Iran, China, and the weaponization of energy is the root cause

Hello, I am Todd Boyle, and what an episode we have today.

I'm the host of Geopower Energy and Real Politics, and I hear there's a few things going

on in the world, and so we're going to focus on that today, and what we're really going

to focus on is Iran.

The reason this show is called Geopower Energy and Real Politics, and the reason energy

is in the middle of that is that energy affects everything, and then when you then go into

the Geopower, which is Geopolitics, which goes back to the term of self-interest rightly

understood by Alexis Tokavils, Democracy in America, you then can understand what is this

Iran war really about.

That gets us to real politics, or real politics, the politics of reality.

You put all that together and you go, why is the United States Israel, now Qatar has joined,

why are they doing what they are doing?

Interesting, because I will tell you that what this is all about is hydrocarbons.

That's what this whole thing is about.

You can say, oh, this is about their nuclear weapon program.

Sure, you don't want a fanatical regime to have a nuclear weapon.

What you can also really say this is about is the energy that China needs.

In the National Security Document that was recently released, in the National Military

Document as well, we lay out that the Trump administration

lays out the framework that we are trying to turn China into a consumer nation.

Right now, when you think of China, you have to realize this is a country that is advanced,

that has over a billion people, that can also be fanatical, that you can really say is

the largest crime syndicate in the world.

We know they're putting fentanyl in America that's killing 100,000 people utilizing the

Mexican cartels.

They've utilized Venezuela to do this.

We know they've militarized the South China Sea.

We know they really don't like India.

We know they still hold historic grievances against Japan.

It's the reason why the new Prime Minister of Japan said we will defend Taiwan, and you

go, well, why would that bother China?

Well, because they still hold rightly so historical grievances for tens of millions of people

being killed by the Japanese Imperial Army.

But yet, what we're looking at is a nation that has sunk its teeth into Iran and into

the Middle East.

They receive upwards of three million barrels all day from Iran.

They have called for the straight-of-form moves to be opened up.

They've called for restraint on all sides.

Isn't it interesting how they've not condemned the United States?

Think about that.

They also didn't condemn the United States with Venezuela, because they knew they had

their cheap Russian oil, and they've also got their cheap Iranian oil.

When countries are heavily sanctioned the way they are, that's been their lifeline.

They've done hundreds of billions of dollars worth of investment in buying of crude oil

from Iran.

We know that Chinese technology is in current bombs, radar technology, but isn't it interesting?

You could really say this entire war could be summed up in one sentence.

This is about stopping the Chinese.

That's what this whole thing is about.

You can say, oh, we want to get rid of the craziness and all of that.

There was actually a really interesting interview by Robert Pop, political science, the University

of Chicago, who talked about how air power can never do regime change.

He also said that President Trump is now called an escalation trap.

The war is already in the process of widening.

The trap has not been shut fully, but it is tightening its grip.

He said, for over a century, states, including the United States, European states, Russian

and Israel, have tried to topple regimes with air power alone.

It has never, and he goes, I'm choosing my words carefully, it has never worked.

The key reason for the consistent failures that when you have foreign air power trying

to topple regimes, you inject nationalism into the politics of the target, which makes

positive regime change in the direction of the attackers' wishes almost impossible.

All that is true, very good political scientist at the University of Chicago.

Do I think this war, is it going to turn out like Venezuela, you go in, the kidnapping

of somebody, you now basically have a regime that's compliant.

You have an oil industry that's getting back on its feet.

Tend to billions of dollars of investments will begin to flow in, and you're seeing stability.

No, it won't happen.

What's interesting, Iran International reported this story this way when China called on all

sides to protect ships transitioning or moves.

Straight-of-form moves, there's approximately 20 to 25% of all the world's hydrocarbons,

essentially oil and natural gas flow through there, Qatar, which is a cross from Iran

within the straight-of-form moves, the rest, among terminal, which has been hit and shut

down, essentially supplies about one-fifth of the world's natural gas that is shipped

around the world or liquid LNG.

Straight-of-form moves we can make an argument is the greatest area of economic activity

in the entire world. I could map out for you whether it's scope 1, 2, 3 emissions, do value

change studies on the straight-of-form moves, look at the economic multiplier effects, and you

can make the argument that nothing is more important than the straight-of-form moves.

But again, why would China say we call on all sides to protect ships

such transiting or moves? Wouldn't they say they wanted to protect their investments in Iran?

Hundreds of billions of dollars, minimal hundred billion dollars?

Why would a regime that is very protective of their people in some ways, but certainly protective

of the Chinese Communist Party, the investments that are made, the Chinese Communist Party has

now called on investments to no longer just be put out into the world, but frankly to use an

investment framework to look at the homeland first to make sure that if they are doing things

with their Belt and Road Initiative, which has many ways been a failure, it's not just putting

money out there to gain geopolitical influence, but is it a safe and smart investment?

So again, why would China call on all sides to protect ships transiting or moves? Here's why.

According to senior, this is in Iran International. According to senior executives at

Chinese state-owned gas firms briefed by government officials, Beijing had urged Iranian counterparts

not to target oil and liquefied natural gas tankers transiting the narrow waterway

into refrain from striking key export hubs such as Qatar.

Why? China buys the vast majority of Iran's oil, providing Tehran with a crucial economic

life line, but the world's largest energy importer depends more broadly on purging Gulf supplies

with both crude and LNG cargo passing through her most. One thing I would call on

whether the Trump administration or Congress or anyone dealing with China is look at the soft power

of energy. I don't know if the Chinese Communist Party would ever accept this kind of

deal or offer. Why not sign a hundred-year contract with China to supply them everything that they

import at a targeted price? Let's put that targeted price at $75.00 a barrel of oil. Let's put it at

LNG at $5 million for millions BCU. Why not? I'm throwing numbers out there, but it's obvious.

So if they're importing about three million barrels of oil a day, here's what you have to know about

oil markets. Even a one million barrel, either addition or deletion, severely affects oil

markets. What it also shows is that China, for all of its technological prowess, what you're really

seeing, and I disagree with people who say the country's not doing well, is what you're really seeing

is the growth of their middle class. Because there's a contradictory nature to what I'm about to say,

we know based on their one-child policy that they killed via forced abortions and sterilization,

about 300 million children. Yet their economy is still growing. They do have a high debt to GDP

ratio, same as the United States. We certainly know they have these phantom or shadow cities,

they're just building things that is not really needed yet. We also know their middle class is growing.

Anytime you see that a middle class is going the same thing with India,

you're going to look at the need for energy, which I would say is very hard to model out.

So what they're telling you is very telling within this war.

I do not think this war at all is about, oh, Iran was about to attack Israel,

or they were about to attack us, big deal. They've been doing it for over 45 years,

they've been killing Americans. I think they should have been avenged over the marine

barracks from Beirut. We should have carpet bombed Tehran at that point. Certainly the Americans

that were being killed in Iraq, the Iraq war, they were coming via Syria, via Iran,

all of them should have been killed at that point. So why didn't presidents from Reagan

to George W. Bush to President Obama? Why didn't any of them do anything about Iran?

Because unfortunately those were acceptable casualties to them because right now,

the national security documents of the United States says that we are wanting to contain

China that we do not want a multipolar world. Though Marco Rubio talked about that during the

first couple of months, when he was Secretary of State, when he called today multipolar world,

the United States would be concerned with the Western hemisphere and others would have their own

spheres of influence, whether the Europeans, the Russians, the Chinese, what this tells you is

that was not really true. What you really need to look at is the national security doctrines of

the United States. And what you see is a country that says we believe China is the greatest threat

to world stability in peace since Nazi Germany. I would make the argument it's seen as even more

of a threat if not equal to than the former Soviet Union. But yet one has to wonder, the Soviet

Union was an economic wreck. The Chinese are not an economic wreck. Now what's interesting about

how the world is is we are all interconnected together, not just via the internet or cell phones,

economies are intertwined with each other. That's why you can possibly strike a massive deal with

China the same way you can with India off energy. They're both energy star of countries because

they're both their middle classes are growing by hundreds of millions of people. Imagine

United States has about let's call it 350 million people. That's if you take the numbers that are

coming out of India and China right now about their middle class growth, you're talking about each

one of them have their own United States of growth inside of each country.

Then let's throw in places like Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam. You can make an argument a little bit

for Pakistan. Now you have Syria. It's trying to gain stability again. I'm not even looking at any

African nations. If you could ever bring Nigeria into that sphere, well, what do you see?

You see that these people are desperate for hydrocarbons. They're desperate for oil,

whether Brent or crude. They're desperate for diesel, for jet fuel. They're desperate for

natural gas. They're desperate for things like hydrogen. They're desperate for liquid natural gas.

You can make a case if I have a country like China that's got

300 at the air minimum. They've got 100 million people right now who are entering the middle class.

That means when people enter middle class in economic terms, that means they start to become consumers.

They're no longer people that aren't really consuming much of anything. They're going to need cars

and apartments and homes. They're going to need food. In other words, they're going to need all

of Maslow's hierarchy of needs, food, shelter, comfort. They'll need luxury. They'll need

energy. They'll eventually need electricity. They need all of these things, as opposed to if you

are 600 million Africans who are still living without being connected to the electrical grid and

many others, billions more are barely getting electricity. You have a country like China who goes,

we don't care about our 100 billion dollars worth of investments and I ran right now. We

don't even really care about the geopolitical influence that we may have. What it actually tells you

is that you have a country that is desperate for energy. They're not even flexing their geopolitical

power. They're not the real politics in China. You've got also the real politics of India is energy.

It's everything. Why do both countries burn coal at copious amounts? Why do both countries build

coal-fired power plants more are being built than even in the world combined essentially?

Because coal is cheap and it's easy to store. Both of these countries do not be surprised if

India gets into this very quickly. Do not be surprised if Pakistan gets into this because they

want to counter India and they want to get on the good side of the United States and they want the

United States to get back from Air Force Base pack so they can fight the Taliban but what they

really want is they want energy. Blackouts laying Pakistan. If you're ever someone that lives in an

economy that needs electricity and that electricity goes away, it crushes every single part of your

economy whether you're business-based, your industrial-based, your consumer-based,

your citizens. You cannot make investments. You cannot plan to make investments. You're going to

have a hard time growing food, building infrastructure, everything relies on electricity now.

It's just fascinating to you. Absolutely fascinating when you go this entire thing is about China.

It's about saying we the United States want to control the oil and natural gas reserves of

Venezuela. Check. The largest known reserves in the world in Venezuela. Check. Watch and see next

we're going to go to Nigeria. Then we're going to go to Mexico and then eventually we're absolutely

we are going to continue in Iran and we're going to let them bomb all the other Gulf states until

all of them join us because at the end of the day we are trying to restrict the supply of

energy to the Chinese Communist Party. A gentleman named Eldridge Colpy is the architect of this.

He's an undersecretary sentient for geopolitics within the Trump administration. He's spoken

extensively on this and this is just this is about American power. America is tired of dealing with

Iran but more importantly they're tired of seeing China and they're tired of looking at other

American administrations and frankly the business community which has gone into China which is

allowed China to steal their technology because they want to somehow think they're going to be a

part of their markets. They're tired of China then spreading things like the coronavirus or COVID

through the world and then being unchecked. They're tired of them being in Venezuela. They're tired

of them using the Mexican cartels and asymmetric warfare killing 100,000 military age men a year

in the United States. They're tired of all of this. China also bought about 80% of all of Iran's oil

exports. This is this is this is absolutely this is about now Iran cannot finance a mosque is

bala and others that have been used by the Chinese Communist Party via Venezuela via Mexico the cartels

that's what all of this is about do not pretend this has really anything to do about nuclear weapons

I don't think has that to do at all. I think you can see the Israelis obviously know we're just about

every sense of the point is in Iran. It is certainly known that Assad and the Israeli special forces

are as capable and lethal as any force in the world. Yes, we're getting to use B2 bombers and

next generation fighter jets and yes, we're saying we're enforcing them on road doctrine which is

actually part came part of the Carter doctrine because now President Trump has said that he will

ensure that all shipping can pass through they'll be financed by the United States all insurance

we backed by the United States for shipping through the straight of war moves. He's also said the

US Navy will make sure that all oil cargoes and natural gas get through there. It will be interesting

to see if those things are allowed to go drop their wares off in China or if the United States by

backing it backing them will use the soft power of finance to let's say okay you were going to get

that crude at oh 45 dollars a barrel now you're going to get it at 82 dollars a barrel. I'm going to

go up what 100x on you. I'm going to use the things a little bit like Reagan used before where it's

like I'm just going to outspingee Soviet Union and bankrupt you because it's obvious those 3 million

barrels of oil a day they are getting from Iran is a lifeblood for them. Fascinating to think

what do you think of it? Absolute lifeblood for them. There was also a gentleman named Zinnab

Rabooa that talks about it's called the piece that he did called the Iran question is all about

China. He says Beijing has spent years and billions of dollars building Iran into a structural asset

everything that follows the Middle East flows from this fact which is why Operation Epic Fury is

the first American military campaign that threatens the sever that asset by striking Iran directly

the Trump administration is dismantling whether by design or by consequence a pillar of China's

regional architecture. I think that's why we could look back in June of 25 when Israel launched

Operation Rising Lion the 12-day campaign to precision strikes that destroyed Iran enrichment

facilities killed over 30 senior commanders it doesn't have nuclear scientists then drew the

United States into direct strikes on three other nuclear sites. Think about that why do we think

protests happened January 26? Some people say these were color revolutions that were formatted by

the CIA or other Western governments. Sure but they still have the security apparatus

the military dislodder thousands of protesters some people say upwards of 30 35,000 people were killed

it even caused the European Union to designate the IRGC as a terrorist organization

which further isolated the regime so why now? Why would you go attack Iran when seemingly the

Islamic Republic is weaker than at any point in its history? Well here's why. China was

putting it back together. It was recently reported that Iran was close to finalizing a deal for

Chinese made supersonic anti-ship cruise missiles weapons that were capable of threatening American

carriers that are now in the Persian Gulf. Also Chinese suppliers had shipped over 1,000 tons of

sodium percolate a key missile propellant ingredient to their Iranian port of Bandar Abbas

enough to rebuild a substantial portion of the ballistic missile stockpile that Israel had spent

12 days destroying. When you think about this okay let's go beyond the bombings we're saying to

who cares what CNN or Fox says right now you better really look at look at energy. Okay if China

is buying between 80 to 90% of all the crew to export. Remember they're doing this at a huge discount

and the way they get around sanctions they use a ghost fleet of tankers switch off the transponders

and then relabel the cargo as Malaysian and Indonesian crew to circumvent American sanctions.

The cumulative value since 2021 of these purchases has been over 140 billion dollars.

You can easily make the argument this is the main reason the Islamic Republic those butchers

did not go bankrupt. China is the lifeblood to continue to attack the United States via Iran.

You always have to look back to why did Donald Trump in his first term walk over in the North

Korean territory. That had nothing to do with North Korea that everything to China. You don't

walk over there because you want to be friends with Kim Jong-un is it interesting that nothing's

really come of of any of that relationship since President Trump has come back for a second term.

One would think that he would have worked off from his first first administration

five years ago the success and made some grand strategic deal with the North Koreans or made that

a pillar of his campaign. You haven't heard a word about North Korea. You didn't care about

North Korea. Nobody cares about North Korea or their nuclear weapons. North Korea is a

proxy of China. North Korea would not exist without China. The 25 to 30 million North Koreans would

die starting with their dear leader to unfortunately down to the citizens who are butchered and

frankly sawtomized in every form possible by that mass murdering maniac.

Unfortunately, all of them would be dead in a year if China did away with their support.

Their entire economic life line is China. Sure, some of their soldiers are fighting in Ukraine,

but if they were such a viable force and were told they're so, you know,

largest army in that part of the world outside of China.

100,000 of them have gone to Ukraine. Do you think it's done much of a difference for

other Russians? No, they've been cannon fodder. They're poorly trained, poorly equipped,

probably poorly fed, malnourished. They're cannon fodder. They're like raw recruits and

put into the front lines of World War II. Those are the first ones to die.

When Trump did that, that's to neutralize China. That's to neutralize your proxy.

This proxy is much more dangerous, the Iranians, because that's a fanatical Islamic

lunatics mass murdering maniacs who has a hatred of Jews, Christians, and anything that's not

going to bring back the twelfth of mine according to their sadistic ideological nonsense based on

the war parts of the Quran. And I would tell anybody, if you think the Quran, go read it.

Just go read what it says. Now, people can go, well, wait a minute. The Bible has all sorts of

crazy things in it too. Okay, I'll give you that, but you don't see Christians going around

slaughtering people around the world. And anyone listening to this, please don't tell me about

the crusades. Christians lost. Solomon is who won a Muslim. The temple mount, one point had

Solomon's grand temple. That's an Islamic site now. But when you think about all this with China,

when you just, oh my gosh, think about what China gets. Okay, here's what we're going to do.

We're going to take a break. We're coming back. And I'm going to break down for you,

everything China gets from Iran, and factually prove this has nothing to do with their nuclear

war program. This has nothing to do with any of that. This has every single thing to do.

We're at war right now because we're at war with China. My name is Todd Royl. This is

Geopower Energy in Real Politics. I'm your host, and we're going to be right back.

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And with that, back to the second half, this is Todd Royale. I am your host,

the Geo Power Energy and Real Polypix. I'm going to let you jump into this.

Think about what Beijing has gotten throughout this little sadistic marriage that's been

killing the world now, not just for decades, but certainly the last five years.

China annually saving billions by getting cheap oil for its industrial base,

compared to the market. So if you're trying to compete against China,

and they're oil, which they then can you put into diesel and jet fuel and other industrial

purposes, you're already, they're getting this way below market rate.

What is that? So I'm already at a disadvantage against a Chinese company,

which I already know they will cheat, steal, lie, do anything they need to win compete.

Just do a little look at the electric car industry.

You're telling me they've taken over the entire thing.

Know what they did is they cornered the market. Sure, BYD is a great product,

but that product was stolen. Just go do a little search on that one. Go look and see.

Go read Bloomberg, who's competed over in China. Go listen to some of this podcast where he talks

about where he's competing against them on solar panels. Look what they've done with electric vehicles.

He's been stolen designs. Just blight out stolen designs. Made him their own. Well, you can also say,

now for the last five years, you've got oil below market rates.

You then you have an energy corridor.

Tyron was cut off from every other major economy in the world, but now they've got a billion

out over a billion half Chinese people. They've made a 25-year strategic partnership.

Western governments have never been able to win Iranians, the Iranian trust.

Itoakomani, the RGG, and the other fanatics that prop up that Islamic terrorist regime.

Iran's economy now runs on Chinese money, and both capitals know it. They signed a 25-year

comprehensive strategic partnership that committed China to invest an estimated 400 billion

across Iran's energy, banking, telecommunications, and infrastructure sectors.

They now have a freight rail that connects the Iranian city of Kham to Yawu China.

The bigger this integration comes, the less leverage anyone else has over Tyron. You can't even say

that Saudi Arabia, Qatar, even Syria, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Bahrain, Egypt. Who has influence

over the Iranians? Do the Russians? You don't see Vladimir Putin as offered to mediate this,

but you sure as hell don't see him bringing in Russian troops artillery on the side of the Iranians.

They now think about the digital leech that's on this, the technology dimension.

Highway Hua, WI Highway, and ZTE have built significant portions of Iran's telecommunications

infrastructure. When you see telecommunications being blown up, you're attacking Chinese companies.

ZTE has signed a $130 million contract to have a complete surveillance system on Iran's

state-managed telephone and internet networks. Highway became the country's largest telecommunications

equipment provider. They give location tracking services to mobile containers and give them

content censorship tools. They've now given them AI-enabled facial recognition cameras

from firms such as T&D and Hick Vision, deep packet inspection tools, centralized traffic

management systems. You're talking about an entire network that's modeled, basically modeled on

the Great Firewall of China and built with Chinese technical assistance. In other words,

the Iranian regime was putting in all the censorship, all the control exactly as the Chinese

Communist Party was. Certainly we can see the January 2026 massacres were Tehran basically shut

down the internet, which remember Chinese firms helped to construct the surveillance technology

enabled the IRGC to track, identify, and suppress dissidents. This is the same companies that perform

identical functions for the Chinese Communist Party. Basically Beijing provided Tehran with

the tools to survive its own population's rejection is doing so for the same reason that it buys

oil. A dependent Iran is a very useful Iran, okay? What about the Red Sea and let's talk about that?

When Iran's Houthis began attacking commercial shipping in the Bob L.

Mandab straight late 23, those consequences went over the entire global economy.

Container traffic through the Red Sea fell by 90%.

Goods worth roughly a trillion dollars were disrupted in the first seven months.

You had to reroute ships through the African Cape of Goodhorn. You added nearly two weeks to

the to it in about a million fuel costs. What do you think that did to freight rates to Asia,

to Europe? What do you think that did to inflation rates throughout where all that shipping

had to pass through to Europe, to the United States, to Asian nations that let's say Beijing is

less than friendly than, and the United States bore the heaviest cost.

The United States ended then was supplying interceptor missiles that cost about a million to

four million. Chinese flagships, though, of course, sailed right through, needed no protection,

no attacks. And Chinese satellite companies were providing the Houthis with intelligence to

enable the targeting their commercial vessels. This war has nothing to do about a nuclear program.

This has to do with a Chinese Communist Party that is just like a Nazi Germany.

They are about one thing only, and that is control. That is to suppress all human rights,

all freedom, and they were doing all of that through Iran. So remember,

this entire, whether you're downing an Iranian plane, you're taking out a ship, you're hitting

you're killing the former Ayatollah, what you're actually doing is you're going after China.

That's what you're going after. So then, if you think about all the Chinese,

China is more embedded, more embedded, that every dollar the United States spends defending the

red sea shipping lanes is a dollar unavailable for submarines, for submarine production,

for anybody being the Pacific, and certainly for Taiwan contingency planning. Every carrier group

that is stationed at the Gulf of Aiden is a carrier group absent from the western Pacific.

Pacific. All of Iran's proxies, whether the Houthis, Hamas, Hezbollah, the Shia paramilitary forces.

All of this has been armed and supported by Iranian intelligence, but this function,

what this is, it's a mechanism to kill America through strategic attrition. I would counter

that Venezuela had just as much to do about kicking out China and kicking out Hezbollah,

as it did about gaining those crude reserves, because then now those crude reserves are no longer

going to China, except you sell, though, to them at now a premium. You go to, you go to Z,

there's Z, however you always forget how to say his name. The president of China,

there's a lot called XI, and you go, we'll sell you Venezuela, Venezuela and heavy crude oil.

Again, you're buying it at O, $25 a barrel, it's now about $63 a barrel.

Oh, and by the way, you're going to pay all the shipping costs, and you're going to bear all

the insurance, all the shipping, everything. So when it's all said and done, you're paying about

$72 a barrel. You go, but I tell you what, how about if for the next 100 years,

you're going to be the ones to give $100 billion worth of loans to rebuild, or we're going to say

about $300 billion, to Exxonmobile, Chevron, and others to completely rebuild the Venezuelan oil

infrastructure, but we're doing it. You can grant us the money. We will then give you the crude oil

under a hundred-year contract at said price. So for all of your years of killing Americans,

of causing havoc in the Middle East, of arming all of these proxies, we believe,

we'll put that at $500 billion grant, but we'll give you a hundred and you pay for all the

shipping and insurance, and we'll give you a hundred-year contract at $60 a barrel.

Let's see what they say. Lay it out for them, and go, otherwise, what we are going to do is

literally obliterate that entire country, and we're going to take over all of our rains,

hydrocarbon reserves, which they have some of the largest gasoline and oil reserves in the world.

And we also say, oh, by the way, we're all going to head back into Iraq. And by we,

we mean the oil majors, and when the oil majors assemble different places,

they typically get what they want. How do you think that would go over?

These are not conspiracy theories, because what you're looking at right now is what you are saying is

we know you want to take Taiwan. We also know that they supply the world semi-conductors.

And you know, and I know, we have a horrible environmental problem here,

that's by crazy environmental leftists at the Democratic Party that are backed by

university educated students and baby boomers that are in all of our blue urban cities.

But things are changing. You show them demographic reports that are showing that

young people, Gen Z, are becoming more conservative. They're attending church services more.

They're actually looking at more orthodox religions, which means they're going to vote more conservative,

probably more Republican. Maybe look at the Marco Rubio's of the world, which means America

becomes more patriotic, which means America builds up its military space program,

which means America lessons its regulatory burden, builds more nuclear power plants,

more AI, more military weapons, more onshore of manufacturing, etc., etc.

And go, China, give us about 20 years from now, we'll have all the rare earth metals and minerals

we'll ever need. We will then recompete with you on all the processing, refining, and mining of

all that's needed from rare earth metals and minerals. We will then bring back all of our

Western countries. We will try to do the same thing to you that we've done to Russia and try to

bankrupt you. But more importantly, we will take over all hydrocarbons in the world or

you can join the global economy as a good actor. It's your choice. You saw what happened to

the Soviet Union. Do you really want to be bankrupt again? Do you really want to be the

Hermit Kingdom again? Do you really want to go back to a malkilled 100 million of you people?

Your own dictator killed 100 million of you. Do you want to go back to that again? Because if you

do, you and I both know it kills your economy. So I tell you what, you stop what you're doing in

Iran. We'll stop bombing it. You immediately help us kill every leader of every Mexican cartel

you've ever dealt with. You give us $500 billion as a grant to rebuild Venezuela. You then

sign a hundred-year contract and you stay on your side of the world and I'll stay on my side

of the world. You'll get all the crude oil you need and you can feed and clothe and house

the 100 to 400 million of you that are entering the middle class.

And oh, by the way, you're going to have to deal with an ascended India that's now more closely

aligned with the United States after the recent US-India trade deal. Do you really want us back

in Bagram Air Force Base? That means we are a hop-skip and a jump by you. Do you want us back in

Diego Garcia? Do you want the seventh lead to just continue to stay right there in this specific?

Because that's what we'll do.

You're also you're looking them going, okay? Let's talk about your allies.

When China also, the Gulf monarchies, when China has so grossly entangled himself and I ran,

it's a threat in a very obvious way. It generates deep anxiety to the monarchies and the Gulf

Arab states because now they have to forge a relationship with America to take on Iranian

aggression backed by the Chinese Communist Party.

Now, in their defense, the traditional relationship they had with the United States

wrote it under Barack Obama's administration when he did that horrible nuclear deal with Tehran.

It's deepened after the muted response to the 2019 Erichem-Aramiko attacks.

Certainly, when Joe Biden left Afghanistan, all the monarchies said,

what's going on? And Gulf leaders are probably correct in saying they can't rely on America anymore.

I mean, you look at our political system. We know that if the Democrats regain the House,

the first thing they do is impeach Donald Trump. If I'm one of the Gulf leaders,

I'm sitting there myself and going, what I'd probably do, I'd try to go nuclear.

You can't rely it. You can't rely on America because we have too many crazy leftists, too

many crazy ACLUs, too many crazy environmental organizations, too many crazy MSNOW platforms,

our media, our law, our NGOs, our nonprofits. We have billionaires who hate America.

No kings protest. The Alice Walton's of the world, the Tom Steyers.

Steve Jobs' widow, Jeff Bezos' ex-wife. These are crazy people who give the left-wing

causes that want to kill America. And they say, I think Donald Trump is the enemy.

And yet, you look at what Barack Obama did, you can also say that all of them are still reacting

to that ridiculous Iranian nuclear deal. From years ago, you thought, oh, I'm going to give them

hundreds of billions of dollars of money to not do a nuclear program and then wonder why they've

armed to the teeth, not only themselves, but their proxies. The foolishness of Barack Obama,

the little zero understanding of real politics, no understanding of geopolitics,

somebody like Ben Rhodes, I think he was a playground, like a literature major,

English major being in charge of geopolitics and power and having no understanding what he was doing.

It boggles the mind that anybody ever voted for him and never questioned people like Ben Rhodes.

So when you think about this, why did Trump launch Operation Epic Fury?

Well, because Washington spends a lot of time managing Tehran, it's another year that Beijing

gets to buy in the Pacific and the administration has decided that trade is not worth it anymore.

The orientation of the Middle East, you can make the argument will determine whether U.S.

can prevail in the defining confrontation of this century and that's going to be a Chinese

move against Taiwan. You want to know why the United States wants a $1.5 trillion defense budget?

Whether there is, obviously there is rot and waste and the Pentagon can't even do an audit.

Trillions of dollars are missing that was uncovered by those. All of it is true.

The gross incompetence of the Pentagon and the Department of War to not be able to understand

where monies have gone, all true. But do you want to live under the specter of the Chinese Communist

Party? Because if you didn't confront Nazi Germany, you see what happens.

We're all real lucky right now. We're not speaking German. We're all real lucky right now

in a lot of ways that the United States was not defending itself from Nazi attack on the East Coast

and Imperial Japan on the West Coast. Because the last time we decided, oh,

we're not going to build up our armies and navies and just allow these massive fanatical

belligerents free reign and free will. If you really understand the attack of Pearl Harbor,

what they actually should have done was walk right onto the West Coast of the United States.

Just go look at the history.

Japan could have walked right into San Francisco if they wanted to.

Probably could have gone into Seattle, Los Angeles, and other coastal cities.

How far could they have got? Think about that. What happens if they take over the San Francisco and

Los Angeles, the two ports? Just the ports? What happens? What happens if you take over the rail

systems of those two major U.S. cities at that point? What if you take over, oh gosh, the farm lands

of California, send all that back to Japan into troops? Imagine if the Imperial Japanese would have

had from Seattle down to San Diego, or even if they just had from LA to San Francisco in farmland

in between. Just imagine it. Imagine if Hitler would have been so grossly incompetent and they

actually do take over Russia. They do take over the Romanian oil fields, the caucuses.

That's what this is about. This is about energy. This is about force posture.

The U.S. can't fight a two-theatre war.

I mean, we've certainly seen now that Iranian weapons are consuming massive amounts of

American interceptor stockpile. I mean, all of our ships and aircraft and munitions, those

are needed for Pacific deterrence, but you first got to take care of this Middle Eastern issue.

You have got to restructure it towards stability. You have got to say no matter how

grotesque many of these regimes are, they're not going around. They may brutalize their own citizens

in the name of Islam, but they're not looking to blow up the world. They're not looking to kill

100,000 Americans a year via fentanyl. They're not looking to arm Hamas via the Palestinians

and go rape and slaughter Israelis to the point where they were cooking babies alive and

in ovens and raping to death women. That's all that is all Chinese money did that. That is money

that went to Iran, which then went to a mosque that is then cooking babies alive. Don't ever be

surprised if the Israelis decide to strike the Chinese for this. The Israelis have a long memory.

Don't ever be surprised if one day nuclear power plants suddenly go offline. There's a

meltdown or two and we find out years later that was the Israelis for getting back at what happened

to them on October 7th, rape and massacre of innocent men, women, children and babies. Read about

some of the women that are survived or they said they were raped over and over and over again.

I don't know how they survived. You can make the case those women were raped by Chinese money,

Chinese surveillance, Chinese weaponry that all went to Iran, that then used it to form it,

sadistic revolutions and just instability all in the name of Islamic fanaticism.

No, it's all really about power and control. That's what it's all about.

If God forbid it, China actually does go into Taiwan.

Well, the United States then will need not just deterrence, not just the Middle East whose

restructured stability has killed the Iranian proxy architecture. The Gulf partners are aligned.

All of it can be managed with a much lighter footprint, bringing the size of combat theater

for the Pacific, which will also need its nations to impose punishing costs on China through sanctions.

I don't know if that will happen. They'll also need financial exclusion and technology denial.

Let's say if Saudi Arabia and the UAE and others are so deeply engaged in the Chinese economic

system that they refuse to curtail oil cells to Beijing during a Pacific war,

the entire sanctions architecture will collapse. In other words, everything is about energy.

You can talk about all your high-minded human rights and freedom. Great, I believe in all of it.

But what you're going to need is Gulf nations that say we will not allow shipping from the

straight of our moves to go to China. We will not sell oil and natural gas to China.

Because as you're seeing right now, it does not take much for Beijing to freak out.

For all the reasons I've just talked about, and let me have this too.

Chinese satellites provided Tehran with real-time intelligence on American force deployments,

including detection of the F-35A, the F-15E, the ATNC, and the THAAD systems

at Air Force bases in Jordan.

Tehran, the fanatical Islamic Republic. Let me quote, has been the central pillar of a regional

order that Beijing assembled, and Operation Epic Fury is now cracking that pillar.

But the strikes, remember, these are not the end. They are just the opening act against a larger strike

against China. Because Iran is exactly where all of Beijing's tyrannical architecture is located.

If you can through strategic attrition, mute, uncover, blind, and ultimately deplete the

American military arsenal, and even diplomatic soft power, you can go attack Taiwan and get away

with it. You can then go take everything that Taiwan does, which by the way, they're doing stupid

things like relying on renewables and closing down nuclear power plants, but that's a different story.

This has been a very sobering episode. My name is Todd Royle. I'm the host of Geopower Energy,

Real Politics, and God's Left. Thank you very much, Royce.