3/12/26: US Lies About Casualties, Trump Declares Victory, US Flagged Ship Struck

12:37Saagar Enjeti:Of those, about 20 arrived on a C-17 military transport aircraft at Lonstow on Tuesday. With injuries, the military designated as, quote, urgent and requiring evacuation. More than 100 medical personnel were sent to Lonstow to assist. What's even worse is that we can see how they initially described the attack. Let's put that one up there on the screen. This is what they said on the day. As of 9.30 a.m., three U.S. service members have been killed in action. Five are seriously wounded. Several others sustained, quote, minor shrapnel injuries and concussions and are in the process of being returned to duty.

13:12Saagar Enjeti:A straight up lie there from the Pentagon. And if you want to see how bad it was, a surviving U.S. service member, Sergeant First Class Corey Hooks, actually described the moment that that drone struck the tactical operations center and what it was like. You can see the injuries that he sustained. Let's take a listen.

13:29Robert Pape:I remember turning my head to the left and I seen the nose of that drone pop through. And as soon as it did, I knew what it was. It was either a missile or a drone. So I turned to my right and that's when it blew up and just blew the whole building apart. Life is precious. Life is short. You never know when you're going to be put in a situation like we were in. Wow.

13:56Saagar Enjeti:It's tragic. Sergeant Hicks, I mean, you could see the injuries to his face. to his hand. He's lucky to survive. But there's so many of his other comrades who are now literally languishing in hospitals, and they lied to us. They lied to us completely. Also, we should note, I think at least five were killed in this attack. We don't know the exact number, but don't forget about the other recent service members who we've learned about who were killed in attacks on Saudi Arabia. What's the wounded number there? What's the wounded number for all the bases that we're about to show people, which have been attacked, some 17 different bases or sites from the United States military, where we've had untold billions of damage, but more importantly, wounded service members.

14:38Saagar Enjeti:We have no idea the number of casualties. We know that the current number is somewhere around 150. That was just a couple of days ago. But you can see right there what the cover-up is currently happening right now. And it only continues to escalate.

14:50Krystal Ball:Well, and here's the thing, like all governments lie and actually Democratic governments tend to like small d Democratic governments actually tend to lie more because they have to bring their population on board. So they have more of an incentive to lie to their population. But this is something different from the Trump administration. And what's different here? And we've seen this that reminds me of the lies around Renee Good, the lies around Alex Preddy, the lies that we've seen routinely from this administration where they have to know that the video is going to emerge. They have to know that the service members who survived are going to come out and speak.

15:24Krystal Ball:They have to know that the family members who lost loved ones or whose loved ones are now gravely injured, not just with minor boo-boos the way they tried to frame it to begin with, are going to ultimately speak. They know this information is going to come out, and yet they lie anyway. That is what is so incredibly wild to me. And so, you know, I think a lot of people are being treated as conspiracy theorists for saying, like, are we getting the real story about the overall casualty number, the number of deaths, but specifically the number of injuries? And now, you know, those concerns about the fact that this government just routinely lies about even things that you know are going to come out eventually, that has been completely that concern has been completely validated.

16:06Krystal Ball:And so there's no reason that you should trust any of the numbers that they tell you. There's no reason you should trust anything they tell you, because if they'll lie about something so basic and so essential and so sensitive as the number of U.S. service members who were gravely, who were seriously injured in this initial attack, they will lie to you about absolutely anything. And so we have no idea. I mean, this is the information they're giving us now. But this one attack, this has been reported out. Some reporter was able to get their hands on this. But we have no idea the overall number of casualties.

16:40Krystal Ball:We have no idea the amount of damage that has been done to our bases in the region. We have no idea how much there was a leak yesterday or to the Congress's brief that this has already cost us over 11 billion dollars. The amount that they are hiding from the American people just, you know, you can't even begin to wrap your head around.

17:00Saagar Enjeti:Yeah, it's it is. It's so unbelievable. And just to show you the scale, let's go and put the next pun up there. on the screen, at least 17 US sites were damaged in the war with Iran. These are all satellite images from March 2nd. Here's another thing I want to flag to everybody, and I want to very much call out these private satellite companies. For years, news organizations, I used to work at one of them. We had deals with these private satellite companies where they would give you up-to-date satellite imagery of some of these sites which were involved, let's say, with the military. Out of the blue, all of these private satellite companies just said, you know what, we're going to go on a two-week delay.

17:33Saagar Enjeti:So we have no idea what's actually happening in the battlefield. So this is just what we know about, which have been damaged. So let me read some of the lists. 17 U.S. sites damaged in a war with Iran. Iran has responded with installations, quote, several of which have been struck more than once. Their analysis is currently based on high-resolution commercial SAT imagery from a couple of days ago, remember, so it's not even currently up to date. Thousands of missiles. Many of them include in Kuwait, we have the Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the UAE, Jordan, and Iraq. All of these are U.S. sites where you have either U.S.

18:13Saagar Enjeti:service member or U.S. personnel, which are currently there. You have drone attacks, you have missile attacks. Perhaps the most important ones are some of the THAAD radar battery sites, which we've talked about here previously. And you can actually see the damage. And again, this is some 10 days ago that we're able to see the damage. So God only knows what it is today when you have escalating actions all across the entire Middle East. Hotels where U.S. personnel are staying. Remember, still haven't gotten any casualty update on that. We know from the DOD's admission that there are all these service members which are staying in these high-priced hotels.

18:46Saagar Enjeti:Tons of these hotels have been struck day after day. A couple of them were struck just yesterday, right? And you have to imagine whenever they're striking at certain floors, you know, it doesn't seem to be random. There's very obviously maybe Russian intelligence, Iranian intelligence, Chinese intelligence about where some of these people are in addition to the exact coordinates in many of their civilian infrastructure. The Dubai airport, by the way, let me let me make sure everybody knows this. There's a story out literally today where a British tourist who fired, who filmed Iranian missiles in Dubai is now facing two years in prison and being charged with a cyber crime offense.

19:21Saagar Enjeti:So remember this. You have no idea what's going on in Dubai. You have no idea what's going on in Qatar. We barely have any idea what's going on in Israel. The video we're able to show you soon that Israel allowed to be released is only because they're going to use that video as a pretext for a massive ground invasion of Lebanon. So everything that we're able to see is totally controlled by all of these governments. And these commercial satellite images are the closest that we get only from 10 days ago, showing damage to all of these different sites. Our friend Brandon Weikert, he described one of these bases as he's like, it looks like Gaza, it looks like Khan Yunus.

19:57Saagar Enjeti:And this is just from Iranian drones and missiles. So, I mean, God help our troops who are stationed and have to sustain fire underneath these circumstances. We're going to talk here in a little bit about the oil tankers. I mean, it's apocalyptic. Not just Tehran. You have ships in the middle of the ocean just getting struck and going up in flames. those storage facilities in Oman. I think 10 different countries were involved in an attack yesterday. 10 were embroiled in the war. It's a full-blown world war now. We have troops, you know, covered up. It is a nightmare.

20:29Krystal Ball:Possibility of it spilling over to the Horn of Africa as well, because Israel wants to take up a position there in order to hit back at the Houthis, who may also be joining the conflict, it appears. So it's an absolute mess. And to point, these are all of them are authoritarian and to include Israel are authoritarian countries. And so, yeah, they are not allowing anyone to pose the damage because for them, it's embarrassing. You know, for the Iranians, there's a different incentive where, you know, we're actually see more of the damage there because they want to show the brutality of the U.S. and Israeli attacks.

21:03Krystal Ball:For the U.S., a big part of the goal here is to save face. I mean, that's a big part of what the risk is for the U.S. in this conflict, which is already, I mean, already they have sustained significant damage in terms of our ability to project that we are invincible, that you can't mess with us, that you don't mess with us, that we are the big bully on the block. And so they are highly incentivized to hide all of the damage to our facilities, to our radars, to our THAAD battery systems, also to, you know, our service members themselves. One more indication of how high the casualty numbers are.

21:39Krystal Ball:And this had come out a few days ago and was one of the things that people were kind of scratching their heads about. Put this next thing up on the screen. Lonstool, this largest U.S. military hospital abroad, paused some services like labor and delivery because of the war with Iran, meaning that they were having to take in enough injured service members that they had to prioritize that over some of the other normal services like labor and delivery that, you know, any hospital, but this one included, would typically offer. So that came out a number of days ago and people were going, okay, well, if we're only being told by the government, there were like, oh, just this handful of minor wounds, this doesn't track with the largest military hospital abroad having to completely cease certain operations in order to care for wounded service members.

22:26Krystal Ball:We also have an update on, you know, now put A8 up on the screen. Obviously, news organizations had already all but proved that the strike on the girls school that killed some 168 young children, young girls, that that came directly from the U.S. Well, now we have reporting that our own preliminary inquiry that is happening internally here also found the U.S. to be at fault. And it's still a question about exactly how this how this happened. There appears to have been sort of old intelligence that was used to target the school. The school site used to be part of a military base. Obviously, now it is no longer part of a military base.

23:11Krystal Ball:It was a children's school, a girls' school. And there continues to be a question over whether or not Claude, the anthropics AI, was implicated in helping to create this faulty information. And when you come up with these targets, this isn't just like a one-step sign-off. It's not supposed to be. It's supposed to go through multiple layers of approval, including checking the most recent satellite data to, you know, to make sure that what you're targeting is what you think you are targeting. So still huge questions about how this happened. And then, of course, the fact that there's reporting that this is a double tap strike adds, you know, increasing, increasingly dire questions about exactly what the hell happened here.

23:52Krystal Ball:Trump was asked about this and continues to, you know, continues to pretend like he has no idea about it. He doesn't know what's going on. You'll recall that previously he had tried to blame Iran and claim that they had somehow gotten their hands on a Tomahawk missile and then bombed their own girls' school. Let's go and take a listen to Trump. This is A7.

24:11Robert Pape:For the strike on the school in Iran, a new report says the military investigation has found it was the United States that struck the school.

24:18Krystal Ball:I don't know about it. Don't know about it. So still just complete, you know, complete Israeli answer there.

24:25Saagar Enjeti:Yeah, and you can say very unequivocally now that you can not only know how this happened, but you also need a serious investigation. Also, didn't even know this. Apparently, Pete Hex had fired a bunch of the people who are in the office who are responsible for investigating civilian casualties. Oh, wow. So this is even though this did happen, what we'll now see with the preliminary finding. The big question is they said the preliminary finding said it was passed on from the Defense Intelligence Agency. Who? Who did it? Who is responsible for updating the target list? Everybody knows that there's a shelf where they just keep all these targets in Iran.

24:59Saagar Enjeti:So was this target list created in 2013 and never updated despite the commandment of the chief? And they just pulled it off the shelf and plug and plate it because that's a complete failure. In fact, the person who is in charge of that office or whoever had that portfolio on their desk, let's say at the chairman of the joint, the way it works at the chairman of the joint chiefs is they have like 200 people who work for them. One or two of them is going to be the head of the Iran desk and they're responsible for coordinating all this stuff. I'm keeping it up to date. Need to know the name. The guy's got to go.

25:25Saagar Enjeti:He's got to be very minimum fired and probably be investigated for responsibilities of his duties because that is what a culture with real responsibility in the chain of command actually looks like.

25:37Krystal Ball:Yeah, and this is what happens when you have a chaotic moron in charge of the Pentagon and total incompetence and bloodlust and not caring at all about the rules of engagement and thinking that these sort of like checks on military power are like woke DEI bullshit. And now you've got 168 little girls who are dead and can't be brought back.

26:00Saagar Enjeti:It might be one of the worst atrocities the United States has been directly involved in in years. I really, I'm trying to think back to 03. I'm sure there were one or two in the very early days of Iraq. And there were a few, you know, the Kunduz Hospital and all that. But this, to be on the very first day, it should give you a lot of pause about how this entire war has already gone. And so whenever they tell you, oh, we struck 2 ,000 new targets over the last week, it's like, were they all legitimate? Were they all part of the same target set? Do you have any processes in place to make sure that this isn't going to happen again?

26:34Saagar Enjeti:Because this one is particularly egregious because it's a girls' school. God only knows about the rest of them. And then even inside of Tehran, it's such a chaotic situation inside the entire country. are they even able to you know go into have cameras there like they were originally again same thing we have no idea so be very careful about trusting what the government is saying and also what the uae and all these other places are saying there's an immense amount of censorship but we could say this at the very beginning or from at the at the very least the united states lied to the american people about the casualties that initially came out on the very first day of the war let's continue on with donald trump let's talk about modern home shopping it's sort

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29:45Saagar Enjeti:Turning now to Donald Trump and his current justification of the war. He's all over the place. It's a war. It's an excursion. It's both. As he said, it's going to both beginning and is also ending very, no, he said it's just beginning. It's also ending very soon. We showed you that one. And we won. This won. Oh, and we won. And even though we haven't won, we can continue to win. So here it is.

30:05Robert Pape:You just said it is a little excursion, and you said it is a war. So which one is it? Well, it's both. It's both. It's an excursion that will keep us out of a war. And the war is going to be, I mean, for them, it's a war. For us, it's turned out to be easier than we thought.

30:25Saagar Enjeti:So, yeah, it's an excursion. It's a war. It turned out to actually be an easier war excursion than we thought. However, what we can also see is that things are not going well. Already here have Trump effectively threatening the use of nuclear weapons, reminding them of our nuclear superiority. Very fire and fury-esque. Take a listen to this from the White House lawn.

30:44Robert Pape:They are, they've lost their Navy. They've lost their Air Force. They have no anti-aircraft apparatus at all. They have no radar. Their leaders are gone. And we could do a lot worse. We're leaving certain things that if we take them out or we could take them out by this afternoon, in fact, within an hour, they literally would never be able to build that country back.

31:11Saagar Enjeti:We could take him out within an hour. I mean, look, as we continue to see, Trump gave away all of his negotiating leverage. Why? Because he keeps being like, if you do this, I'm going to bomb you. And Tehran is like, well, you are bombing us. You have threatened and killed. You've killed our Ayatollah. You killed a vast majority of our upper echelon. You have literally made acid rain fall on the streets of Tehran. You have killed border guards. You've tried to foment civil war. You've demanded unconditional surrender. what more can you do to us? And the answer is only two things. More U.S. ground troops, thousands of U.S.

31:48Saagar Enjeti:ground troops, perhaps to take over the Straits of Hormuz or drop a nuclear bomb. Would it be us? Would it be Israel? Could be either. We talked about Brandon with that, but the strategic logic of it, I mean, I don't know what your percentage at. I'm at like 5 % now. You know, I was at 3%, now I'm at 5%. And I'm actually at 20 % for an atmospheric test because we're gonna talk about this with oil. The longer the shit goes on, If we start to get to oil at$200 a barrel, the energy secretary this morning said,$200 a barrel, we need to stop talking about this. Let me put it in gas prices. That's$8 a gallon.

32:19Saagar Enjeti:So$8 a gallon at the pump. People are going to riot, or they should, at$8 a gallon. I certainly will. And I have an electric car. I'll be mad on everybody's behalf. At$8 a gallon, think about this. The immense pressure to wrap things up. They're too prideful and too hubristic and too far in to say, okay, we're done. And so what's the other option? You got to invade or you got to bomb them. That's the only other thing that's left in our arsenal. Like, and I mean, look, at this point, they're so afraid of ground casualties that you could see like an atmospheric nuclear test that would happen as a signal for unconditional surrender, which is, I mean, unfathomable, like literally in the modern nuclear age.

33:01Saagar Enjeti:That alone would be one of the most shocking events of the century to actually happen. Absolutely, absolutely.

33:07Krystal Ball:Absolutely. No, I think we would have ground troops before we would have even an atmospheric test. Really? I don't know. I think we would have ground troops first. I think that would be the next. Because there is such, even for this, there is such a taboo around nuclear weapons. I think you would go ground troops first. Obviously, they've been briefing Congress that that is a very real, if not likely, possibility. reporters have been able to, you know, get their hands on plans of some sort of, you know, really extraordinarily dangerous, risky to the point of foolhardy operation to go in and secure the loose nuclear material.

33:44Krystal Ball:I think that's probably the next step. But, you know, then if that goes sideways, where do we go next? And that is very likely to go sideways. In terms of the ground invasion, I mean, that I'm at like, you know, very highly high likelihood, because if you think about we're going to talk later on in the show, but Iran is now close the straight of Hormuz effectively, except for they're able to export what they were actually exporting more oil to China than they were before. So they're doing what they want to do. They're blowing up oil tankers. You know, the Navy is saying we can't escort you. It's too dangerous.

34:19Krystal Ball:We can't do it. They've mined the straight. Now, the U.S. has confirmed that that has, in fact, happened. So they're doing what they want to do with the Strait of Hormuz, the Houthis may join the action and also close down that area as well, which in the Red Sea, which is one of the ways they've been rerouting oil to lessen the blow to the oil market. So they're destroying the capacity of the global oil market. So that's one thing. They've also now threatened the regional banking system in Dubai Why? Because we or Israel attacked one of their banks that is linked to the IRGC. And so they say, OK, game on.

34:58Krystal Ball:Then be on notice that HSBC, Citi, all of these local branches and anyone within a one kilometer blast radius of those branches, you are now at risk. You are now a target. So they're bombing the oil. They're bombing banking. They've also put on notice the tech companies who are who are, you know, complicit in the U.S.'s and Israel's entire war machine and who are also, you know, have made deals with these local monarchies, et cetera, and building out their data centers. they've also put them on notice. Like you are also a target, by the way. There is no way that the U.S. is just going to allow them, that the Trump regime is just going to allow them to mess with the oil, mess with the banks, mess with the data centers and not escalate to the next level.

35:44Krystal Ball:So that's why I feel very, you know, sickeningly certain that we are likely to see some sort of a ground invasion. And where things go from there, no one can say. But back to Trump's comments here about, oh, we won and, you know, we took him out and it's gone so much better than exactly blah, blah, blah. Our own intel community is saying that Iran's leadership remains stable despite the strikes. I just saw the new supreme leader, the son, who's, you know, mom, dad, wife, kid, other relatives were all murdered by us in Israel, that he's about to put out his first statement. There were some rumors.

36:17Krystal Ball:I think he I think the Iranians did confirm he was injured in that attack as well. There were some rumors that maybe he was like gravely injured or on the verge of death etc. So anyway, they're putting out a message. You can see that the Iranian, the IRGC has continued to operate. They had made contingency plans in the event that the top leadership was taken out. And obviously, they've continued to be able to execute on that. So even our own intel community says there's no sign of collapse here. There's no sign this thing is, you know, wobbling and on the verge of collapse. And you can tell by Trump's rhetoric himself, because when he first announced the war in his baseball cap without a tie, he said it's time for the Iranian people to rise up.

36:59Krystal Ball:Like, I think he really believed that, you know, they'd taken out the Ayatollah and now there was going to be this organic movement on the ground to overthrow the regime. Obviously, none of that has manifested. And now they don't even talk about it anymore.

37:12Saagar Enjeti:No, actually, one of the most revealing comments that I have seen so far is from Mark Dubowitz. If you don't know who Mark Dubowitz is, he is, I mean, I would say the preeminent regime change for Iran lobbyist called the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, which is like a cutout front really for a large part of this pro-war lobby. I don't even think he would really disagree with that, to be honest. I think he would say it is honorable. He absolutely for years has been beating the drums for war with Iran. He very recently put out a statement where he's like, OK, it will be a victory. He put out a tweet where he said it would be a victory if we leave the regime somewhat intact and we follow up the job later as long as we reduce their defense capability.

37:57Saagar Enjeti:So they know that the war is not going well. Three days ago, they weren't saying that. They were demanding regime change. Even the Israelis are still demanding regime change. And Trump is trying to spin everything as good. But this is the thing about bullshit is bullshit collides with reality. You can BS your way out of a whole lot of stuff. And while the stakes were high for tariffs and the stakes were high for a lot of this stuff, in war, it very quickly gets revealed. So, for example, let's go ahead and put A12 on the screen. Trump tells Axios there's practically nothing left to target in Iran.

38:29Saagar Enjeti:They're like, oh, all their munitions are gone. They have no capabilities. The very same day that he says this, 10 different countries are then either struck by a drone or involved in the war. A U.S.-flagged tanker, which we'll talk and show you pictures of in a little bit, gets struck in the middle of the Persian Gulf. Oman storage facilities are literally on fire. Three different ships in the Straits of Hormuz get attacked. You have drone and missile attacks all over the entire Middle East, and you have a coordinated effort with Hezbollah, which, again, you will all get an update on, which 100 rockets that fire into northern Israel, By the way, only 50 percent, according to at least some initial reports on the ground, only 50 percent were even intercepted, just to show you how low that they're running, right?

39:14Saagar Enjeti:And so this is a global catastrophe already. And finally, just had to show everybody this, A14. The only regime change that we currently seem to be on track for is potentially in Bahrain. From DropSite News, Bahrain is bringing in foreign riot police the first time since 2011 to deploy foreign forces to contain their domestic unrest. Demonstrations have erupted against the monarchy and their role as a base for U.S. military operations, including the Navy's Fifth Fleet headquarters. So that's great. Multi-billion dollar facility, tens of thousands of sailors, so many people. If you ever served in the U.S.

39:50Saagar Enjeti:Navy, you've probably transited at some point through Bahrain. No, oh, great. Now we have a full-blown Arab Spring-style situation requiring riot police and potentially a massive crackdown in that country. Remember, Crystal, some of the videos that came out of Bahrain where their own population was cheering whenever their country is being struck? Remember, 50 % of their population or so is Shia and has long been oppressed by the monarchy there. So this is really bad. And then the final thing I do want to show everyone is A13, where Trump says Iran war is nearly won, but Israel has other ideas.

40:23Saagar Enjeti:And shocking, lo and behold, down in the bottom, they say that actually Israel is still fully on track for regime change, that the different priorities show that they're very willing and want to strike at the heart of the Iranian leadership, at the heart of their civil society. There are reports just last night of drones, Israeli drones that are hovering around, shooting precisely at the police forces, trying to collapse any enforcement in the streets. They're doing everything they possibly can to incite an uprising and a civil war, which, of course, is leading to massive nationalism in the country.

40:57Saagar Enjeti:So everything is unstable. The global – I'm shocked that oil is currently where it's at. I have no idea what some of these people are thinking. I'm amazed our own economy hasn't tanked, honestly. Like with fertilizer, oil, the global inputs, helium, that's another thing. Qatar this morning said that they're going to shut down their production with helium. It's one third of the global helium supply. For those who don't know, helium is absolutely critical to the supply of semiconductors and specifically chips, both in the United States and South Korea and in Taiwan. So we may have a global chip shortage as a result already of some of the helium shortages that we're already seeing.

41:34Saagar Enjeti:Food prices are going to skyrocket. when we talked all about this with the war in Ukraine. Diesel is currently on track for$5 a gallon. So it's bad. It's really bad. And any talk of we've won or any of that, you literally cannot say the words we've won and or some sort of mission accomplished on the very same day that a U.S. flag ship gets struck in the middle of the Persian Gulf. You can't say it. It's on fire, supposedly under protection of the United States of America. Shocking.

42:03Krystal Ball:Yeah, and yes, sure. we're bombing the hell out of Iran. We're bombing the hell out of Tehran. Are we accomplishing? We don't even know what our objectives are. Like, let's even start with that. You know, originally it was regime change. Now they've walked away from that. Now it's, you know, then it was the nuclear material that walked away from that. Now it's like, well, we're going to blow up their Navy. And well, they seem to still be able to, you know, do some stuff on the seas. So I'm not sure what's going on there. We don't even know what we're there for. So, and we are certainly not accomplishing any of the objectives that have been set out.

42:37Krystal Ball:All Iran has to do is survive and they win. That is all they have to do. And right now, what our own intelligence community is saying is that they are winning. That is the translation there. They say the regime is stable. So your goal of destroying them, of creating chaos, civil war, regime change, whatever the goals were, those goals are not being accomplished. And in fact, Financial Times had another report about Iranian nationalism. Surprise, surprise that people are rallying around the flag, even people who are critics of this regime. And there are many critics of and for good reason of this current Iranian regime.

43:13Krystal Ball:But are they do they support having their little girls murdered at school and acid rain rain down on them and Tehran being carpet bombed and, you know, cultural sites, heritage sites being destroyed and Trump saying, oh, the map's probably not going to look the same after this? No, of course they don't support that. So, uh, so that's where we are. And, uh, anyone who wants to deny that reality is just living in a fantasy land. Cause like Sagar said, especially in wartime, you know, Trump can bullshit a whole lot of things and convince people of a whole lot of lies. But when it comes to war, reality is going to smack you in the face.

43:49Krystal Ball:And that is what is happening right now.

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46:55Krystal Ball:All right, well, let's talk about some of that reality with regards to oil. We can put this up on the screen. Just incredible scenes that are unfolding across the region as oil facilities and tankers are being struck by Iran. So this first one here, you can see a tanker on fire. This is in the Persian Gulf tonight. Here is an oil facility that was also struck. and you can see, you know, just fires everywhere. Here's a picture. So this is the straight of Hormuz right there. That's where Trump says, you know, just go ahead, just brave it. This is the U.S. flag tanker. This is the first time a U.S.

47:35Krystal Ball:flag tanker has been struck. This is near Iraq. There were a couple of oil tankers that were struck near Iraq. This is another tanker that is on fire. You can see the damage, the damage that was sustained here. And so, you know, in terms of the, here's someone, someone posted this with, this is what it looks like when Trump tells you to go ahead and be brave.

47:58Saagar Enjeti:I mean, these poor guys, these are some Thai oil tankers on a Thai flagship. You know, they have no idea.

48:04Krystal Ball:Very difficult life. It's not their choice because it's not like they can just be like, hey boss, I'm not down for this. So they're being, you know, brought into this conflict. And, you know, these are, these are civilians who are just trying to do a job. This is like the global working class, truly. And now they're, you know, they're being attacked. Some of them are being injured. Some of them are losing their lives in these attacks. And the Navy had originally said, you know, we had, I think Trump had originally announced, or Hegseth, one of them had announced like, oh, the Navy is going to escort these tankers through to make sure that they're safe.

48:39Krystal Ball:And then they immediately were like, oh, well, we actually can't do that. They're getting tons of requests to do that from these companies that want to be able to, I mean, this is, you know, how they earn their living. And the Navy has said, no, no, it's too dangerous because how can you accomplish this? You know, the Strait of Hormuz has now been mined. We don't know how many, we don't know where they are, but that is an incredible risk. And obviously they're continuing to be able to strike these blows in spite of Trump telling us that, oh, we've won and they're defeated and they have no ability to project any more power.

49:12Krystal Ball:And this thing's just about over. They're having their way. They're in the Strait of Hormuz. they're able to do and operate and do whatever they want to do. Early on, you know, just based on the threats from Iran, the insurers had effectively sort of pulled out, you know, spike prices to the point of being prohibitive. Now, our government came in and said, don't worry, we'll insure you. But who is going to take this risk? Who is going to look at these images and sign up and say, yeah, I want to do this. I want to risk, you know, not only the lives of these individuals, but it's a lot of money that these ships are, these tankers are, and a lot of money on board as well.

49:47Krystal Ball:Yeah, no.

49:48Saagar Enjeti:I mean, it is so bad that these attacks actually are what really sent some of the oil prices going up again last night, somewhere around$90 a barrel. Brent, I believe, is actually higher, somewhere near$100. Again, just to translate, I think if crude goes to$100, it will be roughly$4 a gallon in our national average.

50:07Krystal Ball:We sit at$93 right now.

50:10Saagar Enjeti:That's where we're at$93. So maybe$3. It depends, obviously, where you live, whether that we're going to do gas taxes. They've currently, or Gas Tax Relief, Jones Act. There's a lot of other stuff which actually could further reduce the price. But as of right now, that's roughly where things are going. Highest gas prices we've seen under Donald Trump's presidency. We should, of course, also note the mines that Ryan and Emily covered, some 10 mines, according to the US intelligence community so far, been laid in the Straits of Hormuz. And they have thousands of ships, obvious, or boats, small aircraft, which just have two mines or something you could just float out into apparently into the middle of the Straits of Hormuz, which still have their capability.

50:48Saagar Enjeti:The U.S. said they're only destroyed 16 of those boats now so far. The estimate, again, literally is like thousands of some sort of small craft, many of which are hidden in tunnels and in bunkers. But here is what Donald Trump said about braving the Straits of Hormuz and the mines. Let's take a listen.

51:03Robert Pape:Are you talking to CEOs of various oil companies encouraging them to use the Straits of Hormuz? Yeah, I think they should. I think they should. But I think they should use this. In my opinion, look, we took out just about all of their mine chips in one night. We're up to vote number 60. I didn't realize they had that big a Navy. The Pressure Department, buy oil futures as a means to keep the oil prices down or bring the oil prices down. We're going to be in very good shape. You see what's happening. They are pretty much at the end of the line. Doesn't mean we're going to end it immediately, but they are — they've got no Navy.

51:41Robert Pape:They've got no air force. They've got no anti-air traffic, anything. They have no systems of control. We're just riding free range over that country. And now we're going to look very strongly at the Straits. The Straits are in great shape. We've knocked out all of their boats. They have some missiles, but not very many. Wow.

52:03Saagar Enjeti:At the exact moment he was saying that, U.S. flagship was getting attacked in the Burjah. At the exact same moment.

52:08Krystal Ball:The states are in great shape.

52:10Saagar Enjeti:No, they're shut down. They're completely shut down. There's nothing moving through there except what Iran wants to move through there. All of that coastline, I was already seeing this morning. What do you think I'm reading? Reports, contingency plans for taking over the straits would require U.S. securing the coastline. So like all the coastline on the Straits of Hormuz, U.S. troops have to go there. If they're there, then you got to make sure that they don't get attacked from the rear guard, which means what? A large ground force. course, you can't bomb your way out of this, as we're going to talk about with Professor Pape.

52:41Krystal Ball:Yeah. And if you do just try to send that, those Navy escort, they're sitting ducks, right? I mean, that's why they can't do it. And that's why, coincidentally, I mean, this is one of the many reasons why the military did not want this war. I mean, Bibi said himself, he has been dreaming of this war for 40 years. And we have had in that time period, many American presidents who were extremely pro-Israel, who did many things that Israel wanted them to do and were on their side through thick and thin. But when it came to this war with Iran, those presidents said that would be an idiotic move. It would be dangerous.

53:17Krystal Ball:It would be extraordinarily risky. We cannot do it. It took till this president and whatever is going on with him and his sugar high after Venezuela and, you know, his foolishness to actually get us into this thing because the military knew that this would be a disaster. And this is one of many reasons why. This is extraordinary, too. So let's put B3 up on the screen. So originally, Trump had actually been opposed to any sort of strategic petroleum release. He has now completely done a 180 on that, not only in terms of our own reserves, but in terms of global reserves. The IEA has announced their largest ever oil release from global strategic reserves.

54:00Krystal Ball:They've decided to release 400 million barrels in an attempt to prevent supply disruptions and tame crude prices. So you have that. You have an announcement about a release from our own Strategic Petroleum Reserve. And so as that is happening, at the same time, we still have oil prices going up. That is an extraordinary situation. OK, what this was meant to do was to keep those oil prices low, to calm the markets, to bring the price back down or at least maintain its position. That has not succeeded. That has failed. Why? Because of exactly the scenes that we just showed you. Because of these tankers on fire, you know, right near Iraq in the Persian Gulf.

54:45Krystal Ball:And people are looking at that and saying, you can release all of the reserve that you want to. It is not going to be sufficient to deal with the disruption that we are seeing in the Persian Gulf. So the fact that you have this release and you still have oil prices ticking up and up and up, that tells you the markets are starting to figure out this is a dire situation. You know, to me, they're still underestimating just how bad things are at this point. But, you know, that's the combination of those two news stories is highly significant.

55:20Saagar Enjeti:They still have faith that they're going to figure this thing out. And they just don't seem to understand that we are in it now unless Iran decides that they don't want to do it anymore. And for them not to do it anymore, well, we are going to have to give them an extraordinary amount of concessions. This is why, as he said, we'll talk about with Professor Pape, all logic, all internal logic. It would take one of the most supreme acts of heroism of Donald Trump's entire life to say, I'm done. I'm done. Do you have any idea, though, how difficult that is? The troops are out there. Everyone, I mean, he would be ridiculed.

55:53Saagar Enjeti:I won't do it because even though I'm furious about the war, I would do the fake thing. I'll go on television and be like, thank you. You're the most courageous president ever to try and do so. But most people won't. They'll ridicule him, rightfully so, if we're being honest, about dragging us into this as a disaster. All of his advisors are too afraid to actually tell him that this is bad. And so all logic, it's just like Vietnam. The easiest thing to do, or Afghanistan or Iraq, what's the easiest thing to do? Send in more troops. Escalate more. Do more. Do more. Save face. God, it was peace with honor.

56:25Saagar Enjeti:Can't withdraw. Even though it all ends up at the same place, Saigon on a helicopter in 1975. You can see exactly how this is all going to go, except you just waste billions of dollars, lives in the process. That's the real tragedy of it. I do want to talk about fertilizer. We have B5 here. It's a farmer who was just interviewed talking about the spike in fertilizer prices. And I'll talk a little bit more on the other side. Let's take a listen.

56:48Robert Pape:Those that need to buy are hurting pretty bad because we've had this huge jump in fertilizer prices because of this conflict. And with only about 30 % of fertilizer coming through the Strait of Joraz, if you divide that out per day, that's about 0.09 % of the world's fertilizer coming through there. And even if the U.S. only uses 30 % of that, which I think is probably a really high number, that's 0.03 % per day. So we've only been in conflict for nearly 12 days here, and our fertilizer costs have jumped nearly 77%.

57:27Saagar Enjeti:So he's talking there about the price spike. So I recently listened. I highly recommend it. Odd Lots, friend Joe Weisenthal. They just did an episode on fertilizer. So I did, obviously, not a fertilizer expert or anything. We have no fertilizer strategic reserve like we do with oil. A huge portion of it moves through the Straits of Hormuz. Apparently, urea, the way that it's, whatever, grown or something like that, has to be done next to these natural gas plants. And so it's naturally from Russia and or the Middle East. So that's a natural place for it to be grown. Right now is planting season.

57:58Saagar Enjeti:So right now is when the fertilizer is apparently needed the most. Already, the spot price, I think, of urea and corn is like near its all-time high. If you look at those two things, the price spike for the farmers here will eventually be passed on to us as consumers in the form of groceries and inputs for all these different goods. But the worst part actually is for the developing world because this is an outright massive shortage. That shortage will mean that many developing countries, as we've seen now with Bangladesh or India, many countries which are poor can't afford some of the higher oil prices or fertilizer.

58:32Saagar Enjeti:They just won't buy it, which means low crop yield, which means potential famine. Or they will have to declare a state of emergency and buy food from some other country, tap into debt. IMF could get involved. You have the World Food Program. It's a serious, serious crisis. and that is something I had never thought about, you know, really even seen for the movement through the Straits of Hormuz. And the other problem for fertilizer is that oil is the number one concern. So even when it does reopen, as Rory has told us, that it'll take a couple months just to go back to normal. Well, oil's gonna get first priority, which means the fertilizer will continue to be back behind that.

59:08Saagar Enjeti:And there's all this stuff about how you can't really store it, like it doesn't store very well for a couple of months. So we really could be in a serious shortage. which it's something I'd never considered, but it really, like, this could actually be really bad.

59:20Krystal Ball:I mean, it reminds very much both of the Ukraine war

59:22Saagar Enjeti:and also of COVID, where all of these sorts of things

59:25Krystal Ball:that people didn't think of, including not just us, but, like, you know, experts who run the global economy, didn't think of the ways that, you know, these problems would compound and there would be all sorts of unintended consequences and that it wouldn't be just like, okay, we're open again, so everything's all good, that there would be months and years of getting back to some semblance of quote-unquote normal because our system, our global economic system, is built in a very fragile way. That has been sort of the basis of neoliberalism. You mentioned helium. Someone on Twitter is saying, Barron Investment says, good piece on Bloomberg Intelligence, and for those with helium exposure, Qatar's shutdown of LNG production has taken about a third of global helium production offline affecting chip makers who rely on helium for semiconductor manufacturing.

1:00:15Krystal Ball:Helium has no viable substitute in the chip manufacturing process. No other source can immediately replace Qatar's supply. Helium containers already filled before the war remain stranded. If the disruption persists, helium shortages could force chip makers to deprioritize lower margin product lines, reinforcing existing allocation toward AI memory, deepening an already severe memory shortage. So yet another unintended consequences that, you know, certainly no one in this idiotic administration has thought of. I mean, they didn't even think about the oil thing, which is like the most obvious thing that you could ever think of with a war in the Middle East.

1:00:48Krystal Ball:And they had not even planned for that because Trump was so high on his own supply. He genuinely thought that if he just murdered the Ayatollah and hit Iran hard, that the whole thing could be all wrapped up in a mission accomplished banner. And now here we are and they have no idea what to do. Lastly, I mentioned this before, but I just think this is incredible. Put B6 up on the screen. So while oil shipping through the Strait of Hormuz is completely closed for us or any of our allies, Iran is still doing what they want to do. They've actually increased the amount of oil exports that they have been able to ship out largely to China.

1:01:29Krystal Ball:So the whole cope around, oh, this is all about hurting China, blah, blah, lot. First of all, Iranian oil is not even a really large percentage of China's energy, you know, doesn't meet a large percentage of China's energy requirements. Overall, it's like 1 % of the energy that China consumes. China itself is a large oil producer. They've also invested heavily in renewable energy, et cetera, et cetera. But in any case, even if they were, you know, even if this was a big problem for them, apparently they're still getting what they need from Iran in terms of their energy needs. So just an incredible, incredible statistic.

1:02:05Krystal Ball:You know, it's one thing that that we have heard and I've been saying is, you know, by closing on the street of Hormuz, they're also hurting themselves. Apparently, that's not the case. Apparently, they're able to operate in a way that we are not able to operate there at this point.

1:02:18Saagar Enjeti:Yeah, that's right. It's really I mean, it's just such a bad, bad situation.

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