Did Trump Surrender to Iran? | Haviv Rettig Gur

[00:00:00]Hava Tiger, thank you so much for being here.

[00:00:02]>> It's great to be here. Thanks for having me.

[00:00:04]>> Well, now Bloomberg, New York Times, many other outlets have published what are essentially drafts of this 14-point memorandum of understanding between the US and Iran, notably Israel, not a co-signatory in all of this, which we'll get into.

[00:00:21]These copies in circulation more or less the same. Can you summarize what's in them?

[00:00:28]Yes, there are 14 points. Um, and it's actually difficult to summarize because um there's a lot of debates over what they mean. They appear to be uh points drawn up between the United States and Iran last year um ahead of the June war, never mind, you know, the February war.

[00:00:45]And um they they articulate a few things that many people say don't matter much and then the other things that do matter much. For example, uh there's a $300 billion reconstruction fund. Um, most of the damage done in Iran is damage to military things. And so is the reconstruction fund, what does reconstruction mean? What $300 billion to what? Rebuild Iranian military assets. Um, there is uh a commitment by Iran itself uh some kind of verbal commitment. It's it's written, but it's just written as a commitment not to pursue nuclear weapons, not to acquire nuclear weapons either, which appears to connect somehow to reports that Iran was considering or or feeling out buying a nuke, a fully made nuke, cuz it's having so much trouble producing nukes from North Korea. Um, I think the core piece of it is Trump needs this deal to break the bottleneck at the Straight of Hormuz, the Iranian blockade on global oil shipments. and not just oil shipments, many other many other pieces of the global supply chains for technology and things like that. And uh Iran commits early early on within the first 30 days uh to allow shipping through the straight of Hermuz. The United States commits not to attack Iran. Um the both countries commit not to um involve themselves in the internal affairs of each other, which is an American commitment not to try to topple the regime in case that we see renewed mass protest the way we saw in January.

[00:02:12]It is a complete climb down from war to a ceasefire that seems to be in the agreement in the memorandum of understanding um very very comprehensive and it commits the United States over the next 60 days after the signing to negotiating a more significant and detailed and technical uh nuclear non-prololiferation you know oversight and and what what will be the limits on Iran's nuclear program and things like that. It does not limit Iran's ballistic missile program and the president has said specifically what am I going to limit the ballistic missile program there other their neighbors all have ballistic missiles I don't feel I have the right to do that um Trump has said that this is a product of Iran essentially winning the staring contest the mutual blockade contest in the straight of hormuz um he said that explicitly at the G7 this week um and so you know the deal has come uh under some very very intense criticism by a lot of people who were pointing out that a lot of American intelligence assessments have told us that another month, another two months, maybe 3 to 6 months, depending on which intelligence assessment you believe, the Iranian economy would bottom out uh from under the regime, it would be unable to pay the IRGC and its forces and it may have fallen there. There was some possibility. You just have to have that staring contest. You have to have that power. All war is a contest of wills and the United States didn't have the will.

[00:03:35]Um the response by Trump has been very explicit. In four weeks he said we're going to run out of oil and uh he doesn't want to go into the midterms with extremely high oil prices. Uh that would have hurt the Republicans and so he pulled back. That's that's essentially the heart and soul and core of the deal.

[00:03:52]>> Theou starts in the first paragraph by saying it will end all fronts of the war including Lebanon. A lot of critics were concerned by linking Lebanon and the fight against Hezbollah into this memorandum.

[00:04:06]Practically, what does this mean for Israel? also if you can go a little bit deeper on some of the confusion on if this means no strikes, if this means a total withdrawal out of southern Lebanon and how you have interpreted the language >> in the day or so since we've um had access to the text of this agreement. Um we should also say uh the English and and Persian versions are different. The English version says that the sides will respect including respecting the sovereignty of Lebanon. the Persian side said ensure or guarantee the uh sovereignty of Lebanon. That's much stronger language. Um if the if the whole point of it is to demand the Israelis withdrawal, which is it and what does it all mean? Over the last 10 hours or so, the Israeli media has had multiple reports from Israeli officials that there is tremendous tension between Netanyahu and Trump. Trump has explicitly said, "You have to pull out of Lebanon." Netanyahu has explicitly refused and said we are not party to this agreement and you know will just be rearmed. The Iranians have already announced plans publicly uh to rearmah and rebuildah on the Israeli border and surrendering the Israeli border space uh to an organization that did nothing for 20 years on that border but planned an invasion on a scale of October 7 but roughly five-fold and had massive tunnel networks and uh and and you know massive arsenals of rockets and drones uh is something that's anathema to the Israelis is something that is really quite significant to the Israelis. The Trump administration apparently, according to Israeli sources, off record to the Israeli press in leaks, nobody said this aloud in public with their face on it, but um apparently the Trump administration has told the Israelis this isn't negotiable. We're giving the Iranians everything they want cuz the oil must flow immediately. And that's me paraphrasing. That is not necessarily the sentence, but that's basically the message to the Israelis. And therefore, uh, no, Israel actually is being told by the Americans, if you don't pull out, we're going to, uh, stop, uh, missile shipments. We're also going to potentially not actually sell any weapon systems and deacto place you under an arms embargo if you choose to escalate this. This is not confirmed by the White House. This is not confirmed by Israelis. These are leaks in mainstream Israeli press. Um, they are at the very least a sign that the Israelis believe that the Americans are going to turn the screws. And so we should take that um linkage that theou makes between Iran and its proxyah which to my knowledge is the first time in the history of uh Iran of the Islamic Republic of Iran that the United States in some formal way recognizes some kind of legitimacy in Iran maintaining a non-state militia in Lebanon bent on Israel's destruction. um which again colors this agreement in the eyes of the Israelis and the you know Gulf states.

[00:07:04]Um uh so yes, it's a very significant piece that little mention of Lebanon at the beginning apparently.

[00:07:12]>> What does it mean for there to be so much daylight between two historical allies? How do you think Hezbollah might try to exploit that? And not to put too many questions into one question, just as like a baseline, how are Israelis feeling about the fracture, if I could call it that, between Israeli interests and I mean essentially I mean and you'll correct me if I'm wrong here tens of thousands if not more Israelis have been moved off the northern border because of repeated uh fire from Hezbollah. So it's it's not exactly like thisou goes up and Hezbollah decides that they have new ideological aspirations here. I mean what's the general sentiment?

[00:07:54]Half of the town of Mitula in the northern border is demolished from steady barges of rockets over three years. Umaha chose to enter the war again and again and again. They fired the first rockets and often fired for months before any Israeli response three times, three distinct times. But each of those three times eventually an Israeli response came. And the Israeli response this time is a response that says everyah infrastructure in South Lebanon, including vast tunnel systems under villages, uh are actually going to be demolished. We're actually going to make the border safe. Um and now the Americans are saying that that whole thing is over. You in fact, it's not just we're not going to, you know, fight alongside you. We're going to sign an agreement with Iran, but not the Americans actually saying you are not permitted to fight without our permission.

[00:08:45]And that is not going over well.

[00:08:48]Netanyahu has made his fundamental political case in the coming elections which are coming in October. um as his him him being distinguished from the rest of the candidates for prime minister who are trying to replace him um by the fact that he is very close to the Americans, very close to Trump can obtain from them these extraordinary alliances and do extraordinary things on the regional stage against enemies who even today declared that they plan to destroy Israel. Khalibah the said so you know in in uh in the Iranian parliament and Kani is Khani the head of the Kuds force of the IRGC who which which makes him the man in the Iranian security establishment whose literal job is the destruction of Israel that's the job on his right on on on the little sign on his door um have all said right we're going to liberate Jerusalem and we're going back to this war and we're going to rehabilitate so in Israel it's going over very very uh badly and I think It's also already assigned in the polls. Netanyahu, by the way, has been stuttering and quiet and not responding. He did a very brief um a very brief uh press statement yesterday.

[00:10:00]Took a few questions from reporters. Um and basically told Israelis, "Sometimes we fight with the Americans, but we're still close allies and friends." uh and um and then made the statement that uh as long as I'm prime minister, Iran won't have a nuclear weapon, which is has become sort of court his re-election campaign. I think it's a weak argument, especially when you no longer have Trump apparently working alongside you. And also, it's the argument, you know, presumably Netanyahu is mortal. We are all mortal. Uh so as long as he's prime minister and Iran doesn't have a nuke is is not as comforting as as he maybe is trying to convey that he can. Um I'll say one last thing. Uh you know everybody has argued has understood I have argued in the pages of the free press that the Israeli American wars on Iran are uh overlap tremendously. I use the the idea of 80%.

[00:10:57]The ven diagram of their miss of their goals their missions overlap by 80%.

[00:11:02]Eventually that overlap will be completed and their interests will dramatically diverge and then America will pull back and Israel will be on its own. I did not grasp and I don't know anyone who did the scale of that that American pullback would mean that Israel itself would be reigned in if Israel can't even findah. If if a response of course will test they always test these things. If they launch drones into Israel and Israel responds and that has to get the okay of the Americans, um then the American Israeli relationship has become has has pivoted very quickly from a tremendous asset to Israel to a serious liability, a serious at least in the short-term liability.

[00:11:47]All of that might change come November.

[00:11:49]The election comes, the election goes, Trump now has a free hand, doesn't have that hanging over him. Maybe they're they're going to be willing to then stare down the Iranians. It's not at all clear from this agreement that Iran could possibly fulfill its side of the agreement. Uh, Vice President Vance has made this point. If they dismantle the nuclear weapons program, then they will get u, you know, the huge windfall of money and cash that that the agreement talks about. Maybe, you know, the administration officials have also been talking since then about how they're going to have some enrichment and they're going to have some ballistic missiles and they're going to have some here and some there and everybody's just asking an administration that publicly declares that they were stared down and had to retreat will be the one to negotiate strong, you know, oversight mechanisms over the nuclear program, will be the one to negotiate strong checks before advancing to next sanctions relief. Um, a lot of questions are up in the air. a lot a lot of skepticism from Israel and if this American agreement limits Israel in fundamental ways from acting in the region it's a whole new relationship in a sense.

[00:12:55]>> Well, let's go deeper on some of those points and some of those concerns.

[00:12:59]The overhead concern, as you mentioned, is this potential cash injection back into the regime which can come by way of a few different mechanisms. One of them as simple as this ambiguity around after the 60-day window, will there be the opportunity for Iran to implement a toll? Right now, I think the language is something along the lines of commercial vessels should have no charge for 60 days. So, after 60 days, I don't know, maybe, you know, beyond that, one thing that's being hotly debated right now is, uh, I believe it was paragraph 10 that indicates that the country will partially relax sanctions on Iran's oil industry.

[00:13:35]that one presumably bigger more implications you know talk us through the concern there why would they give up that leverage point at the onset >> the regime is in very bad shape it hasn't been able to sell oil even to people buying sanctioned oil mainly China uh because of the American counter blockade after the Iranians imposed their blockade and uh it's just desperate for cash. Um, and it does make sense if you're going to have a ceasefire and the condition on the on you know for the Iranians is to open hormuz to shipping that they would also be able to ship oil through the straits.

[00:14:20]So that that does make sense. The big question is the scale and the speed. Um the Trump White House is going to have a hard time you know lifting mass sanctions at some point uh in the agreement. Uh it talks about um you know when a bunch of things have been agreed to. It talks about lifting of all sanctions. Well all sanctions includes human rights abuse sanctions, sanctions uh for terrorism, sanctions on all kinds of different institutions and financial institutions. Not all those sanctions are actually subject to the White House.

[00:14:51]They actually some of them would require approval of Congress. Um not something I'm an expert in. This is something that's been it's been reported in various places. Um, and so, you know, the the question isn't it's not a question of the fundamental direction of the agreement. The agreement essentially and Trump's behavior since and the administration's behavior since it was agreed to essentially is give Iran whatever it takes to get the oil flowing. The oil must flow. We're facing we can't have high gas prices in November. That's that's it. That's the beginning and end for the Trump administration. There is no other priority. And then the question is, well, how much, you know, until they've actually negotiated some kind of serious checks on the Iranian nuclear program, how much will Iran actually be able to pocket? I have no idea. And uh, you know, we've read three or four serious analyses and they all say different things. And so the the actual agreement seems to be so vague. It it is a page and a halfou, right? Obama's JCPOA was 160 pages of technical terms um that we reporters didn't completely know how to swim through. Um this is a page and a halfou that we reporters understand perfectly, but what it actually says is often so vague that we don't know what is serious, what is less serious. Uh some people have actually um rebuilt the 14 points by the timing. Well, this happens on day one. This happens on day 30. this happens. It turns out that day one is basically just free flowing of trade through Hormuz for everybody including the Iranians. Uh day 30 is a little bit more than that. Tens of billions may be released for to Iran.

[00:16:24]The hundreds of billions, the total opening of everything is left to a final agreement uh at the end of the process and that it's not at all clear that that could possibly happen.

[00:16:34]Well, the administration is obviously making the case that potential sanctions relief will hinge on their cooperation and performance with regard to their nuclear program. There's been um some walking back of the original points from for example Trump saying there can be no enrichment, zero enrichment to maybe a non-zero enrichment. He had this line um in a press conference where he was saying something to the extent of well you know other countries have a little bit so that they can do their energy program. It was like total uh 180 >> electricity.

[00:17:08]>> Yeah electricity I mean Marco Rubio looked less than pleased. I think that maybe an understatement even I >> I want to I mean just forgive me for the interruption. I I want to make a very simple point that people need to understand. You can have a nuclear program to produce the material you need for a medical research or you know for medical purposes. You need barium for certain kinds of medical tests and you can have a nuclear program for energy right to build nuclear energy nuclear electrical plants and you can have a nuclear program for weapons to build nuclear weapons. Those are radically different kinds of programs. They're vastly different in scale by orders of magnitude. The medical nuclear program is tiny. It's a single tiny facility.

[00:17:49]For a huge country, you don't need more than a tiny little facility. And an energy program has to be vast. It has to be multiple sites. It has to produce a lot of material and has to cover, you know, electrical grids. And a nuclear program is almost exactly in the middle in terms of scale and order of magnitude, right? It's it's basically right in the middle. Iran's nuclear program isn't the size, it isn't the type, it isn't the technologies installed, it's not seeking the levels of enrichment that have anything to do with electricity generation. There is only one possible thing that the that a program of that size, you know, shooting for that technology with that R&D program attached to it could possibly be building and that's weapons. So when Trump comes in and says, "Well, you know, uh Egypt now uh has been buying uh some nuclear energy facilities, you don't need to enrich for nuclear energy.

[00:18:47]You just buy the enriched uranium from a country that's already doing it under IAEA inspections. It is only a nuclear weapons program. Has only ever been a nuclear weapons program and would look radically different if it was anything else." It's not that Trump is saying, "Look, I can't get rid of all the enrichment. I can't send troops in to get out that enriched uranium, you know, reserve that they have that we didn't manage to bury completely. I can't do it. So, we're going to leave them with a little bit and we're going to essentially pay them off to allow inspections and not to build. That's the logic of the JCPOA of Obama. He'll be mocked by uh, you know, because he spent so many years mocking and and deriding the JCPOA. But that that could be that's a rational argument. Now, I might have a policy disagreement, but it's a rational argument for him to come in and say, "Look, you know, they might need nuclear energy." Uh, it's it's such a ridiculous um distraction.

[00:19:41]The only concern is that he might believe it and not know that there are differences and not, you know, what is he actually, was it just an excuse, throwaway comment that came to his head?

[00:19:51]Does he really did some Iranian or pro-Iranian faction or just anti-war faction that's so anti-war that they're they they carried water for the Iranian administration within the with the Iranian regime within the American administration because they're so desperate to end the war? Was some dynamic like that happening that leads him to conclude that there are legitimate reasons they would have a nuclear enrichment program capable of going all the way to weaponization grade enrichment? I I I that word electricity is not a good sign. It's not a good I don't know how to spin it any other way.

[00:20:24]You know, you can you can say he frontloaded everything he needs to get the oil flowing. He's not going to lose an election to to topple this regime.

[00:20:32]And in November, he's a free agent and he can go back to doing whatever he wants. You can argue that and many many of his supporters are arguing that and that's that's fine. That might be what he's doing. He's a man who's constantly bluffing. He's he's he doesn't quite lie. He bluffs. He bluffs his way. It's it's a fundamental part of how he understands negotiation and politics and policy. Fine. Don't say it's electricity if you know you make us suspect that you don't understand what's happening to go into the policy or what we know about the policy as indicated by theou. I mean, one of the only technical points it provides is that there will be some sort of down blending um process that will happen to dilute what they already have versus uh some of the early ideas to try to put, you know, a commando unit or American troops in on the ground to take out the material or negotiate a path for Iran to give up the material. I mean, that seems totally off the table at this point.

[00:21:24]I mean, in an elevator pitch, if you could tell us like what do you make of that policy of letting the country keep their enriched uranium with sort of a trade of sanctions relief for this dilution or down blending?

[00:21:39]>> I I think these are distractions meant to keep the conversation on the administration side. Iran is huge. Iran has vast mountain ranges and plateaus and deserts and places uh to hide things and Iran has hidden almost every facility had to be discovered against the wishes of the Iranian regime whether it's K or Natans or all the famous facilities everybody keeps hearing about. Iran didn't come forward and announce them to the world. foreign intelligence agencies discovered them and then Iran had to essentially deal with the fact that the IAEA and the sanctions regime of the West and the Americans and the Europeans were all now demanding to go in and look. So, this is an a a a regime that for as long as it's been developing a nuclear program, has been lying about the nuclear program in a country with 90 or 92 or 93 million people um and just a vast vast territory where you can hide things in, you know, hundreds and hundreds of mountains. Um and we're going to convince ourselves that we can possibly inspect and know and and keep tabs on. And it's a country also, it's a regime that sees this question as existential because it doesn't understand itself as a government of the people out to ensure the prosperity and success and well-being of the people of Iran. That is not what this regime is about. It is about a worldconquering revolutionary religious ideology with some esquetology and martyrdom ethoses, you know, built into it. It's going to prioritize nukes and it's going to prioritize a program and and it's been doing it for 30 years.

[00:23:19]It's not, you know, obviously it's going to do what it did before. It doesn't think it lost the war. It doesn't see any reason to pivot to a different direction. So, if you're coming to us and telling us there is some technical way that we still could reduce the level of enrichment of the uranium unless Iran doesn't want it. Everything boils down to intent and everything other than the conversation about intent is a distraction. If Iran wants to keep developing nukes, talking about, you know, dilution is not a is not a useful conversation because it's going to be doing it somewhere else. And if Iran no longer wants it, if you can actually buy them off with $300 billion and fundamentally shift their priorities like Trump did with Venezuela, Maduro disappeared, Venezuela fundamentally changed what how it thinks of the world.

[00:24:04]Iran is not a regime that will act that way. And if it doesn't act that way, all of the technicalities that they're trying to spin that sound interesting, sound great, especially to people like you and I who don't know anything about nuclear physics, I actually don't know your background. I apologize. Maybe you know a lot about nuclear physics. I know nothing.

[00:24:21]>> That would be correct. Not a scientist.

[00:24:23]>> So, you know, not meaningful. Not meaningful. The question is characterize what you're saying. It's essentially all of the conversation around uh down blending, dilution, sun setting, the timeline, blah blah blah blah is just basically pointless waste of time because they're going to do it in secret anyway. And so it just sort of uh >> I mean irrelevant conversation.

[00:24:47]>> The Obama people had a point that I don't want to take away from them and will be relevant to the Trump people now as well. Do all of it. Okay. So the Obama people said, "Look, let's let Yes.

[00:24:58]Okay. They're going to hide 30% off somewhere we have to we're going to have to go find. But let's have inspections on 70% and then only have a problem with 30% that's missing. Let's not have to not have inspections on the 70% and have to just through intelligence keep tabs on the 100%. You do six things at once so that they overlap and you actually have some sense of control. That's a legitimate argument. You want to go with with down blending down blending. I'm not opposed. Nobody's opposed. But if the regime still wants nukes at the end of this whole process and you've unleashed their entire economy and they have already announced publicly from the halls of the you know Iran's parliament that they will go back to funding, go back to arming uh their proxies. Um it's that's not enough and that's certainly not decisive. What would you say to someone who would say it's so irrational for Iran to resume their nuclear program because it risks everything else that's on the table, the sanctions relief, the frozen money, um you know, their unsanctioned oil exports by way of this memorandum and subsequent deal that like why would they do that?

[00:26:08]That just doesn't make sense. Like what would you say to that person?

[00:26:11]They would do that for the same reason the North Koreans behave the way they behave and for the same reason that any dictatorship, revolutionary dictatorship uh behaves the way they behave. The Trump administration and the Clinton administration 20 years earlier uh all thought you can come to North Korea, offer it everything that a a western prosperous country would want and all they'd have to give you is their nuke program. And the result was that a North Korea that didn't have nukes managed to make nukes because they just violated the agreement they signed with Clinton.

[00:26:42]And the Trump administration told them, "We'll build hotels and resorts in North Korea," which is what they tell everybody. Um, and uh, they didn't manage to convince the North Koreans to pivot away from being the Stalinist regime or the Mauist regime that they believe that they are. The Iranian regime is a mix. uh you know folks should plug this into their favorite AI.

[00:27:06]There's a wonderful book by a guy named Ahmed Dashi, professor at Columbia University uh on Iran on the on the the I think it's called the theology of discontent. It's about the theological roots and origins very readable very fascinating of the Iranian regime. Uh Dashi does not like Israel is an anti-colonialist was a friend of Edward say uh anything he says about the Iranian regime is not suspected of being a Zionist plot. uh and what he argues there and you can go to any book that's one of the classics is that this is a regime that is pieced together from a Shia esqueological you know there was this battle in 680 in Karbala Iraq between Imam Hussein the grandson of the prophet and the khalif Yazid and the powerful khalif killed the true heir to Muhammad as the Shia see it and that's the great Shia founding myth and the Shia are the uh descendants of the heirs of the believer believers in this Imam and the next IM descended from Hussein who will come at the end of days the the Mai the the Messiah Imam um that Shia esquetology is the heart and soul of the Iranian regime but it's combined with what a great theologian sociologist sbone trained Persian named Ali Shariati and some others Al Jalal um talked about in the 70s which really deeply influenced Kumeni who founded this regime They talked about red Shiism, a kind of merger of Leninist anti-imperialism, Maoism, anti-colonial anti-imperialist westernism with this Shia esquetology. Long story short, this is a regime that has built into its DNA.

[00:28:48]And we, by the way, published a piece on this in the free press back at the beginning of the war. I think in late February, really quite right at the beginning of the war. Um, this is a regime that built into its core heart and soul the martyrdom ethos of of a more of the most extreme version of Shiism, which is to say Hussein died killed by arrogant powerful people. But his humility and his godliness meant that new generations of martyrs were born. And as long as we're willing to die, new martyrs and generations of generations of martyrs will be born.

[00:29:20]Ultimately, the meek and the humble with God's help will defeat all the arrogant powers in the world and take over the world. That story is the heart and soul of this regime. It's what Kmeni and Kame have been talking about for 47 years.

[00:29:33]And what the Americans just handed this regime was the survival as the meek and powerful through martyrdom of the best efforts of the greatest militaries in the world. A validation of that narrative of martyrdom. Now, it's not just martyrdom for themselves. It's mass martyrdom for their societies. All of that is to say they're they believe it. They're willing to die for it. They're not going anywhere. They don't care about $300 billion. They don't care about hotels.

[00:30:05]You can't build them resorts. That's not interesting for them. If they get the revolutionary stuff taken care of, meaning that their regime has wins the narrative war is shown to be victorious, validates the theology at the heart of the regime. They'll also pocket the 300 billion very happily. You know, the IRGC owns probably 50% of Iran's total GDP.

[00:30:26]It owns entire industries. This is a profoundly corrupt sort of crony capitalism patronage kind of economy and government. They're not It's not that they're not corrupt enough to be bought off. Buying them off isn't enough to get them off of the revolutionary ethos at the heart of the regime. Let's explain that $300 billion because we've talked about this dance between them or them on paper at least drawing back their nuclear program for sanctions relief. We talked about um letting Iranian oil uh be sold unsanctioned.

[00:31:00]Now there's this question of this $300 reconstruction fund. You made an interesting point earlier that reconstructing what their military assets since that's been primarily what has been struck by US and Israeli forces.

[00:31:12]There's a lot of questions here. Explain the $300 billion fund. Who is paying for it? Who is not paying for it? And where you think that money will ultimately go?

[00:31:24]>> I I don't know. I don't know. um you know, Senator Ted Cruz uh came out with a statement where he said, "Now we're going to pay them right to and um Trump's people went after him online on social media uh and said you're you're lying. We're not American are not going to pay those 300 billion." And there was a lot of talk about how it would come from the Gulf States. It's not clear how much will or what of it will be released when or what it's actually going to pay for or what kinds of things it'll actually fund and how the oversight mechanism over it will work. And again, even just releasing sanctions to allow that money to flow is not going to be a simple legal matter in the United States. Um, and so I I I'm totally confused on this. Now, I'm totally confused. might be that I just literally don't have the expertise and the minutiae and technicalities of how this money moves, which I certainly don't.

[00:32:16]Um, but I also I also haven't read anyone who made it clear and theou mentions this in passing in in, you know, six words and so I'm not 100% sure that the Americans quite understand. Um the uh Matt Continetti um the uh he is a columnist in many many places uh a conservative he uh is the head of one of the institutes the American Enterprise Institute. He actually made a very interesting uh point which was that 300 billion was the number that the um Trump administration was using when it was trying to talk North Korea out of being North Korea. And so it might be you know the Bible talks about the number 40 as being a number of completion. Moses is on Mount Si for 40 days. They go 40 years in the desert. It's you're not supposed to understand that it's literally 40. It's it's when the journey is complete, when the thing is done, 40 have passed. 300 billion seems to might be for the Trump administration what a big package look. It's just the throwaway kind of number. It might literally be that. Um that's the best I can do at the moment. We're focused on the more immediate stuff. That's the stuff at the end of the deal that nobody's sure will ever happen. I don't know how they uh came to that number, >> but you seem pretty confident that that money will not go towards the Iranian economy, but rather rebuilding their ballistic missile program, their nuclear program, and funneled into proxies, Hamas, Hezbollah, Houth >> Trump can't go to war in 60 days. 60 days is August. He also can't afford high gas prices in 60 days. That's closer to the election. uh markets will respond very quickly to a renewal of hostilities because they'll kind of know what to expect and they'll know that it won't end soon if there is a renewal of hostilities at 60 days he can uh renew he can extend for another 60 days that's in the agreement by by mutual agreement with the Iranian side let's say they go to 120 days uh even that doesn't bring him to November right uh that's August that'll bring him to September October so um you know once the the leverage that Iran has, which is the midterms and the gas prices might hold to the end of the negotiating process and Iran might get a lot. Now, the Trump administration has handed Iran far more than people like me think they needed to hand them just to have the straight open. They also telegraphed to the Iranians that they're totally beaten. Um, they announced it publicly. Trump said, you know, I our entire oil reserve would have cut out in four weeks, so I had no choice. Once you've said that out loud at the beginning of a 60-day negotiating process, how much leverage have you got, never mind right now, in 60 days of negotiating over the really important stuff, right? The oversight over the nuclear program. So, um I I have no idea what to make of it. It's possible the Iranians will hold the leverage all the way to the end because Trump, who fancies himself the greatest negotiator to ever grace the White House, uh has shown all his cards ahead of time. Maybe he's playing 3D chess. I think we're now at 11D chess. the number of D's in the chest keeps rising. Uh or maybe uh he's just saying what he thinks out loud and actually they have no leverage.

[00:35:29]>> This is probably the most interesting thing to me personally. You tweeted something that I thought was really interesting. Um this I'm going to paraphrase it, but essentially you said, you know, this war was always going to be a contest of wills and you thought the US would have calculated their pain for tolerance to ensure that the IRGC broke first. And if they didn't, why would they ever have this war in the first place? You said, "I thought the US knew this before entering, but you said you didn't realize how little Americans understood the enemy they were fighting."

[00:35:58]If I can just tack on one thing to this, you know, there was for weeks as some of the negotiations started a bit of dunking on the Iranian side and they're like, "Look at all the PhDs." And everyone said, "Look at all these real life negotiators, Steve Wickoff, Jared Kushner. They're real businessmen." But now we seem to be in a little bit of a situation where maybe they didn't really understand Iran and maybe it would have been nice to have one or two think tank wonks who had been thinking about Iran for a decade um on the team. I don't know. Just just a thought. Like what do you make of this the naivee if I could call it that? How do you understand it?

[00:36:35]>> I'm unimpressed by both groups. the the think tank wonks are addicted to careful abstractions and order and and don't take initiative and don't have a sense of America's own strength and these um you know real estate negotiators who by the way pulled off the Abraham Accords they have you know sometimes when you come in totally transactionally uh you can achieve things that think tank wonks cannot achieve because they're not looking around corners for deals um they're not creative in that way they're not that they don't they're not incentivized to find paths forward. They're incentivized to hold back and carefully produce more policy papers. Um, and so I'm not sure that either of those two cultures were up for this moment. Uh, my point was a very simple point. We're hearing from a lot of Obama uh excuse me, Trump White House adjacent people, spokespeople for them, supporters, boosters online, big names who are saying things like Netanyahu, you know, sold this to us as something easy or something we could definitely accomplish or handle or it would happen very quickly. First of all, it's, you know, it's a lame excuse. Um, the United States has to do its homework before going to war. I mean that like but second of all I I think that the gap between Netanyahu and Trump on this um is not that Netanyahu was faking it.

[00:38:00]It's not that he was saying about something he understood would be very difficult. He said it was very easy. I suspect and I suspect this from talking to Israelis involved in some of these connections that what he actually said was we can handle this. This is doable.

[00:38:15]He did by the way apparently make a very significant error which is the assumption that the uh protest energy the protest willingness to protest that we saw back in January would come into play once the regime was publicly very weakened very humiliated and the command and control was demolished you know by taking out the top two tiers of the leadership across the board and they tried to do it and it never materialized and you know what now we can have the debate over whether it was a legitimate gamble but that apparently is simply an error it's an error that some people in the American intelligence services agreed with Netanyahu. Some people didn't agree. Um that that is what it is and history will judge it. But he also apparently said we can handle this. Now the Israelis, he wasn't lying to the Americans. The Americans did not have the pain threshold to see this war through from the beginning. We learned this now. What does that mean? When the Iranians blockade Hormuz and produce this kind of cheap missile drone war that the Ukrainians have such a hard time with, the Israelis against such a hard time, the new kind of war that nobody quite has a solution to yet. What if gas prices go up and and America has to suffer a long extended period of gas prices into the midterms? That's a massive amount of pain for the American political leadership.

[00:39:28]Why wasn't that factored in? Like why weren't didn't you weren't you sure you were going into a war where Iran has been planning for 30 years in the case of such a war to blockade hormuz you have to be willing to stare them down on a blockade of Hormuz or you don't go to that war cuz you're not capable of seeing it through. And here we get to the gap in pain thresholds when Netanyahu comes to the Americans and says we can handle it. what he he's he's coming out of an assumption that Israel can ride that escalation curve and that pain curve much much higher than the Americans for a very simple reason. The Iranians are actually coming to kill us.

[00:40:03]This is an existential threat. And so we're willing to lose hundreds and hundreds of soldiers, send boots on the ground in five different places or three different places or whatever it is. Uh we're willing to take sustained ballistic missile bombardments of our cities. We are willing to suffer significant uh economic pain and we're willing to do that because this is an existential threat. There were periods in American history where it believed it faced existential threats and Americans were also willing to do that. Lose significant numbers of men take significant damage to the economy because it mattered because the the the cost of failure was greater than the cost of war. But America today doesn't see Iran as an existential threat. And so it was not able and would never have been able to ride up that escalation curve, to ride up that cost curve with the Israelis. Now, if they had a conversation in the White House where Netanyahu said, "We can handle it." And he's operating out of a a deep self-nowledge that he didn't articulate explicitly. Nobody apparently understood that this assumption wasn't shared. The Americans, you know, they heard from him, it'll be, you know, wham bam and we're done, right? And what he was saying was it doesn't matter how grueling it gets, we can handle it. If that's the conversation that was had, it makes it makes sense. It makes sense that they didn't grasp that there are radically different cost um abilities, you know, ability to absorb to absorb cost. So there was I think that's not an excuse for the Trump administration. If a foreign leader comes to you and says, "I have this great idea for a war. I'm willing to lose more troops than you're willing to lose. I'll take the brunt of it. I'll fight alongside you everywhere.

[00:41:38]if there's something hard to do, send me. That kind of willingness kind of opens a door in American military thinking. That kind of leader comes to you and says that it's still your responsibility, your leadership to to make that call to assess all those things. Um, and if you don't, you know, if the Israelis and the Americans didn't understand that the other had a very different cost uh threshold, pain threshold, uh then you could you'd get this outcome. What would you chalk it up to if you could make a guess that people in the Trump administration were unknowing about what would happen or that they fundamentally misunderstood or that they understood the cost benefit and did the gamble anyway? Like I guess I'm just trying to understand how when someone went to Trump and said they might choke the straight of horm like was do do you think that I mean that had to have been a conversation that would have been had. I I'm I'm just I'm it's it's it's perplexing.

[00:42:32]>> The United States uh Navy or rather Sentcom uh maintained throughout the war that they had a military solution to Hormuz and they launched Project Freedom and there was a a kind of quiet Project Freedom while the negotiations were underway after Trump made the decision not to have a fullblown Project Freedom while the air strikes were continuing I think around May 4th or 5th. But he only actually gave the fullblown naval war against the you know missile and drone teams on the Iranian coast that project freedom that version of very big project freedom by the US Navy uh a couple of days before he cut it off and went to negotiations.

[00:43:13]So in early May so uh it's possible that the Israelis were willing to bear the brunt of the pain. Uh, the Gulf States probably councled to do it because they just watched what the Israelis were capable of doing with American hardware over Iran back in June. It looked like American hardware could overfly Iran at will. Nothing Chinese and nothing Russian in terms of air defense or radar or missiles could actually challenge American hardware in the skies over Iran. Um, and the Gulf states understood the Israeli willingness because it's an existential threat to fight for as long as it takes. And so it looked like the best opportunity for and the January protests against the regime. All of that coming together with the US Navy sitting in the White House. And I'm guessing I'm guessing because they've said this publicly that they can do it. The Project Freedom was a doable thing. I'm guessing they were also telling the president that a month before they were telling the rest of us. All of that can come together uh into a very rational decision to go to this war. But you know, the Israelis have this doctrine after 73 where if everyone agrees on something, there's one guy in the room who was assigned to argue the opposite just to make sure that a lot of those corners aren't ignored. I I'm not sure that happened here. We know that that that uh various parts of the intelligence community doubted Netanyahu's uh I don't know, call it polyianish or simply, you know, operating from very different assumptions uh belief that the war would be successful and and could be fought.

[00:44:38]uh to a win. Um but when so many other elements seem to come together in the region, in the military, um it's it's a rational decision for Trump uh to have taken, except for the point about the pain threshold. If you can't handle that pain threshold, don't walk into that pain threshold.

[00:44:58]>> You had this tweet that I want to read some of. Um and you post the question, what does all of this mean? And you say it means that in the coming years, nuclear programs will sprout like mushrooms after the rain throughout the Middle East. It means that many nations will now build out new and larger ballistic missile arsenals. You go on to say it means, in other words, that we, meaning Israelis in this case, will have a few more wars to fight, a few more technologies to invent to deal with this new age of cheap missiles and drones, and also of supersonic Chinese missiles bearing nuclear warheads that Iran will eventually inevitably be capable of deploying against us. explain from the Israeli perspective what this means for them in the region um and how the situation we find ourselves in now leads to what is I mean that's pretty catastrophic outlook.

[00:45:43]>> Um I have several tweets from the last 48 hours. Um and the several tweets before and several tweets after are all the arguments including me sharing other people responding why it's not that bad.

[00:45:59]Just to just to clarify. Mhm.

[00:46:00]>> But that tweet was laying out uh the worst case scenario and there have been periods over the last 48 hours where I have very much been in the worst case scenario camp. Um and not by the way uh Iran had signed an agreement a few months before the war uh to buy Chinese supersonic missiles, not nuclear warhead capable ones. Not some of that is is um speculative historical fiction. Okay.

[00:46:24]Not that that it's not literally that. I don't know why the Saudis would expand their ballistic missile forces. they would probably expand other forces, but um nuclear programs would certainly be something very interesting also to the Saudis, to the Egyptians, to the Turks.

[00:46:38]Uh if Iran is rushing to a nuke, an Iranian nuke is perceived in the region by even by countries that deeply despise Israel on ideological grounds as vastly more dangerous than the Israeli nuclear program. Um I uh mentioned, by the way, in that tweet, dust off the nukes and maybe test one far away from everywhere else, right from anywhere. um just to say remind the Iranians as they walk down this path now that his if this deal if thisou is fulfilled to the last letter and wiser people than I have argued that it can't be. So again, I put up a bunch of tweets of why it's not that bad. But if it is fulfilled to the letter, Iran will have a nuclear program and it will have a nuclear weapons program and it will have a nuclear weapons program with significant sections of it that can't be overseen by anybody and it will build a nuke. And American intelligence itself has found that trying to buy a nuclear warhead from from the North Koreans to bypass that whole process and the United States through China sent a message to North Korea. Apparently, this is a report I saw in the news. I don't have any firsthand evidence of it. Um but uh apparently uh this is something that that has also been taking place and American intelligence has been trying to rein in the Iranians on this point. So that's pretty good evidence that that they want a nuke and if that's true then Israel has to clarify its uh you know nuclear deterrent. Um mediasan suggested that um uh we crazy Israelis were already talking about nuking everybody.

[00:48:08]Israel needs to clarify its nuclear deterrent because Iran would now have a path to a nuke is is is the worst case scenario argument. Um that is the worstc case scenario. I I I I think it's really important to say that there's a tremendous amount of evil that can take place long before that worst case scenario. So if you talk right now to Emirati analysts, you will not hear from them, you know, the nuclear file. They're not worried about Iran detonating a nuke over Dubai in the way the Israelis are worried about Iran detonating a nuke over Tel Aviv. They're talking about the collapse of the state system. States, the Westfalian state order, the modern nation state that controls its borders and has sovereignty is the source of all the great order that we have in this world. and transnational ideological movements that argue against the existence of the state order as core to their ideology which the Iranian synthesis between sort of Leninism and Shiism explicitly does. Kumeni writes against the existence of borders, the existence of states as a western arrogant powered way of controlling the holy and sacred and humble uh believers who are the world revolution.

[00:49:25]Then you will build outbah and Lebanon and demolish Lebanon from within. You will have proxies in Yemen. You will have proxies in Iraq and in Syria. You will break down the state order and you will exterminate nations. All the small peoples of the Middle East right now are scared. Lebanon understands that by making the linkage in this agreement where it, you know, Iran only has to accept that theou is moving forward if the Israelis are forced by the Americans to stop fighting in Lebanon. Um, Lebanon now understands that America has handed Lebanon to Iran on a silver platter in an explicit agreement for the very first time. and Lebanon is now going to have to re rethink. So the state order that guarantees a kind of future of safety and prosperity and security for the region is now going to break down in favor of what Iran has always been and always favor this Iranian regime which is transnational ideological axis fighting each other in 16 different places. Libya is tentatively coming back from disastrous civil war and if this breaks down the state order breaks down and these ideological this is how Emiratis talk right this what my point is there's so much evil that can be done long before you get to any kind of imagining a nuclear stand a nuclear cold war in the Middle East between the Iranians and the Israelis um that can break down very easily if the Turks begin sending guns and the Iranians sending guns and all the different factions in the Syria in the Libyan civil war sending all their different guns. Um, does Iran turn on the Kurds after hearing that the Mossad had planned some uprising of the Kurds? Does that translate into more violence in Syria? Turkey right this moment occupies about five times more territory in Syria in its war on the Kurds of northern Syria than Israel actually holds in Lebanon. And nobody cares and nobody's interested because it's I have my theories of why, but it's not Israel.

[00:51:20]Well, also, haven't you heard Syria is going to take on Hezbollah per Trump's >> and Syria's going to take onah because Israel can't apparently I don't know that Trump >> by former al-Qaeda president. Okay, sorry.

[00:51:31]>> Who by the way wants to massacrebah becauseah was the hated front, you know, right arm of the Iranian forces that killed 500 600,000 Sunnis in that civil war.

[00:51:42]um the Shia of Lebanon would be butchered if if Syrian forces right now um march into Lebanon under the blessing of the US. And now he's also not going to be allowed to do it by the Iranians while they hold leverage over him because the Iranians are the great protectors, patrons, and builders of Kzbala. So I don't even know what that was other than trying to embarrass Netanyahu ahead of an election. Maybe Trump wants to get rid of Netanyahu and that distance. you know, he said more against NetGo than he strictly needed to say, I should say, about an hour before we started recording. Um, he uh he w he was interviewed on Israeli uh television, Trump, President Trump.

[00:52:20]>> Uh, and they said to him, "Will you support Netanyahu in the coming election?" And he said something very vague. I uh I think he said something like, People can look up the video, but he said something like, "You know, I think I think I'm likely to, but I have to see who else is running, right?"

[00:52:34]Which is now where Netanyahu's position is. So he's explicitly trying to make Netanyahu's life miserable. Um, long story short, uh, the breakdown, the the the great hope, uh, that a lot of Gulf states had from this war, from reigning in Iran, from crushing the Iranian regime, and from the other American initiatives in the region, building out the Abraham Accords was a kind of um, import into the Middle East of that sort of guaranteed stable state system against the great ideological axis on the Sunni side of the Muslim Brotherhood, on the Shia side of the Iranian, you know, resistance axis.

[00:53:10]that's now in total retreat. The Americans are handing literal countries over to transnational ideological axis just to get through the midterms with low gas prices.

[00:53:20]>> Briefly before we close out, how do you see the other Gulf nations playing this?

[00:53:25]New accommodations with Iran? Do you think there will be new joint security packs? maybe even better relations with Israel, which would be sort of on the other side um in response to a new or a strengthened regional power by way of cash injection and so forth. What are they going to do >> if the Iranian regime is unremovable?

[00:53:46]Everybody has everybody who lives in its shadow. Every little Gulf principality Kuwait and uh you know Bahrain and Qatar and uh even larger countries Oman um they all live in its shadow now and they all have to play ball with it. And the United States is leaving the Middle East as far as we know. We've heard people close to JD Vance make explicit this argument that this is ultimately it doesn't really matter who runs the Middle East. You're not going to fix the Middle East so you don't bleed and spend for all time in the Middle East. Leave the Middle East and let the Middle East fight its own squables and let the chips fall where they may. Anybody stops the oil flowing, you bomb them to smitherines. But you only make it about the oil flowing and then people will understand the oil needs to flow and then the Americans won't bomb you. It's that kind of um sense of things uh that I think this administration is now projecting and that the Middle East is responding to. So, does that mean the Abraham Accords will expand? Any kind of alliance with Israel will expand? I have no idea. This could also remove Netanyahu. Uh Netanyahu was polling.

[00:54:49]There are no polls in which he wins dramatically. There are some polls in which he wins just enough to deny the other side a victory because of the way the coalition works. You can even win a tiny bit of the popular vote and still not win an election. It's complicated coalition politics. But Netanyahu is fairing in the polls terribly basically for 4 years since October 7. And this has plummeted him, you know, a little ways down in which it's not clear that he has a path anymore to victory. I say all that with a huge asterisk. We have large numbers of Israelis who tell us they don't know who they're voting for.

[00:55:23]We don't know which way those people will go. So, you know, no poll right now is tremendously reliable in Israel right now, but Netanyahu is in very bad shape.

[00:55:31]If he's replaced just not even by a government that fundamentally changes Israel's orientation as being dead set against Iranian hegemony, why would that change? The Iranians won't change their desire to destroy Israel. But a government that tells Israel's story, right? There's this terrible war in Gaza. Why? The Israeli government never got up and said that this is a denazification war and afterwards Gaza will be rebuilt. That's the goal. But it has to be without it.

[00:55:58]never said those words which would have held on to a lot of a lot of friends of Israel. It wouldn't have convinced the enemies but it would have convinced you know you have people who tried to be friends with Israel and hold out with Israel for the last 3 years and Netanyahu never gave them anything and all we had was the extremist ministers in the government saying very extremist things talking explicitly publicly openly about uh ethnic cleansing in Gaza. A new government would have a very different conversation and also be willing to play ball on many many things. Um, I think that would be ve that would fundamentally change the conversation. Again, not among people convinced Israel is evil, but among some of its friends that have been having trouble being its friends, but want to for grand strategy reasons or ideological reasons or other reasons.

[00:56:39]Um, so you could have a lot of shifts in the Middle East. A lot is going to change. They're going to be an election in the United States, an election uh in Israel. uh all of that, you know, we could be talking about a very different Israel, a very different United States.

[00:56:52]If Trump loses both houses of Congress, what kind of administration is it and what is it going to do in the Middle East? Um, you know, come December, come November even. Um, I don't know what the Gulf States are going to do. We've already seen new accommodations. Uh, the Qataris have already released tens of billions to Iran according to reports, uh, with the American blessing. Uh, and the Emiratis, interestingly, um, didn't welcome the Americanou.

[00:57:21]Not more than that. As far as I could tell, you know, been keeping an eye out.

[00:57:25]We've been looking. Other other analysts have been commenting on this. They didn't come out in praise like many local governments did. You know, many regional governments did. Um, so there there's still an alliance against >> for the for the same reason that Israel is concerned about it, which is the cash injection. Is that right?

[00:57:43]>> Would you would you say I guess Israel and the Emirati share that principal concern? I guess what what is the >> Iran just proved Iran just proved itself a massive strategic maybe even existential threat to the Gulf.

[00:57:55]>> So just even bigger than that news at that point >> it fired more missiles at the Emirates than it did at Israel.

[00:58:00]>> Mhm.

[00:58:00]>> Um this was an American Israeli war. The Amiradis might have had an opinion but the Amiradis didn't participate. They couldn't make the decision. And yet they still had to absorb uh many many many hundreds of of missiles and rockets and drones from Iran. Iran looks to them like a wild animal um that can't be trusted not to expand anytime it's in trouble to expand a war totally. The the blockade of Hormuz is their economy. Um you know yes it lowered like it raised glass gas prices in the Midwest in the United States but that's peanuts compared to what the Amiradis and the Kuwaitis and the Qataris suffered. Um, we've also seen now a massive uh Saudi and Amirati commitment to building out bypass routes for the oil, right? So, the East West pipeline the Saudis activated that was running 7 million barrels a day. We didn't know they could do that. That's amazing. Over to the Red Sea by land. Well, they're now going to double down on that and expand it. And I think it's already at 8.5 million barrels per day. They've been really trying to lay down that infrastructure quickly. So, they're going to try to bypass Iranian power. They're terrified of Iran. They hate Iran. They now understand that America is not reliable at all. America's pivot away. If America doesn't think it's succeeding, it's not going to pivot away a little bit. It's going to pivot away totally dramatically and hand the region to Iranian hijgemony. They now understand that Israel both becomes more valuable while they also now have to accommodate Iran.

[00:59:20]And so everybody's going to be playing this complex game. My argument, by the way, about um countries starting to feel out the possibility of nuclear programs.

[00:59:28]That's something that has been talked about in the Middle East for decades, and there's no reason to think it's not going to happen. And if all the Iranians need to have a nuclear weapons program is to be a little bit stubborn about it and the Americans are now pulling out of the region. So who's going to enforce the NPT in the region after the Americans are unwilling to re-enter the region? The British who don't have a sailing navy. The the nonprolif um everything is in flux. We don't yet know where things are going to land. I'm going to fall back on Neil Ferguson's very wise comment. We don't know what's going to happen, but there's every reason to think that one of the possibilities is that this regime, which is built by its martyrdom ethos to withstand catastrophic war, probably is going to struggle to run a country, govern a country, govern a population it has abused and oppressed and impoverished and rebuild in peace time. Hopefully, peace time will be more damaging to them than wartime and things could get better.

[01:00:29]As we close out, sort of the question of the hour is, is this better, worse, or the same as the JCPOA? Of course, it's not a perfect comparison since we have a 14 two-page document compared to 160 page deal, but given the vantage point that we do have, what's your take?

[01:00:47]Better, worse, the same?

[01:00:50]>> It's it's not comparable. Um, what we have now is much much worse than the JCPOA, but what we have now isn't a deal. So it's hard to compare but one point worth making the JCPOA I people like me okay criticize the JCPA reflecting I think the Israeli mainstream for what it's worth it was a debate in America about it debates in Europe about it they're slightly different debates the debate in Israel was very simple if Iran wants a nuke the JCPOA paved the path to that nuke why because it didn't remove any infrastructure and almost every limitation just about all the limit certainly all the limitations that mattered including UN oversight including actual oversight over the program all sunset. The oversight would have sunset last year in the deal in the actual deal. Uh limits on R&D, limits on deployment of advanced centrifuges for weaponization level enrichment. Um all of that would have sunset. So Iran would have actually had a legal nuclear program recognized by the UN Security Council had the deal still been in effect uh at this at this point. Um and there were a few things that Suns said in 2030. I don't want to take that away from it, but it all it did was kick the can down the road. And if Iran wants a nuke, then it would still have been able to get it. Obama's defenders at the time said, um, the alternative is terrible war, is catastrophic war. But the that's the dumb thing they said, but the smart thing they said was over the course of those 15 years of sunsets, we will negotiate new deals. Now, people like me were very skeptical because Iran would have had everything and it would be totally in agreement with a deal and still getting everything it wants if it has a little patience. Why? What would have been the leverage that you would have over them to force them to negotiate anything better? The JCPOA was kicking the can down the road. That was it. That was its great failure. That was the thing that none of its supporters could ever really, you know, u um disagree with or counter.

[01:02:41]Theou isn't even that. It kicks no can down the road. If you believe what it actually contains will be the outline roughly of the final deal, which hasn't been negotiated. That's critical to say.

[01:02:59]It doesn't even kick a can down the road. It just hands the regime, you know, vast monies. Uh fundamentally ends at its core. It literally talks about ending s all sanctions assuming the Iranians agreed to negotiate some, you know, limits on their nuclear program. A regime that for 30 years has lied every step of the way. It's like everyone says, "Well, but they don't lie. They obeyed all the things they signed on to with the JCPOA while the JCBO was in effect." Well, sure, cuz it released huge amounts of money and paved their way to a nuke ultimately, but also they only obeyed in the sense that foreign intelligence agencies had to discover all the things they were hiding against their will and then they would admit it and and and follow through. So, it's not like they came forward with any information. So, um this is the regime that you're now going to have a new inspection regime with and just trust it and already have told it that America is fundamentally leaving the region. And so, good luck everybody.

[01:03:55]If theou reflects the final agreement, it is not even the one thing the JCPOA had going for it, which is that it genuinely kicked the can down the road. It's not even that.

[01:04:07]>> Any other thoughts you want to leave the audience with in response to everything happening?

[01:04:14]>> The United States is, you know, the argument being made that the United States can pull out of the Middle East.

[01:04:20]I'm I I I think the Americans should feel free to direct their resources elsewhere. Um Trump shocked even some Republican members of Congress with a vast um defense budget request. Uh the whole idea that America should not be spending so much when it's so in debt that the tax paying, you know, the the the sheer tax cost of the military-industrial complex is immense and Middle Eastern wars are never successful and never produce good in the world. All of those frustrations are all legitimate and all serious and all topics of real conversations. Um and and and Americans should be debating them.

[01:04:59]But if nobody enforces the NPT, the non-prololiferation treaty in the Middle East, there will be nukes in the Middle East. And if nobody um defends oil flowing through Hormuz, then oil will stop flowing through Hermuz anytime a revolutionary Islamist regime decides.

[01:05:17]And so at the very least, America, if it doesn't want to be involved in the Middle East, should know its allies, and it should invest in those allies. It should not hand money to those allies.

[01:05:29]It should not do things that are frustrating to Americans that don't want to spend money overseas, but it should certainly be uh involved in R&D with those allies. It should be involved in in qualitative military edges with those allies. The I'm obviously talking about Israel, but I'm not at all only talking about Israel. The uh Gulf States demonstrated the incredible uh level of of of technological prowess of American interceptors in this war and demonstrated the importance of interceptors and upgrading America's interceptor production capacity by 20fold because this is the future of war. If in two weeks the Gulf allies alone can shoot two years of American production of interceptors of the high level stuff, the Thads, the Patriots, um then America needs to be producing them much faster if it ever hopes to face down China over Taiwan or or just in general be able to defend the American homeland. So, uh, there are lessons learned here that teach us that the United States, even if it doesn't want to go to new adventures in the world, which is something I really deeply understand, you still can't disconnect from the world. The world will come back to you.

[01:06:36]Those oil prices, an Israeli Iranian war over Hormuz, an Israeli Iranian war going forward because launches an all-out assault on Israel, which will always want to do and was planning to join in October 7 in the future.

[01:06:50]will shut down hormuz anyway and that gas prices will go up. America doesn't need to be fighting wars in the Middle East, but it definitely needs to maintain leverage in the Middle East.

[01:06:58]Don't abandon the Amiradis. Don't abandon the Bahrainis. Don't abandon the Saudis. And don't abandon the Israelis at the level of that alliance or America will not have that leverage and the same damage America faces now, it'll face and will have less to do about it, less ability to influence it going forward.

[01:07:18]Well, Haviva Tuker, thank you so much for being here. Um, as the situation unfolds, we'll definitely have you back.

[01:07:24]So, thank you.

[01:07:26]>> Thanks so much.