide, But that implies a change in direction. And

692
00:46:56,480 --> 00:47:00,519
in that new direction, you won't have the Chinese constantly

693
00:47:00,519 --> 00:47:03,599
buying everything from you at a massive discount and not

694
00:47:03,679 --> 00:47:07,000
actually investing in the country. You signed this twenty five

695
00:47:07,039 --> 00:47:09,480
year partnership with the Chinese. Where are the Chinese investments

696
00:47:09,519 --> 00:47:13,679
in Itdaan they haven't materialized because they don't want to

697
00:47:13,719 --> 00:47:17,000
cross American sanctions and because they like the US is

698
00:47:17,079 --> 00:47:21,920
keeping China away from it. And so do you want

699
00:47:21,960 --> 00:47:27,559
to take the alternative pathway and stay in power as

700
00:47:27,599 --> 00:47:32,199
we did with Venezuela as what happened in Venezuela. And

701
00:47:32,280 --> 00:47:34,119
so if you're one of these guys in the IRGC,

702
00:47:34,239 --> 00:47:38,840
you're watching what's happening in Venezuela quite carefully. The problem

703
00:47:38,920 --> 00:47:43,960
is that the IERGC could fragment, it could turn into

704
00:47:44,000 --> 00:47:47,840
a criminal enterprise. If they put the Shah, he will

705
00:47:47,840 --> 00:47:51,199
only be a figurehead because it's not obviously that he

706
00:47:51,280 --> 00:47:58,840
has real connections within the military establishment of Itdan. There's

707
00:47:58,880 --> 00:48:03,440
always been a conflict with the IRGC and the ASH,

708
00:48:03,719 --> 00:48:08,639
the Iranian army. How does that play out? And do

709
00:48:08,679 --> 00:48:12,760
the various ethnic groups try to assert themselves, do the

710
00:48:12,800 --> 00:48:17,000
asides in Azadavijia and decide we want to help the

711
00:48:17,039 --> 00:48:21,039
assets in Iran along our border and we want to

712
00:48:21,079 --> 00:48:26,400
expand our territory. So there are all kinds of possibilities

713
00:48:26,440 --> 00:48:29,880
that come from the removal of this regime, or at

714
00:48:29,960 --> 00:48:34,000
least from the removal of the Islamic Revolution part and

715
00:48:34,079 --> 00:48:41,960
heading of this regime. The most peaceful outcome would be

716
00:48:42,039 --> 00:48:47,400
the IRGC saying we're in charge, that's it, and we're

717
00:48:47,440 --> 00:48:51,000
going to rebrand. We're gonna keep the same brand but

718
00:48:51,039 --> 00:48:55,079
follow completely different behavior. We're gonna do whatever, and that's

719
00:48:55,119 --> 00:48:59,119
the most peaceful outcome. But it's obvious that there is

720
00:48:59,239 --> 00:49:03,960
no need for a guy with a turban at the top.

721
00:49:05,719 --> 00:49:08,280
If you look at the Uranian Constitution outside of the

722
00:49:08,320 --> 00:49:15,039
Supreme Leader, it's actually a work of genius with these

723
00:49:15,119 --> 00:49:18,679
various appointed and elected bodies that do ensure a level

724
00:49:18,679 --> 00:49:24,000
of participation and that allow a competent leader to wield

725
00:49:24,079 --> 00:49:28,840
power effectively and to include very many swathes of society

726
00:49:29,519 --> 00:49:34,119
in decision making through the Parliament, through the Assembly of Experts,

727
00:49:34,880 --> 00:49:38,920
less so through the Guardian Council, et cetera, et cetera.

728
00:49:39,719 --> 00:49:44,599
So if you just remove the Guardian Council and the

729
00:49:44,639 --> 00:49:48,960
Supreme Leader and you have a president with enormous powers,

730
00:49:49,760 --> 00:49:52,440
with a Parliament and the Assembly of expert becoming a

731
00:49:52,559 --> 00:49:57,519
kind of Senate that oversees Parliament as a sort of

732
00:49:58,920 --> 00:50:06,400
a sort of upper chamber, you have a very functional system.

733
00:50:06,599 --> 00:50:09,280
But it will always require a secret police that is

734
00:50:09,400 --> 00:50:13,840
very strong to make sure that these ethnic minorities don't

735
00:50:13,840 --> 00:50:17,360
get ideas, So it's never going to be a proper

736
00:50:17,760 --> 00:50:22,320
democratic system that can't work in a diverse country like Iran.

737
00:50:25,320 --> 00:50:28,119
So that's the best case scenario. The worst case scenario

738
00:50:28,239 --> 00:50:34,719
is some combination of ethnic insurgencies, civil war, conflict between

739
00:50:34,800 --> 00:50:40,400
the different military branches, etcetera, etcetera, chaos, which is a

740
00:50:40,519 --> 00:50:43,559
very real possibility in a very diverse country with this

741
00:50:43,639 --> 00:50:44,519
kind of geography.

742
00:50:46,119 --> 00:50:55,480
Speaker 3: That's not an optimistic Yeah, the one thing I was

743
00:50:55,519 --> 00:50:58,559
going to say that for an audience is we tend

744
00:50:58,599 --> 00:51:00,920
to think of the IRGC as just like one organization

745
00:51:01,079 --> 00:51:03,679
or just the army and just the special forces. But

746
00:51:03,719 --> 00:51:06,719
as I tell people, it's it's a parallel institution. There's

747
00:51:06,719 --> 00:51:09,880
a regular Army, there's the IRGC Army, there's Air Force,

748
00:51:09,880 --> 00:51:11,800
in navy, they have regular and they have i ERGC

749
00:51:12,559 --> 00:51:16,559
plus the Kods Force. They're special ops guys who control

750
00:51:16,639 --> 00:51:19,239
a lot of their are direct a lot of the

751
00:51:19,239 --> 00:51:24,400
they're Allied insurgents, which is extremely professional and disciplined, as

752
00:51:24,440 --> 00:51:27,719
well as some other forces. So, yeah, the IRGC is

753
00:51:27,760 --> 00:51:30,280
big and it's fairly cohesive, but it's not like it's

754
00:51:30,360 --> 00:51:34,440
just one organization. It's this hierarchy of interlocked organization. It's

755
00:51:34,440 --> 00:51:36,719
the way that you know, the KGB was in the

756
00:51:36,719 --> 00:51:39,000
Soviet Union they had its own army and police force,

757
00:51:39,159 --> 00:51:41,719
or the ss was in Germany that had its own

758
00:51:41,760 --> 00:51:43,559
police force and a separate ground army.

759
00:51:43,639 --> 00:51:47,559
Speaker 2: So and there is the economic wing of the IRGC

760
00:51:48,920 --> 00:51:55,159
through Amba, which is a whole massive construction company. And

761
00:51:55,199 --> 00:51:59,199
then there is the religious endowments that are under the

762
00:51:59,280 --> 00:52:04,320
control of Amenity through the Bonyads, which are a massive

763
00:52:04,400 --> 00:52:10,039
economic power in the country. And then there's the traditional

764
00:52:10,079 --> 00:52:15,320
merchant class. And then there's you know, the peasants and

765
00:52:15,360 --> 00:52:18,039
the workers and the youth and all of these groups.

766
00:52:18,679 --> 00:52:24,880
So there are genuinely very many different centers of power

767
00:52:24,920 --> 00:52:29,440
in Itdan and Hamenei did a decent job of centralizing

768
00:52:29,440 --> 00:52:33,840
that power around him, but he had thirty forty years

769
00:52:33,840 --> 00:52:39,800
to do so. And whoever comes in on top, if

770
00:52:39,800 --> 00:52:43,679
he doesn't understand the system, and if he doesn't truly

771
00:52:43,760 --> 00:52:47,039
understand the centers of power and how to manage them

772
00:52:47,079 --> 00:52:49,400
and how to navigate them, and how to give all

773
00:52:49,440 --> 00:52:54,320
of them a stake in the country, it can fall apart,

774
00:52:55,239 --> 00:53:02,000
which is why Asha worries me. I don't know how

775
00:53:02,159 --> 00:53:06,840
much he is deeply involved with these centers of power

776
00:53:07,639 --> 00:53:10,679
and able to speak to them, and nobody has a

777
00:53:10,679 --> 00:53:15,119
good read on the internal politics of the IERGC, like

778
00:53:15,199 --> 00:53:17,480
we know which centers of power exist. We know that

779
00:53:17,519 --> 00:53:21,639
the Aerospace force is getting a lot of resources. We

780
00:53:21,719 --> 00:53:23,840
know that the HUTS force gets a lot of resources.

781
00:53:25,360 --> 00:53:30,400
The Navy, the IERGC navy gets some resources, et cetera,

782
00:53:30,440 --> 00:53:34,719
et cetera, but we don't get the full picture. And

783
00:53:35,039 --> 00:53:39,760
one of the reasons for that is that during the

784
00:53:39,800 --> 00:53:46,159
early two thousands color revolution season, the IRGC realized that

785
00:53:46,199 --> 00:53:50,519
they could be next, and so they proved the country

786
00:53:50,599 --> 00:53:56,480
against color revolutions and against the capitation strikes by dispersing

787
00:53:56,559 --> 00:54:00,239
regional commands. And so if you remember the Ukrainian that

788
00:54:00,320 --> 00:54:03,599
was shut down, part of the reason for that shootdown,

789
00:54:04,159 --> 00:54:07,920
if you don't want to believe the conspiracy theories, is

790
00:54:07,960 --> 00:54:11,599
that the Iranians refuse to have a fully integrated air

791
00:54:11,639 --> 00:54:17,199
defense because they believe that would be more vulnerable. Then

792
00:54:17,239 --> 00:54:19,760
this war taught them otherwise. And now you're talking to

793
00:54:19,760 --> 00:54:23,960
the Chinese about acquiring some kind of turnkey capability that

794
00:54:24,000 --> 00:54:28,000
would cover the whole country. We hear reports that maybe

795
00:54:28,000 --> 00:54:30,639
they've gotten the HQ nine and bits and pieces of

796
00:54:30,719 --> 00:54:34,760
Chinese air defense, or that they haven't gotten them. We

797
00:54:34,840 --> 00:54:38,440
don't like. I can't tell you that with any confidence

798
00:54:38,440 --> 00:54:41,280
if they have them, if they don't have them. But

799
00:54:41,400 --> 00:54:44,760
their own internal politics within the IRGC ended up dictating

800
00:54:45,519 --> 00:54:48,960
a level of decentralization, and so you could have a

801
00:54:49,159 --> 00:54:53,719
province rebelling because the local iergy C commander decided that

802
00:54:53,760 --> 00:54:57,599
he and his men are going to rebel. So there are.

803
00:54:59,400 --> 00:55:03,719
It's a very difficult country. It's a very difficult country

804
00:55:03,719 --> 00:55:06,679
to navigate them to get your head around it, which

805
00:55:06,679 --> 00:55:08,840
is why it needed to be a monarchy with a

806
00:55:08,960 --> 00:55:11,360
very strong secret police.

807
00:55:13,719 --> 00:55:17,679
Speaker 1: I guess the next question I would ask is you

808
00:55:17,719 --> 00:55:22,480
know the reason Syria fell so quickly is because they

809
00:55:22,480 --> 00:55:27,920
were abandoned by their allies. That was pretty clear. How's

810
00:55:28,000 --> 00:55:30,000
Russia going to play in all this? I mean, in

811
00:55:30,079 --> 00:55:36,400
Russia and Iran are trade partners and their allies. So

812
00:55:36,679 --> 00:55:37,920
where does Russia come in on this?

813
00:55:40,239 --> 00:55:42,840
Speaker 2: I don't think they can influence the internal dynamics too much.

814
00:55:45,320 --> 00:55:47,639
I don't think they can influence the internal dynamics. I'm

815
00:55:47,679 --> 00:55:49,800
sure they have a good read of the different ethnic

816
00:55:49,840 --> 00:55:54,880
groups because Russian sociologists and these guys who sort of

817
00:55:55,880 --> 00:56:01,000
study these countries tend to be quite exceptional and incredibly talented,

818
00:56:01,960 --> 00:56:04,199
and they learned the languages and they master them and

819
00:56:04,400 --> 00:56:08,039
they sort of end up loving the culture that they're studying.

820
00:56:08,079 --> 00:56:12,800
So they do that quite well. But I don't think

821
00:56:12,840 --> 00:56:16,079
that they are able to influence this too much. They

822
00:56:16,159 --> 00:56:18,800
can't provide them with an air defense that would check

823
00:56:18,880 --> 00:56:21,320
the Americans this much.

824
00:56:21,360 --> 00:56:22,400
Speaker 3: We know.

825
00:56:24,159 --> 00:56:27,639
Speaker 2: They would be all right with Idan turning nationalists so

826
00:56:27,800 --> 00:56:31,599
long as it remains stable, because then they would have

827
00:56:31,639 --> 00:56:35,840
an intersection of interests in the CAUCUSUS and in Central

828
00:56:35,840 --> 00:56:44,519
Asia aimed at containing both Turkey and China. So they

829
00:56:44,559 --> 00:56:50,920
don't mind so long as there are military and intelligence

830
00:56:50,960 --> 00:56:54,719
people that they can speak to and cooperate with, and

831
00:56:54,800 --> 00:56:59,400
so long as they can keep the North South corridor going,

832
00:57:01,119 --> 00:57:04,480
because the Russian ambition is to just be able to

833
00:57:04,559 --> 00:57:07,440
get to Iran and then get to Persia and get

834
00:57:07,440 --> 00:57:11,679
to India and be able to sort of contain China

835
00:57:11,760 --> 00:57:16,960
that way, the whole Chinese, the whole Indian Russian relationship

836
00:57:17,000 --> 00:57:21,719
is all about containing China and a naturalist India, a

837
00:57:21,760 --> 00:57:27,760
naturalist Iran, and a naturalist Russia are very natural partners

838
00:57:28,719 --> 00:57:34,079
working mainly against Pakistan in Turkey and China, and so

839
00:57:34,159 --> 00:57:38,440
you're going back to Huntington's prophecy of the Muslim world

840
00:57:38,599 --> 00:57:43,239
siding with China against the West, and everything keeps pointing

841
00:57:43,800 --> 00:57:44,960
towards that direction.

842
00:57:46,639 --> 00:57:50,320
Speaker 1: Do you have anything, mister phil has no.

843
00:57:50,719 --> 00:57:52,559
Speaker 3: It's sort of like, how would you even be able

844
00:57:52,599 --> 00:57:55,360
to summarize all that? It definitely sounds like Russia is

845
00:57:55,440 --> 00:57:57,480
very concerned, but at least they have the discipline to

846
00:57:57,559 --> 00:58:01,320
understand that medline creates more problems and at least from

847
00:58:01,360 --> 00:58:05,199
their perspective. It's a lot of this comes back to

848
00:58:05,239 --> 00:58:07,880
the beginning. Like I said, my biggest concern is America,

849
00:58:08,880 --> 00:58:12,800
for our American establishment interfering in something it doesn't understand

850
00:58:12,800 --> 00:58:16,280
and making it worse, especially since people like me go

851
00:58:16,320 --> 00:58:20,159
and die when our country does stuff like that. So yeah,

852
00:58:21,360 --> 00:58:23,599
that remains my issue. I just hope the United States

853
00:58:23,599 --> 00:58:26,039
doesn't decide that we're somehow going to remake this country

854
00:58:26,039 --> 00:58:28,000
in our own image and then spend it, you know,

855
00:58:28,440 --> 00:58:30,559
a decade, trying to turn it into Connecticut, like we

856
00:58:30,639 --> 00:58:31,559
tried to do with Iraq.

857
00:58:32,800 --> 00:58:36,599
Speaker 2: I think those days are over. I think that these

858
00:58:36,719 --> 00:58:40,519
kinds of liberal delusions are over, not of military intervention,

859
00:58:40,679 --> 00:58:45,400
not of imperialism. But you know, as someone who's from Lebanon,

860
00:58:45,920 --> 00:58:49,119
like all of the empires come and fight in Lebanon

861
00:58:49,239 --> 00:58:52,440
at some point or the other. All I want in

862
00:58:52,480 --> 00:58:56,039
life is competent imperialism. Like, give me competent in imperialism

863
00:58:56,079 --> 00:58:58,000
and you will have my undying loyalty.

864
00:58:58,719 --> 00:58:59,840
Speaker 3: You may not want to expect that.

865
00:59:00,119 --> 00:59:10,079
Speaker 2: America, Well, the Venezuela example does suggest a different story,

866
00:59:10,880 --> 00:59:16,920
like it's genuinely genius to go and kidnap a president

867
00:59:18,400 --> 00:59:20,239
in the middle of the night, grab him by the

868
00:59:20,239 --> 00:59:24,440
scruff of the neck and parade him literally parade him

869
00:59:24,960 --> 00:59:29,000
in New York and say to everyone else in Latin America, look, guys,

870
00:59:29,679 --> 00:59:33,880
this could be you, and then use that as an

871
00:59:33,960 --> 00:59:37,960
example to say to a regime like the Iranian regime,

872
00:59:38,480 --> 00:59:41,920
look guys, you can still be in charge. We just

873
00:59:41,960 --> 00:59:45,320
want this one thing, this crazy ideology which you accept

874
00:59:45,320 --> 00:59:49,119
has failed. We want that gone and we'll do business.

875
00:59:50,679 --> 00:59:57,119
This is this is competent imperialism, in part because the

876
00:59:57,239 --> 01:00:00,440
system as it now exists, the challenge from China as

877
01:00:00,440 --> 01:00:06,239
it now exists, imposes on the United States restraint, like

878
01:00:06,400 --> 01:00:10,880
you can't go now and just shoot goat fuckers in Afghanistan. Sorry,

879
01:00:10,960 --> 01:00:14,880
but you can't go do that kind of thing and

880
01:00:14,920 --> 01:00:18,840
try to sort of turn the Loyat into a parliament.

881
01:00:21,239 --> 01:00:23,639
That's not going to happen anymore. You can't afford it.

882
01:00:23,679 --> 01:00:25,599
The threat from China is too big and it's too real,

883
01:00:26,960 --> 01:00:32,920
and so in this multipolar world, to the extent that

884
01:00:32,960 --> 01:00:37,760
it is multipolar, the Americans have to act with restraint,

885
01:00:38,719 --> 01:00:43,280
and they're at least in Venezuela, acting with restraint and creativity.

886
01:00:43,800 --> 01:00:46,440
It's still too soon to tell. It could still go south,

887
01:00:46,519 --> 01:00:49,760
it could still go badly in all kinds of ways.

888
01:00:50,159 --> 01:00:55,559
I fully accept that, but I do take it as

889
01:00:55,599 --> 01:00:58,960
a good sign. I do take it as a positive sign.

890
01:01:00,880 --> 01:01:03,400
Speaker 3: Well, that was optimism I didn't expect, so I appreciate it.

891
01:01:07,119 --> 01:01:12,480
Speaker 2: Yeah. Well sometimes sometimes I can be optimistic sometimes, but

892
01:01:13,679 --> 01:01:16,199
don't ask me to do it too often. It wearies me.

893
01:01:16,880 --> 01:01:18,079
Speaker 3: Yeah.

894
01:01:18,119 --> 01:01:20,480
Speaker 1: Well, I mean, I don't know if you saw this

895
01:01:20,519 --> 01:01:24,960
one this morning, but Trump said that he was the

896
01:01:25,039 --> 01:01:28,599
US will be conducting land strikes against the cartels and quote,

897
01:01:28,639 --> 01:01:31,320
we are going to start it now, hitting land with

898
01:01:31,360 --> 01:01:34,400
regards to the cartels. The cartels are running Mexico.

899
01:01:36,280 --> 01:01:37,960
Speaker 3: I was going to say on that that we spoke

900
01:01:38,000 --> 01:01:40,880
the other day, Pete. It's at least the context of

901
01:01:40,960 --> 01:01:43,119
which I heard it. It's like that seemed to be

902
01:01:43,239 --> 01:01:45,880
Trump shooting from the hip when he was asked direct questions,

903
01:01:46,760 --> 01:01:50,639
and just by the body language off of Rubio and Hexath,

904
01:01:50,920 --> 01:01:52,599
you kind of got the sense that they had no

905
01:01:52,639 --> 01:01:55,679
idea what he was talking about. And I kind of

906
01:01:55,679 --> 01:01:57,320
hope that's the case, just because I think that is

907
01:01:57,360 --> 01:01:59,840
completely unfeasible. But maybe I'm wrong.

908
01:02:01,960 --> 01:02:03,880
Speaker 1: Well, I mean, I was only thinking that, you know,

909
01:02:04,679 --> 01:02:09,360
we're told to cheer what happened in Venezuela, and you know,

910
01:02:09,679 --> 01:02:15,199
maybe I am just way too have seen this movie

911
01:02:15,199 --> 01:02:19,239
play before and the promise of everything being cheaper, and

912
01:02:19,360 --> 01:02:22,679
maybe it's different now with the liberal world order dying.

913
01:02:23,559 --> 01:02:25,559
But you know, I said that if this would have

914
01:02:25,639 --> 01:02:29,079
been Mexico, if it would have been you know, we're

915
01:02:29,119 --> 01:02:31,800
going to destroy, We're going to do and it would

916
01:02:31,840 --> 01:02:34,199
take boots on the ground and men would die. But

917
01:02:34,280 --> 01:02:40,440
it seems like that's the more the more pressing threat

918
01:02:40,519 --> 01:02:44,480
to the United States, even though obviously the cartels work

919
01:02:44,559 --> 01:02:48,360
with a work with certain factions in the CIA, and yeah,

920
01:02:48,440 --> 01:02:50,760
I mean, it's just a big, big, mess.

921
01:02:50,679 --> 01:02:52,039
Speaker 3: It's an existential risk.

922
01:02:54,639 --> 01:02:58,880
Speaker 2: Look Mexico, it's a lot harder to do things without

923
01:02:58,960 --> 01:03:04,880
the Mexican government being willing to cooperate and without the

924
01:03:05,039 --> 01:03:08,800
US being able to just flood the zone with drones.

925
01:03:09,480 --> 01:03:09,639
Speaker 3: YEA.

926
01:03:11,360 --> 01:03:14,559
Speaker 2: One of the important things about Venezuela is the sheer

927
01:03:14,719 --> 01:03:17,440
volume of natural resources available there.

928
01:03:19,039 --> 01:03:21,039
Speaker 1: As an It's not they say about Ukraine. That's what

929
01:03:21,039 --> 01:03:23,760
they say about Ukraine as Yeah, that's Ukraine as well.

930
01:03:24,199 --> 01:03:28,199
Speaker 2: That's Ukraine as well. That's Ukraine as well. The sheer

931
01:03:28,239 --> 01:03:33,559
amount of natural resources that are extractable from Venezuela and

932
01:03:33,599 --> 01:03:38,599
from Ukraine is just insane. And so if you're thinking

933
01:03:38,599 --> 01:03:42,280
about a war with China, getting all of your oil

934
01:03:42,280 --> 01:03:48,400
supply and your mineral supply from a Caribbean country means

935
01:03:48,440 --> 01:03:51,159
that your supply chains are immune and are a lot

936
01:03:51,199 --> 01:03:54,639
more resilient than they would be if you were getting

937
01:03:54,679 --> 01:03:56,920
them from Africa or if you were getting them from

938
01:03:57,320 --> 01:04:01,039
even the rest of Latin America. So there is that

939
01:04:01,159 --> 01:04:05,639
supply chain element that is linked to Venezuela that makes

940
01:04:05,639 --> 01:04:10,320
it particularly important and then enables action in other theaters

941
01:04:10,360 --> 01:04:14,239
that might be long term, be that China or Mexico.

942
01:04:17,199 --> 01:04:20,239
But the United States is obviously is in an imperial

943
01:04:20,280 --> 01:04:25,599
consolidation phase. The other part of the story is not

944
01:04:25,679 --> 01:04:31,320
just the imperial consolidation, it's taking away China's allies. And

945
01:04:31,400 --> 01:04:36,679
so if the Chinese don't have allies, they then have

946
01:04:37,079 --> 01:04:41,639
a much bigger problem. And one of those not allies,

947
01:04:41,679 --> 01:04:44,280
because the Chinese are different in how they think about

948
01:04:44,320 --> 01:04:47,280
the world. But one of those partners that the Chinese

949
01:04:47,360 --> 01:04:52,639
have is Venezuela and another one is Iraan, and between

950
01:04:52,719 --> 01:04:55,440
them they might account for twenty to twenty five percent

951
01:04:56,280 --> 01:05:00,760
of Chinese oil imports. And so if you've gain control

952
01:05:00,760 --> 01:05:05,599
over that, you've slowed down the Chinese economy. It's given

953
01:05:05,679 --> 01:05:08,400
you breathing space to do other things in other parts

954
01:05:08,400 --> 01:05:13,199
of the world, including a place like Mexico. And by

955
01:05:13,280 --> 01:05:15,920
showing Shine bound that look, one day she could just

956
01:05:16,000 --> 01:05:19,800
end up on a plane and find herself on trial

957
01:05:19,840 --> 01:05:23,360
in New York. That's the kind of threat that focuses

958
01:05:23,400 --> 01:05:26,679
the mind. So this is the kind of approach that

959
01:05:26,840 --> 01:05:30,599
says to these leaders, you have personal skin the game.

960
01:05:31,440 --> 01:05:35,559
It's not going to be you know, my soldiers killing

961
01:05:35,599 --> 01:05:42,280
your soldiers and just people from Appalachia dying. No, no, no,

962
01:05:42,400 --> 01:05:45,760
it's going to be you the guy in charge, and

963
01:05:45,800 --> 01:05:48,199
you're going to live your life in humiliation or in

964
01:05:48,239 --> 01:05:50,800
a jail cell, or your life is going to end.

965
01:05:51,920 --> 01:05:55,480
But now you must think as someone with a lot

966
01:05:55,480 --> 01:06:01,760
more skin in the game and act accordingly. And that

967
01:06:02,000 --> 01:06:07,199
is a more competent way of doing things, because that

968
01:06:07,239 --> 01:06:12,880
capability to reach these people exists. You've demonstrated that it exists,

969
01:06:13,400 --> 01:06:18,039
and you forced everybody involved to maybe change their thinking.

970
01:06:19,159 --> 01:06:21,239
And in a way, what Shinbaum has been doing in

971
01:06:21,280 --> 01:06:26,159
Mexico is trying to get the cartels into the legal economy.

972
01:06:27,000 --> 01:06:29,119
Like part of the logic of the hugs nut bullets

973
01:06:29,800 --> 01:06:33,880
is that maybe in twenty years time, these guys will

974
01:06:33,920 --> 01:06:36,800
go down the Godfather route and will want to become

975
01:06:36,880 --> 01:06:43,079
legitimate businessmen and get out of this dirty business. And

976
01:06:43,159 --> 01:06:45,000
that might be the only way to do it because

977
01:06:45,039 --> 01:06:49,480
they've become too powerful. Well, okay, that's a nice carrot,

978
01:06:50,239 --> 01:06:54,760
you have to pair it with a stick. And so

979
01:06:54,920 --> 01:06:58,960
if the offer is look, you could become a Mexican oligarch.

980
01:06:59,280 --> 01:07:02,960
You don't have to be a Mexican drug dealer, and

981
01:07:03,000 --> 01:07:04,719
you can sit on this well and you have to

982
01:07:04,760 --> 01:07:07,639
sacrifice a bunch of your men, who you know are

983
01:07:07,679 --> 01:07:13,400
a bunch of rapist and murderers anyway, just like you. Well, okay,

984
01:07:13,440 --> 01:07:16,119
I'll become legitimate and my family will have a legacy

985
01:07:16,360 --> 01:07:20,679
and I'll be rid of these guys. So it's not

986
01:07:23,880 --> 01:07:27,320
what I'm saying is that there is reason for some optimism.

987
01:07:28,800 --> 01:07:34,840
Speaker 1: I'll take that, Yeah, I know, and without saying.

988
01:07:34,599 --> 01:07:36,480
Speaker 2: That it's going to work this way or that there's

989
01:07:36,519 --> 01:07:38,079
not going to be a glitch or that it's going

990
01:07:38,159 --> 01:07:43,400
to be you know, all wonderful. But if you're deploying

991
01:07:43,440 --> 01:07:46,840
these kinds of tools, a combination of skin in the

992
01:07:46,880 --> 01:07:51,079
game and an offer of redemption, yeah, okay, this is

993
01:07:52,239 --> 01:07:53,719
you have to become a liberal Democrat.

994
01:07:54,760 --> 01:07:57,480
Speaker 3: There is some coherence there. Hopefully it works, but there

995
01:07:57,559 --> 01:08:00,480
is going to Yeah.

996
01:08:00,039 --> 01:08:01,719
Speaker 1: I guess the one you know, one thing I think

997
01:08:01,760 --> 01:08:04,360
about is okay, all of this works out really well

998
01:08:04,400 --> 01:08:10,000
and everything, then well you have we have it, we

999
01:08:10,079 --> 01:08:14,719
have elections here. Then someone comes into power who you know,

1000
01:08:14,760 --> 01:08:20,279
That's the I'm not saying you don't try, you don't

1001
01:08:20,319 --> 01:08:22,119
try to make things. You don't try to make your

1002
01:08:22,119 --> 01:08:27,239
neighborhood better. But if you're if there's a possibility in

1003
01:08:27,279 --> 01:08:29,640
three years somebody is going to come into power, who

1004
01:08:29,720 --> 01:08:33,600
is going to seek to dismantle all of this. It's like,

1005
01:08:36,640 --> 01:08:38,560
we got to get rid of this system so quick.

1006
01:08:41,399 --> 01:08:43,680
Speaker 2: One of the many reasons why I'm a monarchist through

1007
01:08:43,720 --> 01:08:44,119
and through.

1008
01:08:45,279 --> 01:08:45,560
Speaker 1: Yeah.

1009
01:08:46,079 --> 01:08:49,359
Speaker 3: Yeah. As Americans, it's nothing but harping if we were

1010
01:08:49,399 --> 01:08:49,960
to say that.

1011
01:08:50,720 --> 01:08:54,000
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

1012
01:08:53,199 --> 01:08:56,399
Speaker 3: I can tell you I'm a monarchist, but as an American,

1013
01:08:56,520 --> 01:09:00,760
it doesn't mean anything. Concrete Mexico, we don't.

1014
01:09:01,680 --> 01:09:05,079
Speaker 2: You can can sort of try a genuine we've tried.

1015
01:09:05,840 --> 01:09:08,359
You could try at January sixth that the liberals imagined

1016
01:09:08,359 --> 01:09:13,680
that January sixth was and put Baron Trump on the throne. Yeah, no,

1017
01:09:13,760 --> 01:09:14,720
I'm joking.

1018
01:09:14,720 --> 01:09:18,199
Speaker 1: Obviously, Benny Mary is the princess of Norway and Greenland's

1019
01:09:18,239 --> 01:09:19,920
not a problem. There you go.

1020
01:09:20,600 --> 01:09:22,359
Speaker 3: How about Iceland? I went Iceland?

1021
01:09:23,439 --> 01:09:27,039
Speaker 1: Yeah, I like Iceland. I've been there. It's a it's

1022
01:09:27,039 --> 01:09:28,800
a wonderful a wonderful place.

1023
01:09:29,239 --> 01:09:32,319
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah. Oh, and that not to digress too much,

1024
01:09:32,399 --> 01:09:35,720
but my favorite was in i Afghanistan. Iceland stepped up

1025
01:09:35,760 --> 01:09:39,520
and deployed an infantry battalion to help there, which was

1026
01:09:39,560 --> 01:09:42,199
a very big contribution since the country has no army.

1027
01:09:42,840 --> 01:09:45,199
But they never let the fact they didn't have an

1028
01:09:45,319 --> 01:09:48,079
army stop them from deploying a battalion of infantry.

1029
01:09:49,039 --> 01:09:51,640
Speaker 2: That's very impressive. That's very impressive.

1030
01:09:52,319 --> 01:09:53,199
Speaker 3: I was impressed.

1031
01:09:54,159 --> 01:09:57,640
Speaker 1: I landed when I landed in Reikievic. When we touched

1032
01:09:57,640 --> 01:10:00,640
down and I looked to my right, first thing I

1033
01:10:00,680 --> 01:10:08,880
saw was a an American C one thirty. So yeah,

1034
01:10:09,119 --> 01:10:12,119
they then you then everybody pretty much speaks English, and

1035
01:10:12,159 --> 01:10:15,640
you're like, oh, I mean, besides the fact that everybody

1036
01:10:15,640 --> 01:10:18,159
here is like fourth and fifth cousins, this is pretty

1037
01:10:18,199 --> 01:10:19,039
much seems like home.

1038
01:10:19,479 --> 01:10:21,680
Speaker 3: Yeah, which made you the most eligible bachelor on the

1039
01:10:21,680 --> 01:10:22,359
island that night.

1040
01:10:24,880 --> 01:10:29,359
Speaker 1: Yeah, all right, gentlemen, we can we can go on

1041
01:10:29,479 --> 01:10:32,399
like we go on like this forever. But you know,

1042
01:10:33,079 --> 01:10:36,800
thank you and uh fear us to your plugs.

1043
01:10:37,800 --> 01:10:40,760
Speaker 2: Yeah, so you could find me on moder geopolitics dot

1044
01:10:40,800 --> 01:10:46,079
com and Dad on on X and Pete thank you

1045
01:10:46,199 --> 01:10:47,479
very much for inviting me back.

1046
01:10:47,319 --> 01:10:51,479
Speaker 1: Home, of course, of course, Uh, doctor field House, you

1047
01:10:51,520 --> 01:10:54,239
got anything, I've.

1048
01:10:54,039 --> 01:10:57,199
Speaker 3: Got a substack. Sometime somebody else started publishing on that.

1049
01:10:57,399 --> 01:11:03,720
Until then, watch repeat reading Martyr made uh read uh

1050
01:11:03,840 --> 01:11:07,840
dark Enlightenment stuff. Those are my friends until then, all

1051
01:11:07,920 --> 01:11:10,159
Speaker 1: Right, thank you, gentlemen, Thank you,