The Iran War Has No Victory - Only Consequences

Added: 2026-05-16

[00:00:00]Well, folks, I think it's pretty obvious at this point that the United States and Iran are in a stalemate.

[00:00:07]I guess that's one way to put it. That's the diplomatic way to put it. That's the way the analyst and the pundits on cable news television would put it.

[00:00:18]There's also another way to say it.

[00:00:22]Another way to say it is that Donald Trump is trapped, painted into a corner of his own making.

[00:00:31]There's no version of this war that ends well for him or for the United States or most importantly the global economy.

[00:00:42]Every path forward is worse than the path we're already on. That's where we are.

[00:00:50]And the path we're on is already catastrophic. It really is. Let me walk you through this trap because once you see it clearly, you understand why this is getting really bad and why it's going to drag on and why the damage is going to keep just accumulating.

[00:01:17]Option one, fullcale invasion of Iran.

[00:01:23]This is the option that your Mark Levens, your Lindsey Grahams, the Hawks, you know, they keep talking about. Take out the regime, open the straight by force, replace the government with something more amunable to American interests, a decisive military action.

[00:01:50]And that's insane. Let's let's be honest.

[00:01:54]Iran is not Iraq.

[00:01:58]It's not Afghanistan. It's a country of 90 million people, roughly the size of Alaska.

[00:02:06]Has a mountainous terrain that has stymied every empire that has ever tried ever tried to conquer it. Like the Romans couldn't do it. Okay. The Ottomans couldn't control it. The British, the Russians, you know, they spent the 19th century trying to dominate it and they never succeeded.

[00:02:31]To invade Iran would require somewhere, I don't know, half a million to a million American troops. We don't have them.

[00:02:42]We don't have them. The all volunteer force isn't sized for that.

[00:02:48]That would require a draft. We're not going to do that.

[00:02:52]American kids want to fight a ground war in Persia. No, not going to happen.

[00:03:00]And the cost, who knows what, two or three trillion dollars over what, 20 years? an Iran war would just it's it's not even something we can consider honestly. It it's really not. Of course, Donald Trump is the president. So, but what would you get for all that? A failed state with 90 million traumatized surviv uh survivors and a refugee crisis that would dwarf anything we've ever seen in history.

[00:03:37]Come on.

[00:03:38]There's no military victory available in Iran. It's simply not a thing. And the Pentagon knows this.

[00:03:47]Every serious military planner understands this. The only people who don't know this are the people who learned everything they know about Iran from cable news.

[00:04:00]And option two is to negotiate a deal, which was always the smart play.

[00:04:08]always.

[00:04:10]The whole point of the Iran nuclear deal in 2015, the JCPOA was to give Iran enough economic relief to make the costs of bad behavior outweigh the benefits.

[00:04:26]No, it was not perfect. Yes, it had problems, but it worked.

[00:04:33]Iran was complying.

[00:04:37]nuclear weapon development was stopped and then Donald Trump tore it up in 2018 for no other reason than it had Obama's name on it.

[00:04:51]And now here we are eight years later.

[00:04:54]Iran's closer to a bomb than they've ever been.

[00:04:58]The straight is closed. Oil's over $100.

[00:05:02]We've lost American servicemen and women. And the negotiating position we're in now is significantly worse than one we walked away from.

[00:05:15]That's what I mean when I say he painted himself into this corner.

[00:05:20]Now, a new deal is theoretically possible, but here's the problem. Iran has no reason to trust any agreement we make whatsoever. Why would they? We torn up the the deal we made with them.

[00:05:34]We've assassinated their generals. We've struck their territory. We've, you know, absorbed their attacks without retaliating in proportion.

[00:05:46]From their perspective, any concession they make is unilateral. Any commitment we make is conditional on the next election.

[00:06:00]So even some negotiated deal, assuming we could even get one, leaves us in a permanently unstable position as Iran rebuilds.

[00:06:12]The straight reopens with conditions.

[00:06:16]Oil prices ease, but they don't return to pre-war levels. As you keep getting told, that's not a thing. We're back to managing a chronic crisis instead of solving a problem.

[00:06:29]And option three is where we are right now. Like this somewhat indefinite stalemate.

[00:06:37]And if we don't do something, this is where we're going to stay because this indefinite stalemate is the least bad option from the administration's perspective.

[00:06:48]No invasion, no surrender, just slow grinding, expensive, you know, deterioration of the status quo.

[00:06:59]But what does that do to the global economy?

[00:07:06]This oil over $100 is not a spike. The longer it stays there, it will become a new baseline. Every business that runs on energy, which is every business, will have to adjust its cost structure.

[00:07:21]Those costs get passed through to customers.

[00:07:25]inflation which was much lower before this up to 3.8% 8%. Now those costs get passed on to us.

[00:07:40]Central banks face impossible choices. Are you know are we are we looking at an interest rate increase soon? There's talk of that.

[00:07:56]What happens if like is that going to crush our little bit of economic growth we have when that occurs?

[00:08:05]We're going to hold rates and just watch prices spiral out of control.

[00:08:12]Developing nations are going to get totally crushed the worst. you know, countries in Africa and Asia, Latin America, they were already struggling with debt and food insecurity and now they have these energy costs. They they can't afford they can't absorb like they can't.

[00:08:35]This is going to cause things that we aren't seeing yet.

[00:08:40]I'm talking about things like famines.

[00:08:47]We're going to see political instability in countries around the world. We're going to see migrations potentially on a scale that will reshape politics of developed nations.

[00:09:04]Europe is already an energy vulnerable, you know, state pretty much after losing Russian gas. It's getting hit again.

[00:09:14]German manufacturing, the engine of the European economy, it's going to become largely uncompetitive.

[00:09:26]China, which was already managing a real estate crisis, if you remember when this started, and also a demographic collapse. It's going to get squeezed by higher input cost.

[00:09:38]And every commodity it imports.

[00:09:42]And we sit here, the United States, export more fuel at higher prices, which makes the oil companies very rich. Good for them. But it's making us pay more.

[00:09:52]We're at the pump. We're paying, we're already paying more at the grocery store, more on our utility bills, more for everything.

[00:10:02]The wealth transfer of the because of this war is going to be staggering from working people and families to energy multinationals.

[00:10:15]This is what a stalemate cost.

[00:10:19]Not war, not victory, just this stalemate.

[00:10:25]And the longer it goes on, the more damage becomes permanent.

[00:10:31]Trade relationships permanently damaged and realigned. Energy infrastructure getting built around some assumption that the Middle East is unstable.

[00:10:44]Capital flows are going to shift around the world.

[00:10:52]By the time anyone admits that this war is pretty much unwinable and starts the serious work of ending it, it's going to be far too late. The world will already be a different place.

[00:11:08]Trump can't invade. He They're not negotiating. He can't admit defeat. So, he's just going to stay trapped.

[00:11:17]He said today he didn't care or think about how it hurt the finances of the American family. He literally said that this is so this is going to drag on and the bills are going to come due and the damage is going to compound and we're going to sit here watching a president who for whatever reason thinks he's the world's greatest dealmaker and he's going to discover that not all problems can be tweeted away.

[00:11:55]The folly isn't just going into Iran.

[00:12:01]It's really pretending that we have some way out.

[00:12:05]That's the folly.

[00:12:07]and the lie that we're told every day that everything's going to be fine.

[00:12:16]Everything we're seeing now, everything we've seen for the last few weeks, and everything we're going to see over the next at least a year are all reasons why every president that was presented with this scenario said no.

[00:12:42]You're going to see it. You're going to be reminded of it every day.

[00:12:46]And this is the consequences of electing a This is the consequences of electing a who thinks of himself as such a great person who thinks so much of himself that he just thinks he can defeat anyone, thinks he can end any war, walks around talk, ask Donald Trump to name one of the eight wars he's supposedly ended. Ask him.

[00:13:17]He's entirely full of entirely.

[00:13:27]He's one of those people that tried to fake it until they made it. Except he had everything handed to him, so he had already made it, but he just kept faking it because he wanted you to believe that he earned it. That's who Donald Trump is.

[00:13:45]Folks, we had an amazing guest on the American Power podcast that is available today, right now.

[00:13:56]I didn't know much about this guy.

[00:13:59]The hour I spent with this man, I was really impressed. It's Congressman Adam Smith from Washington, and he sat down with us on the American Power podcast.

[00:14:12]things I agreed with him on, some things I didn't agree with him on. didn't really care because this was the first time in a very long time that I spent any time with a politician where it was clear to me that they were being honest and genuine and that their opinions were well thought out and researched and not writing some political party line.

[00:14:42]He's a Democrat who calls out Democrats and Republicans both.

[00:14:48]Adam Smith from Washington on the American Power podcast.

[00:14:54]It's a fantastic interview. There are some fireworks.

[00:15:01]There are some fireworks. It got I'd say it got a little heated at times, but I have an enormous amount of respect for that man. Like I said, didn't know much about him before he came on, but uh he's he's a solid guy and I like him.

[00:15:24]He's a solid guy and it's it's going to be uh easily our best episode of our podcast yet. Hands down.

[00:15:38]Easily the best guest we could have had to start off with our first guest. Big fan of that guy. Please go check it out.

[00:15:47]Apple, Spotify, anywhere you can find podcast.

[00:15:52]also on the uh find out media YouTube page.

[00:15:58]Otherwise, let me know your thoughts in the comments section. I really appreciate my followers and subscribers so much. Please like, follow, and share.

[00:16:06]Hope you guys have a great week. Thanks.