6/22/26: Iran Talks Nearly Collapse, Neocons Try To Tank Deal, Americans Want War To End

21:38So Netanyahu clearly is going to want to try to sabotage this. As for the sort of particulars Yes, technical teams are negotiating, but it appears as though the United States, again, didn't actually bring its own high-level nuclear experts. The Iranians, again, they show up with a suite of individuals with PhDs, multidisciplinary, and the U.S. largely shows up with J.D. Vance and a couple of guys carrying last week's golf scores. So it's the idea that J.D. Vance has to be calling international nuclear experts at 2 a.m., as he indicated in his press conference today. That should really raise a lot of eyebrows.

22:16Why isn't the U.S. sending very serious negotiators on the nuclear issue if, as Donald Trump says, that was the most important point of this at all?

22:24Jeremy Scahill:Well, all you need to do, they can just dust off the JCPOA, get Claude to go through, update the dates, change a little bit of language, and there you go. Yeah, if anything, Jeremy, we already did it. So maybe we don't need to worry too much. I had said earlier in the show, I'm curious for your reaction. It appears my reading is that they've just given up on the technical details and they're going to allow Qatar and Pakistan to negotiate them with the IAEA, then deliver it, signed, sealed and delivered. This kind of gives them a little bit of removal from the process. Also, frankly, easier to just delegate much of this.

22:56Curious for your reaction to that. That was my reading of the Pakistan memorandum. Yeah, I mean, again, let's remember, too, that the Omanis were really the expert mediators between the United States and Iran. And because of Steve Witkoff's behavior and the White House's behavior, they toxified the relationship with the most knowledgeable force that the U.S. had been working with for decades on this issue. The Qataris have really emerged as as the primary mediators right now. Yes, Pakistan gets to put its signature on these documents, but it's quite clear that Qatar is now in the prime position taking the lead on all of this.

23:30And I think we have to remember, again, a concession that President Trump made that is very important is that he basically said, we don't actually need the enriched uranium to be taken outside of Iran. You know, we can deal with it inside of Iran. That's been the Iranian position going back a year, going back many years when they talked about potential framework for negotiation. So the Iranians also feel that they want a coup of sorts because Donald Trump is no longer saying they're not allowed to do any enrichment whatsoever if they reach a deal with the United States. That's a massive concession if you just go back a few months or even a few weeks to what Donald Trump was saying.

24:07But I think your suspicion in part is true. It might not be limited to the Qataris or the Pakistanis. It also seems like the U.S. wants to kind of co-opt the IAEA, which is supposed to be a neutral international body into effectively being the U.S. enforcer of this. That's why they're pushing for IAEA inspectors or monitors to go into Iran very soon. But, you know, if you go back and you look at the roster that the U.S. brought, just from an American perspective, doesn't matter if you're Democrat or Republican, just look at it from a purely technical perspective. It's good diplomacy and responsible statecraft to bring actual experts that also have security clearances in your country, that also know how to prepare information that can be briefed to the president of the United States.

24:50When you're outsourcing these core issues that the president has defined as the single most important issue to the IAEA or to Qatar or to Pakistan, then you're sort of saying, well, we don't need American expertise in the room. And it just goes to show you, again, it's another indicator of how kind of fraudulent the entire architecture of justifying this war was from the very beginning.

25:12Jeremy Scahill:Yeah, that is so well said. Let's talk a little bit more about Netanyahu in Lebanon. As you indicated, they do not seem like they're willing to withdraw from southern Lebanon. Let's go ahead and take a listen to a little bit of Netanyahu's recent comments on that front. As long as we need to protect our people, we will remain in the security zone in South Lebanon. And the reason, the reason is perfectly understood. No country would be asked to do otherwise. Now you imagine the United States. Across the border, you have thousands, an army of thousands of terrorists who pellet your cities and your towns with rockets and ballistic missiles and killer drones.

25:57They kill your soldiers, they kill your citizens, they kill your children. And they threaten them every day. Well, what would America do? Would it say, well, there's nothing we can do?

26:09Jeremy Scahill:Jeremy, the memo of understanding explicitly talks about Lebanese sovereignty. Is this going to be acceptable to the Iranians? I suspect it won't. I mean, it will be if if, in fact, Donald Trump and J.D. Vance are able to restrain Netanyahu and the Israelis genuinely do stop firing. Then I think there is a window open where the Iranians can then say, okay, there is a quote unquote cessation of fire happening right now. And now we need to address the issue of the withdrawal. And that may buy some time. And again, Arachi has indicated that that may be the reality the Iranians would be willing to accept.

26:45On the flip side of this, Netanyahu in particular has a real expertise in violating ceasefires. You know, Rafat al-Arir, the Palestinian poet and writer from Gaza who was assassinated by the Israelis during the genocide, often remarked that the Israeli definition of a ceasefire is that we fire and you cease. And we're certainly seeing that in Gaza, where the Israelis have killed more than a thousand Palestinians since the so-called ceasefire was signed in October. And so I would suspect that if Netanyahu tries to replicate that definition of a ceasefire, that this is going to become a potential deal breaker every single time there's an incident.

27:26There's a parallel track happening, which if you listen to what President Trump and J.D. Vance have said, they're a little bit contradicting each other over the weekend in the messaging. Donald Trump is supposedly claiming that he's going to get Ahmed al-Shara, the president of Syria that he claims he personally installed in power, that somehow a former al-Qaeda leader is going to lead the charge to dismantle and destroy Hezbollah in another state inside of Lebanon. Shara gave an interview to Lebanese TV where he seemed to push back against that and talked about respecting the sovereignty of Lebanon and then saying that he's willing to engage with leaders of Hezbollah and others.

28:06So at least publicly, he's indicating that that's not going to happen, even though Trump was sort of saying, oh, the final touches are being put on this new war. We're going to start involving the Syrians going into Lebanon, which would be an utter bloodbath and an insane bit of lunacy, even by Trump standards. But then you have J.D. Vance saying some interesting things. He says that the agreement talks about the territorial integrity of Lebanon. Now, the Iranians say that means you can't have Israeli occupation forces there. J.D. Vance seemed to indicate that it needs to be aimed at resolving the issue of Hezbollah.

28:40And this is why there's this other track where they're trying to co-opt the United States and Israel are trying to co-opt the Lebanese government under President Joseph Aoun into essentially serving as the Lebanese counterterrorism force that's going to go in and crush Hezbollah. So I would imagine what Vance is kind of trying to prepare the public for or what indicates the U.S. position behind closed doors is that they're going to try to say we can get the Israelis to leave as long as the Lebanese army, which is trained in part and supported by the United States. And this is what Israel has been calling for.

29:15If we can get the Lebanese army to come in and take over Hezbollah positions, that also is reasserting the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Lebanon. That, though, raises questions of civil war, civil strife, civil conflict in Lebanon. When you don't have a political resolution in a Lebanese context to the question of Hezbollah, which is not just an armed actor in the region, it also has members of parliament affiliated with it. And up until recently, it was actually a crucial part of the government before it was sort of forced out of it. So it does seem like Vance's track on this is to try to merge this secondary so-called peace process that the White House has been orchestrating with this MOU.

29:56And the idea is that the U.S. could sort of pick two flowers with one hand by saying, oh, we're stopping the Israelis from firing. And by the way, the Lebanese army is now going to take up positions in the south of Lebanon, which will be resisted by a lot of supporters of Hezbollah. So this issue is going to get very, very complicated. It's the single greatest issue that has the potential to blow the entire deal up, in part because the Iranians have made it abundantly clear that they view Hezbollah as their ally, that they view Hezbollah as a party to this, and that they view the United States and Israel in violation of the deal as long as that war continues.

30:28Right. Yeah. It's not like they're just going to surrender their own territory. Like you said, look, this is a decades-long problem inside of Lebanon. They're not just going to cede all of their own authority, hard fought in this particular case, to the Lebanese government, especially if it's under control of the United States. Last thing, I do want to clear up something I said earlier where I mentioned that the deconfliction cell would include Israel. Currently, the initial report, Jeremy, is that it actually won't include Israel. I'm not sure. I mean, maybe that's a good thing if the United States would actually tell Israel what to do and what not to do.

31:00At the same time, per Netanyahu's comments, they're not going to stop the number or the types of strikes they're continuing to do in Lebanon. So it does seem as if that may not be useful, this so-called deconfliction cell, if it is not going to actually be able to restrain Israeli behavior. which I feel like is the most common theme. I mean, it also speaks in part. Again, we don't know what's happening behind the scenes between the United States and Israel at this point. But the Israelis are also ferociously trying to resist themselves being party to this Iran deal. I mean, that's Netanyahu's messaging, is that Donald Trump, as president of the United States, has a right to make a deal with Iran.

31:37But Israel is not bound by those terms. It's what he's using to justify their continued presence in Lebanon. He's going to try to spin any sort of agreement that he makes that clearly is related to the MOU as having to do with the bilateral relationship between the United States and the bilateral relationship Israel has with the Lebanese government and to avoid it being that they're making some deal that's an omnibus package. But in the issue of this deconfliction, when they implemented a similar monitoring mechanism for Gaza, the fact that they didn't include the Palestinian side sent a very clear message that this was just a U.S.-Israeli project that was operating under the veneer of being some kind of a monitoring cell.

32:21I think in this case, what Vance is talking about with the establishment of this is literally to try to stop the Israelis from blowing up the deal and to try to have a mechanism to speak directly to the Iranians. They also opened a line of communication that has to do with the Strait of Hormuz. But in the broader picture, if we zoom up to 30 ,000 feet, I think we have to look at this as kind of two separate but related tracks. On the one hand, we have the short-term realities that the Israeli war in Lebanon has the potential to really blow up this deal. And I would also add to that Donald Trump's erratic behavior.

32:54The Iranians are fed up with him making these public threats, and they're under pressure from their own government. Remember, the supreme leader of Iran did not wholly endorse this MOU. He simply granted consent for Iran's political leaders to move forward with these negotiations. And there are a lot of Iranians, including prominent members of the Iranian parliament, who are adamantly opposed to what Ghalibaf and Arachi are doing, meeting with J.D. Vance, meeting with the Americans. So all of those things together create very unstable terrain that this is operating on. But then in the longer term, yes, the Iranians do seem to be succeeding in getting some of their assets unfrozen.

33:33J.D. Vance said this thing about they need to import American soy, American corn. We'll have to see what the Iranians say about that deal. But in the longer term, if this moves on and the Iranians are not getting substantial sanctions relief and the nuclear issue, Donald Trump could blow the whole thing up and say, oh, wait a minute. No, we do need to go in and take the nuclear dust. We actually have to send the Marines in to retrieve this. The whole thing could go south very, very fast. The Iranians, the most important thing to them in terms of the war is they feel that they've succeeded in restoring deterrence, that no matter what Donald Trump says or Lindsey Graham saying, oh, the next step is Donald Trump's going to go in and seize the Strait of Hormuz.

34:10Good luck with that without losing a substantial number of American soldiers. I mean, that's lunacy, the kind of lunacy Lindsey Graham has banked his entire career on. But just to show you how the neocon nutcases in Washington think about this, you just need to watch any comments from Lindsey Graham. But I think the Iranians feel like they have a win-win in a sense. Yes, I think they would prefer comprehensive sanctions relief, a state of non-aggression with the United States, an ability to sort of allow their society to thrive free of suffocating sanctions. I think all of that is true. But it's also true that there is political support at the highest levels of power in Iran for taking a much harder line and saying, if the United States doesn't learn its lesson, we keep slapping them back.

34:53And by slapping, we mean using the option of military force or asymmetric tactics to shut down the global economy as it depends on the Strait of Hormuz.

35:00Jeremy Scahill:That was actually the last piece I wanted to get from you. We could put A6 back up on the screen. This is the tanker traffic through the Strait of Hormuz. You know, Trump, in what I think was an honest moment, said that it would be bedlam if we kept the Strait of Hormuz closed. The oil markets would be a disaster. We know that oil executives came to him and basically like, listen, buddy, we've kept it together here so far. Basically, China has saved our asses by reducing their imports of oil significantly. But this can't go on forever. What is your understanding of the current state of play of the Strait of Hormuz, because we talked earlier about how Iran has said that they have closed it again or limiting traffic again because of Israeli violations of the MOU in Lebanon.

35:47I mean, I think this is another staggering admission off the cuff by Donald Trump. And it just shows the hubris. You know, he thought, oh, this thing is all sewn up. I have it. The stock market's going to be celebrating me again. And we're going to have The price of oil is going to plummet. And the Iranians, and I think they also understood the market manipulation tactics at play here. I think they timed their closure of the Strait of Hormuz in sync with Trump's constant recurring attempts to manipulate markets by making certain decisions public on the various stages of the negotiations. But I think it's quite clear that Iran has a very firm handle of control over the Strait of Hormuz.

36:28This was something that the Iranians had contemplated doing for many, many years. It's not like this was just something they cooked up when the United States and Israel bombed February 28th. They understood the global impact it was going to have. And they stopped short of doing this during other wars, I think, because they felt like this is going to be a tool we'll bring out when we feel we're facing an existential threat. And now that they've done it, and now that they've emerged with their state intact, with their government intact, and with the world being quite nervous about the idea of another war in Iran, and combine that with Donald Trump's admission about the actual cost of this and how close the United States came to an even further catastrophic economic situation, I think it ultimately puts cards back in the hands of the Iranians.

37:16Well said, Jeremy. Thank you for your analysis, man. really spot on. Appreciate you guys. Thanks for all your work. Make it a summer of live with Live Nation. Get four lawn tickets for just$99 and see the Black Crows and Whiskey Myers, MGK, Neo and Akon, Death Cab for Cutie, Chicago and Sticks, Toto, Christopher Cross, and The Romantics, and many more. Get your friends and grab tickets now at LiveNation.com.

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38:22I turned off news altogether. I hate to say it, but I don't trust much of anything. It's the rage bait.

38:31Jeremy Scahill:It feels like it's trying to divide people. We got clear facts. Maybe we can calm down a little. NBC News brings you clear reporting. Let's meet at the facts. Let's move forward from there. NBC News reporting for America. As Jeremy said, we really got to watch out for Lindsey Graham, and that is exactly the plan that is being hatched out in the open here in Washington, where many of the hawks are quasi-endorsing the diplomatic process that we just ran through. But they have an alternative plan, an alternative plan that perhaps Trump has already opened the door to. Here is Lindsey Graham on Face the Nation this weekend advocating for this new plan of just taking over the entire Strait of Hormuz.

39:17Let's take a listen. Let's try a diplomatic solution. I think it's going to fail. What happens next? I spent four and a half hours with President Trump Friday. Here's what I think will happen next. If this deal fails, President Trump is going to take the Strait of Hormuz over by force. The United States will control the Strait of Hormuz. will charge a fee for all those who go through to pay for the operation. And we're going to expand the Abraham Accords in calendar year 2026. We're going to get Saudi Arabia joined the Abraham Accords, which is the biggest change in 5 ,000 years in the Mideast.

39:55And if Iran can test control of the Strait of Hormuz by the United States, we'll obliterate them. So to all the people listening, if this diplomatic effort fails, President Trump is going to take the Strait of Hormuz. We're going to run it. We're going to try to get Saudi Arabia to join the Abraham Accords in the Arab-Israeli conflict in 2026. And if Iran continues to attack Israel and Lebanon, the new policy will be we'll hit Iran. The new policy will be we'll hit Iran if Hezbollah continues to hit Israel and we'll just take over the Strait of Hormuz. Now, obviously, this is just completely nuts, taking over the Strait by force.

40:33They act like it's going to be some sort of weekend adventure. This would take hundreds of thousands of troops. Also, once they're there, if the rest of Iran is not conquered, they can use these little things called drones that we all just saw to fire them from the inland to the troops that are all stationed there. Brandon Weikert actually laid all of this out initially when we were discussing much of this. It would be Gallipoli. It would be a complete military disaster. But this is still something that Trump is considering. Let's put B2 up here on the screen. He said it just yesterday. There will be no tolls in the Strait of Hormuz for 60 days during the ceasefire period.

41:08There will be no tolls after the 60 day period has expired unless they are imposed by and for the United States of America. Should the deal not be completed for services rendered as the guardian angel to the countries of the Middle East for purposes of both past, present and future reimbursement of costs? Thank you for your attention.

41:28Jeremy Scahill:They really thank us for our involvement in the region over the past 26 years. Yeah. It's been great. Yes, we are the guardian angel, the guardians of the strait of Hormuz. They can make a Marvel movie about it. All of it would be funny if this is not, you know, this is the thing about Trump. This is what we warned about earlier is, yeah, right now he's silent. If we were to think about Trump, Trump is ultimately, you know, from The Apprentice, which is probably the sole reason why he's president of the United States. What does he do? He auditions different things. So you could think of the Iran war as an audition for the Lindsey Graham and for Marco Rubio and for himself, of course, because he bears responsibility.

42:07Bibi Netanyahu. They obviously failed. So now he's like, OK, let's shelve Rubio. Let's shelve that. And let's break out the alternate cast for The Apprentice, the J.D. But the problem is, is that he is like hovering on top of it. And these nefarious actors, Beebe and Lindsey Graham and the entire Hawk commentariat class, which is seriously pushing this option and is telling him, sir, you gave up too early. You can easily go back to it. This is, you know, I gave an analogy in our last show about this, about the First World War, where, you know, a lot of Germans were shocked when they surrendered because Germany had never been invaded.

42:41So they're like, how can this be possible? and that's where the Israeli idea, which they're borrowing ironically from the Germans of 1919, which eventually became the Nazis, is the stabbed in the back theory. And the only conceivable reason that they had to surrender was that they were stabbed in the back. And there were all these fantasy military options that they had on the table, which were all bullshit. But 20 years later, they could be like, no, we could have done this. It's kind of like lost causers who will analyze General Longstreet in Gettysburg. If he had just done this, they would have won.

43:10Oh, my God. I've met too many of them. But the point is around this is that they're creating a mythos in real time. And the power of that is really strong because they're by propping that up with Fox News. And you will never hear a defender of the deal on Fox News. You'll never hear a defender of the deal, even on CNN, honestly. It's insanity. Like, did you see that Caitlin Collins thing where she's like, whoa, what? Iran has a right to self-defense? You're like, yeah. All nations do. Is that so crazy? but as this starts to bubble itself up and let's say things start popping off in Lebanon and the Iranians, oh, I don't know, walk out because they're like, hey, that's our red line.

43:48How easy do you think this will be to cement into Trump's mind? It's gonna be nonstop. Remember, Fox and Friends, Brian Kilmeade, he's against this thing. He's been trashing it every single day. You got Sean Hannity and Jesse Waters seems to be somewhat on board, I don't know. His IQ is low enough. But then the rest of these guys, they're very, very smart political actors. So I'm just I'm watching this very, very closely.

44:10Jeremy Scahill:This is why we must protect Trita Parsi at all costs. He's one of the few reasonable voices just because he is so like impressive and elegant of a person that they allow on to CNN, at least in the mainstream press. But the thing I note most about Lindsey Graham's posture here, which is really we have to pay attention to, is he says, sure, let's try the negotiations. They're going to fail. Not and he is invested in that failure. He will be involved in doing everything he can to make sure that that failure comes to pass. We covered last week Netanyahu is pushing, you know, Mark Levin and Ted Cruz and their other sort of like bought off or influence peddlers here in the U.S.

44:49Jeremy Scahill:to make sure they're doing what they can to undermine this deal. So when he says they'll probably fail, it's not like he's just some disinterested observer, you know, guessing what's going to happen here. He is going to be doing everything that he can to make sure that is going to fail. We did have to bring you this, though, because this is an incredible turn of events for Bacha Angarsargan, who has been one of Trump's fiercest defenders, you know, saying that he truly is this this warrior. Yeah, this warrior for the working class, et cetera. But, you know, she's also very pro-Israel. And so she has been really critical of the deal and the possibility of negotiations here.

45:29Jeremy Scahill:Let's go and take a listen to a little bit of her commentary talking about what a terrible week J.D. Vance had because he went out and actually said some honest things about about Israel. For once, let's take a listen. Vance implied that all opponents to this terrible MOU are war hawks who want a forever war and boots on the ground, who have some kind of bloodthirst for endless Iranian deaths. Just an appalling straw man. I don't know anyone who wants boots on the ground. The whole point of the U.S. blockade of the Strait of Hormuz was that we didn't need boots on the ground. And while Vance spent all week talking about how cool the IRGC is, he repeatedly blasted Israel, Israelis and Israeli politicians, inventing bizarre scenarios in which he fantasized about how many Iranians Israel wanted to kill.

46:18Here's how he ended his press conference. Donald J. Trump is the only head of state in the entire world who is sympathetic to the nation of Israel at this moment in time. And he happens to be the head of state of the world superpower. If I was in the cabinet of the Israeli government, I might not be attacking the only powerful ally that I have. And anybody in Israel who thinks their biggest problem is the president of the United States needs to wake up and smell the reality of the situation that country is in. Apparently, according to our vice president, you got to hand it to the Iranians for negotiating in good faith.

47:00It's Israel that's the real impediment to peace. Here's the truth. Vice President J.D. Vance just brought the great United States to its knees with a humiliating deal weeks before our 250th birthday, and he's decided, like many before him, to blame Israel for the mess his administration created. If this was a dry run for 2028, it was at least very clarifying.

47:29Jeremy Scahill:So in response to similar commentary from Baccia, the White House actually went after her aggressively. I'm going to put this up on the screen. They say the only humiliation here is Baccia desperately begging for an additional brain cell because her failing TV show is even more irrelevant than the likes of Caitlin Collins and Fake Tapper. Only a moron of her caliber could still doubt President Trump's leadership. Agreed. Unreal. Trust the plan. woman yeah this woman sucked up to them so aggressively we internally named her bagdad because she was always on the pro-trump talking points going on cnn to make the case that's how she ends up with this news nation gig etc and after all of that the moment she criticizes them on one thing they turn on her and say she is a moron who needs an additional brain cell well in In some way, look, how can you not love it, right?

48:26Because currently the entire—this is the thing about Trump and the entire ecosystem, which genuinely makes this all fair in 1984. Because a month ago, she and the entire neocon industrial complex who were defending the deal were being celebrated, really, by these same White House accounts. And the people like us who were criticizing it, we would be the ones under attack. But in the same way that it's like, you know, Oceania has always been at war with Eurasia or whatever, it's like now that the deal is Trump's policy. Now you're doubting the president. But that's part of why I love it is because these same people for literally months made it.

49:01I've said this like have made a whole show about Trump is so independent. He cannot be controlled. The idea that Israel controls him is preposterous. He makes his own decisions. And then he did make his own decision. And he was like, actually, the war that you guys wanted was a total disaster. So we're going to try something else. So they cry about it. And he's going to use the same logic. You can actually see many of his own allies now or proponents of the deal using the same language of police. They're like, why are you distrusting Trump? Why don't you trust the plan? You sound like a panicking.

49:34Why are you not? Why are you doubting the wisdom of our great commander in chief? And he's the one who selected our vice president, right? And so, look, this is why trying to engage in this like who is the true speaker for the czar is ridiculous. Just say your ideas. Like, say your ideas on what they are, and if you don't, you know, sometimes they'll align and sometimes they don't. That's mostly where things stand right now. But, I mean, Tucker made a good point. One of the dangers—Tucker made a good point, I think, in his prelude to his interview with Trita, where he's like, look, here's the thing about Trump.

50:06Trump betrayed basically all of his own voters except for these neocons. And so you almost can't blame them for being mad when he also does the same thing that he did for everybody else. At the same time, you know, if we're being honest, everything they're saying about the deal is correct in the sense that, yes, it was an American humiliation, but it was an American humiliation because of you. And the humiliation is still somehow preferable to 150 ,000 ground troops who have to seize the Strait of Hormuz. But, again, I do think all of this stuff, palace intrigue, is really interesting in the sense that they were the last fierce defenders of the Trump administration.

50:43And as we're all about to show you with the polling, they could not I mean, maybe this is the final good thing about this. At least we can see that the vast majority of the people who sold this war, support this war, who are the loudest defenders of Trump are so deeply out of touch with the American people. It is laughable when you actually look at the polls. Nothing could be said. Nothing further from the truth could be said that Americans are like crying about that. the only people crying are the neocons here in Washington and all over television. I literally long for somebody to be able to go on Fox or CNN or any of these places and just tell the truth for once about the deal.

51:20Not just treat it on a weekend show. I'm talking about actual prime time for one of the, not that anybody's going to watch it, but the people who do watch it are the members of Congress and all these others. Like some honesty needs to be injected into the system. That's why when JD just says the basic stuff about Israel, be like, yeah, they're just like any other nation. They're like, oh my God, they have a total meltdown about it.

51:38Jeremy Scahill:Well, I mean, and here's the thing, too. Trump five seconds ago was aggressively trashing Megyn Kelly and Tucker Carlson for being on, you know, against the war. Now that he wants a deal, you know, the people who are on the other side are now suddenly the villains. So, I mean, there's no there's no through line here. Right. It's all just about where is he today? And do you support that or are you critical of that? The only way that you can stay in his good graces is if you support the original stupid position and the new better position. Like, you can't have any principles or consistency because at some point you're going to end up on the wrong side of him because he has no principles and consistency, as evidenced by the fact that we, you know, literally played free in the earlier block, how he is threatening to murder the Iranian negotiators in Switzerland before they even return home.

52:25Jeremy Scahill:So that is the nature of what you sign up for when you decide to defend this man and try to be, you know, in the inside of the court and be one of the favored commentators at some point. If you stick to any consistency at all, you will end up being completely humiliated by this man because that's just what he does. That's right. All right. Let's get to polling. Make it a summer of live with Live Nation. Get four lawn tickets for just$99 and see the Black Crows and Whiskey Myers, MGK, Neo and Akon, Death Cab for Cutie, Chicago and Sticks, Toto, Christopher Cross and the Romantics, and many more.

53:10Get your friends and grab tickets now at LiveNation.com.

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53:54Pet insurance products offered and administered by Pets Best Insurance Services, LLC, are underwritten by American Pet Insurance Company or Independence American Insurance Company. For terms and conditions, visit www.petsbest.com backslash policy. Products are underwritten by American Pet Insurance Company, Independence American Insurance Company, or MS Transverse Insurance Company, and administered by Pets Best Insurance Services, LLC. $1 a day premium based on 2024 average new policyholder data for accident and illness plans, pets age 0 to 10. I turned off news altogether. I hate to say it, but I don't trust much of anything.

54:25It's the rage bait.

54:28Jeremy Scahill:It feels like it's trying to divide people. We got clear facts. Maybe we can calm down a little. NBC News brings you clear reporting. Let's meet at the facts. Let's move forward from there. NBC News, reporting for America. Turning now to polling, as we just mentioned about how wildly out of touch the neocons are. CBS News just ran a new poll. And even for them, remember, this like Zionist media outlet at least tried to do a bit of a survey and found 78 percent of Americans want the Iran war to. And now, as in right now, here they are confronting Mike Waltz, the U.N. ambassador, or the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, about this.

55:14Let's take a listen.

55:15Jeremy Scahill:The war is unpopular, as you just heard, but how it ends matters, as you know. CBS's Olivia Gazzis is reporting that senior members of Trump's national security team, including Secretary Rubio, remain doubtful Iran will comply with this deal's terms. The CIA director presented Trump with intelligence, indicating inconsistencies with Iran's commitments. So if even the president's own team doubts this is a win, how do you sell this to the public?

55:48Well, Margaret, I'll go back to other polling that shows that the American people absolutely agree with President Trump that Iran can never have a nuclear weapon. Of course, we all want lower gas prices. They are lower, below$4 and falling with more work to do. They're cheaper than under the Biden administration. We'll remember just a few months ago when analysts were saying oil would be upwards of$150 to$200 a barrel. And it is not. It's now under 80. Of course, everyone wants cheaper energy. But what President Trump is doing is striking that balance with also ensuring that a genocidal regime that none of us trust can never have a nuclear weapon.

56:32And that process is underway right now as we speak.

56:36Jeremy Scahill:Well, the American people also don't want Iran to have a nuclear weapon. We see that in our polling, but they're unconvinced that this interim agreement achieves that. So you can see then, you know, even in terms of the this is the problem that they set their goals. So maximalist whenever it came to what they wanted to accomplish. And then the deal itself, this is why I was saying earlier, you almost can't blame the neocons. Like you said, unconditional surrender. You said you were going to do all this. And then now we're like, OK, well, just maybe don't charge a toll just for 60 days. Maybe in the future you can.

57:07And then let in the inspectors who were already there and who were on the table for being admitted back in June. and all that. Let's just go right back to when you bombed you in the first place over a year ago. We could just do that. Maybe, please, pretty please, just for the price of oil. So that's the problem that they face. But this polling is just so stark for them. Let's put it up here on the screen. We have some of the slides. The conflict with Iran, what should the US do now? End it now. Only 22 % continue the conflict until Iran gives up more. Let's go to the next one. What do we see here?

57:40Was the conflict with Iran worth the cost? 31 % worth the cost. 69%, no, not worth the cost. Let's go to the next one, shall we? Did the conflict with Iran, quote, solve more problems than it created? 21%. I don't really know how so few people came along just with that one. But then create more problems than it solved? 57%, yes. And then neither was 21%. Let's go to the next one. This is the most important one to me. Among Republicans, what should the U.S. do now? All Republicans, 60%. Even self-identified MAGA Republicans is 56. Continue the conflict until Iran gives up more, 40 % and 44 % with all Republicans versus MAGA Republicans, respectively.

58:19So MAGA Republicans, probably the most propagandized group to even potentially say that we should continue this conflict, mainlining Fox News into the bloodstream for the last 100 days. Even they are like, yeah, I just need this thing to end. I need it to end now. And that's even with Trump. I mean, you know, he's selling the deal, but not really. Like, is he really selling the deal as he was the war? Not even close. You just have JD out there. You have no real media support for it. And yet the 56 % of the MAGA Republicans are there. So for the Batias and for, you know, for all the neocons and the free presses and all of them of the world who, you know, self-identified speak on behalf of MAGA, nothing can be further from the truth, at least in this one particular case, even all your bullshit, they're not buying

59:06Jeremy Scahill:And the Israelis actually see it even more clearly. The loss, there was a new poll there that found 92 percent of all Israelis believe that the Islamic Republic of Iran won the war. Among supporters of Netanyahu, it was 93 percent that believe Iran won the war. So, you know, they're looking at this and they're like, this was a disaster. I mean, I would love to have a chart of the emotional highs and lows. Oh, I know. of the neocons and the Zionists over this period. Because, man, remember the beginning of the war? They were going on TV. They were so happy. Trump's threatening to murder their entire civilization.

59:44Jeremy Scahill:They're so delighted. He's calling for the Iranian people to rise up. There's all these rumors about we're going to arm the Kurds and send them in and start a civil war. They were so happy about all of that. Delighted. And now that we actually have a possibility at ending this utter disaster, devastation, humiliation, etc. Now, you could not see a sadder group of people if you tried. All they want is to go back to the war, the promises of unconditional surrender, the delusions of regime change. They want to go immediately back to that fantasy land. Exactly. Let's put this last one here, C3, up here, just because this is where that MAGA Republican line, where we should end it now.

1:00:25This also comes, though, on the other side of, can you come back from the war? And I support, and in the war, I'll support and I'll attack all the people who want to continue it. But if we're all being honest, for a lot of the people who were burned by this, and especially economically, can you come back? And as the Washington Post writes here, for cash-strapped farmers, the deal to end Iran fighting comes too late. Some of the president's strongest supporters hurting as the midterm elections approach. And they interview, Many of them, costs have outrun sales all of this year, mostly because of Iran, especially with the fuel and the fertilizer bills that continue to rise.

1:01:01Diesel, quote, has not been cheaper since mid-March. Urea fertilizer in recent days sold for less than it did before the fighting began. However, the financial damage has been done. And they specifically point to the Iran war as the number one reason why they saw those costs skyrocket in the interim. from urea, which we covered some of those charts, fertilizer, many of the other things from the early days in the war. But over and over again, they point to soybean, cotton, sweet potato, tobacco, corn, sunflowers, which is many of the places where Tyson farms there, one of the people that they interviewed here.

1:01:36And he says he runs the operation from his own property. And he just goes into detail about the damage that they have taken. And this was already after the tariffs that had hit in June. So you have two successive, what I would say were real crises for the American farmer in their market with no requisite relief or anything from Congress. And I mean, look, I mean, are they going to vote Democrat? Probably not, but they're definitely just not going to vote whenever it comes midterm election time. And even in 2028, is it going to be that easy, you know, to go on board when Trump, Donald Trump says is going to be a good thing to be?

1:02:12Maybe I could be wrong, but I think this is going to burn people. I really do.

1:02:15Jeremy Scahill:Yeah, I feel bad for these guys. Not only so you've got the tariffs are disaster, the Iran war, an utter disaster, COVID and Ukraine had also been a disaster. And then on top of that, they've been experiencing, many of them, a horrific drought, which has also caused problems. So you've really got like a perfect storm of both Mother Nature, partly caused by the climate crisis, and then Trump's disastrous decisions where they're just taking losses year after year after year, one of the guys they interviewed was like, I long ago told my kids, don't do this. Go do something else in the world. So yeah, I mean, it gets to the point of, let's say it all goes smoothly over the 60 days.

1:02:58Jeremy Scahill:Seems unlikely, but let's say it all goes according to plan at the end of 60 days. We announce some deal. Iran's getting their sanctions relief. We're, you know, the straight hormones is open. Oil is flowing. Like, things in the economy go relatively back to normal. There's been a lot of damage that's been done over this time period. And as we've learned before, it takes a while before things go back to normal. And if you're someone who's living, you know, hand to mouth, which is close to a majority of Americans, you're being set back in this period in a way that's going to be very difficult to recover and that you're not going to forget.

1:03:30Jeremy Scahill:So I think the, you know, both the economic and political fallout of this is incredibly, incredibly damaging. National price of gas today, $3.92 a gallon. Glad to see it under$4 a gallon. Diesel still, look, about$5 a gallon. And as you said, the other wild card to all of this is China, which, remember, the only reason that we didn't hit a genuine crisis in the oil market was because of Chinese imports. But those same analysts that we were looking at who talked about that 50-some percent cut in overall imports from China is saying, look, at a certain point, they are going to have to start importing.

1:04:03At some point, again, They can't just continue to sit there and eat up all of their own reserves. So when they restart at least some of their imports, price pressure will stay there. They're waiting for the price to come down to be able to continue, but they will have to do it sometime in the next month or two. And so no nation in the world, especially one of some 1.4 billion people, can just sit around and not have any oil import or very little oil import for months on end. So when it restarts, that could keep the price continuing high, especially with all the slack currently cut out of the system, not even to mention the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.

1:04:37If we have another crisis after this one, we're dead.

1:04:40Jeremy Scahill:Yeah, and there's no guarantees in the negotiation process. Let's say we get 60 days down the road. Thing falls apart. We've got 60 more days of oil traffic having been interrupted and not back to ordinary times. And the SPR has been dramatically drawn down. so you're in a much more precarious position starting out at that point. Well, we always make this fallacy. We point to the current conflict. But the lesson of history is that you don't know. I mean, right now, we're going to cover this tomorrow with John Mearsheimer. What's happening in Russia and Ukraine is out of control. It's very scary.

1:05:12Absolutely out of control. They are blowing the shit out of all of these Russian oil refineries. Russia's oil production is actually dropping. They're hitting all these. Look, I get it. Ukraine has a right to self-defense, but this is still a nuclear-armed nation and all of that. And so will they take drastic measures? That sounds like a recipe for disaster in the oil market, right? Or you never know, India, Pakistan, I mean, North Korea, like the Straits of Malacca, Taiwan, anything can happen. That's why you have a strategic reserve. But at the lowest level here from 1983, that's why the precarity, it's like the munitions.

1:05:45We knew it would be a problem. You didn't know we were going to bomb Iran, but you could foresee it a mile away. And, oh, that's exactly what happened. Now that we've come out of this war, we have very, very low stockpile. So you can see it. The script is written here for a petroleum reserve. We used it in the current crisis. We don't have, you know, nobody's going to want to refill it because it'll cost hundreds of billions or whatever. Trump doesn't want to have to eat that cost. Neither does Congress. Sets the stage for a potential problem in the future.

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