The Iranian Leviathan Loses Its Head

(upbeat music) Hello listeners, welcome to another episode of Geopolitical Cousins. It is hard for the cousins when President Trump does these military operations early on a Saturday. I had kids to myself for much of the weekend. Marco was traveling and got on the podcast even though he was feeling really awfully ill. So props to him for getting on here. My kids are napping in the background for the last 10 minutes. I saw them running around upstairs and I committed to the pod. So I know all of you wanted the pod soon and we're doing it as quickly as we can. Just understand that when it's on the weekend, like we gotta rally the families and our own schedules in order to get it done. But here's your first 75 minutes. We hope you enjoy it. We will get more episodes out as things go this week. And I think that's all. If you want to email me about anything you heard on the podcast, jake about jakemchapera.com, my CC Marco and everything. I think that's it. We'll see you out there. (upbeat music) All right, listeners, we all know why you're here. You're here to learn about the biggest geopolitical development of the year, which is that cousin Marco was featured on the Bill Simmons podcast with a mailbag question. Cousin, tell us about this important question that you posed to Bill Simmons and why the masses have been clamoring for it to get on the microphone. - No, I think it was awesome. It's a dream come true. Not only was I on, but he referred to my question as historical, as awesome, even read my joke. My life is not complete, you know? That's the best call of the year that I've made. - No, you also deeply got into his psyche. He was like, "Why, I was actually mad "when I was listening to the episode "because house was like, yeah, isn't that obvious?" And Bill Simmons, "Well, then why has nobody else said this? "Because it wasn't obvious house." Like, come on, go eat a sandwich. - It's kind of-- - Yeah, so the point I make is that you have to play 60 games or more. You have to play your best player to be able to win, right? Because you need the best player to gel with the team. And yeah, I guess, I mean, it kind of is obvious, but no one's made the point before. So, no, I'm very happy. But of course, we've just eaten into our pod by minute and 15, and everyone's eagerly waiting for us to talk, Iran. - I know, but I actually think it's a good reference point because your point in the Bill Simmons letter that you sent him was that teams that don't play their best players don't win the championship because the best players are rusty or whatever else. And if you've got the top military in the world, you better make sure the military's in the game. You better make sure you're getting your reps, you're doing your things 'cause if the best military in the world is not playing 60 games a year, is it really the best military in the world when the chips are down? Is it really gonna happen? That's the best way I can try and segue into it. Okay, unless you've been living underneath a rock, see what I did there. You know that the United States and Israel are conducting a joint military campaign against the Islamic Republic of Iran. Marco and I are recording here at Sunday March 1st, 107 PM Central Time. We're gonna pump this out as soon as it is done. But we're dealing with the information that we have in front of us right now. Supreme leader Ali Hamani is dead, has our many members of his family who are apparently with him in the compound, seems like not such a great decision there. I understand his martyrhood. Having your grandchildren martyred that I have a little trouble accessing that thought process. But whatever, a lot of senior leadership in Iran has also been wiped out. But Iran is continuing to fire missiles, continuing to find a rocket that looks like there's a succession plan in place, things look relatively resilient to me. Before I turn it over to you, cousin, 'cause if I was on top of the Venezuela thing, I would say you are on top of the Iran thing. I've been bored of this topic for quite some time. I just wanna say people often ask me, I will land this segue, just give me a second listener. People often ask me if I'm a huge curb your enthusiasm fan. And I always say, I'm not a huge curb fan for the same reason that I'm not a huge Woody Allen fan. It just hits a little too close to home. Like I know too many Larry Davidson in my life. I also have a predilection to becoming Larry David. And as I've been thinking about this Iran issue for the past couple of weeks, I almost feel like I've become the Larry David of geopolitics. It's like, are they, are they not, they could stride. Oh, they took out the Supreme Leader. Okay, whatever. They probably have a bunch of other Ayatollas, right? Like I'm just, I'm like fundamentally unimpressed and feeling like Larry David. So I need you to shake me out of my doldrums and tell me why this is so important 'cause I'm looking at what's happening. And it seems to me like we're gonna end with the Islamic Republic of Iran with a new Supreme Leader and the same regime and some kind of nuclear deal that's probably not worth the paper that it's printed on. But tell me why I'm wrong Marco. Tell me why this is a big one. - I mean, let's go through the history of the Middle East. And let's look at all the regimes that America has changed fundamentally into something completely and not really different. So. (laughing) Iraq, the United States of America spent somewhere between one and two trillion dollars on Iraq. Thousands of soldiers killed. Probably set America back by about 10 years from a geopolitical hegemonic position. We're probably in a multipolar world today because of the invasion of Iraq by the US. It just sunk way too much treasure and time and resources. And what do we get? We got an Iran-linked, Shia militant regime. - No, it's not actively. - We also, by the way, got ISIS for a couple of years. That was also a part of the fallout for that. Don't forget that. Which we needed Iran's help to destroy. And there's a little Kurdish statelet that is sitting there that the Turks fool around with themselves. - Right. And so one of the most intriguing parts of this is that Russian and Chinese energy companies came to dominate Iraq other than into Kurdish region where the US companies dominate. But the reality is like, you know, all of this treasure goes into changing the regime in Iraq. And it did change. It's not led by a Sunni Saddam Hussein who threatens the region and the US. But you didn't exactly get Wisconsin. - No, you did not. - Syria, Assad is gone. There's a gentleman who used to be in Al-Qaeda terrorist running the country. Personally, I think he's doing a good job, you know, but like, you know, I mean, better than Assad. Don't get me wrong. Like I mean, who among us has not dabbled in militant Islam during our fallout? - You're from the fears. - I'm from the fears. All right. Like Libya, you know, like Gaddafi, he was a pretty useful guy keeping micro-flows from Africa checked with his repressive regime. Once he was removed, the country descended into chaos. And then finally, Venezuela, which I look objectively speaking, you know, taking out Maduro is not in any way sort of like, I think that I really stay up about. There's not a lot of criticism I have for that. Like cool, like now sick. Like let's go Chuck Norris, baby, Delta Force. But anyone out there who's talking about how Venezuela is now pro-American, like, okay, let's pump the brakes on that. Del C. Rodriguez was the vice president of Maduro. Like obviously she's operating under the assumption that she's next if she, you know, fucks around. And that's cool. Well done, the Trump administration. All I'm saying is that I'm not criticizing actually. All I'm saying is that let's pump the brakes and like freedom and democracy coming to Iran. And it's really interesting to me how everyone online and on Twitter seems to think that, you know, that is where this has had it. Like no, we're headed towards another Supreme Leader or maybe they've changed the name, but the regime hasn't been decimated. Like not everyone's dead. There is still a pretty significant regime apparatus. And what was interesting to me is that the Western media is already trying to annoy the next person. For example, Larigiani, the adjective that's being used ahead of his name is pragmatist. Now you just kind of see like these little monikers, these little normative moral adjusters, you know, like pragmatist Larigiani. Like first of all, he was the Treasury Department sanctioned him in January because he was, it was pretty involved in the crackdown that caused anywhere between 10,000 and 30,000 protesters to die. But yeah, like in a couple of weeks, he might be cool. I don't really have any problem with this from a sort of geostrategic perspective, like this is what it is, but this is why you're right. This operation will end whenever President Trump wants it to end. It's not like he has a checklist of what he's trying to accomplish. He's trying to accomplish a change in behavior. And you can do that like he went to Venezuela, but it doesn't mean that these countries are suddenly pro-American. And it certainly doesn't mean that they will never like trade with China or like take a side on an issue that's not pro-American. By the way, we forgot Afghanistan too. I mean, President Trump negotiated the withdrawal from Afghanistan and like Tallahbun is in charge. And you know, I mean, they are still the Tallahbogh. Yes, and at war with Pakistan, by the way, it's like the United States and Israel didn't want the world to realize that Afghanistan and Pakistan are-- We don't have time, or with each other. We don't have time to discuss that. Yeah, I mean, there's a lot to unpack. And I want to try and help listeners get to the center of gravity. And I'm going to go, well, I'm going to identify one center of gravity that I want to throw at you. And then I want to say one thing about sort of where we are here on Sunday, March 1st, because it doesn't seem to me that the US has been particularly successful. I also want to say, by the way, I love your framing, a change of behavior, not a change of regime. Like Trump can say whatever he wants about it, a day of freedom is upon us for the Iranian people. What he really wants is what's happening in Venezuela, which is a change of behavior, like say nicer things about the United States. Let us have access to your oil. I don't know if you saw this amazing article in the New York Times this past week of somebody who went to Caracas. And it's like, they're opening up new nightclubs and they're selling Porterhouse steaks for $160. And in my head, I'm like, I thought this was a country with hyperinflation and couldn't afford anything. And there's steaks available for $160. I'm so-- anyway, I dig right. But the decapitation strike was too easy. Like Ali Hamini was just chilling in his compound. He was obviously ready for this. And the reporting that he picked four potential successors and that he asked every single senior person in the Iranian government and the IRGC to pick four successors that they weren't going to share around publicly so that when the decapitation strike came, there would be a chain of command. That tells me that there actually is significant resilience inside the regime. And if you really want to change behavior or regime in a meaningful way, you have to knock enough of these people out such that the Iranian regime feels under threat. I look at-- at least now on March 1, and maybe the tempo is going to increase and maybe Israel and the United States have some things up their sleeve. But we expended a significant amount of ordinance. There's already reports about how the United States is running out of ammunition or is going to have to relocate stockpiles from the Asia Pacific. Do they have the missile defense interceptors that they need? Is Israel have the interceptors that they need? Whereas Iran's pace has been kind of ragged and slow, but continuous. And they're just staying in the game. They're resisting the knockout blow. They're just going to keep jabbing and jabbing and jabbing because the longer this goes on, the more I think it helps them out. And then the pressure comes on President Trump that he has to wrap it up to your point and put a little bow on the reality TV episode and everything else. The thing I wanted to throw at you in terms of center of gravity, to me, the most surprising thing in some sense of the last 48 hours was this reporting that the Saudis were for this and that they were pushing the United States and Israel to do this. And that threw me for a loop because I was still thinking in my head about Saudi-Iran normalization from 2023 and that the Saudis wanted stability. They didn't want US-Israeli intervention against Iran because they were worried about the instability. I don't know how to evaluate just how true that reporting is, but that reporting is out there, that the Saudis were banging on the table for this. And that makes some sense in terms of President Trump's urgency here. But if the entire Gulf is here for this, and maybe that also then explains why Iran is attacking Gulf state countries, because unless you know that they were pushing for it, I saw Farid Zakari being like, this was stupid. I can't believe they went after Gulf states. Yeah, it is really stupid. So they must have had some reason for doing this. Like I don't think stupidity is like a very good explanation for explaining Iran. I mean, maybe it is, I don't know, but it seems like overly stupid. Anyway, I just, I rambled a bit, take it whatever direction you. I don't know if Saudi Arabia wasn't in favor of it. I saw that report as well. I think that Iran is the difference between today and 2025 is that the regime is backed up against the wall. And it does have to illustrate to the region and the world that there's a cost to killing the person in charge of Iran. So I don't think it's stupid to attack. Regional hubs, transportation and to close the straight of removes, which has been closed, both because of GPS spoofing and because of use of drones. Two ships have been attacked. So we now have actual supply loss of crude, which we have not had since the Hamas attack on October 7th, 2020, Moset III, not two. So the reality is that I don't think that it was a mistake for them to do that. It's just that they're clearly limiting their attacks or maybe they're not, maybe they don't have the capability. Either way, yeah, you know, like so either way, I think that there's still an element of Iranian regime, not I think, not knowing whether they should turn the dial all the way to 10. Last year, they kept the dial at like three, they attacked US bases, which is expected. They attacked Israel, which is expected. Nobody really cared about those two. I mean, like globally, like you didn't move markets, it didn't really make any difference. But you know, now they're actually attacking like everything. The largest airport hub in the world is Dubai, all the planes are grounded and crude is not transiting through the straight of her moves. So they have actually done something that they've really not ever attempted since the 1980s and even then they just, but it does feel like the dial is only at like a seven or an eight. And if that, it feels lower than that to me. I mean, they haven't, you talk about the straight of her moves, like yes, data looks like it's, you know, I mean, not 100% shut down, but significantly shut down. But it's not because Iran has mined it or because they've been blowing up ships or anything. It's just because companies are afraid to go there and insurers are canceling policies and doubling the policies and things like that. So nobody in their right mind is gonna go that through that in a war, but that we even had a report that the Iranian foreign minister was saying we're not blocking shipping through this rate of form, like we are guests, like go on, that's not what we're doing. - Yeah, I mean, I don't know. I mean, it's pretty blocked though, you know, so the ships are not, look, it's okay though, it's okay. There is enough storage around the world that, you know, the blockade of straight to her moves, there's a difference between stock and flow. The world can deal with this straight to her moves being closed for like a month, that's fine. It's ox, but all prices are gonna go up, but it doesn't mean that it will necessarily have a long lasting economic impact. So I think that they are, look, but you know what we don't know though Jacob is whether it's a dial issue, whether they've turned a dial to six or seven, or whether this is it, this is what they have. These are their capabilities. And so one of the reasons that maybe you are right or the reporting is right, that Saudi Arabia did approve or nudge Israel in the US into this, one of the reasons it may be that look, I mean, Iran's had a lot of setbacks over the last eight months, and at some point, it just gets to a point where you say like, "Well look, you guys kind of suck at war." None of your missiles or drills got to Israel in 2025. You lost Assad in Syria completely. Hasbullah has been decimated by Israel. And it doesn't seem like you have any ability to defend your airspace. So almost what caused this to happen is not President Trump's wish to deflect from Epstein or the economy, although sure, yeah, it helps with those. What caused this is potentially the vulnerability militarily speaking that Iran ill-stried it. That they've invited this attack because they don't seem to have any ability to effectuate sovereignty over their own airspace. Like Israeli fighter jets, now for two years in a row, are effectively just taking a stroll through Iranian airspace with absolutely nothing to stop them. - Well, I haven't seen that report. What I've seen is that, and maybe they will be able to here soon. Like a lot of the initial strikes that the, especially the US is going after was air defense inside Iran, but it seems like the US and Israel are attacking from Iraq. Like they're not actually in Iranian airspace quite yet. They are trying from Iraq and from areas around Iran to knock out the local air defense, which is your same point. If you can't prevent them from getting to your border and then knocking out the air defense so that in two days they're flying over at will, like, you know, what are we actually talking about? But I do want to say, like, I saw that. I don't know. I mean, this is also the fog of war. Like this is the part of reporting where you get 10 different reports about targets and what's going on and you have to start parsing through them. - Well, Israeli press said that, no, 200 fighter jets were in airspace of Iran and attacked the Supreme leaders. Compound. - Yeah, but were they over Tehran? - Yeah, I mean, look, we don't know. - Or were they like, right, like, two centimeters over the Iraqi border and like, they launched the missiles from there, like, it's all. - What I would say is it's kind of semantics. And the reason I say that is because, like, the leader of the country is dead. - You know, like, including his like granddaughter. Like, you know, like, they clearly are extremely weak. And I mean, that's a reality. No, no, there's an asymmetry to this, which I'm concerned about. And I'm concerned about it because, like, the Houthis in Yemen, allied with Iran, managed to close the Red Sea for three years with drone warfare. And they got really good at producing $2,000 drones. They got really good at producing them on site. And they got really good at shooting and scooting. So they would like shoot and then just disappear. And the thing with drones is when you launch them, there's no like heat signature. So you can't actually go ahead and find them and destroy them. Where at the point of launch. And so, you know, like, when you launch an anti-ship cruise missile, for example, the AWACS somewhere above the region can like pinpoint it and tell the fighter jet, like, hey, there it is, go launch a missile. So like, you can't really do that with drones. So I do worry that at some point if Iran goes into unrestrained drone warfare, they have a very long in rugged coastline. And you can have these independent guerrilla teams just launching drones at global shipping. And that then turns this into a very long campaign. It becomes a campaign where America has to effectively conduct punitive air strikes to impose so much pain on the Iranian regime and people that they stop doing that because you can't actually find these little teams. Again, maybe I'm wrong. Maybe the reason the world didn't do anything about the Houthis in Yemen and their drone capabilities is because Red Sea is not that significant actually. Like it just isn't. I mean, you know, it's more significant. And yeah, it's more significant than I think than you say there. But the ironic thing was that shipping was just starting to come back. And now it's gone because of everything that's happened to the world. No, but like, I don't know. I have no answers except to say that for three years the Houthis closed the Red Sea, Iran is wealthier, larger, and more capable than the Houthis. Like, should they not be and they're much more approximate to the straight of her moves? Straight of her moves is a choke point. You cannot find an alternative to it. Saudi Arabia has a pipeline across its territory to get to the Red Sea. But that pipeline itself could be attacked by the drone. So this is where, you know, I agree with you that this could very much end in a week. President Trump just said, literally just said, that things are progressing better than expected. This was his statement. He said that Iranians want to talk and that he wants to talk to them. So there are signs that things are moving in the right direction, like in terms of President Trump just declaring that Larigiani is a del Zidriguez. What do he call her? Our girl. He's going to be our bearded man. I can see that happening. And that's why I say a lot of this is kind of just Hollywood. Don't tell me that this is regime change. Don't tell me the president Trump really cares about the 10,000 to 30,000 dead protesters. Like we're not going to try to get Iran to turn into his constant. Like that's not what's going on here. Elements of the regime who repressed the people in December and January, like they're going to be in charge. But they're going to change their behavior, particularly on nuclear program, on ballistic missiles. And so I still think it's a win-win for the US. But it's not about regime change. It's about regime calibration. And I think that what's really profound about President Trump's foreign policy-- and I've said this before-- is that in a multipolar world, the last thing you want to do is commit yourself to a war with anyone for a prolonged period of time. It will just further drain your resources. So instead of regime change, you want to have these regime calibrations. Very short term, quick, no-ground troops, no resources really spent. Get your allies to do the heavy lifting. In this case, Israel is actually participating and doing a lot. And then what do you get? Well, you don't get a regime change. And you don't care about that because the world has no room for normative or moral issues. The United States of America does not have the resources to change fundamentally the regime's structure of a country of 90 million people in a rugged mountainous terrain in the Middle East. That's just not going to happen. Yeah. I think you're right when you center in on-- is the dial turned for Iran where it is because of capacity or because intentionally they think that's what's going to get them what they want or what-- that's the way out of this. Because I think your right president Trump wants to wrap this up in a week or two. And if Iranians can take the first punch and just stay in the game long enough to get there, then they'll get a deal. And they can have their delcy. And the regime can basically continue on but to your point with a change in behavior. Ironically, I don't know if Ali Hamid is really this selfless. But I mean, the dude was 86. He was really sick. Like, he'd been sick for some years to the point where he was already having to delegate responsibility. He had spoken about wanting to die by martyrdom anyway. One potential interpretation is, if he wanted to preserve the regime, the best thing he could do for the regime was to have a succession plan and die for the regime. That is the sequence of events that gives the regime the best possible chance in standing up to what the United States and Israel are doing to it. And yes, I do want to hit that question that you just sent to me via chat. But I want to ask you a question. I haven't been able to answer to myself first. And it started as a joke to myself because I was thinking, is every other former US president like calling up their former advisors and demanding? So I could have just killed these guys. Like, I didn't have to deal with that. Like, the Supreme Leader has been like literally since the 1980s, this guy has been a thorn in the side of every single US president. We could have just knocked him out. Like, it takes president Trump to do this. Well, why has no one else done this? I'll tell you what. I'll tell you, I have that answer. I have that answer. And that answer is the topic of this great book by George Cannon called American Diplomacy, which I've brought up before. So America always had the capabilities. But it didn't have the moralistic nihilism of President Trump. Because see, this is what my contention is with everybody who is really a guest when I say it's all Hollywood. It is all Hollywood. You say that you care about protesters dying, but then you attack the regime. The regime replaces the Ayatollah with somebody is similar and then we're cool with it. Like, President Trump is pursuing American interests in a very 19th century manner. This isn't about morality or norms. So in the past, when American presidents had to justify military operations, they did so through the narrative of norms and morality. Saddam Hussein is a bad guy. Slow but I mean, Loshovich is a bad guy. Al-Qaeda are evil. And so everyone effectively becomes Hitler. And so you cannot just go replace Hitler with goring and be cool with it. Like that's just not-- Like when you use apps-- Accepted apparently Donald Trump, because that is what he's doing. No, I agree. I agree. Maybe that's not what he's-- Sorry, I didn't mean it. No, no, no, no, it's OK. No, no, you're totally right. So why is he capable of doing this in nobody else's? I would argue that he's the right man for the right moment. And what I mean by that is that the world is not-- it's not a unipolar or a bipolar world anymore. It's a multipolar world. In a multipolar world, if you consistently use absoluteist moral arguments over and over again, you're going to be putting boots on the ground of every country that's your rival. And that's just not something that you can do in a multipolar world, where there's other adversaries who are extremely powerful. It would be stupid for America to get drawn into turning Iran into Wisconsin. America has to look out for its own interests. And so what I'm saying, Jacob, is the President Trump-- it's not like he's a genius who figured this out. It's that America is at a point in its evolution when it comes to foreign policy, this is what Americans kind of want. Now, polls don't show that. polls show that only a quarter of American support this conflict. But once it's over, I think that that will change. If you and I are right in this last, let's say, two weeks, and President Trump eventually kind of pulls the Venezuelan here and says, La Rijani is a good guy. In that world, people will be like, oh, OK, cool. It was another limited operation. They did not suck our resources or change geopolitics for the next 10 years because we're stuck in the Middle East fighting these wars. So why does he-- why is he the only person who can do this? Because the world has changed. And I think in this world, it doesn't make sense to use absolutist arguments. That's just not how a multipolar world works. It goes back to that old saying, countries don't have friends or enemies, just have interests. And that's what this illustrates. I think one of the things that's so interesting about him, though, is that he's using absolutist language. There's nothing about his language that is not moralizing and ideological. It's freedom for the Iranian people, this regime is evil, they're threatening American interests, they want nuclear weapons, even though we just set back their nuclear program eight months ago. So he can say all those things. And yet, his actual moves of the tactician are exactly what you're talking about. I think your description of his tactics is dead on. And for some reason, he can use the moralizing language one day and then shift the language the next day. And not be called on it. Whereas if I look back at previous US governments, like Richard Nixon and Kissinger, much to my dismay and Shagrin, we all know how much I hate Kissinger if you've been listening to this podcast. This is the world they were preparing for. And therefore, in policy was dialed to this. There are no friends, but interests. We're going to be as horrible as we have to be, no matter where we are in the world. Because this is all about US interests. But that was what they said. They didn't pretend like it was anything different. The thing that was exceptional about them was they said it. I mean, Nixon used to use the word multipolar in speeches. He was fairly blunt about it. Flip side, you may have somebody like Barack Obama, who maybe wanted to do that, had visions of maybe trying to do that, but in practice, he just couldn't stomach it. Like as soon as the Yazidis start getting genocide, it by ISIS, he's like, "Uh, okay, I was a realist, but I got to save these people." 'Cause I cannot conscience that we're not going to save these people, 'cause we're the light on the hill, and the city on the hill and everything. - I'm not sure, Obama. I think the problem for Obama is his constituents were not ready for this. I think the problem for Obama is that he was the President of the United States of America from 2008 to 2016, and during that period of time, I don't think it was a self-evident that the world was multipolar, and therefore scary, and therefore difficult for America to project power in. And therefore you had to be prudent, and his constituents are liberal. They believe in absolutist universal human rights. And so, you know, like, it was, I mean, he drowned a lot of people. You know what I mean? - Yeah, a lot. - Yeah, a lot. But I didn't that, like, he had to still pay lip service to this narratives. The other issue was that during the Cold War era, I think it was also difficult to be this brutal, because you did have an ideological conflict. Soviet Union was out there. This was an ideological battle. This wasn't just a battle between two superpowers. Soviet Union was communist, America was capitalist, and a democracy. We in 2026, what is China? Please don't tell me they're communist. Like, what are they? What is the ideological conflict? Is there a Maoist party in Portugal ready to take over? And then we're going to have to intervene on behalf of the right wing pro-business. No, there is no ideological challenge in 2026. So we have no ideological, like, you know, epic battle between two camps. And America is not a unipolar hegemon where it can waste resources willy-nilly on pursuing morality and norms. And so I think that Trump's sort of, you know, nimbleness, it's the fact that he's amoral, not immoral necessarily, amoral that allows him to pivot. And I would say that I would have to say objectively speaking, given the constraints on U.S. power projection, this is the correct way to do it. You just, you know, it's regime calibration, not regime change. So if you have to do this every couple of years to Iran, like, well, then, you know, it is what it is. Yeah. But before we get onto China, I want to put one more question to you, which is something I've struggled with. I mean, since I started my career. But I also, I struggled with it in particular, in the last couple of years, especially when the race between Trump and Kamala Harris was starting to heat up. Because I don't know if you remember Kamala Harris went on 60 minutes and the edited version. I mean, you should go watch the unedited version out there. If you haven't seen it, oh my God. I mean, the edited version wasn't that good. The unedited version is absolute comedy. But in the edited version, she gets asked, I'm going to paraphrase here, because I don't remember the exact quote. She gets asked, what is the biggest threat to United States from a geopolitical perspective? And she basically says Iran that went like, that's the thing that occupies her time. And that if she becomes president, she's going to have to deal with Iran. And I was sitting there thinking, Iran, really? Like even, I mean, that's before, like 2025. I was thinking, do they really threaten U.S. interests? And I'm kind of there right now, because I can get to most of where you're saying on how U.S. policy is getting. But when I look at it, it's still a significant expenditure of U.S. treasure and like firepower and everything else. And how are U.S. interests that much furthered here? Like was Iran really that much of a geopolitical threat to the United States? Like it seems to me that there are much bigger fish to fry elsewhere. And maybe Trump can do it all. Like maybe this is where the multipolar thesis starts to fall apart and the U.S. is stronger than either you or I give a credit for. And Trump to your point is unbridled by concerns about morality or about proportionality. And he's just like, hey, this guy's an awful person. His regime sucks. I can take him out. Cool. Let's take him out. That's net net. That's great. That's a low cost or low risk high reward win for my administration here. Like, I don't know. Do you understand what I'm dancing around? Yeah. No, I do. I do. But the U.S. didn't do this because Iran is a repressive regime. No way. That has nothing to do with it. The U.S. did this because Iran's been stringing the U.S. along forever. It's like in 2025, Israel and the United States of America proved they can do whatever they wanted to Iran. President Trump gave them six to eight months to negotiate a deal. And they kind of didn't. And it was like enough, enough already. And I think it's a great signal to the rest of the world. Like we will kill your leader. And I don't mean great. It's like, I think it's awesome. But this is what the U.S. is saying. The U.S. is actually saying to the rest of the world, oh, you think it's a multipolar world? Cool. We agree. We agree it's a multipolar world. In our national security strategy, we published in December of 2025. We in fact say that great powers deserve to have spheres of influence. It's never been done before. So I believe that I'm not just right objectively. When I say the world is multipolar, I believe President Trump 100% agrees with me. But then the second step, like after you accept the world is multipolar, the second thing that America says is like, cool. Well, we don't care then about improving your livelihood. We'll just bomb you. You don't want us to be a hajima. You don't want the American empire to be in charge. You don't want us to be in charge. You don't want us to be like, well, then we are not going to police the region. We're just going to show up and bomb you and then book it. And then we'll come back six months later, bomb you again. You know why? Because we don't care that your lives improve. We actually don't. Like we don't care that the guy who comes takes over from how many is like, whatever. Just, here's three things we want from you. Deliver it. Or you're going to be bombed again and again and again. It's almost once America threw away that cape of morality. You know, that sheen, that like constant liberal baggage that everything had to be done from a perspective that there's absolute universal human rights norms. You know, if you're going to intervene in Iran, you have to leave the place better than you left it. Once he'd like through that cape away, it's just like, fuck it. We're just going to bomb you every six months, man. Like that's it. You know, and so that's if it's sort of like if you don't want to join the rules based international order and you're taking your sign down. Okay, cool. Signs down. Cool. Signs down. Let's go. Yeah. Like we can do this better than you guys can. And that's when America is basically telling the world like, look, you guys, you know, like this multiplicity stuff. I mean, you know, Jacob, you and I got accused of being like CCP spies and pro China, pro Russia because multiplicity was a term that put in and she loved because it argues that America is no longer in charge. And what Joe Biden did and I would argue with some mistake is he fought against that objective reality. He wasted resources on trying to illustrate to the world that no, America does stand for something and it is still a Hegemon and Trump is like, now, fuck it. You know what? They want to multiple the world. Joe, let me give it to them. And I'll show you what it looks like when America doesn't care about a rules based nor order. It's ironic because that behavior is actually much to me at least as much more Hegemonic than Joe Biden's version. Like it's much more Hegemonic to me that you're like, this guy is not negotiating. Cool. Can I get the plan? Yeah. Plan's are ready to go. Let's go. And by the way, I still have to hit the fundraiser later tonight. We're still like, I mean, it's incredible. It's incredible. But like, let's, let's pump the brakes on this being Hegemonic. Like Iran flies F fours, Phantom twos, F fours, like four single digit four, F four. It was designed, I believe in 1958. They still fly them. All right. That's so like an aircraft carrier off the coast of Iran just does whatever he wants. An aircraft carrier off the coast of China is like on the bottom of the ocean. So I do think that a lot of folks, they look at what's going on and they're like, no, this is a sign of American unipolarity. Like, this is not a multipolar world. But let's pump the brakes on that. Iran has proven to be a lot less adversarial than we think than we can illustrate. So would this be the case if the US wanted to fight China Russia? Of course not. I mean, they have nuclear weapons. They have hypersonic cruise missiles. It would be, it would be a lot tougher and obviously would lead to World War III. So no, I just think it shows that America is going to like kind of act in a way that other countries have been acting, you know? And I think that that's it. That's it. That's what Trump has done. And I do think that the worst thing that can happen over the next 10 years is that we get a president who rejects some of these new tools of foreign policy and decides that no, America should turn a country like Iran into Wisconsin. The reason I say that is while the intention is good, the problem is that as execution of it almost always leads to much more destruction and pain than what Trump just did in Venezuela or even Iran. And the die is already cast now. Like yes, the United States can be, when I say hegemonic, I mean, US behavior towards Iran is unconstrained. It's unconstrained by morality to your point, but it's unconstrained by capacity, by adversaries, by anything. It's just like the United States is doing whatever it wants to do. And your point is taken, the US is not going to do this against Russia or China. US couldn't even probably do this against North Korea. Like I would sit up in my chair a little bit if this is how an intervention with Pyeongyang went. And you might remember back in 2017, Trump was flirting with this. He had the two aircraft carriers off the Korean peninsula seemed like we were moving that direction. And then he didn't do it probably because that was not going to be as much of a layoff. But it's just unconstrained. But I think your point is right because whether you disagree with Trump's policy or not, like this is now how the world is going to look at the United States. And so countries are going to as quickly as possible try and develop some level of deterrence. Whether that's nuclear weapons and a nuclear deterrent, like we talked about last episode, whether it's about better defense systems, like actual air defense systems. That work. So 10 years from now, if you get a new president who like tries to turn the clock back, but everybody else is thinking none of that, no, like we need to hurry up because we can get bombed at any moment. Then 10 years down the road, the US will be materially weaker and it won't be able to assert itself even against a country like Iran. So in that sense, like President Trump has set the US on a path that no future president is really going to be able to get off of. And if they do, I think so too. I would be disastrous. I think this is this is with us to stay. We're in the 19th century. We're in a multipolar world of the 19th century and a multipolar world doesn't mean that America is equally powerful as other polls. No, you can still have the most powerful country in the world. The United Kingdom in the 19th century or US today, but United Kingdom did not go around just invading other countries by itself and then trying to turn them into Wisconsin. The United Kingdom did it. It's weird. It's weird. It's weird. It's weird. It's weird like parts of the empire, but those weren't even like really wars. Yeah, because the people were so weak. I mean, like, but like what I'm talking about more is in the European theater, do you know I came them quite often led from behind? He created coalitions of the willing, like the Kremlin war being a good example. The United Kingdom was one of several countries that fought that conflict. And so that's kind of what I'm getting at. The United Kingdom did not just do everything by itself. It didn't stretch itself thin. It was smart about it. It was Machiavellian about it. And I think that I do think this is going to stay with us. I think the next president of the United States of America, even if it is a Democrat, is going to act precisely the way Trump is acting right now. And I know a lot of you hate this, but this is a classical, this is Jacob. You and I were like taught by George Friedman how to do this. And I always loved when he would write a report I had of the appointment of the next president of the US. And he would say like nothing will change, you know. And then the liberals would lose their mind. And the conservatives would lose their mind. And I will say like if AOC becomes the president of the United States of America, like the foreign policy is going to look a lot more like this, like what Trump is doing right now, then like what Bush, W or Obama did. Yeah, the flip side of it though is that the like if I'd have to go back and look at a GPF reports and see if George said this. But if you said that about Trump and the second administration, nothing's going to change. That would have been wrong. He has changed things. In that sense, he is a world historical figure. He is this individual whom like, yeah, normally like geopolitical forces and constraints. They are the one that are operating things here. But he made decisions that will now affect everything else that comes afterwards. Like a like love him or hate him like that, I think is indisputable at this point. He's changed the course of US foreign policy because it didn't have to go this direction. Like he had choice here and he had agency and he made it. In that sense, I think he took the agency away from future leaders. I think you're right. Okay. Let's, you sent me this question in the chat. So let's attack it a little bit. And I've seen this out there, which is everybody wants to make this. It took 24 hours for the articles to start to proliferate that this was really all about China and the South China Sea and Taiwan. The good faith argument there is that, you know, this oil, all the fertilizer, the chemicals that are coming out of the straight-up, or moves all this trade. Like yes, it's going to affect the Gulf States, especially if the blockage goes on for more than a couple weeks. But most of that is going to Asia, the exports of it. And China and an ordinance share of this as well is this really all about China. Was this really about taking a potential Chinese, not ally, but let's say partner off the board and flipping them. Is this going to impose the most damage on China than any other country? You said you talked about oil prices being up. I mean, it's Sunday March 1st. Futures were up 10%. So that puts oil roughly 80 a barrel. Whoop-de-doo. Like that doesn't mean anything for most of the West for China. Like that's, you know, now we're like talking about something that's mildly important. I also just want to throw in here. You know, Narendra Modi was in Israel last week. And he was having quite a bromance with Benjamin Netanyahu. And I assume he got some heads up about what was about to happen here. So to me, the Israel-India relationship is also a really interesting part of this. I don't know if you also caught this. Netanyahu, what was it an interview a couple weeks ago? He was talking about the future relationship with the United States. And he was saying that he wanted to, he was like wanted to broach the notion that US or the extent of US military and defense support for Israel in terms of annual expenditures should start going down and should maybe go away in 10 years time so that Israel should be self-sufficient. Like I thought that was a really interesting nugget there as well. Because that's Israel preparing for multi-pollarity and preparing for hey. Like they're doing us a solid now, but we push them to do this solid now because we know in 10 years they're not going to be wasting time here. They're going to be digging up penguins in Greenland or something like that. So is this all about China? I'll let you cook for a second. Yeah, so I think that there's like this real impetus, real desire to connect the dots. Everybody wants to connect the dots. Sometimes they don't really need to be connected. Is it all about China, Venezuela and then Iran? China obviously sources oil from both of those. And so now there's this view that after this conflict, the US will prohibit Iran from selling oil to China. First and foremost, that's nonsense. The United States of America couldn't prohibit Iraq from selling oil to China or Russia while still occupying it. Well, it's a fungible resources. So no, like, and by the way, even if the US was successful, China would just buy oil from Saudi Arabia. So I think that it's not all about China. I do think that it helps to do regime calibration to regimes that were pro-Chinese. That's fine. But anymore who thinks that Iran is pro-Chinese and that Saudi Arabia does not have also very good relationship with China, just doesn't know what the hell is going on in the world. Like what is Saudi Arabia going to do? Someone's going to have to sell their oil to China. The world's not going to not sell oil to China. I think a much bigger issue is that this is a great demonstration of American military presence in might in the state of Ramos. And I think what the US can signal with this attack is like, hey, China, just as a little reminder, we can close the straits of Ramos whenever we want. Forget about Iran. So if you invade Taiwan, just remember, we control this region here. We have a lot of military bases. We don't have a lot of capacity. So you will not get your oil, whether it's from Iran, Iraq or Saudi Arabia or Kuwait, it doesn't really matter. Like the point is, the oil will not transit if we want it to stop. But that's a different point. I just think that, no, it's not about China. I think that what the US is doing is, it's, you know, like I think it had an opportunity to regime calibrate Venezuela and Iran. But I do think that actually in a cup, in like a month, we're going to have President Trump and she meet. And I do think that they're going to find a deal. If anything, I think this does help President Trump in those negotiations. I think he can like have sort of an upper hand. I think it's a signal to China that it doesn't want to challenge the US right now. I think if anything, that's what this does. It makes China believe that they should as quickly as possible make a deal with the US. And maybe by American oil instead of Venezuela and Iranians. Yeah, the only part of that I would quibble with is as quickly as possible line. Like I think you're right. I think China is angling for a deal. And I don't think China is going to live up to the deal, but I think they want the deal. I think they understand the reality TV presidency better than any other country in the world. And they understand how to give President Trump a win and that they don't want this extended conflict. I think it's actually much more interesting to speculate about how, I mean, the country, aside from the United States, that like in Israel that is going to profit the most from this is Russia. I mean, if oil prices are significantly up for a period of time, this is Russia. What I'm saying, it helped out. And the reporting out of Russia, I mean, the reporting out of Russia for years has been that it sucks, but eventually it's going to suck enough for even the Russians to have to throw down the czar. But I mean, things have been really bad there. They've been keeping the economy together with Scotch tape and interesting interest rate moves and everything else. And if you get a meaningful increase in the price of oil, even if it's for a month, I mean, that helps Russia at a particular crucial point in the war with Ukraine with the negotiation. Oh, yeah, 100%. And I think that that's where this kind of like everything is connected breaks down because yeah, this does potentially extend Russian willingness to fight the war in Ukraine. I mean, look, at the end of the day, when it comes to oil, someone's going to sell oil to China. So don't over index to the fact that China was buying from Iran or Venezuela. Like if China has to spend a little bit more on oil, like the Chinese economy is not going to collapse because of that. Because economy has problems already, but it's got plenty of oil and storage. It has pipelines into Russia. It's going to buy oil from Saudi Arabia. Like, you know, the world will go on for China if it can no longer get it from Venezuela and Iran. So I'm I am confused by how much everybody thinks this is about China. I do think, however, the president Trump is going to see all this nonsense online and he's going to be like, yeah, this was all about China. You know, the dots are connected. It's like, no, bro, like we know why you did this. You know, in Venezuela, you want you don't want to have a country that's openly hostile to the US in Latin America, like that's fair. And in Iran, it's a country that the attacks of 2025 proved was vulnerable. He tried to make a deal with them. He gave them a number of issues, a number of like points and they didn't want to give up the ballistic missiles. The reporting is very interesting, by the way, on that the reporting suggests that they were willing to give up everything on the nuclear program, everything. They were willing to just like Maduro was willing to give up everything, you know, right. And then they did not want to give up their ballistic missile technology. That's where I told, in fact, the last speech that I told a company made was we need to have deterrent technologies. Like America can't ask us not to have any deterrents, like that's not fair. And it's like, yeah, life is fucking not fair, bro. And you're dead now. Like you should have given that. And you know why this is awesome now? It makes the deal easier. Why? Because they don't have any more ballistic missiles. They will all have been destroyed, either fired. The launchers would have been destroyed. Israel and the US are going to destroy their industrial capacity related to the manufacturing ballistic missiles. And so now Trump doesn't have to insist on that being part of the deal. And then every 12 months, if you have to fly over Iran and blow up some ballistic missiles, I guess that might be the world we're in. You're going to have to mold the grass as the Israelis. That was the term that the IDF used to use for Hasbola. You know, every couple of years you're going to have to mold the grass, you know, just go in there and bomb some stuff. Maybe that's the world we're in. But this goes back to my point about Hummy knee, like either he lost it, and it means he's 86 years old. Like I'm not going to be in the game when I'm 86 years old. We've talked about that. I can't imagine being the supreme leader of Iran at 86 years old. So either he lost it or he understood that he had outlived his usefulness and that the best thing he could do was be the voice of resistance and take it on the chin and preserve a pragmatic space for his regime to still exist. Because it's also like it's not just, I mean, like, you know, his argument, it's not fair. We need some kind of deterrent. Okay. It's also like not possible. Like how do you verify that you gave up your ballistic missile technology? Like that's human know how unless you assassinate every single engineer in the country. Like we're not, you know, this is not about uranium enrichment. Like developing missiles and rockets as a deterrent. Like that's, you're not just going to like give that away. It's like an unrealistic ask let alone like a more, when I want to connect a different set of dots. I know you said we don't have time to go into Afghanistan and Pakistan. I don't want to go into a 2D, but I just want to ask listeners to take a step back and like imagine a map of Eurasia in your head. And think about the fact that you've got, you know, Russia, Ukraine war ongoing. You've got this Syrian al-Qaeda dude backed by Turkey going after Kurdish autonomy in the Levant. You've got a Sudanese civil war with the Emirates on one side and the Saudis on the other side. You've got Ethiopia gearing up for another round of war, maybe to conquer Eritrea and a whole bunch of geopolitical machinations happening. That's the biggest geopolitical thing we are not talking about enough right now. It's pretty disturbing how much is getting built up around there. Now you've got, add into this, Israel in the United States bombing Iran, zoom out from, and then you know, a little bit further over, you've got now Pakistan and Afghanistan at war. And you might remember a couple weeks ago, we started off a podcast and I told you, did you see those weird attacks in Belochistan? Like on the border with Iran, like I said, I can't figure out exactly what was going on there. That's a huge chain of people and resources and trade routes and everything else where you've basically got active conflicts and none of them are interacting with each other. It's not World War III. Every one of them has their own self-defined logic. But man, it's like a crescent that cuts through all of Eurasia, through Suez, where things are just screwed up. Which is why I say like, I don't know how to connect the dots fully, but the notion that you're going to connect the dots to the South China Sea, that's just Asinai. The dots to connect are, okay, well, if the Saudis were pushing for this, how does this work into what they're doing in Sudan and with Ethiopia? And if the Emirates were not, there's a whole bunch of, yeah, there's a whole complexity in murkiness to it that I don't understand, but you don't have to be an analyst to look and see that there's all these different things that are happening at the same time. And there's no way that they're not connected in some way. Yeah, no, I totally agree. And I think that Iran, now the big fear, this is the pessimistic scenario here, is what Khamran was talking about, a different Khamran as well, which is that what President Trump thinks he is doing this for a couple of days, he thinks this is limited, he thinks that Iran finds a new leader, boom, that tells you Rodriguez and everything is fine. But what if Iran tips over into a civil war, right? What if this actually tips Iran into completely, complete instability? I guess it's not a big deal, either the fact that millions of people will die and that sucks and will sort of be his fault, but would it really hurt American interests if that's the case? And the answer is, yeah, potentially, because potentially you could have the emergence of some pragmatic Iranian faction, a Baluchi Iranian faction, and then a Islamist ideological faction that acts like the Houthis do by bombing the, by using drones to introduce oilshipping. So do you really want to have an unstable Iran, a stride, the most important choke point in global trade? And I think the answer is no. So hopefully somebody is explaining that to the White House as well. Like look, let's quickly get to regime calibration because regime change will not necessarily turn this place into Wisconsin. And that's why we started this podcast and I kind of went through the history. Like let's think of all the things that America has done in the region. When is it led to a more superior, calmer, better place? Like I mean, Syria, the jury's still out. Like I got hopes for what's going on there. But like Libya is the mess. Iraq is, you know, pretty messy. Afghanistan is run by the Taliban. You know, we're back where we started. So that would be a problem. Yeah, I think Iran excuse me. I think that Comarons framing is important to engage with. And we had a couple listeners who just didn't seem to get that when I was talking to Comaron, I was being a foil for his argument because I think his argument is provocative and it needs to be probed, but whatever. But I mean, Comaron has been talking about this for weeks now, which is talking about the IRGC versus the Arteche. The Arteche being the Iranian regular forces and that the Arteche is going to start asserting itself and that this is probably the version of Delci Rodriguez. And also in Comarons framing, which might be right, I find myself disagreeing with it more than a green. But his framing leads to that civil war scenario because you do have these two armed forces that are against each other. You have the Arteche, which has not participated in the IRGC's absorption of the Iranian economy and they want to get theirs and they can assert themselves versus the IRGC. I have struggle coming around to that because it doesn't seem to me like that's what's happening. I think maybe there was a moment in early January where you could have done that, where the regime was not ready for this. But I think the regime has spent the last two months since those protests in January getting ready for this. And I don't see any Arteche IRGC tension here. I don't see civil war as a meaningful outcome. It seems to me it's either going to be you're going to find some kind of version of Delci Rodriguez or you're going to get a revolution. And like revolution will be incredibly messy in the short term, but in the long term, like that's the return to the secular Iran that is going to participate with the West and is going to be an ally of the West in general. That is very clearly what Israel wants. Like Netanyahu, I don't know if you saw his speech or his statement about this. He was like, yes, I was asked last year whether the goal was regime change. And I said, if it's a byproduct fine, but it's not the goal this time, the goal is regime change. And I believe what you say about Trump not giving a shit about regime change in Iran. The Israelis want regime change. Like they really think that they you might be able to flip Iran into some kind of secular democratic paradise once again. And by the way, I think that will happen at some point. I just don't think it's going to happen today. And part of the reason if you hear a tone of criticality in my voice towards the Trump administration, I just think they had a shot in January to do that. Like instead of like pushing for that high-risk high-reward solution, they're doing the Delci Rodriguez thing here now. Interesting. So you think if they had attacked while the protests were going on, there would have been a different outcome. I think it would have been. Yeah, I mean, I'm trying to ascribe a percentage to it in my head. I think you could have really talked about an Iranian revolution. If when President Trump did that tweet that help is coming, help is on the way. If you had seen the United States carpet bombing, IRGC facilities the next day, yeah, I think we're in a fundamentally different Iran. Whereas here today, and in over the next two weeks, I don't think we're going to be in a fundamentally different Iran. I think that I think you're right. Iran is weak. It invited this. It's licking its wounds, everything else. And maybe Israel and the United States, like I said, like it's March 1st. A lot can happen in the next couple of days. Maybe they're going to knock out all the air defense. And then the dial is going to go from three right now all the way to 10. And it's going to be nonstop parking lot creation throughout the entire country. And it's going to be a different story. But if this is as far as they're going to push it, like the regime is resilient. The messaging is resilient. The leadership is out there talking. They're talking they're open for negotiations. Like I don't see any signal that this regime is that war with itself is flagging. It seems to me like they have a plan and they're trying to stick with it. I've always been very skeptical of appraisings in Iran. But at the same time, these things don't, they're not linear. They're kind of like forest fires. They just kind of like happen. So it's difficult to forecast social movements and revolutions. Very difficult. You can just say, look, this place is ripe for a social revolution. And then it takes years for it to happen. But one of the reasons that I have a problem thinking that's going to happen is Iranians, I'm sure, are not happy with their leadership. Obviously, like it's, it's vile. It's terrible. But I'm pretty sure that like most Iranians hate Israel. Like that's not like fake, you know? You think most Iranians hate Israel? Harbisaat. Harbisaat I do. Yeah. It's a rivalry in the region. They've, they're it. I mean, like Israel just like killed 70,000 Palestinians or whatever the number is. There is genuine concern about Palestinians in Iran. That's, that's cute that you think the Iranians care about the Palestinians. Do you think anyone gives a shit about the Palestinians? I mean, I think that, look, all I, all I'm saying is that you've got a regime that's existed for 50 years. And during those 50 years, it's pretty clear they consider America the Great Satan and Israel the little Satan. Like, that was the, that was the, I mean, that was the deal with the devil that they made. Like the Iranian revolution. I mean, this goes back to your history lesson, which is this conflict is and is a byproduct of the Cold War. The United States supports the Shah because they feel like they need the Shah and they need Iran against the Soviet Union. Eventually, the people hate the Shah so much that they are willing to align with the clerics and the religious crazies and say, let's bring down this monarchy. And the religious crazies come in and say, whoops, like not, are you sure you like this bargain? Like, this is what we've got for you. And now you've got this, you know, uneasy balance between, you know, the secular merchant economic class and then the folks that actually bought the, yeah, but Eric said, and the reason I think January was a moment was because that economic class, they were the ones that were out. They were, they were closing the shop. No, I get that. They were taking the sign that they were taking the sign out of the way. It doesn't mean that the rivalry between Iran and Israel is fake or it's just a function of the regime. And in fact, look, I go to the Middle East a lot. I travel a lot. And there's this very glib viewing America and Israel that nobody cares about Palestinians. True, nobody cares enough about Palestinians to do anything about it. But this idea that once Iran is resolved, Abraham, according to back on, that everyone is just nipping at their heels to get a deal with Israel. Like why? What's Israel going to give you? Why would you make a deal with Israel for what purpose? You can have a good cybersecurity like solutions. What does Israel provide honestly to anyone on the planet? It's a country of 10 million people with hummus and cybersecurity software. Like cool. Nobody in the Middle East has to improve their relationship with Israel. It don't have to. And the history of the region is one where Israel did some things that expanded its territory at the loss of the Arab populations control of their territory. That's a fact. Nobody likes that. That's what I mean. That's a fact in Riyadh and Abu Dhabi, by the way. And of course, it is then the fact in Tehran too. So the reason I bring this up is that I do think it would have maybe been easier to engender actual regime change if Israel was not involved in the attacks. That's what I mean. And I think that we're ignoring that fact. Like Israel is bombing Iran and you're not supposed to have an uprising. Well Israeli jets are giving you cover. Like that might be a bridge too far for the median Iranian person. And look, I could be wrong. No, I think you're supporting your own assertion about President Trump not making this about regime change because if he had done this in January, he would not have done it with the Israelis. It would have been America is coming to help you. America is helping protect the Iranian protesters. They wouldn't have it. They wouldn't have had enough time to call up the Israelis and you know, oh, we're going to do a joint campaign against these things. This would have been the United States going in and taking care of this. Whereas I think you're exactly right. I think the US joining with Israel to accomplish this does take regime change off the table. Even if I would disagree with you, I think that some of it is manufactured by the regime. If every single card carrying IRGC member hates Israel, that's already enough for like a large portion of the population to hate them, even if some others do. But yes, I take obviously IRGC who cares. I'm just saying like, look, I spent a lot of time in the Middle East. I grew up in the Middle East for part of my life. People are genuinely mad at Israel's behavior. Like obviously, like how is this contentious? You know, this is an obvious fact. And this is why I think that sometimes American policymakers, particularly the Trump administration, they think that Abraham Accords are a given. And it's like, but why? You know, like there are some countries where improving relationship with Israel is a huge deal. I would say Egypt and Jordan. Like that makes sense. You know, but for a lot like a UAE, like, cool, whatever. Like, yeah, we'll improve our relationship with Israel. It'd be fun. You know, you get some Israeli VCs that are really good to like put a post-opinabudavi, like that's sick. Let's go. You know, like, but like it's not necessary. It's not like critical to the future development of the region that they all lock hands with Israelis in Sink Kumbaya. It just isn't. Yeah, I agree with that, which is why, by the way, I thought the Netanyahu Modi meeting was so interesting. Interesting. That makes some more sense. Like, Israel to have a good alignment with India. Like now we're now we're cooking with multipolar, like civilized gas. Well, listen, I understand just to be clear, just to be clear, I understand why this stuff matters for Israel because, you know, it takes away this sort of democracies over Israel that vast majority of its neighbors hitting, like cool, got it. But I just don't think that for Saudi Arabia or UAE or Kuwait or any of these countries or Iraq or Iran one day, like, are they really itching to improve relationship with Israel? Like, I mean, if they get something for it, maybe, but not for Israel. Israel has nothing to give them. Israel is not like capital rich. It's not technology. I mean, it's technology rich. It's technology. I know, but like that. No, but everybody else has that. I take it. No, no, no, I take your point. It's not in their interest to do so. I the way I would like slightly shade what you're saying is that these countries begrudgingly admire Israel. They want to be Israel. Israel is the version of what they want to be. And so they want to take notes about like, wait, how did you guys become like self-sufficient and you have nuclear weapons, but nobody gave you shit about that. And you can apparently send pages to the leaders of the groups that you hate and everybody dies. Like, we want to understand how you did this because we want to be you. I think that's the, it's a begrudging admiration. I think that this, I think definitely Israel is kicking everyone's ass into region. That's, that's clear. The issue is again, I don't know if, I think that we in the West, this is just an under, understated like when you talk to people in the region, whether they're policymakers, whether they're just like rich family offices, whether they're just like the people in the street, nobody's sitting there being like, yeah, we are, I don't really care about Palestinians. It's cool, like what apps, you know, like, but you know, like, I just got to pretend like I do. No, like, that's not how it works. And so that's why I do think that when you think about this operation in particular, when Israel was involved, I was a little surprised, you know, because Israel could have been in, like, if Israel has better intelligence in Iran than the US, which seems to be the case, they could have just shared that, you know, like, would it have made more sense to do this without Israel's involvement? And I think that it kind of reveals either ignorance to the sensitivities of having Israel attack Iran and then hoping that Iranian people just like rise up against the regime, or maybe a lack of concern about that because at the end of the day, that's not what's really. I think that's exactly the point. It's actually great. It's a great piece of evidence that this was not about regime change. But you know what else? Because you don't want the Israeli F-16s involved. I live in Los Angeles, obviously, wonderful Persian community here. Love it. Like, just, I play basketball with some folks from that community. Just love them. But there's this constant, like, I get reminded this like every single time. It's like, bro, you do know about Queen Esther though, right? And I'm like, dude, if another fucking person tells me about Queen Esther and Purim, I'm going to light myself on fire. Like yeah, something that happened like 6,000 years ago is not going to erase the last 60 years during which Iranian, Israel have been at each other's throats. You know, like that's just, it's not going to. What are they telling you about Queen Esther? What do you mean? The story of Purim is that the Iranian or the Persian like tried to kill the Jews, the Jews infiltrate the leadership with Esther. And then they go and kill all of the Persians. Like the ending of the book of Esther is actually like, I mean, it's not quite genocide because there were still Persians left afterwards. But the Jews basically just go and kill like tens of thousands of people and wipe out entire bloodlines. Like, that's the part, oh yeah, we're dancing and we're eating the silly shaped cookies and we're wearing costumes. And it's like, yeah, also we were butchering the rest of the Persians who tried to kill us. That's the part that is left unsaid. Yeah, I mean, if you're Persian and you're like Queen Esther, like good relate, like actually that's a really good example of the Jews like. There you go. There you go. I guess it proves my point. That's a really quick. Really quick before we end. I have to because my my children are waking. So they're rising to you. Okay. Rising lions. Yeah. We should we should do a moment of silence for one of the greatest Twitter personalities. I think a moment of silence for former president Mahmoud Afmeneed-Ejad. Yeah. In his later years, he became a rap connoisseur. He was I just looked through his Twitter. He was out there shouting out to like Bill Russell. He was he posted on two box chakras 50th birthday. Hashtag west side literally like for anyone out there. I mean, you know, like we shouldn't make light of a man's death. But I think that Ahmed Ineshad was a very interesting person who later in life kind of transformed himself. I mean, he was out there criticizing Vladimir Putin. He was criticizing Russia's war with Ukraine. I think it's rare to see a public figure so reviled as him, but he kind of later in life. I think had some demons he was trying to slay by becoming quite liberal and quite concerned about his legacy. Well, he was an interesting guy for a lot of reasons. But if you want to locate the period in modern Iranian history where the IRGC goes from protecting the revolution to become absorbing the economy, it's under Ahmed Ineshad. He is the one that basically gave the keys to Iranian industry to the IRGC. That begins with him. And in some sense, the path that Iran has been on since him, he's the one who locked it in because at that point, the IRGC becomes not just this special body that is protecting the Supreme Leader and all of the various different principles that Iran happens. The IRGC becomes the aversion of the Egyptian military. And that's why I can say I don't think that much is going to change because to actually change the regime, the IRGC controls something like 40 to 60% of the economy. Are you going to kill 40 to 60% of Iranians? Like, that's what you would have to do to disentangle the regime. And that begins with Ahmed Ineshad. And maybe he regretted that towards that. I think he did. I think because he was a populist. He was an outsider who wins the election for president when nobody really wanted him to win. The IRGC didn't want him to win. The IRTOL didn't want him to win. I think the reason the IRGC took over the economy while he was the president is because he was actually a very weak president. What's interesting about him is that we all remember him being extremely anti-Israeli. He was out there saying Israel does not have the right to exist. And just remember, he came in and he was elected on a populist platform. So he was quite popular for some time. And then of course, he presided over the crackdown on the protest. So that has greatly solid his legacy. The fact that he was so adamant that Israel didn't have the right to exist. First and foremost, that was his biggest problem. And then of course, that he participated in that crackdown. I mean, although it did seem like he was distant to it. Like he wasn't really in charge of the security services at the time as well. No, I think that's true. He was the skeleton key that like unlocked it with the power that was there. And so the Israelis did not forget. The Israelis have been keeping, keeping receipt. Yep. Okay. He is dead. All right. I think we did it. All right. I'm sure we'll get back on this week. But listeners, we hope you enjoyed it. And we will talk to you soon. [BLANK_AUDIO]