Breaking: America and Israel at War with Iran

All right, we are recording a bonus pot save the world episode because, as I'm sure, listeners

and viewers have seen, the United States and Israel are once again at war with Iran's

or an update you on everything we know as of Saturday afternoon.

So this started at Saturday at 1.15 a.m. Eastern time, which is 9 a.m. T. Rontime.

The U.S. and Israel launched airstrikes on Iran.

The U.S. military is calling this Operation Epic Fury.

It's so totally epic, Ben, that Trump launched the war from his country club in Florida.

Target so far include the Supreme Leader of Iran, his compound, the Israeli say the Supreme

Leader, Ayatollah, Kameneh dead, and that Netanyahu was shown footage of his body that's

in news reports.

Iran says that's false.

We'll find out, I guess, but as we've noted, the Supreme Leader is 86.

So he was about to regime change himself, but his death would be a massive seismic event

in Iranian history, given the role he plays in their system.

It sounds like he was specifically targeted by the Israelis and not by U.S. forces, and

that they also targeted the Supreme Leader's son, but he may have survived.

President Pzezhkin was reportedly targeted as well.

Again, the Iranian state he's alive, but we'll find out that the timing of the strikes

were reportedly based on intelligence about when senior regime officials would all be

meeting.

Israel said they had about three gatherings of Iranian officials simultaneously.

Israel said 200 jets bombed 500 targets.

They did it during the daylight because they thought that would be a surprise.

Israel said it killed the head of Iran's IRGC, the Minister of Defense, so much of other

top military officials, and it seems like the U.S. is confirming that they agreed that about

five to ten top Iranian leaders are now dead.

The U.S. said they hit 900 targets in the first 12 hours.

They were focused on military sites, including the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps command

and control facilities, air defense targets, missiles, drone sites, military airfields.

Iranian state TV says that one air strike hit a girl's elementary school and killed 85

people.

Obviously, we can't confirm that, but Sendkamp says they are looking into those reports.

So Iran so far is responded by firing missiles and drones at Israel.

It sounds like they shot fired off about 300 of them.

They fired at U.S. bases.

They fired at civilian targets as well in UAE Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, and Jordan.

Most of these Iranian missiles and drones seem to have been taken out by air defense systems,

but there are some pretty scary videos out there on social media of either Iranian ballistic

missiles or Iranian drones striking targets, including civilian targets, like a high-rise

building in Bahrain or a hotel in Dubai.

On Saturday, Iran's Revolutionary Guard announced that, quote, no ship is allowed to pass the

Strait of Hormuz.

So they're saying they're going to close the Strait of Hormuz.

You'll see if Iran can deliver on that promise, but if they are able to, the economic impact

would be massive through every day, about 20 million barrels of oil passed through the

Strait of Hormuz.

It's about one-fifth of the world's supply than there's other shipping.

Trump released a video statement about all of this this morning, and it Trump kind of

played all the hit-span when it comes to U.S.

Iran tensions.

He talked about the U.S. Embassy personnel being held hostage in 1979, talked about the

1983 Marine Barracks bombing.

He claimed that Iran was involved in the bombing of the USS Cole in 2000, which is just

not true.

Someone should tell a tie to that.

I think they take credit.

He also once again claimed that Iran will soon be able to reach the U.S. with its ballistic

missiles, which again is a lie.

Here's an excerpt of Trump.

I think this is the section of the speech that seemed to most specifically lay out the

goals of this conflict.

Let's watch.

There's always been the policy of the United States in particular, my administration, that

this terrorist regime can never have a nuclear weapon.

We sought repeatedly to make a deal.

We tried.

They wanted to do it.

They didn't want to do it.

Again, they wanted to do it.

They didn't want to do it.

They didn't know what was happening.

They just wanted to practice evil.

We're going to destroy their missiles and raise their missile industry to the ground.

It will be totally again obliterated.

We're going to annihilate their navy.

We're going to ensure that the region's terrorist proxies can no longer destabilize the

region or the world.

The lives of courageous American heroes may be lost, and we may have casualties that often

happens in war through the members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard, the armed forces,

and all of the police.

I say tonight that you must lay down your weapons and have complete immunity, or in

the alternative face certain death.

Finally, to the great proud people of Iran, I say tonight that the hour of your freedom

is at hand.

When we are finished, take over your government.

It will be yours to take.

This will be probably your only chance for generations.

For many years, you have asked for America's help, but you never got it.

No president was willing to do what I am willing to do tonight.

Now you have a president who is giving you what you want, so let's see how you respond.

This is the moment for action.

Do not let it pass.

OK, so Ben, let's pause there and just get your reaction, you know, so what you've seen

so far and in sort of events in the world, and also Trump speech, what do you make of it?

Yeah, it's always reassuring to have a president launch an illegal and unnecessary.

We're wearing a baseball cap in the middle of the night at Mar-a-Lago, but putting that

aside for the moment.

I think the headline here is that this is the regime change war.

And we've walked up to this precipice with Trump like several times, and each time he

took a more limited action, whether it was assassin and custom salmone or whether it was

the 12-day war when, you know, he bombed nuclear sites principally, but this is clearly

based on rhetoric and targets like an effort to change the Iranian regime.

Now the problem with that, though, is that even though that's clear, nothing is clear

about what the end game is, right?

Even if the Supreme Leader is killed, the Iranian regime is a very deep regime.

He mentioned the IRGC, the police and the military.

That's millions of people who run their arms in the Iranian regime.

And so whether this devolves into civil conflict in chaos or whether some IRGC-led regime

emerges, we have no greater clarity today than we did before this began about how the

U.S. sees this thing ending.

And we do see already some of the consequences that could come from this war.

We're only one day in, but we've already seen Iran unlike last time where they showed

some pretty calibrated restraint.

It seems like they're firing missiles in all directions.

They're trying to exact a cost on the Gulf countries for hosting U.S.

bases or just to kind of create a sense that, you know, if we burn, you burn too, they're

launching missiles at not just bases at Israel as well.

And so we're seeing the beginning of what could be a kind of regionalization of this conflict.

And so this is a very dangerous moment.

And I have no reassurance from Trump or anybody around him that there's a plan for how

to land this plane beyond, we're going to go in there and destroy as much of this regime

as we can before it becomes kind of almost politically unsustainable for us to be bombing

this country.

Then we'll stop and oh, you know, you Iranians rise up.

But if those Iranians are massacred again, if it turns into a civil war, there's no plan

B.

Yeah.

I mean, it's just, it's not clear to me that Trump realizes that he started something,

that he's not able to stop because he's a Trump is doing a round of interviews.

He's talked like NBC, Axio, a bunch of other outlets.

He told Axios he has several off ramps to end the conflict.

One of the quotes was, I can go long and take over the whole thing or end it in two or

three days and tell the Iranians.

See you in a few years, if you start rebuilding, in any case, it will take them several years

to recover from this attack.

It's like, I mean, first of all, no, you can't take over the entire country unless you

send in troops to occupy the country and if that's on the table, you should probably

tell us.

Second, like we don't know really if Trump is actually thinking about off ramps or if

Brock revealed in this five minute call was like, hey, what's your off ramp?

And he was like, I got a bunch of them.

Trump also told Axios that he asked his team to compile every Iranian linked attack

around the world in the last 25 years.

And clearly that was sort of reflected in the speech he made.

But if you have to do that, it seems like you're really struggling to justify why this has

to happen now.

And I think all of that just speaks to your point, which is like, we have no idea what's

going to happen next.

This could end quickly or this could go on for a long time.

And by the way, thank you for watching this episode of Pots of the World.

Please subscribe on wherever you get podcasts or on YouTube because we're going to be covering

this story really, really closely and we're not going to like mindlessly regurgitate fucking

yokon talking points the way a lot of other news outlets are this morning.

It's just like it's very hard to watch.

No one seems to remember the Iraq war or be learning the lessons.

So please subscribe to Pots of the World.

Ben, I also noticed that that Reuters had a story that the CIA assessed before the strikes

that even if Iran Supreme Leader were killed in the operation, he would likely just be

replaced by hardline figures in the IRGC.

So like again, like the end goal is not clear.

And I noticed this morning again, like Trump has been lying about Iran's nuclear program

and ballistic missile programs.

Gideon Tsar, Israel's foreign minister said that this military action was urgently needed

because, quote, delay would have allowed the Iranian regime to reach a level of immunity

for its nuclear program as well as to engage in the mass production of long-range ballistic

missiles.

But that's just its false that is absolutely alive.

Like no expert, no one I've seen has suggested that Iran was on the cusp of like revamping

its nuclear program.

Yeah.

And the war is illegal domestically and internationally.

The war is unnecessary as a matter of timing.

The threats that they're pointing to do nothing to explain the fact that in that litany

that Trump gave, he was talking about roadside bombs and a rock 10 years ago.

Is that a reason to go to war now?

I mean, obviously those are terrible things that happen.

But it's an absurd reason to launch a war now.

The only new pretext they developed is this ICBM threat, which is totally false.

Iran has long had an ICBM program.

It cannot hit the United States with an ICBM, is nowhere near being able to do that and

doesn't have a nuclear weapon.

And so it matters that this is being done under false pretenses with very little public

support and no legal basis because it's not a very strong footing to take the country

into a war of regime change in a country over over 90 million people.

Now we know Israel wants this.

I mean, BB Netnao has been pushing for this for a very long time.

And he finally got this kind of window with Trump because he sees that Trump is a guy

that is willing to ignore Congress and public opinion.

Trump's a guy who frankly has done what BB Netnao has wanted to do before whether I was

moving the U.S. Embassy to drew some of the 12-day war.

And one thing that I was thinking about, Tommy, is it, it doesn't matter how many days

he bombs Iran.

We are in a forever war with Iran.

One way to think about this is the 12-day war was not a 12-day war.

This is still part of the war.

Once you start bombing a country, this is the same war as the 12-day war that's happening.

Just because you periodically stop bombing doesn't mean you're not in a forever war.

And so Trump can spin it however he wants to.

Maga supporters from Tucker Carlson, his own vice president, who have the political

identities based on opposing this.

But the reality is that we are in this and the world is going to see, you know, whatever

happens in Iran next, they're going to see as the responsibility of the United States

and Donald Trump personally.

And as we talked about whether it's civil conflict, refugee flows in other countries, major

energy disruptions in the Straits of Formues, you know, periods of calm, followed by periods

of dramatic violence.

I mean, this could go all kinds of ways.

But the one thing we know is that Iran is now added to that list of forever wars and

it's the biggest country yet that we try to do this in.

And we're doing it with no boots on the ground.

And we're doing it in conjunction with Israel, which we've also never done.

We've never done a regime change war, like literally with the Israelis.

So that is going to create impressions in the world, too.

And I just think, you know, there's no real discussion of this by Trump.

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And so, to that point, there will absolutely be Iranians, I think, who are happy about

the Supreme Leader being dead or the regime toppling, and I'm sure the U.S. and Israel

will amplify those voices, especially people in cities, people in Tehran, who understandably

hate the regime.

But we have no idea what the majority of the Iranian people think, especially people

in rural areas.

We don't know how they'll react.

We don't know what's going to come next if the Supreme Leader is, in fact, dead and

there's a massive power vacuum and potential for civil war and other problems.

So, I mean, it just feels like, yeah, this is all ahead of us.

Abbas Rachi, Iran's foreign minister, was on NBC News this morning.

Here's a little piece of what he had to say then.

You cannot do regime change while millions of people are supporting these so-called regime.

Look, in the past 47 years, the United States has tried everything from coup, from sanctions,

eight years of war by Saddam Hussein, supported by the United States and many others.

And then, you know, 12-day war, a snapback, you know, in the Security Council and, you

know, terrorist operations, they have tried everything and all of them failed.

And I don't know why they don't, you know, understand their failures.

So if they want to repeat a failed experience, they won't get any better results if Americans

want to talk to us.

They know how they can contact me.

We are certainly interested for de-escalation.

This is not our war.

This is an imposed war against us.

This is a war of choice by the United States and they have to pay for that.

And I will.

So pretty defiant there still.

We'll see if that tone holds over the next few days.

Ben, I've been struck by Iran's decision or the how they've responded.

I mean, like, they've been targeting densely populated urban areas filled with civilians.

They've been hitting targets in places like Bahrain and Dubai, which, you know, in the

near-terms, seems like the best possible way to get the entire Gulf to rally against you.

That said, maybe the calculus is just like, let's up the cost of this war in every way.

Let's inflame these populations and see if we can turn them against their governments

for supporting the U.S. and not in Israel and not Iran.

I've also seen reports that Iran is fired at, Saudi oil infrastructure.

I'm not sure if those are true.

It doesn't sound good.

They've hit anything yet.

I think, you know, the big question I have is like, how long will these, the Iranians

be able to retaliate in what will it look like?

Fox News says Iran fired about 300 missiles today.

They have 2,000 long-range missiles and 2,000 shorter-range missiles total.

I'm confident that the U.S. and Israel have taken out a bunch of those and they will methodically

take out as many of the missiles and drones as they can.

But that could take a while and you're not guaranteed to get all of them.

We also don't really know what the Iranian Navy will be able to do.

And maybe just the mere threat of going after shipping in the street of Hormuz will be enough

to choke off oil flows.

We should watch the Houthis.

We should watch Hezbollah, all these proxy groups, including, you know, some that might

be abroad or in American cities is something to worry about.

And then again, as we talked about last week, like Iran has some pretty advanced cybercapabilities.

We don't know if and how they might use those.

So a lot of this is just like, I think, wait and see for a while here.

Yeah.

I mean, the first point is that, you know, Aarachi, it's not clear, you know, who he even

reports to at this point.

Yeah.

You can see he's taken orders from.

And then the negotiation, the Iranians have been bombed now twice in the middle of a nuclear

negotiation where they were making concessions.

So the idea that that's a pathway to de-escalation seems less likely to me.

You've laid out well what their options are for response, right?

They're not going to do all of them.

So we're not suggesting that all these things will happen, but they are all the available

paths.

You know, ballistic missiles, drones, asymmetric attacks, including terrorist attacks, proxy

attacks across the region, cyber attacks, all these things are kind of in the Iranian

kit.

And the question is essentially, do they try to kind of empty the, you know, magazine

here in the early days, or do they kind of periodically do these kind of ways of strikes

and try to make this war hurt for people in Israel and the United States, kind of in the

region, kind of over time?

I agree with you.

It's interesting.

There are strikes on the Gulf countries and they hit just about everyone except Oman.

And that was interesting.

Oman was the one that was not hit.

Some of them were just, you know, strikes at US military facilities and that makes sense

and no surprise.

These other strikes that include like drone attacks, you know, like as you referenced places

like Dubai and Bahrain, it does seem like that the message they're trying to send is,

you know, so long as we are under attack, you are not secure.

And yes, they're taking the risk that certainly the Gulf governments now will probably feel

potentially more inclined to allow the US to use bases to attack Iran thus far a lot

of the Gulf countries have opted out of that, or maybe even participate themselves.

But you also make the point that the US doing this in conjunction with Israel, you know,

the publics in these countries will surely be mad at Iran for what they're doing.

But also I think we'll blame Israel, who there's no love for in the region as well as

the United States for launching this war, essentially the sense that the US and Israel are involved

in kind of a strategy of creating chaos in the region, you know, whether it's the strikes

in Lebanon or Syria or Yemen or now Iran, there's this kind of moving wrecking ball of chaos

that is harming people.

And we should be, you know, that school, I guarantee you the number one image of the war

being consumed around the world, well, if not number one, it's certainly up there is

the image of those parents screaming because they're children in that school.

It's a horrifying video.

And so look, now, so in a weird way, Iran is kind of reinforcing the chaos strategy,

you know, it's like, let's see, look what's happening.

We have no choice but to kind of pour gasoline on this fire that was set.

And again, it's going to make them a lot of enemies, but I think that their view is like

we have to set as many fires as we can to make this war feel as uncomfortable for people

as we can.

But to me, the ultimate future of the war will be determined inside of Iran, inside the

politics of Iran.

And that we don't know how that's going to play out at all.

Yeah, it does seem like they've decided they have to up the cost.

I mean, anyone who was saying that in advance was right.

So Ben, I know like nobody in the United States cares about hypocrisy or any more, or, or,

you know, lies, but we should just point out that Trump explicitly ran against regime

change wars and wars in the Middle East in particular in 2011.

He had this to say about a war with Iran and Obama.

Let's watch.

The president will start a war with Iran because he has absolutely no ability to negotiate.

He's weak and he's ineffective.

So the only way he figures that he's going to get reelected and assured you're sitting

there is to start a war with Iran.

In August of 2013, Trump tweeted, quote, the president must get congressional approval

before attacking Syria, big mistake.

If he does not, JD Vance wrote it not bad with the headline in the Wall Street Journal.

This was from January 2023, Trump's best foreign policy, not starting any wars.

He asked my support in 2024 because I know he won't recklessly send Americans to fight

overseas.

Tulsi Gabbard used to sell Ben, no war with Iran t-shirts, and now just to, you know, make

sure she was fully humiliated.

There's images of her sitting in the situation room, watching the war unfold at the, like,

the kids table hosted by JD Vance, while Trump's down at Mar-a-Lago, David Saks, who is

not really relevant to this debate, but to someone we personally find both some tweeted

in March of last year.

What did removing Saddam, Gaddafi Assad get us chaos civil war genocide, the rule for

regime change operations in the Middle East is they don't flip a country from bad to good,

they flip a country from bad to worse.

Pretty good point there from David Saks.

Like, again, the war started.

It is what it is.

I do think it is worth pointing out how much Trump lied and how we ran against this because

maybe parts of MAGA will go along with anything he doesn't says.

I understand that, but a significant percentage will not.

They think this is a bad idea because they don't want to see American service members killed.

They don't want to spend the money.

They feel like we are getting led around on our foreign policy by Net Yahoo and the Israeli

government.

And those are things that will be harmful to Trump politically.

Yeah, I mean, this is going to be a real cleavage inside of his coalition, right?

I mean, this is, again, it's not a secondary issue for a lot of people, you know, Tucker Carlson,

Steve Bannon.

I mean, really the leading lights, such as they are, of MAGA, and look, what's amazing

about this is that one of Trump's most effective arguments was this one against ending

forever wars.

It was central to his rise, right?

When he dismantled Jeb Bush on the debate stage in 2015 over Iraq, no other Republican

would, that's when he moved to the front of the pack.

Like he would not be president without his kind of repeated opposition to this idea for

ever wars.

In the first term, too, he was much more careful about, you know, the United States getting

in conflicts.

He has now bombed seven or eight countries.

I've lost track in just the first 13 months of his second term.

And he's proving to be not the kind of disruptive, corrective to American imperialism and wars

of aggression and for ever wars.

If anything, he's proving to be the uber manifestation of it.

I mean, even these targets that he's going after are kind of the, the old in the closet,

you know, targets of hard line Republicans like Lindsey Graham, then his wala, Iran, Cuba.

You know, this is, this is all the ancient history in the Republican hawk cupboard is coming

out and people know that, you know, and nobody asked for this.

And tell me, I'd say just to take another point that doesn't discuss much, the price tag

for this thing, I was talking to, I was talking to somebody today who was suggesting to me

that if it's just even like a few weeks, tens of billions, right, this, this massive amount

of military force moving and deploying into the Middle East and then all these munitions

being used, maybe the damage it's being done, we saw some damage to our facility in

Bahrain.

I mean, do Americans want us to be spending tens of billions of dollars to a grandized

Donald Trump to go along with BB Netanyahu's obsession with, you know, killing the Supreme

Leader and moving the Iranian regime?

No, they don't.

And look, and normally I kind of roll my eyes.

And when you hear from like military people that were our stockpiles are running lower

this so that because like, you know, look, we have a lot of weapons, but experts will

tell you that we really are running seriously low on interceptor missiles for missile defense

systems.

We're running low on the, on the Tomahawk missiles, the T-lams.

If there is a war with China, God forbid, or if we need to respond to them taking Taiwan,

like we will be dangerously low munitions.

The Chinese are happy about this.

And yes, Trump told us he would end the war in Ukraine in 24 hours and instead he is launched

two regime change wars in the first two months of 2026.

Like I, we have to be able to prosecute that case, Ben.

And I think it brings us to the Democratic Party's response so far.

So like candidly, most responses I've seen have been pretty weak.

There's some exceptions that we should talk about.

They have been focused on the process and Trump's obligation to come to Congress for a

vote before going to war, which of course is true.

But it's like not my main issue with going to war with Ron.

Some Democrats have focused on Trump, you know, not explaining his strategy or making

the case.

Again, I agree with them, but not the issue.

So like what I just want to see from Democrats is go at the heart of why this is a bad idea.

I want them to say there is no urgent threat from Iran's nuclear or ballistic missile

program to the United States.

Talk about how regime change wars have ended disastrously, both for the US, for the countries

we launched them in, for the rest of the world.

Look at the migration crisis in Europe.

Like Trump has started something he cannot control.

It doesn't matter what he tells you and he now owns the consequences.

And then there's just the fact that like Americans don't want this.

There was a youth poll very recently, like earlier this month that asked, do you support

or oppose the US using military force to attack Iran?

27% of adults supported it.

24% were not sure, 49% were somewhat or strongly opposed.

That include 54% of independent to opposed, and 19% of Republicans who opposed the war.

So keep making that case, right?

Like Trump ran against this, Democrats have to make that argument, like there's a war

powers vote next week, which again, good on Rokana and Thomas Massey for pushing this.

But it's a little late, guys.

You know, this is what you and I were complaining about last week when you yelled at

by people on Twitter.

But, you know, it's like, now is not the time for, you know, long statements that are

four paragraphs of throat clearing about how bad Iran is before we get to the heart

of the matter, which is this being a catastrophically bad idea.

So I don't know, what's your advice for Democrats who might be figuring out what to say?

Well, first of all, you're right, because we saw this bill up for weeks, good on Rokana

for tabling this resolution.

But the people were telling us, oh, we're working it through the process.

Well, like you just proved the point that if you really cared about this thing, you know,

you would have fought like hell to get a vote on this before Trump actually bombed the

country.

Kind of speaks to how Congress has been absent on this thing that they're going to have

vote after.

I want to pick out some of the people who've been good, and I'm not going to be able

to, you know, name-check everybody.

But like Tim Cain and Chris Van Hollen in the Senate, and Chris from consistent both

of them about war power.

Cain in particular.

Yeah.

Criticized Democrats.

Criticized Republicans.

And not just war powers, though.

You know, as diverse people as Tim Cain, Chris Van Hollen and AOC, like had different components

where they're like, it's illegal, it's unnecessary.

They lied about the reasons to do it, and it ignores the lessons of history of regime

change wars in the Middle East.

So that's an objection on policy, process, history, all of it, right?

That's the kind of case you can make.

Mason Crow, I think, made a very powerful case as a veteran, where he's like, not only

is this not what the American people want, you know, this doesn't lower prices.

But time and again, working-class people have been screwed because they have to foot the

bill for these wars by fighting in them or paying the taxes for them, you know?

So there's a kind of populist message that things, it's important, it's not just like politics,

it's true, you know, it is fundamentally true.

And so I think no defensiveness, the process is one piece of a much bigger picture here

as to why this is wrong.

And I think Democrats have to be willing to make that argument, you know?

It's interesting to me, Tommy, that you mentioned that the polls fluctuated 70 to 80% of Americans

are opposed to this.

You also saw a public opinion poll for the first time the other day that more Americans

sympathize with Palestinians and Israelis, and that is an overwhelming majority among Democrats.

And let's just name the fact that oftentimes the people who seem the most reluctant to oppose

this war are those Democrats who are most supportive of Israel and Congress.

And so we should just not be afraid to talk about the fact that this is part of the dynamic

here, because there's a very clear correlation between people who take APEC money and who

have been supportive of a BB Nenya in the past, who are going to either vote no on that

resolution or been on a pretty teapot about this.

And look, Donald Trump, you know, people including us gave him credit for, you know, getting

tough with Nenya sometimes, but that's out the window now.

He just went to war and part because BB Nenya wanted him to.

So like don't ever tell me again about how Donald Trump uses this leverage.

Like the Democratic Party can be the anti-war party, can be the party wants to change a dysfunctional

relationship with Israel, change a dysfunctional approach to the Middle East, that learn the

lessons of history, and that is saying it's time to stop spending money on this stuff

and start investing in the things that Americans actually want us to be doing.

And I also saw these Israelis are using the occasion of this war to once again cut off

aid into Gaza.

So there's just like, there's so many bad things happening right now.

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Ben, let's talk about the international reaction before we kind of have any concluding

thoughts.

There's a big roundup of people, kind of countries and leaders responding.

The UN Secretary General condemned the attack.

The Canadians were like full-throated in their support.

Mark Carney was full-throated in his support.

So were the Australians.

Anthony Albanese was like fully in support of what Trump was doing.

Prime Minister Kierstarmer over in the UK notably said that the UK is refused to participate

in the attack, which I think has made a lot of headlines in the UK.

But like I don't know, his tone, but he condemned the Iranians primarily for responding.

And then there was a joint statement with the UK, Germany, and France that was mostly

about the Iranian response.

The Turks called on both sides to de-escalate.

China called on Iran's sovereignty to be respected.

Russia denounced the attack in all the ways you'd expect.

It's kind of a jumbled mess like no one seems sort of willing or able to really stand

up to Trump in this moment.

But did anything jump out of you?

In particular, what the fuck do you make of the Canadians and the Australians being like

so for this?

So those are the ones that jumped out to me.

And look, you're right.

I think privately you get these leaders in a room and they did not want this to happen,

because they're aware of all the consequences.

I mean, the Europeans who, you know, I don't even know, you can read their statements over

and over again and have no idea what the fuck their position is.

Right.

Daniel Macron, like it's kind of word salads, you know, about how bad the Iranians are,

but we need to have consultations and we're concerned.

But, you know, they're the ones, by the way, who could end up getting refugees, like

up from this, if it goes really south.

But to me, what stood out, you know, Mark Carney, who we, you know, praised a lot and has

gotten a lot of praise, he stood up at Davos and said that the international order was

broken because it only worked for the powerful countries, and therefore the middle

powers had to have their own views on things.

And I think what's really disappointing about his statement is, I guess he was only talking

about trade.

I guess we don't care if we, you know, the United States just goes around bombing countries

with impunity, and Israel goes around much more than the United States, even bombing countries

of impunity, you know, so I look, why not stand up to Trump on this one?

Like what is the purpose of, and he doesn't even have to be a full-throwed in opposition,

but that statement, you know, tilted towards support as it Albanese.

So I, I don't know, I was a little disappointed in that because it's like everything else.

Like if Trump feels like he can do these things, and, you know, the democratic world is going

to kind of fall into line or at least kind of be pretty passive about it, it just lowers

the bar and him doing it.

And that, that's the thing is he could be doing this again and again, right?

In Iran, he could kind of keep bombing again and again, we could do this in Cuba, you

know, Greenland could come back in the picture, Panama, like all these other places.

And so yet to be thinking ahead to creating some guardrails around what Trump is doing.

Yeah, and look at you and I recorded an episode yesterday about how Afghanistan and Pakistan

went to our at war, you know, the Pakistan, he said, we are an open war, a full-throwed

war with Afghanistan.

There are millions of people who, you know, are getting pushed across either border, Iran

shares a big border with Afghanistan and Pakistan.

If Iran descends into civil war or chaos, as you said earlier, like a lot of people will

be harmed.

A lot of people will become refugees, will get pushed out of the country.

There could be massive refugee flows, just, you know, like this is like, we're like

minute one of the of the game here and it seems like Trump is already trying to spike the

ball with all these phone calls and, you know, bragging to press and etc.

But I don't know, so look, I guess we'll wait and see if the Supreme Leader is really

dead.

We'll wait and see who will take his place, if that is the case.

Any other things you're watching in the next kind of 12, 24 hours?

Well, so if the Supreme Leader is dead, I would definitely, how is that announced?

Who announces it?

Is there a succession plan?

I mean, I think we'll get a pretty quick understanding of the kind of political strategy

and dynamic inside the Iranian leadership.

So I think that's an important thing to watch.

Do Iranians heed Trump's call to kind of rise up and, you know, start to create like

a civil conflict, essentially, you know, so that there are clashes in the streets, just

like there are clashes in the, you know?

Yeah, I love when the American leaders in Netanyahu call on mostly unarmed Iranians to rise

up and fight their military and that will then well for them, I'm sure, but sorry,

continue.

No, that, yeah, when Netanyahu in particular is like, let me speak directly to Iranian people,

you know, the, the separate, you know, in the, the Kurdish areas and the blue areas of

Iran, I get, you know, a lot of people may not follow this, but there are kind of longstanding

separatist movements in those regions.

Do they start to try to rise up, which could threaten the territorial integrity of Iran?

So there's a lot to watch.

I think that, I want to just echo something you said, Tommy, like we tend to consume these

things in new cycles.

And even Trump loves that, 12-day war, right?

Like, this is going to play out for years, you know?

And it's going to look terrible at some times and it might look fine at other times.

But like, we, we are in, we're, you could argue that we are in this war now because we had

a coup that we sponsored in 1953 in Iran.

That looked great on the first day, too, and like, look where we are now.

And so we just have to recognize this is going to unfold like over a long period of time.

Yeah.

And this thing might end up feeling cost-free to Americans again because no U.S. service

members are hurt or killed.

Like, pray to God that no U.S. service members are hurt or killed or Americans abroad.

But there is already an enormous cost to the Iranian people.

Like, hundreds are probably dead or wounded already.

I mean, this story about, you know, the strike on a girl's school is horrific.

Iran is a country that was dealing with an economic crisis.

Tehran is a place where they're about to run out of water because of climate change and

other mismanagement and other reasons.

So like, it's a population that has suffered enormously.

There was this massive crackdown on protesters, you know, a couple months back, which Trump

is sort of cynically making part of his messaging about why he had to bomb them again.

Like, again, I'm sure there are some Iranians who are in the streets who hate the regime,

who will be happy that the Supreme Leader has taken out and like, just sort of hope for

something better.

I just, my fear with all of this having been through Iraq and Afghanistan and the Arab

Spring and just a lot of kind of turmoil is that the guys with the guns tend to end up

on top.

And in this case, the guys with the guns aren't much better than, you know, the Ayatollah

and the Supreme Leader and the religious figures who have been in charge of Iran since,

you know, 1979 or, you know, in the 89, I think, in terms of, um, uh, coming as tenure.

Yeah.

I mean, I, I think you probably know Tommy too, people in the Iranian diaspora who are

very supportive of this military intervention.

I understand, like, the anger and trauma that people feel in the diaspora.

I just sincerely believe that the United States and Israel bombing Iran to bring about

regime change, you know, creates more risks, frankly, than it does opportunities.

And principally, the reason I believe that is to your point, when I think of the places

where there have been, you know, regime change, let's expand it beyond even, uh, US wars

to Arab Spring, right?

Um, Afghanistan, Iraq, Egypt, Libya, Yemen, uh, I'm leaving some out.

But in every case, Sudan, um, where the people that rise up, in every case, you either

had like a civil war that was hugely destabilizing and disruptive and, and, and a loss of life.

Before you add the guys with guns, come back and be even more repressive, right?

Like the Egyptian government that emerged was more oppressive, even than Mubarak, right?

And so that's, that's why we sincerely, uh, like, just don't think this is the right

weight.

It's not out of any sub, you know, no love for this regime has been horrible for the Iranian

people.

Um, but I think we just have to learn from history.

And I just want to come back to why you mentioned it, Tommy, so I don't know if you have

one final thought on this, the media coverage, some of it's very good, but some of it is

just, what are we doing here, people like, I know, like you had people credibly referring

to these really statement that this was like a preemptive strike, like preemptive.

I know.

I know.

What, what are we preempting?

That's a rock war language.

It's almost like they were trolling the US media and just being a stenographer for this

fucking bullshit.

Especially when we told, we're told you like the nuclear infrastructure was quote unquote

totally and completely obliterated in June of last year.

The president of the United States said that it's like, come on, guys, just like be a little

more credulous of anything this guy says or the net, yeah, who says, yeah, all right.

Well, look, thank you guys for watching.

We're listening to this.

Please subscribe to Potsy of the World wherever you get your podcasts or here on YouTube.

Uh, I don't know if we'll be back tomorrow, but we'll be watching this very closely.

We'll be covering this all week long.

Um, so we appreciate you guys watching, uh, and sharing this and, you know, let us know

what else you want to hear and we appreciate it.

Potsy of the World is a crooked media production.

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