5/7/26: Saudis Turn On Trump Over Project Freedom, Trump Says $8 Gas Is Worth It For Iran War

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1:08Good morning, everybody. Happy Thursday. I have an amazing show for everybody today. What are we, Crystal? Indeed we do. Some pretty fascinating revelations. So Trump was apparently forced to back off of, quote-unquote, Operation Freedom in the Strait of Hormuz after Saudi Arabia and Kuwait both said, you cannot use our countries for your military maneuver. So pretty stunning revelations there. We'll take you through the very latest, of course, in terms of the Iran war. Trump is also out saying that even$200 a barrel would be worth it for all of the glorious things that are being achieved in this insane war.

1:37A billionaire says that tax the rich is equivalent to basically the N-word or other racial slurs. So that's quite a take there. Oh, and river to the sea. Yeah, we'll get to that. Yes, exactly. It's just as bad as calling for Palestinian freedom in his view. An alleged Epstein suicide note has been released. We told you last week about the existence of this note. Now it has been made public. You can see for yourself and judge what you make of it. Glenn Greenwald is going to join us to talk about the ADL's new anti-Semitism report and really reflect on his own status as a self-hating Jew. And we also have him on to talk about a horrifically cruel bill that just passed the House that would require all pigs who are being raised for human consumption to live in crates that are so small they can't even turn around, undercutting state legislation that has been passed to try to avoid exactly that fate.

2:30So he's always a great animal rights activist and our advocate and has been really following these stories and a couple other ones as well. Something I've always respected about Glenn and excited for him to educate us in particular on that topic. Thank you to everybody who's been subscribing to the show, BreakingPoints.com, if you can support us. If you're listening to this on YouTube, please just go ahead and hit the subscribe button. And if you're listening as a podcast, please share an episode with a friend and rate us five stars. It really helps other people find the show. But as Crystal said, let's go and start with that blockbuster news out of Saudi Arabia.

3:00Let's put this up here on the screen. Trump's abrupt U-turn on the plan to reopen the Strait of Hormuz came after backlash from allies. Saudi Arabia, a key Gulf ally, suspended the U.S. military's ability to use its bases and airspace to carry out the operation. Trump's abrupt reversal came specifically on Project Freedom on Sunday afternoon. Now, initially, the market and others thought that this was a sign, or sorry, the announcement of Project Freedom only for two days later to back off of it. Now, the abrupt dismissal was initially thought by the market, by us, and others as, wow. So talks with the Iranians must be really, really serious.

3:39This must be progressing in a very good direction because why else would you call off an operation which 24 hours before the secretary of defense and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs were announcing in their bluster and in all their glory? Well, it turns out that in a call between Trump and the Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, the issue not only was not resolved, but the KSA stood their ground. And the reasoning behind it is that they said they would not allow the military to fly aircraft from the Prince Sultan Air Base southeast of Riyadh or fly through any Saudi airspace to support the effort.

4:14We also need to shout out Ryan Grimm, who reported and apparently had the story. He was sitting on it. He didn't get there just fast enough to the issue. But what he found out was that Kuwait also had told the U.S. that they cannot use their airspace or their bases to conduct the operation. And obviously, this is proof beyond any measure that the Iranian policy of horizontal escalation and of punishing Gulf allies has been tremendously successful. Because what the Saudis, the Kuwaitis saw was with the announcement of Project Freedom, the immediate targeting of the Fujairah oil plant in the UAE, the only one which they're able to export oil from outside of the Strait of Hormuz.

4:58Saudi Arabia sits in terror at attacks on the east-west pipeline and the Yanbu oil facility, which is in the Red Sea, in addition to Houthis, which, remember, did not ever join the war, even with shutting out the entire Strait of Hormuz. Kuwait, we got the news, has not exported a single barrel of oil in 30 days. I mean, look, they have plenty of money, but nobody has that much money to sustain your economy in a total 30-day shutdown of the vast amount of your imports. So these two things combined show actually much less confidence, I think, in any of these talks that are allegedly happening between Iran and Washington and instead a curtailing and a really humiliation of the American empire.

5:37Because what we've also seen is not only now a rejection of these U.S. traditional allies, the Gulf and Kuwait, but we've been unable to protect them sufficiently that they feel okay with letting us that. And also the fact that we have our aircraft carriers and others outside of range of Iranian drones and missiles, but that means that you are very reliant on these ground air refueling. And many of these bases and others, they took tremendous damage throughout the war, which we also have some images of, which we'll show people later in the show. This is a wild insight into the real dynamics that underpin this war.

6:11It also really calls into question for me those reports that Saudi was alongside Israel also pushing for this war to start. It's still possible that they were and just didn't realize how extreme the backlash would be. But I think this undercuts some of this notion that Saudi Arabia has been a real cheerleader. There was also some reporting that while the UAE was being really hurt economically, Saudi Arabia had actually been able to export enough oil and with the premium, that they were actually making money. But if you look at the overall dynamics and how significant of a change this is going to be in the region with Iran gaining control of the Strait of Hormuz, you could see that Iran's power in the region and globally is rising.

6:49And since Saudi is the primary rival of Iran, especially regionally, this has ended up being a disaster for them as well. But for them and Kuwait to come to us and say, oh, your little Project Freedom thing that you didn't apparently bother to greenlight with us, no, we're not doing it. That is a stunning rebuke. And Iran has said since the beginning of this war, and really before that as well, but really, you know, credibly since the beginning of this war, has said that one of their goals is U.S. withdrawal from the region, and especially from Saudi Arabia, because, you know, the presence of U.S.

7:22Army in, you know, the Holy Land for them is a particular issue of concern. But in any case, that seemed so fanciful at the beginning of this war. And now between Saudi, Kuwait saying, this is a problem for us. We don't want you operating from our soil. And when you combine that with the fact that our bases have been basically obliterated in the region, it no longer seems like such an incredibly preposterous or far-fetched outcome. We have yet another report. In fact, I'm not sure what element this is. I think it's A7 all the way at the bottom that we can put on the screen. This is yet another report.

7:59this one from the Washington Post, about how many more U.S. military assets were hit, then reported. This is, again, according to satellite images CNN had a report previously. There was another one, I think maybe NBC News before that, that talked about the number of bases that had been hit. We could tell anecdotally because the soldiers had to be removed from the bases and housed in civilian hotels. That probably saved a lot of lives, actually, the fact that they were evacuated off of these bases because apparently these bases were just hit with extraordinary precision at a level that the U.S.

8:32military was never able to anticipate. So when you add that together with the Saudis and the Kuwaitis saying, no, we're done here, and there was also some indication that the Omanis were maybe not too psyched about what was going on either, and Trump having to completely change his entire approach at a moment's notice after Hegseth and Dan Cain and Rubio had all gone out and done press briefings to tout Project Freedom that he had to make that U-turn because he no longer had cooperation from his allies in the region. That's pretty devastating. Yeah. Can we go back to those bases? I believe we have some more images just because they're so shocking, I think, in nature.

9:09If we can go and put them up there on the screen from A7. And if not, we can edit some of these later in post. But what you can actually see is that the Iranians had originally released some images. What they then did is they use satellite imagery later on to verify them. Now, these actually satellite images are only from March 8th, so almost two months old in some cases to even show you what the damage is. But what you see is that the vast majority, let's say in one case, of fuel bladders, which were stored in Kuwait, were damaged. And the images that I'm looking at, it's almost all of them. Yeah, you can see them actually in the bottom right corner, right?

9:47And so the next one, what you're all seeing are individual parts of bases where you can see tremendous amounts of damage, either to the roof, to airfields, to fuel storage areas, to airplane hangars. And what this demonstrates also is why the U.S. was so reliant even thus far just on these bases, because they still need these because the aircraft carriers and others are so far away that they're not able to support the bombing mission in the way that they want. And Project Freedom, make no mistake, you know, we've talked about the blockade and others. This takes a tremendous amount of energy and military resources.

10:25Just to give you an example, let's put A1 up there on the screen. Just yesterday, as all the talks were apparently getting good, the Central Command released this. The U.S. forces disabled a vessel in the Gulf of Oman attempting to violate the blockade. They said, U.S. forces operating in the Gulf enforce blockade measures by enabling an Iranian-flagged the unladen oil tanker, which was attempting to sail toward an Iranian port. CENTCOM said that they saw this ship called the Hasna as it transited international waters to the Iranian port on the Gulf of Oman. American forces then issued multiple warnings and informed the flag vessel it was in violation of a blockade.

11:05After the crew failed to comply, forces disabled the tanker's rudder, firing several rounds from a 20-millimeter cannon gun on a U.S. Navy FAA-18 Super Hornet, which was launched from the USS Abraham Lincoln. So just, again, to keep in mind how much military asset this is taking. You need helicopters. You need planes. You need constant surveillance. You need all of these ships that are there. This is why in the old days people would often talk about no-fly zones, you'll remember. And it's like, oh, it's just so simple. It's like, oh, is it that simple? Or do you need to have aircraft circling in place 24 hours a day?

11:38It's crazy expensive. Well, and this introduces another factor and another consideration for Trump in terms of the options that he's evaluating here for Iran. Because we hadn't really considered that the Gulf allies may pull the plug. And we really can't continue to prosecute a war or even the economic blockade fully without their support. And I think another important thing that happened was these strikes on the UAE. Now, there are some questions about whether that was Iran. Iran says it wasn't them. Even the UAE seems to be unsure whether it was Iran or whether it was Saudi. There's some possibility that the UAE had struck Saudi's oil infrastructure and Saudi struck them in retaliation.

12:19Unclear whether that's happened or not. But what we do know is that UAE was struck in very sensitive ways with a significant missile and drone barrage. And what did the U.S. do? We were like, that's no big deal. Don't worry about it. So what message does that send to, which I'm glad they did. And, you know, I'm glad it didn't lead to a gigantic escalation. But if you're the Saudis and you're looking at this, you're like, wait, what do you mean no big deal? What do you mean? Like they're targeting their most critical oil infrastructure that their entire economy is based on. UAE is so screwed right now.

12:53Dubai, the hotel reservation rate is 10 percent. Prior to the war, it was 80 percent. And our reaction is no biggie. Deal with it. This isn't even a ceasefire violation. So of course they're looking at this and going, wait a second, what have we signed ourselves up for? And this changes the entire calculation, not only in the region, but around the world of countries that host our bases. And saw them prior to this moment as being an advantage, as being, oh, this is going to protect us. Now that calculus is completely flipped. Now they will hang us out to dry and this makes us a target. So that's one of the reasons why this is so significant too.

13:29in terms of the options that are available to Trump, he has a, I mean, he really doesn't even have a political horizon at this point because the war is so incredibly unpopular. Gas prices are way too high. You know, people here are very sensitive to that. He's got the midterms looming, et cetera. You've got these. So you've got a very small, at best, political horizon here. You've got the economic noose tightening every day. And you've got the military armaments limitations that, you know, just in terms of the interceptors and the tomahawks and all of that sort of thing. And now you introduce another limiting factor, which is whether or not your allies are going to continue to cooperate with you.

14:05And as I said before, you really can't do any of this without their assistance and support. No, not at all. It never happens at a good time. The pipe bursts at midnight. The heater quits on the coldest night. Suddenly, you're overwhelmed. That's when HomeServe is here. For$4.99 a month, you're never alone. Just call their 24-7 hotline and a local pro is on the way. Trusted by millions, HomeServe delivers peace of mind when you need it most. For plans starting at just$4.99 a month, go to homeserve.com. That's homeserve.com. Not available everywhere. Most plans range between$4.99 to$11.99 a month your first year.

14:39Terms apply on covered repairs. Let's continue. A2 up there on the screen, just a little bit of update on the talk. So what we know so far is there were these leaked details around what some sort of memorandum of understanding with Iran may look like. So let me go ahead and read them. Details around the length of any suspension of Iran's uranium enrichment or possible removal remain unresolved and are expected to complicate any future talks. Now, what the plan seems to be is it would be a 14-point memorandum of understanding, which if you're familiar with the League of Nations, This is kind of not exactly a good reminder of where things went with that one.

15:22It says, during the 30 days of talks, there would be easing a chokehold on the Straits of Hormuz by Iran and easing of the blockade by the U.S. So like a bilateral easing, if you will. The two sides are then working on details to halt enrichment of uranium. The U.S. wants clauses that would prolong a moratorium on uranium enrichment if Tehran wants to violate the deal. One idea is to halt enrichment for 12 to 15 years before then allowing Iran to enrich uranium up to 3.67 % purity compared with the current stockpile enriched up to 60%, which puts it within the reach of the 90 % enrichment needed to fuel a nuclear weapon.

16:02Now, the sticking point remains on this nuclear fuel. Let's put A3 up there on the screen. Uranium, Trump says the United States will get the uranium from Iran. One of Trump, and he said this to a couple of reporters, quote, we're just going to get it. Now, the thing is, is that what the U.S. wants out of Iran is they want them to unilaterally give them the enrichment, basically allow our people on the ground, take it out, and bring it back here. The Iranians are like, no, that's not going to happen. We can downblend it or we can give it to Russia. Maybe in the worst case scenario, we'll give it to Russia, and then international inspectors can go to Russia, and then they can go there and then come to our places to check it out.

16:44But what they're basically saying absolutely not to is that we're going to get it. Now, I don't know how much of this is bluster or not, but it remains the key sticking point. But just zoom out a little bit. This is called the JCPOA, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, a.k.a. the Iran deal, which was they gave up nuclear enrichment or some amount of nuclear enrichment for 10 to 15 period. I forget what the original terms were. It's been so long at this point. And then in exchange, they get sanctions relief, which is basically what the U.S. has been allowed to do. Except this time we vaporized, oh, I don't know,$50 billion probably.

17:19And the regime is stronger. And we get to sign a deal with them, which gives them some de facto control of the Straits of Hormuz. At the very least, look, even if they charge nothing, the fact that they have the credible deterrence now of like, we can shut this shit down any time that we want is going to give you some leverage, you know, in the future. Absolutely. Negotiations. And so, yeah, I've been trying to come up with a good moniker of like the Trump all comprehensive, Trump all comprehensive organization that works out to taco. So if you can help me come up with a good acronym for that, it's like those bill drafters who do like the Trump Act.

17:56And I need to call one of my friends in Congress. So anyway, commenters, if you can help me, try and work taco into a JCPOA thing. If you do it, I don't know, we'll give you a free premium membership or something. Yeah, it's JCPOA plus incredible increase in Iranian power and degradation of our own standing in the world. Yeah. And a lot of money spent for what? Yeah, amazing job here. And to your point, let's put A5 up on the screen. This is Iran right after, you know, we get this information. Oh, we're close to a deal, blah, blah, blah. The Barack Ravid, you know, market moving report. Right after that publishes, Iran introduces this new email based permit system for the trade of hormones.

18:36as they stood up this website, they're like, okay, here's our process. Here's the way this is going to work going forward. So the notion that they're going to just let go of this control that they've been able to achieve with relative ease too, by the way, all it took really was just a threat because these are commercial ships. They're not going to take the risk of any sort of significant damage to them or transiting through a war zone, et cetera. They have not Not only their corporate bosses, you've got the insurance landscape that is not going to ensure tankers to go through a war zone. So in any case, they put this up like, OK, well, this is our new reality.

19:15So, look, I do think that there are negotiations going back and forth. There are different drafts that are being exchanged. change, are we at a point where Trump is willing to accept the level of concessions and frankly codify the level of humiliation for the U.S. that has been achieved, the real achievement of this war? Is he at this place? I don't know. It's hard to see. Hard to see. I don't see it yet. I also just think with the Israel part of all of this, you just can't underestimate that. Like, let's go and put A6 up there on the screen, the Israelis, by their own admission, proudly bombed Beirut in the first attack on the Capitol in weeks.

19:55According to them, they hit a terrorist, a Hezbollah commander. I mean, I don't know. You can check Hezbollah and see if they confirmed that or not. But that, I mean, Ryan made the joke, this is how you know that the talks are serious, is that they're back to bombing the middle of Beirut. That the Israelis are trying to destroy them. Yeah. It's very possible. I mean, you know, they're staying pretty quiet right now, the Israelis, I think they don't want to be seen by immediately killing the deal in Trump's eyes, only subtly trying to target it behind the scenes. I mean, their allies here in Washington are going crazy.

20:25Like if you look at the John Potherits and the Hugh Hewitts of the world, Hugh Hewitt literally interviewed Trump, what, like on Monday? No, sorry, on Tuesday. Oh, did he? I didn't really thought. He did. This is a great coming out of it. He interviewed Trump on Tuesday. By Wednesday, he was like, oh, this is a horrible deal. I'm going to be having John Pot Haritz on my show to talk about why it's so horrible. So, I mean, there's, when I see people like that freaking out, I'm a little optimistic that something might happen, but they also signpost at everything. They chimp out, you know, anytime that they need to because in general, they have a good track record of working.

21:03And you know, Lindsey Graham and Mark Levin and these people are all up in Trump's ear. Not to mention, you know, with the Iranians, It's very hard to get a picture of what they're up to. They have a lot of bluster. Goluboff put something out yesterday where he's like, this is all BS, going after Axios. That said, they said all that last time before the ceasefire, and then they did agree to a ceasefire. So I don't know. Their government, I can't really figure it out. The IRGC is constantly saying that they're going to be attacking, they're doing all this, and their foreign minister and their speaker of the parliament, they genuinely do seem to want some sort of a deal.

21:37So I don't fully buy the U.S. line about how they're totally divided, but it would be somewhat expected if you're going to lead the highly – if you're going to kill the highly respected leader of the country to have some sort of factualization break out with various different interests. I don't know what their strategy remains and or is, and I think it would be very hard to get to a point where they're actually going to just give up all the uranium fuel. It would shock me, actually. Yeah, I don't think that's likely. The thing that argues in favor of a deal is simply Trump running out of other options.

22:05You know, I mean, he's the piece about Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, I think, very significant in that regard. The economic piece, the political piece, the munitions piece. You're going to bomb Carter Island. Like, what is that going to do? Absolutely nothing. It's not going to change any of the dynamics at all. There's no air campaign that's going to solve it. You've already seen you got sold a bill of goods on this economic blockade. I mean, you know, all these pieces coming out is just 14 days and their oil wells are going to explode. and this was all analysis from FDD, which is extremely hawkish, extremely pro-Israel think tank.

22:36The insanity of taking a guy from there, by the way, and putting it on the negotiating team, that pushes in the other direction. I'm hard to see how this all works, although they aren't doing in-person negotiations, obviously, at this point, but it seems like that would be required at some point if we're actually going to bring the war to a close. So in any case, I think that would be the dynamic that would push this to some sort of a conclusion is simply the fact that Trump really has no options left than to take it on the chin, have to realize the gains that the Iranians have made at our expense and at the expense of all of our regional allies to include Israel and try his best to sell some victory narrative and hope that the media cycle moves so quickly and we all have the brains of goldfish that we'll forget all about it by the time the midterms roll around.

23:21That really is his best bet at this point. It's funny. It's kind of like what Dave said. He's like if I wanted to play the game I'd be like oh you know you only you yeah would have the courage I'm just like I can't do it the joke headline yeah I just I can't do it I I just I have I know at this point I just it's I've seen I've seen too much I just don't really care you know anymore and I've seen that that strategy has backfired so many times for people who are trusting the plan I'm just like okay man you know I just have some dignity yeah at a certain respect It was crazy to see Hugh Hewitt, to your point about the fit that they're all throwing, which is also a positive sign, but also shows you the perils of all of this stuff because those people are unfortunately incredibly influential for whatever reason.

24:05But in any case, he came out and said the quiet part out loud and was like, yeah, it's in Israel's interest to blow up these negotiations. It's amazing. It's like, I mean, he's right. Yeah. In terms of the way they perceive the landscape, they always think they're one more bombing campaign away from peace and victory and can never coexist with anyone, et cetera. So from their perspective, that's absolutely the case. And then you see them, oh, look, more strikes in Lebanon. What do you know? Shocker. Yeah. All right, let's get to oil. Yeah, let's go ahead and get to that.