4/7/26: Trump Threatens Iranian Civilization, US Strikes Kharg Island, Trump Trashes US Allies

25:41Is there an edit, by the way, any sort of correction? No, nothing. Because so far, all they've done is silently edited. Now, look, it's a minor, not minor, it's a big story, obviously. It's a scandal, I think, for the BBC. But the point is that this is how it works, is you find these fringe actors. Remember that Afro woman who was on television who was like, please, Mr. President, keep bombing my country and then was so upset whenever he did. And she was like, no, not like that. That's not what I meant. I just saw this morning an advisor or some analyst for Iran International, some monarchist, is out there being like Trump should nuke Iran.

26:19I mean this is a sickness. Were there Japanese, like, can you imagine in 1945 that there were like some Japanese American and he's like, please, President Truman, nuke my country. Like, you have to do it for the good of the Japanese people. This is a perverse, like, 21st century creation. An even better example, a Pakistani friend of mine was just saying the other day, he's like, he's like, I think Asimunir is a brutal dictator who kills innocent people in the streets, is dragging Pakistan, you know, back into the past. I could not, there aren't enough adjectives for me to describe how I feel about that man and the military establishment that runs Pakistan.

26:58Never in his wildest dreams, he said, would he imagine urging other countries to bomb Pakistan. That's, I think, sickness is right. Literally, it's like a perverse. How your mind even gets to that place is. It's a mental illness. But the point about this mental illness is that this artificial narrative has been elevated by extremely fringe elements of the Iranian diaspora, which bubbles up to Fox News and to BBC. And then this BS gets put in front of the president. He's like, you know what? That's it. They want me to bomb them, right? This is how somebody psychologically can either say that the regime are animals, but I care about the great people of Iran.

27:39Well, if you only talked to these 2 % or whatever of Iranians who live in like Los Angeles and they're the ones who are telling you and encouraging you to keep bombing, this is the condition. And of course in our media, the scandal of the BBC quote is effectively nothing. It's not like any of the media journalists or misinformation – where are they? Where are you, right? This stuff matters. It is literally being used to perpetuate potentially one of the worst bombing campaigns since the Second World War on an entire civilian population for nothing. At least Japan attacked us in World War II. Yeah, and this brings us actually to the next element of this conversation because if it was true that the Iranians were begging to be bombed because the bombs represent liberation, the way that the saga around the downed airmen played out would have been completely different instead you have u.s officials who have said everyone with a gun in iran who was in range of us and many people who weren't even in range were shooting at us yes that was a direct quote from the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff is that everybody in iran with a gun was shooting at us Does that sound like a population that wants to be liberated?

28:56Oh, absolutely not. You know, I've done a lot of reading. I recommend the most accessible book on the Second World War bombing campaign from the U.S. perspective, the Eighth Air Force, Masters of the Air. They made it into a TV series, and they talk explicitly about how when these airmen would get shot down, they would often be terrorized and like in some cases killed, U.S. airmen, by the German populace because I think – I forget the German word. They would call them like – it's like terror fliega or something like that. Terror flyers because of the bombing campaign. And that was in a much more targeted bombing campaign by the United States.

29:31But they've been whipped up by the Nazi regime and also, of course, by the bombing itself to be like, you're the people who are bombing our cities into oblivion. And they would attack them. They would kill them. Dresden. Right. Well, that was a little bit later on. But my point is even in the midst of all of that, of the vigorous attempts of the US to try to bomb like railways or submarine pens. People don't like being bombed. Right. People do not like to be bombed. And so it's the same scenario, right? Vietnam, read the testimony of any of these flyers shot down who became POW in North Vietnam.

30:02Think about it. Very often the villagers would take them captive and turn them over and go on the Ho Chi Minh Trail. It would be horrible for all of these people. You can't sleep at night because of the fear and the sound of the bombing. They probably killed some people that you know. Right. And they're so distant from you. They're way up there in the sky when you finally get them. Like, oh, my God, this is the person. Yeah. Are we justifying? No. What we're saying is that this is absurd idea that, you know, they're wishing to be bombed. There's no evidence of that whatsoever. However, Trump also, look, just last thing here before we move on to these recent strikes by Carg Island, I do think it is just very important to lay out.

30:40You know, we talked yesterday about what that rescue operation looked like. We don't know the full details. Remember, it's not like the U.S. military hasn't lied to us about Jessica Lynch or about Pat Tillman. So, like, for anybody saying that they always tell the truth, yeah, be around the block a little bit. Or the Osama bin Laden raid. Just filled with incorrects. Even to this day, people are still litigating what happened on the Bin Laden raid. So what is important to say at the very least is you look at it two ways. This is an extraordinary operation. We got our guy. Nobody was killed. Great.

31:11Also, several hundred million dollars of aircraft. It took hundreds, hundreds by the testimony of the president to be able to get these people out. It didn't go exactly to plan. There were significant amounts of fire, enemy fire, helicopters, A-10s, and all of that shot down. And this is on the brink of potential ground operation that could be happening around either tonight or sometime in the future. So let's take a listen. A9, please, of what the president said. We immediately mobilized a massive operation to retrieve him from the mountain holdout. And he kept going higher and higher. The mountain kept getting rougher and rougher and really very, very hard to find.

31:48The second rescue mission involved 155 aircraft, including four bombers, 64 fighters, 48 refueling tankers, 13 rescue aircraft and more. We were bringing them all over and a lot of it was subterfuge. We wanted to have them think he was in a different location because they had a vast military force out there. thousands, thousands of people were looking. So we wanted them to look in different areas. So we were scattered all over like we were right on top of them. We had seven different locations where they thought and they were very confused. They said, well, wait a minute, they've got groups here.

32:30They've got groups there. It's amazing. 155 aircraft. He said several hundred Americans were involved in this operation. So look, I mean, I tend to think it was a little bit of both, that they were both battle testing. So this potential uranium operation, seeing how many guys can we get down there? Can we get a forward refueling point? How many people, how long can we be on the ground? We have to go do it anyways. Let's try and do a little testing. And so you can see, while as well as it went from the tactical point of view, it also showed the many perils of what prolonged deployment deep inside of Iran could bring for all of us.

33:07And again, right before we move on to CARG, and let's just say like the civilization tweet, I don't know about you, Ryan. I have never actually, I've always been afraid Israel would use a nuclear weapon. When you read a whole civilization will die tonight, I'm not really sure you can rule it out. And I had, I'm being honest. Even as far as upset as I am about this, I really did not fear a use of a tactical nuke until right now. And we'll talk about Tucker later. He's suggesting that Mark Levin is urging it. And Mark Levin has been getting his way, like every step of the way. And I mean, I think it's just important to say like, you know, there's no such thing as a tactical nuclear weapon.

33:47It doesn't exist. Nuclear weapon is a nuclear weapon. Whether it's on an artillery shell or not, once you cross that threshold, you've crossed it. And then it's over. What a devious term. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we've got North Korea with ICBMs. We've got all these other countries with ICBMs. They're going to be like, well, you did it. All right. So now that's just the reality of war. China, okay, tactical nuke. we're going to nuke Taiwan if you don't peacefully reunify. I'm not saying they would do that. They'd probably be foolish to do so. But maybe they would be within their rights now. There's no rights.

34:16Everything is constrained. There's also a thing called wind. Yes, right. Of course, radioactive fallout. Like the Strait of Hormuz, as people love to say. It's not very wide. You're going to put a nuke right there? It's terrible. What if the wind is blowing west? It really is. And just to see it, it's not just about crass. It's like this is real. This 93 million people's lives who are at stake. and who even knows about what this will mean. And who are offering a fine deal. Like the deal's fine. I know. Take the deal. The craziest part is, guys, take the deal. The deal before would have been better.

34:46It would have been better than the Iran deal. The deal now is better than whatever the hell this is. Can you imagine? What is, if you collapse a civilization of 93 million, the refuge in Syria, how many people live in Syria pre-Assad? 20 or 30? Yeah, nothing, right? A third? Something like that? And it caused the worst refugee crisis in modern history. Just destabilized all of Europe, changed the country of Turkey forever demographically. Syria alone, I mean, God, think about what's happened to them. ISIS, I mean, all of the fallout, even Iraq. Iraq was nothing compared to this. And if you have a famine in Africa.

35:24Oh, man, yeah. Libya, the gateway. All right, well, it looks like we'll, at the very least, we'll be here covering it with all of you. Okay, let's move on to Card Island. You can have opinions. You can have like a strong stance. And then there's your body having its own program. I'm Dr. Maya Shunker, a cognitive scientist and host of the podcast, A Slight Change of Plans, a show about who we are and who we become when life makes other plans. We share stories and scientific insights to help us all better navigate these periods of turbulence and transformation. There is one finding that is consistent, and that is that our resilience rests on our relationships.

36:10I wish that I hadn't resisted for so long the need to change. We have to be willing to live with a kind of uncertainty that none of us likes. Listen to A Slight Change of Plans on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

36:51Before he wrote his stories, it must have been. What? Okay, I don't think that's true. I'm telling you, the guy was a spy. Binge all 10 episodes of The Secret World of Roald Dahl. Now on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hello, gorgeous. It's Lala Kent, host of Untraditionally Lala. My days of filling up cups at Sur may be over, but I'm still loving life in the valley. Life on the other side of the hill is giving grown-up vibes. But over here on my podcast, Untraditionally Lala, I'm still that Lala you either love or love to hate. I've been full on oversharing with fans, family, and former frenemies like Tom Schwartz.

37:28I had a little bone to pick with Schwartzy when he came on the pod. You don't feel bad that you told me I was a bootleg housewife? I almost flipped a pizza in your lap. I was so pissed. Oh my god, I literally forgot about that until just now. Sorry, I don't want to blame alcohol. I got to blame that one on the alcohol. This is about laughing and learning when life just keeps on lifing. Because I make mistakes so that you guys don't have to. We're growing, we're thriving, and yes, sometimes we're barely surviving. But we do it all with love. It's unruly, it's unafraid, it's untraditionally la-la.

37:59Listen to Untraditionally La-la on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Turning now to some of the breaking news as of this morning. Let's put it up here on the screen. The U.S. military is conducting strikes on military targets on Karg Island. So all of the information that we have now so far, Ryan, is that these strikes on Karg Island are so-called on military targets, as in not on the oil landing platforms, not on any of the places where you go. The little military stations. The docks, right. There's small military stations. Now, remember, we were told previously that actually we had already wiped out the military targets all over Karg Island.

38:39And so it does make you question, why do you have to do it again? But there's a lot of things that you can see into this. It could be a precipitation of a ground operation to take CARG. I don't think that that will happen, but it also could just be - Could be a feint. One, to be a feint, exactly, before some sort of ground operation elsewhere in the country. It could also be a demonstration, obviously, of US power or intelligence. I think we've already done that, but bigger picture. It could also just be a retaliation for what happened yesterday, which, again, the whole Western press is silent on.

39:10So I'm going to give you the floor to tell us about what happened in Saudi Arabia because these seem massively important. These strikes that happened, people are totally silent. The Saudis are claiming basically – what are they saying? They're like, oh, it was just debris from thawed missiles. The videos coming out with huge fires seem to indicate much bigger percentage of their oil is offline than they're indicating. So go ahead. Yeah, we put up an A11. So there's the Jubail Industrial City in eastern province in Saudi Arabia. There's a major industrial hub there, partly owned by SAVEC, which is a Saudi-owned company.

39:51And it's been hit. And it is on fire. And it is extraordinarily central to Saudi Arabia's economy. And Saudi Arabia's economy is extraordinarily central to the Western economy and to the global economy. As Draftsot writes here, Al-Jubil is one of the world's largest industrial cities and a core pillar of Saudi Arabia's petrochemical economy. You add this to Iran's petrochemical industry getting hit yesterday. So this is a retaliation for Israel and the U.S. hitting Iran's petrochemical production facilities. I've seen estimates as high as 20 % of the petrochemical production in the world. And so we're talking about everything.

40:46So you've got plastic pipes that connect the piping of civilization. That's where these are made. Everything in a hospital, pretty much. And what am I doing? I don't need to explain to you how important plastic is and these polymers are to the underpinning of the entire economy. Somebody needs to explain it, perhaps, to Trump. I think everybody watching this basically understands. Just look around you. The entire underpinnings of our civilization as it exists run through these production facilities. And you say, oh, well, 20%, that's not so much. We still got the other 80%. Like, that's not exactly how it works.

41:27That's not how it works. Everything seizes up. You've got, as a business, export-import business, you've got your supply lines. All of a sudden, you no longer have those. you then collapse you were our node you don't exist on an island either you your business was a node for other businesses that that collapses um and so you don't just get the kind of violent combustion of the petrochemical industry you get the slow collapse of bankruptcies of companies throughout the world and then like okay well we need financing to get this going again well who do we go to whenever you need financing? We go to the Gulf.

42:12And the Gulf says, wait a minute, and I reported this on Sunday, wait a minute, we don't actually have the money. We're reviewing all of our deals. So the financing that we were able to make before, we cannot make. Now, if you want to pay us a much higher premium, obviously, we still have some money. They're extraordinarily wealthy. They've got sovereign wealth funds worth trillions of dollars or whatever, hundreds of billions at least. But is it trillions? I think it actually is trillions. But instead of, you know, three, four percent, you know, we're going to need eight, nine percent. And instead of this being silent partners, we're going to be active partners here.

42:53So that's just, that's the petrochemical industry and the refining process. We can put up A12. So in the UAE, You have, so finally, so this is coming from Sentinel-2. The U.S. is doing its absolute best to make sure that satellite imagery is not circulating to Americans to see what's happening. So ADNOC is one of the UAE's main kind of oil companies. This one here is the AASAB oil field. So this is an image that our team took before and after April 5th. Before, on the screen here, it's on the right. That's the before. That's what a refinery, that's what you want it to look like. On the left there, that's what it looks like now.

43:41That's what you don't want it to look like.

43:47That's not the only one that was hit in the UAE. And so Kuwait is getting absolutely blasted. uh, refineries. And now in for the United States and Israel to respond by hitting Carg Island and also what's it called? Parse oil field, Parse field, which Israel did yesterday. Right. Yeah. So Iran is now saying the restraints are off. So what we just showed you is damage done to the Gulf economy with the restraints on. Yes. Now they're saying the restraints are coming off. Well, let's get into that. So the IRGC announced earlier today that after the strikes on Karg Island that all of the strikes or all of their prior restraint and red lines on energy infrastructure will be put away.

44:43There's also this element, guys, I sent it and let's put it in post, is that Israeli media is reporting that attacks on Iranian railway tracks appear to have isolated Tehran from the rest of the country, a step, quote, that will help protesters take to the streets if needed. Some 10 different railway sections have been struck. Now, you could read that the way you want it to. You could also read it as now we can starve the entire population of the capital city because no infrastructure, food or anything can get on its way. And if we bomb all of the bridges and the power plants, then we're going to have mass chaos and no way for any of those people to get out.

45:21So you choose the way that you would want to read that one. I think I'll probably read it in the latter. But you can see very clearly Israel actually issued yesterday, ironically, a message to the people of Iran. They said, please stay off of the railway tracks. Of course, Iran has no internet and hasn't had internet for a month. And so – oh, and the message I think was put out – well, at least one part of it was in English. So, OK. Was it intended for the Iranian people or was it intended for the Western media to say, oh, wow, thank you so much for putting that out there? The intent nonetheless is the same.

45:56They're disguising it either under regime change and or regime collapse. Regime collapse is what their modal outcome is what they would like to see in this. And so, I mean, all you can say from the strike so far is this is a preview of where things are going. It can get a hell of a lot worse. As Trump has said, civilization will die tonight. But the retaliation from Iran, these are people who have dug missile cities out after they've been bombed. They've proven extraordinarily resilient. They studied the United States. They've been able to shot down an F-15. They clipped an F-35. They shot down two different A-10s.

46:33They have struck refueling tankers by their proxies. The Houthis are sitting there. Who knows if they're going to enter the war after what happens tonight, if it does happen, what that will all look like. And the IRDC is saying that we're going to take off all of the guardrails. And if we do wipe out their power plants and the power plants and the desalination plants. And then you have the Qatari, I believe the prime minister this morning or the president, whatever, their ruler saying this morning we are at the tipping point for the region, entire region from spinning out of control. So the signs are all there.

47:02You can all see it. And what we saw may be extremely tame from what we will see sometime in the future. I also think it might be worth noting. Why don't you talk while I look at what's going on with the oil markets as a result of this? And so the final thing to think about is where we are in this process. So we talked at the very top of the block that the U.S. keeps pushing for a temporary ceasefire. ceasefire. And that appears to be because the U.S. and Israel are both exhausted because they are not built for this type of what is now becoming long term. Like they're built for this shock and awe, you know, two or three days.

47:39The one aircraft carrier group is already offline. The Ford had to depart the entire battle space. We have lost, you know, significant numbers, you know, amounts of equipment on the ground. We have fired off extraordinary amounts of our both defensive and offensive munitions. And in general, aircraft being deployed at this pace require maintenance. You can't just constantly run these things. And so the U.S. is hoping for some kind of stop down where they can kind of, you know, you got to change oil, got to change tires. You got to get these things up and going again. We are reaching the actual physical limits of American capacity.

48:31And so that could have something to do with why the president is rationing things up to 11 at this point, because we can't actually go on forever like this. And as long as Iran can maintain kind of, quote unquote, control of the strait, which means as long as they have a drone somewhere in Iran that is capable of reaching that area, ships can't get the insurance to go through. Like that one$20 ,000 drone, one theoretical potential$20 ,000 drone is all we're talking about. And Iran has not yet used, has used a few of its hypersonic, most sophisticated ballistic missiles, but has held those back.

49:19So at the exact same time that the Israelis and the Americans are depleted, Iranians, yes, are smashed into oblivion, but still have countless numbers of hypersonic missiles that have even more sophisticated targeting capacity than the ones they've been using to date. And if you push this war beyond where we are now, and they're saying that they're lifting the restraints, and you also have the entire backbone of the economy in this small area, I don't think people have absorbed where this goes. It's very COVID-ian in that sense. And think about who cares more. Like, I think it's the Greeks who say a wet man's not afraid of the rain.

50:12Iran has been getting smashed by sanctions for decades. And so you can make them more miserable. They already have a currency that's worthless, an economy that is grounded to dust. So, yeah, you can make them a little bit worse. And you can bomb them. And you can keep bombing them. The West doing okay. Right. Or was or is today. Like right now, as we sit here today, still okay. the hammer's coming. It's been swung. It hasn't hit the nail yet. But we have a lot farther to fall. And so there's that asymmetric gap as well. Right. And what level of pain do you want to suffer? For what? Yeah. And for what reason, exactly?

50:54It's not like we're fighting World War II or something worthwhile. It's something in completely a war of choice. It's unpopular. It's not what anybody wanted, what they voted based on. And it will go down. I genuinely – look, I never thought I would see an Iraq event again. If we go through with this, it will be worse. I actually am convinced this will be worse. And Professor Pape even said, like, this could be worse than Vietnam. Remember he said that to you? Vietnam, he's like, yeah, it was a tiny little country with no control over 20 % of the world's oil. Now we've created an intolerable geopolitical situation for everybody involved from the Iranians to the U.S.

51:29to the Gulf, which just means more and more and more. Full-blown total war. That's where everybody's thinking. Yeah, and Vietnam broke the back of the American economy. It brought in stagflation. It broke the New Deal coalition apart. Yes. Iraq allowed China to spend 20 years investing in its own kind of development while we burned trillions of dollars doing war. And now we're going to just finish ourselves off with this one. Very possible. All right. Let's move on. You can have opinions. You can have like a strong stance. and then there's your body having its own program. I'm Dr. Maya Shunker, a cognitive scientist and host of the podcast, A Slight Change of Plans, a show about who we are and who we become when life makes other plans.

52:24We share stories and scientific insights to help us all better navigate these periods of turbulence and transformation. There is one finding that is consistent, and that is that our resilience rests on our relationships. I wish that I hadn't resisted for so long the need to change. We have to be willing to live with a kind of uncertainty that none of us likes. Listen to A Slight Change of Plans on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

53:04You know the famous author Roald Dahl. He thought up Willy Wonka and the BFG. But did you know he was a spy? Neither did I. You can hear all about his wildlife story in the podcast The Secret World of Roald Dahl. All episodes are out now. Was this before he wrote his stories? It must have been. What? Okay, I don't think that's true. I'm telling you. The guy was a spy. Binge all 10 episodes of The Secret World of Roald Dahl. Now on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hello, gorgeous. It's Lala Kent, host of Untraditionally Lala. My days of filling up cups at Sur may be over, but I'm still loving life in the valley.

53:42Life on the other side of the hill is giving grown-up vibes, but over here on my podcast, Untraditionally Lala, I'm still that Lala you either love or love to hate. I've been full-on oversharing with fans, family, and former frenemies like Tom Schwartz. I had a little bone to pick with Schwartzy when he came on the pod. You don't feel bad that you told me I was a bootleg housewife? I almost flipped a pizza in your lap. Oh my god, I literally forgot about that until just now. Sorry, I don't want to blame alcohol. I got to blame that one on the alcohol. This is about laughing and learning when life just keeps on lifing.

54:15Because I make mistakes so that you guys don't have to. We're growing, we're thriving, and yes, sometimes we're barely surviving, but we do it all with love. It's unruly, it's unafraid, it's untraditionally la-la. Listen to Untraditionally La-la on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. All right, we were supposed to have Professor John Mearsheimer. We had a bit of a scheduling snafu, but we will get him back on the show very soon, we promise. Why don't we talk about some of the things that we were going to talk about with Professor Mearsheimer, and that is Trump effectively saying there are no allies but the Gulf country and Israel.

54:51Be one. Let's take a listen. And it's not just NATO. You know who else didn't help us? South Korea didn't help us. You know who else didn't help us? Australia didn't help us. You know who else didn't help us? Japan. We've got 50 ,000 soldiers in Japan to protect them from North Korea. We have 45 ,000 soldiers in South Korea to protect us from Kim Jong-un, who I get along with very well, as you know. Do you notice he said very nice things about me? He used to call Joe Biden a mentally retarded person. Okay. So don't tell me about your stuff. Joe Biden, he said he's a mentally retarded person. He was so nasty to Joe Biden.

55:33It was terrible. But to me, he likes Trump. And do you notice how nice things are with North Korea? It's very nice. Who didn't help us? South Korea, Japan, Australia. Earlier in that, he also was like, but you know, the Gulf, they've been tremendous. I'm like, yeah, they're tremendous because they're getting hit right now. Otherwise, they could care less, I think, about all of it. And then, of course, he name checks Israel. Let's think about how inverted this is. He calls out NATO. And again, look, no NATO defender. If anything good comes from the war, maybe - He turns soccer into a NATO sympathizer.

56:07No, no, not a NATO sympathizer because people confuse it. As I've said, with NATO, the problem with NATO is that we have all these countries which are completely irrelevant to the US in NATO. However, the original idea was not wrong. Well, yeah, Germany, the UK, france might be it for me but you know maybe a few others can can add you estonia no you could oh hell yeah you can you can petition uh from from that point forward as to who you who else you think should be from nato but that's my starting point okay so let's take those three countries japan south korea so japan number three economy in the entire world uh south korea probably in the top 20 economies top trading partner of the united states tens of thousands of u.s troops who were there, fought side by side in the Korean War.

56:52South Korean fought side by side with America and Vietnam. Now, we shouldn't be there, but when the call came, they answered the call. They fought side by side with American troops. By the way, South Korea creates some of the best military technology and has sold much of it to the Gulf and replaced much of the U.S. ammunition stocks at our request, by the way, even though they had to strip their own stock pile after we asked them to do so when we gave it all to Ukraine. Japan, 90 % of their oil comes through the Straits of Hormuz. As I said yesterday, I read the Korean, Japanese, Singaporean, and Chinese press every single day, especially since this conflict happened every day when I read their press.

57:30They are full-blown panic mode. That is what we have done to these people. And we're scolding them for not using their military. The Koreans are dispatching people to Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan with their hands out, being like, we need oil now, right now. The Japanese, I mean, they're on a full-blown crisis. Their prime minister this morning was like, I will not rule out having to tell people in the future to ration. Like, she's like, I can't even tell people that that's not coming. And yeah, it's probably going to, I mean, the 90 % of their oil, what are they supposed to do? And if we go through with this power plant, the IRGC, by the way, I apologize for the fact this is all breaking literally as we're talking.

58:10They just said in response to Trump's civilization truth. They said, if that happens, Saudi Arabia and the entire region will then plunge into complete darkness. So they have the coordinates. So what will happen? That means 20 % of the world's oil is not just choked in the strait. It's cut. As in, there's no refinery being operated. There's no, you know, the well, I mean, if you take a well down, as I understand it now, having spoken to some of these oil people, is the worst thing in the world is to shut down a refinery. You would actually refine, you would prefer to refine at 10%, 10 % capacity, rather than zero.

58:49Because zero back to 10 apparently takes forever. And then zero to 100 is like a whole thing. Again, I don't understand the machinery of it all, but that's what I've been told by these oil experts. Well, that's Saudi Arabia, UAE, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar. already 17 % of Qatar's natural gas is offline. This could be 100%. I mean, that is 40 % of LNG in the whole world, right? So that is blackouts everywhere. You talk a lot about Pakistan. 100 % of Pakistani LNG comes from Qatar. 100%, which is why they're so desperate to have a peace deal. This is why. So there will be, I mean, not just rolling blackouts, blackout forever, for months potentially.

59:34on end. So yeah, to inflict this level, because we just talked about the human damage of Iran, to inflict this level of damage on the top trading partners of the whole United States of America, you are fundamentally flipping them the bird and basically saying, I'm with Israel and with the Gulf over you. When the combined trade of those places I just listed is probably 1.5 trillion with Israel and the GCC, I don't even think it would drop$155 billion. It's so crazy. Yeah. And the problem is that Saudi Arabia has been doing okay up until now. Because of Yanbu and the Red Sea. Exactly. They were incentivized to not find this to be that awful for them.

1:00:22And I did a story on Sunday over at DropSite about how a lot of the Gulf financing is now being reconsidered as a result of the deprecation of the Gulf finances that is coming from the collapse of their physical infrastructure and their ability to produce oil, sell money, get capital, which then turns into the financing of the entire Western world. But as one of these top officials, Gulf officials, told me, Saudi Arabia, people think that they're getting killed, but actually, yes, they can't export as much through the Strait of Hormuz, and their ability to export is slightly down. They were able to move a lot of things, as you were saying, out other directions.

1:01:06And the fact that they're now getting double or triple what they were getting before makes up for the difference. And they're seeing their competitors getting smashed as well. So from a very cynical perspective, it's like, this is actually not so bad for us. We can manage this. if their power plants get hit and their and their petrochemical plant just got hit their industrial base just got hit if if iran retaliates for being plunged into darkness by plunging saudi arabia the uae and qatar into darkness like you said that sets them back right now they're set back two or three years a bunch of investment you rebuild things billions and billions you get but But it's doable.

1:01:47But it's doable. You get back online. It'd be a lot of suffering for several years, higher prices that probably never come down totally. But you can bring back things to some semblance of what they were like on February 27th before Trump and Israel launched this war. You plunge all of these countries into darkness. Now you're talking about a decade, a lost economic decade. And let me read you what the Iranians, this is senior Iranian source for orders. Again, this is all breaking because they're responding live. If the situation gets out of control, Iran's allies will close the Bab al-Mendeb Strait, which is the Houthis closing down the Red Sea.

1:02:25And then it's over. There's no more oil, period. There is no more oil. Right, because Saudi's backup plan is now, oh. The backup plan is over. You will almost certainly see suicide drones that try to hit the pipeline. They already were able to hit the Yanbu terminal. They will try to destroy. Also, by the way, I just saw a report. Yanbu was down significantly in terms of the amount of oil. They were even able to export just last week compared to the week before. So clearly there's something going on that they weren't telling us. But that trickle of oil is really keeping. To the extent that the oil market is still afloat, that is one of the main reasons that it is.

1:02:59And they say specifically they will close the strait or they will close Bab al-Mandab if the situation continues. There are no negotiations with the Americans. We will strike energy plants in response to these attacks. and the entire region will then reciprocally be plunged into darkness, including Saudi Arabia. All of this, I think, really backs up Professor Robert Pape's New York Times op-ed, which coincidentally they stole from his Breaking Point segment. Love it. Let's put it up. Yeah, I guess we'll take it. I mean, there's no attribution, which is kind of annoying, but it's okay. So they say the war is turning Iran into a major world power from Professor Robert.

1:03:31You heard it here first. You heard it literally here first. Don't forget it. They almost certainly stole it from my Twitter feed after I tweeted out the clip of your and Emily's fantastic interview with him. And look, I mean, I think this is a very obvious, the leverage points that we've now seen Iran be able to hit that are very tactical, precise, but important for the strategic picture of their ability to exact pain. And with one-fifth of the world's supply moving through this strait and then potentially also being able to shut down Saudi Arabia, the Bab al-Mendeb in the Red Sea, those two things really would – I mean I don't even know.

1:04:12Is there a price of oil? And at that point, is the price – the price doesn't reflect reality. If the price is$400 a barrel, that's basically only the US and the richest countries in the world will have it. For everybody else, like they can't afford it. They'll just be no oil. And even for us, we may be willing to pay X amount for oil. Luckily, we're OK. We're a net exporter. But even then, as I understand it, refinery capacity and all that gets very complicated. Even if we were to do some sort of an export ban, it would probably lead to an eventual shortage of some kind. Like there's a full-blown shortage that could happen.

1:04:48Or diesel or jet fuel. Like all of these types of refined products, which fundamentally, that's why we care about oil in the first place. So just looking at all of this happening live and seeing, look, this will have a major impact on us, as I said, but we're not going to starve. We're going to be okay. But for the rest of the world, like Japan, South Korea, it might actually be full-blown like rationing. They might have to say nobody can drive. They might have to do – I mean what's the worst case? Rolling blackout. Like they're like, look, in the hot part of the day, no AC. I've lived through that.

1:05:19When I went to India as a kid, we had periods during the day where they're like, look, from 3 to 9, no current. It's just that's how people live. There's no power. Well, that really could be the reality, even in very developed countries, and then total blackout in the rest. So just watching his statement and then seeing also the reaction where the Japanese and the Australians – I saw the Australian prime minister. He's like, look, we just want peace. We had nothing to do with this. But now it's a disaster for us. And the Japanese – I mean literally this is a full-blown crisis. The Koreans, it's a crisis.

1:05:50Of course, for the Europeans, it's a crisis too. It's a crisis, you know, for almost every single major U.S. ally, which is not named Israel, is very unhappy about this. And then you have the U.K. denying our base rights, right? I mean, you can't go back from that. Like, that fractures the alliances as we know it. And the question is, who is telling Trump this? Because as we talked about in the first block there, you have – you've been hearing Trump say a lot of completely delusional things. one of them being the Iranians, we have signal intercepts. So that, I don't think he made this up. So Trump said, we have signal intercepts of Iranians begging us to bomb them.

1:06:32So the reason I don't think he made it up is because he's using the word signal intercepts. I think somebody in his orbit told him that. Oh, of course. I think it's a fabricated thing. I don't think they have actual telephone communications where just two regular Iranians are talking to each other and they're saying, if America's listening, please keep bombing us. I don't think that's real. What I do think is real is somebody told Trump that. Setting that aside, what are Dan Cain, Pete Hegseth in particular, telling Trump about how this war is going? What is Besant telling him about what the effect is on the economy?

1:07:11where what are uh jd vance tulsi gabbard i don't think can even like get into the white house anymore she's tweeting aloha from hawaii doing nothing oh my god what a joke just sitting around waiting to get fired at this point what a joke of a person can we say that yes all these people you're doing what are you doing disgust me disgust me your whole point your whole point in compromising all of your integrity right is that you're going to be in the room at critical moments and your voice is going to make a difference. That's the argument for why you do this. And if you can't, then you quit. Yeah.

1:07:46Which Joe can. Joe can, to his credit. To his credit. Yeah. Look, he can hate the guy and all that. He made a mistake. I made a mistake. And he talked about the hermeneutic seal around Trump, that he's not getting the information that we all have. Because he's not getting it from cable news. They're not being honest about what's going on here. He talks to a lot of people. So if you're one of these people that talks to Trump all the time, come on, guys. Somebody tell him. Because clearly Hegseth and Cain, Rubio and these rest are afraid of telling Trump the truth. to me they should be more afraid of what the political implications are going to be for them I mean they should be more afraid of what they're doing to the world but I think we've dispatched with the idea that they care about that but we're hey Rubio Hegseth like Vance too like how like how do you think your future looks in a world that is in global depression because this unfolded can we You did not even talk about that.

1:08:58That's so far beyond that. I don't give a flying fuck about their future political - Then what motivates them? Something has to motivate them to shake them out of this. I don't know. Look, you know, I'm a cynical person, Ryan. We've talked about it many times, even this. I mean, like, this is sick. This is the world is on a precipice of disaster, potential nuclear weapons use. These motherfuckers are sitting in their offices thinking about running for office. Oh, you think you're running for office? After this, I'm gonna tell you this. I'm gonna do whatever the fuck I can to make sure you don't get a single inch closer to power.

1:09:29Now, I'm nobody, all right? But maybe enough people together will be something. The entire world agrees with you and is going to roll with you. Tulsi, JD, all these other people. Yeah, all right. You got 12 hours, guys. No, not. You got 10 hours. Get it together. Fuck you at this point. All right. Anyway, let's move on. Yeah, it's true. But still, dial it back. Come on. Come on, guys. Come on. Let's move on.

1:10:14Peace to the planet. Charlamagne Tha God here. And listen, we are back. The Black Effect Podcast Festival is back in Atlanta on April 25th at Pullman Yard. Yeah. And the full lineup is nuts. We got the Grits and Eggs podcast, Deontay Kyle and Big Ice Cup Cat. We got Club 520 with Jeff Teague and the gang. Don't call me white, girl. Mona will be there. Keep it positive, sweetie, with Crystal Renee. We got Reality with the King with Carlos King. And yes, Drink Champ will be in the building. Plus, you know, we're going to have a lot of guests. So you need to join us. And we got the Black Effect Marketplace, the picture podcast, and everything you expect from the Black Effect Podcast Festival.

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1:11:03Hey, I'm Dr. Maya Shunker, a cognitive scientist and host of the podcast, A Slight Change of Plans. A show about who we are and who we become when life makes other plans. I wish that I hadn't resisted for so long the need to change. We have to be willing to live with a kind of uncertainty that none of us likes. You can have opinions. You can have like a strong stance. And then there's your body having its own program. Listen to A Slight Change of Plans on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Saturday, May 2nd, country's biggest stars will be in Austin, Texas.

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