Trump Goes from Obliteration to Negotiation on Iran

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I'm Ben Rhodes. Ben, today we wanted to debut a new segment with you called Great Moments in Oval Office History. Here's today's entrance from President Trump. Let's watch. Who knows better about surprise than Japan? Okay? Why didn't you tell me about Pearl Harbor? Okay? Right? Right? Right? Is World War II a sensitive subject in Japan? No. I cannot think of a more cringe moment. Who are the people guffawing at first and then when he actually dropped the Pearl Harbor reference? He couldn't even just be subtle. Who knows more about secrecy than Japan? Someone groaned. Yeah. Spoke for all of us, I think. I'll be honest. I watched that and I laughed out loud. I was like, that is just genuinely fucking hilarious. Well, because he's just such a. Of course he did that. Takeichi was like. She literally gasped. She's like. Her eyes looked like they were going to pop out of her head. It is wild. Anyway, that was. Yeah, a real winner from our president. Just kind of like pinballing through the world. Just kind of throwing his elbows at everybody. Even like she's his ally. One year and three months into it, Tommy. Of the second term. But yeah, like she later in the day too had this bizarre thing where she. Did you see where she said that Barron Trump was really good looking and he clearly got that from Donald Trump? Yeah, it was a little creepy. That's weird. Yeah, I mean, it's so funny. It's like all the reporting on her trip was like great success because she avoided a blow up. It's like, what? I feel like the relationship should be about a little more than that, but. You just said a higher bar. Yeah, whatever. What are you going to do? By the way, Ben and I did a bonus episode last Friday for the Pod Save the World YouTube where we dug into the first three weeks of the war with Iran. So please subscribe to Pod Save the World on YouTube if you want more bonus episodes like that. It's also the. where we find the dumbest clips we possibly can of Pete Hegseth or Trump or whatever and we laugh at them so that we don't cry because otherwise we'd be doing a lot of crying. So when you subscribe to Pod Save the World on YouTube, when you rate it, when you review it, when you share the episodes, it really helps us grow the show. It helps us get good factual information into the YouTube algorithm and displace the pro-war propaganda from Fox News in the daily wire. Speaking of which, Ben, if you are sick of that shit and the credulous coverage of this war and you want to hear it discussed by people who are not in a conversation with you, who have been in a coma for the last 20 years, who remember the Iraq war and that it didn't go so well, please consider joining Crooked Media's Friend of the Pod subscription community. It is the number one thing you can do to help us grow as a company. You can sign up at crooked.com slash friends or right here on YouTube by pressing the join button. But our solemn pledge to you is it will never book Senator Lindsey Graham on the show unless he passes a breathalyzer test first. Does that work for you? That works for me, Tommy. Or do we want him drunk? Do we want him to fail or pass? We maybe just want him to pass. He's passed out. Just silence. I have a quick plug here. So listeners may know my book, All We Say, The Battle for American Identity is out in late May. Available for pre-order now. And for Wednesday and Thursday, the 25th and 26th, there is a special discount for pre-orders on Barnes & Noble. Nice. And if you're a Barnes & Noble member, which you may be if you listen to this podcast, you get 25% off. I think everybody else gets 10% off. So check it out. Hell yeah. Also, Ben Rhodes on Substack. Notes on the stories we tell. Okay. Enough plugs. Subscribe to all that shit. We're going to talk today. We're going to try to explain Trump's crazy 180-degree turn on Iran policy in the span of the last 48 hours. So he went from promising basically a series of war crime airstrikes on energy infrastructure to saying talks with Iran were so far along that the war was effectively over. We'll try to explain what happened. Why it happened. And then we're going to dig into the details of the U.S. and Iranian demands and why getting a deal done feels quite difficult right now. We'll also cover what other countries in the Gulf are reportedly telling Trump. Some recent U.S. troop deployments that seem ominous but important to watch. Then we're going to explain why Iran firing a missile at a joint U.S.-U.K. base raised a lot of eyebrows. We'll talk about the growing cost of war and then update on the conflict in Lebanon. Then we're going to look at some recent elections in Europe and in the United States. And explain what they tell you about the strength of far-right parties in Europe and how Trump might be impacting those parties. Spoiler alert, not well. And then finally, there's a little fun story at the end about how a fitness app exposed the location of a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier in the middle of the war. Fun is always in air quotes on this show. And then you're going to hear my conversation with Edward Fishman, author of Choke Points, American Power in the Age of Economic Warfare. Then we get into all the economic costs of the war, the ways it has exposed economic vulnerabilities, as he calls them, choke points. It's very up your alley, this conversation. Yeah, underappreciated piece of how Trump is messing up things. So I'm excited to hear that. Yeah, just exposing our enormous weaknesses to the entire world. All right. So let's try to understand the last 48 hours. So it has been truly head-spinning. On Saturday, Trump posted, quote, If Iran doesn't fully open without threat, the Strait of Hormuz within 48 hours from this exact point in time, the United States of America will hit and obliterate their various power plants, starting with the biggest one first. So again, that would be a war crime, but details, details. So this went over about as well as you'd expect in Iran. The Speaker of Iran's parliament, Mohamed Bouker, Ghalibaf, responded with, quote, Immediately after our country's electricity and infrastructure are struck, we will consider vital infrastructure as well as energy and oil facilities throughout the region to be legitimate targets and will destroy them in an irreversible manner. So escalation ladder goes up and up. But then on Monday morning, just 12 hours before Trump's self-imposed deadline, Trump announced that Iran was getting a five-day reprieve from attacks on their power supply or oil infrastructure, power infrastructure, because the two sides were having very good and productive conversations. Now, everyone, especially the Iranians, seems surprised by this claim. But our president elaborated on the talks and much more during press events on Monday and Tuesday. Here is some of what he said. They called. I didn't call. They called. They want to make a deal. We're in negotiations right now. J.D. is involved. And Marco's involved. And Jared Kushner's involved. Very smart guy. And Steve Witkoff, smart guy, is involved. And I'm involved. We're dealing with a man who I believe is the most respected and the leader. If it goes well, we're going to end up with settling this. Otherwise, we'll just keep bombing our little hearts out. They did something yesterday that was amazing, actually. They gave us a present. And the present arrived. Today, it was a very big present worth a tremendous amount of money. You know, this is a change in the regime because the leaders are all very different than the ones that we started off with that created all those problems. So this was, I think we can say, Jason, this is regime change, right? We've won this. This war has been won. What about the straight-up war moves? Who's going to be in control of that? Maybe me. Maybe me. You want the United States to be in control? Me and the Ayatollah, whoever the Ayatollah is. I said, Pete and General, General Raisin Cane, I think this thing's going to be settled very soon. Here they go. Oh, that's too bad. Pete didn't want it to be settled. Pete, I think you were the first one to speak up. And you said, let's do it. We see ourselves as part of this negotiation as well. We negotiate with bombs. I'm going to give you a little bonus Hegseth at the end there because Trump is setting him up to be blamed for the whole thing. So listeners are probably asking, what happened? Ben, do you want to take first crack at it? You want me to take first crack at it? And then how do you want to go here? Let me, I mean, here's. That's what I, I will tell you what I think happened, right? Which is Trump threatens to start hitting power plants, civilian and energy infrastructure. That's a war crime, we should just say. When Vladimir Putin does that, you know, we get very upset as we should. Then I think over the weekend, people got to him and there's been some reporting on this, that the Gulf countries whose energy infrastructure would be destroyed by Iran if they made good on their threat to hit energy infrastructure, got to him. The markets got to him because they could see, you could see the price of oil skyrocketing. You could see futures, you could see the bond markets, you know, going in very dark direction. And so I think he was spooked. I don't think there was any negotiation whatsoever with the Iranians. The Iranians came out and denied it. It's a sad state of affairs that I believe the Iranians to be more credible than Trump. Now, I do think that there's probably a lot of frenetic diplomacy and it's probably all intermediaries where Qatar, Oman, countries that are, you know, negotiators and are also being walloped economically and sometimes physically in this war are probably trying to go back and forth and get messages from the Americans and Iranians. But I don't think there's some evolved negotiation here. I think Trump climbed down because of the markets and because of what he was hearing from the Gulf. And but he had to somehow make it seem like he was about to get a deal. We can get into also the potential market manipulation that went on here. But that statement was for the markets. And his pullback was because people got to him finally and said this would be madness to continue up the energy escalation ladder at the precise time that the global economy is being completely destroyed by this war and what's happening with respect to energy. I hear that and I hear a man who has no idea what's going on, who has no idea what he started. He can talk about J.D. and Marco and Jared and Steve and the gang. Those guys have no idea what the hell is going on. The IRGC, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, controls the Strait of Hormuz, not even the Iranian government. The IRGC controls it. Their stuff is getting out. Other people's is not. That is how bad this war is. Donald Trump is losing this war. Not only has he not won it, he is actively losing the war. And so he's just trying to kind of calm markets as if there's not a reality out there that, you know, is not going to bend to whatever his fiction is. And like the end state he describes there is co-ownership with the Iranians of the Strait of Hormuz. And so he's trying to calm markets as if there's not a reality out there that, you know, down the road. And so, you know, oh, lo and behold, he announces like a five-day reprieve, which is right until markets close on Friday. There are some, as you mentioned, like there's some talks are happening. A bunch of news outlets have reported that Egypt, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan met to try to find some sort of off-ramp to end the war. Apparently, Egyptian intelligence kind of led the outreach to the Iran's IRGC. But the, the, apparently, the new interlocutor on the Iranian side is the guy I mentioned earlier, Speaker Ghalibaf, who Trump seems to think can be his new, like, Delcy Rodriguez in Iran, which means like, like in Venezuela, a leader that the U.S. can install and control. But that is a hell of a lot easier said than done in Iran. And again, of the talks, Ghalibaf said, our people demand the complete and humiliating punishment of the aggressors. No negotiations with America have taken place. Fake news is intended to manipulate financial and oil markets and to escape the quagmire in which America and Israel are trapped. That doesn't sound all that hopeful. And again, like the Iran is talking about hitting infrastructure like oil and gas, but also maybe desalination plants, which we've discussed before, like Kuwait gets 90% of its water from the sea, Saudi Arabia gets 70%. So that'd be a huge crisis. And then just quickly on the corruption thing. So the Financial Times reported that traders made a half a billion dollars worth of bets in the oil markets 15 minutes before Trump's tweet announcing these talks. So a 6,200 Brent or WTI futures contracts, those are oil, oil futures were bought and sold between 649 and 650 AM on Monday, 15 minutes before the truth social post. Uh, the notional value of the trade was $580 million. There was also a spike right at that time in the trading of S and P futures. Uh, and then maybe some sort of like a European energy commodities too. I'm sure it was all just a coincidence, Ben. Uh, but someone made a lot of money. Yeah. And we saw this by the way, before with the tariffs, when he did his climb down after liberation day, there was a lot of suspicious trading before that, that made a lot of people a lot of money. And again, like we need to need to spell this out because this is very plain what is happening. Donald Trump knows if he goes out and says, and on true social that, which is clearly a planned thing, right? It's not even like a kind of stand up at a, in front of the microphones, you know, with the air force one blasting away. Um, he knows he's going to post at a certain time. And he knows that that's going to bring down the price of world futures and calm markets. Um, if somebody has foreknowledge of that and trades, they can make an extraordinary amount of money. And, and again, either this is like the biggest coincidence in the world that someone had a premonition that there was going to be a post just like this, or somebody knew or got tipped off and did this. And I'm sorry, like, I, we don't know. I'm not suggesting I know for a fact what happened. I am saying this is incredibly suspicious and I can't think of anything more disgusting than somebody profiting off a war, trading off a war because Donald Trump is like turning the dial on oil prices up and down with his, you know, false claims about negotiations. I also say like to the markets in like, which we talk about, like, as if it's a person, not the best day for them too. Like that they somehow are credulous of Donald Trump's claims, you know, like, I mean, I know people are eager for this to end, but just because he puts something on true social doesn't mean it's true. Well, the Iranians, you know, it folds into this preexisting narrative, the taco thing, right? Trump always chickens out and that works with tariffs and things he can turn on and off and controls. It doesn't work in the context of a war where Iran gets a shoot back, you know? So Ben, before we dig into the substance of the negotiations themselves and why getting a deal will be really difficult, I did want to play you a clip from an expert that gave me some hope and some faith in president Trump's abilities. So this is an infamous pierogi hater and friend of Jeffrey Epstein, Alan Dershowitz. Let's watch. Had president Trump been in charge in 1935, 1936, I think the Holocaust would have been prevented. I think he would have gone in after Nazi Germany. He would have destroyed it the way he is destroying Nazi Iran and the Holocaust would have been prevented. Spot the lie. I mean, Alan Dershowitz's capacity, I know it's Newsmax, but to get himself on television, uh, is, is pretty remarkable to me. I mean, all these Trump supporters, they can't even really like defend what's happening. They can't even give a plausible argument for why this was a good idea. So it's all this kind of insanity, like, well, he would have, but you know, next thing he would have like prevented the civil war in this country or like, this is, we are just living with the stupidest people in the world, blowing smoke up this guy's ass when he, the emperor has been revealed before the entire world to have no clothes. You know, uh, I should also add as a negotiating strategy, I just want to say to, to, to embrace the speaker of the Iranian parliament. If you think that's a good way to get that guy killed either by the Israelis who seem to want to kill anybody that could, uh, bring an end to this war as they did with, uh, Ali Larajani or by the Iranians themselves, the IRGC, you know, is not going to go along with the Delcy Rodriguez plan. They're just not like that is not an option here. Maybe there's some cold peace that can be arrived at. We can talk about that. But the idea that this Delcy Rodriguez play is going to work in Iran. What, what have you been, what planet have you been on the last four weeks that you think that's possible? Yeah. Patsy, the world is brought to you by Helix. Helix is the most awarded mattress brand. It's tested and reviewed by experts like Forbes and Wired. Helix makes buying a mattress easy. You take the Helix sleep quiz and they'll match you with the perfect mattress based on your personal preferences and sleep needs. Get free shipping. You can get free shipping and seamless delivery. 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So they know we sent you Helix.com slash world. Patsy, the world is brought to you by factor as the weather warms up in short season approaches eating. Well, shouldn't You know how the package schedule in the way of your goals. With Factor, you can get dietitian-designed, chef-crafted meals that are ready in just two minutes. It's the nutrition you need without the planning or the cleanup. Factor meals are made with quality, functional ingredients, including lean proteins, colorful veggies, whole food ingredients, and healthy fats. No refined sugars, no artificial sweeteners, no refined seed oils. Meals that fit your goals and schedule, healthier eating, calorie management, and more protein. Choose from a menu of 100 rotating weekly meals to keep things fresh and delicious through winter. The options include high-protein, calorie-smart, Mediterranean diet, GLP-1 support, and ready-to-eat salads. Plus, the new MusclePro collection supports strength and recovery. Factor meals are always fresh, never frozen, ready in about two minutes, no prep, no mess. I've gotten some great stuff from Factor. There's a delicious barbecue chicken breast with potato mash, cream corn, and peppers. There was a bison pork sausage that was really good. There's cornbread on the side and barbecue cauliflower and salsa. They had a really good short rib with sweet potatoes. In Brussels, they have tons and tons of great options, way more than you can ever get through. Head to factormeals.com slash PSTW50OFF and use the code PSTW50OFF to get 50% off and free breakfast for a year. Offer only valid for new Factor customers with code and qualifying auto-renewing subscription purchase. Make healthier eating easier with Factor. Okay, so Mr. Dershowitz aside then. Okay, so Mr. Here's why getting a deal done will be very hard. So first of all, Iran doesn't trust the United States. And that's clear, right? The Trump pulled out of the JCPOA when Iran was complying with it back in 2018. Last June, the White House was bragging about using talks with Iran as like subterfuge to help the Israelis plan their bombing raid. Remember that whole thing? And then in this most recent bombing raid, the U.S. and before this most recent conflict, the U.S. and Iran came out of those talks saying like these were the most productive sessions yet. And then again, the U.S. and Israel started bombing. So they don't trust us to say the least. Second, Iran now thinks it has a lot of leverage, right? Like the Iranians decided that they screwed up before by being measured in response to the 12-day war or U.S. bombing raids or whatever. Now they've decided and seen that they can fire missiles everywhere, cause regional chaos and like truly global economic damage. And that gives them a lot of leverage. And then third, Iran now thinks that it has a lot of leverage. And then third, I think Iran knows that if they reach just a temporary ceasefire, there's a good chance the U.S. and Israel are bombing them again in six months, 12 months, 18 months, right? So they want a long-term resolution. And so their list of demands is going to be extensive. Some of it has been floated in the press. I don't know how much of this is positioning or people who know what they're talking about versus don't. But just to summarize what I've seen, I've seen them call for simultaneous ceasefires in Iran, Lebanon, and Iraq. The U.S. closing its military bases in the region. Reparations for damage done during the war. Sanctions relief. Recognition of Iran's right to enrich nuclear materials. Recognition of their right to develop ballistic missiles. Iran wants to treat the Strait of Hormuz like a toll road and to charge ships that go through it a fee. So all of those are going to be non-starters for Trump, for Gulf countries, for the Israelis, et cetera. And then you're also seeing like crown prints. There are all these reports now that the Saudis are saying to Trump, finish the job, decapitate the regime. There's also reports. The UAE is making the same case and even considering getting directly involved in the fighting. And at the same time, Ben, Trump doesn't seem to have moved an inch on all of his demands, right? And so like to your point about the markets being stupid, that to me kind of gives up the whole game because like what are the Iranians going to agree to now in this sort of like maximalist set of U.S. and Israeli demands that they didn't agree to before now that they feel like they have real leverage? What am I missing here? I agree with everything you said. And what I would add to it is we've made this point that the Iranian response, because of what you said, right, because of the feeling that they did not hit back hard enough in the 12-day war, that that invited this kind of existential regime change war on them by the U.S. and Israel, they have a clear theory of the case that they need to make this war so painful for the United States and the global economy that the United States won't do it again. And in Israel, Israel is a different story because like they have their own fixation on regime change. But everything the Iranians have done has suggested that this war has made the Iranian regime much more radical, like much more dug in, because that's their only path to survival. They see diplomacy with Trump as something that they can't trust because they've been bombed twice during diplomacy. So they need to achieve their objectives in part through the war. The cost has to be, I think, prohibitive to the United States and global economy. We'll see if they can do that. Thus far, they're demonstrating that they can. And we'll see if they can hang on. And so to that end, anything, they may not want that whole list, right, reparations and all that rest. But whatever the end state is that they agree to probably has to be something that gives them the maximum assurance that they're not going to be bombed again. Yeah. So things like actual sanctions relief, right, the sanctions are gone. Like that would be a signal from the United States that this kind of conflict between the U.S. and Iran is over. Yeah, like you're back in the global economy, like security arrangements, maybe between Iran and the Gulf may have to be negotiated. So anything that the Iranians agree to is going to have to be in that kind of space. The U.S. doesn't even really know what it's prioritizing here. You know, if they want a nuclear deal, they can get one. There was one on the table before this war. As long as the Iranians can say they sell the nuclear program, they're just not going to pursue a weapon. By the way, that was the Iran nuclear deal under Obama. That's something Trump could get. But that's about it. I don't really know. The Iranians don't seem to concede. So he may have to talk about TACO. Like he may have to accept a much more radical government in some ways more empowered because they've shown what they can do and make concessions to them for the kind of same nuclear deal he could have had without launching this war in the first place. It's crazy. Yeah, it's crazy. I was talking to someone who is an Iran expert today who has been involved in what are called like track two negotiations. Those are like conversations with people who have ties to the Iranian government but aren't a part of government but are like kind of clued in enough that you can float diplomatic possibilities. Right. And this person said that like the Europeans seemed really excited about the talks, but the Iranian officials this person talked to were dug in and way more so than usual. This person also said that the Gulf countries, like the stuff you're seeing reported about some of the various Gulf countries, like the UAE, saying finish the job. That is 100 percent. 100 percent. 100 percent. 100 percent. True. They are pissed and they are angry. Yeah, yeah. No, I wanted to say one thing about that. The UAE in particular, they if you look at the Strait of Hormuz, right, what you see is are these kind of small countries like the UAE and Qatar. They're the ones that just cannot get their energy, their oil and gas out without the Strait being opened. And so the reason why I think it may be true that the UAE wants this finished or in some fashion is. They know that if it stops now, the IRGC runs the Strait of Hormuz like a toll road. And so whether they wanted the war or not, like they need the Strait opened and they don't trust that the IRGC is going to like let their stuff through Saudis. I'm still like, well, maybe that's true. Maybe it's not because the Saudis have a lot to lose if this war goes on. But but that definitely strikes me is true. But I think they don't even know what does it mean for the war to end? And it's probably. A version of a frozen conflict, you know, this war is not unlike the war in Ukraine. The U.S. thought it would be a cakewalk. The U.S. thought that it that the regime would collapse and the first blitzkrieg happened and it didn't. Yeah. And Pete Hexeth can like talk all he wants about bombs. Bombing gets less effective, not more. I mean, we've hit a lot of these targets. They know that they can weather it. And so then the question becomes, does this kind of just continue until it kind of freezes in place at some point and you deal with bits and pieces of this, like the Strait of Hormuz, or does the U.S. put boots on the ground and really try to destroy the regime, which could lead to an implosion of Iran? Let's get to the boots in a second. So this person who is involved in these track two negotiations also pointed out that like Ghalibaf actually is a credible messenger and someone who you could maybe do business with, but Trump is probably kneecapping the guy by talking about him all the time, right? Like it's just it seems like the worst strategy. And a lot of folks I've talked to did take a little hope or see a little hope in the fact that there's reports that J.D. Vance might get involved in the talks. It would be a good thing because for first of all, I would take it out of the hands of like, you know, Jared Kushner and Steve Wyckoff, who have proven themselves to be bumbling fucking idiots, but also, you know, J.D. Vance would probably only get involved if it was ready to get over the finish line. And seems like someone who at least has told us in the past that he's, you know, wouldn't want this war to be over, but it doesn't seem like he's really involved yet. You know, you heard that quote from Trump a minute ago where he's like, J.D.'s involved, I'm involved, Marco's involved. Right. So that he's just like naming everybody while blaming Pete for the war happening. And then, Ben, again, like this person said, the best case scenario might be an outcome where like Trump essentially has to bribe Iran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz and get us back to the status quo ante from before the war. Exactly. We basically saw that process start last week when the U.S. let Iran make about $14 billion by selling $140 million perils of Iranian oil. So real quick, here's a clip of Treasury Secretary Scott Besson from over the weekend on Meet the Press talking about this decision. And then I want to get your reaction to it because this is a touchy subject in Obama world. Let's watch. Is the president in the process of winding down this war or escalating? Again, they're not mutually exclusive. Sometimes you have to escalate to deescalate. On Friday, the Treasury Department lifted sanctions on Iranian oil stored on tankers, a move that would effectively allow Iran to get more than $14 billion of oil revenue. Why is the U.S. helping to fund a country that it's currently at war with, Mr. Secretary? Again, Kristen, why don't we have good facts here? That Iranian oil was always going to be sold to the Chinese. It was going to be sold at a discount. So which is better, Kristen? Which is better? The oil prices spiked to $150 and they were getting 70% of that or oil prices below 100. It's better to have them where they are now. And to be clear, we had always planned for this contingency. About 140 million barrels are out on the water. In essence, we are jujitsuing the Iranians. We're using their own oil against them. It's a jujitsu move to let the Iranians make billions of dollars to help them fund a war that they're fighting against you. By the way, speaking of jujitsu and planning, Ben, I read, I can't remember where, maybe the Times or the Journal over the weekend, that the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, the U.S. one, was only 60% full at the start of this war. So clearly no one had done any planning for this thing. What do you make of that decision to relieve sanctions on Iran during a war with Iran? I've been practicing mindfulness, Tommy. How's it going? I don't know if you knew this about me. I got some of those meditation apps. You don't listen to Ezra too much. I've done some hot yoga, just so people know, because I'm just trying to get more in touch with my body. How's it going? And so I'm going to incorporate these practices now. But I am going to do a little history here. The first piece of history is that in the Obama administration, you may recall that as part of the Iran nuclear deal coming into effect, and also a prisoner, from Iran, including our friend Jason Rezaian, that the United States allowed Iran to receive $400 million that they were owed. And it's a long story that had to do with the fact that the Iranians paid for some weapons back when the Shah was there. The weapons were never delivered. A court decided to give them the money. Yes, exactly. Anyway, they got $400 million. And in the MAGA world and the AIPAC world and all the BB lovers out there online have spent 10 years. I cannot post something online without somebody posting a meme about like pallets of cash because some of the $400 million was delivered in pallets of cash. Now, you can argue about whether or not you like that deal or not. But the reality was, it was $400 million of money that Iran was owed under international law. This is $14 billion. This is like, I mean, I'm not a math expert. This is like leaps and bounds more than the $400 million. It is in the middle of a war. It is being given to the Iranians because of the rank incompetence of the Trump administration and launching a war that they clearly thought was going to be a cakewalk and running into a buzzsaw instead, even though everybody could have predicted this. All of the people that spent 10 years like clutching their pearls about the $400 million in pallets of cash. I guarantee you every single one of those fucking people support this idiocy, support this war, will not trash Trump for giving Iran $14 billion, literal tankers full of cash. And Scott Besson has had this shtick he pulls where he's the grown up and the smart one who talks to the quote unquote markets. He has no, you can listen to him there. He doesn't even know what he's talking about. And when he talks about how we've been planning for this, we've been playing. So, okay. Two things could be, one is that these people are so incompetent that the only way they can bring world prices down is to let the Iranians make $14 billion as a starter. Who knows where it's going to go from there? Nevermind that the Russian are out also out from under sanctions, but let's like the good scenario that Besson says is that they actually planned this all along, that it was part of the war plan. He gets pissy about it. He gets pissy. Pissy cadaver on TV, like getting all mad at Kristen Welker asking basic normal questions. Well, it's because if they plan for it, you're telling me that you knew the war was going to go so bad that you're going to have to start waving sanctions on the Iranians in the middle of it. So it's either the dumbest fucking plan ever or the dumbest fucking war ever. Okay. And there's not another option here. Yeah, no, there is not. Sorry. I got the pallets of cash off my chest. Hey, that's why I brought it up, brother. Also the Houthis still haven't come into this conflict yet. So things get worse. One thing we're really watching closely, Ben is it's just worth noting that a bunch of U S ships and Marines are heading to the middle East in some way, but we'll be there by Friday when this sort of five day pause, uh, ends right now. Um, you know, like the USS Tripoli, it's an amphibious assault ship is on its way, uh, from, I think Asia with 2,200 Marines. There's a similar ship called the USS boxer that's en route from San Diego with another 2,200 Marines. Um, I just saw reports of the Pentagon has ordered members of the 82nd airborne, the immediate response force to deploy to the middle East. That's a reaction force, but they need to be in 18 hours. So these amphibious assault ships, they are like aircraft carriers, but not aircraft carriers in that they don't have catapults to like launch planes off. But, um, the, uh, the, the Harrier style jets can take off from them. The F 35 B's that can do the vertical takeoff and landing, and then major, um, helicopters like Ospreys, uh, work off of them. And more importantly, though, they have a lower deck where you can launch, uh, ships assault ships. So like, if you wanted to send a, a bunch of Marines to Carg Island, for example, you would probably use an amphibious assault ship like the USS boxer or the Tripoli. So it's all a way of saying there's just a lot of military assets steaming to a location. And in the past year or so, when that has happened to Donald Trump has used those military assets to further a war. Yeah. We said on this podcast for months, pay attention to the military force gathered off the coast of Venezuela. Uh, it was going to be used in, in this as eerie reminders to have the run-up to the war in Iran, because while Trump was saying he wanted a deal, they were building up this massive, you know, Armada, uh, to, uh, strike Iran, the largest massing and military force in the Middle East since the Iraq war. Now, whatever Trump is saying about, you know, we're negotiating and it looks great. And the Iranians are calling me. There is a methodical deployment that is going forward that could only have the purpose of supporting a ground operation in Iran. Now, whether that's to seize materials at Isfahan in central Iran, whether that's to try to seize Karg Island as some kind of leverage on the Iranians, we don't know. What we do know is that's what these troops do. And that's what this hardware does. Um, and so that's very disconcerting. And it, I, one of the things I want to say is that I don't get the sense. Do you get the sense something that he's listening to any Iran experts? No. All he ever, you know, he doesn't seem to understand the, and the reason this matters is that the mentality Iranians is they're going to fight. You take Karg Island, they'll keep fighting. They're not going to surrender. Like it's like Afghanistan. It's like what, you know, what we dealt with in Iraq. Like these are people that, that are pissed. You know, if they were chanting death to America before we bombed their country and killed thousands of them, can you imagine what their mentality is now? And so the idea that one lightning special operation like Hollywood thing that Trump likes is going to solve this problem. It's not, I hope, I really hope this doesn't go forward. Or if you, yeah, like early on, Trump was talking about regime change. There's a bunch of reporting over the weekend and the times that, uh, the Israelis and the Masad had basically sold Trump on this idea that they could foment regime change or maybe use the Kurds to, uh, begin a regime change operation. Obviously that didn't happen. But yeah, to your point, I mean, now I think 1500 people are dead in Iran. Uh, we bombed a girl's school. Trump is threatening to blow up their power plants. Like that is not going to lead to an uprising in a way that's positive. One other thing that just was worth mentioning, Ben, because I think, um, this incident blew up in the kind of wonky arms control, like Iran nerd circles that we traffic in over the weekend was Iran fired two missiles at a place called Diego Garcia, which is this joint us, UK military base in the Indian ocean. Neither missile hit its target. One seems to have failed and root. Uh, the other might've been taken out by us missile defense systems, but Iran seeming to be able to target something, uh, 2,500 miles away, surprised a lot of people because the previous sort of conventional wisdom was that Iran's missiles only had a 2000, kilometer range. Uh, but Diego Garcia is 4,000 kilometers away. And so that led a lot of people, especially war supporters to say, see, Iran is lying. They always lie. Like it is an imminent threat to the U S this is why we had to go to war. And I think, um, it's worth just offering some context on that. So like, first of all, the 2000 kilometer limit on Iran's ballistic missiles was one voluntarily put in place by the Iranians. But I think every real, like Iran expert, uh, questioned it. First of all, it was like, Oh, I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know at all. And whether they were telling the truth, but also knew that Iran could take some simple step to increase the range of those missiles, like reducing the size of the warhead. if you make the thing lighter, it can go further. They also knew that Iran has been researching space launch technology, which is essentially ICBM technology, and maybe they could use that as a dual purpose. And then finally, if you bomb a country, if you go to war with Iran, they're probably going to do away with some of the previous self-imposed limits on their military technology. So again, not really surprising in any way, but Ben, I mean, how big a deal did you think this was? I thought it was notable, not necessarily a huge deal, but they're trying to fire at everything they possibly can. They're trying to make it feel like the reach of their weaponry puts at risk all U.S. military facilities within range of any weapon they have. And so this is just one more example of them kind of trying to empty the kit to make the U.S. feel vulnerable everywhere. Now, we don't know that this signifies like a substantial additional capability in terms of the range of their ballistic missiles. It didn't like, you know, make contact with the target either. So to me, it's just the Iranians, you know, messaging again. And yeah, you're right. Like they they're innovating on the fly. I mean, one thing that happens in wartime, we've seen this in Russia and Ukraine, is that when you're under the immense pressure of an existential war, you just start innovating, you just start trying new things. And that could be what's happening here. It's also the case that I just don't trust at all the briefings from the United States and Israel, including the U.S. military. Yes. Right. Because like they told us that, you know, I think 90 percent of Iranian ballistic missiles are destroyed in launchers. Meanwhile, they keep firing them every day. I was talking to someone who's an expert in this stuff who's, by the way, like more MAGA than not. And this person was saying this stat from DOD and the Israelis that Iran is like there's been a 90 percent reduction in launches. It's day one is total bullshit. Iran is still firing ballistic missiles. More of them are getting through. They're having more devastating consequences. They have clearly figured out how to adapt to hide them to husband resources. And stats relative to day one are just it's meaningless because Iran is playing a long game. Right. And like that is what's so frustrating about the bullshit you hear from Hegsath and even from Dan Cain, who I think is much more like honest and honorable in those briefings, but still is falling way short of where a previous chairman would be. Right. Way short. And we have to name this. Right. Because the people in the military, you know, don't have to go along with this and they don't have to put out bullshit, you know, information because it makes Hegsath feel like he has a more macho Fox and Friends briefing that he can give this. It's disappointing to me because I don't know how to trust it anymore. How do you trust people? I mean, Trump said that all of Iran's military capability was destroyed. We know that's BS. But this 90 percent figure we've heard. For a while, like what we're seeing with our own eyes in terms of Iranian ballistic missile launches, including against Israel, is suggested that's just not true. Yeah. I mean, look, on Tuesday, an Iranian ballistic missile hit Tel Aviv. It caused a bunch of damage, injured four people. Over the weekend, an Iranian ballistic missile hit a town near Israel's nuclear research facility. Iran seems to be doing a lot of kind of like tit for tat strikes. Like if you hit near one of our nuclear sites, we'll hit yours. Like I said, you know, fifteen hundred people are believed to be dead. In Iran, the Strait of Hormuz is basically closed. Like a huge chunk of the world doesn't have access to energy, fertilizer. There could be a global food shortage, political instability and starvation. So everything is getting worse. Donald Trump keeps saying, oh, yeah, we have air supremacy. We sunk their Navy. Well, you know, we had air supremacy over the Taliban for 20 years. They didn't have a Navy there. And what happened in that war? Let's turn to Lebanon then, because you did an excellent interview last week with Kim Gaddafi. She told us about Israel's military campaign in Lebanon that I think folks should listen to in full. But unfortunately, a lot of what she talked about in that conversation is coming to pass, because it looks like Israel is planning to occupy parts of Lebanon. The Israeli Defense Minister, Israel Katz, said on Tuesday that Israel is going to control the territory in southern Lebanon up to the Latani River, which is about 15 or 20 miles from the border between the two countries. So hundreds of thousands of people have had to flee their homes already from the south. And a million people displaced in Lebanon, which is about a fifth of the population. And Israel is now bombing bridges that cross the Latani River. I think there's been five of them total that have been blown up. By the way, did you see one of the bridges? I mean, there was a RT correspondent doing a stand-up right next to it as it was bombed. The guy was almost killed. It was horrifying. So the IDF says they're bombing these bridges because they're preventing the flow of Hezbollah fighters into southern Lebanon. But obviously, bombing these bridges is going to cut off any remaining civilians in the area. And then potentially cut them off from food, water, like any humanitarian access. So it will lead to a crisis. And stepping back, I mean, remember Lebanon, Hezbollah entered this most recent iteration of the war by firing rockets at Israel after Israel killed the supreme leader of Iran. As you discussed with Kim, I think, Ben, the Lebanese government and a lot of citizens of Lebanon are furious at Hezbollah, including Shia, for dragging them back into this war. But they can't do anything about it because Hezbollah has the guns. So, Ben, I imagine it's hard for us. It's hard for our listeners to imagine, like, wrap your heads around the scale of this evacuation order because you're talking about like 800,000 people to a million people getting displaced in a country of like, well, I think, five, six million people. And I was talking to a friend with family in Beirut who said that one thing compounding the problem is that everyone is afraid of strangers right now because you don't want to rent a room in your building to someone you don't know who is displaced from southern Lebanon. Because what if that person has a connection to Hezbollah or is perceived? You don't want to leave to have one from the Assad and your building gets bombed by the IDF, right? And so that is going to further exacerbate sectarian tensions. It is all very bad and it's likely to get worse because the Israelis are talking about the Lebanon conflict as one that would extend beyond the Iran conflict. And also, Ben, the press keeps talking about Israel creating a buffer zone. It's like, what? They're annexing and occupying territory. Call it what it is. Absolutely. You covered it well. I think what I would focus on is what is Israel's objective here, right? Because there's something, and the Diego Garcia piece ties into this, that Israel and Netanyahu and then all the kind of AIPAC adjacent think tankers, if the enemy is strong, it's a reason to go to war with them. And if the enemy is weak, it's a reason to go to war with them. That's a really good point. And so let's just look at. Israel's track record since October 7th, because what they've done is destroy a lot of things. But let's think about what they have actually accomplished strategically, right? They were we heard we heard that they were going to destroy Hamas. They didn't destroy Hamas. Hamas is still in Gaza. They destroyed Gaza. They killed tens of thousands of children. Hamas is still there. Then all these, you know, AIPAC types, you know, they can't stop talking about the Pager operation. Remember the operation where they blew up a bunch of Hezbollah guys and some other people by, like, you know, infiltrating their pagers? Well, guess what? Hezbollah is still there. You know, Hezbollah is still in Lebanon. You know, did they solve that problem? No. The 12 day war that we obliterated the Iranian nuclear program were bad. They keep destroying things and coming back and destroying more things. And so if we just take Lebanon, what is the objective here? Because they are destroying Lebanon, right? They've got a fifth of the population displaced. They're turning people against each other. The politics are becoming more toxic. They are blowing up apartment buildings just to kill a few Hezbollah targets in them. So they're killing a lot of people there. To what end? And this area that they're occupying, you know, you've got Ben Gavir talking about, you know, a pretty senior minister in the Israeli government annexing southern Lebanon. And meanwhile, the American media credulously describes it as a buffer zone. They're blowing up buildings. They're blowing up bridges. Buffer to what? Like, would we be describing if this was any other place on earth? You know, if Mexico took, you know, 15 to 20 miles into Texas. Yeah. Or we did to Canada. Yeah. Because they said, you know, yeah, if we did that to Canada, I don't think we would just be like, well, these guys need a buffer zone. Like, no, there's sovereign borders. Like, this isn't even the West Bank. Like, Lebanon has had a border that's been internationally recognized for a very long time. And they're basically just destroyed. Destroying that core tenet of international law. Yeah. It's a really bad situation that is going to get worse before it gets better. And by the way, we have not had time. Like, Iran has kind of blotted out the sun on the show. And we have not had time to talk about what's happening in the West Bank with this wave of settler violence. It's kicked off since the war started. But it's something we should get back to because it is truly awful and worth highlighting. This podcast is sponsored by. Squarespace is the all-in-one website platform designed to elevate your online presence and drive your success. Squarespace provides all the necessary tools to claim your domain, build a professional website, expand your brand, and facilitate payments, making it the ideal solution for businesses of all sizes. Squarespace gives you everything you need to offer services and get paid all in one place, from consultations to events and experiences. Showcase your offerings with a customizable website designed to attract clients and grow your business. With Squarespace's collection of cutting-edge design tools, anyone can build a. Spoke online presence that perfectly fits their brand or business. Start with Blueprint AI, Squarespace. 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about getting uh just take it to the cleaners at one of those little kiosks where you exchange money it's a great service it's super easy to use you just download the wise app today or visit wise.com terms and conditions apply let's switch gears up into europe because we've been watching closely for years now like the rise of far-right political parties in europe the trajectory has felt quite bad for a while like you know i think we were speculating on the show early on and earlier this year that we could be heading towards uh far-right parties controlling big swaths of germany in 2026 and then even the french presidency in 2027 um that obviously could still happen but there have been some bumps in the road thanks to our president donald trump um because it's been a long time since we've been it turns out that trying to annex greenland is not that popular it turns out that starting an idiotic war with iran is not that popular um and here's some evidence for you guys so the most obvious impact of trump's policies come to us from denmark uh folks probably remember denmark governs uh greenland the danish prime minister metta frederickson called early elections to capitalize on her popularity after she got in this big fight with trump over greenland we don't have results as of this recording but going into the race she was seen as the front runner and there was a great piece in the atlantic this week about how the far-right nationalist populist danish people's party in denmark went from super pro trump to one of its members saying quote let me put it in words you might understand mr trump fuck off so that's a bit of a change um in italy prime minister georgia maloney's right-wing government just lost a judicial reform referendum pretty badly it was 54 to 46 the underlying issues are pretty technical and wonky so we're just going to skip past them because they don't really matter for this but what what you should know was it became seen as a referendum on georgia maloney uh and she lost and now she's seeing headlines like this one uh from politico quote referendum defeat brings italy's maloney crashing down to earth right so that's just again the mood music is bad for her uh in slovenia there was a parliamentary election over the weekend and the center-left freedom party is barely leading the right-wing democratic party uh but this race has interesting ties to victor orban in hungary uh and an organization called black cube that is near and dear to our hearts your friends of mine yeah so let's put a pin in that one and come back to it um and then finally ben in france there were a bunch of municipal municipal elections the results were a mixed bag uh the far-right national rally party had some successes but like every party had some successes the centrist had some successes the left had some um but national rally won seats in smaller towns and smaller cities but failed to win its biggest target which is marseille which is france's second biggest city and it's also in a region that is a the national rally and has been for a while um emmanuel gregoire the center-left socialist he won the runoff election in paris national rally continues to do terribly in paris um but then you know interestingly ben in previous elections like the key to defeating the far right was getting all the parties from the center to the left united in opposition but i was listening to i think this bbc political analyst talking about how in in this past election um a lot of the socialist parties fared better if they rejected the far left because the far far left has become so toxic under melancholy so it's a bit of a mess um i guess i'm going to choose to take a little bit of hope away from these results um while also stealing myself for the reality that you know an economic crisis or a migration crisis because of the iran war is the kind of thing that will fuel uh the far right in europe and also like you know these are very low turnout elections while the presidential elections see closer to 75 85 but any takeaways from you based on what you watched so a couple of small things and then the big thing right so on slovenia um there are a lot of converging threads here for parts of the world listeners because one thing is black cube is this group of former massad agents um that spied on me back in uh you know the good old days of the first trump term um and and you know i i i think widely they they traffic in these kind of far right circles so they also notably have done some work in hungary over the years to discredit victor urban's opponents um and so shortly before the election a few days a group of journalists and activists in slovenia did their own investigation and exposed these black cube ties to the far right candidate who was way up in the polls in slovenia one of them was anika kovacs who's a friend of mine who's been on this podcast before talking about her advocacy on on reproductive rights in europe um and that did not go over well in slovenia uh because people saw it as foreign election interference a group of former people making contact with the far right there to help him uh come to power and so you had this surge at the end for the very progressive prime minister of slovenia and you essentially had a photo finish um and and actually a slight lead for the progressive now we'll see what happens in government information etc but a significant underperformance in slovenia for the far right in slovenia which is often seen as kind of a bellwether you know of where politics are going in central europe particularly ahead of the hungarian election in april so that's good um in italy maloney you know these constitutional referendums have often been bellwethers so matteo renzi for instance was the more progressive prime minister of italy at the end of the obama years he staked a lot on a constitutional referendum to amend you know the the electoral laws in italy he lost and that was seen as kind of you know letting the air out of the balloon for renzi he lost the next general election now maloney you know kept she had a kind of odd political strategy with this referendum at first she kind of didn't campaign that hard for it but then she got involved she definitely lost she lost significantly and so this kind of or invincibility around her has been punctured and she's the most talented far-right politician in by far yeah so by far and i talked to some friends there um who said that in the later last days of the campaign all the energy right in the streets and online was with the opposition suddenly young people are getting motivated to cut you know oppose maloney that's a big deal and so then that leads me to kind of where are we big picture well look this could still go horribly wrong like they could still win the french presidential election they could still make gains in germany the far right over time but we're not seeing that kind of groundswell like even in mixed results in france people were worried there was gonna be like this wave of uh national rally candidates getting elected that didn't happen and i think trump's recklessness and and his interventions in european politics are not helping these far right parties yeah and that to me is the headline you know people can see this is what far-right leadership looks like and i don't know if i want that and i certainly don't want donald trump and jd dance coming over here and trying to mess around in my politics or for that matter bb net yahoo and black cube yeah and lecturing me and like trying to ride herd and tell us what to do um ben did you see who won the mayoral race in the little french town of rc sirobe i missed it uh hitler charles hitler what what charles hitler with two t's see that one coming yeah independent candidate who won his re-election over zelensky antoine zelensky this is a real thing that happened in france did you find this yeah this i was watching some what's like french 24 like some youtube thing and they did a big piece on uh chucky hitler you look what that tells me is dream big dreams kids because most of you would probably think if your last name is hitler you can't run for office but charles showed the naysayers wrong wouldn't you explore a name change if oh god yeah if you're a politician go with the silent h or something yeah yeah anything hither hither hither there's yeah each in there and maybe hither is a nice or come yeah hank charles like flip them around i don't know anything else uh finally ben so we got a lot of stories a lot of wars lately like information leaks they're flying at us from every direction got poor uh mushtaba hamaneh having his sexuality questioned as you mentioned earlier because we're going to be talking about WikiLeaks published a report that he sought ED treatment in the UK. okay uh the massad reportedly clearly not hymns uh which is you know sponsored this podcast in the hey shaba we got you covered we got we got a code for you buddy uh the massad was hacking iran's traffic cameras to track like the supreme leader through tehran the white house had the the infamous signal gate fiasco but today's uh opsec story comes to us via a familiar name to longtime pod save the world listeners strava uh according to you strava ben it's like i do log your jogs okay well you may make sure it's set on a private because according to lemond a seaman that they're referring to as arthur went for a jog on the deck of a french nuclear powered aircraft carrier the charles de gaulle uh and logged his very respectable 4.5 miles in 35 minutes on his smart watch which unfortunately was linked to strava which was set to public so anyone who looked could see these little curly cues through the mediterranean and thus locate the ship which is a bit of a no-no um when you have the iranians firing missiles um at diego garcia or other bases you know thousands thousands of miles away um this was not the first strava incident i'm sure you remember this we've covered this on the show before it's been used to pinpoint joe biden's travel thanks to secret service agents working out um uh so-called strava heat maps identified the locations of secret u.s and cia facilities all over africa in the middle east they have like the running routes have been used to identify the exact perimeter of cia bases in syria and afghanistan and the list goes on and on so just a little advice to arthur and all the other strava fans deployed overseas by a stopwatch so this lit up my strava group chat time nice um i was actually on this right away because i i'm a big devotee of strava i'm actually here on my kids spring break and i'm going to be talking to rick you know you can track your skiing on strava too i will show you all my skiing has been logged i got vertical feed i've got a heat map of everywhere i skied um thankfully i'm not in a sensitive military theater i will tell you also that i know some people including some friends we have in common who told me that when you go to these deployments you know like in eastern syria or something where you're like on an airstrip basically living in a trailer the only thing to do is work out is to like is to run it looks quite literally like it's not like a mall you know so so uh like these guys get in really good shape because they're just like jogging around this airstrip and the strava thing is probably the only thing interesting for them like you know tracking their time so yeah we need to have an encrypted uh strava app or something yeah listen i get it also i recently became a fitbit guy am i proud of it no does it look cool absolutely not um do i find it useful yes so here we are but yeah i mean if i were um well it means like there's still an underlying problem of if you're jogging with your phone like someone can track your gps right yeah um yeah yeah god only knows what the russians do but also i mean actually strava has got uh some some russian soldiers got got fucking around in ukraine back in the day before anyone knew about it because they were using strava to to to you know i think the massad got got to so i don't know it's um brave new world out there buddy these these apps are all you know like i i've heard from people in the business that like you know if you want to have a like people use a grinder to like have like chats you know like like it's just all these ways to penetrate apps and to communicate to locate to disparage you know all these all these things it's a dystopia we live in grinder is one good way to penetrate uh okay we are going to take a quick break when we come back we're going to listen to uh my conversation with edward fishman he's the author of choke points american power in the age of economic warfare we're going to talk about all the economic costs of the war uh with iran the closure of the strait of hamoos all the ways it's exposed massive economic vulnerabilities for the united states and the United States and the United States and the United States and the United States so stick around for that today's show is sponsored by strawberry.me let me ask you something are you satisfied with the current state of your career or are you waking up every day wanting to make a move but not sure how to get there i mean to talk to you about this success doesn't just happen the most successful people in the world don't figure it out alone they have mentors coaches and people guiding them every step of the way that's where strawberry.me career coaching comes in career coaching gives you the clarity the strategy and the accountability you needed to turn your goals into reality whether it's landing a new job advancing in your current role or transitioning into a field you love with expert guidance you'll identify obstacles holding you back develop a step-by-step plan and take action with confidence knowing you have a dedicated coach supporting you every step of the way instead of relying on guesswork or waiting for the right time professional coaching helps you take control of your career trajectory ensuring you make intentional strategic moves towards success listen whether or not you've had a coach everybody's had a great mentor at work who's helped you grow see the next path forward the next career step for you wouldn't you love that back in your life go to strawberry.me world and get 50 off your first coaching session that's strawberry.me world it's like therapy for your career my guest today is an expert on sanctions he's the director of the center for geoeconomics at the council on foreign relations and the author of choke points american power in the age of economic warfare edward fishman welcome to the show thanks for having me on today tommy thank you for doing this so um we're talking about iran here in the in the ongoing closure of the strait of hamoos and the economic cost of it the head of the iea the international energy agency said that this closure of the strait of hamoos is the greatest threat to global energy quote in history that sounds bad um can you help us understand what does that mean exactly and how alarmed we should be about the outlook for the global economy because of this energy supply shortage sure well i'd say alarmed is probably the short answer the strait of hamoos is the world's most important maritime choke point before this war about 20 of global oil and 20 of liquefied natural gas flowed through the strait of hamoos on any given day so that's you know uh two out of every 10 barrels of oil it's a very substantial percentage of global oil supplies and frankly we never have had this much oil come off the global marketplace you go back to 2022 the last time we had a big oil price spike in the wake of russia's invasion of ukraine we actually didn't even have any supply disruption but let's say we did russia only sells five million barrels of crude oil and another two and a half million barrels of petroleum products each day so it's less than half of what's being disrupted right now at the strait of hamoos so we are dealing with a monumental shock to the global energy system and there's really not an end in sight so far yeah um and then i know that iran's hit oil refineries and gas facilities in kuwait saudi arabia and qatar qatar says 17 percent of its export capacity has been damaged maybe for three to five years to get it all fixed um that the there's also you know some oil fields are calling in force majeure on their contracts um if the war ended tomorrow and the strait was fully opened how long do you think it would take to kind of fix the damage that has been done already and kind of get us back to where we were i mean to get to a status quo ante it would take years i mean ross lafon the uh the lng facility you just mentioned in qatar is the world's largest lng facility and just so to understand i mean liquefied natural gas has become increasingly important since 2022 because russia which had been exporting a lot of the pipeline gas that went to europe has no longer a reliable supplier and so our european allies have been increasingly dependent on importing natural gas uh that's liquefied into a you know into a cool liquid and sent on tankers well a lot of that is coming from qatar and to your point uh the qataris have said that that facility is not going to be back to 100 percent for several years but setting that aside i mean even just to unwind the snarls and supply chains it's going to take several months iraq has shut in oil uh refineries have cut back their runs and these are really exquisite complicated systems that once you turn them off they can take quite a long time to turn back on now yeah i've read that you know if you permanently shut a well um it can get clogged like paraffin wax can build up you can you could take like get the blast right hot oil in there to try to free it up i don't know what the hell i'm talking about i'm regurgitating things i read in the ft um has any of that happened yet have they permanently shut down any wells yet or are we still gonna get to that point oh yeah yeah i mean iraq had to shut in uh wells within a few days of the conflict starting i mean it's because a lot of these uh these oil producers they had already filled up their storage and if you think about it you had all of these tankers that are stranded in the gulf and they have nowhere to go um and so yes you've already had a significant percentage of oil shut in not good so you know in the u.s this conversation kind of manifests uh it's often about higher gas prices right like gas prices are up a buck nationally or something like that um but um internationally in other parts of the world it's much worse like there's reporting out about bangladesh closing universities to conserve electricity nepal is rationing cooking gas schools are closing universities to conserve electricity schools are going remote in pakistan i think i heard laos has closed down 40 percent of its gas stations due to just lack of supply um what other things are you hearing about extreme measures the countries are having to take and what do you think happens to these countries if this war drags on for months like do they have any other options so look the commonality of a lot of those countries you mentioned is they're developing countries and i think what that that shows is that even in a scenario where you have a significant shortage of crude oil on the marketplace rich countries are going to get a lot of oil and they're going to get a lot of oil and they're going to get a lot of oil and they're going to get a lot of oil they're going to pay higher prices for it in the united states we're going to feel it in the form of inflation we could feel it in the form of slowing economic growth as well, depending on how long it lasts. But in developing countries, you actually already have acute shortages. To add to your list, I mean, the Philippines has gone to four-day work weeks. You know, you have government officials being told that they should take the stairs instead of taking elevators. You have already significant, you know, rationing that's going on in other parts of the world. And you can just imagine how much worse this will get. The other thing just to mention here is the Strait of Hormuz is the world's most important maritime choke point for the energy sector, but it's critical for other industries too. You know, one-third of fertilizer goes to the Strait of Hormuz on a daily basis. So if this lasts for a long time, it could also create shortages in food supplies. You know, you could see significant humanitarian concerns as well. Yeah, I want to get to that in a second. But you were a sanctions expert in a past life. What did you make of the United States, like, temporarily removing sanctions on Iran and allowing them to sell, what, 140 million barrels? It seems a little touch unprecedented now. Yeah, it's a pretty remarkable development. I think just, I'm always hesitant to quantify sanctions relief because, you know, what we control is what's permitted and then the market decides what the actual economic relief is. So the only way to compare this apples to apples to previous examples of sanctions relief is to look at what was permitted this time versus, for instance, what was permitted under the Iran nuclear deal in 2015. Well, in the Iran nuclear deal in 2015, the United States eased nuclear related secondary sanctions. So we didn't actually relieve any of the primary embargo. The United States wasn't buying oil from Iran. We weren't allowing payments for Iranian oil to go through the U.S. financial system. This license that Trump issued last week does allow the United States to buy oil from Iran, and it does allow Iran to collect payment using the U.S. financial system. So in really important respects, it actually goes beyond the U.S. financial system. It goes beyond the U.S. financial system. The relief that was offered in the 2015 nuclear deal. So if you just consider what kind of an incentive that provides to Iran, you know, a previous generation of Iranian leaders negotiated away large parts of their nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief. Well, this current group of Iranian leaders closed the Strait of Hormuz for three weeks and got just as much, if not more, sanctions relief. So I worry that that has really negative ramifications for whether Iran or, frankly, other countries. Are ready to come to the negotiating table with the United States to try to obtain relief from sanctions or other pressure. Yeah, it's not hard to draw the lesson from that example. As you just mentioned, I mean, the conversation around the Strait of Hormuz is often about oil and gas shipments, and rightly so, because it's like, what, 20% of the, you know, petroleum products flow through it. But it's also a critical transit point for helium, for a bunch of types of fertilizer, many other commodities. Can you talk about what the impact you think will be beyond just oil and gas? Like, why should people care about helium? And then talk about the food crisis element of this. Yeah, I'm glad. I think those are probably two good ones to focus on, helium and fertilizer, because they kind of affect different parts of the world. So helium is essential for the production of microchips, you know, these semiconductors that we're relying on to fuel data centers and ultimately help us win the AI race in the United States. Well, if we are short on those microchips because we don't have access to helium, that's going to have significant ramifications. That's going to have significant ramifications for the plans of big tech companies to build out these data centers. And on the stock market, Americans' wealth right now is largely tied up in the performance of big tech. And so if this lasts for a long period of time and prevents data centers from being built because of helium shortages, and also, frankly, because a lot of those data centers were scheduled to be built in the Gulf region, a region that's now in the middle of a massive war where you've had a number of data centers actually attacked by Iran in the last few weeks in countries like the UAE, I mean, that could have substantial ramifications for the whole AI boom. It could burst the AI bubble and have untoward consequences for all of our stock market portfolios in the U.S. and the rest of the developed world. I think fertilizer and the ramifications for food, I mean, that has really, really substantial potential problems for the developing world, because developing countries rely on fertilizer coming through the Strait of Hormuz even more, frankly, than the developed world. And so I think that's going to have substantial implications for the world. I think Sudan, you know, which is obviously in the midst of a terrible humanitarian crisis right now, relies on the Strait of Hormuz for over half of its fertilizer needs. So you can just imagine that if this plays out for a long period of time, there could be significant famines that occurs around the world. Yeah, I'm horribly worried about the food supply shortages. And it's just, of course, the poorest places on the planet will get hurt the most and the fastest. I mean, on this sort of like duality of the point there, seeing, you know, these cities in the Gulf, countries in the Gulf take this massive economic hit, like a place like Dubai, right? It's this economic miracle over the past 50 years. All of a sudden, this is a center for banking, for investment, for all these expats. And now people are terrified, right? They're living under assault. There's drone strikes on buildings. They're scared shitless. I think the UAE is knocked down by something like 2,000 projectiles from Iran. Do you have any sense of, like, what the long-term economic impact could be, on a place like Dubai going forward? I mean, maybe it's unknowable, but it does seem like it's been a wake-up call for a lot of people. Yeah, I think this is a real tragedy of this war, because all of those countries you mentioned in the Gulf, including the UAE, I mean, for decades, they have been trying to get out of this situation where they're just commodities exporters. They're just selling oil and gas, and that's really their entire economic model. And look, many of these countries have had success in recent years, including the UAE in terms of diversification, diversifying their economy, you know, moving into higher value-added industries, becoming capital providers, including for, again, the AI race. I worry that this war is going to have lingering consequences for the Gulf region. I think for starters, assuming that the Iranian regime remains in place, which does feel like the base case scenario right now, absent a massive escalation in the military campaign by the Trump administration, there's going to be some level of arms race. That occurs in the Gulf region. There's going to be concern on an ongoing basis about the risk of drone strikes from Iran and missile strikes from Iran. And I worry that companies are going to be reluctant to invest billions of dollars to build things like data centers or to open, you know, novel industries in the Gulf. So I do worry that a lot of the progress that has been made in cities like Dubai really does hang in the balance right now. Yeah. So look, the U.S. and Israel and Iran have been engaged in, you know, some level of warfare for a very long time. Some of it was covert action, but then there's more overt stuff, right? Like the Qasem Soleimani strike in 2020 was a pretty severe moment. It led to a ballistic missile response from the Iranians. But at no point did Iran ever close the Strait of Hormuz until now. And I'm wondering why you think that is, you know, sort of where maybe they got that idea and whether you think they might now feel like, oh, God, we're going to have to close the Strait of Hormuz. Yeah. You know, this is a lever we can pull and we might pull again going forward, you know, short of the Supreme Leader being, you know, killed. Yeah. I think one of the puzzles of this war so far, Tommy, is why is it that the United States seems surprised by Iran's closure of the Strait of Hormuz? And it's clear that there's probably some shoddy planning that went in. But to give folks a little bit of credit, I think the assumption had always been that for Iran to close the Strait of Hormuz, they would have to close the Strait of Hormuz. They would have to lay thousands of sea mines and make the Strait physically impossible, make it difficult for any ship to get through, lest they're, you know, potentially blow up by virtue of, you know, stumbling upon a sea mine. Well, the thing is that the U.S. didn't think Iran would take that step because, of course, if you had thousands of mines in the Strait of Hormuz, Iran wouldn't be able to sell its oil, you know. So I think the assumption was Iran's not going to commit economic suicide in order to mine the Strait of Hormuz. And I think that so long as this regime stays in place, that threat is going to be there. And that's why right now they're going so far as to demand payment, demand tolls, basically, for ships going through the Strait of Hormuz. It's really remarkable. And so, look, final question for you. I mean, Iran is debatably winning a war against the United States and Israel simply by closing the Strait of Hormuz. China won a trade war with the United States simply by blocking the exports. I mean, Iran is debatably winning a war against the United States and Israel simply by blocking the exports. rare earth minerals that we in the US need for electronics of all kinds from cell phones to drones. Is this the future of warfare? And if so, are there other Achilles heels you're seeing out there for the U.S. that you think we should be talking about? Short answer is yes. I mean, this is why I saw fit to write a book called Choke Points about economic warfare. Living in a hyper-globalized economy with all of these sort of single points of failure, you are really handing over a whole lot of economic leverage to all different kinds of countries around the world. We saw last year what China can do when it throttles the global supply of rare earth minerals. It got the Trump administration to completely reverse its China policy, right? I mean, this pivot on China that was ushered in during the first Trump term to be more hawkish, to cut off their supplies of semiconductors, to impose tariffs, all of that right now is in the process of being walked back because China weaponized a choke point against the United States. Well, now Iran has pulled off something similar by weaponizing their control of the world's most important maritime choke point, the Strait of Hormuz. They've completely changed the Trump administration's war aims. You know, they vacillated between regime change, denuclearization, military degradation. Well, now they have one overarching aim. That's reopening the Strait, which is fighting on Iran's terms. There are many other choke points in the global economy. I think one that worries me, especially now, if you look at kind of the longer term consequences of this war, to me, one of the easiest bets right now is to think that many, many countries around the world are going to triple down on efforts to electrify their economies. To go solar, to adopt electric vehicles, battery technologies. Well, guess what? China dominates all of those industries. Every single one. So even if we're okay at home, living on fossil fuels to the end of time, if all of our allies in Europe and Asia completely embrace electric technologies, and China dominates 90% of most of those industries, that hands China a heck of a whole lot of choke points that it will be able to use to leverage against American allies. That's not to say they shouldn't electrify. It's to say that here in the United States, we really need to wake up and start competing with China in these industries of the future. Yeah. Nevermind if they take Taiwan and TSMC and all of a sudden there's no chips. There you go. That's another choke point for you. Too many choke points. The book is Choke Points, American Power in the Age of Economic Warfare. Edward Fishman, thank you so much for doing the show. Really important stuff. And I appreciate it. Yeah. My pleasure. Good to see you. Thanks again to Edward Fishman for joining the show. And I will be gone next week. Unlike Ben, I'm too lazy to work on my kid's spring break. But I'll see you guys a week after that. So I'll miss you. I'll be here with Alona. Oh, yeah. Holding down the fort. You're going to crush. Yeah. Pod Save the World is a Crooked Media production. Our senior producer is Alona Minkowski. Our producer is Michael Goldsmith. Our associate producer is Anisha Banerjee. We get production support from Saul Rubin. 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