The Ceasefire That Wasn’t

[Music] You're listening to American Power from Find Out Media. I'm your host, Nat Towson, Stand Up Comedian, Speech Writer, Comedy Writer, Other Kinds of Writer, and most famously, Podcast Host. We are recording this at 6 p.m. on Monday, May 4th, 2026. I'm here with my panel of experts, first hour expert on military and policy. Chad Scott, Chad, how you doing? I'm doing well. Glad to be here. Hope everyone is having a great week. And of course, also joining us, as always, is our expert on energy. Mr. Global himself, Matt Randolph, Matt, how you doing? Living the dream, Nat. Living the dream. You really are. I want to focus on some evergreen topics, some long term strategy that we can discuss at great length, but unfortunately news keeps happening. So I was hoping we could start today's episode by talking a little bit about what has happened in the world of oil and the situation in Iran. Chad, would you kick us off? Yeah, so it seems the ceasefire is effectively over, despite the fact that it's technically still in place on paper. I mean, Iran and the United States are shooting at each other. If you take a look at Trump's announcement of these escort missions through the straight up hormones, that's not sitting well with Iran. And the US began supposedly moving ships through the straight under this project freedom, sent US central command sent, come said to US flag merchant ships, successfully translated the straight up hormones with a US Navy destroyer. Interestingly, the original construct for this was for neutral ships, but US flag ships are not neutral. So a bit of a misconception on what's going on there. Shortly after those ships went through a South Korean operated cargo ship called the HMM. Now we was hit by an explosion likely came from either drone or missile out of Iran. There's no casualties, but Trump publicly blamed Iran and said South Korea should join the war now because of this. There's a new strategy coming out of Iran. They're calling us the new responsibility, right? They haven't said anything specific as of right now to this. They were trying to create this air of chaos. They're trying to make it seem like they don't want to directly engage with the United States Navy, obviously, but they also want to make it so the shipping doesn't doesn't go through. And they're saying that all of these countries, regardless of where you stand, need to follow these new Iranian maritime rules. And this is kind of their new construct for how they're going to present a permanent structure within the straight-up war mues. And they're saying that if you don't follow that, there's the you're going to be stopped. You're going to get fired upon. I don't necessarily think they're going to be firing constantly. They just need enough to create this air of chaos. And with that chaos, they and maybe Matt can talk about this as well. They struck the an oil facility that was supposed to be a work around pipeline. In this north of Dubai, I believe, but basically there's a pipeline. And so Iran is not only focusing now on the straight-up war mues, they're trying to punish anyone who is circumventing the straight-up war mues as control regime by striking pipelines and things like that that would be used to go around their kind of pseudo blockade. And what's their goal just to reflect as much pain as possible? They're just trying to is a certain control. It's this new maritime regime. They're trying to say, hey, we're in charge of the straight. The two parties here kind of sitting on opposite sides of what is common international law is the United States is saying, hey, we're going to block it as we see fit because this is a war. It's not really a war according to many in the in the magma movement. We've already had to deal with that problem because we've passed the 60 days. Regardless, Iran sitting on the other side saying, no, this body of water borders us. We control it. And you guys got to deal with it. So at that point, we're looking at an approach where you have two countries operating outside of international law, believing what they believe is right. And it's leading to for all intents and purposes, I don't see a way out of this other than it becoming more of a kinetic fight. That's kind of what we're seeing with these small boats being struck by a patchies in the state of hormones. Some six to seven, depending on who the sources of these Iranian swift boats, these small fast boats that come in and try to harass the ships. They were apparently struck by a patchy helicopters destroying them missile strikes on these countries. And then obviously the missile strikes on a pipeline systems. So CNN's reporting that within the next 24 hours, a coalition of the US and Israel and potentially even other countries, including the UAE. Would are looking to start striking Iran again. That's why in the beginning, I said, I believe the cease fires just effectively over at this point. And we're going to move to more kinetic operations. And so we find ourselves, as you mentioned, were 60 days past the original invasion or the original strike in Iran, right, which means which puts us the war powers act would require a declaration of war after 60 days of military activity. Is that the. The so it's either that you either have to have a you have to have a declaration of war, which we won't get out of Congress or an authorization for use of military forces. That's kind of the. We haven't declared war on anyone since like World War II. So it's always been an authorization for use of military forces basically Congress saying, hey, we give the president permission to do this. It's not an act that a lower than a full declaration of war. Yeah, basically, there's there's. It kind of divorces the Congress from the action. If there's too many people who are opposed to it, but it's also quicker. There's a quicker mechanism for an authorization for use of military force. And it allows them to the Congress to instead of saying we want this war. We want to fight this war. We believe whole hardly in this war. They just kind of say, have. Go do what you need, president. We're not going to get in your way. That's kind of what we got. We've had this stand in Iraq was is. Yeah, not. And Vietnam for there are all. Yeah, they're all authorizations for use of military force. Key thing here is right now for this Iran situation. This Iran debacle. There is not a declaration of war nor is there an authorization for use of military force. So we are in a. A new area now. We've passed the 60 days. They've the administration is claiming that because there's been a ceasefire pause that there should be it's no longer a war. As if when bombs to reset the counter. Yeah, that's exactly what it is ridiculous. They're trying to reset the clock and the thing is is you can't say. I'll be in tag rules and putting it back. Exactly. That's. Yeah, it's like you can't say when the war's only happening as bombs are being dropped and then the war stops when. When bombs are done being dropped. Totally new and different war. That's like you. There's Trump's previous war from March. No, no, that's over. And that's the things we're carrying this over and the blockade in itself is an act of war. Further, the the granted it's an older case from civil war, but the Supreme Court has has reaffirmed that a blockade is a part of active warfare operations. The international law across the board shows a blockade is an act of war for all intents and purposes. This is a wartime action that the United States is is conducting against Iran. We are just Congress is just kind of kind of backed away and is allowing. Trump to do what he wants and it's very concerning because it does give this almost dictatorial power to make and and continue war when that power was initially intended to be an article one power of the Constitution granted to Congress specifically. So do we see this the first time we've seen this in American history. Have we seen a president exceed the 60 day limit and continue acts of war without even an authorization for force authorization of force. Yes, in general, there's I mean, we've seen some like when you look at things like the. Kosovo and stuff like that there's been some buffers where they allowed for a little bit of negotiation stuff, but it's never been this a gregious there was always an understanding. At least until recently some still something of a norm like one of the this is completely new to his lack of militarism in the past destroyed yet. No, yeah, this is completely generally considered the standard. Okay. Yeah, so it's very much in I mean, I'm very concerned going forward with what's what's going to happen, especially since we were now seeing Iran circumvent the straight and start striking the pipelines outside of. And that's definitely going to have market market implications for sure for us and the world. And I want to ask about that in just a second, but just to recap if you can if you just correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems like what you're saying to me is that Iran is doubling down on this strategy that we've talked about in recent weeks where obviously they don't have the scale of military force that the US has, but they realize that in order to inflict harm in the US in order to maintain control, they don't necessarily need to overpower us. They need to let the US burn out its resources and you know, maintain the situation long enough that it becomes inconvenient and expensive for the US to continue to do this. And you know, as we've discussed before where you haven't even felt all the economic impacts that are going to come from this yet. So this is essentially their new strategy and they are. They're doubling down and continuing to strengthen their power that way. And of course, yeah, absolutely of course they're doing that because it's working. They're seeing the cracks falling within the administration. They're seeing. the infighting amongst Trump's usually even fervent supporters are getting very frustrated. You see the discussions happening in the Midwest of how the costs and things you're seeing. You're seeing the cracks form and so Iran sees no reason to change their strategy. I mean, the pain has not been incrementally ramped up against them. We just said we're doing a blockade and they're surviving the blockade. It's not great for them. My biggest concern, though, is given Trump's cowboy-esque ways of doing things, at what point does Iran say no one to many times? And then it becomes, "Okay, well, Trump did say this is going to end a civilization or something to that effect." Or, "I'm going to strike bridges and civilian infrastructure and power plants." At some point, I'm concerned that he will start doing that. And that's going to hurt the people of Iran who we should be supporting, not so much obviously the regime. There's no love loss with this regime, but we need to be supporting these people. Absolutely. And, well, let's take a moment to talk about how this is affecting, because we're talking, some of this is the Iran's guarantee banking on this affecting not only Americans, but American citizens. How is this? I know a lot of Americans are paying a lot of the pump these days. Mr. Global, can you give us a little sense of how is this affecting all the markets as a whole and how is it affecting costs for Americans at the pump at home? I had. It's really bad. Worse than, isn't worse than anything? Or is this sort of decline as usual? At this point, we have to talk about acceleration. Honestly, I don't know which is worse. I don't know if today's events are worse with Iran hitting so much infrastructure in the UAE, or if all of the tankers coming to the United States are worse, because people really don't understand how bad that is. But, that export terminal that Iran hit today, we don't know the extent of the damage yet. So, the pipeline might still be functional. In that area, there's a whole storage terminal. There's a pipeline, the start of a pipeline is there. There's a lot of stuff there, a very large area. And it's not clear yet to the extent of the damage. That pipeline moves about one and a half million barrels of oil a day, but we don't know if the pipeline itself was damaged. So, it's really hard to say what that's specifically going to do other than the fact that it's going to drive up oil prices. I think oil closed at 114 today. So, it was up nearly six bucks by the end of, and this dust been going on since like four o'clock this morning. Today, the whole day was like this. When they came out and said they were going to escort ships, and then they said, "Well, we're not going to export them. We're actually just going to kind of talk them through it." I was like, "What are we doing?" Obviously, I'm not a military strategist, but this whole thing seemed kind of odd to me. Do you see it as an manipulation again? Is that something? Because when he said that it was not going to be an escort mission, it was just going to be, "We'll give you the maps and stuff to get through." I'm like, "Okay, this is a Monday morning Trump manipulation." Now, you see the same thing, or is that you're feeling too? Or is it more legit? When he came out and said that on Sunday night, he does this on Sunday night because international markets open on Sunday night. A lot of people thought it was a manipulation thing, but the thing was, it didn't work. The markets dropped for a couple of minutes, but they had to immediately come out and say, "No, we're not actually escorting anyone. We're not doing that because that's the impression, apparently, that Donald Trump gave. To be fair, he didn't say the word escort in his tweet or truth or whatever it was. He said, "We're going to guide ships through the straight and get them all out of the straight." So, I want to assume that meant because he said, "We're going to use naval forces." So, people were like, "Oh, that means we're going to escort them." They immediately came out within minutes and said, "No, we're not escorting anybody. We're going to give them the maps and we're going to talk them through it, lend them an ear, whatever the hell it is, we're actually doing that." We're going to guide them through the straight and get through it, virtually. We're going to ask them what their goals are with the trip and hope they get the most out of it. We don't care. We're going to do a vision board. We're going to do collage with them before they leave. The whole day's been nuts. Like, Iran immediately this morning claimed they hit a destroyer or a warship or something. I'm not sure. The US immediately came back and said, "They didn't hit nothing." Then the US came back later and said, "Well, they actually fired on us." And then we're in this space and time where you can't believe anybody. It makes it almost impossible to get the right information to the people that you're trying to really inform me. And all of this just makes the market go nuts. My big concern is, of course, this will post on Wednesday. And we'll know about this by the time this podcast comes out. Tomorrow the API inventory report comes out, which is going to tell us how much our diesel fuel gasoline inventory has dropped. It's going to be a lot. A lot of people think it's going to be the biggest one ever. American petroleum index? No. Institute. Oh, yeah. So you know how the job numbers come out one day? Who is it that releases the job numbers first? The payroll company, ADP. ADP does their job numbers. And then the Bureau Labor Statistics does their job numbers like the next day or the day after. They do the same thing with oil inventories. So API does them first. And that gives you like some insight into what they might actually look at. And then the EIA comes out the next day. And that's the one that really moves the markets. But the API is always very close to the EIA. So we'll know Tuesday how much that inventory drop. You could see a parabolic move in gas prices on Wednesday. When this show drops, if those inventory levels drop as much as people think they're going to drop. So we'll have more of an idea of how much gas is or sorry, how much oil is domestically available presently? Is that like with how much gasoline and diesel we're talking about refined fuel specifically. Yeah, a lot of these tankers aren't getting oil. They're getting our gas and our diesel. And that is driving up our gas prices more than if they were getting oil. Because they're getting the roboly of the refined oil is making it worth exporting. And therefore there's less of it here. Exactly. Driving up prices domestically. So what we're seeing right now is exactly what caused gas to go to $5 in 2022 under Joe Biden. Russia attacked Ukraine. We started exporting a lot of gas and diesel to Europe because they cut Russia off. We brought our inventory levels way down, gas spike to $5. The difference is in 2022, it took us six months to send an additional 20 million barrels of gas diesel to Europe. In 2026, we've done that in one month. So this is a much faster, more drastic thing. And there's tankers coming into mid August at least. So we could see gas prices go to places. I honestly not even willing to predict where the gas prices could go. But this inventory report and the next one and the next one are going to be the biggest driver of gas prices. It's not actually going to be in the oil prices because when your inventory gets this low, oil prices can drop and your gas can still rise a lot. And after small, these are likely like refining can't be sped up. Right. Like if we haven't no, we're at max. We're at max. But if we are, if we don't have oil, like if you don't have the full amount of oil to refine at a given time, there's no catching up. You are, Matt, you are refining at that capacity at this point. Yeah, we're already at max. So you're there's no way of catching up on that scarcity other than to import refined gas and diesel or stop exporting. Well, okay. Yes. So after tomorrow's report, after tomorrow's report, there will, our inventory levels will be lower than they were in 22. That's what I'm saying. And that's tomorrow after a month rather than six months. Right. With more tankers coming into mid August. It's this is bad is what I'm saying. Matt, this is really bad because even if the straight opens today, those tankers are coming into mid August. That's how long it takes to cycle the world with oil and gas. Do you think that the president could use something like the Defense Production Act to stay no, we're not giving you anymore gas. There's not just too problematic or and there's just too much pushback because if you're saying what we're saying, I'm seeing just reports generally on the news that like states are now hitting new records of diesel somewhere like six bucks or something just getting out of control. Yeah. It can the president come in and just say, all right, enough of this, our production is for us for now. Stop shipping it or is that going to be too much of the pushback? Is that basically political suicide from the oil companies? They'll say, no, we're not doing that in its lawsuit heaven there. It's going to get to a point where I think he has to do it. But the problem is he's done nothing but celebrate the fact that these tankers are coming. But it I fear that it's going to get to the point where he's forced to do that. There was a story out today in Reuters about how that is coming. They're going to have to do that. And I don't think you have to use the Defense Production Act to do that either. I think you can just declare an emergency. But yeah, that's the real concern right now is our inventories because once your inventory gets that low, oil can go up or down $10. It's not going to matter. Gas is still going up no matter what because you're just out of inventory. It's the supply side of supply and demand and once you lose that supply side, you're done, right? So we'll just have to see what happens. You know, there are some in some choke points in the past or or also like in times following Hurricane Irene or Hurricane Sandy, other natural disasters like that. When gas distribution was interrupted, you have like a run on gas stations in a lot of cases like you saw, you know, I mean, it happened in New York, but I know it happened all over the place, but you know, you saw people showing up to fill up with, you know, with tanks with cans and, and you know, buying out these local gas stations. How far are we from a run on gas? Like how like at what point does the increase in prices speed up? I mean, obviously you can't predict a human behavior at a mass scale, but is there anything that tends to trigger that panic? So here's the thing. If we get a run on gas, we're still going to be fine. It's not that we're going to run out of gas. That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying the price of it is going to be very expensive. I'm curious if that's going to happen. Cursor like, would there be a run if prices start to get to the point where people say, oh, shit, I can't pay for this next week. If it goes, keeps going at this rate, like a, like a preemptive, like not a supply based run, but like if the cost hike increases in speed, essentially, and as I said, it's acceleration at this point, right? So if the prices accelerate at a certain level, will people start to hoard gas, will people, will we say, a huge buy-in for a moment? Like just a, yeah. This whole thing creates this vicious feedback loop where every action makes that the last action worse. Like, you know what I mean? Like high gas prices, you get a run, do it, you know, low inventories, you get a run that makes inventories worse, makes gas prices higher. It's just, it's a cycle that you have to break out of. But what I want to be clear of is even if that happens, we're not going to run out of gas. We're just, it's just going to be really expensive. We just can't afford the gas that we have because the lack of supply will just make it so expensive to the average consumer. Yeah. And in many ways, this kind of needs to happen to be honest, like we need a wake up call about what's happening in the Middle East and the markets have been suppressed for so long, people like like it's no big deal. Maybe we need gas to hit seven or eight dollars a gallon. So people will wake up and say, Oh, this is actually serious. That's the only way the market can correct itself is through that demand destruction that will occur with those higher prices. And I'm curious, am I incorrect in in, in, in understanding this, uh, in other Western countries, I understand that people pay proportionately more per gallon for, for gasoline. Like our gas has been like traditionally much more subsidized. And so we're used to a artificially lower price than say like a car driver in the UK. Am I, am I getting that right? Oh, yeah. Our gas is a lot cheaper than all of the other Western nations. You know, we complain, you know, gas right now in Canada on a, well, if you convert it to gallons, it's over seven dollars a gallon. And like, you can, I remember being in the UK and it was almost the same price and then going, Oh, that's pounds. Like it's almost twice what we were paying at the time. And you know, the pound was almost double the dollar at the time. And it was a comparable number. And I went, Oh my God. And then I realized that was like one of the first times I experienced. So we, our price has just for decades been somewhat like artificially suppressed. So Americans are under the impression that gasoline effectively is cheaper than it could, I mean, obviously it could be, I could always be more expensive. But do you think that at, do you think this is a thing that's just never going to go all the way back down that we made this major, be what triggers like we have to adjust a little bit to the idea that gas can't be as cheap as we think it is? So this is the deep conversation because I don't think gas is expensive. I think wages are extremely low and we don't have a cost problem in the United States with everything. We have a problem with what we pay people. If the United States paid people, you know, just a normal amount of money, gas would not be expensive right now. Gas is expensive because people don't make enough money to live in this country. But we're not doing that in the 80s. So the solution has always been to make everything cheaper instead of to pay people more. Yes. And who's, who benefits from just making stuff cheaper instead of paying people more? Who benefits from that? From people being able to purchase more things, I would say, the people who are being purchased from in my, in my very basic economic analysis, based on what you're saying, I would imagine that more people being able to buy things would probably benefit the people selling it. And it's kind of wild because it, when I was, so when I was in Germany, station in Germany, there's the US is so hyper focused on prices that we got what was called an SO card. Now, I know you are in Europe now. I don't know if you got this as well. But soldiers, when we go to the, go to Europe and our station there, we don't pay their gas prices. We pay American gas prices at their pumps. We use what's called an SO card. We drive up to their pump. We pay with the SO card and it charges us our American per gallon rate. And they all have to pay their rate. So I'm running up, I can fill my tank at the time when I was there for like 30 euro, but for, which is like roughly 35 bucks or something like that, they, while the Europeans were paying like 60 or 50 euro themselves. And it's because there's this like Matt was saying, there was this, there's this hyper focus on trying to keep everything cheap rather than making the market actually work. And it's just, it was I was kind of triggered something. I was over Europe to find out how the rest of the world is living. We got to. Yeah. Like a while we just culture shock. Well, and it's funny because like if you forget your SO card and you need to get gas, you just got to pay their prices. And that happens. I mean, I mean, it would happen every once in a while. And so I was like, dang, I have to pay like 80 bucks on this, on my car, on my BMW to get filled up. But yeah, it's, it's really fascinating. And I'm, you look at the kind of the, the shortest thing I was kind of thinking about 2008, how the United States is so insulated. We are so insulated 2008 crisis that hit us hard, but it hit us way less than everyone else around the world. Our recovery was way faster. We were so much more insulated because one of our financial system and two, a lot of our, a lot of the inputs come to the US. And you're seeing like we won't see gas runs here like Matt was saying, but already you see like India and Pakistan. And these are countries like there's a confirmed cooking oil shortage in India because they get a lot of their cooking oil from Iran. You look at Pakistan and they are having some fuel lines start where people are trying to get fuel. It's things we don't see. And so what ends up happening, unfortunately, politically, we could look at it from a kind of ho hum like, okay, well, whatever, I guess we'll keep paying a little bit more. And we don't change anything politically while the rest of the world is really struggling. It's just kind of fascinating that Matt like Matt was saying, we're not going to see these gas runs. We're not going to feel the pain, but the rest of the world and humanity outside of the United States certainly is. I think you have a point even thinking about 2008 as to what Matt was saying about, you know, we focused so much more on cost than wages that a lot of the recovery after that. I mean, obviously there was like little bits of stimulus here and there, but it was focused on getting inflation down and focused on and it wasn't focused on the kind of, you know, investing in citizens that would create long term wealth. It was focused on making things affordable as quickly as possible. And, you know, of course, that was like the birth of Occupy and all, you know, all these movements there where people were saying, Hey, I actually can't afford to live, but we are very focused on the idea that everything should be, you know, cheap, affordable, available immediately. I'm curious as we go forward, if you guys don't mind pivoting a little bit to talking about the long term of this because I think we're realizing that, yeah, these effects are going to be pretty serious and as often is the case, Americans are insulated in a way that people around the world are not from the effects of the American economy crashing time and time again. This is an ongoing situation with no obvious resolution in sight. So I was wondering if we could take a look at, you know, we're a sane person in charge, given the current narrative, though, given given the way that we've moved forward, assuming anything sort of impeachment or, you know, regime change on our end, what's our way out of here? Can we talk about what a possible, what possible steps forward look like, both from the military situation, but also how does the American economy stabilize from this? And do we just get used to higher gas prices? But I'm hoping maybe we could start talking about the situation first. Yeah, sure. So from a, from a, kind of a military geopolitical geostritches stance here, I want to caveat this, this again, like I'm repeating what you said, this would be if we had a competent leader in place. And I kind of got, I kind of got a question that last episode in the, in the YouTube comments, like Trump would never do that. Yes, of course. This is if we had someone who would do this type of stuff. This is if we had a good leader in the industry that we know that. So just making sure that people are aware. So first, we have to understand that this administration is getting played by just hyper focusing on the straight-up hormones. That is Iran's strongest card. It is narrow focus economically sensitive. And it lets Iran pressure the global economy without doing anything meaningful. They don't have to fight the US Navy. They don't have to really do anything other than scare people. So if we stay hyper focused on hormones, we are fighting Iran where Iran is strongest. And then you're getting into the art of war in Sunzoub. We're fighting them on their territory. That does not mean we should be surrendering the straight-up hormones. We should absolutely come to some way to make this open and free again. But it means we stop letting Iran define the entire war around it. And so we take this fight from the straight-up form of moves and we move it out into a global system. We blow it up where America is the strongest. The entire world because of our soft power, because of our hard power is our strongest arena. And that's the first thing we have to admit that this strategy of hitting, trying to hit Iran in the mouth in this small spot is not working. And we need to broaden out by rebuilding our allied front. We need, and again, this isn't going to happen, but this is what we need to do. We need to go to Europe, Japan, Australia, all of our golf partners and say, look, we screwed up. We tried to handle this alone. We tried to take care of this problem. We didn't do it well. We need the help on the diplomatic and economic fronts. And along with that, we got to stop trashing NATO. We got to stop picking fights with our allies. We got to reaffirm our commitments to Europe, increase support in Ukraine where we can as kind of a, hey, you help us out. We'll definitely help you out in Ukraine. Because the NECS phase of this only works if other major Western economies are aligned with us. Without, without those, those other Western economies, countries like China and Russia will find loopholes to help Iran survive the pressure because they love seeing this pressure on the United States. So it has to become not the United States pressure. It has to be a coordinated global pressure campaign instead of this unilateral American mess that we love to think that we're so star-spangled awesome that we can fix ourselves. And it ends up turning out, no, we can't. We need help with our allies. Second of all, we got to separate the immediate crisis from this long-term Iran problem. The immediate crisis is hormones right now. We need to solve that now and kind of backburn or everything else. And I know that sounds really bad to the Trump administration. Like, that means we got a backburner, the nuclear program, their missiles or drones or proxies, all of that. But now we're having actual human suffering from the straight of hormones being closed. So that needs to be separated. And if we try to solve all of it at once, we're not going to get anything. That's kind of the premise of the JCPOA. We got around this, this whole thing. So before I go on, I just, I mean, because I can talk about this. I just, if you want to interject, absolutely throw out whatever you feel or, or not. But I mean, I'm, I'm listening and I'm hearing, you know, obviously you're saying number one, not obviously, but if I can recap number one, you're saying essentially restore our standing among allies. 100% come back to NATO hand and say, hey, we actually recognize that we need your help, which is does sound a very non-Trumpian thing, but that is the caveat of this discussion, which is how could this be done, not will Trump do it. And then, secondarily, I'm a little question about this because I do feel like the administration, while they're talking about Iran's nuclear concerns and all these things, have been pretty focused on the straight and have been delivering a lot of misinformation about the straight. Are you saying that they need to be folk, they need to be actually solving it and that the focus has been spin. Yeah, it's a, it's what they're doing. It's not a to me from a, from a news perspective. It's a spin for, I think it's been for market. I think it's spin for votes. The midterms are coming. I think at this point of Trump was, was. I wouldn't say smart in this regard. I think he would just understand that the midterms are lost at this point and he needs to do the right thing and how to get out of this and the right thing is going to be a bit painful for the United States, and it's not going to get us our maximalist demands. And that's kind of where our maximalist demands is like no more nukes, no more helping the proxies and Hezbollah and the hoodies, no more killing your people, which I really wish we could do that, but that's something that we can't force without our own physical forces on ground there. And so because of that, we, we need to kind of parse this out. We need to compartmentalize and say, okay, first of all, let's solve for moves. And then if we solve that and the ceasefire holds, then we can move to a framework of how do we address the nukes, which is number two on the list. I think humanitarian is number two, but the American people seem to think nukes are number two. So then we compartmentalize further and deal with the humanitarian issue, deal with proxies, deal with everything else, and that's kind of the requirement there. And there's, there's multiple, there's much more steps because it's going to require us to apply pressure external to Iran, including on Israel, including on China and Russia as well. And we can't do that without our allies. So early on it feels like a lot of the messaging, even from democratic electives was not necessarily muddied, but they were all doing this sort of rhetorical. Trump is going about this the wrong way, but Iran's leaders are evil. Iran is bad to their civilians. And obviously, there are other countries where that's true that we didn't suddenly invade that we're not focusing on. So that standard seems false to me, but I would agree with you that, you know, we also can't ignore those humanitarian concerns like we do need to address those humanitarian issues. So higher priority than nuclear proliferation. I think that's a higher priority, perhaps than Iran's nuclear program, but we don't need to be as we discuss this, you know, there's no endorsement of Iran's regime, but I think if anything, we have really harmed our ability to have any kind of humanitarian impact on Iran. And we're also really super bombing civilian populations, that's the opposite of it, but we're also not influencing the regime to be suddenly more of an open society. I mean, if anything, this makes it more complicated to encourage that am I am I crazy to say that. I mean, we should be supporting that was the whole premise initially that we all thought when Trump was like help is coming on the way we thought that that was going to be the premise that he was going to provide aid, provide intelligence, help provide weapons via the Kurds into so that they can defend themselves against this regime and none of that happened. And so the minute that took place, the Iranian regime said helps not coming and then they just killed thousands of them in the streets. And since this war started, they've had something like 25 or 26 executions, which is the most executions Iran has conducted in a span of this span of time since the I to all came into power. So none of this humanitarian threats or efforts that we've made aimed at the the new I told him much to come any is working. And so I think personally we have that's why we have to expand globally and have exacerbating the problem that sounds like. Yeah, it's making it worse. We're focusing so hyper focused on Iran itself in the state of hormones that I think we need to apply economic pressure on things like Russia and China. And potentially start hitting them where it hurts and obviously where that where it hurts them is in the energy not both the energy coming out of Russia, but also the energy coming into China from Iran. And that's kind of where I was like, maybe Matt has his ideas on how we can impact the energy and trade with those countries so that we can kind of end around straight of hormones to to have some sort of forcing event with Iran. And later on, I can tell you that we have to give a bit to Iran as well. We can't just be assholes here. We got to actually give a bit they got to actually have something. But in the meantime, there are some other avenues other than a blockade and just trying to hit them in the mouth, which clearly is not working. So yeah, I think economics is going to play a big part into the economics of Iran's supporters in Iran, or in Russia, China, North Korea, et cetera. Matt, any thoughts on that? I don't have a lot of faith. Look, when it comes to sanctions on Iran, they were always predicated on what our gas prices were. Like they weren't they were never serious. They were a joke. And Donald Trump put sanctions on Iran is when our gas prices got cheap enough that he could afford it. So I mean, you know what I mean? And it was the same thing with every administration, you know, how we treat Iran has always been predicated on how does it impact our gas prices at home. Like, oh, gas is high. Let's let's chill out on enforcing the sanctions. You know, so like how we can do it. That's what I mean. Like every decision we make regarding Iran, which is supposed to be this existential threat. It's been determined by 50 cents at the gas pop. So how existential of a threat can it actually be? Like when gas is $4, we stop enforcing sanctions against Iran and just let him rush a frustrating weakness of the West. Because what's the motivation of playing this act of actually having? I mean, are you are you assuming that it's in good faith when we can afford it? Or is this more to have a perpetual boogeyman? I don't know. Honestly, I think it's a bunch of BS. Like if if you tell me that some country is an existential threat to us, then why does 50 cents at the gas pump change that right now half of America is saying that they're doing their patriotic duty by paying more for gas? Well, why can't they do their patriotic duty when we're not at war? Like why do we have to be at war if you do your picture? Like if you know what I mean? Like the whole thing is too political for me. It's everyone's decisions on Iran is always based on how it hurts or helps themselves politically personally and not what's best for the whole country. And that has always been the case. Well, I don't want to deal with this existential threat because it might cost me an election. What? Like what does that mean? Like if if they're this threat, they need to be dealt with. And if they're not, go home and shut up. You know what I mean? Like just stop this existential threat. I agree is complete nonsense because there's only frankly two countries on the face of the earth. that are existential threats to the United States. And by proxy, that means there are existential threats to the world. Because if that existential threat, obviously a nuclear strike comes to bear, we respond, end of the world. So this notion that small countries, whether it's Iran, North Korea, whatever, are this existential threat, it's completely bogus. And it's Trump using the same playbook that Putin used, saying that Ukraine was some sort of existential threat to Russia. That's absolute nonsense. It's the narrative, the boogeyman, and it is. It's BS. So I just wanted to throw that in there. There's no countries truly an existential threat. And the only countries that are, it basically becomes a globe-ending event at that point. So it's either all or none. You know, they keep talking about all the last 47 years. So what have they done for the last 47 years, right? Financed or helped carry out terrorist threats. When all of this is over, are they still going to be able to do that? Yep. Absolutely. So like what the hell are we doing? Like they're still going to be able to do the thing they've done to us for the last 47 years after all of this is over. Yeah, and also if we're talking about who funded terrorists didn't we fund Al-Kaeda? Like we're not spotless on that record. Yeah, take it easy. Take it easy. Hey, we didn't know what they were going to do. Come on. Yeah, but I mean, just serious. Well, that's why I have concerns about us funding an army lebanon right now to have fight Hezbollah. Get it. They're trying to fight Hezbollah admirable. But that was the same excuse we used when we funded and helped out the Mujahideen to fight the Soviets. And then they turned around and used those weapons against us. So it's. We love to. We love to quote unquote step on our own dick when it comes to this type of stuff. Wait, we're quoting myself. That's a military term when you when you leave that do something to himself at first. Yeah. I can't even sit down much less. It does sound more like that. I don't know. He said, but I think it's the latest position to do that personally. But it basically is like you we we have it. We we think we have such a great idea that we're going to go do this thing. And then we end up. It ends up being a great idea briefly. And then we'd have to deal with several decades. If not a generation of consequences. And that's kind of what. What we're seeing here. And now we're doing it again in Iran. And we potentially could be doing it again with Lebanon. And so we just aren't learning from the stuff. And it's yeah. So that's why I don't think we need to be focusing so closely. And why we need. The brainpower of the collective of of our allies who know more than us. In some things. And we know more and other things. That's why when we work together with them, it works out. And it's a better situation. Like the lenses are different. We should be asking our goalf allies. Hey, how do we do this better? We should be asking Europe. From your experience, what do you see? And we just we just aren't. Because Trump seems to think that he knows best all the time. Always. And it's. It's becoming more and more of a burden. And more of a detriment to the United States, that thinking. So we need to expand outward. I mean, if Donald Trump reversing course publicly is what it's going to take. We're in not a great situation. But I am curious. You were right. Now, yeah, Matt, we were talking about, I mean, a lot of this does. I feel like every week we go, I can't believe this comes down to three men or one man's ego. But yeah, publicly changing the narrative. I mean, that's a whole other discussion is to like, how do you create a, you know, joke in the past about sending him to fake New York post. Headline like mom, Donnie did, but like literally how do you create a path for Donald Trump to psychologically deescalate, which is a whole other conversation. But I wanted to ask you, Matt, we're talking a little bit about. You know, in order for us to actually sanction Iran in a way that's effective. We have to be willing to do so. You know, you, you've expressed your, your skepticism. This is actually an existential threat. But if we want to make changes there, we want to do so via sanctions. You're saying we're only willing to do so. At times when gas is cheap because it won't, it won't threaten the politicians in charge. Because the prices are a little lower. You're also talking a little bit about like this might reset our understanding this crisis might have to reset our understanding of gas prices. We might have to get used to the idea that even if the supply is there that the prices will be different from what we, what we've been used to in the past. Is there any world in which as things settle Americans get used to paying 50 cents more anyway. And we have the ability to sanction Iran without causing immediate political pressure or give some kind of buffer to oil prices there. Or are we just going to get back to making gas prices. Sorry, not oil prices gasoline prices. Are we going to get back to making it as cheap as possible at the pump as quick as possible. I've looked at it and this isn't just Iran. This is historically. I've never been a fan of any kind of sanctions. I think they're stupid and I think they don't work. But that's just me. What do I know? You know, are you just going to leave sanctions on Iran for 20 years. And then what like what exactly is going to come of that like what is the end game. And I feel like we do so much stuff without having an end game. I don't know. Maybe write up some kind of agreement on a piece of paper. Maybe at the top you could write like JCP. What is that? I saw you going there. You know, you could write. I'm sorry. What would that say? Hypothetically. Hypothetically. What would that be? An initial sport. Join comprehensive plan of action. Oh, well, that's interesting. Yeah. It's a good. Yeah. Yeah. Join meaning to people right to countries. Or more. You want to point is. I'm confused. I interact. And look, people can disagree with me on sanctions. All they work are all I want. That's that's fine. I totally understand the pros and the cons. I've just always thought they were really stupid and is probably the largest thing that's driving. I'm not sure if you're going to be able to get a lot of money. If we don't find a way to work this out with Iran, they're going to continue to hold the straight at risk. And even in the best case scenario, we probably are going to get a worse deal than the JCPOA that Trump pulled out of the way. That Trump pulled out of the way. and we ended up spending, what is it, what do they say, $25 billion on this war so far and 13 lives just to get something that's slightly worse than the joint comprehensive plan of action. So we do have to come to the table in good faith, which Trump has not done. We've attacked him twice now when we went to the, like during negotiations, we started to fight with them. And that's why I just, I'm concerned, I don't think we have the administration capable of doing what is necessary. At least until after the midterms, maybe after the midterms Trump can be neutered enough that more sane players can come into play, but I don't see that happening. - And all this because he thought he could sort of claw machine comedy out of the country, like we didn't South America and be done with it. Just essentially, we get involved in these Middle East conflicts with no understanding of, I mean, I can't, we, various administrations get involved in these Middle East conflicts with no understanding of the local culture or economic systems. And our only way forward is, you know, like I just saying, Trump's never gonna admit his wrong, right? So they do, what all Trump can do is claim that he won. And so effectively, I think if any of these path paths are going to happen, what's gonna happen is they're gonna have to create some kind of narrative or someone, as you said, if the pressure of the midterms is high enough, as much as he'll never admit it, he does recognize leaning popularity. He does also take crazy swings when his popularity is waning, but that means he's aware of it. So it is possible that someone creates a narrative that he can latch onto. And, you know, if he knows he's losing saved some amount of faith and still call it a victory. And again, you know, we could do an entire episode with a psychologist on what it would take to get Donald Trump's ego to, you know, to be placated enough to pretend that he was okay with what it's gonna take. But effectively, it sounds like it's gonna take a little eating hat, eating crow, and having a hand eating crow, excuse me, and we can eat a hat too. But effectively, a crow in hand took his worth too in the George Bush administration. And I'm on a long one now. But effectively, we can meet it like trust our allies. Do you have reasonable negotiations, effectively accept a worse deal than we had in the first place? And even that seems like an unrealistic course of action at the moment because the ego's still driving the ship. Like every episode I'd like to end this episode with a segment we call the least worst part of my week where we take a look at a silver lining or something that's on the rise or less declining than the rest of the world. On that note, Chad, do you have a story you'd like to share with us? - Yeah, I mean, kind of looking at the broader geopolitical space for the Ukrainians and their gaining influence around the world, one cool thing that took place recently was Ukraine met with Armenia. And that's a much bigger deal 'cause Armenia is a relatively small country, but that's a much bigger deal than you think because Armenia is very much in Russia's sphere of influence. In fact, they are in the collective security treaty organization, which is the wish version of NATO. It's like Russia's version of NATO. It's like all the Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Armenia is in it and such. And the fact that we have Armenia meeting with Ukraine, now there wasn't any kind of military agreement, it was just kind of, they wanted to create a framework for future partnerships, economic cooperation, et cetera. But the fact that Armenia basically looked at Putin and said, we're done with you for now. We're gonna go work with Ukraine and talk to them. Even when Putin was saying, don't do it, that's a huge win because that means Russia's losing influence on the global stage. They are struggling to keep their allies. And this goes back to a bit of the Russians were unwilling to help Armenia during the conflict they had with Azerbaijan, that's a whole another story. So Armenia is quite angry with Russia at this point and they are seeking partners with Western nations, including they've met with the United States and now kind of unheard of is them meeting with Ukraine, the clear geopolitical enemy of Russia right now. And it looks like Russia's grip on their allies and global affairs continues to slip. - Well, I'm glad that Russia's fear of insulin is shrinking. I affirm your story, I'm glad that no one happens to be throwing a huge wrench into the spokes of global order right now, so I'm sure everything will work out fine. Matt, do you have any silver lining, best worst, least worst part of your week that you'd like to share with us? - I do. Now I don't know about you, Matt, but I'm one of these people that genuinely despise tourists that don't respect the wildlife in whatever area they are visiting on their $10,000 family vacation that they can't pay for that they put on a capital one card. So the monkeys, now I know I talked to you. - Right at me. - The capital one card. - Yeah, you know, you get a card, Chad. - I got a capital one card. Capital one of your listening, I love your card. - They're not paying for this, stop it. - Let's ask for money first. (laughing) - I love to travel to beautiful places. Like I go to Yellowstone and that's my gig. I love that kind of stuff. And I hate seeing tourists that just disrupt or just do anything to the wildlife. Anyway, the monkeys, I know I talked about a monkey last week, but this is two weeks in a row of monkeys. I'll never do this again, I promise. The monkeys in Gibraltar have figured out. - Yeah, 'cause next week you'll have two weeks. - How to self-medicate. - Yeah, they figured out how to self-medicate from all of the junk food that the tourists that go to Gibraltar feed them. Chocolate, candy, cookies, potato chips. They're literally getting fed all of this junk by the irresponsible Americans that come down there and spend their hard earned money to feed monkeys, chocolate. And they noticed, scientists in Gibraltar, noticed that the monkeys were eating an extraordinary amount of dirt. There's something in the soil in Gibraltar that gives a very calming effect to the monkeys. It helps with their gastrointestinal systems. It relieves the symptoms that they suffer from eating all of this ultra-processed American junk food that we're taking and giving to them. So they're literally medicating themselves from American tourists by eating an enormous amount of dirt. And I just think it's really cool. And they have discovered that these monkeys are communicating with other like herds or tribes of monkeys and like spreading the word about how you need to eat the dirt. And monkeys eating dirt is spreading across Gibraltar like-- Adcultural. Like 98 degrees back in 1996. I don't know. It's just-- Have any editors update that? Is it an insert-- Current reference there? Later. [LAUGHS] Like-- I don't know if you guys love it today, because I'm not in my 50s. Yeah, that's-- But yeah, I thought that was a great story. You're very like that. They have figured out how to self-medicate. I thought that was the coolest thing ever. It's like no matter what people do to them, they will figure it out. I also like the angle of-- Oh, man, I've been eating all that processed American food. You know, it would really clear me out of some-- just straight dirt. Something healthy. I can't eat my-- I can't eat no McDonald's. I got to eat some soil from the ground. We're-- You joke we're like-- We're like, I don't know, a month away from having Gweneth Paltrow sell dirt. And it'll be like 80 bucks for like a bag of dirt. It's going to suit your stomach, a pile of dirt. I'm going to pass this on to my wife. Why can't we sell the dirt? My teammate's wife. I'm going to be like, hey, have you heard of this dirt? Maybe we can add some dirt to our tea. So-- Monkey dirt. But we're drinking activated charcoal at this point. We're not. Yeah. Come on. Madagascar and soil from different places around the world. We could market this. This is really-- If find out ever wants to pivot to the like brain supplements and pseudoscience, homeopathic yours, angle, we could start selling like American power homeopathic dirt. Back's a dirt. Yeah. Should go to Gibraltar, get some dirt. Bring back here. Say it's from Gibraltar and everyone will buy it. They'll spend a lot. Special dirt from Gibraltar. And use our promo code on American power at checkout at American Express and capital one. Edit that out, please. I shouldn't keep saying this. Come on. We're a discover level podcast right now. We haven't his ever-- All right, diners club podcast right now. If you can find someone who accepts our sun credit, that's great. We're so happy to be included. But I've got a good story for this week. This is more of a general recap for how my past week went. But as many of you may know, perhaps listeners to an energy podcast are aware of the fact that it was Earth Week. This past week, the week that contains Earth Day. Guess what? We've expanded it. It's a crisis. We got to spend a whole week working on it. Also, climate week, we got that one in September. We need at least-- we need climate year at this point. But it was Earth Week this past week. And as a result, I had the privilege of doing some shows and workshops with students at schools across America in different places. I actually went up to Massa Soet in Brockton, Massachusetts and did a show and workshop with some of the students there. I worked on a show and also worked for several months with students at CU Boulder for their inside the Greenhouse Climate Science program, where they put on a big show for Earth Day. And most recently, I actually had a chance to speak to some students at Staphyson High School in New York in a really cool class called Writing to Make Change that works with the students on how to shape your writing for activism. I got to talk to them about it, write speeches, and write comedy. And I would say that there's a lot of doom going on right now and culturally, if the only way that you interact with people between the ages of 15 and 25 is on the internet, you might believe that everyone is completely black-pilled and hopeless. And I do think that we're dealing with a lot of phone addiction and a lot of doomurism. It's a very real thing. But I can't say my experiences were representative of all of America, but I found that almost exclusively the people that I talk to in high school and college to be really interested to people really curious with way more awareness of how fucked everything is than I had as a teenager by a long shot. And I was a real contrarian, but I think in general to be that kind of person when I was to be anti-bush wasn't even popular when I was in college. And generally, all liberals were against him, but it was considered unpopular to be political in many ways. And I'm finding that a lot of young people I work with, a lot of people I teach are way more engaged and way more aware of power structures and class structure in a way that was not popular or not common when I was that age. And so, you know, I wish this were a funnier story that had a monkey involved, but unfortunately almost a serious story. That was a huge worry. What is, I feel really, I was really invigorated by talking to all these people because they were really interested in-- It's good to like that. Interested in finding climate change. And I thought of it because some of them were telling me that they had to clean up the vapes in the creek down in Boulder, Colorado because animals were vaping. So they tried dirt. That was my connection to Matt's story. They are doing a lot of cleanup and pick up my hand to stop the animals from sucking on vapes and zins or whatever the hell else people are throwing over the college campuses. It's bleak, but I was really excited to see every, every group of young people I talk to, I say, get off your phone, get off the internet. It seems hopeless. Go stick your fingers in the dirt. Go meet people. And I'm really excited to say that I see a lot of people doing it. A lot of people who are actually interested in it. So I'm not going to be, you know, polyanna, I should say, the kids are all right. Probably most of them are still racist. I don't know. But I'm meeting a lot of young people who are interested in making a change. And I think that's really exciting right now. I think a lot of people are really becoming aware of what's going on in the world. And that's the least part of my week. That was very cool. I'm always hopeful for kids. They're always seem to be better than us. That's what I hope for. Oh, I'm not hopeful for them. That's why this is exciting for me. Nevermind. So very cool. You know, it's don't know. No, I try to be. I think people like to paint entire generations with a single brush and it's ridiculous. But you know, we all want to believe that Gen Z is hopeless or Gen Alpha is going to just live with an iPad 4 and just from their face for their whole lives. But I actually think that to some extent, finally, people, the proliferation of information and the crisis has gotten to the point where people are really starting to get a good sense of what's going on in the world. And I think that's really cool. Yeah, very cool. We'll talk to you all next week. This has been the American Power Podcast from Find Out Media. I'm Nat Towson for Chad Scott and Matt Randolph. Before we go, we just want to make sure you can follow us on social. Chad, where can people find you on social media? TikTok, CP Scott 15, YouTube at CP Scott 16, I know it's confusing. And then I'm on Facebook also CP Scott 15, just find Chad Scott. And the NATO global warfare space, not the NFL coach. So Warboat. And Matt, where can we find you? YouTube Facebook TikTok, Blue Sky, Instagram, Reds, Substack, News Nation. To name a few. Sometimes on News Nation. Yeah. And I am @NATTowson on whatever social media I choose to pay attention to at any given time, usually Instagram. But I also want to tell you folks about a brand new app that I'm on, which is Find Out Social. It is the first of its kind. It's a social network associated with our media organization podcast network. You can interact with other listeners and hosts of your favorite podcasts. And there's a news feed and it's not owned by evil billionaires who will sell your data. So you can find us all there. I believe that is launching today for early adopters on the wait list. And in a few days for everyone else. So find us on Find Out Social. I'm @NATTowson. And once again, this has been American Power from Find Out Media for Chad Scott and Mr. Global Matt Randolph. I'm Nat Towson. We'll talk to you next week. And remember power corrupts, but American power corrupts. American Lee.