Ep 389 | Trump’s Iran Strategy: Geopolitics, Energy Shocks, and a New Middle East Order

For my entire adult life, the nation of Iran has been at war with the United States.

Whether we acknowledged it or not, I graduated high school in 1979 and just a few

months later, students stormed the American Embassy in Tehran taking 53 people hostage.

Iran has repeatedly been named the world's foremost state sponsor of terrorism.

They or their proxies have bombed American barracks and carried out all sorts of mischief.

For decades, they've sought to obtain nuclear weapons.

Their ultimate aims have been to destroy both what they call the little Satan, which

is Israel and the great Satan the United States of America.

Some presidents appease them as did Obama, some negotiate.

They feared President Reagan so much that they released the hostages just as he was sworn

into office.

Now, President Trump has launched a major number of strikes against the nuclear facility

and also calculated strikes killing their supreme leader.

Is this the right strategy or is it too risky for our security?

At a minimum, we've already paid an economic price with higher gas prices and a falling

stock market.

To better understand the geopolitics, I've invited our good friend, Rod Martin, CEO of

Martin Capital, back to the economic war room.

You can follow him at RodMartin.org.

Fox Business calls him a tech guru.

Gokker once labeled him a brilliant, non-conformist while Britain's guardians described him as

a philosopher capitalist.

The epic times caught him as a leading China expert and Blaze TV has named him one of America's

leading public intellectuals.

I call him a friend.

Rod was part of PayPal's pre-IPO startup team, serving as special counsel to founder

and CEO Peter Teal and also served as policy director to former governor Mike Kuckabee.

Welcome, Rod, to the economic war room.

Excellent to be here.

You know, it's so good to have you back, but right now it's kind of an interesting time,

I guess, a Chinese curse.

Why did President Trump choose to go after Iran right now?

Well, it's no accident that only Islamic calendar, the beginning of the strikes was on 9-11.

I don't think a lot of Western media caught that.

But you know, the bigger issue is they have very rapidly reconstituted their missile

program.

And we're talking about ICBMs in addition to everything else.

They're quite adept at this.

Canadians are very smart people and very technically proficient, highly educated.

And they're a real threat to the world under the wrong regime.

As you just pointed out, we've been at war with Iran for 47 years.

We just don't always acknowledge it because we're the biggest boy on the block and we

have the luxury of pretending things aren't actually happening.

If we were Iraq or Pakistan and Iran had been at war with us for 47 years, we would

certainly notice.

But we're half a world away and they hit us with what seemed like pinpricks to the

average person in Florida or Texas or Michigan because they kill some of our guys in Iraq

with IEDs, half, by the way, of our fatalities in Iraq directly attributable to Iran, not

to people in Iraq, but Iranian proxies there with Iranian weapons.

We'll have the embassy bombing in 83.

We have the hostage crisis that you described.

I was 10 when that started and we were just gripped every single day on the television

with what's happening in Tehran.

This has been going on for a very long time.

These guys, the people who run this regime are a sect of a sect.

They are called 12ers.

They are part of a relatively small group of Shiite Muslims who believe not only that

the Messiah will come back, I mean, Methodists and Baptists and everybody believe that their

Messiah will come back.

The difference is that Baptists and Methodists don't think they need to cause that to happen.

And the Iranian regime believes not only do they have to cause it to happen, but that

the mechanism of action is basically a reign of nuclear fire, burned down the world and

the Modi will return.

So these are not people who can be deterred with normal, you know, mutual assured destruction

strategies or, you know, any of the things that have been successful with the Russians or

the Chinese or other powers through the years.

These are people who, if they have it, they're going to use it.

And if that's a suicide run, they're actually happy about it.

And those people, this small group of people dominate, I would say, occupy a country of

90 million perfectly lovely people, the majority of whom aren't even Muslims who have

historically been one of America's top allies and a friend of Israel going back 2,500

years.

Well, let's talk about that or the people sick in Iran of the Sharia enforcement that's

been thrust upon him.

I've got some photos of young people in Iran before the Ayatollah came to power.

And they looked as Western as anybody else.

And then afterwards, you see them completely covered shopping for wedding dresses or walking

down the street.

Are the people upset with the Iranian government?

If that were all it were, we would actually not be in this situation.

But the truth is, this is an incredibly brittle regime.

It operates economically as a socialist dictatorship.

But it absolutely has this incredibly unique and uniquely evil theological aspect to it.

So much so that they actually execute 16-year-old girls for the crime of getting raped.

This is a wicked, wicked regime that the people of Iran are suffering under.

And yes, the video coming out of Iran, such as we can get, because they've shut down

the internet as much as they can, but we get a lot out and the videos of Iranians cheering

our airstrikes on regime installations are just breathtaking.

They'll bring it its here.

It's the reaction of these regular Iranians to our action against their oppressors.

And the truth is, Iranian government data tells us that more than half of Iranians are

no longer religious at all that there's an enormous upsurge in Zoroastrianism, the ancient

religion of Persia, and also Christianity, and most important of 75,000 mosques in Iran.

Over the last several years, 50,000 have closed.

So yes, this is a people ready to be free.

Well, and there were all these killings.

I mean, I'm looking at the statistics, over 36,500 killings.

That was January 25th.

How many more have died at the hands of this brutal dictatorship?

Okay, right.

We're going to have to take a break.

And when we come back, I want to ask you, is it possible for there to be regime change

in Iran without American boots on the ground?

I mean, that's what Americans don't like.

They don't like the nation building.

They don't mind so much if we can turn an evil regime into a good one.

We'll cover this and more when we come back with Rod Martin.

We're talking about Rod Martin.

We're talking about American action, plus Israel, in Iran.

Rod, what exactly have we been doing, and what's the upside for us if we're successful?

Well, the upside is extraordinary, and the way the president has chosen to get there

is a function not only of his general strategy, but also of the advance of American technology

beyond anything the world has ever seen, and anything we could have imagined 10 or 20 years

ago, it's really quite remarkable what we're capable of now, and Venezuela got a lesson

in that.

When we went in and we seized their dictator out of one of the most heavily fortified

compounds in the hemisphere and did so without a single American death.

Many of Venezuela's dead, but actually a lot of those were Cuban and demonstrated to

the world.

You really are vulnerable.

We can reach out and touch you.

What's happening in Iran is a little bit different because there really isn't a delsi

Rod Riggis in the Iranian regime.

Delsi is the acting president in Venezuela.

She was number two behind Maduro, and she's one of the co-conspirators.

The Maduro's have been indicted in New York on conspiracy charges.

Delsi is one of the conspirators.

Most of the Venezuelan government are co-conspirators.

They all know we can go in and pick them off one by one if they don't play ball and we'll

get to a free and fair election there.

That's not Iran.

That's not how Iran is structured, and Iran doesn't allow opposition parties.

Iran doesn't have elections that it pretends to whip like Venezuela's regime has done.

You actually have to destroy the centers of power of the regime to make it possible for

the disarmed populace to be able to rise successfully and overthrow their government all on 1979.

That's happening now.

We're not only seeing the widespread destruction of IRGC forces and bases of leadership compounds

of key leaders throughout the regime.

Madelon B had a great headline the other day, Iran, the warrants, United States.

We have an early unlimited supply of supreme leaders, you know, we're doing those things.

But now it's getting very granular.

In the last 24 to 48 hours, we have started carrying out targeted drone strikes on secret

police and militia forces at traffic stops and actually operating on the ground in the

city terrorizing the population.

We're taking those guys out one by one.

That is absolutely unprecedented in the history of warfare and it shows you what we're capable

of.

We get to a point where there's actually regime change without boots on the ground.

I would suggest there are probably spec ops all over Iran for various purposes right now.

And I wouldn't be surprised if we occupy a car, but aside from things like that, no, we're

not going to invade.

There are going to be 250,000 American troops in Iran for 20 years.

And if we can just degrade the regime sufficiently, the people will rise.

I believe they will rise in response to the call from Reza Pallavi, the Crown Prince.

He has shown an ability to get them to do so in recent weeks.

And I think we can have a free and prosperous array.

What does that do in the Middle East?

I mean, it seems like I've got a funny ex post that says the Muslim world is divided

about Iran.

Some countries in favor of removing the regime, Jordan Kuwait, UAE Saudi Arabia, Oman

Qatar, Bahrain, but the Muslim countries against the removal of the regime, and it's a joke,

but Great Britain, France, and Spain.

It seems like the Middle East is in favor of this way.

Is that the case?

Absolutely.

Iran is the source of every ongoing armed conflict in region.

There's not an exception.

If you want to redefine the region to include something like Darfur, okay, but if you're

talking about Gaza, if you're talking about Lebanon, if you're talking about Yemen and

the Red Sea, if you're talking about anything, anywhere that threatens these countries,

it is armed, directed, and funded from Tehran.

You take out this regime and all of that goes away.

I'm not going to say that there will be no Hezbollah guerrillas.

I'm not saying Hamas will just disappear.

I'm saying that they can't get very far without money and guns.

And there's no one to replace the Iranian regime for that.

So yes, peace breaks out.

The board of peace gets to do its work.

There's actually the potential for a widespread adoption of the Abraham Accords.

And if the Saudis don't want to play ball with that, and I think they do, I think the

older generation is holding the MBS and some of the younger guys back a little bit because

of their long time devotion to the Palestinian cause that the younger generation simply

does not share.

But in the final analysis, if Saudi Arabia doesn't want to play ball with Israel, Iran's

going to, I said earlier, Iran has long been a friend of the Jews, thousands of years,

they have been in modern times as well under the Shah.

And the people in Iran are cheering BB, and they're constantly speak of Trump as uncle,

and they're chanting uncle, uncle, and BB, BB, and it's just an extraordinary thing.

They're also chanting the name of Reza Polavi, and this must not be missed.

He does seem to be emerging as the single unifying figure.

And I think what you get is something very much like Juan Carlos I in Spain, who was set

up as the king again after dictator Francisco Franco died over a couple of year period.

He led Spain in a transitional regime that led to a constitutional monarchy, not that

different from England's.

And I think that's exactly what you'll see in Iran.

It's certainly what Reza Polavi has been promising for the last 40 years.

Now, there's also an upside globally beyond just the Middle East.

I know that Iran has been a primary supplier of oil to China, as has Venezuela.

It looks like Trump is taking a really dramatic move against two other adversaries of the

United States, China being one and potentially Russia.

What are your thoughts?

In Trump night, all roads lead to China.

And after the break, I can break some of this down on how all the pieces fit together.

But at the end of the day, Trump understands that China is the primary geopolitical threat

to the United States.

It has to be contained.

And if it does, it will collapse under its own way.

All right.

So there are a lot of potential upsides here.

After the break, I not only want to dive into China, but I also want to dive into some

of the risks.

Oil prices, stock market, Straits of Hormones, attacks in the United States from drones,

sleeper cells here in America.

I want to get your perspective on not just the opportunities, but the risks that we're

facing from our actions in Iran.

We'll be right back.

Rod, before we went to break, you were alluding to the idea that Donald Trump has some kind

of master plan and that the actions in Iran weren't just a response solely to the nuclear

threat, which was real and the ICBMs and others that they were developing.

But there seems to be a bunch of puzzle pieces falling into place that shows us Trump's

vision for the region and the world.

In the decades since Ronald Reagan, who was brilliant and who Trump clearly learned deeply

from, the American response to foreign crises has been very piecemeal.

Everything is in its own silo.

And by the way, we're going to telegraph all our plans to the enemy long in advance and

tell them exactly what we will and won't do.

Trump rejects all of that in very much the same way that Reagan did.

Reagan didn't even give the queen a heads up, much less the Soviets when he seized Renata.

Reagan was ready and willing to be unpredictable in a way that completely flomaxed the Soviet

Union and ultimately led to their collapse.

And he also understood, and Peter Schweitzer did a wonderful job of lining this out in

a book called Victory, How Reagan allied with the Saudis for the purpose of collapsing

the price of oil, just a few years after the 79 oil shock under Carter, for the purpose

of depriving the Russians of hard currency they needed to be able to conduct the arms race

he had initiated.

Well, okay, fast forward.

Donald Trump clearly learned all of the lessons and then saw.

So you take Venezuela offline, you take a ran offline, you disrupt the shadow fleet

in a way that takes Russia partly offline.

All of that goes straight to the current massive geopolitical threat, China, because China

actually imports between 40 and 50% of its oil from those three sources.

It's all the illegal oil, it's all under sanction and every nation in the world is legitimately

entitled to seize those tankers and they've started doing so.

It's not just the coolness of the U.S. Navy seizing tankers off Venezuela or chasing a

tanker all the way to the Indian Ocean.

That was cool, but now you have Sweden, interdicting tankers, Belgium seizing tankers and the

earthquake is India, which Trump appears to have flipped from the Russian column for the

first time in 80 years, they are now seizing Russian tankers as well.

Okay, that forces China onto the open market for oil.

That is an earthquake and it is a huge subsidy to the Chinese economy that just evaporates.

At the same time, you actually make it possible for Venezuela and ultimately Iran to produce

in full force quantities such that global oil prices a year and a half from now ought

to be a lot lower because there's just going to be a lot more supply.

Now, the short-term situation is rough with them hitting ships in the Straits of

Hormuz, but we'll sort that out pretty quickly.

And this release of 400 million barrels by IEA is a big deal and it will help bridge the

gap.

But the bigger strategy here is reorder nine.

There won't be a Cuban regime hosting Russian and Chinese intel bases.

There won't be a Venezuela supplying China and potentially hosting a naval base for

the Chinese in the Caribbean.

And ultimately, Trump wants to flip Iran and Russia.

Russia will never be our friend, but they don't have to be our enemy.

And if we are profitable for them, that turns them on China in a significant way.

And China is pretty much left alone.

And ultimately, you do have Iran, 90 million highly educated pro-western people who can

actually establish a democracy.

That country will be a first world country in 15 to 20 years if this succeeds.

And it will be an enrichment and a glory to the world.

It will absolutely bring peace in much of the Middle East.

All right.

You see a brilliant long term, we see a somewhat scary, immediate term.

The middle, though, we have midterm elections coming up.

How is all of this going to impact the midterm elections and what do we need to be aware

of?

Well, the myth that there's a big split within MAGA has been disproved at this point

by multiple pollsters on different sides of the aisle.

So Fox found that 98% of self-identified MAGA supports the president on Iran.

NBC and CNN just came out with polls that have it near 90%.

Okay, there's just no split.

Tucker Carlson and the groipers online are talking to each other.

Now the country is a whole.

If you're watching CNN, you think we're losing this war.

You think the Iranians may march on New York tomorrow.

So those folks are getting a very different movie than the one the rest of the world is watching.

But even so, we've seen support taking more move from 50% at the outset to now 52.

And there is nothing as persuasive as victory.

I think we will see that law hung before the midterms.

And we're also going to see the economic boom that is gathering in the United States.

I think by midsummer.

All right, Rod, you're brilliant.

You've covered so many topics.

I love getting the emails I get from you.

People are going to want to follow you.

What's the best way for them to do that?

Well, everyone should come to rod martin.org.

That's rod martin.org.

We have tens of thousands of subscribers for our daily geopolitical analysis.

Fox business calls absolutely phenomenal.

No kidding.

They said it.

And we have hundreds of thousands of followers on social media.

There's a reason.

So come to rod martin.org.

That's the hub for everything.

And you can follow us everywhere from there.

All right.

Well, your Twitter is amazing.

You've covered so many things.

I want to also put in a plug for us future.org, which you founded.

And I think you're the chairman of that, which is a think tank that is looking forward.

It's a special forces in the war of ideas.

It's fighting these battles here at home, domestically, politically, on like,

Banshari and things like that.

But it's also giving a bird's eye view into all of the conflicts around the world.

So usfuture.org and follow you again at rod martin.org.

Rod, you've been a friend for a long time.

I've known you for over 20 years, maybe 26 years almost.

And everything you've told me, I've watched happen and unfold.

It's almost like you have a crystal ball or something.

I love you as a brother.

Appreciate all the excellent work that you're doing.

So thank you, Rod, for being part of the economic war room today.

Thank you.

All right.

We will summarize all of this in our free economic battle plan.

You get a copy of that at economicwarroom.com.

There you'll find links to rod martin.org, usfuture.org,

and all of the great work that he's doing.

Remember, what we see as a marketplace

are interviews view as a battle space.

That's true in a run and around the world.

This is thank you so much for being with us.

Rod Martin.

This is Kevin Freeman from the economic war room.