America Strikes Iran

Episode Transcript
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(00:03):
Hello listeners.
Welcome to the GeopoliticalCousins podcast emergency
episode, the US Bombed Iran.
You don't need to hearanything else from me.
Email me at jacob@jacobshaer.com if youwant to send in any thoughts, comments.
I forward them to Marco and I promisein the next week or two, we will have
an email address for the podcast itself.
Okay?
Take care of each other.

(00:28):
All right?
How should we start?
Um, you know what?
We love God, don't we?
Marco?
Do you love God?
Do we love I love God.
Yes.
We love God.
He's vengeful.
Uh, he, he makes us workon, on the weekends.
I wanna first say, uh, I'm not hereif not for, uh, the dedication of
both my wife and my mother-in-lawto get childcare here on a Sunday.
So thank you to both of them.

(00:48):
And here I am, uh, Marco, I knowyou're also fighting your children
for internet bandwidth, andwe'll see if we get through this.
Um, we had grand plans to do a much moreinsightful podcast on the trade value
of global leaders around the world.
And we have to delay that too becauseobviously we have to talk about what's
going on with the US and Iran, unlessyou are living, um, in a bunker, some

(01:09):
30 miles below Fordo or in Naans.
You probably know by now that theUnited States launched airstrikes on
three different nuclear sites in Iran.
Um, detail not exactly clearon how much is damaged.
Everything from completelywiped out to meh.
Like maybe it's not gonnaset them back so much.
Uh, I think there's a lot ofreporting still yet to come on that.
Um, some of the more interesting fallouts,at least that I've seen, um, is that

(01:33):
Iran's parliament seems to have passed.
I don't know what, it's a motion,a decision to block the straight of
war moves, but it's not up to them.
It's up to the National Security Councilof Iran and they will probably not do it.
I'm sure we'll get into that.
I'm sure you saw the foreignminister of Iran is supposed to
talk to Vladimir Putin tomorrow.
Not sure what he's gonnaget from all of that.
Um, I wouldn't say that PresidentTrump and his, his cronies, his

(01:54):
lackies, um, have taken furtherretaliation off the table.
It seems pretty clear that they want,you know, an end to an, they want some
kind of nuclear deal going forward.
And they've said if there areretaliations that you know, they, that
there's much worse that could be done.
Um, but where do you want to pick it up?
Uh, Marco.
Well, I wanna pick it up atthe fact that we're both, uh,
totally in the summer vibes here.

(02:16):
Uh, game seven NBA gameseven is about to be played.
Yeah.
And, uh, too, so theend NBA season is over.
So you're, you're already in AtlantaBraves, uh, I wearing the, the
Padres, uh, famous, uh, Clementewho died tragically in an air crash.
So we're both, uh, in a baseballtheme, which is interesting.

(02:37):
And I would, yes, to be
clear though, I've, I've been in abaseball theme ever since Zion pulled his
hamstring for the first time this season.
I, I got to summer modepretty quickly, but yes.
Well, and I, and I wanna open upwith, uh, the Tupac Jaki quote.
I've been, uh, quotingfor quite some time now.
You know, uh, it's one of my favoritelines, uh, from Tupac's changes.

(02:57):
I still see no changes.
Can't the brother get a little piece?
There's war in the streets,in the war in the Middle East.
Instead of war on poverty,they got a war on drugs.
So the police can bother me.
And I start off with that.
Uh, Jacob, my favorite Tupac quote,because I mean, changes is what?
1997? Mm-hmm.

(03:17):
Lemme see.
Actually, I don't know.
I'm gonna guess it's 1997.
Um, uh, that does sound alittle bit late, but, oh my bad.
92. Um, 92, but it wasremixed later in 98.
Um, so I mean, it can't be97 'cause the man died in 96.

(03:38):
Oh, fail Marco fail.
I
mean, you, you think he's dead.
I mean, OO obviously thisincontrovertible proof here.
Anyway,
look, the point is the man recorded,uh, those lines in 19 92, 1 of the
smoothest bars that Tupac ever spit.
I still see no changes.
There's war in the streets andthe war in the Middle East.

(03:59):
I mean, here we are.
It's June 22nd, 2025.
I'm sitting in Los Angeles.
There's still, well, the media andPresident Trump would love it to be a war.
It's not really, but there's stillprotests in the streets and yes,
there is still war in the Middle East.
So the reason that it's relevantto start this way is because I've
gotten so many texts, Jacob, fromso many people who are like children

(04:21):
who have walked into an adultconversation, and that's perfectly fine.
That's why you're listening to this pod.
This pod.
The intention is to, you know, likegive you some ammunition when you're
arguing with your uncle or when youare on a text thread with your family.
The fact of the matter is thatthis is not the first time that
the United States and Iran.

(04:43):
At each other's throats.
This is not the first time that we have acrisis in the Middle East for god's sakes.
We've had 25 years of almostunrelenting warfare in the place.
Um, 1980s.
Were a a far more turbulent time forthe Middle East, and as a result for the
rest of the world, 1970s, of course, wehad a lot of things happening then too.
You and I went through this wholehistory when we talked about

(05:06):
Israel a couple of months ago.
I believe one of our first podcastswas actually war with Iran.
I think it was number two.
So,
uh,
everybody and
I, I actually remember thinking atthe time, I didn't wanna be talking
about it 'cause I didn't wannabe just another Shapiro out here
talking about Israel and Iran again.
But it was the right thingto talk about, apparently.
There it was.
And so I think that's thefirst thing I would say.
This is, this is par forthe course in that region.

(05:27):
But I will say that I have, this isa little bit different obviously,
because the US has been circling aroundthe idea of bombing these facilities
for the past, you know, 20 years.
It hasn't chosen that until today.
Uh, it's clear that Israel.
Basically prompted this, uh, I, you know,you and I have already talked about this.
Just as a recap for our listeners.

(05:49):
I don't believe that Israel warned theUnited States about their intentions.
I think that President Trump has tofront, he has to defend this narrative
that he knew that he was involved.
I think Israel told the US like two daysbefore, that's why they pulled those,
uh, people from the embassies and so on.
But the reality is that Israel, uh,is the dog and the US is the tail.

(06:13):
And President Trump, in a wayI sympathize because you don't
wanna be the tail of a dog.
You don't want to be wagged.
And so in a way, he had to do thisto ensure that American adversaries,
whether they're Russia or China, knowthat, you know, the us Sure it can be
wagged, but it can still wag prettyforcefully and it can drop a lot of

(06:33):
bombs that nobody else in the world can.
Uh, by flying, uh, B twobombers out of Missouri.
Around the world and destroyingsomething that's 80 meters,
a hundred meters underground.
So, uh, that's kind ofthe setup where we are.
And now of course, the number onequestion is how does Iran retaliate?
And the question for that reallystarts off with this theme that
I think we should hit head on.

(06:54):
We did it a little bit at the lastpodcast, but I still think it's worth it.
Regime change.
Like the argument goes, the argument,and I'm sure you've had many texts from
many people, from many walks of life.
Like my buddies on the fantasy ba uh,basketball, uh, league that I'm in, go
JBL, he's been running for over 30 years.
These guys are like really seriousabout their fantasy basketball.

(07:17):
And I, I lose all the time becausethey're really serious about it.
Um, but, uh, you know, the questionis like, look, regime change, right?
A lot of people are saying like, well,clearly regime change is an option.
Uh, and this is a reallyimportant question.
It it's not just that somelay observer of geopolitics.

(07:37):
Thinks that it's an option andtherefore we gotta talk about it.
The reason it's relevant is thatyes, if the Iranian regime feels
that they're back against thewall, who knows what they will do?
That's the thesis.
You've got an 86-year-old, areligious zealot sitting there, right?
He's, he's gonna live forwhat, not a six months Yolo.
Let's go, let's meet DMA baby.

(08:00):
Let's do it quickly.
So, you know, this is,this is where we are.
Um, and so it's a very coaching questionwe have to, uh, uh, tack on head on.
What I would say is what I've been sayingfor like a week now, for two weeks, you
cannot have regime chain from the air.
It's very difficult.
Most countries don't fall apart asthey're circling the wagons, you

(08:22):
know, just circling the wagons.
If anyone inside that circle says,Hey, you know what we should do?
We should let the Indianscome into the circle.
How about that?
Yeah.
That person gets shot.
To use the Western analogy, likeas you're circling the wagons.
This analogy, yes, comesfrom Oregon Trail era.
You circle the wagons, you'rebeing attacked, you're shooting at

(08:42):
the people outside of the circle.
Anybody inside that circle startscontemplating maybe, maybe this is the
land of the Native Americans, you know,maybe we should go back to like Arkansas.
Like, no, that person, boom, dead.
Especially in the regimeas brutal as Iran.
So if our listeners want an example ofregime chain that came about from the

(09:04):
air, it's my homeland of Serbia in 1999,NATO bombed it in 1999, NATO bomb Serbia.
18 months later there was regimechange, but there's a huge
difference between Serbia and Iran.
Enormous difference.
SLOs regime in Serbia nevershot protestors in the streets.
They really didn't.

(09:24):
They beat him up.
They offed him up.
They imprisoned them, but they didnot, I mean, there was like even
independent media in the countryduring the nineties when the guy was
like called a dictator in the west.
The truth is he really wasn't,SRBs actually elected the dude.
You know, if you wanna blameSerbia for anything, there you go.
Blame it for electing an idiot, right?
But the truth is, yeah, he stole alittle bit here and there he was.

(09:47):
He was mean, don't get me wrong.
But there, there was nowhere near thebrutality of what goes on in Iran.
So you got two things goingagainst regime change.
And why I don't think the regime isthreatened as much as people think.
There's two things going against it.
Number one is that they have no hesitationto shoot people in the streets on a
random Tuesday, let alone when they'rebeing attacked by the little Satan.

(10:12):
Okay?
That's the number oneand the great Satan up.
The second issue is that in the contextof defending themselves against Israel,
of course that is gonna be very easy forthem to basically tell everyone in the
society, like, look, it's every man up.
Everybody's gotta defend the country.
This is the moment of truth.
This comes also, you know, you heara lot of people say like, well, but

(10:34):
if there's regime change, there'llbe a government that will be more
conducive to being pro-Israeli.
The Shah of Iran, who was deposed,of course in 1979, the Shah did
recognize Israel and was relativelylike, all right, but if you wanna see
his thoughts on Israel, go on YouTube.
Watch a 19 74, 60 minute episode wherehe's actually interviewed in Tehran.

(11:00):
The antisemitism that comes out ofthis guy is like, is next level.
All right.
So like this idea that there's somealternative in Iran, they will embrace in
a brotherly embrace, their long lost, youknow, cousins, the Jews is just wrong.

(11:20):
That's just not gonna happen.
Like if there is regime change in Iran.
It wouldn't be pro-Israel, especiallynot after what just happened that would,
you would lose immediately legitimacy.
There's like civilians dying inIran right now because Israel
is bombing them, you know?
And that's just, you know, obviously war.
I'm not saying anything about it.
But the point is, the point here isthat I don't think this regime feels

(11:42):
that it's back is against the wall.
They do look vulnerable, they look weak.
This is not a good news.
They need to continue to strike Iran,uh, Israel with ballistic missiles.
But I think the first questionwe have to ask is how willing
are they to, um, go suicidal?
And the reason that's important isbecause I believe that the number one

(12:02):
thing that, uh, people are listeningto this podcast right now for is
our thoughts on how Iran retaliates,well, that will be determined by how
suicidal they feel in Tehran right now.
Mm-hmm.
So there is a hierarchy of retaliation.
I would say the number onehierarchy, the number one, uh,
this is a hundred percent certain.
This will happen overthe next 24 or 48 hours.

(12:24):
They're going to attack withmissiles, some American basis in Iraq.
That's far for the course.
They did this after General Soleimani wasassassinated by the US in January of 2020.
Many of our listeners forgot thatbecause it's a long time ago.
You can, I mean, not just that, butit was not just a long time ago.
It was also, um, right before COVID,general Soleimani was one of the

(12:48):
most popular, if not the popular,most popular human being in Iran.
Everybody loved this guy.
He was awesome.
As far as Iranians are concerned,obviously from the Israeli perspective,
American perspective, kind of a terrorist.
But you know, I'm nothere to judge whatever.
Uh, the point is he was assassinatedwhile on a diplomatic mission.
Very, very dramatic increased intentionsby the US Iran retaliated by bombing

(13:14):
some American facilities in Iraq, andPresident Trump said, I totally get that.
I understand it.
Let's move on.
That's the first thing thatI think is going to happen.
And I think it's gonna happen, andI think President Trump will react
exactly the same as he did in 2020.
The second kind of retaliation is moreserious is it would involve attacking
American assets outside of Iraq.

(13:35):
So things like Bahrain, Qatar, uh,the basis there, I think the US will
have to ret retaliate against that.
So that prolongs this crisis.
And then the third retaliation, ofcourse, is straight of MOUs for those
of you who are listening to this andwondering, why are we focusing on this?
Why not on terrorism,this, that, or the other?
Because straight of MOUs would be away where this war would finally impact

(13:58):
you at home because thus far you havenot been impacted at all that a single
barrel of oil has been lost since 2023.
I mean, it's fascinating sincethat terrorist attack by Hamas
that a single barrel of oilhas been lost from the region.
Fascinating amount ofself-control by everyone involved.
And the reality is that if Iranwere to interdict trade for

(14:20):
moose, it would interrupt thefallough of 20% of world's oil.
So yes, gasoline prices would rise.
So I'm gonna stop here and thenwe can like see what you think.
And then we can disentanglea lot of these things.
Yeah.
I wanna unpack some things.
So the first, there's a couple thingsI probably should have added to the
intro, which is one of the thingsthat is happening that I don't think

(14:41):
has, or is sort of being coveredup by, by all the, and it's hard to
cover everything right now fairly.
So I'm not, I'm not shittyon the media for that.
I have plenty of other thingsthat shit on the media for, but
Israel's been getting hit harder.
In the last couple of days,they ban public gatherings.
Um, what looked like Iranian competencenow looks at least has a semblance
of a strategy that their overwhelmingmissile defense with lower quality

(15:03):
rockets and things like that.
And then once the missile defenseis confused, um, they're coming in
with, you know, three or four orfive really high quality missiles and
causing a significant amount of damage.
So that wasn't true the lasttime that we were on the podcast.
It was just Israel spanking theIranians into the previous century.
Like I'm not saying that it's evene uh, equal right now in terms of
the damage, but they are startingto punch back and they are imposing

(15:25):
real costs, uh, inside of Israel.
So I think there's that.
I think what you said about the supremeleader is really important because to
my mind, one of the most important.
Uh, reports that came out was theNew York Times had this one that
the Supreme leader has put forwardthree names for his successor.
Mm-hmm.
If he should be takenout by assassination.
And there's, there's twothings to note there.
Number one, his son isreportedly not one of them.

(15:46):
And he, the supreme leader got in trouble.
Was that 12 months ago?
Or, I can't remember exactly when,because he was trying to put his son in
the line for who was gonna replace him.
And that was the whole point of theIranian revolution to get rid of
the hereditary monarchy and, andsort of sclerotic monarchy that
had, you know, uh, come about that.
So he is taken his son off theboard and he is gotten three

(16:07):
successors, which goes to your pointabout he's ready for martyrdom.
He's ready to meet the mahi andhe's, he's ready to sort of have
somebody else take the reign.
So he's not ready for the regimeto commit suicide, but he obviously
himself has moved in that direction.
So I think that's an important thing.
Um, I want to SI want to really underscorewhat you said about Mohammed, uh, Raiha.

(16:28):
Pavi and his views.
Um, the Iranian nuclear program did notbegin after the revolution with the IRGC.
It began with the Shah and the Shahwho gave the middle finger to Kissinger
and Nixon and the United Statessaying, nah, I sort of want a civilian
nuclear program with the languagethat the Saudis are using right now.
It was only when the regime changedthat suddenly the United States
got into a big huff about that.

(16:49):
And that's why, you know, the songthat you listen to in the intro, you
go back and read reports from the1980s, like, we have literally been
talking about this for over 50 years.
Like, this is not something new.
It's the eternal return of the same.
I think there's also a reallyimportant question about Iran's
capacity res to respond versus theirneed to, one of my scenarios was.
Maybe nuclear breakout if theirbacks were really against the wall.

(17:10):
I feel like I've seen enough tosay they don't have a nuke and
that they weren't close enough totry and put anything on the board.
Straight of horror moves, likeyou said, that's suicidal.
If the best that they've got is somepot shots at Iraq or Qatar or Bahrain,
like we're talking about a regimethat doesn't really have many options.
Um, so then like, you know, whatis the big deal in the long run?
And I actually think I, I want to goback to, to, to maybe reframe a little

(17:33):
bit and then we can back into some ofthe scenarios and, and the succession
challenges and the regime changething, which is two different people.
One of whom was my wife and anotherwhom, another whom was a friend
who was vacationing in France,which I was vacationing in France.
Um, and their questionswere actually much simpler.
They weren't, is theregonna be regime change?
Was their questionswere, am I gonna be okay?
Like, is anything gonnahit me at home with this?

(17:54):
Do I need to be worried about this?
So maybe Marco.
So let's do that.
Yeah, let's do that first, because Ithink you and I are nerdy and we wanna
unpack it, but I think, well just forthe listener who has suddenly woken up
and is like, oh, we're bombing Iran.
Like, are we gonna be okay?
Yeah.
Like, is is everything fine?
And then maybe we can back intosome of the nerdy questions.
So let's talk about that.
Think we can do a service
there.
Talk about, yeah, let, let's do that.
Uh, I was gonna tackle straightto ose, but that's because I work

(18:18):
in finance, I work for investors.
Well, and, and let's get there.
'cause I think that'swe'll actual, tangible.
We'll get there.
But, but, but I do thinkpeople are afraid enough.
They're like, oh my God, we'redropping the bombs and it's God
bless America, divine providence.
And like, am I okay?
Should I be keeping my kidsfrom like, what's going on here?
You know, so,
so here's what I would say.
I mean, like, uh, everyone who'slistening to this for the oil
price can wait until the end.

(18:38):
You know what I mean?
Uh, so yes.
Let's, let's deal with that.
So how does this become World War iii?
It becomes World War II becauseChina and Russia decides to
defend their ally and new America.
And the chances of that are negative.
They're negative percentages andyes, yes, my dear friends who
know math, no, that's impossible.
I'm fucking, I'm staking a claim righthere and creating new mathematics

(19:01):
where there's a negative probability.
You know, nobody's going to help Iran.
I mean, Vladimir Putin, you posteda, a tweet where he's saying
like, well, you gotta take intoconsideration that there's like.
Over a million Russianspeaking Jews in Israel.
Like, I'm not gonna take sides.
That, that, that, okay.

(19:21):
Let, let's just, yeah, I,I wanna quote him directly.
Somebody asked Putin whyhe wasn't assisting Iran.
His response was, I'm quoting him now.
Israel today is almost aRussian speaking country.
2 million people from the SovietUnion and Russia live there.
We take that into account.
This is from the president ofthe country that was behind the
protocols of the elders of Zionand was probably more antisemitic.

(19:42):
Then Nazi Germany and any of theothers, the reason the 2 million
Russian Jews are there is becauseyou couldn't kill them quickly enough
in Russia and in the Soviet Union.
And he's saying that they'regonna hold off on bombing Israel?
No, because of Slaviclike, uh, love connection.
I like literally, I don't know what to dowith, by the way, you can tell there is
a Slavic Jewish love connection.
It's called the Geopolitical Cousins.

(20:03):
We're showing that we can worktogether in peace, in harmony.
But that's, you know, but that'sbecause my SLS were trained by the
Ottomans and there was nobody morepro is, uh, proje than the Ottomans.
So, you know,
yeah.
They, they were up there.
They, they were, they were up there.
They were they nice.
They were, they were the oneswho sold the Jews Palestine.
If you got problems with, uh, Israeltoday, it's really the Ottomans
that you should be worried about.

(20:24):
Not so much, you know,the guys who bought it.
Uh, but, but going back to this issue,uh, so just to tell everyone who's
worried about World War iii, it's notgonna start, and it's not gonna start
because Iran finds itself in an oddlycomfortable and familiar place alone.
So this is not something that theyhave, you know, not experienced before.

(20:48):
All the talk of China, Russia, Iran Axis.
That's American propaganda guys.
And I, and I wanna turnon the TikTok camera.
Um, turn on Sponsored.
We got it sponsored by theccp by Coinbase and ccp.
Coinbase and ccp.
Um, look, this notion that thereis some access of evil out there,

(21:10):
that's American propaganda and it,it exists so that you, dear American
can give your taxpayer dollars toa trillion dollar defense budget.
But the fact of the matter is that,and I hit Saudi like Stephen Bannon
and like Dr. Carlson, but likethere is no clear strategic alliance
between Russia, China, and Iran.

(21:31):
If there was Russia would not haveto buy North Korean artillery shells,
they would've been able to buy Chinese.
Artillery shells, which are likebetter and not 70 years old.
So China has been very reticent to helpRussia and its war against Ukraine.
Yeah.
They're buying their oil, but sois American Ally, India, and on

(21:52):
Iran, the S 300 surface to airsystem that Russia gave them Sure.
Did not work well.
And Russia, uh, there was a reportin the media right at, when the
war started, Iran asked Russia forhelp, and Russia was like, sorry,
we, we just, we have our hands full.
So the fact of the matter here isthat when Putin says that it's his
love for the Russian speaking Jews inIsrael, that he can't choose sides.

(22:16):
There's a, there's a little bit of thereality that he just materially can't
because he's involved in a war that hasstretched his own country, but also that
Russia hasn't really supported Iran.
Over the last 20 years.
Russia voted for the UN sanctionsagainst Iran, the sanctions that brought
Iran to heal, and that gave us thatnuclear deal that Obama negotiated.

(22:39):
Those sanctions were imposed withRussian support because Russia does
not want Iran to have a nuclear weapon.
Russia dragged its feet for yearsto deliver the S 300 surface
to air missile that has nowproven to be completely useless.
But even that, they dragged their feet.
So Tehran finds itself very alone.
And that's a familiar place becausefrom 1980 to 1988, when Saddam Hussein

(23:03):
proceeded to kill hundreds of thousandsof civilians in Iran in a brutal
eight year war, which we need to keepreminding everyone who listens to
this, please, if you wanna know what'sgoing on right now, go Wikipedia.
Just read Iran, Iraq War.
You think that what'shappening now is a big deal?
This is a joke.
This is a bee sting.
Israel is a bee sting comparedto the grizzly attack that Iran

(23:29):
had to survive from 1980 to 1988.
The regime was brand new.
It was far more on the edge of survival.
Mere months after the 1979 overthrowof the Shah, you had religious
zealous running the country.
They just took over.
And the United States and the SovietUnion together locked in arms supported

(23:52):
Saddam Hussein's war machine against Iran.
Lemme say that again.
There weren't many things that theUnited States of America and the
Soviet Union were on the same side for.
They were on the same side here.
And every other western or advancedcountry in the world on the planet
supported Saddam Hussein, exceptironically, somewhat Israelis in alanine

(24:13):
way, way actually supported Iran.
Uh, so the point here is that for theeight years of that war backed up against
the actual wall, not some proverbialwall that CNN is telling you about.
No, no, no.
Actually, their, theirbacks were against the wall.
Iran did not lose, its cool, it foughtSaddam, uh, to a standstill actually,
you know, didn't really win the war.

(24:34):
The war ended in a, in a,in, in relatively a tie.
They did not lose an inch of theirterritory in that conflict, including the
southwestern region where the Arabs lived.
Mm-hmm.
Uh, they, they, they helped.
And so my point about this isthat this is not news to Tehran.
And if you listen to their foreignminister, who's walk, who's running
around, their deputy foreignminister was on Christiana Maur,

(24:57):
actually on CNNA couple of days ago.
They referred to this war inall of their conversation.
It was actually kind of funny becauseAmanpour, who's in my view, just terrible
journalist and honestly, I can't evenbelieve that she's still fucking, like,
has a platform, but fine, whatever.
Good for her.
Uh, well done.
Go.
I mean,
it it, it's funny that that'sthe one that calls you.
They, they trotted out John Bolton todayon CNN this morning and I was like,

(25:20):
oh my God, this walrus like, again,
but bolt, no, no.
Time out.
Time out.
I respect Bolton.
I respect consistency.
Oh.
Oh no.
Look, I respect Bolton the wayI, uh, respect like Swaggy Pete.
Like he is consistent to who he is.
AUR tries to pretend she plays a,a journalist on tv, but she's not.

(25:40):
But anyways, it doesn't matter.
Look, she keeps telling the guy as ifshe knows, she keeps telling the guy,
the deputy foreign minister of Iran,sorry, I forgot the name, but she keeps
saying, but this time is different.
What Israel is doing is muchworse than what Saddam was doing.
Oh my God.
Oh, what?
Half a million peopledied from 1980 to 1988.

(26:03):
The regime was barely, they had barelythe time to replace Shah's pictures
of the walls with that of the Aya.
You are telling me that thateight year confrontation with the
murderous psychopath that SadadHussein was not a bigger risk than
what Israel's doing right now.
You lack perspective, my friends.

(26:24):
If that is, if you are on that lineof, if you are the side of that
questioning that you don't know what'sgoing on in the Middle East, and
that's why that Tupac quote is for you.
The reason I begin this with, there's warin the streets and the war in Middle East,
it's in a song called Changes and whatTupac is trying to say, I see no changes.
Everything is the same.
My people are suffering in America.

(26:45):
That's the whole point of the song.
And he refers to war in theMiddle East there as a line.
Because if you just woke up in June of2025 and think what's happening in Iran
today is somehow news to the Iranians,then you know you need to read history.
So this is a 46-year-old regime
and in those 46 years they've seennothing but the world gang up on them.

(27:11):
And I mean, look, I'm not, I'm notstanding on the side of the ALS in Iran.
In many ways, there's a reasonthe Soviet Union in America
ganged up against you guys becauseyou're kind of radical, you know?
And talk about Maori coming back.
So yeah, everyone's gonna be against you.
But my point is that in those 46years, we can actually use that time

(27:31):
period as source of empirical data.
Okay.
So how does the regime run by abunch of theocrats and Aya react
when they're attacked by adversaries,supported by the rest of the world?
Saddam Hussein today, Benjamin Netanyahu.
Sorry.
Benjamin Netanyahu Today.
Saddam Hussein in 1980s.
What is their reaction function to this?

(27:54):
Number one, the regime does not collapse.
The regime strengthens it survives.
It perseveres because it usesthese threats to create solidarity.
Domestically, you know, I mean, ifyou are opposing the suppression
of women in Iran in 2022, it'sdifficult to shoot you in the streets.

(28:15):
But we will.
That's what Iran says.
But in 2025, if you oppose theregime while Israel is bombing
the country, you are a traitor andtherefore will be obviously executed.
Right?
So like that's, if, if these peopleare willing to shoot people who
protest against the hijab, lemme tellyou, they, they will definitely not

(28:38):
hesitate killing someone protestingwhile they're being attacked.
So that's the first thing.
The regime is safe, at least fornot, and as long as there are actual
Israeli planes in the airspace ofIran, I would bet anything that
the regime will survive that.
The second thing is that while,because they are safe, they
don't panic in these situations.

(28:58):
And your point about the 86-year-oldayatollah pointing successors and
thus willing to meet his maker.
I actually see it differently.
The fact that there is now threesuccessors means that the regime
is thinking long term, means thatthere's enough corrupt, rich, AYA

(29:18):
running around hoping that they seea 2027 model of the Porsche Cayenne.
And the reason I say that is that Ionce overheard an intelligence officer
tell me that Tehran has the highest percapita cayenne ownership in the world.
What?
What's the point of this?

(29:38):
What's the point?
The point is that these guys are notactually religious zealots anymore.
They were in the 1980swhen Sadan attacked them.
Why didn't they closethe street Tous then?
Why did they not even attempt it?
Why did they not?
I don't know, like just invadeSaudi Arabia and why would they
do it today if they didn't?
Then today they got a lot of lesslead left in their pencil, a lot less.

(30:02):
They really like that fine handstitched green leather inside a cayenne.
You are telling me that this timethey're going to be more zealous
than they were in the eighties.
I struggle to see that, and thisis why we come to the big question,
like if they actually cross somered line or maybe a pink line.
It's tough to see if it's really red, butI think they know where the line is and

(30:26):
the line is, if you mess with that 20% ofenergy that transits through the strait
of MOUs, if you look at the map, dearlisteners, Persian Gulf empties into the
Indian Ocean through the Strait of MOUs.
Very, very narrow choke point.
Many say, well, theydon't have the capacity.
If they can't defend themselves againstIsraeli fighter jets, how would they,

(30:47):
how would they close the straits?
Well, there's a problem of a symmetryhere, and the problem of a symmetry is
that they can't defend themselves against.
Israeli fighter jets, but closing theStraits of MOUs is relatively easy.
You can do it with drones, you cando it with little zodiac boats and
dinghies like the Somali pirates did.
You're attacking commercial defenselessvessels through the straits.

(31:10):
And so yes, they, they havethe capacity to do that.
It's actually really difficult forthe US Navy to protect the straight,
how do you protect it against tinydrones and tiny zodiacs filled
with like two suicide bombers, likein that famous scene in Syriana.
You know, how do you do that?
Like how do you actually do it?
The US would have no real gameplan against this, and therefore

(31:32):
the US instead of trying to openthe street, would shift towards,
let's turn Iran into a parking lot.
Something that people don't understand.
Israel is a wasp at best.
America is a grizzly bear.
Yeah.
There, there's, there's a couple things.

(31:53):
I, I, go ahead.
We'll, we'll, it'll takeus, sorry, I went on rant.
I know.
No, no, no.
That's what we're hereto rant to each other.
This is like therapy for both of us.
Um, your point about the Supreme leader.
Yeah.
I, I, I think you're right.
I think it is a sign of strengthening,strengthening the regime.
But I also think it tells you somethingabout the supreme leader himself.
I think it tells, tells you thathe might be willing to do something
radical and take the fall for it.

(32:13):
Mm. And then good point.
His successor fair, like, okay, the,the regime is, is in good hands.
But, you know, he's 86.
He's been sick anyway.
He's been on his way out.
Like, go down in a flame of glory, man.
What?
Supreme leader doesn't wanna die?
A martyr like this is the perfectdeath for that kind of person.
If he could do something.
The Straits of War moves hasnever seemed a convincing.
Um, strategy for me.
And if they don't havenuclear breakout, I dunno.

(32:35):
The, the scenario that disturbs meis, I mean, think about what Hezbollah
did in Argentina in the nineties.
Yeah.
Like, there, there is probablysome nuclear material that you
could put into some kind of dirtybomb or series of dirty bombs.
And maybe you can activate cells,different parts of the west and have
plausible deniability say that it'sthe spirit of the revolution that is
causing groups around the world toresist the great and little Satans in

(32:58):
their, you know, hearts of commerceand decadence and things like that.
Like that.
That's the scenario.
That kinda, well, canwe stop there the most?
Yeah.
Can we stop
there and then we'll go back?
Lets react to that because again,I, I, we promise to tackle the big
picture issues like nuclear war,world War iii, Russia and China
are not gonna stay with, uh, Iran.
China's deathly afraidof losing oil and energy.
Your point about terrorism,a lot of people ask me that.

(33:20):
Um, I would answer, you should a hundredpercent expect terrorist activity.
And I don't wanna be callousabout that, but I will be.
It is like saying like,there's a storm coming.
I might be hit by, uh, Thunderbolt.
You might be probabilistically.
You're not gonna diefrom a terrorist attack.
And second of all, it'spar for the course.

(33:41):
This is a regime that supportedterrorism for the last 46
years as a tool of retaliation.
So yes, absolutely there will be, andthey will use plausible deniability,
as you say, it wasn't us, you know,it was the zeal of the revolution.
Somebody somewhere, somecell caught a Holy Spirit.
Mm-hmm.
And they blew themselves up.

(34:02):
Um, absolutely.
That's that, that, that is gonna happen.
Now to, to listeners, theymight say like, oh my God.
Well, what hap what do you mean?
Like, well, I think we've seen alot of terrorism after nine 11.
Most of it is lone wolf attacks.
Most of it is, you know, whatterrorists basically realized is

(34:22):
they're pulling off a complex operation.
It's complicated and there's many, nowthat the Americans in the West are no
longer letting random people take flyinglessons in Arizona, like now that we've
become, you know, focused on that, it'sjust through revolutionary, uh, process.

(34:44):
It's just much easier beingsomebody that executes a less
complicated terrorist attack.
And so what I would say, yeah.
Go
ahead.
Sorry.
The devil's advocate there is look atwhat Ukraine just did to Russia, or
look at what Israel just did to Iran.
Like the technology has changed somewhat.
Now.
I, I think the problem for Iranis it doesn't seem like their
intelligence services are very good.
Like they've shown themselvesto be relatively poor in terms

(35:06):
of their trade craft here,especially in how the war has gone.
But if they have any good tradecraft whatsoever, like there are new
technologies out there that mightallow them to sort of make a bigger
yes, for sure indentation there.
But that's what I keep going back to.
Like everything I see from, I think you'reright, the regime probably survives.
Like all, all that feels right to me.
But the other part of this is like,and, and Tucker Carlson got to this
in his conversation with Ted Cruz.

(35:27):
Can't believe I'm on Team Tuckerhere, but he is like, you know,
'cause he's asking Ted Cruz why he's,why he wants to attack these guys.
And Ted Cruz is saying out of both sidesof his mouth, oh, they're this huge
threat and also they're incompetent.
And Tucker's like, no, no, no.
It can't be both.
Like, are they the big threat or arethey completely incompetent and we
shouldn't be wasting, um, this ordinanceon them because they can't do anything.
And my, like, I keep on lookingin Iran and I'm like, you

(35:49):
guys don't have any moves.
Like the only move you have is a straightof who moves and that's a suicide move.
So, okay.
Like, you're gonna, so we should go.
There's the basis you're gonna fire out.
Like it's, it looks bad.
So we should go there.
So that's where we should go.
Um,
and I, I also, I, I, well, I want toimplant two questions in your head while
we're talking about this 'cause For sure.
Um.
The first is, 'cause when youtalked about China, Russia, no.

(36:10):
World War ii, I also agree with that,but I think the, the, the person who
listens to us and wants to disagree withus will say, but Jacob, Marco, I thought
the cousins were on Team Multipolar.
And the world you just describedsounds very unipolar that the United
States can fly their bombers fromMissouri and like just, you know, do
a, do a song and dance afterwards.
And we did it.
We're the greatest.

(36:30):
Nobody else can hit us.
We are so good and nobody's gonnastop us and nobody is stopping us.
Like that doesn't sound likea very multipolar world.
And then the second question I wannaput in your head is, Iran is not the
only country that has tried to do this.
Uh, North Korea.
Yeah.
Got nuclear weapons.
Yeah.
Pakistan.
Pakistan, yeah.
Got nuclear weapons.
Israel got nuclear weapons.
Yeah.
Why is it, why is it thatwe're bombing these guys?

(36:51):
Why didn't we bomb North Koreabefore they got, 'cause they do it
quietly.
Because the North, the North Koreans
were pretty loud.
No, no, not really.
I mean, they, they, they rushedto it much faster and much
more quietly than Iran did.
And because Iran's been trying todo it since the seventies, there's

(37:12):
been way too many eyeballs on them.
Hmm.
And I think that, uh, that's,that's really the problem.
The other problem is thatNorth Korea had help.
Pakistan had helped, um,
Israel had help.
Israel had a ton ofhelp, you know, thanks.
Appetite.
South Africa,
was it South?
I thought it was France.
It was kind of both, but yeah, France.

(37:34):
France and then South Africa provided theuranium and supposedly the testing ground.
Oh, okay.
Good.
Yeah.
Great.
So, so thanks.
You know, like, whereas, again, theone thing about Iran is, and you gotta
admire this, by the way, as just anihilist observer of geopolitics,
like they're on their own, like.
They haven't really had any help.

(37:56):
Russia helped them with the bushof hair, nuclear power plant,
which by the way has not been hiteither by Israelis and Americans.
Probably.
'cause they don't want to causeIran to retaliate against demon,
which is the Israeli nuclearpower plant in the negative.
But the point is, um, you know,Russians help set up the power plant.

(38:17):
The issue is that they also voted at theUN to impose sanctions, as I said earlier.
So Iran is, I think that's what'sholding this back, that nobody really
wants Iran to have a nuclear weapon.
Not Russia, not China.
I mean, look, China's kindof funny in all of this.
China just wants oil totransit the strait of ous.
So they're actually, they don't
care.
No, but they're, they're actuallya factor of stability in the world.

(38:40):
And nobody even gives China credit here.
They're not encouraging Iran.
They're not encouraging Israel.
They're like, Hey guys,can't we just all get along?
You know, they're like Tupac Shakurlike, yo guys, this war in the
streets and war in the Middle East.
Can't a brother get somelike discounted oil?
Come on.
So China is not going togo on the side of I Iran.
And the reason it's not isbecause then Saudi Arabia would

(39:03):
obviously have a problem with that.
Right?
And, and China needs oil fromboth Saudi Arabia and Iran.
To your point about Multipolarity, uh, wehad a great discussion about Multipolarity
couple of months ago, and what I said isthat it's very important, especially for
Americans to understand what Multipolaritymeans and what I said almost verbatim
on this, on our show, it doesn't meanthat every country has equal power.

(39:28):
The United States of America isquantit quantitatively and qual,
qualitatively still the mostpowerful country in the world.
It's just that that power doesn't go asfar as it did during a unipolar world.
So yes, you can still fly B twosoutta Missouri and drop, uh, a very
heavy ordinance anywhere in the world.
The problem is that that's the onlyway that you can compel behavior.

(39:51):
Not the only, but pretty much the only.
In other words, it doesn'twork in a unipolar world.
You don't have to drop any bombs.
You pick up a phone and you are like,yo do X or else not just to your
enemies, but also to your allies.
So yes, you don't want to be an enemyof the most powerful country in the
world, but the problem for the US isthat the rest of the world is drifting

(40:14):
away from just doing whatever they want.
So I'm, this is consistentwith a multipolar world.
In a multipolar world, in the 19thcentury, in the 19th century, the United
Kingdom could still show up with agunboat in your port and say, what's up?
And they did that.
That was come, like that happenedall the time in the 19th century.
So did France.
So this, this and that, like us.
Maybe the only country that candrop this particular bomb on Iran.

(40:37):
But actually the reason the worldis multipolar, and the reason that
this is showing that we are right,that it is multipolar is number one,
Israel couldn't care less what theUS was doing in those negotiations.
They bombed Iran anyways.
And it shows that even a countrylike Israel has the capacity
to do something like this.
And by the way, you know who else inthe region could have done this Turkey?

(40:58):
Hmm.
So there's many, many countries,not, sorry, not bomb fardo
with a stealth bomber.
No, but when you think about like Air War,yes, there's many other countries that
can take matters into their own heads.
That's what it means.
It just means multiple veto.
But going back to your pointabout terrorism, so World
War II is not gonna happen.
Sorry, Steven Bannon.

(41:19):
I know that's your big shtick now.
You know, like I get it.
World War II started thestreets of Los Angeles.
I loved it.
By the way, I don't know if you listento this one, where he said like West LA
is the like ground zero for World War ii.
I, I didn't see that.
Although I went at, I went at himand Ben Shapiro on Twitter yesterday.
'cause I was bored and I
was just, well, he was safe.

(41:39):
He was firing away at them was, youknow, Bannon's Point was like, look,
Steven Miller, Ben Shapiro, theseguys know la they know West la You
know, Steven Miller went to likethe middle school my son goes to and
the high school my daughter goes to.
So like, and they're like, west LAis the epicenter of World War ii.
And I'm taking a strollthrough Sunny Santa Monica.
Like, you know, like peoplejogging, walking their dog.

(42:01):
And I'm like, fuck,
it's all around us.
This World War ii, you know,like, oh my God, there's a cloud.
The sun is gone.
You know?
Oh my God.
Please, Steve, Steve,man, come on our show.
Come to West LA bro.
Let's go, let's, let's check outthe mean streets of Santa Monica.
Marino, Delray, CulverCity, up to no good.

(42:23):
Let's do
it.
Live.
Live and in person.
Yes, live and in person.
Like, come on man.
Like, geez.
Anyways, look.
There is no World War III threat.
Everyone can calm down.
There is a terrorism threat.
We should expect a spike of terrorism.
And in a way it's likepar for the course man.
Like you, you know, you,you poke the hornet's nest.
Some hornets are gonnacome out and sting you.
Like if there is a terrorist attack byIran, I think, or like Iran linked sells.

(42:49):
I do think that a lot of peoplein the West are gonna be like, you
know, like, well, what'd you expect?
You expected them notto do terrorist attacks.
So really this boils down.
I mean, we've been talking for 42 minutes.
This boils down to the one thingthat actually is dramatic, and it
does take this to the next level,which is if you around closes the
straits, the strait over most,

(43:09):
which, which is underwhelming too,because as we've both said, like even
if they take it to the next level, sothen, then they get bombed into the
15th century and then it's 15th century.
It's like a two week, week thing.
But you and I know this Jacob.
Oh, we think we know this.
We've also known many things before.
Jacob, you, yeah,
I, I knew that Israel couldn'tdo this to Hezbollah and to Iran.

(43:29):
So Yes.
About, we've
known many things.
This is why our logo is two puppets.
So just because we know it well, no,
it's, it's, it's, it's why we areboth like, you know, uh, you know,
the, it was Socrates who says atthe beginning of knowledge is the
admission that you know, nothing.
Like, so let's, let's, we're willingto start over from scratch and say,
eh, like, we should take that overrather than No, no, no, no, no.
The coming war with Japan is still coming.

(43:50):
No, no, no.
I was predicting thecollapse of China in oh nine.
It's coming.
It's coming right now.
Let, I hope that the listenersknow who I'm throwing shade at.
Right?
But listen, listen, listen.
I wanna, I just wanna say thedifference between us and some
random uncle or some random dude inyour basketball league, you know?
No, no offense, Ben.
I love you buddy.

(44:11):
The difference between us is we do thisfor a living, so our view is backed
by some empirical evidence, and weneed to give that empirical evidence.
It doesn't mean that somebody random,like, I got a buddy, uh, from college,
Rafer loved this guy to death.
I would like throw myselfin front of a bus for him.
He works in, uh, industrial scaffolding.
Mm-hmm.
Just like baller, you know, andthis guy trades the VIX better

(44:35):
than any hedge fund out there.
Like, if you are running a hedgefund right now, like you've been
humbled by Ray for, I'm telling you,the guy knows how to buy and sell
the Vix like better than anyone.
He's an industrial scaffolder.
He goes upside down, buildsscaffolds inside like crazy
industrial wasteland, toxics.
I mean, he can build a scaffoldinside Fordo after it got bombed.

(44:56):
And anyways, my buddy Rafer, youknow, he, he gets, he has a really
good gut instinct for when theworld is a little too complacent.
I'm not saying that someonelike Rafer or my buddy Ben from
the fantasy League has no like.
Business In this conversation, I'm justsaying that when you and I give a view,
it's at least backed by like some data.

(45:17):
So what is the data in this case?
The data is that in 46 years that Iran,the regime has existed, it's never
truly tried to close the strait of ous.
And we just have to askthe question like, but why?
If this is such a huge thingthat they have on the rest of the
world, why haven't they done this?

(45:39):
You know, why, why not?
And so, uh, the immediate answer that'slike an amateur would say is like, well,
it's never been threatened like this.
We just unpacked why it hasbeen threatened like this
by Saddam in the eighties.
Um, why you can't reallyhave regime change with an F
16, that's not gonna happen.
Mm-hmm.
So, so why?

(46:00):
And the, and, and the simpleanswer is, well, their own
oil goes through the strait.
I disagree that that's an issue.
They could just attack Saudifacilities across the Persian Gulf.
Mm-hmm.
You know, why not do that?
And the answer for this is that yes,the retaliation against them would
be so total and they have no ability.
Like the rest of the world is not gonnabe concerned about pushing vessels

(46:24):
through the strait, as they said.
That's gonna be tough to do.
And precisely because it's difficult tointerdict little tiny dinghy zodiac boats.
Precisely because that is notreally in the arsenal of the west.
The west Saudi Arabia, Israel, everybodywould just turn Iran into a parking lot.

(46:47):
In a way it's a nuclearoption for the regime.
It's, it, it is their nuclear option.
And, and except they only have onenuke, they can deploy it in the strait.
They close that thing and then they getturned into a parking lot and there's
nothing they can do if they can't stop.
Israeli F sixteens, whichhave very little ordinance.

(47:09):
Now, this is a fighter jet.
This isn't a bomber for a reason.
If they can't prevent F sixteensfrom bombing, they cannot prevent the
strategic might of the United Statesof America, which is not like America's
not gonna use B two bombers, guys.
It will throw everything atthem 1950s, 1960s bobbers.
The US will absolutely turnand, and it will be punitive.

(47:31):
Just like the Air Waragainst Serbia was punitive.
It wasn't tactical.
It wasn't even strategic.
Once the US realized that SLO DemiSVI was not going to withdraw the
troops out of Kosovo and that hewasn't playing by the rules of war,
he wasn't turning on his air defensesystems, the US proceeded to degrade

(47:52):
Serbia's industrial economic capacity.
This is what would happen to Iran as well.
And so this is why we have the viewthat we have for those of you listening,
because we are seeped in the knowledge ofthe region and history and the behavior
of Tehran over the last 46 years.
Now, I completely concede that mybuddy fer could still crush us, right?

(48:13):
Because hey, sometimes afresh pair of eyes is better.
They see something from a differentperspective and say, yeah, but
this time I think is different.
And ultimately, if you are an investorright now, you like the risk as
symmetry is skewed towards higherVix at, at the very least, and over
the next couple of days, perhapseven higher oil prices from here.

(48:34):
I mean, obviously we're allwaiting for Iran's retaliation.
It's gonna come oil prices spike.
But I do think that at some pointthere's going to be an epic opportunity
to fade all of that because Ithink that there is a gravitational
pool almost by like a giant star.
You can't see here is like ablack hole that you cannot see.

(48:54):
That's pulling Iran's retaliation andbehavior towards a set of standardized
moves that it's done over 46 years.
And that gravitational pull that youdon't see, that black hole that, that
most people can't identify is thatlike, bro, if they do this, they're
going to face the might of the us.

(49:16):
And before I stop my rant, Ijust wanna say one more thing.
I know I've said it many, many times inthis show, but for those of you who are
listening to this for the first time,go on Wikipedia and read about, no, no.
Wikipedia is a great source.
Like if you're just like an anamateur geopolitical, you're just
interested, like what are you gonna do?
You know, you can't read booksand stuff, you don't have time.
You have a busy life.
You're on the show to try to figureout what to read on Wikipedia.

(49:38):
Well, here's one operation,praying mantis critical.
So when I said that Iran has neverattempted to close the straits,
that's not necessarily correct.
They did try very, very gingerlyto dip their toes into this.
Idea.
They mined the strait a little bit.
One of those mines hit an American vessel.
The United States of America in thenext 72 hours sunk their Navy and

(50:01):
attacked their energy facilitieson Kag Island to the point where
the International Court of Justiceactually sided with Iran many years
later saying that the US was punitiveand unproportional in their reaction.
And America was like, fuck yes, we were.
And do it again.
And you'll see what we'll do next up.
I'm, I'm glad you brought that up.
'cause this is, this is one of the thingsthat's bothering me, like in, in the

(50:23):
category of things that I don't know,um, how is it that Israel and the United
States can, A, do what they've alreadydone to Iran and b to your point, if
they close the straight, like, you know,bomb them into the medieval period back
to when, you know, the Iranians weresipping Shiraz and writing poetry and
inventing algebra and things like that.
Like how can they do that?
And yet they can't stop the Houthis.

(50:45):
Like, you know, yeah, I Ananswer just six weeks, weeks ago.
No, no.
We were talking about like, no.
Easy.
Yeah.
Go, go, go.
Easy, easy, easy answer to that question.
My friend and I, I believe I already saidit on this podcast a couple of weeks ago.
The Houthis are perfectlycomfortable living on tattoo.

(51:05):
Yemen is tattoo.
For those of you who are notfans of Star Wars, uh, I'm not
going to clarify that statement.
You should fucking watch Star Wars.
Another thing to Wikipedia,
you know what I mean?
The Houthis are fa perfectlycomfortable with being in tattooing.
The Iranians are not.

(51:26):
Yeah, but it's, it's not even like I, I Ihear you on that, but it's not even that.
It's, it's, it almost seems likethe Houthis got more shots on goal
against us Air assets that werepummeling them than the Iranians did.
I mean, if, if you listen to Hegsethand, and not just Heg, I mean,
hegseth was like way over the top.
It was, it was gross,the level of propaganda.
But the four star who stood next tohim, who spoke after him, who was like

(51:47):
your typical American military officer,like straight lace, like very honest,
empirical data to back everything.
He was basically like, yeah,they didn't even see us coming.
Like, they didn't get a shot off,like, wait a minute, decoy stuff.
And we knocked out some defensesand like, they didn't get what,
like they had no clue we were there.
I think, whereas the Houthis, likethe Wall Street Journal was reporting
that, like the Houthis were like closeto taking down drones and like getting

(52:08):
shots off on, but, but US assets.
Okay.
But, but drones versusstealth bombers is different.
Stealth bombers fly very, very high.
The drones can be seen like withyour open eyes and you can shoot them
with the, you know, like, I mean it'sobviously I'm making it simple, but.
I just don't think it's different.
It's the same.
It's not the same thing.
And the US did not commit as manyassets, nor did it like drop.

(52:30):
Why would you drop this ordinance?
Why would you drop theBusters and the Houthis?
The Houthis are verydifficult to impose paint on.
You know, the Houthis are like thehomeless guy in the alley with a knife.
No offense to the Houthis, by the way.
Don't come after me.
I love you guys.
You know, go Sam.
People like of tattoo.
You guys are fucking awesome.

(52:51):
And you know, I think George Lucashimself like rebuild the story of
the Sam people in the subsequent,uh, star Wars series because they
also have feelings and families.
And we should think aboutthat too, by the way.
People have no ideawhat I'm talking about.
They didn't watch Star Wars.
And honestly, I don't want you as alistener, if you didn't watch Star Wars.
God, anyways.
Look or do.

(53:11):
Yeah.
Wait, here's the difference.
You face a homeless guyin the alley with a knife.
Why are you afraid of him?
Because he's got nothing to lose.
He's a homeless guy inthe alley with a knife.
So that's why it's difficult Jacobto like, when you say that America is
going to push Iran into the medievalage, Yemen is kind of already there and

(53:33):
that's why the Houthis just don't care.
Their pain tolerance is infinite.
That's the point.
Iran and the people in Iran, andparticularly the regime that has
enriched itself through corruptionand the sanctions and everything else,
the fact that their Porsche, cayenneper capita ownership is the highest
in the world, tells you something.
This is a regime thatdoes have a lot to lose.

(53:56):
They don't want to live on tattooing.
And so that's the difference.
I think it's very difficult for theUnited States of America to conduct
punitive airstrikes against Yemen.
Saudi Arabia found that outduring their war with Yemen.
The Houthis are like just whatever,like, oh, you're gonna bomb us.
Cool.
I'm gonna go back to the cave.
No, I don't mean the cave where like I go.
When you bought me, I mean my home.

(54:17):
I'm perfectly comfortablewith this existence.
I'm perfectly comfortablewith its existence.
Like, like this is what Yemen is like.
I'm, this is it.
It's tattooing.
Yeah.
Whereas, yeah, and then maybe they're,they're all chewing Kat too, so maybe
they're just all like, yeah, that's,
you know, maybe we should be doingsome of these podcasts on Kat too.
Maybe that will make us like lesslike, but look, my point is that

(54:38):
Iran doesn't have that option anduh, that's what the difference is.
Their pain tolerance is surprisingly a lothigher, one could say, but that's because
Iran is a sophisticated, educated, modern,technologically advanced country that
doesn't want to become tattoo overnight.
Whereas Yemen is tattooing.
Yeah.

(54:59):
Okay.
Well, here, here, let's, let's, uh, let'sround out on some long-term thoughts here.
'cause I've been, I've been playingaround with this notion that, um,
maybe Donald Trump would've been theperfect unipolar president, but he's
actually the wrong multipolar president.
And that somebody like Bill Clinton orBarack Obama, they were bad unipolar
presidents, but they would've beenreally good multipolar presidents.
And I say this becauseit seems to me that.

(55:21):
This is the, the US strikes on Iranare part of the general pattern
of Trump foreign policy, which isshort-term wins for long-term losses
because I, I don't think there areactually going to be huge implications.
Like I, I don't think they'regonna close the straight, if they
do, it won't last for a long time.
It seems pretty clearthey don't have a nuke.
If they did, they would'vebeared their teeth by now.
So maybe that doesn't happen.
Well least they would've exploded

(55:43):
it to show
they have Yeah, like something like for,you know, you've, you've got bros on
Twitter, like, you know, reading SeismMcGrath in Iran being like, is this it?
It's like, no.
If it was, it like, you know, they,they did their movie thing about this
is gonna be remembered for centuriesand it was a couple of missiles.
Like, nice, okay, great.
Like there's, there's some coolmissiles, but they're not there.
But the point being, um, youknow, the Trump administration

(56:04):
is taking short-term wins.
So yes, it get, it's probablygonna get short-term wins and
trade deals with European countriesand China and things like that.
But in the long run, you've basicallyjust ensured that Europe doesn't want to
be dependent on you anymore and becomesprobably a competitor down the road.
Do you think that there is somethingto the, to the notion that, you know,
your China, your Russias, even yourEuropes is looking at US behavior here.
And even as some of these countries areclapping and saying, thanks for taking out

(56:27):
the trash, they're also saying, man, thisis the us Like they could do this to me.
Like, they could do this to anyone.
They're gonna say two weeks and thenthey're gonna turn on a bombing.
Like, we don't trust the us.
Or do you think that that's tooweeny, you know, liberal of a
position and it's like, no, no, no.
Like, like nobody's gonna think that.
It's just gonna be like, Hey,this is, this is the world that
we're in right now in the UnitedStates is doing what it's gonna do.

(56:49):
And like, there's mad respectthere and everybody else is
gonna go do their own thing.
Like, where do you, where do you fall on
that?
The multipolar world is the world whereeveryone's gonna do what they're gonna do.
You know, that's why it's dangerous world.
But it's also a world where,uh, because normative and
ideological issues don't matter.
Morality doesn't matter.
That makes it safer.
I have to say, and this, thisobviously shows that I'm a

(57:10):
realist, a brutal realist.
Uh, and many will disagree with me, but Iwould say that Donald Trump is including
President Trump and including andincluding the Supreme leader because
this is a very religious, like,ideological conflict on both sides.
At least.
At least in the waythey're talking about it.
Not really like let go.
No, I would disagree, Jacob, becauseif it was President Trump wouldn't
say things like, look, we bombed Ford.

(57:32):
Oh, and now it's over.
It's time for peace.
So I actually think that Donald Trump isthe perfect president for a multipolar
world, and I would applaud him in manyways on the way he has pivoted the
US towards a much more Machiavellianway of thinking about foreign policy.
Now, before I get accused of being callousand stuff, lemme just break it down.

(57:52):
The reason that I don't think Bill Clintonwould've been good in this situation, and
definitely Joe Biden would not have been.
Because every time a moralistic liberalinterventionist president who's in charge,
they don't know when to land the plane.
Once you paint a regime as immoral, youneed to take it all the way with them.

(58:15):
You cannot sit down and negotiate.
You need an immoral, immoral,immoral foreign policy.
In a multipolar world,that's what's a requirement.
You cannot choose what country is good,what country is evil, because if you
do, then how do you stop having anantagonistic relationship with them?

(58:36):
How do you stop, sitdown and say, okay, cool.
Look, we bombed Florida.
You know, you know what we can do.
Now we understand that, uh, youknow, we don't want regime change.
Look what President Trump said afterbombing, uh, the u uh, Iran, and
then he said, repeated it today,that they don't want regime change.
That is something that liberalinterventionists cannot do.

(58:58):
If you have a moralistic compass,how do you stop yourself?
How do you say, this is enough?
We've done enough.
You can't do that.
You have to say, how manytimes have we invoked Hitler?
How many times have American presidentsinvoked Hitler as an analogy for some
leader, they don't like, whether it'sneocons or liberal interventionism.

(59:20):
And that's where neocons, neoconservativesand liberal interventionists are the same.
They couch everything in the termsof morality of good and evil.
And so if some country is, you know,is going against American interests,
you cannot couch it in the, in thewords of real politic of realism.

(59:41):
You couch it in terms of morality.
But once you do that, once you step intothat world, how do you slow yourself down?
How do you stop bombing a rod?
How do you decide that this was enough andnow it's time for negotiations and peace?
So I would say that Donald Trumpis a product of his environment.
I would say that Barack Obama triedto do this, but he was not consistent.

(01:00:01):
I would, as I've said before, Ithink Obama and Trump are similar
in that both of them recognizedthat the world is multipolar.
I just think he was tougher for Obamabecause he surrounded himself with
liberal interventionists who are veryliberal, very moralistic, very normative,
and they would always kind of saylike, that's what happened in Libya.
Look, Gaddafi is a bad guy, but he gaveup his chemical and biological weapon

(01:00:26):
program for guarantees of stability.
Was bombing him the right message to make?
Well, first of all, obviously not asthe Italians warned, the west collapse
of Libya would lead to a migrationcrisis in Europe, and they were right.
So Italy was opposed to this.
Barack Obama understood these risks,but he let France in the United

(01:00:46):
Kingdom take the lead in 2011.
So he wasn't, I think, brutal enough.
He wasn't realist enough,although he tried to.
Present himself as a realist becausehis enemy on foreign policy was neocons.
President Trump's enemy onforeign policy is both neocons
and liberal interventionists.
And so I would say that he's a perfectpresident actually for a multipolar era.

(01:01:10):
Now, we will see, right, is he able toconduct a limited strike against Iran?
It will require him to takethe retaliation straight in the
face like a man and then not doanything in, in re taliation.
In other words, he cannot getsucked in by idiot journalists and

(01:01:31):
tackle trade talk and Twitteratisaying that weak for not responding
to something Iran is about to do.
And to his credit, he showed thatconsistency in January of 2020.
He, he, he, he orders the assassination,which was illegal by International Law
of General Soleimani, Iran freaks outbombs, some American basis in Iraq.

(01:01:54):
At that point, a Bill Clinton, a GeorgeBush, a Joe Biden, a Hillary Clinton.
And yes, even Barack Obama does a lotmore in retaliation because they have to,
because they feel compelled by morality.
Our troops were endangered, andPresident Trump said, of course,
our troops were endangered.
That's par for the course.

(01:02:16):
I understand why Iran had to retaliate.
I consider this matter over,that's almost verbatim, the tweet
he sent after Iran retaliated.
That is a multipolar president.
You know, that is somebody who can have,and this is why most commentators right
now, Jacob, and I know you also disagreeas I do, but most commentators see this as

(01:02:36):
a slippery slope towards a confrontationbecause you're almost counting on this
reflexive need for America to couchtheir enemies in morality normative
like, so the reason this is a slipperyslope is now we're gonna build a case
that Iran is evil and blah, blah, blah.
Immoral, immoral Presidentdoes not have to couch the Iran

(01:02:59):
as, as that kind of an enemy.
He can say things like,I respect Iranians.
They're hard negotiators.
They should have taken my deal.
They didn't.
I had to punch 'em in the mouth.
I understand why they're retaliating.
I'm ready to talk when they are.
And if they cross our red lines,we turn them into a parking lot.
Well, yeah, and this is why,like, it's not a slippery slope
because they can't respond.

(01:03:20):
There's no way.
Like if they had, if, if they nuked NewYork City, but the problems Jacob or if
they like blocked the straight for mooseand they could keep it closed for a month,
like Yeah, but I don't think they'vegot, I don't think they have any cards.
But see, Jacob, you're lookingat this as like a objective
analyst and God bless you.
I want to kiss your recedinghairline because of it.
Thank you.
Yes, thank you.
I, I love you for it.

(01:03:41):
But the, the issue is a normativepresident, whether of a NeoCon ilk
or a liberal interventionist ilk.
Would've taken any Iranian retaliationas a sign that they're evil war mongers
led by Adolf Hitler in clerical robes.
And thus, it is a reasonfor regime change.

(01:04:04):
And thus, it is a reason to smitethis evil that has come under the
very heart of the hell and pursue aholy Jihad on behalf of human rights.
And that's the difference in amultipolar, in a unipolar world.
The reason that Joe Biden, in many waysis a very nice guy, great legislator,

(01:04:28):
you know, but the reason he was the wrongpresident for Multipolarity is because
I don't think that Joe Biden and hislike Cory of experts around him would
have been able to deftly and nimbly justignore what's coming out of Iran because
Jacob, you and I both know there is someretaliation coming, some American service.

(01:04:49):
Men and women might be in danger, mightbe even killed in this retaliation.
Joe Biden can't allow thatto happen because he believes
there's right and there's wrong.
And the truth is that in today's worldof Multipolarity, I mean there is still
right and wrong, don't get me wrong,but unfortunately, you don't have
the ability to respond to every rock.

(01:05:10):
That is the point becausethere's multiple threats.
It's a multiple world and you, UnitedStates of America may be the most powerful
country in the world, but your poweris stretched thin around the world like
too little butter on too much toast.
To quote Jr. Token.
Yes.
Uh, it's hard being a ring bearer.
I, I think, um, that's why, uh, I,I think you're right about Obama.

(01:05:31):
Like, uh, Obama got so much flack for thered line in Syria, but that was actually
the, like, one of the most impressivethings he did in the foreign policy of
his, of both of his terms, which is hemade the stupid mistake about setting
a red line about yes, the Assad regimeuse of chemical weapons and then like,
they used chemical weapons and then like,the drumbeat started, like, I remember,
I think I was still at Strat war atthe time, like, uh, like John Kerry

(01:05:54):
was, was going on CNN and thunderingaway about how like the red line had
to be honored and things like that.
And Obama said, eh, like,we're not, like, no.
Well, I'm, I'm not doing that.
Jacob, like, I'm pulling back.
It's, it's interesting.
I would, I would have to saythat setting a red line is
stupid in a multipolar world.
He made a mistake.
Yeah.
But he didn't double down on themistake, but he didn't double down on it.

(01:06:14):
And that was correct.
Like he, he, you know,took it in the face.
He took the punch.
But that's exactly the point.
In a multipolar world, youcan't be, you can't be preachy.
You can't be going around theworld saying like, Iran is evil.
Like, well, that's your opinion,man, to quote another great movie.
But,
but this is sort of where yourargument is on a little bit of a,

(01:06:34):
is on like, doesn't like, becauseTrump has gotten preachy about this.
His red line is no nuclear weaponsfor this regime, and it's gone from
I want a nuclear deal, blah, blah,blah, to no, no nuclear weapons.
Like that's his new line.
Well, okay.
That's, that's, that's adifferent issue though.
Uh, first of all, it's very clear.
It's like objective, it'sphysical, it's materialistic.
It's not like we need Iran to changeits behavior towards its own people.

(01:06:59):
Yeah.
He's never said that.
No, of course not.
You know, but that's, but that's,that's the issue because it is a
actionable, it is a limited and it isa clear delineation of what American
interests are, and then that's it.
But so was Obama.
It's like, I'm just saying it, it isa red line, like where three weeks

(01:07:21):
ago he, he was nothing like, there isnow a red line for the United States
and maybe he won't, like, listen,maybe he won't follow through on it.
Well, okay, fine.
To be consistent.
To be consistent.
Then what I would say is that I dothink that Barack Obama also made
a mistake for not attacking Syria.
Oh, for not, not following through.
Yeah.
Not following through.
Because look, they use chemical weapons.

(01:07:42):
You can just bomb the shitout of Syria and move on.
This is my point, thisis my point right now.
Too many people are extrapolating thisinto regime change, boots on the ground.
Why?
For God's sakes, maybeit's 'cause I'm Serbian.
Maybe because it's, I watch my hometownburn on CNN Live maybe because of that.

(01:08:07):
I remember the one example wherethe US did something limited and the
rest of you just forgot about it.
'cause nobody cares about Serbiaexcept when we're, you know,
kicking your ass in sports.
Um, but, okay.
Okay, look, time out.
In 1999, bill Clinton showed upand said, look, uh, you need to
remove your military from Kosovo.
Serbs.
Were like, Yolo, you know, youknow, show us what you got, nato.

(01:08:32):
Great idea.
Thanks.
Slow it on.
And then, you know, three months of liketaking it in the face, the servers were
finally like, okay, fine, fine, fine.
They cried.
Uncle, the point is that at no time wasthe United States of America planning an
invasion of Serbia because they would'vehad to face a bunch of yoki and Djokovics
like, fuck, you don't wanna do that.
So like, they were like, look, we'rejust gonna bomb the shit out of

(01:08:52):
you until you change your behavior.
And this is why I would say toeveryone who right now is just
saying like, oh, it's another Iraq.
It doesn't have to be, there are waysto use effectively what we call a
political science gunboat diplomacy.
You steam a gunboat into the port,you show the caliber of your big
guns, and then, you know, youchange behavior of a country.

(01:09:15):
It doesn't have to be a slipperyslope into invasions, into regime
changes, into, you know, Americanservicemen d dying in some random place.
The point is, it's in a limited attack.
I think Barack Obama shouldhave done that in Syria.
I don't see why he didn't.
It's because, of course, the demonsin his skeleton were left over by the
previous administration and he, he feltpolitically that he couldn't do that.

(01:09:37):
I think President Trump hascorrectly, in a way, I mean, obviously
what was incorrect was lettingIsrael wag him at like a tail.
But let's leave that aside.
Let's leave that aside for a second.
Now that it's happened, he did it.
And then what did he flag to Iran?
This is very important.
He said to Iran, it's notregime change, and this is it.
We're done.
We are done.
You guys can now decide where youtake this, but we don't think we, we

(01:10:01):
don't care that you're an evil regime.
God bless you for it.
Go ahead being evil, just be verycareful how you retaliate against this.
That is limited.
Im not immoral, immoral way toconduct foreign policy based
on hardened material interests.
And I think it's a new, it, it is a,it's almost a conscious acceptance by

(01:10:23):
America that it's a multipolar world andyou cannot be running around the world
trying to turn countries into fuckingWisconsin with your foreign policy.
'cause it doesn't work.
Yeah.
I, I think you're slightlymischaracterizing what trump's I, I
think you're like 85% of the way there.
But the other part that you'veleft unsaid, it's not like,
okay, fine, you could be evil.
He doesn't care about that.
But he is also clearly said, and you'renot going to have nuclear weapons.

(01:10:46):
That's, and I've made it clearsince my first term, but that's
American interest, that you'renot gonna have nuclear weapons.
Now, I don't think this is gonna happen,but let me throw you a scenario at you.
Like, for, for devil'sadvocacy's sake, please.
Like, let's say the Iranians, uh, havea successful test of a nuclear weapon
tomorrow, after this bombing, aftereverything that's happened, like.
Trump can't abide that can, of course not.
He's gonna have to figureout how to do more.

(01:11:07):
Yes, that's fine.
So like, there, there, there isa line here now, which is, it's
not just go do your own thing.
This matter is closed, it'snow you will not have nukes.
And I've committed the US military tomaking sure you will never have nukes.
Have a nice day.
I don't listen, listen,here's what I would say.
The, the difference is notthat there is no way for this
to become a slippery slope.
The difference is that that wayis not moralistic or normative.

(01:11:29):
Yes, yes.
And that's, but, but, but thereason that's important, Jacob.
The reason that liberal approachto foreign policy is dangerous in a
multipolar world is because it sucksyou into a never ending conflict.
Once you identify some somebodyas Adolf Hitler, once you identify

(01:11:51):
somebody as a Nazi regime, you mustintervene and you must spend all
your resources on that intervention.
That's important.
You can set.
You can order a countryto change their flag.
Don't use green, use red.
You can order them to nothave a nuclear weapon.
You can order them to stopwearing hats for Atlanta Braves
and embrace the revolution.

(01:12:11):
That's the La Dodgers.
God bless them, please.
And I can't wait for that revolutionto spread to the LA Lakers.
You will all be wearing blueand purple and gold, goddammit.
But listen,
you're, you're welcome forFreddie Freeman, by the way,
you, of course.
Thank you so much.
And also for the Toronto mapleleaf, uh, not maple leaf, my bad.
The Blue Jays, you know, for the Oscar.

(01:12:32):
And of course, let's not forgetthe Boston Red Sox for Freddie.
If
you're listening, I cannotbelieve you left us for them.
I cannot believe whatcha talking about
Mki Te Oscar, Freddy Japan.
He could have gone down.
He could have gone down as one of thegreatest figures in storied Atlanta.
Brave's history.
No.
You wanted to go home.

(01:12:53):
Wanted to, to Southern California.
I'm, oh, I'm sorry, Jacob.
I'm sorry.
Apparently you could still live in
Southern California.
Come, apparently
the epicenter of World War III is anice place to live, and apparently
that helps teams here attract talent.
Well, listen, listen, listen, listen.
My point is that this is the keydifferentiator in a multipolar.
You can set all sorts of red lines.

(01:13:13):
They can be stupid still, you can stillmake mistakes, but those red lines are
not whether or not somebody is evil.
And my point, my point to youand to everyone listening to
this, I'm not an evil person.
I don't cheerlead for 21stcentury like Hitlers out there.
The reality is that in a multipolar world,the power of the United States or any

(01:13:35):
other great power is, is, is, is limited.
There are limits to that.
It's not preponderance of power.
You cannot just parachute into somecountry and turn it into Wisconsin and.
Make it less evil.
And so the foreign policyhas to adjust for that.
And that's where PresidentTrump, I would say, is a perfect
president for a multipolar world.
What I fear, what I fear is theDemocratic Party, because it does have

(01:14:00):
the Trump derangement syndrome, is goingto throw the baby with the bathwater.
And listen, lemme tell you like Trump isa baby, he's got some stinky bath water.
Alright?
There's, there's a lot of stuffthat needs to be thrown out as far
as the bath water is concerned.
But the one very, very goodthing is that I, I think that his

(01:14:24):
approach to foreign policy is goingto withstand the test of time.
But I do fear that it could beideologically resisted by the next
Democratic president in 2028 or beyond.
Merely because it wasTrump's foreign policy.
It's not Trump's foreign policy.
It's matter Nic, foreign policy.
It's Kissinger's foreign policy.
It is a foreign policy of anybodywho's existed in the past, which

(01:14:47):
is you cannot just identify youradversaries as morally inferior.
Because once you do that, you don'tknow when to stop the war and actually
sit down with them and negotiate.
It becomes impossible to do that.
And therefore every freaking war thenbecomes a war of existential proportions
where yes, you do push countries tothe brink of existential survivor.

(01:15:12):
Survivor, survivor, wait, survival.
And then they do all sorts of things inretaliation because you put them to that.
That's why this kind of a conflict,this kind of a, a military action
that just happened is unique.
And I think everybody listening tothis should go and read like President
Trump's like tweet hack sets.

(01:15:32):
Yes.
Um, like, um.
Press conference.
Why?
Because America is telling its adversary.
We're not seeking regime change.
You wanna go and like do whatever youwant to Your people go right ahead.
We think that's stupid.
We think you are bad actors.
We think you're repressing women, butit's not our place to change that.
Good luck to you with that.

(01:15:54):
You know, we think your timeis up anyways because you are
an amoral country, whatever.
But we're not gonna punish you for that.
We're gonna punish you for this thinghere, which is your nuclear program,
and then we're open for negotiations.
Yeah.
Alright, last words.
Um, 'cause I'm, I'm on the clock.
Uh, my last thing is just like, and thisis not the thing that's gonna like, you

(01:16:14):
know, people wanna talk about and thingslike that, but for me, what's salient
when you step back from all of thisis that, um, like you said, probably
not World War iii, probably not eventhat big of a deal in the short run.
Like probably this goes the way of India,Pakistan, Russia, Ukraine, maybe a slow
burning crisis that continues, that weall get acculturated to and normalized to.
And like that, that's sort ofwhere I think it's heading.
But I do think when you take a stepback and look at the world now, the

(01:16:36):
Eurasian landmass is in trouble.
Like there are problems everywhereand brush fires everywhere.
And the places where there are not brushfires or places like South America,
and I know that Southeast Asia is stilltechnically part of the ian land mess,
but Southeast Asia looks pretty good too.
And Australia, Oceanialike looks pretty good.
I wouldn't throw Sub-Saharan Africa inthere 'cause they've got lots of problems.
But I think if you're just looking aroundthe world for relative stability, like

(01:16:58):
there are pockets of relative instability.
It's just not in Eurasia.
And there's something happening likeacross the Eurasian land mass, which as,
as somebody who's trying to step backand not try, 'cause you know, you can
fade geopolitics and think about trading,but if you're thinking about frameworks
like beyond the short term and thinkingabout 5, 10, 15 years from now, um, I
think we're actually having a very starkrelief where the places of stability in

(01:17:20):
the world are and where the places ofinstability in the world are going to be.
And for me, that's the big lessonhere because we've had all of
these conflicts in, in, in shortsuccess, in in short succession.
And like we, we are also seeingwhere there isn't conflict.
And for me, like that's the lesson.
Uh, like, and that's how I'm tryingto think about reorienting things.
What about you?
So, first of all, uh, I'm notgonna disagree with you on Latin

(01:17:41):
America and Southeast Asia.
I love those two places.
I think they're gonna do great.
However, I do wanna disagree with you.
Good.
I, I think there is a concept of agarrison state, and I think that too
many investors and too many commentatorsjust look in the region and they say
like, oh my, I don't wanna be there.
Not a single barrel of oil hasbeen lost since October 7th, 2023.

(01:18:05):
And I'm like, the only analyst outthere that points that out repeatedly.
Not a single barrel of oil hasnot made it to the global market.
In other words, Iran andIsrael could nuke each other.
The rest of the world can move on.
Mm-hmm.
And that's because oftentimes it's in theregions of instability that you find, the
gems, that's where things start moving.

(01:18:27):
That's where countries realize we gottaget better because we're not safe.
You know?
So I look at what'shappening in Saudi Arabia.
I look at what's happeningin Dubai Abu Dhabi.
I. These are countries literallyin the middle of all these
rockets go flying back and forth.
And I'm not sure that I would notwanna like, visit those countries
or invest or, or, or, or havea condo like, or go for fun.

(01:18:49):
Like I absolutely would.
And I absolutely have been over thelast two years going in and out seeing
the changes that are happening there.
Similarly with countries in Europe, likeEurope is taking the challenge from Russia
and is actually doing the right things.
Poland, you know, I mean theeconomists jinx Poland by putting
them on the cover of their magazine.
But the point, the, the one thing Ithink where we, we agree, I think Latin

(01:19:13):
America is gonna do very well SoutheastAsia too, but I think that there's
pockets of stability on this brush fire,uh, affected Eurasian, uh, landmass.
And I think that's where innovation,and that's where entrepreneurship,
and that's where vigor and that'swhere, uh, you know, actual.

(01:19:35):
Productivity will be shown up becausenecessity is the mother of all invention.
So I like the concept of Garrisonstates and I want to invest in those.
Gotcha.
All right.
Uh, before we go breaking news, you ready?
Yes.
Uh, the Phoenix Suns have agreed totrade Kevin Durant to the Houston
Rockets for Jalen Green, DylanBrooks, the number 10 pick in this

(01:19:55):
year's draft and five second roundpicks what a poo poo platter this is.
Uh, so you can react to that oryou can make your picks for Game
seven tonight before we say goodbye.
Well, I'm definitely, uh,I think game seven, man.
I mean, you know, it's UnitedStates versus Iran, right?

(01:20:16):
Ooh, spicy.
Yeah.
OKC man, the heartland,the MAGA heartland.
They just got like stealth bombers andthe Canadian assassin, you know, they're
just like, yeah, so much more powerful.
But man,
the Pacers have the Caliban.
And my heart wants the Pacers to win.
But you know, I, I do thinkOKC is going to prove to be

(01:20:40):
just overwhelmingly powerful.
You think OKC looked scared to me?
I know they're young.
I, I listen man.
I know, but would you putmoney on the Pacers though?
That's such a, like,it's a, it's a crazy bet.
You know, it's, it's gonnabe the, it's Oklahoma.
There's, their fans are not gonnasit down and they're just so good.
Like SGA is like so good.

(01:21:03):
I agree with you though, that the Pacersplay with no weight on their shoulders.
Uh, whereas the thunder do, andlook, I'll tell you this, Jacob
Shapiro, if there is a God.
He'll let the Pacers win.
I wouldn't have put money on, Iwouldn't have even thought, I, I
thought the Pacers didn't have achance until game six and now, yeah, I
think I might throw some money becauselike the kcs seem seemed scared.

(01:21:27):
Like they seem like they didn'tknow what to do and like they really
like, it's SGA and like if SGA isnot cooking, like who else is there
around him, who's gonna go forward.
Yeah.
And I think the coachingaspect here really matters.
Yes, totally.
Like I, I think Carlisle'sbeen here before and he's got
the, he's got the Porsche.
No, he's awesome.
Like, you know, he doesn'tgoing in all directions a
hundred percent.
And listen, the reason I saythere's a God, like that team

(01:21:48):
should have stayed in Seattle.
You know, they've been cursed ever since.
There's clearly like something, butyou know, they are, I mean they won
like how many games have they won now?
94 or something.
Like, it's just, it's hard, it's hardfor me to see them, but I would love for
the Pacers to win just for the, you know,for the, the Cinderella story of it.

(01:22:08):
Be, by the way, this will be thegreatest upset mathematically in
NBA finals history if it happens.
I, I,
well, and I
check, oh, maybe 2004.
The Detroit is still bigger.
I'm not sure.
Yeah.
It, it also would be a huge victoryfor the United States over Canada.
'cause I mean, you know, we'vebeen talking about multipolar
basketball here for a long time.
And SJ if you're gonna blow thisshit to, you know, uh, Tyrese,

(01:22:29):
Halliburton from Oshkosh, Wisconsin,uh, like not you're, you're Canadian.
Uh, basketball geopolitics notlooking so good if you fumble this,
but, but you're probably right.
Alright.
Unfortunately.
Yeah.
Alright, well this was great.
Thank you.
And by the way, for all you, uh, waitingfor our long anticipated trade value,

(01:22:49):
we are going to replicate what BillSimmons does on the basketball side.
We're going to do a trade value podcastat some point when Israel Iran calms down.
Uh, we're going to both present our top30 leaders and basically the way it works.
The politician, that's number one.
You would not trade him or her Foranybody, the politician becomes 30th.

(01:23:13):
It means that you would trade thatperson if you were in the country
that I run for anyone above.
So we're gonna do that soon.
I can't wait.
It's just that I can't
wait.
So, Iran, Israel, please stop thisnonsense so that we can get to the
content that people really need.
And that's truly importantto the future of the, I mean,
Benjamin Netanyahu should juststop bombing Iran 'cause he wants

(01:23:35):
to find out where we put him onour top 30 liter in the world.
If he makes the cut,
does he make your cut?
I don't know.
We, we'll have to wait until that episode.
All right.
All right.
I won't spoil anything.
Cheers, dude.

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