March 2, 2026 • 31 mins
In this episode, Michael breaks down the latest developments in the Middle East, specifically the US and Israeli operation against Iran. He discusses the strategic implications of the operation, including the killing of the Supreme Leader and the destruction of Iran's military command structure. Michael also touches on the reactions of key players, such as China and Russia, and how their responses are shaping the global landscape. He shares insights on the potential consequences of this operation, including its impact on energy markets and the balance of power in the region.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, Michael, just wanting to let you know that you
aged well.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
You're more handsome now than when you were younger. Great job.
That creeps me out.
Speaker 3 (00:15):
That wasn't your wife. No, I mean arguably you are
in much better physical condition than you were twenty something
years ago. You were the fuels or your door boy.
Then you're actually pretty you know it now?
Speaker 2 (00:27):
Yeah? Who was that better? Yet?
Speaker 4 (00:32):
How do they know? How do you know? So let
me give you an honest, clear eyed summary about this
conflict where it stands as we start the work week.
The good news is from our own strategic standpoint. That's
(00:54):
the news is substantial. The man who ran Aran for
thirty seven years, who built their nuclear program, who funded
every proxy group from Lebanon to Yemen, who massacred his
own people by tens of thousands, is dead, and in
addition to him being at room temperature, more than forty
(01:18):
of his senior military and security commandos are dead with him.
The Uranian air defenses are being systematically stripped away. The
Navy is being literally sunk. Its missile infrastructure is being
destroyed by B two bombers. We've suffered four, I think
combat deaths. Four too many obviously, but no catastrophic military reversal.
(01:45):
And the hard news is equally real. The strait of
her moves is a war zone. The ships are being sunk,
the global oil supply is disrupted. Then markets have not
yet fully priced that in. But we still produce more
liquefied natural gas, natural gas, and oil than any other country.
Speaker 2 (02:08):
In the world.
Speaker 4 (02:10):
We are the world's largest producer of all of those.
So there will be shocks and there will be price increases,
but it will be and I know this isn't company.
Anybody doesn't see any gas price increase because that ripples
through the economy. Nonetheless, I think it will not be
nearly as bad as what we expected.
Speaker 2 (02:34):
Has be. Law open the second front, and that does
bother me.
Speaker 4 (02:40):
Iran struck a synagogue, killed nine civilion, Saudi Arabia's oil
refinery is hit. A British base in Cyprus was hit.
Iran is still trying to retaliate and in Trump's own words,
potentially for four more weeks. And the central strategic bet
(03:02):
that the Iranian people would rise up and take their
country back has not yet been validated on the ground
in country, the regime security forces of the IRGC are
still shooting at celebrants in the street. The Internet is
cut to four percent of normal levels. Inside or wrong,
the IRGC. IRGC still has weapons, They've got money, and
(03:26):
they they've got the motivation to fight. What's the motivation
for them to fight?
Speaker 2 (03:30):
Power?
Speaker 4 (03:31):
Stay in control? One of them takes over the country.
But here's what I believe. This is day three of
what will likely be a four week maybe less, maybe more,
but generally speaking about a four week operation, and the
opening phase achieved more than I think anyone expected, including
(03:53):
killing the Supreme leader. The middle phase will determine whether
the IRGC's command strugure collapses or does it consolidate. And
in the final phase, whatever that looks like will be
a negotiation, not a surrender ceremony. Iran will choose a
new leader. That leader will face a destroyed military, a
(04:16):
collapsed economy, a furious population, and an American president who
has demonstrated I will do what I tell you I'm
going to do. So the question is whether that new
leader is rational enough to take the off ramp that
Trump is already signaling is there for them now. I
said Saturday morning that this was either the most consequential
(04:38):
foreign policy actions since September eleventh, or the opening chapter
of a conflict with no defined.
Speaker 2 (04:44):
End three days later.
Speaker 4 (04:47):
I still believe it is both, because the Iranian regime
is mortally wounded now. But whether it dies quickly or slowly,
and then what replaces it is the story of the
next several months, and it could be even story the
next several years. Probably the Let's talk about a chess
(05:13):
game that's going on. Brett Bear Fox News had a
private one on one interview with the President today. I
heard him talking about it this morning on the way in.
So let's start with that for a moment, and let's
start with what Brett Behar got out of the President,
(05:35):
because when you read between the lines, I think it
is the most significant intelligence disclosure of the entire operation
and that operation, and the disclosure I don't think was accidental.
Trump told Brett Behar that Iatola Kamina was meeting with
(05:58):
his inner circle for breakfast on the morning of the attack,
and of course they thought they were safe because it
was broad daylight. Trump said to Bear quote, we were
shocked when we heard what was going on. We knew
exactly what was happening and where he went on to
(06:20):
say again quoting it was forty nine leaders that were
taken out. That was going to take four weeks, we
thought to get rid of the Uranian leadership. And it's
always you know, if they hide, it's a lot longer
than four weeks, and they would have been hiding.
Speaker 3 (06:40):
Once.
Speaker 4 (06:41):
You think like a lawyer for just a moment, because
every single word of that answer is pregnant with meaning
we knew exactly what was happening and where. That sentence
cannot be explained by satellite in they alone. It cannot
(07:03):
be described by anything other than human intelligence. You cannot
watch a breakfast meeting in real time from outer space.
Speaker 2 (07:17):
You cannot know.
Speaker 4 (07:18):
Who is in the room at what hour, or what
part of a room, or if they've even left a
room in a building to go somewhere else in the
building from a satellite. So that sentence, we knew exactly
what was happening and where describes human human intelligence agents
(07:38):
on the ground inside the country, feeding real time targeting
information to both US and Israeli forces, the CIA and
massade in all likelihood both. I don't think that's speculation.
That is the only logical reading of we knew exactly
what was happening and where. So I think Trump just
(08:00):
public confirmed whether he meant to do it or not.
Speaker 2 (08:03):
Who Lord knows?
Speaker 4 (08:04):
Who knows that the United States and Israel have human
intelligence assets operating inside the Islamic Republic, and not just
operating inside the Islamic Republic, but operating at the highest
levels and in real time. That is a stunning revelation
(08:24):
around security apparatus. The very IRGC that exists to prevent
exactly that kind of penetration was completely and totally compromised.
But then there's a second revolution revolution revelation. The forty
nine leader killed number was not a target list, it
(08:47):
was an opportunity. Israel media is reporting that the Israeli
Air Force eliminated thirty high level officials in the first
thirty seconds. Now, these weren't thirty pre planned individuals executed
sequentially or even simultaneously in different locations. These were simultaneous
(09:08):
precision hits on a group of leaders who happened to
be gathered together because somebody on the inside told the
Americans and the Israelis where they would be. So the
entire first phase of the operation was intelligence driven. It
was not just firepower driven. And that distinction matters enormously
because it means the planning was not just about bombs.
(09:31):
It was about betrayal, betrayal of the regime by the
people within it. And then there was another revelation. The
third revelation was ahead of schedule. So Trump confirmed to
CNBC that the operation was ahead of schedule and moving
(09:53):
along very well, a four week operation that already achieved
this primary target, the Supreme Leader himself on day one
is just had a schedule. It's running laps around the
original plan. Now the reason is simple. The intelligence was
better than even the planners had expected. When Kammenay gathered
his inner circle for a breakfast meeting in broad daylight,
(10:14):
thinking himself that, oh, I'm pretty safe, he walked into
a kill box that American and Israeli intelligence had already
mapped out. The operation ran ahead a schedule because the
target cooperated unknowingly but nonetheless cooperated. He cooperated with his
own elimination. But now the succession question, and this is
(10:35):
where it gets constitutionally and strategically fascinating, because by Trump's
old A mission, plans for succession and Iran after Kammene's
death were complicated because multiple would be successors were also
killed in the opening strikes. Now we've identified Kammenae's potential
successors on Saturday, but several of them are now dead,
(10:59):
which means the United States and Israel were not just
targeting common A, they were targeting the successor, the succession chain.
They were trying to create a vacuum, a vacuum so
deep that the clerical system cannot simply regenerate itself with
a new hardliner and just continue on as before. Now,
(11:19):
whether that strategy succeeds depends on factors that I'll talk
about in a second. But I want to talk about
the Gulf Cooperation Council, this the GC. I'm gonna refer
to it as the GCC. The GCC is essentially a
(11:42):
in our vernacular, let's call it a trade association many
United nations, a cooperative agreement between the Arab States, Oman,
United Arab Immirates, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, the usual suspects. Fox
News is reporting that the GCC is now actively and
(12:06):
offensively taking on Iran. That framing is directionally correct, but
I think it requires a little more precision, because the
full picture is actually more interesting than the headline. Here's
what is unambiguously true. Within thirty six hours of the
start of Operation Epic Fury, Iran had attacked every single
(12:30):
member of the Golf Cooperation Council. They had hit international
airports and at least three active ports. They crippled international travel,
They disrupted oil shipments. Iran fired more than one hundred
and sixty five ballistic missiles at the United Arab Emirates alone.
The UAE intercepted one hundred and fifty two of them.
Thirteen or so fell into the sea, but they still
(12:53):
suffered civilian casualties. Kuwait intercepted ninety seven ballistic missiles and
two hundred and eighty three Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain all targeted.
It is now hard to imagine that the Gulf will
return to the previous path of detunt with the regime,
(13:17):
with Iran in general. Tehran's reckless strikes appear to have
calvinized the Gulf. They brought them together, maybe temporarily bring,
you know, bridging the deepening tensions between Saudi Arabia and
the UAE. Iran did something, truthfully, decades of American diplomacy
could not do. It unified the Arab guild states against
(13:39):
it in a single weekend, and against a common enemy
that they wanted to you know, hey, hey, hey America,
would you would you we gonna We got a crazy
uncle and he keeps showing up at dinner. Could you
do something for that? And we know we're supposed to
hate the Jews, but could could you do his favorite
(14:00):
because could you and those Jewish guys kind of get
together and maybe do something for us? You know, it's
all under the table. It was all kind of just
this quiet day, talked Prince MBS, always telling Trump, you
know he listen. You know we we'll back you, but
I can't say anything publicly. Well now, Saudi Crown Prince
Muhammed bin Salmon, while he privately conveyed anger at the
(14:24):
scale and the timing of the US strikes to the
to his golf allies, and he told them to avoid
steps to cond trigger a broader response from tehranor it's proxies.
The Saudi Arabi truly is walking to tightrope. It is
now publicly condemning a reigning aggression, calling it blatant aggression,
(14:45):
privately urging caution because NBS does not want his oil
infrastructure to become another theater of war.
Speaker 2 (14:56):
Now over at.
Speaker 4 (14:57):
Breaking Defense, one expert said that if any attacks continue
throughout this week, I would expect the Gulf Arab States
to eventually participate in counter attacks on Iran. The UAE
in particular would be the one to watch. They need
to restore some kind of deterrence against the Iranians, and
sitting passively by and using up their air defenses are
(15:18):
not going to accomplish that. I would say, Yeah, that's
a pretty accurate statement. I would say it a little
more precisely. The Gulf Cooperation Council is fully defensive right now,
is being pushed toward offensive operations by Iran's own provocations,
(15:38):
and is at a minimum allowing and likely expanding US
operational freedom to conduct offensive strikes from their territory. The CSIS,
the Center for Strategic and International Studies concluded this weekend that
over the long term, the GCC countries are now moving
toward a more formal integrated air defense system. So the
(16:02):
Arab world just got its version of NATO's Article five moment,
except Iran was the aggressor and Iran is the one
that made it happen, and the struggle the strategic bottom line.
Speaker 5 (16:17):
Next, Good morning, Michael Dragon, this is your fav uber.
You know what I love about this conflict that I
think is beautiful. Actually, I see people all over the world,
even in Iran, are celebrating, but they're celebrating with American,
Israeli and Iranian flags. I think that's just awesome.
Speaker 2 (16:41):
Awesome. You guys have a good week, and we've brought
the Arab world.
Speaker 4 (16:51):
Fully into our sphere, which brings me to what I
want to mention earlier, the strategic bottom line spent years
and billions of dollars all trying to cultivate the policy
of Arab detante. The twenty twenty three Saudi Iran normalization
(17:12):
deal that was broken by China, that was.
Speaker 2 (17:15):
The crown jewel.
Speaker 4 (17:18):
In only seventy two hours of retaliatory strikes, the arraigns
destroyed every single bit of that diplomatic goodwill, every single bit.
The Arab states they have been slowly drifting toward Beijing's
orbit as part of exactly the strategic architecture that I'm
about to discuss, have now been violently pushed back into
(17:42):
alignment with Washington. That is not a small thing that
may in the end be the most consequential geopolitical consequence
of the entire operation. I said to someone earlier that
I thought China's response was tepid. I think that's the
(18:05):
perfect word, and the specifics of what they said and
did not say are worth you understanding in precise detail.
China's Foreign Ministry spokesman said that US Israeli strikes quote
have no UN Security Council authorization and violate international law.
(18:26):
Foreign Ministry also went on to say that China is
quote deeply concerned over the regional spillover close quote and
then finished China quote believes that the sovereignty, security, and
territorial integrity of the Gulf States should likewise be fully respected,
and they urged the parties to stop the military operations.
(18:51):
Think about that carefully. China condemned the US strikes and
then immediately condemned the Iranian strike on the Gulf States in.
Speaker 2 (19:02):
The same breath.
Speaker 4 (19:03):
In the same statement, when China says the sovereignty in
the territorial integrity of the Gulf States should be fully respected,
they are telling their proxy, the Iranians, that firing one
hundred and sixty five ballistic missiles at the UAE was wrong.
That is not how you defend a strategic partner. That
(19:24):
is how you signal to the Gulf states who by
enormous quantities of Chinese goods and sell enormous quantities of
oil to China that Beijing is not going to sacrifice
its economic relationships to defend a dying regime. Now, when
asked directly whether China and Russia were considering providing military
(19:46):
support to the Iranians, the Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman declined
to answer, not once, but twice the question was asked
by an Adula agency. The spokesman gave a non answer
about phone calls and new in meetings, but not one
time did China say we will defend Iran. Not once
(20:08):
did China say we are considering our options. They said, hey, yep,
call the Security Council. That's that would be the diplomatic
equivalent of saying our thoughts and prayers. And Russia their
response is even more telling, not by what they say,
but by what they omit. Russia condemned the strikes, and
(20:33):
then Russia that's the fighting. The Ukrainians called for an
immediate cease fire, and then Russia did nothing.
Speaker 2 (20:42):
Nothing.
Speaker 4 (20:44):
All the analyst irees say that Russia is not in
any position to give more meaningful material support because of
years of grinding war in Ukraine, having hallowed out the
Russian capacity to project power beyond its own borders. So
here's what this tells us. And here's where we get
(21:04):
to the argument that I've been building since Saturday.
Speaker 2 (21:07):
I think.
Speaker 4 (21:09):
This was always about China, and now all the soul
called expert class are saying it openly. When I told
you more Saturday morning, which, by the way, it's up
right dragon. The podcast from Saturday is up if you
want to hear it. When I told all of you
(21:30):
nationally Saturday that Venezuela Iran and their strategic sequencing of
this administration's military actions were not random, that they were
chess moves against China, I said it.
Speaker 2 (21:45):
You heard it.
Speaker 4 (21:46):
Now the analysts are saying it in writing, and the
evidence from the past seventy two hours has made the
case even stronger. A senior fellow at the Hudson Institute
published analysis that says this Trump didn't launch Operation Epic
Fury only to push only to punish Commonade for his massacres.
(22:07):
He launched it because every year Washington spends managing Tehran
is another year that Beijing buys in the Pacific, and
the administration has decided the trade isn't worth it anymore.
So let me walk you through what I've put together
is a three part argument because it is precise. Quite frankly,
(22:28):
I think it's compelling. First is energy. China imports roughly
seventy percent of its oil. Most of that transits the
Strait of Malacca. Now in a Taiwan contingency, those sea
lanes become contested, so Beijing will need alternative energy sources.
(22:49):
And they had planned to look westward to the Iranians, Russia,
and any ghost state willing to sail outside the dollar system.
If the Middle East has already drifted into beijing economic
orbit by the time that crisis arrives, then China begins
the confrontation with a strategic in the reserve that our
(23:09):
military planners cannot disrupt. So Iran was China's primary discount
oil supplier. China purchased more than eighty percent of Iran
shipped oil last year, accounting for more than thirteen percent
of all crewe China imported by sea. China was buying
all of that at huge discounts because of US sanctions
(23:34):
on the Iranians paying Iran in the Wan bypassing the
dollar system entirely. That relationship was the cornerstone of Iran's
economic survival and also China's energy security strategy. Operation Epic
(23:55):
Fury is the first American military campaign that is starting
to sever that asset. So energy number one. Second attrition.
Every dollar that we spend defending red sea shipping lanes
is a dollar that's unavailable for submarine production, Pacific basing,
(24:18):
or Taiwan contingency planning. Every carrier group station in the
Gulf of Aden is a carrier group that's absent from
the Western Pacific. This really scares me to death right now.
But China's economy right now prevents it from doing anything.
So we're in a incredibly tight timeline here. Every carrier
(24:40):
group station in the Gulf of Aiden, as I said,
as a carrier group that's absent from the Western Pacific.
So the Uranian proxies, armed with Iranian weapons and supported
by Iranian intelligence, function as a mechanism of American strategic attrition,
and the costs fall entirely on Washington mean al Beijing
(25:00):
accumulates all these strategic gains, The Houthis cost the US
Navy and estimated one billion dollars in defensive munitions in
twenty twenty four alone, just shooting down Iranian supply drones.
Speaker 2 (25:14):
Every month, the.
Speaker 4 (25:14):
Huthi's attacked red sea shipping, China's competitor for those trade routes.
The Gulf Arab States suffered economically, which drove them toward
Chinese alternatives. Iran was China's military contractor for regional attrition.
That contract, you might say, it's now being terminated, so attrition, energy, attrition.
And third, the coalition that defeats China depends on the Gulf.
(25:41):
This is the argument has received the least attention and
I think deserves the most.
Speaker 1 (25:47):
Let's look at the legacy media's negative coverage of the
murderous dictator Ayatola Kamani eighty five percent people who shared
worse than him in negative coverage. K Junior, jd Vance, Elon, Musk, Cash, Fattell,
Christi Now Tulsea, Yabbert, Pete Hegsath has one hundred percent
(26:08):
negative coverage and Trump has ninety two percent negative coverage.
Absolutely insane and wrong.
Speaker 2 (26:20):
It tells you their perspective. Quite simple.
Speaker 4 (26:25):
Not shocking. I mean sad, infuriating, but not shocking. So
let's get back to China. The brutal reality of China
is they have spent a decade building exactly the kind
of relationships that I'm talking about. Because if China invades Taiwan,
(26:47):
which would spill over because of defense agreements between South Korea, Japan,
the United States, the Philippines, Australia, everybody in the in
the Pacific, they're going to need energy. They don't produce
enough oil and gas for their military, and the economy
right now is in the cropper. So the twenty three
(27:10):
Saudi Iranian normalization deal that was broken by Beijing wasn't
just a Middle East peace initiative. It was China inserting
itself as the indispensable diplomatic broker for the world's most
critical oil producing region, precisely so that Saudi Arabia and
the Imiordis would think twice before sanctioning China at the
(27:33):
request of the United States. That was Beijing's master stroke
in the Middle East, and in the past seventy two hours,
the Iranians destroyed it by firing ballistic missiles at every
Gulf capital as Taiwan News reported just this morning, citing
(27:53):
the Hudson Institute analysis, removing Iran's Islamic Republic government is
tantamount to re moving one of China's chess pieces in
its Taiwan playbook. Now lay on that what we already
knew about the China US diplomatic calendar, the timing of
Operation Epic Fury, approximately six weeks before a scheduled Trump
(28:15):
visit to China, introduces a strategic signal aimed at asserting
unilateral US power projection at a capacity that's incredibly high
before even walking into high stakes great power negotiations. Trump
is about to sit across the table from Shijingping, and
(28:38):
he just demonstrated to she in real time what American
and Israeli intelligence and military power can do when it
decides to act. All she could do was sit and
watch as the United States on a Saturday morning, kill
the supreme leader of a nation that she regarded as
a closed partner, destroyed that nation's military command structure, sure
(29:00):
sank its navy, isolated it from every neighboring country, all
before lunch in Beijing.
Speaker 2 (29:07):
Now, analyst at Chatham House notes.
Speaker 4 (29:10):
That Beijing might seek concessions on issues more directly related
to its interests, such as Taiwan in trade, in exchange
for its significantly watered down messaging on Iran translation. China's
tepet statement I told you about is not weakness. They're
just using it as a bargaining chip. Beijing is actually
signaling that it will not go to the mat for Iran,
(29:33):
but it's expects something in return.
Speaker 2 (29:35):
When Trump lands in Beijing.
Speaker 4 (29:37):
Next month, that's something, maybe a softer post on Taiwan,
maybe teriff relief made, have some sort of technology transfer restrictions.
The Iran operation has already become currency in our US
China negotiations. That there's one more dimension, and that ties
Venezuela to the Iran chapter to the China chapter in
(30:00):
a way that you know what, you can hold your
heads as a single coherent argument. By targeting Venezuela and Iran,
Trump's not just playing checkers, it's playing chess. Venezuela denied
China it's primary source of heavy crude in the Western Hemisphere.
Iran was China's primary discounts oil source in the Middle East. Now,
(30:25):
if the Uranian regime falls, it's not gonna be too
long before Trump could say checkmate to the Chinese if
they're stupid enough to try their hand at an invasion
of Taiwan, because China would begin that conflict with its
two primary alternate energy sources neutralized, and China would be
facing a Gulf Arab coalition that has just been violently
(30:49):
reminded why it needs us and not China. We are
still the world's largest economy, are still the world's most
lethal military. So if I was to explain to somebody
over dinner tonight, I do it in a certain way,
(31:13):
and I'll tell you about that two things next, how
you explain this to your dinner friends and to the
War Powers Act?
Speaker 2 (31:22):
Oh No,
Hey, Michael, just wanting to let you know that you
aged well.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
You're more handsome now than when you were younger. Great job.
That creeps me out.
Speaker 3 (00:15):
That wasn't your wife. No, I mean arguably you are
in much better physical condition than you were twenty something
years ago. You were the fuels or your door boy.
Then you're actually pretty you know it now?
Speaker 2 (00:27):
Yeah? Who was that better? Yet?
Speaker 4 (00:32):
How do they know? How do you know? So let
me give you an honest, clear eyed summary about this
conflict where it stands as we start the work week.
The good news is from our own strategic standpoint. That's
(00:54):
the news is substantial. The man who ran Aran for
thirty seven years, who built their nuclear program, who funded
every proxy group from Lebanon to Yemen, who massacred his
own people by tens of thousands, is dead, and in
addition to him being at room temperature, more than forty
(01:18):
of his senior military and security commandos are dead with him.
The Uranian air defenses are being systematically stripped away. The
Navy is being literally sunk. Its missile infrastructure is being
destroyed by B two bombers. We've suffered four, I think
combat deaths. Four too many obviously, but no catastrophic military reversal.
(01:45):
And the hard news is equally real. The strait of
her moves is a war zone. The ships are being sunk,
the global oil supply is disrupted. Then markets have not
yet fully priced that in. But we still produce more
liquefied natural gas, natural gas, and oil than any other country.
Speaker 2 (02:08):
In the world.
Speaker 4 (02:10):
We are the world's largest producer of all of those.
So there will be shocks and there will be price increases,
but it will be and I know this isn't company.
Anybody doesn't see any gas price increase because that ripples
through the economy. Nonetheless, I think it will not be
nearly as bad as what we expected.
Speaker 2 (02:34):
Has be. Law open the second front, and that does
bother me.
Speaker 4 (02:40):
Iran struck a synagogue, killed nine civilion, Saudi Arabia's oil
refinery is hit. A British base in Cyprus was hit.
Iran is still trying to retaliate and in Trump's own words,
potentially for four more weeks. And the central strategic bet
(03:02):
that the Iranian people would rise up and take their
country back has not yet been validated on the ground
in country, the regime security forces of the IRGC are
still shooting at celebrants in the street. The Internet is
cut to four percent of normal levels. Inside or wrong,
the IRGC. IRGC still has weapons, They've got money, and
(03:26):
they they've got the motivation to fight. What's the motivation
for them to fight?
Speaker 2 (03:30):
Power?
Speaker 4 (03:31):
Stay in control? One of them takes over the country.
But here's what I believe. This is day three of
what will likely be a four week maybe less, maybe more,
but generally speaking about a four week operation, and the
opening phase achieved more than I think anyone expected, including
(03:53):
killing the Supreme leader. The middle phase will determine whether
the IRGC's command strugure collapses or does it consolidate. And
in the final phase, whatever that looks like will be
a negotiation, not a surrender ceremony. Iran will choose a
new leader. That leader will face a destroyed military, a
(04:16):
collapsed economy, a furious population, and an American president who
has demonstrated I will do what I tell you I'm
going to do. So the question is whether that new
leader is rational enough to take the off ramp that
Trump is already signaling is there for them now. I
said Saturday morning that this was either the most consequential
(04:38):
foreign policy actions since September eleventh, or the opening chapter
of a conflict with no defined.
Speaker 2 (04:44):
End three days later.
Speaker 4 (04:47):
I still believe it is both, because the Iranian regime
is mortally wounded now. But whether it dies quickly or slowly,
and then what replaces it is the story of the
next several months, and it could be even story the
next several years. Probably the Let's talk about a chess
(05:13):
game that's going on. Brett Bear Fox News had a
private one on one interview with the President today. I
heard him talking about it this morning on the way in.
So let's start with that for a moment, and let's
start with what Brett Behar got out of the President,
(05:35):
because when you read between the lines, I think it
is the most significant intelligence disclosure of the entire operation
and that operation, and the disclosure I don't think was accidental.
Trump told Brett Behar that Iatola Kamina was meeting with
(05:58):
his inner circle for breakfast on the morning of the attack,
and of course they thought they were safe because it
was broad daylight. Trump said to Bear quote, we were
shocked when we heard what was going on. We knew
exactly what was happening and where he went on to
(06:20):
say again quoting it was forty nine leaders that were
taken out. That was going to take four weeks, we
thought to get rid of the Uranian leadership. And it's
always you know, if they hide, it's a lot longer
than four weeks, and they would have been hiding.
Speaker 3 (06:40):
Once.
Speaker 4 (06:41):
You think like a lawyer for just a moment, because
every single word of that answer is pregnant with meaning
we knew exactly what was happening and where. That sentence
cannot be explained by satellite in they alone. It cannot
(07:03):
be described by anything other than human intelligence. You cannot
watch a breakfast meeting in real time from outer space.
Speaker 2 (07:17):
You cannot know.
Speaker 4 (07:18):
Who is in the room at what hour, or what
part of a room, or if they've even left a
room in a building to go somewhere else in the
building from a satellite. So that sentence, we knew exactly
what was happening and where describes human human intelligence agents
(07:38):
on the ground inside the country, feeding real time targeting
information to both US and Israeli forces, the CIA and
massade in all likelihood both. I don't think that's speculation.
That is the only logical reading of we knew exactly
what was happening and where. So I think Trump just
(08:00):
public confirmed whether he meant to do it or not.
Speaker 2 (08:03):
Who Lord knows?
Speaker 4 (08:04):
Who knows that the United States and Israel have human
intelligence assets operating inside the Islamic Republic, and not just
operating inside the Islamic Republic, but operating at the highest
levels and in real time. That is a stunning revelation
(08:24):
around security apparatus. The very IRGC that exists to prevent
exactly that kind of penetration was completely and totally compromised.
But then there's a second revolution revolution revelation. The forty
nine leader killed number was not a target list, it
(08:47):
was an opportunity. Israel media is reporting that the Israeli
Air Force eliminated thirty high level officials in the first
thirty seconds. Now, these weren't thirty pre planned individuals executed
sequentially or even simultaneously in different locations. These were simultaneous
(09:08):
precision hits on a group of leaders who happened to
be gathered together because somebody on the inside told the
Americans and the Israelis where they would be. So the
entire first phase of the operation was intelligence driven. It
was not just firepower driven. And that distinction matters enormously
because it means the planning was not just about bombs.
(09:31):
It was about betrayal, betrayal of the regime by the
people within it. And then there was another revelation. The
third revelation was ahead of schedule. So Trump confirmed to
CNBC that the operation was ahead of schedule and moving
(09:53):
along very well, a four week operation that already achieved
this primary target, the Supreme Leader himself on day one
is just had a schedule. It's running laps around the
original plan. Now the reason is simple. The intelligence was
better than even the planners had expected. When Kammenay gathered
his inner circle for a breakfast meeting in broad daylight,
(10:14):
thinking himself that, oh, I'm pretty safe, he walked into
a kill box that American and Israeli intelligence had already
mapped out. The operation ran ahead a schedule because the
target cooperated unknowingly but nonetheless cooperated. He cooperated with his
own elimination. But now the succession question, and this is
(10:35):
where it gets constitutionally and strategically fascinating, because by Trump's
old A mission, plans for succession and Iran after Kammene's
death were complicated because multiple would be successors were also
killed in the opening strikes. Now we've identified Kammenae's potential
successors on Saturday, but several of them are now dead,
(10:59):
which means the United States and Israel were not just
targeting common A, they were targeting the successor, the succession chain.
They were trying to create a vacuum, a vacuum so
deep that the clerical system cannot simply regenerate itself with
a new hardliner and just continue on as before. Now,
(11:19):
whether that strategy succeeds depends on factors that I'll talk
about in a second. But I want to talk about
the Gulf Cooperation Council, this the GC. I'm gonna refer
to it as the GCC. The GCC is essentially a
(11:42):
in our vernacular, let's call it a trade association many
United nations, a cooperative agreement between the Arab States, Oman,
United Arab Immirates, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, the usual suspects. Fox
News is reporting that the GCC is now actively and
(12:06):
offensively taking on Iran. That framing is directionally correct, but
I think it requires a little more precision, because the
full picture is actually more interesting than the headline. Here's
what is unambiguously true. Within thirty six hours of the
start of Operation Epic Fury, Iran had attacked every single
(12:30):
member of the Golf Cooperation Council. They had hit international
airports and at least three active ports. They crippled international travel,
They disrupted oil shipments. Iran fired more than one hundred
and sixty five ballistic missiles at the United Arab Emirates alone.
The UAE intercepted one hundred and fifty two of them.
Thirteen or so fell into the sea, but they still
(12:53):
suffered civilian casualties. Kuwait intercepted ninety seven ballistic missiles and
two hundred and eighty three Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain all targeted.
It is now hard to imagine that the Gulf will
return to the previous path of detunt with the regime,
(13:17):
with Iran in general. Tehran's reckless strikes appear to have
calvinized the Gulf. They brought them together, maybe temporarily bring,
you know, bridging the deepening tensions between Saudi Arabia and
the UAE. Iran did something, truthfully, decades of American diplomacy
could not do. It unified the Arab guild states against
(13:39):
it in a single weekend, and against a common enemy
that they wanted to you know, hey, hey, hey America,
would you would you we gonna We got a crazy
uncle and he keeps showing up at dinner. Could you
do something for that? And we know we're supposed to
hate the Jews, but could could you do his favorite
(14:00):
because could you and those Jewish guys kind of get
together and maybe do something for us? You know, it's
all under the table. It was all kind of just
this quiet day, talked Prince MBS, always telling Trump, you
know he listen. You know we we'll back you, but
I can't say anything publicly. Well now, Saudi Crown Prince
Muhammed bin Salmon, while he privately conveyed anger at the
(14:24):
scale and the timing of the US strikes to the
to his golf allies, and he told them to avoid
steps to cond trigger a broader response from tehranor it's proxies.
The Saudi Arabi truly is walking to tightrope. It is
now publicly condemning a reigning aggression, calling it blatant aggression,
(14:45):
privately urging caution because NBS does not want his oil
infrastructure to become another theater of war.
Speaker 2 (14:56):
Now over at.
Speaker 4 (14:57):
Breaking Defense, one expert said that if any attacks continue
throughout this week, I would expect the Gulf Arab States
to eventually participate in counter attacks on Iran. The UAE
in particular would be the one to watch. They need
to restore some kind of deterrence against the Iranians, and
sitting passively by and using up their air defenses are
(15:18):
not going to accomplish that. I would say, Yeah, that's
a pretty accurate statement. I would say it a little
more precisely. The Gulf Cooperation Council is fully defensive right now,
is being pushed toward offensive operations by Iran's own provocations,
(15:38):
and is at a minimum allowing and likely expanding US
operational freedom to conduct offensive strikes from their territory. The CSIS,
the Center for Strategic and International Studies concluded this weekend that
over the long term, the GCC countries are now moving
toward a more formal integrated air defense system. So the
(16:02):
Arab world just got its version of NATO's Article five moment,
except Iran was the aggressor and Iran is the one
that made it happen, and the struggle the strategic bottom line.
Speaker 5 (16:17):
Next, Good morning, Michael Dragon, this is your fav uber.
You know what I love about this conflict that I
think is beautiful. Actually, I see people all over the world,
even in Iran, are celebrating, but they're celebrating with American,
Israeli and Iranian flags. I think that's just awesome.
Speaker 2 (16:41):
Awesome. You guys have a good week, and we've brought
the Arab world.
Speaker 4 (16:51):
Fully into our sphere, which brings me to what I
want to mention earlier, the strategic bottom line spent years
and billions of dollars all trying to cultivate the policy
of Arab detante. The twenty twenty three Saudi Iran normalization
(17:12):
deal that was broken by China, that was.
Speaker 2 (17:15):
The crown jewel.
Speaker 4 (17:18):
In only seventy two hours of retaliatory strikes, the arraigns
destroyed every single bit of that diplomatic goodwill, every single bit.
The Arab states they have been slowly drifting toward Beijing's
orbit as part of exactly the strategic architecture that I'm
about to discuss, have now been violently pushed back into
(17:42):
alignment with Washington. That is not a small thing that
may in the end be the most consequential geopolitical consequence
of the entire operation. I said to someone earlier that
I thought China's response was tepid. I think that's the
(18:05):
perfect word, and the specifics of what they said and
did not say are worth you understanding in precise detail.
China's Foreign Ministry spokesman said that US Israeli strikes quote
have no UN Security Council authorization and violate international law.
(18:26):
Foreign Ministry also went on to say that China is
quote deeply concerned over the regional spillover close quote and
then finished China quote believes that the sovereignty, security, and
territorial integrity of the Gulf States should likewise be fully respected,
and they urged the parties to stop the military operations.
(18:51):
Think about that carefully. China condemned the US strikes and
then immediately condemned the Iranian strike on the Gulf States in.
Speaker 2 (19:02):
The same breath.
Speaker 4 (19:03):
In the same statement, when China says the sovereignty in
the territorial integrity of the Gulf States should be fully respected,
they are telling their proxy, the Iranians, that firing one
hundred and sixty five ballistic missiles at the UAE was wrong.
That is not how you defend a strategic partner. That
(19:24):
is how you signal to the Gulf states who by
enormous quantities of Chinese goods and sell enormous quantities of
oil to China that Beijing is not going to sacrifice
its economic relationships to defend a dying regime. Now, when
asked directly whether China and Russia were considering providing military
(19:46):
support to the Iranians, the Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman declined
to answer, not once, but twice the question was asked
by an Adula agency. The spokesman gave a non answer
about phone calls and new in meetings, but not one
time did China say we will defend Iran. Not once
(20:08):
did China say we are considering our options. They said, hey, yep,
call the Security Council. That's that would be the diplomatic
equivalent of saying our thoughts and prayers. And Russia their
response is even more telling, not by what they say,
but by what they omit. Russia condemned the strikes, and
(20:33):
then Russia that's the fighting. The Ukrainians called for an
immediate cease fire, and then Russia did nothing.
Speaker 2 (20:42):
Nothing.
Speaker 4 (20:44):
All the analyst irees say that Russia is not in
any position to give more meaningful material support because of
years of grinding war in Ukraine, having hallowed out the
Russian capacity to project power beyond its own borders. So
here's what this tells us. And here's where we get
(21:04):
to the argument that I've been building since Saturday.
Speaker 2 (21:07):
I think.
Speaker 4 (21:09):
This was always about China, and now all the soul
called expert class are saying it openly. When I told
you more Saturday morning, which, by the way, it's up
right dragon. The podcast from Saturday is up if you
want to hear it. When I told all of you
(21:30):
nationally Saturday that Venezuela Iran and their strategic sequencing of
this administration's military actions were not random, that they were
chess moves against China, I said it.
Speaker 2 (21:45):
You heard it.
Speaker 4 (21:46):
Now the analysts are saying it in writing, and the
evidence from the past seventy two hours has made the
case even stronger. A senior fellow at the Hudson Institute
published analysis that says this Trump didn't launch Operation Epic
Fury only to push only to punish Commonade for his massacres.
(22:07):
He launched it because every year Washington spends managing Tehran
is another year that Beijing buys in the Pacific, and
the administration has decided the trade isn't worth it anymore.
So let me walk you through what I've put together
is a three part argument because it is precise. Quite frankly,
(22:28):
I think it's compelling. First is energy. China imports roughly
seventy percent of its oil. Most of that transits the
Strait of Malacca. Now in a Taiwan contingency, those sea
lanes become contested, so Beijing will need alternative energy sources.
(22:49):
And they had planned to look westward to the Iranians, Russia,
and any ghost state willing to sail outside the dollar system.
If the Middle East has already drifted into beijing economic
orbit by the time that crisis arrives, then China begins
the confrontation with a strategic in the reserve that our
(23:09):
military planners cannot disrupt. So Iran was China's primary discount
oil supplier. China purchased more than eighty percent of Iran
shipped oil last year, accounting for more than thirteen percent
of all crewe China imported by sea. China was buying
all of that at huge discounts because of US sanctions
(23:34):
on the Iranians paying Iran in the Wan bypassing the
dollar system entirely. That relationship was the cornerstone of Iran's
economic survival and also China's energy security strategy. Operation Epic
(23:55):
Fury is the first American military campaign that is starting
to sever that asset. So energy number one. Second attrition.
Every dollar that we spend defending red sea shipping lanes
is a dollar that's unavailable for submarine production, Pacific basing,
(24:18):
or Taiwan contingency planning. Every carrier group station in the
Gulf of Aden is a carrier group that's absent from
the Western Pacific. This really scares me to death right now.
But China's economy right now prevents it from doing anything.
So we're in a incredibly tight timeline here. Every carrier
(24:40):
group station in the Gulf of Aiden, as I said,
as a carrier group that's absent from the Western Pacific.
So the Uranian proxies, armed with Iranian weapons and supported
by Iranian intelligence, function as a mechanism of American strategic attrition,
and the costs fall entirely on Washington mean al Beijing
(25:00):
accumulates all these strategic gains, The Houthis cost the US
Navy and estimated one billion dollars in defensive munitions in
twenty twenty four alone, just shooting down Iranian supply drones.
Speaker 2 (25:14):
Every month, the.
Speaker 4 (25:14):
Huthi's attacked red sea shipping, China's competitor for those trade routes.
The Gulf Arab States suffered economically, which drove them toward
Chinese alternatives. Iran was China's military contractor for regional attrition.
That contract, you might say, it's now being terminated, so attrition, energy, attrition.
And third, the coalition that defeats China depends on the Gulf.
(25:41):
This is the argument has received the least attention and
I think deserves the most.
Speaker 1 (25:47):
Let's look at the legacy media's negative coverage of the
murderous dictator Ayatola Kamani eighty five percent people who shared
worse than him in negative coverage. K Junior, jd Vance, Elon, Musk, Cash, Fattell,
Christi Now Tulsea, Yabbert, Pete Hegsath has one hundred percent
(26:08):
negative coverage and Trump has ninety two percent negative coverage.
Absolutely insane and wrong.
Speaker 2 (26:20):
It tells you their perspective. Quite simple.
Speaker 4 (26:25):
Not shocking. I mean sad, infuriating, but not shocking. So
let's get back to China. The brutal reality of China
is they have spent a decade building exactly the kind
of relationships that I'm talking about. Because if China invades Taiwan,
(26:47):
which would spill over because of defense agreements between South Korea, Japan,
the United States, the Philippines, Australia, everybody in the in
the Pacific, they're going to need energy. They don't produce
enough oil and gas for their military, and the economy
right now is in the cropper. So the twenty three
(27:10):
Saudi Iranian normalization deal that was broken by Beijing wasn't
just a Middle East peace initiative. It was China inserting
itself as the indispensable diplomatic broker for the world's most
critical oil producing region, precisely so that Saudi Arabia and
the Imiordis would think twice before sanctioning China at the
(27:33):
request of the United States. That was Beijing's master stroke
in the Middle East, and in the past seventy two hours,
the Iranians destroyed it by firing ballistic missiles at every
Gulf capital as Taiwan News reported just this morning, citing
(27:53):
the Hudson Institute analysis, removing Iran's Islamic Republic government is
tantamount to re moving one of China's chess pieces in
its Taiwan playbook. Now lay on that what we already
knew about the China US diplomatic calendar, the timing of
Operation Epic Fury, approximately six weeks before a scheduled Trump
(28:15):
visit to China, introduces a strategic signal aimed at asserting
unilateral US power projection at a capacity that's incredibly high
before even walking into high stakes great power negotiations. Trump
is about to sit across the table from Shijingping, and
(28:38):
he just demonstrated to she in real time what American
and Israeli intelligence and military power can do when it
decides to act. All she could do was sit and
watch as the United States on a Saturday morning, kill
the supreme leader of a nation that she regarded as
a closed partner, destroyed that nation's military command structure, sure
(29:00):
sank its navy, isolated it from every neighboring country, all
before lunch in Beijing.
Speaker 2 (29:07):
Now, analyst at Chatham House notes.
Speaker 4 (29:10):
That Beijing might seek concessions on issues more directly related
to its interests, such as Taiwan in trade, in exchange
for its significantly watered down messaging on Iran translation. China's
tepet statement I told you about is not weakness. They're
just using it as a bargaining chip. Beijing is actually
signaling that it will not go to the mat for Iran,
(29:33):
but it's expects something in return.
Speaker 2 (29:35):
When Trump lands in Beijing.
Speaker 4 (29:37):
Next month, that's something, maybe a softer post on Taiwan,
maybe teriff relief made, have some sort of technology transfer restrictions.
The Iran operation has already become currency in our US
China negotiations. That there's one more dimension, and that ties
Venezuela to the Iran chapter to the China chapter in
(30:00):
a way that you know what, you can hold your
heads as a single coherent argument. By targeting Venezuela and Iran,
Trump's not just playing checkers, it's playing chess. Venezuela denied
China it's primary source of heavy crude in the Western Hemisphere.
Iran was China's primary discounts oil source in the Middle East. Now,
(30:25):
if the Uranian regime falls, it's not gonna be too
long before Trump could say checkmate to the Chinese if
they're stupid enough to try their hand at an invasion
of Taiwan, because China would begin that conflict with its
two primary alternate energy sources neutralized, and China would be
facing a Gulf Arab coalition that has just been violently
(30:49):
reminded why it needs us and not China. We are
still the world's largest economy, are still the world's most
lethal military. So if I was to explain to somebody
over dinner tonight, I do it in a certain way,
(31:13):
and I'll tell you about that two things next, how
you explain this to your dinner friends and to the
War Powers Act?
Speaker 2 (31:22):
Oh No,
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