3/9/26: Oil Apocalypse, New Ayatollah Chosen, Jeff Sachs Dire Warning, Lindsey Graham Coached Bibi On Convincing Trump

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Turning now to oil, we're going to be joining us

second by Rory Johnson using excellent oil animals,

but we do have to show you some absolutely apocalyptic images coming out of Tehran.

Let's go and put these up here on the screen so we can show

all of you. The first here is some of the destruction.

This is an Iranian reporter standing in front of an oil facility

in the middle of Tehran, one of the largest facilities

which supplies the entire city.

These are reportedly, is really, is airstrikes,

which not only struck the facility,

but these black clouds started coming all the way up into the sky,

and authorities there in Tehran are now reporting risks of acid,

rain, black clouds, and smoke across the entire city.

So you can see that the entire thing was on fire.

There were storm drains from which oil was actually flowing

into civilian infrastructure that remained on fire.

I mean, literally out of the scene of a movie.

We also have this video from a CNN reporter who was on the ground

in Tehran actually showing the raining oil on top of everything

in the surrounding vicinity. Let's take a listen.

I want to show you something else because it's also raining,

but you can see that the rain, the rain water,

is actually black, also saturated.

It appears with oil. And then if we look over there,

you can see that the the water that's running down

here also is black. So that's what's coming down this morning.

This sort of oil filled brain that we have right now

on the Iranian capital after the strikes took place.

Oil filled rain, and of course that was immediately responded to

by the Iranians who are targeting a lot of oil facilities

across the region. So to get into all of that where the price of oil will go

and where the market stand as of right now, we're going to welcome Roy Johnson.

He is an independent oil analyst. He's going to join the show now.

Joining us now, as I said, is Roy Johnson. He is the founder of commodity context.com

and he's a longtime friend of the show. Roy, thanks for joining us.

Thanks for having me.

Yeah, not under the best circumstances. Unfortunately,

I've been following your work quite a bit,

independent oil analyst has and has really forecasted things with a very

honest view. And so we want to start with Donald Trump's first true social

and reaction to crude oil features going over $100 per barrel.

Let's put it up here on the screen. He says short-term oil prices which will

drop rapidly when the destruction of the Iran nuclear threat is over

is a very small price to pay. Only fools would think differently.

So Roy, are you amongst those fools who think differently

here about the price of oil and where do you see things right now?

I'm definitely among the fools on that one. I think, as I was saying, at the time when

when the president truth that, it's kind of the worst thing he could say in the current moment.

I think the important thing to keep in mind here is that the main thing the oil market is attempting

to handicap is the duration of this disruption through the straightforward moves

and the broader attacks against different structure in the region.

So when the president says, you know, don't worry, it's a short-term thing. No biggie.

I think the market's concern is that he actually believes that. Because if he actually believes that,

then this could go on much longer than anyone had feared. I mean, going into this, I did not think

there was any chance. I didn't ever thought I would see this in my career. This is the largest

scale disruption of energy systems at least since the 1970s. And potentially if this goes

on much longer, potentially the largest in history. So if this continues going on and the

president's statements make it seem like this is all under control, this is absolutely not under

control. This is massive and prices are exploding and the longer this goes on, the worse it's going to

get. How bad could it get? I mean, it's one of those shocks where this apply loss is so large

that what you need to do is you need to incentivize demand destruction across a whole variety of sectors.

Air travel, freight, consumer consumption, everything needs to go. And what, you know, when we think

about the way this would manifest, basically we have two sides of this. Either the prices rise

and the incentives and shipping it to rise to such a level that people begin to risk making the

transit through the straighter from those or the war ends and the straight reopens. Otherwise,

if we still have this 20 million barrel a day loss of supply from the coal system and just to put

that in perspective, that is roughly the exact same size of disruption, the size of demand loss

that we work that we kind of saw at the peak of COVID demand destruction in March and April of 2020.

Yeah. During that period, we were all locked in. You know, planes were not in the air. So what we're

talking about is kind of what price would be needed to replicate the conditions of the bottom of

COVID. That's the kind of scary part about this. And the way this would play out is, you know,

basically we in advanced kind of wealthy countries probably are just going to pay much, much higher

prices of the pump because those prices will be needed to incentivize those supplies of those

fuels remaining in our economies. The rest of, you know, the developing world where they can't afford

these imports, this is going to manifest as outright shortages for them. So that's this way

you're already seeing gas lines or seeing everything else. This is something that we already at this

stage, we've already had such a massive kind of air bubble in the system of the loss of disruption

and exports already. This is already kind of a historic crisis. If this goes on longer,

there's no telling how high we could go, $200 of barrel. It's like it's very, very easy to just

say numbers that are higher because there is no number high enough to incentivize the level of

destruction that we would need to see. That's crazy. Let's put C6 up on the screen. This was your

analysis. You say as someone who routinely mocks perma bullish clickbait oil forecast,

I want to be exceptionally clear, crude will go to $200 per barrel on route higher,

unless traffic through the street resumes, not clickbait rather brutal physics and necessary

economic incentives. So to put it into perspective, you know, everybody, not everybody's of

barrel expert, what does that mean? What does that mean in terms of, what does that mean in terms

of gas prices at the pump? Last time we talked, Russia, Ukraine, you thought, you know,

potentially $6 a gallon, what does that look like? $200 a barrel.

Yes, so even as we stand right now today, the price of our Bob Gasoline kind of futures are

implying that we've already jumped back above $4 a gallon in the US. And that is going to stick

and continue going higher. So yeah, $5, $6 a gallon. This is going to be, again, we need to just

do something to break the demand cycle and those are the prices it's going to take. What I should

note is that while Gasoline is going, you're going to mainly feel the loss of or the oil price spike

in that in the gasoline price. What we're seeing is an even more acute disruption in middle

of this list. So those would be your, you know, your diesels, your jet fuels, etc. And part of

that is because the Middle East, in addition to being, obviously, the world's largest kind of single

conduit of oil exports or crude oil exports is also a major supplier of jet fuel, jet fuel

of Asia and largely diesel to Europe. And the diesel to Europe replaced the banned imports from

Russia following the invasion of Ukraine 2020, which is roughly the last time that the oil

market was exploding. And we were talking, you know, the last time I first jumped on this show.

And this is the kind of situation we're seeing again, even in the opening salvo of this,

what we saw was jet fuel demand in Asia jumped to the equivalent of more than $200 of barrel already.

And part of what's crazy here is that the refined products market, particularly in Asia,

is going to frontrun the impact that we're seeing from crude. And that's because, you know,

as of a week and a half ago, tankers were still flowing out of the straight from this.

So it takes a month to two months for those tankers to get those their destinations.

So it's going to be a month or two. And so we start to feel the loss of those crude supplies

in those below finding systems. But what we're already seeing is that refineries,

particularly in Asia, were to depend on this feedstock, they're terrified.

Their worst case scenario is shutting down. They don't like shutting their facilities down.

It's very complicated, very expensive, very tough to get them back up and running.

So they have preemptively reduced operating levels, let's say from, you know, 90% to 65%.

In order to kind of extend the runway. But what that's done is it's immediately cut

supplies of diesel, jet fuel, et cetera, to the region. So it, you know, this is why the

products impact is frontrunning what we're even going to see in crude.

So we are obviously much more energy independent than we were in the 70s.

Are there tools at the US government's disposal that they could use to help blunt the impact

for consumers? Yeah. So I think the most important and obvious kind of tool in this toolkit is

the strategic petroleum reserve. And we actually saw, I just woke up and saw the,

the news that the G7 with the United States is considering a release of strategic stocks through

the IEA, potentially was a 300 or 400 million barrels, which would, that's exactly what should

be happening right now. It's actually shocking to me that up until this point, the Trump

administration has so kind of stubbornly refused to entertain the idea of an SPR release.

And partly because they tied themselves in so many knots, lambasting the Biden administration

about the use of the SPR in 2022, which again, at that time was a historic crisis.

And then because, you know, even in the big, beautiful bill last year, the Trump administration

had attempted to get more money for the SPR to refill because the SPR is effectively out of money now.

The Biden administration had refilled, you know, 60, 70 million barrels, but then they ran out of

cash because the rest of the cash had been remitted to Congress. They need more money to get to

fill the SPR and they weren't able to get it. I think the actual appropriation request dropped

from like a 1.2 billion to like 118 million, or those are rough numbers. But, you know, you had a

massive cut in that volume of crude, which is 100 million dollars for refilling crude and the

SGR is basically nothing. And we needed a lot more than that. So I think that's the situation

we're in right now. So, Rory, what we've seen right now is effective closure of the Straits of

Hormuz. I know that there are other pipelines, which are operating. However, the Iranians,

there's been other some reporting about potential strikes on those. If we do see shutdown with

Aramco, also LNG, what does that look like, you know, for our global energy market? As you're saying,

it's just demand destruction. People were just in the developed world in Africa. It's like,

stop driving. You're not going anywhere. Is that what it looks like?

Basically. And I think, so there's an important differentiation here. So when we talk about the

closure of the Straits of Hormuz, that's, you know, these numbers are all over the place. Let's

say 20 million barrels, roughly 20% of global supplies travel through the strait. When those were

effectively shuttered, I think that it's like a kinked garden hose, right? So, you know, nothing's

coming through. But if it only lasted a day or two, you could just unkink the hose and things

just kind of flow back to normal. What we were seeing in the attacks against energy infrastructure

in the region, that's even the larger tail rest than the strait, than the closure of the strait

itself. You know, if this, the strait closure is like a kinked garden hose, these facility attacks

are more like taking a shotgun and then blasting off the faucet to which the hose is attached.

Everything in the oil market is repairable, but that's a far larger, longer kind of repair

operation. The other thing we've seen beyond that is that the pressure from that, that, you know,

kinked hose has built back up and the other issue is that a lot of the producers, most notably

are rock and co-weight, don't have a lot of domestic storage for their, for their crude. So when

they can't ship it out, they basically need to start shutting in production. And what we've already

seen is, as of yesterday, I haven't checked the numbers yet this morning, as of yesterday,

a rock had already shut in forcibly because of the lack of export optionality. They'd already

shut in more than three million barrels a day, which again, rewinded 2022 when we would have last

spoke. That was the, the feared loss from, from Russia was three million barrels that we never

actually saw. And that feared loss was enough to push oil prices above $120 a barrel. We already

have realized that loss in the first week of this, of this crisis in the Gulf. We have a real

worry of loss of what we expected loss in 2022, just to put it into context. Exactly. And we've

already lost it. So that can be turned back on, but it can't be turned back on like, you know,

flipping a switch. It's going to take weeks, you know, you know, days, or potentially weeks

up to a month. And that is again, these are massive volumes of crude. And the system needs to

open itself back up. And at this stage, the market and myself, increasingly has no confidence

that this, that this conflict is going to end. Again, I never thought we would get this far.

What we'd seen from President Trump up to this stage had been a series ever since, you know,

2019 when he killed General Sulimani. It was quick, sharp. You had kind of almost a symbolic

exchange of fire between US forces and the Iranians. You know, the Iranians would, you know,

this was also happened in June of last year and 2025 during the 12-day war between Israel and

Iran. You would kind of get these kind of fainting attacks that, you know, they weren't the big deal,

but, you know, Iran couldn't be seen to just roll over. So it was kind of like, we're going to hit

you with a couple of missiles in a warehouse or, you know, a base, but, you know, it's not, it's not a

massive thing. And they can kind of just like, okay, that's fine. And we'll pack up and go away.

This time, however, they've gone full-bore. You know, Trump has not let up as quickly. It's not

been a flashy kind of cinematic event followed by a declaration of victory, which is, I still think

what he was hoping to achieve here, but the Iranians did not give him that opportunity. And, therefore,

we are now stuck in this kind of prolonged conflict. And the White House very clearly does not have

any kind of durable escape plan. And they did not plan for any of these energy tendencies. We

hear about things like shipping traffic, you know, war insurance coverage from the Treasury

Department. You know, this is stuff that if they were really planning this, they should have had

this figured out months ago. The fact that the fact that we are just at this now, they are

clearly reacting and they're flailing. I mean, that is part of what is so crazy to me. Like,

literally anyone, if you say war in the Middle East, the first thing they're going to think of

as oil, right? It's like the basic number one of what's going to be impacted if you have some sort

of a war anywhere in the Middle East. My last question for you, because I know you got to run,

we really appreciate your time, is how does this ripple, we're focused on oil, we're focused on

gas pumps, but how does this ripple around the entire economy? Yeah, so I mean, you know, if this

is going to feel, if this continues, much like, much like the kind of supply chain disruptions

that we experienced in COVID, we talked about this kind of bullwhip effect that when in COVID,

we lost all this demand, so supply contracted in, and then demand recovered,

that supply wasn't able to keep up. This is basically, we're starting on the second phase of that.

We've lost the supply, and it's such a large portion of supply that we can't really make it up

easily, so you're going to start rationing through the economy. That's going to force all of these

kind of various industries and countries into kind of more zero-sub competition, where the system

is not designed to go to work like that. So it's going to be really hard, you know, to predict the

kind of knock-on effects here, but if, and again, if this stage goes to all of this is contingent

on traffic not, you know, resuming through the straight, but if that occurs, or we're talking

that it's not a global recession, we're talking about upwards of like some kind of global depression

level event, if this occurs. Wow, well, sobering words. Again, not a alarmist person, a very

straight-minded independent analyst, we appreciate you. It was always where we thank you.

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Joining us now to discuss a number of recent developments, though, including

the selection of a new supreme leader of Iran is, front of the show,

treat to parsy, of course, of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. Great to see, sir.

Good to see you. Good to be with you guys.

So let's go ahead and put D1 up on the screen. As I mentioned, new supreme leader has been chosen.

He is the son of the previous supreme leader. Tell us about the significance of this

and how he may differ from his father.

So let me first start off by saying that very few people on the outside really know much about

what's going on in the assembly of experts, Shurei Hobirgan, who actually elects the supreme leader.

And I definitely cannot claim to have any expertise. But from the outside analyzing this,

and, you know, reading the TV leaves over the course of the last couple of years and months,

I think it was quite clear that prior to all of this,

Moshev al-Khamenei was not a leading candidate. His name was still in there,

but there was a lot of resistance to him, not only from the previous supreme leader, but also from

others. It seems to me that the killing of his father by his role, the killing of his mother,

his wife, and his child, really actually made him much more of a likely successor to the

previous supreme leader, particularly also mindful of the fact that Trump came out and said that

Khamenei, that Moshev al-Khamenei would be unacceptable. It's exactly the type of endorsement

that I think he needed, because what the Iranians are trying to do right now with this choice is

to signal total and absolute defiance. They chose someone who clearly mindful of the fact that his

wife, child, father, mother were killed by Israel is in no reconcilatory mood. And as a result,

I think, you know, the signal is very clear. The Iranians are sticking to their guns. They're not

going to back down. They're certainly not going to surrender. That's the message they want to

get across with this choice. Even though I'm really strongly confident that he was not the leading

candidate, how did it not been for which is happening? Yeah, because his father even preached

against a hereditary monarch, because he was pointing out like the degeneracy of the previous

Shah regime. That's what made it even more shocking. But it's like you said, the fact that Donald

Trump himself said that's not somebody we want to deal with, it seems very clearly like that is the

moat, that is the message intended foremost. It's wartime leader, somebody who himself has

personally suffered father is a martyr in terms of not only religious authority, but in terms of

national message to the populace and to the world that they're not backing down. Yeah, and look,

there's not a lot of interviews with him at all, frankly, you know, he has a reputation of being

more hard-lined than his father. I don't know if that's true or not, a lot remains to be seen.

Mindful of the fact that he was almost never seen in public before. But if it is so, that he is

more hard-lined. I think, unfortunately, the regime is going to go in a much more hard-lined

direction now since they're in a war situation. It just further shows that these type of escalations,

conflict, et cetera, is exactly the opposite of what you want. If your desire actually is to move

Iran in a much more open-minded and liberal direction. We're seeing the clear opposite taking

place in front of our eyes in which they just selected a person who's simple as a miss to show

defiance against the United States and anyone who wants to see reformed in place inside of Iran.

What does this election mean for the likelihood that Iran would actually pursue a nuclear weapon?

Well, we have a scenario which the fatwa of the Supreme Leader has now essentially gone

with the Supreme Leader. That is the main interpretation of these fatwauses that they only

last as long as the Iatola who issued them is alive, and then they need to be re-issued by

someone else. I mean, I don't think it will be particularly early in his agenda to re-issue it,

and there may be a tremendous amount of pressure on him not to do so. Because I think, you know,

the shift in mood in Iran is very, very clear. There's a lot of argumentation that this was a

mistake for them not to build it. I don't necessarily think that the capacity to do so without

being detected, et cetera, et cetera, really was there, but I think there's a strong view in

many quarters in Iran that the previous Supreme Leader simply wasn't decisive enough to go in

either direction. He didn't build the bomb, and at the same time, he was not willing to do the

kind of full-scale engagement with the United States to get a deal done, because he kept on

refusing, allowing any Iranian officials to directly speak to Trump, which I think was a mistake.

That is now all, you know, extremely unlikely to happen. I fear very much that the selection of

Hamine son now means that any exit ramp that potentially was available is even more difficult

to materialize. Now, Trump could potentially just choose to declare victory, walk away and say,

look, I killed the Supreme Leader. I misfortune so much of their nuclear program, so much of their

missile program. The country has been set back 10 years, he said, and just declare victory in

leaving. I don't think it would end there, because from the standpoint of the Iranians,

if that were to happen, they would actually be in a much worse situation compared to the beginning

of the war, because the country's destroyed, they can hardly export any oil, they can't get any

cash, and no one's going to come in from the outside to rebuild the country, and their pathway

towards centuries relief is essentially blown up. So I don't think that's an acceptable situation

for them. I suspect that they actually would continue the war even if Trump pulls out.

They would continue to target GCC states that would continue to target Israel. I think they're

going to fight until they get an outcome that they believe also puts them not necessarily in a

better position, but in one in which their prospects of getting to a better position

is greater, meaning that there is some sort of an arrangement indirectly or directly with the

United States, when some sanctions relief, the country can be built up, again, they can sell their

oil, etc. At this point, they've lost so much, they have nothing to lose to go even further

in trying to make sure that they use their last resources in order to be able to turn the tables

around, which is kind of the same situation Trump is in. I think he realizes this was a huge mistake,

he's lost, and he's not desperately trying to turn the tables, turn this failure into a victory

before the market crashes, and his own base turns against this war. His own base is not quite yet

turned against the war, at least not in a very forceful way, so I think he thinks he still has

some time and he's throwing everything at the Iranians in the hope of turning this defeat into a

victory. Yeah, very good point. Now, we did originally want to talk to you about some of this

failed diplomacy and no potential off-ramps you're talking about. Let's put this up here on the

screen. It all kicked off with a very interesting statement over the weekend, where the Iranian

interim leadership council approved that neighboring countries would no longer be attacked,

unless an attack on Iran originated from them. This was seen as a potential off-ramp where they

said, look, you don't use bases to attack us, that we won't attack you. However, Trump immediately

then came out and let's go to the next one guys, where he said Iran, which is being beat to hell,

has apologized and surrendered to its Middle Eastern neighbors, promised it won't shoot at them

anymore. The promise was made only because of an Israeli attack. Your analysis is that his

immediate shoot down of that potential off-ramp immediately actually re-escalated the situation

can you get into it. Yeah, so there was very sense that negotiations taking place initiated by

regional states. The Iranians had come to an agreement with them that there would be a movement

towards not targeting them unless actually their soil was used for attacks. In some cases,

they happen. They started off them with this video message by Pizzyashkion, in which he actually

went further than what had been agreed upon within the Iranian system. He issued a personal

apology, which of course took all the headlines. This actually generated a tremendous amount of

anger within the Iranian system against them and he came out and kind of retracted and said that

he was misunderstood. But and the next step was then for some of these GCC states to observe

what happens will the Iranians actually implement that and then issue their own statement. It would take

a couple of hours. In between Trump comes with his truth social and as you see there, he insults

Iran, he humiliates Iran and then he says that Iran will be hit very hard today and only a

short period after that, the United States hits the desalination plant in Beshme Island,

which is a major, major escalation. It's also a violation of Article 54 of the Geneva Convention's

Protocol I. So immediately after that, the Iranians started pounding GCC states as well as Israel

and this whole thing just fell apart. Now, it is not entirely clear to me. I've not been able to

get to the bottom of this as to whether Trump did this deliberately because he wanted to sabotage

that mediation effort or whether this was something that essentially further reflects that the

US government is somewhat of a disarray that the GCC states had informed the US of this deal,

informed them of the status of these negotiations, but Trump was not in the loop or didn't care,

didn't understand that him coming out and issuing this tweet and going forward with this attack

with completely destroying matters. But this is what happened and the effect is that this diplomacy

collapse. Now, I do believe that there's some other efforts being made right now to resurrect it,

but it tells you how delicate the situation is and how problematic it is if the United States is

really just improvising this war at this point. Yeah, and then Israel, of course, directly interested

in broadening this war as much as they possibly can and seeming to, we just talked about how they

were blaming the UAE for this drone strike on the desalination plant in Iran. UAE is saying that

is not true at all, but you can see the incentives there of Israel. We could put D4 up on the screen.

This is one of the strikes that happened from Iran shortly after this attempted diplomacy

fell apart. That is Dubai International Airport. That is, I mean, I'm sure all three of us have

been there multiple times. I was a jet fuel tank hanger too. And yeah, to see this is pretty

astonishing, busiest airport in the world, or at least it was. And meanwhile, on the escalation,

front, let's put D5 up on the screen. US is deploying yet another. So this will be the third one,

carrier strike group to the Middle East, just an extraordinary amount of firepower being amassed

in the region. So it looks like this thing is only going in one direction and it is not towards

an off-ramp. Sorry, Jordan. I think what you said about there is Joel's constant messaging that

this was done by Bahrain or by the UAE has infuriated these states because it's so clear

these Israelis want these GCC states to fully enter this war because not that that makes a huge

military difference, but because it further ruins Iran GCC relations for decades to come.

What the Iranians are doing already now, it's going to create a tremendous amount of problems

between the GCC and Iran going forward. There's a lot of anger obviously against Iranians and the

GCC, particularly amongst the states that went out of their way to make sure that this war was

prevented and is still trying to stop it. But what the Israelis are doing is that they're trying to

get everyone directly involved in this conflict in order to make sure that even once this is over,

Iran's relations with these states are going to be in a terrible state for decades to come.

We also have to say, if I could just add one thing. As much as we're talking about

like this war is, Trump is improvising and he's lost control, I think we have to be

clear that from the Israeli standpoint this is splendid success. It doesn't matter to them.

If it's much tabar or it's Hassan or whoever it is that becomes the next supreme leader,

none of these things are important. What's important for them is that the country is being

bombed to smithers, that their power is being set back decades, that the balance is going to be

shifting in Israel's direction at the end of this regardless of exactly how it ends politically.

The way it ends militarily is that Iran's resources are not really being drained in its military

capabilities are even though they may, I don't think they will at all, surrender. Even if that is not

a surrender that it ends with, militarily, they capabilities will be set back dramatically

and that shifts the balance of power in Israel's direction, which is exactly what they're looking for.

It just so happens to be that the United States is paying for all of it.

Right, they don't care at all about a stable. In fact, they don't want Iran to be stable.

They don't even care about American gas prices, they don't care about American lies.

They care least about the GCC countries were the only ones that have any interest.

Asian markets are tumbling, boohoo, they could care less.

One of the things we've also seen though is the explosion of civil conflict in Iraq.

Let's go ahead and put D6 up here on the screen where we've seen Iraqi resistance units who

are in direct contact. This was a claim with US forces. It hasn't been exactly confirmed,

but we definitely know that there's a lot of stuff going on in and around Iraq where there's been

significant consternation. What is the possibility you've talked about this on the show before,

about resistance in Bahrain with the Shia population in Iraq, attacks potentially there,

and a broadening of some sort of like Arab spring style uprising in the middle of all this conflict

if it continues to blast? We don't know quite exactly how strong the Iranian intelligence

capabilities are. I mean, he clearly they have capabilities, but their ability to actually

ferment some unrest or support it in Saudi Arabia and the Eastern provinces or in Bahrain.

We've already seen some sporadic, spontaneous protests particularly in Bahrain early on.

So that is an unknown, but we definitely know that in Iraq there are plenty of armed militias

that are still quite loyalty around. They believe that particularly if the Kurds were to go in,

I think that definitely would have activated these other Iraqi militias against this,

and all of Iraq would once again be thrown into some form of a civil war.

So the idea that this would be quick, that this would just entail Iran, all of that was

disproven within the first 48 hours, but it can still get much much worse than what we already

have seen, particularly if those groups are activated or you've seen that there's open fighting

now between Esvola and Lebanon, and of course the Houthis are still sitting tight, whether they're

sitting tight as a warning to Saudi Arabia not to enter the war and they would only go in if the

Saudi is going, or whether they're waiting for a moment in which the chalk point in the

straight of Hormosa is becoming really, really high, and then they add another problem to it

by closing down the Red Sea again, which would really just be devastating the entire global economy.

It doesn't remain clear to me exactly what the strategy is, but I think it's very interesting

that so far it had been sitting tight, but I don't think that that is because they don't have the

capability or the willingness to get in, it seems to be a much more complex calculation that they have

that is all about timing rather than willingness. I agree. Lastly, let's put this piece of news up

on the screen, Saudi American diplomats in Saudi Arabia have been ordered to leave, State Department

said to order diplomats to go or to departure of U.S. employees in the Kingdom indicates

senior diplomats are bracing for possible surge in violence in the war with Iran. What do you

make of this development? It shows that at this point the Iranians are the ones that are determining

the geography of this war. They have already been able to hit major CIA stations inside of some of

the GCC states. They have also been later on identified where those CIA personnel moved and they

hit those places. So their ability to strike particularly with these drones that are not being

picked up by the air defense systems in the same way precisely because they're moving so

slowly. If they were moving faster, they actually would have been detected. Has given the Iran

is a significant benefit to Saudi Arabia and the GCC states are not asking you crane for help

because the Ukrainians have now four years of experience dealing with some of these

drones that the Iranians are using. So we're seeing, I mean, this war is just expanding. It is

providing a tremendous amount of cost, but I do think that the Trump administration has managed

to keep the cost of this war rather hidden from the American public. Not just in terms of the

tremendous amount of money that is being spent, but also the tremendous amount of facilities that

are being destroyed. We're talking about some fad radar detectors that cost up to one billion

dollars that have been destroyed and will take years to rebuild. But also do note that the

administration is not saying a word about the number of casualties. We have mentioned the number

of debt, not the number of casualties. Yes, we have a great point. And not to mention even

every day, I read about some Pakistani laborer who got killed or hurt, multiple people in

Bahrain and Kuwait. I mean, there's a lot of civilians who've been caught up in, I mean,

and then in Tehran, God only knows the number of people who've been killed, probably in the

thousands at this moment, such a disaster. Thank you very much, sir. I'm sure we'll see you again.

Thank you so much for having me.

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So, we wanted to ask in this show just how bad are things and just how bad could things get

Professor Jeffrey Sachs, who we've had on this program a number of times,

speaking to Glenn Deeson over on his YouTube program. He said that he believes we are

already in the early stages of World War III. Let's go ahead and take a listen to that.

Israel is a crazy rogue state with the half-its-political leadership in the mindset of the 5th

century BC, reading some text from King Josiah, and their Israel has just plunged the world

into probably the Third World War, but into a phenomenal economic crisis. This is

the timing, the instigation is Israel's. The fact that the U.S. goes along with it is because

it's completely coherent with the U.S. Hegemonic project. But this is Israel.

So, complete madness. And because of the whole of the Israel lobby in the United States,

that madness isn't even examined. I don't want to be alarmist, but I also want to be

clear-eyed about where we are and where this could go. And already, we have, we can put the next

piece up on the screen. We have reports that Russia is providing Iran with Intel, which makes

perfect sense about the locations and movements of American troop ships and aircraft,

according to multiple people familiar with U.S. intelligence reporting on the issue. In the

same way, we viewed Russia's invasion of Ukraine as an opportunity. Hey, let's get involved.

Let's do a proxy war. Maybe we can hurt Russia. Maybe we can degrade their capability.

They are viewing this as a similar opportunity. In addition, U.S. also has intelligence

suggesting I'm reading from the CNN report that China may be preparing to provide Iran

with financial assistance, spare parts, and missile components. Three people familiar with the matter

said, the Beijing has stayed out of the war up until now. China relies heavily on Iranian oil

and has reportedly been pressuring Tehran to allow safe passage for vessels through the

straight-over moves. So, we have directly impacted their interests in terms of their energy

landscape. Although, I don't want to overstate that because China, I think, some 10 to 15 percent

of their oil comes from Iran. So, you know, it's not great for them, but it's not a total and

complete disaster the way that it has been portrayed. I mean, the people who are arguing,

oh, this is all about hurting China, this is all about hurting China. The math doesn't really

math when you consider that the country that is being, you know, one of the countries that is

being hardest hit by this is us, their geopolitical rival. So, when you look at that,

when you look at the fact we're already in this proxy conflict in Ukraine with Russia,

when you look at, you know, you've got a proxy conflict going on in Sudan as well.

Obviously, we're, you know, in our own hemisphere, Venezuela, you know,

kidnapping Maduro, and quote-unquote, taking over there. Now, we're belligerently threatening Cuba

as well. It does have some of the ingredients, and especially with the uncontrolled escalation

spiral that we're already in, it does have some of the ingredients of a broader conflagration,

especially when you add on the table. The possibility of deployment of nuclear weapons, which I don't

think either one of us can rule out. I mean, I wouldn't put it at zero, which is scary enough.

I don't know what five, what are you at? I'm at like 3%, which is, I mean, too high.

For what? Luke's the World War Three. Okay, but let's talk about the whole World War thing. So,

even when people say World War Three, the expectation of World War Three is it's going to look like

World War Two. Well, World War Two looks nothing like World War One, okay? So, the idea that the new

frontier battle is going to look exactly like some, you know, carbon copy of something that happened

80 years ago is preposterous. It is going to look actually exactly like it does right now. You and

I consider the Ukraine war to be a proxy conflict, yes? Well, that, okay, that is a global conflict,

because all of NATO, the United States, sanctions, the entire economic system, all of these US

institutions, which were designed, post-World War Two were leveraged against Russia. That,

literally, to me, is basically warfare. You could call it what you want, whether US boots are on

the ground. If Russians are providing intelligence, it's the same thing. Also, who are we to complain?

How many times do we do battle damage assessments? And we do more for the Ukrainians, or the Russians

have done for Tehran, also far. And now we're complaining. Good luck selling that. Come on,

scale. I mean, close. No, literally. We consider, you know, all of these weapons,

trenches, intelligence, intelligence. Every training that we've been doing for years and years

in Ukraine. Exactly. So, and we, what were the coup that we phoned on? How about that? Think about,

yeah, exactly, like, not to turn it into a Ukraine thing, but that already was a proxy conflict.

This is a proxy conflict. Now, but it's got a long history in the post-World War Two era. This is

what global conflicts look like. Afghanistan became globalized. Vietnam became globalized. Syria,

globalized. Libya became globalized. Every one of these interventions, the Iraq conflict, right?

The war in Iraq was not between the US and Saddam. That portion only lasted like three weeks.

It was the US versus Iran versus all of these other, you know, during the Syrians, during Al-Qaeda,

like, all of these people coming from all over the globe, same in Syria. I mean, Qatar, Saudi Arabia,

the United States, Israel, Hasbola from Lebanon, like, all of these people were involved. So,

World War Three, if you will, is going to look a lot more like this because of mutually assured

destruction and nuclear weapons between the great superpowers. It will look a lot more like those

conflicts that happened throughout the Cold War. It is less destructive in terms of overall human

life, but it can still be an abject disaster. How many people died in the wars in Iraq and

Afghanistan? Americans, maybe 7,000, right? I mean, there were more people killed in a single hour

of combat in some of the world wars in that, but that doesn't mean that the strategic implication

was not an absolute nightmare for all of us. So, I think that's why we need to recalibrate

some of our expectations. I don't think Jeffrey Sachs is wrong. Really, what I'm the most

worried about is the climb up the escalation ladder, which we talked about from oil and to water,

because there's no coming back from that. Like, once you start going after civilian infrastructure,

it's a disaster because everyone has to fight to the debt. There's a clip going around I was

telling you earlier where Trump said unconditional surrender. I talked about that with Tucker.

And Tucker made a comment, and he was like, unconditional surrender means that foreign troops

get to rape your wife and daughter provocative. But, I mean, look at the history of unconditional

surrender. That is unambiguously true. Randy Fine and Laura Lumerol, like Tucker says, American

troops are going to be, it's like, that's not the point, guys. The point is is that when you're

faced with that, as the Germans were with the Soviet Union, you want to know how many,

I mean, you know, not a lot of people talk about it. It's something like 2.5 million

rapes that occurred over the battle through the conquest of Germany. It's dark, like it's really,

really dark, Jengous Khan. That was unconditional surrender. And that's the point is that when you

impose that on a foreign populist, you have to do either what the United States or the Union

Army did to the South during the Civil War is burn their civilian infrastructure to the ground,

take away all their food in World War II. You literally have to invade and go block by block

the Soviet Union. They incurred 400,000 casualties in 1945. Just in the last six months of the war,

there are 400,000 casualties on the front line, whenever, you know, in the battle of Berlin,

think, when the United States, how did we get unconditional surrender in World War II? We had to

drop two atomic bombs to force them. And then, you know, that we had too. Okay, well, you see

there are two atomic bombs, which, I mean, if you look at the decision matrix, it was either

two atomic bombs or hundreds of thousands of American casualties. There was no other option. That

was it. If you wanted unconditional surrender. And even then, we still had to revise our unconditional

surrender to make it so that the emperor could stay as some sort of figurehead. That's what it takes

to achieve something like this. And that's effectively, like, we're on the road now. And it's only

been eight days. Usually, it doesn't even take, it usually takes much longer than this to get to

some sort of disastrous position. Also, you have to think of this from the perspective of the

rest of the world, right? It was one thing when Trump is like, okay, we're going to dominate

our hemisphere, right? We're going to do the, you know, we're going to do whatever we want. We're

going to make sure we've installed these puppet regimes or we've kidnapped leaders and we've

brought everybody to heal. We're going to do that in Russian, China. You've got your, you know,

China, particularly. You've got your spheres of influence. You do what you want over. Okay,

that's one thing. They love that. That's one thing. They're like, we believe we're like, sure,

don't row doctrine. We're cool. Yeah. But they're like, then we get Taiwan and Ukraine is ours.

Right. But now, especially when you consider we've, you know, Trump has not

solves the Ukraine conflict. We are, you know, in endless war in Ukraine, we're locked in a proxy

war with Russia and Ukraine. Okay. And now you add to the mix, oh, by the way, we're going to

destroy Iran. We're going to, you know, do regime change or collapse the regime or whatever

in that region. Well, that's not our hemisphere. It becomes clear that the point is to dominate

the entire world. The point, the response from the Trump administration to, you know, the decline

of our empire and the decline of our superpower status as the sole global hegemon is not to say,

all right, let's come to some sort of accommodation with the world. The response is no.

We're going to have a $1.5 trillion defense budget and we are going to dominate the entire world.

We're going to do whatever we want to, whoever we want, no holds barred,

law of the jungle. And I have to think that if you're a China, if you're a Russia, if you're

any other significant power in the world, that is an unacceptable approach to you. So it is

intentionally bringing us into direct conflict with these other countries. And again, this isn't

theoretical. This is already happening now, especially with China considering, you know,

involving themselves directly in our war in Iran. And you can understand why we're messing with

their stuff. We're messing with their oil. And we are also asserting to the world that we are

going to try to dominate the entire world. We're going to blow up the UN and these other,

you know, institutions of global cooperation, we're going to put Trump at the head of the quote-unquote

board of peace and, you know, allow him to serve in perpetuity and get to appoint his successor.

And you have to pay to get in. And ultimately he has veto power. That is the direction that they

have clearly broadcast to the world. And so yeah, the rest of the world, at some point,

already is going to have something to say about that. So that's one piece. The other piece here

is the possibility of the deployment of nuclear weapons. Because now you have obviously Israel

also nuclear power and completely psychotic and, you know, parts of it driven by these,

you know, religious fanaticism, parts of our government driven by religious fanaticism,

which makes this whole thing scary as well. Obviously, Iran is a literal theocracy. So you have

religious fanaticism there as well. And you have these very ominous comments recently from Netanyahu.

Let's put E6 up on the screen where he is promising some sort of a major surprise for Iran. He says

that will completely destabilize the country. Netanyahu is asking Iranis to lay down their weapons

in surrender or face death. He said, quote, the moment of truth is approaching and he will free Iran

and make Iran an Israel allies. Okay, so we have that. So what does that make your surprise? That's

a little uncomfortable. And then this also just came out. We can pay E7 up on the screen. You've

got this guy who makes these like doomsday bunkers that are supposed to be, you know, to allow you

to survive drone attacks, ballistic missile strikes or even nuclear armageddon. And he claims

that two senior cabinet members in the Trump administration are among his clients. One of them

texted me yesterday asking me, quote, when will my bunker be ready? So not exactly comforting

when the people who are in charge here are preparing their doomsday bunkers and trying to rush

delivery concerned about how quickly they will have access to this anti-armageddon proof bunker

for themselves. Yeah, I mean, I don't know if it's true or not, but it is crazy. And I do think,

to the whole world war point and actually what you were saying about how others will react.

I'm very world war one brain. So to me, it's like everyone's like, oh, this is going to cause

world war three. And I'm like, no, I don't think so. If we were to have like a real massive thing.

But what it does is it shatters the illusions and the understandings that we all have. So there

was the board war, which a lot of people don't know about, but you know, between Britain and what

it did is it pierced like this idea of splendid isolation. It really heightened the tensions between

the Anglos and the Germans. It led to the triple on top. But more importantly, it normalized like

a lot of the modern trench warfare, the concentration camp. That's where a lot of that stuff came from.

But what it did is it set the stage for, well, wow, Britain is not nearly as invincible as we all

thought, which means we need to rearm because, oh, it's a paper tiger maybe. And that's what leads

to the great clash in 1914. Well, I could see this very similarly. It's like, you have this,

I mean, nobody could say that this was essential for U.S. security, just like Iraq. So you have this,

you know, foreign adventurous conflict. Some Americans will die, but not hundreds of thousands

or anything like that. I'm not minimizing their deaths in any way. I'm saying domestically,

we can absorb that. If we could absorb 7,000 casualties from the global war on terror. Most people,

how do they, how do they, how do the GWAT impact them? Well, we, we all knew somebody who maybe

have deployed and came back with PTSD, but for the most people, it was high gas prices, bad politics,

etc. But it wasn't like an attack literally on our everyday civilization. This is very similar.

Most people will be very upset, but it's not going to directly impact your life in the way that

a real war would, but China, Russia, all any of these other, you know, countries, what they're

watching for is any of the, you know, Kingston, our armor interceptors, for example, the breakdown

in the global order, the GCC countries, after this is all over, you really think they're going to be

great friends with America. So if we have to rebuild all these radar systems, we need permission.

You have status and force agreements with every one of these countries. Are you resigning?

I don't think so. I really don't. Or we're going to have to bribe the shit out of them with,

with weapons we don't have. Yeah. Or we'll have to take from somebody else.

And how about this? Let's say China does take this as opportunity to move on Taiwan.

Yeah, what are we going to do? What then? We're not ready for that. We're not militarily.

I mean, I personally think it would be insane to get out and fight with China over Taiwan ever,

but especially at this point. But we're also not prepared domestically to, we have not spun up

the semiconductor capacity that we need. We're fucked. So I mean, that's, and that's the reason

that anyone cares about Taiwan really. It's not about human rights and democracy. Total and

complete bullshit. It's the semiconductors. That's the whole thing. We aren't prepared for that.

So what are we going to do then? Then we're in a direct conflict with China. So I don't know.

I mean, I do agree with Jeffrey Sachs and also with your point that in a sense we are already

in that conflict. Now, it doesn't look like World War One. It doesn't look like World War Two.

To your point, it's not going to, especially in the nuclear age where you have not just us,

but Israel and Russia and China, all these nuclear powers that are hopefully not itching to

destroy the entire world, hopefully. But in terms of the lines of conflict and being engaged in

these various proxy fights, I mean, it's already on. And there's something else that I saw online

that I thought was an intelligent point as well. You know, we talked a lot in the show about

the possibility of boots on the ground. And we're talking about specifically, you know, probably

special forces to begin with at least raid into Iran to try to recover this loose nuclear material,

whatever. But in a broader sense, we already have boots on the ground. I mean, this is a regional

war. And we have a lot of American servicemembers who are in the region, boots on the ground,

getting killed in action right now and getting wounded. We don't know how many right now,

as part of this fight. So in a sense, it's a bit of a distinction without a difference because

there is no doubt there are already American servicemembers boots on the ground in middle of this war,

in the theater of combat, where all of the action is happening. Of course, yeah, you're right.

We have boots on the ground in the forward deployed bases, which for what? To defend who? Israel?

Well, no, they would say, no, it's not to defend Israel. It's to defend the Gulf countries.

How's that working out? How's that working out for the Gulf countries?

Yeah, they're actually feeling very defended right now. They are furious.

On the timeline, Emirati billionaires with massive amounts of money invested here are all

posting about how upset they are with the United States. Also, just so people know, the billionaires

are the cutouts for the royal family. That's how it works over there. You don't have free speech.

You don't put out long essays criticizing the U.S. government without at least

tacit admission or without tacit permission from the monarchy and the people who are in charge.

These are all messages which are intended for the United States. Again, not that anybody cares

last point on this because it really makes me upset. Our actual allies, like really good allies,

South Korea and Japan, they're stock market. South Korea's stock market is down 14%. Japan is down

like eight. It's a disaster. The vast majority of their oil comes from the Middle East. Their

economies are getting hammered and we're losing, we're taking away possibly interceptors and

others. I mean, South Korea, Japan, these are not Israel, where we do 53 billion in bilateral trade.

I'm talking about hundreds of billions, trillions of dollars for the global economy and those people,

I mean, hung left out to dry by Washington. It's so disgraceful. All right, let's get to Lindsey Graham.

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Food and Drug Administration. These products are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or

prevent any disease. Turning now to the person who should be having the most fun in this war,

Lindsey Graham is at the height of his powers here in Washington. How did he get there? It turns

out by colluding directly with Prime Minister Netanyahu of Israel and their own intelligence

agencies using their tactics to lobby Donald Trump behind the scenes and now openly bragging

about war and death and all the money we're going to make from this war. How we're even going to

free Cuba on Fox News Airwaves. It's beyond 2003 madness. Let's take a listen.

This regime goes down. We're going to have a new mid-east. We're going to make a ton of money.

Nobody will threaten the straits of hormones and we're going to win.

Israel and the United States, you just wait to see what comes in the next two weeks.

The next two weeks, meaning what?

We're going to blow the hell out of these people. This regime is in a death row now. It is going

to be on its knees. I mean, I'm not looking for a fair fight. If we get in a fight, I want to win

it. I want to win it quick. I'm in Miami. You see this hat? Free Cuba. Stay tuned.

The liberation of Cuba is upon us. It's just a matter of time now. You see this hat? Make a run

great. President Trump said the only way to make a run great is for the people to take over.

We're marching through the world. We're cleaning out the bad guys. We're going to have

relationships with new people that will make us prosperous and say, I've never seen anybody

like it. This is Ronald Reagan Plus. Donald Trump is resetting the world. In a way,

nobody could have dreamed of a year ago. He is the greatest commander in chief of all time.

Our military is the best of all time. Our run is going down and Cuba is next.

Does he even have a hat that says America on it? I mean, how many hats does this guy have of

foreign countries? It's crazy. I mean, do they hear him? We're marching through the world.

I mean, we're cleaning out all the bad guys. This is 2005. Ronald Reagan Plus.

It's like, Jesus Christ. I mean, it's worse than 2005. We're marching through the world

in sanity. And yet, you know, he's getting a little nervous about the oil situation too.

I'll read this. I don't think we have this as an element. But he says in this tweet,

our allies in Israel have shown amazing capability when it comes to collapsing the murderous

regime in Iran. America is most appreciative. Speak yourself. However, there will be a day soon.

The Iranian people will be in charge of their own fate. Not the murderous Ayatollah's regime.

In that regard, please be cautious about what targets you select. Our goals to liberate the

Iranian people in a fashion that does not cripple their chance to start a new and better life

when this regime collapses. The oil economy of Iran will be essential to that endeavor.

So when they were murdering schoolgirls, he didn't have any problem with that. He was on air,

ecstatic, we're marching through the world, blah, blah, blah. Now that the oil is threatened,

oh, that's, that's too far. That's a bridge too far, Saga. We can't have an attacking the,

you know, any of the oil impacted. That would be a real problem for the government.

Right. Well, but here's the reality and the reason why is that again, America has a interest

in a stable Iran afterwards. Why? Because we want the price of oil or the global empire. Israel

doesn't care. And yet, for him to be chimping out over this, it's like, dude, if this is what

you signed us up for. And let's go and put F2 on the screen because this shit is so crazy

to help make the case on Iran. Graham traveled several times to Israel in recent weeks,

meeting with members of the country's intelligence agency. Quote, they'll tell me things our own

government won't tell me. He said, he spoke with Prime Minister Netanyahu coaching him on how to

lobby the president for action. I mean, you directly have a Senate, a Senator, United States

Center from South Carolina, who is traveling multiple times to the country of Israel where he's

bragging about it. He's meeting with them. He's being coached by them, coaching them. I mean,

they talk about his long game going all the way back to 2015 about his sucking up to Donald Trump

after initially getting into it with on the campaign trail about how he historically would butter

Trump up about comparing the Ayatollah to Hitler and saying that the only thing you have to fear

is fear itself saying FDR. He's like, you're going to be one of the greats. Reminded Trump about

ripping up Obama's nuclear deal at every turn. Quote, White House aides even would call him the

annoying crazy uncle because he would always be showing up at Trump's golf clubs just sitting

in his ear, talking, whispering sweet nothings about how good it is whenever it comes to Iran. And

he's the proponent, not only as they point out of Iran, but Lebanon. He wants to widen the war.

He's fundamentally with Israeli interests. And look, I won't speculate to Senator Graham's

personal reasons for supporting this. But look, here's one at least, I think, fair hit

beyond any of the stuff about his own personal life. This guy doesn't have any children. He doesn't

have any investment in the future of the country. He's in his 70s. This is all just a game for him.

Like at an intellectual exercise, he wants to be Richard Russell or any of these other senators

and get their name on a building. He had a great Senator Fulbright and got a scholarship named

after him. Like that's what's driving him. Not any of our prosperity, any of our interests.

And that's why it's so sickening. This is another reason why the the old men in charge of this

country, what's a problem? Because they start thinking about their legacy and start doing insane

things apparently is a problem that we're having right now. Because I think that's part of the calculus

for Trump as well. He wants to leave his mark on the world. And I don't think he really, you know,

gives a shit whether it's a good marker or a bad mark. Or the Iatola. He was 86. You know,

he was a super cerebral. That's what everybody said around him. He doesn't make any decisions.

He's an old man. He just wants to die a martyr. Yeah, he cares much. Yeah, we got it too.

Congratulations. Right. You know, accomplishes goal with our help. And just look at this next,

the response from the Iranian foreign minister to this revelations about Lindsey Graham. But

again, I just want to sit on for a sec. Just think of how crazy this is. He is going to a foreign

country getting intelligence from them, coaching their leader about how to drag us into a war,

how to convince our president to take us into a war and apparently was successful. So he said here,

uh, in response to this very article in Iran, an official could never travel to another country

to collude with a foreign spy service on how to coach our own president into doing the bidding

of foreigners. We would ask what the foreign country may have on that official and promptly charge

him or her with high treason. And if we were functioning society, thinking in the same direction,

that is how utterly insane this is. And with Lindsey Graham, you know, you guys may remember

going back to, he was actually in that presidential primary as like an also ran in the 20th,

you know, 2016 presidential election fierce critic of Trump because he worried that Trump would

not be excited about getting into these wars based on Trump's rhetoric at the time as being,

you know, against the Iraq war, et cetera. Then he turns into Trump's thick of fan. Then,

you know, he's very critical of Trump after January 6, but very quickly, he realizes, okay,

the way to be able to manipulate this man. And again, this is not to absolve Trump at all. Trust me,

I hate the man. And I think he is leading the country and the world into utter disaster. And it is

100% all on him, but to understand the forces around him, he thought that the best way to manipulate

Trump would be to get back in his good graces as quickly as possible after January 6. And so,

that's what he did. And we saw, you know, his first to endorse him, he has been playing this game

for a while now, all to effectuate exactly this outcome. And so when you see him on Fox News,

and he's the happiest man on the planet watching bombs rain down and murdered little school girls

and oil fall from the sky and all of the region in flames. And he's just happy as he could

possibly be. Yeah, this is the fulfillment of a lifelong. And I do actually think it's just an

ideological government. Like he has been very consistent in his Neocon war-mongering convictions

over many, many years. And here he is. He finally found the guy who was willing to, you know, go

where no president had been willing to go before. I don't know if you saw Tony Blinken talking

about that. The Israelis actually tried to use the same approach with Obama, where they were like,

well, we're going to bomb Iran no matter what. So you better be with us. And Obama was like, no.

Yeah. And guess what? It didn't happen. You know where I learned about the idea that,

oh, we had no choice because Israel is going to know you had a choice. The choice would have been

to say no to Israel, but nobody see, you know, he seems completely incapable of doing it.

The moment I came to love Dr. Parsie is when we were all in school. And he did two or three weeks

on that exact decision, the decision point of 2009. He made us read all the profiles and everything.

And it's funny because all of the students were like hardcore Neocons. And so this was like a

shocking development to their minds about Israeli pressure. And I really came away from that class

being like, man, man, he really, remember, this is a long time ago for me. So it was a very different

phase of my understanding of the American empire. And I was like, yeah, maybe these Israelis aren't

the good guys here. I was reading this. I was like, this is a real problem, man. And then he spent

weeks actually making us study how these Israelis and the Iranians had actually fine enough relations

beforehand, like in the 1980s and of clean break and the new strategy and how they devised it

all around Iran. This just like blew my mind actually at the time. I was like 23, 24 or something.

But that's why it's so important to know that history is that many previous presidents, Obama

included, actually had Israelis basically give them some sort of ultimatum. And enough of them were

like, they're like, who do you think you are? I mean, Bill Clinton famously, who's the fucking

superpower here whenever talking to them? So yeah, it could be done. It's only Trump who is either

weak, compromised. I mean, who the hell knows? Maybe just dumb enough is that usually the simplest

explanation is the easiest one. But regardless of what it is, we're in it now. And now that we're in

it, there's no off-ramp. There's no off-ramp. People like Lindsey Graham and all of them are in

charge. And people should also notice this is that all of these Neocom people who hated Trump,

as you said, are sucking up to him more than ever. They're the ones who are now declaring like,

what true man? And you know what? At this point, I'm like, what is the useful to define Magar or

whatever? It's like, you can have it. If you want this to be it, take it. It's all go all in.

I hope you are, but the only danger, and I worry about this. I wonder if you do too,

is how can we make sure that this doesn't happen again? Because this was supposed to be the entire

project post-Iraq. And one of the lessons from that is that we allowed these people to be rehabilitated

in society, Paul Wolfowitz, and Douglas V. And I mean, all of these guys got jobs from Washington,

Rumsfeld, Bush, Chang, I mean, Bush is like a Lib icon now. Who always just to paint her,

Graham? It's like, no, he's not. No, that's, I mean, that's, that is the lesson. People need to

fucking go to jail. They need to go to jail. There needs to be professional consequences.

He ostracized society. It's unbelievable that we have some of the very same quote-unquote journalists

who, you know, cheerleaded the Iraq war, who are now still around to cheerlead the Iran war.

It's crazy making. I mean, not only was there not accountability, but in many instances,

people continue to fail upward. Because as long as you're wrong, in a way that is regime and

empire compliant, then you're good to go. That cannot continue to be the case if we want to avoid

this again in the future. And we need to be, you know, thinking about that right now, if we all

survive this, because the level of danger that has been created for a financial catastrophe,

for a violent catastrophe, you know, the potential blowback impacts. I mean, we already,

already what has been done is so consequential and so devastating and, you know, very hard to see

how we walked away from this. You just mentioned blowback. We didn't even cover this. You used

a long time ago, we would have, there's some crazy shit going down in New York. It's some

ISIS-inspired plotter. I mean, allegedly, yeah. And why people are saying it's ISIS-inspired.

Okay, you take it for what it is. Yeah, I want to see that.

There was an IED. There was something. Yeah. What? That's a story.

In New York City. Right. Austin. I mean, all of these other arrests. Look, you could say,

falsely, regardless of whether what it is. I mean, it's important that all of this stuff is starting

to heat up again. I mean, people, look, whether those are legitimate or whatever, people around the

world hate our guts, right? And are only going to hate us more. The more they watch our bombs fall

on innocent schoolgirls and our president lie about it and are throwing weight around the world.

You don't think that's going to have consequences here at home. You don't think that, I mean, Trump,

God asked about this. He got asked about that. And he was like, yeah, I guess that, yeah, that could

happen. I mean, just completely blasey about the potential consequences for a war that ate

minority, a minority of the population is wants to fight at all. So yeah, Lindsay, apparently,

is earning his place in history here. Uh, no doubt he was extremely influential in, and he played

his cards right. He knew how to manipulate Trump again. That is, this is all comes down to Trump,

the buck stops with him. But he was one of the forces that was pushing in this direction and he got

as well. Yeah, no, I mean, his name will ring out. That's for sure. Knowing Washington, though,

he'll get his name on a damn building. And then 50 years from now, the Graham Senate office building.

That's how the ship. Hi, you know, I have Kyle and I were talking about this. How are they going to

spin this thing? Like in the history books, how can you possibly spin this thing? They always do.

I mean, I hate, look, I hate to be a genuine doomer. But everyone said that about Vietnam,

guess what? All those people were fine. They were super rich. Uh, you know, yeah, but it's still

is, it's still is seen as a catastrophe. It's like synonymous with an American military catastrophe

as is the Iraq war, although they still try to, you know, to spin it. Right. You can say, you can

say Iraq was a disaster. But did anybody really pay a price? Every single one of those generals

filthy rich, none of them paid any price, not just the generals, all of the political leaders.

I knew some of these people. They're all still sitting here pretty in Washington. Dick Cheney,

his obituary said, what? He's basically a hero for democracy. George W. Bush is a painter.

Like I said, Vietnam, Connie, Connie's back in the White House. Connie's back in the White House.

George Bungee and Trump and Robert McNamara, though, these guys, they died fine. You know, nobody

paid any price without 50,000 people were killed. Not to mention was a million or so Vietnamese

Cambodians, all these folks, LBJ. He died of a heart attack. It was, like, at the end of the day,

like most of the time, it doesn't work out the way that we actually wanted to. It's honestly,

it's tragic. We have to fight for it to be different this time. Okay. All right. We'll see you guys tomorrow.

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