Iran Deal: All or Nothing /Lt Col Daniel Davis

Added: 2026-05-26

[00:00:01]Deal or no deal. President Trump made his mark on the world about being able to this great dealmaker, the art of the deal. He ran on that in 2016. He ran on it again in 2020, 2024. He always talks about how he can get a deal nobody else can. His acolytes always say this president could bring people to negotiations that no one else could. But none of that matters if you can't close the deal. And if you set the conditions to where it's going to be nearly impossible for you to have a deal that you like, then you're going to be in a world of hurt. And that is the condition that we're in right now because President Trump made the bad decision to start a war that was against the US Constitution and against American national interest. Now he is in a deep hole. So the question is, is he going to dig deeper or is he going to climb out?

[00:00:51]Because there's a ladder. There's a ladder which he could get out and there's a shovel with which he could dig deeper. The question is going to be what is he going to do? And everybody in the world is waiting to find out. This morning he gave yet more information here with on Truth Social. This first one here was about 6:10 a.m. So you see he got an early start to the day. Um he just rants a bunch of stuff in the first part. I won't even bother reading that.

[00:01:15]But then you get down to the bottom part here that I have highlighted. The deal with Iran will either be great and meaningful one or there will be no deal.

[00:01:23]Hence deal or no deal. It will be the exact opposite of the JCPOA disaster negotiated by the failed Obama administration which was direct and open path to nuclear weapon for Iran. No, I don't do deals like that. Now he is potentially painting himself into a corner here as well. He keeps talking about how the JCPOA that Obama did in 2015, which which President Trump withdrew from in 2018, he keeps saying that this is terrible deal and we can't go back down that path. I'm not going to do that. That was a path to a bump, which of course is 100% false. No truth to it whatsoever. That was a a deal that was negotiated painstakingly over about two years. That would have ensured Iran never had a nuclear weapon because everything that you want, very limited enrichment, independent international inspectors, a small portion of enrichment, 3.67% way far away from any kind of uh nuclear weapons grade enrichment. very small amounts of enrichment would be allowed to be in the country. They had shipped out I forget how many tons of it uh of various tops they shipped out of the country and they had very small stock piles that they were even allowed to have and there was no path to having a bomb on top of the fact that they declared that they had no interest in having a bomb. So all of those things, that's what the JCPOA did, which President Trump withdrew from. And after that, then they went up to 20% enrichment. Then they went to 60% enrichment every time in response to our staying out of the deal or something that we did with new sanctions or whatever to go on top of it. And they were always trying to get back into it.

[00:02:57]That's the reality and that's the truth.

[00:03:00]But now, President Trump has to validate why he pulled out of there because he can't be he can't acknowledge the reality, the truth that I just laid out for you. Because then it would be, wait a minute, if that was actually a good deal and we would love to have, we would kill to have something that good right now. He's got to say, okay, well, that was a bad deal, but I'm going to have a good deal. Here's part of the problem why I say he paints himself into a corner by going back to this Obama stuff. One of the biggest things he kept dra bashing Obama about was the quote giving them billions of dollars. You remember that he because part of that deal with the 2015 was the unfreezing of frozen Iranian assets. Uh and then they had access to their money. President Trump mischaracterized that to appeal to his base and to Israeli supporters and said that Obama gave them money, paid them to do all this stuff, which of course was always untrue. But he's stayed with that as recently as this weekend keeps harping on that point there. Well, one of the key requirements for the Iranian side in this current round is the unfreezing of assets. And I've seen anywhere from 11 billion to 12 billion to 30 billion, something like that. I think the total is aroundund and something billion that's frozen. But they're like, let's start with a good chunk of it. And then we have phased uh sanctions relief, etc. And then kind of a one for one. You do something, we'll do something, and on on and on like that. That's what they have said. And by the way, the Iranian side is willing to negotiate. You're going to see some some details on that during this show here.

[00:04:27]They're they're saying they're not just saying, "No, we're not going to do anything. We're just going to demand everything and that's it." They say they're willing to negotiate on some of the issues. They are willing to give something to get something. So, that's a positive sign and that's an opportunity for us to end this war and to get it off the table and to stop digging deeper.

[00:04:48]this hole that we've dug ourselves into.

[00:04:51]But the question is, is Trump gonna, you know, go through with that? So, that first uh truth, I'll show you. Was it six, what was that? Um 6:10 this morning. Then about uh two and a half, two some odd hours later, he posted this one, and this is again a really long one, and I'm not going to include all the first part of it. He's ranting on and on about all these things that happened. He wants peace that's never happened in 5,000 years, and listed all of these Middle Eastern leaders that he'd been talking to, etc. But then we get to the key parts here and I also highlighted um he said uh listen uh the level of important and prestige would be unparalleled if he gots has these agreements. It should start with the immediate signing by Saudi Arabia and Qatar and everybody else and this is talking about the Abraham Accords should follow suit. If they don't they should not be part of this deal and in that shows their bad intentions. Then we move down to the next part. Therefore, I am mandatorily requesting and that alone is kind of weird uh use of the English language that all countries immediately sign the Abraham Accords and that if Iran signs its agreement with me as president of the United States of America, it would be an honor to have them also be a part of this unparalleled world coalition.

[00:06:08]Now, we're going to have Rajan Menon with us later on in the show. He's got something published this morning that talks about a lot of these contradictions and he's specifically going to talk about the Abraham Accords.

[00:06:17]Um, we're going to bring some light onto that. So, I'm just looking forward to that later in the show here. But the the the bottom line is now I'll just tell you categorically is Saudi Arabia is not going to sign the Abraham Accords because Trump has an angry social. I doubt anybody else will in the region either. There's a reason why they haven't. There has been some that signed the Abraham Accords during President Trump's first term, which by the way, I was I was applauding. I thought it was a good deal. Anything that moves towards reconciliation between the Arab world and the the Israeli world is a good thing. And if we can get more people in that and everybody's talking peace, that would be great. And if you could factor in the Iranian side of that somehow so that it gets the fundamentals and the foundation that has led to so much conflict in the region off the table, that would be fantastic. Don't know if that's actually possible, but Saudi Arabia has said, "Listen, we're not going to do this. We're not going to sign the Abraham Accords unless the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and in the West Bank have a state of their own and they have some freedoms and and they're no longer being attacked." They say, "Sure, once that gets Saudi Arabia has always said, if that occurs, we will sign the Abrahamic Accords." And they're not going to not sign that now. They're not going to not require that now just because Trump puts out this truth social. So, as far as I'm concerned, that's just forget about that. Rajan will explain more on that in a minute.

[00:07:37]Today, this morning, President Trump went on Fox News and said, "By the way, great news here. 95% complete. We are 95% of the way there with the deal with Iran." Haven't we heard that before? How many times then this war began we hear all kinds of stuff that Iran has largely agreed to everything that we basically had all the agreements and we're just going to have a signing here and it never happens and and I just have to wonder why do people keep listening to this stuff and the markets react. I mean, that's what's so comical, tragic, comical about this is that Trump says stuff like this, like he did over the weekends. And so, as predictable as it can be, when the markets opened up, I think in early trading on Sunday night, and then earlier this morning when I last checked, um, huge drop in the price of oil, huge spike in the stock market, which President Trump lives for. So, it is it is, in my view, a naked attempt to manipulate the market because there's no truth to that. And let's take a look as we always do. That's what President Trump is saying. Let's see what the other side is saying here. And here's a a few dueling uh announcements here this morning. This this first one here uh was at I believe it was Yeah, there is. It's this is 3:00 a.m. Eastern Standard Time here from Iran. And they said this is from the Iranian news agency, senior Iranian diplomat. No commitments have been made to the other side in a potential agreement with the United States on the nuclear issue. President Trump 95% complete. Iran, no commitments have been made. They continue on. Uh the end of the war on all fronts, the release of Iran's frozen assets, there's that number again. The lifting of US maritime blockade, the opening of the straight of Hormuz, and the freedom to sell Iran's oil are considered in potentials in the agreement. So again, you see the Iranian side says yes, we are definitely willing to do that. that now you notice in that first part there's basically two parts two phases that Iran is willing to have negotiation. The first one that you see there in the blue on the upper left is they're talking about end the war on all fronts and that primarily means Lebanon.

[00:09:46]That's that's the big stick in that one.

[00:09:48]That's one of the things that's a problem with Israel. The release of Iran's frozen assets. That's a big problem in Washington. The lifting of the US maritime blockade. That's a simple decision that President Trump can make but that they definitely want. They certainly want that one maybe above all of those right away. The opening of the straight of Hormuz. Now, that's key because this is what Iran is saying.

[00:10:08]They want the opening of the straight of Hormuz. We're going to see in a minute that the conditions with which they think the straight should be opened as opposed to what the US does. And the freedom to sell Iran's oil are all considered in the potential agreement.

[00:10:21]Then you move to the next one, the upper right hand corner. And this one was at 4:47 a.m. So about an hour and a half later, senior Iranian diplomat. In the event that the American side fulfilling its commitments in progress in the first phase agreement, then and only then, this is phase two, the nuclear issue enrichment, stockpiles of highlyenriched uranium will be addressed in exchange for the lifting of sanctions and the full release of Iran's frozen assets during the 60-day negotiation period, and American forces will completely withdraw from the region surrounding Iran. So their phase one and phase two one is that they'll end the war in Lebanon. Uh they'll they get some of their frozen assets and then you see in phase two they get the rest of their frozen assets released. Um and then they'll talk about they don't say anything about what they're willing to do only that they're willing to talk about it. But President Trump keeps saying Iran will never have a nuclear bomb. Iran will never have a nuclear bomb. Add infinitum. He says it you know almost every time he brings the issue up here. And then the issue with that is, of course, Iran is saying, "Yeah, we'll get to that later, like after this 60-day period that's coming on, we'll talk about these other things first, talk about." And so, we're in a quasi, well, not a quasi, we're in a ceasefire period right now. It's just illdefined.

[00:11:40]Remember, it was supposed to be two weeks to try to figure something out and then we extended and now it we're just not shooting. So, it could restart at any time, but we're just in this quasi era. Well, now they want to add another specific time frame, 60 days. And apparently both sides are talking that.

[00:11:55]But then what happens in those 60 days?

[00:11:57]President Trump says no nuclear weapons.

[00:11:59]Now the Iranian side is saying we'll talk about that in a couple of months from now and in the meantime we'll talk about the stuff that we want. So I don't know how President Trump's going to agree to that. So, you see this whole claim of 95% of the way there unless President Trump has made some radical changes in what he's willing to agree to. Uh, I don't know that we're even 5% of the way there. We're talking so that's useful and and that's helpful.

[00:12:25]Uh, but we'll see what happens. Now, moving back on to this one again. Going to now the lower right hand corner. This is from the Washington Post this morning. Washington Post reports that the United States and Iran have developed a proposed framework extending the current ceasefire by 60 days while negotiations continue towards a broader agreement. The reported framework includes the phase reopening of the straight of Hormuz, restoration of maritime traffic and a halt in military operations across regional fronts i.e. Lebanon and Iran and the US sources stressed that no final agreement has been signed and the nuclear issues remained resolved. So, even the Washington Post is saying, "Look, there's all kinds of stuff going on in here. We're way far away from anything."

[00:13:05]We're not even to the point yet where we can agree that that there's 60 days, at least that that number, it seems to be consistent on both sides. But then the conditions for that seem to still be miles apart.

[00:13:18]Now, let's take a look at what what when they say the straight of hormones. This is an important thing here. This is what we've gotten some clarity from the Iranian side here today on on what they're talking about. So uh uh foreign ministry spokesman Bagghai this morning uh said uh listen this is 4:43 our time this morning in Washington time Iran's foreign ministry confirms that an environmental tax will be charged on ships according to guy there is no toll people should use the correct terminology uh Iran and Oman are currently drafting a new protocol under the new system maritime services will be provided to protect the environment of the straight of Hormuz the Persian Gulf the sea of Oman, which requires the collection of an environmental tax. We hope to reach an agreement with Oman on the matter soon. So, so the because President Trump keeps saying there's not going to be a toll. There's no toll. They can't have it. They're not going to have control of it. And Iran says, "Yeah, no problem.

[00:14:13]There's no toll. It's an environmental tax." Uh, apparently there's some uh international law of the sea that says you can't charge uh a toll for international waterways, etc. and a portion of the uh the straight of Hormuz especially that narrow point goes out a pretty good amount from Oman and from uh Iran uh that cover a good portion but there is still international waterways in between by every account. So in to get around that they just wordsmith I don't know I guess they've been paying attention to President Trump and they said if he could just change the meaning of words I guess we can too. Bottom line is they will say they remain retain complete control. Now earlier today on uh on Arabic uh English language news, Professor Morandi went on to give a little bit more depth of exactly what the Iranian side is saying about the straight of Hormuz. The Americans wanted the the straight of Hormos to return to normal. Iran did not accept that. Iran said it will not return to normal. What will return to normal is the number of ships that pass through and Iran will maintain control of the strait. That's the Iranians have said that that is not something that it will uh accept to negotiate with the United States. This is something between Iran and Oman. Uh the issue of fees, the issue of uh the security of this trade that is not for negotiations.

[00:15:38]>> So that's a pretty categorical statement and that's something that the Iranian side has been saying from the beginning.

[00:15:43]They say once we had this, we never had this kind of leverage in the first 47 years and we are not. He's he has told me many times and by the way, Professor Morandi will be back on the show this week. Looking forward to that uh as always to get the view from the Iranian side. Whatever whether we may think it's good, bad or ugly or right or wrong, we will always listen to both sides to find out what is the truth here and where is the possibility for mutual agreement to get this war over with permanently because we really really need that.

[00:16:14]That'll be coming later in the week. U I I do want to show you a couple things here. This this is part of the reason why uh President Trump says over and over, I'm in no hurry. He said that again this weekend. I got all the time in the world. I'm not worried about anything. Um, he might want to start he might want to start worrying about some things because uh this is from um Art Art Burman who is an oil industry expert whom I know we may have him on the show if we can if we can manage that pretty soon. But he has uh is really a decadesl long expert in the oil industry and uh he says listen Iran's negotiating this is today Iran's negotiating position has never been stronger in 47 years. its leveraged compounds every day because oil inventories continue to drop. Europe will be at tank bottom in a month. The US will in July if Hormuz open tomorrow, this is so important. It would still take six months, six months before things stopped getting worse. Not not that in six months things would be better and then we'd be back to normal from the time that the deal is made, but then it will stop getting worse. It will finally stabilize. That's how long it will take to unwind this just to stop the damage. But you see there that look European storage is going to come is going to start tanking out in about a month and then the US will uh about a month after that. So one of the reasons why the price of oil has been able to be manipulated so easily is because all the flow that has stopped coming out of the straight of Hormuz is mitigated by the release of strategic petroleum and other storage in places all around the world.

[00:17:51]you see now then everybody's is sucking that down. So that minimizes the loss of I think it's about 12 million net barrels of oil per day from uh all the sources that's lost on the global market. And so that is that even with these SPR releases it's still not enough to equal 12 but it mitigates the damage such that the price of barrel has gone from I think it was 65 67 something like that before the war up to hovering between I think this morning it was 91 last I looked and 100 which has been kind of bouncing around there. So, it's still more even with that delta, you see it still is causing the the price of oil to be considerably higher than it was before. But once those SPRs run out, if the straight is not open, if we haven't even begun the process of unwinding that, then the damage is going to start compounding. And according to most experts that we've had, some of which have been on our show, there's going to be a spike in the price. And then it's not just going to be up to a dollar and, you know, 20 30 cents per week going up.

[00:18:47]could be up 4575 cents in a week and continue to go north and then there's no there's no way to turn that back off once you've used up the SPRs your leverage on on to mitigating that price and you can't manipulate it when there's not oil you can manipulate the price when there's SPRs to release you can't do it in the other case here now I've told you already that and we've had uh uh Mike Adams on the show and his his assessment is that we've already got baked in some some starvation issues is coming in because again ken the the issues with uh the the fertilizers has not coming out that's you can't release fertilizer there's no SPR for fertilizers so that's a net net loss period and that's a huge impact on agriculture around the world and that problem is going to be manifest at harvest time later this year that's already baked in and he's concerned that the longer this goes it may get into the next planting season and then now you may have some starvation issues at some place around the world and every expert I've talked to said that that so far we've already baked in a recession.

[00:19:52]You're not going to be able to avoid that. But there was a an author on 60 Minutes last night and you see that book in the corner there. He wrote this and unfortunately we we can't show 60 Minutes for some reason. They always demonetize this but uh you can go back and watch that. Uh Andrew Ross Sorcin uh says that a massive crash is inevitable.

[00:20:13]And he was saying this by the way before the war started. this has only exacerbated that. So it's probably not just a recession. Now then he's saying even without the war that at some point a depression, a great depression rivaling 1929, a crash is coming was his his message last night. So if President Trump doesn't want to deal with that and wants to even hope that that gets pushed off or possibly mitigated, he's got to get the straight opened quickly. And let me just categorically say, you're not going to get it done with military. It's not possible. If it was possible, we would already have done it in the first 40 days. All these weirdos, by the way, we're going to do a show this afternoon, uh, probably around 3:30, I think. We're going to be looking at the American headwinds against a deal, uh, that Trump has to fight inside his own house.

[00:21:07]Forget about what the Iranian side is going to do, that are begging and lusting to go back to the war. We're going to talk about that this afternoon.

[00:21:14]But they're wrong. There's no military solution to this. And if he tries, then Iran has already stated that they're going to destroy oil infrastructure throughout the Gulf. And then it's almost like the floodgates for a depression will open up. So President Trump can't go down that path. He's going to have to go down a path of uh ne some kind of negotiated settlement or the just the walk away theory. And with all this contradiction here, I wanted to bring on uh the a friend of mine and and a guest we've had on before uh Rajan Menan G, if you can bring him. There he is. Uh who's currently a professor emirus of international relations at the City College of New York and a very well-connected person who knows all the stuff and he's actually got a piece out.

[00:21:57]Uh Raj Raj, I think it's this morning, right? Uh that you have something >> Morning's Guardian. Yes. have here.

[00:22:06]>> Uh, yep. There it is right there. Yep.

[00:22:08]That's out this morning. Each side spins a different story about the US Iran peace talks, but Thrron may have the last word. Uh, what can what is what do you reveal in this this article here and and what do you make about this spin that each side is telling us and how is that going to get this to a situation where we can get the straight of horror moves back open?

[00:22:27]>> Right. So, my read Danny is that the Iranians have long since uh stopped taking President Trump's threat to use force seriously.

[00:22:35]>> Um Raj, I'm sorry. There's there's something uh it sounds like you're in a in a bottom of a cave.

[00:22:41]>> You hear me now?

[00:22:43]>> Uh Gary, you got any ideas here? Sorry about this, folks. We we get the audio here fixed up. It sounds like you're muffled like your hands over your >> Hold on one second.

[00:22:55]>> Sorry. We'll get we'll get back on that in just a second. Uh Raj, while you're trying to do that, Gary, I want to roll one more time. This this is what foreign ministry spokesman has to say this morning about what Iran is willing to do.

[00:23:07]>> Under the current circumstances, we have not planned any trip to Pakistan, nor any visit by a Pakistani delegation to Iran.

[00:23:17]>> The focus of the negotiations is on ending the war. At this stage, we are not discussing the details of the nuclear issue. It is true that we have concluded a large part of the topics under discussion. However, no one can claim that this means an agreement is imminent. We have not set a schedule or specific timeline for finalizing.

[00:23:39]Certainly, as the Islamic Republic of Iran, we will spare no effort to reach a result as soon as possible.

[00:23:48]>> And yeah, so there he is just saying, listen, uh we're a long way from doing anything, but they do want to have a negotiated settlement. What do you say to that?

[00:23:56]>> Sorry, Danny. Can you hear me now?

[00:23:59]>> Uh, unfortunately, it's the same. I I guess we may have to Can you just unplug the mic and maybe just go with what's on your laptop there possibly?

[00:24:06]>> Uh, yeah, sure.

[00:24:15]>> Sorry about that, folks. Um, yeah, we'll get we'll get that in just a second. One one last >> That's the same actually. It's no different at all. Uh maybe can you try going out and coming back in uh and see if that does it with the with the other microphone. And in the meantime, there's one other soundbite here I wanted to show. Uh this is from uh one of the uh the military experts, I'm sorry, military advisers to the Supreme Leader in Iran this morning. he issued, I think it was actually last night, uh that he issued a bit of a warning, but also a bit of a hope to what happens if we don't get a negotiated settlement, but that he still wants one.

[00:24:56]>> About negotiation, the Islamic Republic has put the least costly path before you. The Islamic Republic is telling you that if you continue the war, we will make the American people miserable and the American economy miserable. Iran is here for a fair negotiation with you.

[00:25:10]So, look, they they want a negotiated end, but they're saying that if this goes back to war, and of course, any time this could go back to conflict. Uh there's there's we know from from many of our sources on the ground in the Middle East that the US has been locked and loaded for a long time that the in Israel any time the war order could have been given. And President Trump himself claimed that last Tuesday there was they were ready to go and he was going to give the order uh and then he didn't.

[00:25:37]And then I was told by some others that this past weekend again they had all they had all but made the decision and then they unmade it at the last minute.

[00:25:46]The Iranian side is saying if you do all these things I kept warning you about and he reiterated here we're going to strike back in ways that you won't lack.

[00:25:54]That'll be much more damaging but and then he ended on a positive note. We will have a negotiated settlement as long as there's something fair. And again Iran is willing to give something in order to get something. So, let's see if we have Raj back with us here. See if that's >> Well, I I guess we're just gonna have to go with that there. So, it's it's about like it was, but uh we can't hear you.

[00:26:15]So, there's there's that.

[00:26:16]>> Okay. Sorry. Bane of my existence.

[00:26:21]>> So, is as best you can. I think we really can't hear him at all. It's it's not >> Yeah, it's that bad. It's that bad.

[00:26:28]>> Okay.

[00:26:29]>> Anything I can do with the settings, Gary?

[00:26:32]>> I have my mic plugged in. show this.

[00:26:35]>> It's It's on your end, Rajan. I don't know how I could um assist you, unfortunately.

[00:26:40]>> Okay. Okay. Hold on. Okay. We may have to do this another time then.

[00:26:44]>> Yeah. Okay. Well, awfully sorry about that. Um well, we'll look forward to get that back. Uh awfully sorry, folks. Uh but there there was Russian men in back.

[00:26:55]G, if you can put that headline back up on there again, though, will I do at least want to take a look at uh one of the things he had written there because I thought it was really important here.

[00:27:03]Um, if you can scroll up just a little bit there. He said, "The twist uh and the turns uh in the saga are bewildering, but Donald Trump appears to have the cards stacked against him." And and that's kind of what we're talking about here. The the United States has so much power and and again, when you look at it on a spreadsheet, we're overwhelming more than they do. I mean, we spent last year, this last fiscal year, something around a trillion dollars on our defense budget. They had maybe 12, 13 billion, something like that. Just a fraction of what we had.

[00:27:36]Uh, their air force was antiquated. They only had a few aircraft. Apparently, they not apparently, they do still have some. They actually have flown some sorties that actually hit one of our bases early on in this. Most of them they keep underground so that they can't be hit, but they also can't fly in there. If they do, they can they can get knocked down. Their their most of their normal surface fleet, 158 ships, has been uh destroyed across the board. So, they've suffered a lot of damage, but they have the things that matter for this war. And that's what needs to understand. Wars are not fought on spreadsheets. If they were, we would have won the Vietnam War. If they were, we would have won the Afghanistan war.

[00:28:16]If they were, we would have won the Iraqi the insurgency war which kind of just petered away and let and then we ended up just leaving and saying, "All right, you know, y'all figured out." We did the whole sons of uh uh the the one with the Petraeus did there about, "Hey, how about we just pay you to go after these guys, the the Shia, instead of us." And then we worked together with them and that turned out to to end that conflict there. Same situation here, except it's it's actually not the same.

[00:28:46]It's it's worse from our perspective because the Taliban basically just had time. Their their their path along with the North Vietnamese during the Vietnam War was to just drain us of our resources and our our interests. And of course, we're thousands of miles away.

[00:29:00]There was no self-evident security need of the United States. And then they just kind of, you know, death by a thousand cuffs just nickel and dimed it. The Taliban, they couldn't fight a conventional fight with this. They had to do the roadside bombs and just ambushes, etc. and then they just wore us out over 20 years and it was about a decade in the Vietnam War. This one is different because Iran does have the capability of striking and striking hard against our interests and defensively they have these whole mountain ranges a series of mountain ranges on their entire western border which makes them nearly impervious. The probably the reason why we we tried to win this from the air only and not from a ground force because we realized we looked at a map and we said, "Hey, this is never going to work." We said, "Oh, you know what?

[00:29:49]When you look at Oh, snap. Yeah. You look at Iraq on the left hand side there. You see all that green? That's not actually underbrush. That that's elevation. And it's nice and flat. And I can tell you with firsthand experience because I drove up a lot of that and I drove around much more of it. Uh but you see Iran there is just these whole the whole western side the entire western side is covered. You see a majority of the country is covered in these all around. There's a plane there in the middle around ter just south of tan tan itself snug uh nestles up into those mountains. Um but you see that there's no path to to invade the country that you can take. There's no path in there.

[00:30:27]So we we don't have that option. So we couldn't do that. So, we tried to do something that was even less possible because Iran took those same mountain ranges, these same thick granite, burrowed under over about a 20-year period, and they built these missile cities underneath, etc. that are nearly impervious to being taken out from any kind of bombs, even nuclear weapons.

[00:30:49]Some of them apparently are strong enough to even endure a nuclear blast.

[00:30:53]So, you can't win it with air only. You can't even make a possibility do it on the ground. then there's no military solution, folks. This is not that hard.

[00:31:03]It's not that hard to see. But that's that's where we are these days. And so, President Trump has these issues that we just told you about here. There is some real clock ticking here. And and you know, the longer the clock ticks, the worse it's going to come here. But from right now that you're at a recession here, here you're at a depression. And President Trump, I I I don't think that he understands this yet.

[00:31:30]They say that he's really good at markets, but uh he's good at looking at the ind indicators today. What is the market doing today? What can I say to adjust it? He's he's just got these myopic blinders on that all he looks at the market today. How can me and my rich friends benefit today? How can I make it look good for my supporters so that they keep supporting me today? Maybe he's looking as far as November, but I even if he does that, even his closest allies can tell him it's going to be a blood bath, man. You're gonna you're going to get, you know, slaughtered. It's either going to be a blue wave or a blue tsunami. No, it's probably one of those two. There's no scenario where especially the House of Representatives stays in Republican hands. I mean, it was razor thin margin as it is. You're certainly not going to get that as unpopular as he is.

[00:32:19]But if you have a recession rolling in and if you have a if you try if you listen to the likes of Lindsey Graham and at Hall and you try to go back, you're going to have oil prices way higher than they are now. And you can't manipulate those. And you also can't manipulate the price of gasoline, the price of diesel, and therefore everything else in America that's dependent upon transportation to get them to market any other product or to produce food, etc. That's why he's got to do what it takes right now to get this war off the table while he still can.

[00:32:55]If he doesn't do the walk away theory and he does the bombs away plan instead, all those bad things I said are essentially guaranteed to get profoundly worse. All of them. and and it's going to be a depression in in my estimation, my assessment from the fundamentals, not even and I hadn't even certainly seen this book, but just from the fundamentals I can seen, it is as close to a guarantee of a depression as you can get. If you bomb if you bomb Iran and then they hit the oil infrastructure this just it's just a mathematical calculation. You don't have enough energy to be able to keep the economy going where it was. You you can't even maintain it. Forget about growth. it's going to be a drop of about 10% and that equals a depression. So the only way President Trump can get that is to either do the walk away or to have a negotiated terms and and Iran is willing to do that. But we're going to have to give something to get something. So he's going to have to do something he has never done in office and that's to have a negotiation to where we actually negotiate. We give and we get and and the terms that we would be able to get aren't good. That's the problem. That's why I've always said I don't think that he can have a negotiated settlement that Iran would agree to because that would necessitate him accepting something that they want and giving them something.

[00:34:15]Whether it's sanctions relief, whether it's release of the frozen funds, leaving them in control of the straight of Hormuz, whether it's a toll or a tax, whatever the word you want to use, everyone will see that. And then of course there's the issue of Iran, of Israel. didn't even mention that yet.

[00:34:29]But the whole issue there, one of the things that uh I think in that first one we put up here uh where the uh the Iranian side said that uh the end of the war on all fronts. The end of the war on all fronts that primarily means Lebanon and Israel. We've seen the last time there was when we tried to have the first part of the ceasefire it was also supposed to include Lebanon. And Israel said, "Oh, how about this? How about we have the biggest bombing we've ever had in Lebanon?" uh to just reinforce we ain't doing that now. Subsequently, they went to a limited it's quasi ceasefire.

[00:35:05]They they apparently didn't hit Beirut, but they are still hitting other places in there and they always claim self-defense, whatever. They've invaded the country. So that you you've forfeited that right to claim that anyway. But the question is it that basically gives Israel a veto. Will they play it and say we're not going to stop fighting in Lebanon? Remember, they got their troops on the ground in Lebanon.

[00:35:26]So they would have to withdraw back to their side to to make that into a ceasefire on all fronts or at least they would have to to go silent on the guns and certainly they don't want to do this. There's a big fight inside Israel inside Netanyahu's inner circle that are screaming to expand the war in Lebanon.

[00:35:45]So what if they keep going down that path? Meaning that even if the US and Iran could come to an agreement on everything, Iran is not budging on that ceasefire on all fronts. That was their first point that they made there. So if Israel vetos that and says, "Nope, we're going to keep fighting." Will Trump just walk away? He never has so far. But you see all of the roadblocks and all the headwinds against this. That's why we're in such a difficult time. And it it seems that he's likely aware that what going back and bombing is going to mean for the economy. So it seems like he wouldn't do that. But he's also undercutting his own path to getting the war off the table.

[00:36:25]So, we remain in this dangerous situation to where ration and logic aren't going to be what makes the deal here. If it was, we would already have either walked away or made a negotiated settlement on the best terms we could get. But he could also do the irrational. Doesn't make any sense. It would harm him. It would harm our country. It would harm his political standing. It would harm everything. And he still might do it. That's the danger because it's not rational. We'll have to wait and see it's going to work out.

[00:36:53]We'll have to wait and see how the Israeli side is. We're going to be back this afternoon though and show you if the Israeli side has some headwinds in that. We'll talk a little bit more about that this afternoon as well, but I'm going to show you the headwinds he's got in his own party and how hard it is for him to do the right thing or even exercise the desires that he has without all this extra headwind. We'll see you then at 3:30 and on the Daniel Davis Deep Dive. You know, I don't try to talk you into buying gold or tell you how to run your stock portfolio, but there is a way you can help us. Subscribe, hit that like button, and share this with somebody you love.