5/26/26: Trump Bombs Iran, Prof Marandi On Negotiations, Trump Pauses Taiwan Arms Sales

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24:32Joining us now to discuss that Iranian perspective is Professor Mohammed Mirandi of the University of Tehran. Great to see you again, sir. Good to see you. Thank you very much for having me. Yeah, of course. So let's go ahead and put B1 up on the screen here, guys. So we've got a report, this one from the Financial Times, that some of Iran's top negotiators have traveled to Qatar amid intensified efforts to secure a deal. What is your sense of how real these negotiations are and how close we are to a potential end of this war? It's very difficult to say. The negotiations in Qatar seem to be going well.

25:10That is for the potential transfer of Iranian assets that were confiscated by the Americans or blocked by the Americans. They want to make sure that the Iranians received assets if an agreement is signed. But the night before last, the United States, they bombed two boats, killing four Iranian soldiers. And they were in Iranian waters, and there was no reason for them to carry out that assault. And that is raising a lot of questions in Tehran. And then we see Netanyahu, who is about to escalate, and he wants to carpet bomb cities in Lebanon again, which reminds us of the previous ceasefire after the 39 days of fighting when there was a ceasefire between Iran and the United States, which included Lebanon.

26:00Back then, he started to carpet bomb cities, and he killed hundreds of people within a few minutes in order to wreck the ceasefire. So the belief here is that there is an effort to undermine any potential deal between the two sides. Professor, I do want to ask you about the reception in Tehran to this more recent Trump concession saying yesterday that the preferable solution for enriched uranium is to have it either be downblended, destroyed on Iranian soil or transported to a third party, presumably Russia or China. This previously was not something that President Trump was willing to accept at least publicly.

26:46How was the reception to that in Tehran? Is it viewed as a positive concession on the way to a deal or otherwise? Well, the Iranians are saying that we're not yet there. We haven't reached that stage. First, we have to have an agreement. And then after the 60 days, if all goes well and the Americans abide by their commitments, then we can move on and discuss the nuclear program as well as sanctions and other issues that exist between the two sides. But ultimately, the Iranians have said very clearly and repeatedly that they're not going to hand over any enriched uranium to the United States, nor do they plan to send it abroad.

27:26So this is, I would say, as an Iranian who's looking at events here, I think that this is a positive step. This is a step in the right direction. But again, we have different things happening simultaneously. and the murder of the four soldiers, the intensified assaults on civilian targets in Lebanon, and this, it's difficult to figure out where things are ultimately going. So if I was a betting man, which I'm not, I don't think I could bet either way whether there will be an agreement or there will be a continuation of what we have or war. As you indicated, the concept is that the nuclear file negotiations will be pushed off into the future.

28:20But in this initial negotiation, there are a lot of details that remain to be worked out and can put B2 up on the screen, which pertains to the status of the Strait of Hormuz. So this is from an Iranian foreign ministry spokesperson. We are not seeking tolls from the Strait of Hormuz. Be careful in choosing words. Fees are charged for the services that Iran and Oman provide in the Strait of Hormuz, as well as for the implementation of nature and ecosystem protection programs. So not a toll, but a fee for services. What is your sense, though, of what some of the red lines in this initial phase of negotiations are for Iran?

28:56Well, maybe they're trying to appeal to leftists in Europe and the left wing of the Democratic Party in the United States with regards to environmentalism. But I think the Iranians have said many times, and I think they're very serious about it, that the status of the Strait of Hormuz is not going to go back to what it was before for two reasons. One is that the Iranians feel that they have the right to receive fees rather than tolls, just like Turkey does. but second, the Iranians don't want the Americans to be able to rebuild those military bases in the Persian Gulf, and they don't want an Israeli presence or a European presence either.

29:47And right now, the Americans, as we all know, they're forced to use planes to bring in troops and equipment to the region, which is much more expensive and causes more damage to the equipment, and they want to continue to make it more difficult for them to maintain their presence. So I think the Iranians are going to remain in charge of the strait, no doubt, I believe. But I don't think they're going to do it in a way in which impedes traffic, because the Iranians do want business as usual to carry on through the Strait of Hormuz. That's obviously how Iran makes a lot of money. And countries friendly to Iran, like Iraq or Oman, they also make a lot of money as a result of trade and business in the Persian Gulf.

30:38Professor, how does the Iran view this more recent addition by the Trump administration to insist that all of the regional countries must recognize Israel via the Abraham Accords as part of some sort of comprehensive ceasefire between the United States and Iran? I think the United States really doesn't, or Trump at least, doesn't really understand that this sort of language, especially what we saw in his Truth Social post, which he was effectively ordering them to join. Now, I don't know what language he used on the phone, but the Truth Social post was insulting to these countries. And for these family regimes in the Persian Gulf in particular, it undermines their position among the public, especially since they've already been weakened due to war.

31:34If they are perceived to be moving towards the Israeli regime, it makes them more unpopular. And when the United States or Trump is ordering them to take a particular stand and they don't respond, that also doesn't look good for them. I don't think, though, that any of these countries under the current circumstances are going to take any further steps towards building relations with the Israeli regime. We know all of them do have relations. Qatar, Saudis, all of them have relations. But I don't think that right now any of them want to improve those relations because there's an ongoing genocide.

32:20It's been going on now for almost three years, and now the slaughter has begun in Lebanon too. So I don't see that happening. And of course, Iran is never going to join such an accord because Iran doesn't consider the Israeli regime in its current form as an ethno-supremacist entity to be legitimate. What if your soda actually did something for you? Introducing Sky Pop Protein Soda. Sky Pop Protein Soda has 10 grams of complete protein, zero sugar, and real delicious soda taste. Sky Pop Protein Soda. Reach for the sky. Get your Sky Pop Protein Soda now at Target, Walmart, or Kroger. When people turn to telehealth or weight loss, they're looking for real support.

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33:38I just called my guy at Grand Appliance. He recommended a large capacity GE profile option with fingerprint resistant stainless steel and a convertible middle drawer. I can optimize for meat, beverages, snacks or wine. Best of all, it was in stock and they delivered next day. Another crisis averted by Grand Appliance. Shop GrandAppliance.com to learn more. How much of a problem is the fact that Israel is insisting on we're going to continue to bomb in Lebanon, celebrating ethnic cleansing there? Trump seems to have effectively greenlit this at this point. And of course, Netanyahu is not interested in an end to this war coming to some sort of a deal or accord that would make sense for the region.

34:20So how much of this is an obstacle that will completely block any progress towards a deal? It will completely block progress because you recall that after the fighting, the 39 days of hot war, when there was a ceasefire, one of the conditions was a ceasefire across the region. And then Netanyahu began the carpet bombing. Iran said until there's a ceasefire, we're not going to allow those extra ships from countries that are linked to those who were hostile to Iran during the war to pass through the strait. So Netanyahu, by violating the ceasefire agreement, he has been preventing the world from obtaining the energy and the other resources that they get from the Persian Gulf.

35:05And I know that the Iranians continue to take the same position now. The war and the genocidal attacks in Lebanon have to stop. Otherwise, this agreement will simply not work at all. and the Strait of Hormuz will not go back to normal. Especially for Iran, Lebanon has a particularly high status and a moral status because when the genocide began in Gaza, no one but Hezbollah and the resistance went to the aid of Gaza when they began fighting in southern Lebanon in order to draw away some of the Israeli troops from Gaza to ease the pressure on the Gazan population, even though they knew that they would be bombed and slaughtered and their families would be taken out as a result of this policy.

36:05But for Iran, this was a heroic stance that Hezbollah took over the past two and a half years, more than two and a half years. And that's why Iran, for that reason too, is simply not going to accept the war to continue. And if it does, Iran will not allow those ships to pass through. I wanted to ask you a little bit of just what is life like in Iran right now? Have things pretty much resumed to normal daily pace? You can put before up on the screen, this is a report from Reuters, that the Iranian president has ordered the reopening of international internet access within Iran. So, you know, is there a sense of sort of normalcy day to day or things still feel very unsettled?

36:50Is there a lot of economic pressure? What is day to day life like in Tehran right now? It is normal, although there are a couple of policies that I think were very bad. And that is that after the fighting stopped, they they continue to have schools and universities, university courses online. And I think we all know what happened during Corona. But from next week, schools and university classes will be on campus and at schools. So from next week, I'll be on campus teaching my students. But during the past few weeks, even though there was no fighting, my classes were online. And during the war, of course, course, they were online too.

37:33So we're almost back to normal. I think we could have been back to normal earlier, but the internet, as you pointed out, is going to go back to normal. Schools and universities are going to go back to normal, but we have a lot of inflation. And obviously, because of the airstrikes on factories, on pharmaceutical factories, on hospitals, schools, and other infrastructure, the economy is hurting. And also the siege itself is having an economic impact because Iran can't import medicine or food from the Persian Gulf easily. It's very difficult. So there is inflation. But the Iranians believe that they will be able to wait out, outweigh the United States because this siege on Iranian ports is a double edged sword and it's basically a siege on the whole global economy.

38:31So Iran says we'll wait until the United States is forced to change. And I think that that policy is working because over the past couple of weeks, the American negotiators had a much greater sense of urgency to get this deal done than the Iranians. The Iranians are very careful. They're slow because they want to make sure that there are no loopholes because they know what happened in the JCPOA. The Obama administration took advantage of those loopholes against Iran, and they never fulfilled their obligations. And then, of course, Trump later on, of course, left the deal. But the Iranians want to make sure this time around we don't have a situation where Iran carries out obligations and then the Americans refrain from carrying out their own.

39:19And that's the main reason why the Speaker of Parliament is in Doha right now, to make sure that money comes to Iran as soon as if an agreement is signed. Professor, give us some signs that we can look for here in the West to actually see that a deal may be happening. You pointed out the Speaker there in Doha. However, we've seen numerous trips. We've seen the Pakistani army chief visit Tehran. And then we saw strikes that just happened yesterday. So how can we assess the willingness in your country to actually want to sign a deal? And same for us. What concessions can we look for from the American side that still remain outstanding?

40:02Well, first, I should also add that another reason why the Speaker of Parliament and the chief negotiator is in Doha is also to try to encourage countries in the Persian Gulf that assisted the United States in the war to tilt away from Trump and to establish better ties with Iran. So that is another reason why it's going. We were pretty close, actually. And there was a widespread belief that by now we would have had a deal. But it seems in Tehran that the neocons and the Zionist lobby in the United States pushed back hard on Trump. And we saw him make some statements that ran against the agreements that they had reached during the negotiations.

40:53So during these 60 days, the Americans were supposed to release a substantial segment of Iranian assets that were confiscated. The sanctions on the energy sector would be waived. that there would be a regional ceasefire, and the Americans would bear responsibility because in the deal it says the United States and its allies and then Iran and its allies. Also, the status of Iran's control over the Strait of Hormuz is not questioned. The United States gets a commitment by Iran not to develop nuclear weapons, which is fine for Iran because Iran has been saying it for decades that they have no intention of developing nuclear weapons.

41:46So the Iranians feel that they have a strong hand because of the Strait of Hormuz more than anything else. But everything depends on Trump. It could be resolved very quickly within a day or two. But I think that But there are lots of pressures in the United States right now that may prevent it from ever happening. Again, if we go, the reason why the ceasefire was wrecked a couple of months ago, almost a month, a month and a half ago, roughly, was because of Netanyahu. He refused to abide by the ceasefire. And if he hadn't done that, right, we would have had the last month and a half, we would have had ships going through the Strait of Hormuz and the global economy would have been in a much better situation now.

42:40So it depends on what Netanyahu does in Lebanon with regards to Lebanon. And it depends on whether Trump is serious and he is willing to stand up to the Zionist lobby. Professor Morandi, always so useful to have your analysis. Thank you so much for joining us this morning. Thank you, sir. Thank you very much for having me.

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43:45No guessing, just a more supportive experience. And all shipped directly to your door in discreet packaging. Do your research. Ask questions. Then visit orderlymeds.com slash podcast for an exclusive offer. That's orderlymeds.com slash podcast. Individual results may vary. Not medical advice. Eligibility required. See site for details. And now another appliance triumph from your friends at Grand Appliance. Meet Chad. With the laundry piled high, Chad's washer died days before a two-week vacation with his family of five. But Chad didn't panic. I just called Grand Appliance. They recommended a large capacity Samsung option with a super speed wash mode that washed everything in no time.

44:24Best of all, it was in stock and they delivered it next day. Another crisis averted by Grand Appliance. Shop grandappliance.com to learn more. Turning now to Taiwan on the heels of the Trump-shee summit, it appears now the United States will pause weapons sales to Taiwan, blaming the situation on the war with Iran and the need to conserve ammunition. Let's take a listen to the acting Navy Secretary Hong Kao under questioning from the Senator Mitch McConnell or what's left of him. Let's take a listen. To buy arms from us and all of a sudden there's a pause. What are you hearing from the Taiwanese about the pause?

45:06chairman i have not heard i have not spoken to the taiwanese however we are we have done some military uh foreign military sales to them and it's just right now we're doing a pause in order to to make sure we have the uh munitions we need for epic fury which we have plenty but we're just making making sure we have everything but then the foreign military sales will continue uh when the administration deems uh necessary sir i'm just gonna put mcconnell's health to the side and we'll focus on the political class just rotting and decomposing before our eyes. So first and foremost, that's important.

45:39So when we're talking about declining empire, that's a significant part of it. But let's focus on the substance, shall we? Let's put the next one up here on the screen. The Iran war and China thaw complicate U.S. support for Taiwan. A$14 billion Taiwan arms sale is now on hold amid the strain of the Middle East conflict and Trump's reconciliation with Beijing. So this was confirmed by Hong Kao, the acting Navy secretary, before the Senate Committee on Thursday. It has now been confirmed officially by the Pentagon of this, quote, pause, fueling concern among lawmakers and Taiwanese officials for President Trump's support of the island nation as he juggles the Middle East war and the desire for detente with Beijing.

46:18And the reason why that we are sitting with this, it is the single most important part of this entire strategic defeat that we have now suffered with Iran. No matter which way the ceasefire goes, this was the inevitable consequence. And I think it was inevitable from day one, but especially some two to three weeks into the conflict when we started to see the munitions began to dwindle. It just became mathematically impossible to seek a different solution. And then second, Trump, by getting into this disastrous situation, by removing almost unilaterally himself some sort of military option on the table, reducing deterrence, you now have a situation where you have no choice but to seek detente with Beijing.

46:57You genuinely don't. You need Beijing to bail you out of this global crisis. One of the reasons, and this is fascinating to me, one of the reasons why oil is only$100 a barrel, China is importing less oil today than it ever has in modern history. And it is doing so as a favor to the global economy, saying, hey, we have a huge strategic petroleum reserve. What we're going to do is we're going to import less, so we're going to keep the oil price down. If they were importing at normal levels, it'd be $150 a barrel, something like that, based upon the analysis that I've seen, which means it would be$6 a gallon here in the United States.

47:29You think that there's not some back and forth give and take between the United States? It's obviously not just a gift to Trump. It's a gift really to all of the other nations in Asia who are very reliant here on the US. And what we're seeing here is that Taiwan is the tip of the spear because Taiwan, if you were to compare Taiwan and Israel, let's say one country now as of this morning just surpassed the entire GDP of India, Taiwan, India, all of Taiwan, just tiny little island nation based on semiconductors for all the electronics. You know, it's been a reasonable ally over the years with the United States.

48:02Israel, causing problem after problem after problem after problem with the GDP of like, or bilateral trade between the U.S. of like 50-something billion, which ranks along like Chile, right? Taiwan is in the top 10. Which would you choose to defend? You could ask me, or anybody else. I think it's a pretty obvious answer. We have chosen instead to throw the full force the empire behind Israel, and by doing so, have sacrificed even the ability, if you wanted to, to do so with Taiwan and possibly even with South Korea and Japan, which I'll get to here in a moment. But I mean, this is it. This is it.

48:36And I mean, I thought it probably always was, but there was at least 10 % deterrent, I would say. I don't even know. It's gone. It's gone. And Trump has evaporated it as a result of this war. Yeah. I mean,$14 billion weapon sale or not, It's over. What? We can't defeat this, you know, middle income at best regional power of Iran. And we're going to go up against China for Taiwan. No, we're not going to do that. I mean, we can say whatever we want, maintain ambiguity, blah, blah, blah. The reality is clear to everyone. It's certainly clear to the Chinese. And this decision to pause the weapon sale is also, you know, this is a direct result of this meeting and of this trip to China that Trump just went on.

49:24Just to recall how this all went down, the public statements from Trump were completely sycophantic towards Xi, very praiseful, worshipful. Xi was much of sort of more hard line and clear cut about, hey, we are going to try to avoid the Thucydides trap, which means we don't want, as you are a declining empire, we don't want to go to war with you. And they expressed upset over this weapon sale. And lo and behold, we said, okay, like we'll do what you want because we are not in a position to do otherwise at this point. That's the reality. And, you know, this has been made manifest by the Iran war.

50:03Now it is undeniable, as Sagar is pointing out, whatever sort of imaginary deterrent there was previously is now wiped clean. So when China says, hey, I don't really like the fact that you're doing this $14 billion weapon sale right now, guess what? Our best course of action is to say, okay, we won't do it then because we need to have good relations with you so that you do not cut us off from not only what we need in terms of semiconductors in Taiwan, but other various rare earth minerals and other supply lines that we are completely dependent on China for. So that is just an acknowledgement of the reality of the world that we live in now.

50:40It is a different day, regardless of how the Iran war concludes and what the contours of a deal are, blah, blah, blah. And when that comes, whether it's this week or two months from now or a year from now, the world has changed and everybody's opened their eyes to the fact that we are no longer in any position to throw our weight around in the world in the same way. Right. And this is a disaster really for the United States because the entire basis of the American empire, especially in Asia, was built upon the security guarantee, not just for Taiwan, but for Japan, for South Korea. And in exchange, what that means is that there's open and navigable trade waters for cheap shit to flow to the US.

51:21I'm not saying this is a good thing. I'm saying this just is the basis for the US. I personally would like to change some of that. However, if we were going to say who are the best allies, I would say Japan and South Korea, especially when you compare them to a lot of these European nations. Well, what's going to happen now? C3, please. Let's put it up here on the screen. Just yesterday, the U.S. has now warned Japan of a severe delay in tomahawk deliveries due to the Iran war. The missiles will come two years late as the Pentagon now has to replenish its own stocks depleted in the Middle East military campaign.

51:49So remember, we went to Japan and we said, hey, you guys have to buy tomahawk missiles. They were like, okay, let's do it. So then we took their money. And now we're like, just so you know, we're going to have to wait a few years to give it to you because we blew it all with the Iran war. This was the interruption is the big blow to Japan, ordered tomahawks again for the first time in 2024 at the insistence of the U.S. to enhance its deterrence against China. The missiles would have given Japan a, quote, counter-strike capability to hit coastal China. And it was a$2.3.5 billion deal after Washington urged Japan to increase its defense spending.

52:29So Japan does it, and they give us the money. They're like, all right, so give us the missiles. Nope, we can't even turn those missiles over right now. This comes on the heels of this, you know, increasingly all of these reports that are coming out, which, you know, you don't need a report necessarily for the obvious, but let's put this Washington Post piece that I sent in post-production. U.S. allies in Asia are now trying to shield themselves from Trump's unpredictability. And what they say is that Trump's seeming ambivalence about the value of allies has created a sense of urgency among nations with close U.S.

53:00ties. As China now shows greater willingness to strong arm its neighbors and Trump injects waves of unpredictability, Japan and South Korea are banding together as smaller nations redraw the geo-strategic balance in Asia despite their complicated history. So to get Japan and South Korea to work together, that takes a titanic feat from the United States, two countries which hate each other. For good reason. Yeah, I don't blame it. But, you know, it's not my not my place to judge about who is comforting women who. But just saying I don't blame the South Koreans for still being upset. Trump is uniting the globe in ways we never could imagine.

53:33We never could have imagined. But what they're pointing out is this, quote, growing urgency was felt from the big powers, from the South Korean president hosting the Japanese prime minister for a two day summit, including a banquet and traditional fireworks show. something that's rare generally. And what they're doing is they're pushing them together to say, okay, we have these two great nations, the giant economies. However, both have total security guarantees. Previously thought ironclad from the United States, not so ironclad anymore. You take those thads out, take those tomahawks away. You have Trump saying, oh, we're gonna pause weapon sales to Taiwan.

54:09They're like, well, remember for Japan and South Korea, they have two twin problems. They don't just have China. They've got North Korea, which literally fires missiles over Japan and near South Korea all the time, who is a sworn enemy. So for them, what they need to do is they need some sort of guarantee. And look, some of this is healthy in the long run because it gives them strategic independence, but it will come as health for the globe and detriment to the U.S. dollar and to our own security guarantee, our ability to buy cheap goods, our ability to have good relations with these nations. And again, just be very clear.

54:45Who is more important to the United States of America? Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan? Or Israel, the UAE, and Saudi Arabia? It's a joke compared to their actual economic importance, especially in the future when we transition generally away from fossil fuels. How many Trump, Kushner, and Wittkopf properties, though, exist in the Gulf region? is, I guess, the more important question to ask here in terms of the type of decision-making that is being made. And look, also, you know, the same logic that we apply for the U.S. bases in the Middle East, where now, you know, many of them have been destroyed.

55:24Countries are realizing, hey, we thought having these bases on our soil would help protect us. Instead, it made us a target. That logic applies to a certain extent in places like South Korea, too, in places like Japan as well, where they're saying, you know, this whole idea that this was really going to protect us as you're pulling weapon systems from our soil and sending them to the Middle East, not sure that this fully adds up for us anymore. So I'm not saying that that change will happen overnight. But again, the logic and the calculus has completely, completely changed. You know, Trump threatened to pull our, you know, our military out of Germany.

56:01And there was a significant part, number of Germans on sort of like the far right and the far left. But we're like, okay, good. By the way, that actually would be a great thing. I would support that. Please, go ahead and do that. I mean, that sentiment exists in South Korea, especially among young South Koreans as well. That sentiment exists around the world. And the logic of it has also changed since the demonstration of our weakness in the Middle East and in the Iran You know, I know you guys covered this, but C4, I cannot emphasize enough how ass-backwards this whole thing is. From John Hudson, the U.S.

56:36bore the brunt of Israel's missile defense, which means that while Iran was shooting at Israel, the United States military expended far more of its own interceptors to protect Israel than Israeli forces did. Let me sink that in as deep as we possibly can. We have a very limited amount of these advanced interceptors, as I've emphasized over and over and over and over again on the show. They take years to rebuild. They're high precision. They're ridiculously multi-million dollars expensive. One of the reasons we give money to Israel is so that they can have the weapons to defend themselves. This is the logic.

57:12Then when it came time to defend themselves, the United States stepped in and we defended them. We expended many of the stocks that we have so that Israel could conserve theirs. Why? Oh, because, oh, but Israel might need them in the future. then why did we do it in the first place? And so we are now dramatically less safe because we protected Israel from Iranian missiles in a war, by the way, which they got us into and which they started. Remember, day one of the war, the United States Secretary of State, one of the most historic statements ever uttered by a chief diplomat. We had to do it because Israel was going to attack them and that we knew Iran would attack back and that's why the United States had to get involved.

57:50That was his reasoning, the U.S. Secretary of State. He said it, not me. And so here we are, several months later, the United States has expended the vast, vast array of its advanced interceptors, costing some hundreds of millions of dollars on behalf of this tiny little nation, while Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, they go dry. How does that make any sense? I'm losing. Like, genuinely, this demonstrates to me the level of which there has been a complete strategic inversion in the Trump administration. this will go down as one of the greatest follies in U.S. history. It's not even hyperbolic now at this point.

58:28This is it. This is the big one in terms of the turning point. Yes, I owe everyone. Oh, you're just saying that. Listen, I don't just say these things willy-nilly because when you stack up the balance sheet and you look here at Japan, a G7 nation, South Korea, same thing, top trading partner of the United States. Taiwan, I just described three nations which are in the top 10 trading partners of the United States who are like, I don't know. I don't know about this. And, Sagar, I don't even, I don't see anyone really disagreeing. Even the neocons now, the ones who are like, oh, we got to do more war.

59:00You know, Lindsey Graham in that tweet that we talked about with Trita Parsi on whatever day that was, on Sunday. Sunday. He said, if this concludes with the deal right now, I don't know why we went into this war to start with. Because even them or, you know, the Robert Kagan piece that we talked about in The Atlantic where he says it's checkmate like we lost in Iran. I don't think that there's really anyone who can disagree with that at this point. Now, some of those people use that as a justification. That's why we need a ground invasion. That's why we need to nuke them or whatever insane plans they have.

59:36But it's pretty undeniable at this point, unless you are the just most blinded, MAGA, sycophant, loyalist you could possibly imagine who just hears Trump go, we won, and are like, I guess we won. Outside of those people, it's pretty undeniable. It's really undeniable. And that's actually one of the obstacles to being able to secure some sort of a deal at this point, because even Trump knows he's not going to be able to sell this as a win. Even he knows with all of his powers of persuasion and reality distortion and all, you know, something that he's very talented as the probably greatest bullshit artist in American history, even he knows people are going to see this as a loss, as nothing more than a devastating strategic loss and one of the greatest blunders in history.

1:00:24So, you know, I think it's fairly undeniable. And this latest, you know, okay, well, we're not going to do the weapon sales to Taiwan at China's request. By the way, we're just got to go along with what they want at this point because we're in such a position of weakness. It's just a sign of a new reality. Iran is the excuse, but it's also the truth. Like it just is. And is there something we do about it? Yeah. We would have to basically Manhattan Project, our defense industrial base. Here's the problem. It's not a horrible idea, but it would be a horrible idea under the current political regime because, and I'm not just talking about Trump, I'm talking about both of them.

1:00:57Because under the current political regime, what we know is that, let's say some neoliberal Democrat or Trump, the neocon Republican, if you give them more weapons, they're going to use it for more shit like Iran and Israel. The whole point would be to have a sensible strategic defense and say, we're going to use this to protect us and to protect Japan and to protect South Korea and maybe Taiwan, maybe, right? Which even then is basically a dream. But we want to make sure that it doesn't get invaded or at least we maintain some strategic connection to make sure we can get all these chips which are deeply valuable all this democracies it's bullshit and everybody knows it but even that under the current regime like we know that if we put 1.5 billion dollars into our pentagon budget the vast majority of it will be squandered into the mansions of northern virginia and for more high-tech weapon systems which either don't work or are easily defeated or penetrated by a$20 ,000 drone.

1:01:52We have no creativity. We have no wartime mindset. Then the people at the top who talk the way that I do are like the CEO of Palantir, right? Who have a shit ton to gain from some more defense spending at some very dubious and problematic expense. So I don't even see a political constituency which is capable of solving this question, like period, without a dramatic rewriting of the entire global foreign policy elite. And it's terrifying, honestly, because it's theoretical. We're just talking about it. But the realities of what this means in the future are going to be serious humiliations abroad, being at the genuine, really being at the mercy of other great powers.

1:02:36Nobody alive in the United States today has ever lived under a regime like that. We have not lived that way in almost 100 years. And it's, I mean, look, you know, you can read books. It usually leads to clashes and fires and genocides and death and destruction. It's not good. Well, and this is why I continue to be concerned about nuclear weapons, because we haven't experienced a hegemonic decline in the nuclear age. No, we haven't. And Trump's psychotic. Like, you don't have any idea what this guy will do. It's impossible to predict, you know, what insane maneuvers he will take next. And so, you know, is it possible that he breaks the nuclear taboo in order to protect his fragile ego and avoid, you know, in his mind, avoid holding the L that he has to hold because of this Iran war?

1:03:26Like, I don't think that that's preposterous. That's why that's so, and Israel, obviously nuclear armed as well and completely psychotic. So it's a very dangerous world that we live in. And multipolarity was coming regardless of whether it was going to be Trump or Kamala or whoever else comes after them. But there could have been a transition that did not result. Circumstances matter. Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, what we're risking is a complete collapse. I had someone say to me, you know, we're flirting with a potential like Soviet Union collapse level of degradation. You know, is that guaranteed?

1:04:01No. But that's the sort of level of catastrophe and decline and obvious decline in living standards that we could be facing here in the U.S. because of the way that we are crashing into multipolarity versus having some sort of negotiated transition that would result in a lot less chaos and pain. And when I say this is the big one, you won't see it right now. What you're going to see is the ground for when the next big one happens and people are like, holy shit. It's like the Suez moment, right? That's why what happened with Suez, it happened after nearly a decade of the post-World War II era where the UK was generally declining in power and the empire was collapsing.

1:04:43And everybody, including the UK, was like, oh my God, we have no power anymore. But the signs were all there. I mean, what we're saying is that it's all right here. It has been laid out. And then either a Taiwan crisis, which crisis, I mean, what would it look like? We don't really know. A vote for reunification or some sort of pressuring sanctions regime, who knows, some sort of crisis between Japan and South Korea. I've always thought North Korea is like the sleeping giant in this one. And some sort of global rewriting event just because of the nuclear problem and now these problems with the United States of security guarantee and China as some sort of a guarantor.

1:05:19But that's when everybody will wake up to that one. As of right now, most people are just going to the store, 450 a gallon, oh, that sucks. It's like, if you open your eyes to how it is, it's really, really, really bad.

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