7/2/26: Trump's Crypto Corruption Worth Billions, Vance Says US Reloading For War With Iran

24:39And that also is like, you can, you can follow the logic of a person who doesn't trust anyone anymore coming to a conclusion like that. Like, obviously I think it's completely wrong, but I understand with, this is the, it gets back to institutional trust. And to your point about the politics of Trump's corruption, I don't think Republicans have any idea what's waiting for them on the other side of these midterms. I think they're starting to see it creep into the campaigns as general elections get closer and closer and the primaries are settled. Because in the first Trump administration, yes, there was grift.

25:10There was Kushner grift, no question about it. There was Trump organization grift, no question about it. The hotel was here in the middle of the city, like two blocks away from the White House. We saw it. But it was not like what's happening now, obviously. And also, before the pandemic, the Trump economy was better. and we were not in a hot war. Like, well, I guess they would say we're technically not in a hot war, but I think we all know the answer to that question. We were in clearly a hot conflict, bombing Iran for weeks and gas prices were going through the roof. And so I don't think they're prepared for this scale of Trump corruption in a bad economy.

25:43Because I think when you're in a bad economy, Trump's point about whether or not people care changes. People do care when the economy is really bad and you claim to be a populist champion. So all of those - It's just so blatant. You know, it's very shameless. Yeah. Well, and the other thing I would say is I'm not going to play this clip because the audio is kind of shitty and it looks like it's from 1996. But, you know, to your point about, OK, what are the meta reasons that this is allowed to persist, et cetera, is Republicans, they never, you know, Republicans in Congress never cared. They never they're happy to, you know, how many hearings we have about Biden and whatever.

26:22But when it comes to Trump, when they get asked about it, oh, I didn't see that report. I didn't read about that. Well, I don't do those sorts of things, but I don't know. I'll have to get back to you with regard to Trump. Like there's just zero, zero moral accountability when it comes to Trump, the Republican Party. And that's the place where it really matters, because Trump doesn't care if some, you know, some lib like me is mad about his corruption. It doesn't matter to him. What would matter is if you had some, you know, some pushback from within his own side, that would be consequential. That would make him much more upset.

26:57That would act as much more of an effective check, potentially, on what he's doing here. But because so much has been, you know, they didn't say a word about it in the first administration, where there was truly, at that time, eye-popping levels of corruption, and, you know, which was astonishing. this dwarfs that by orders of magnitude and not a one of them has a thing to say about it. So I think that's an important dynamic here too is just the total lack of any sort of moral standards or standards with regard to corruption or consistency on the issue coming from his own side. Well, I wonder actually if he if it matters at all to him whether Republicans turn on this particular issue, which to be clear, I don't think they will.

27:41But, you know, Democrats can subpoena and there will be damaging things that come out of subpoenas if they take back the House and the Senate, and there will probably be impeachment proceedings and the like. And subpoenas can do, yeah, that can do real damage. It can expose more of the problem. It can expose them potentially to liability. He'll do a whatever pardon, preemptive pardons at the end of his term, probably as well. But all that is to say, I don't, to me, it almost looks like a race to the end of the administration, like, because he's not going to be on the ballot again. So make as much money as you can in the next few years, it doesn't really matter if Republicans start to turn on him at this point.

28:17Just rake it all in as quickly as possible. Yeah. I mean, there's a tie in here psychologically with the way that the tech oligarchs behave too. And I don't think anyone has done a better job of describing this dynamic than Naomi Klein, who coined it end times fascism, where it's basically like they have these apocalyptic views of where human civilization is going. Partly they have those apocalyptic views because they are the ones that between the climate crisis, but specifically through AI development, are trying to push us over some sort of a cliff here. And so it is just like a smash and grab.

28:55It's like, what can we, what resources can we suck up immediately? What sort of cash can we accumulate? What kind of wealth can we hoard so that when things go really bad, that we have enough money and power to be able to protect ourselves from the fallout from, in many times, in many ways, their own actions. And so I think that is part of the mentality here too, is like, and Trump comes in also with all of this, like, oh, they tried to throw me in prison and they failed and now I'm just gonna do whatever the hell I wanna do. And there's gonna be no check and no limit on me and what I'm up to.

29:33And so I think that comes through. Because you can report it as much as you want. You can subpoena me as much as you want. A, I can pardon. But B, this is the Trump mentality. B, the media could cover this every day. It could be the headline every single day. And because people don't have trust in the media anymore, F it. Like, it doesn't matter. It's not like a big headline story in New York Times every day would have taken down the Clintons or would have taken down maybe like George W. Bush of his financial entanglement. So it was a different time in the country. There was a different level of institutional trust.

30:00But now that's all burned up. So here I am. I'm doing whatever I want to do. Yeah, no, he absolutely is. So let's do a couple more here. We've got A-9, the Qatar Force One, the plane that was gifted to him, to him, by the way, not to the government, to Trump himself that has been rehabbed into the new Air Force One. To his library, right? It's a donation to the library. Yes, that's right. Exactly. So he gets to maintain control over it in perpetuity. I'm sure that has no impact on his decision-making whatsoever. Anyway, that has been retrofitted using taxpayer dollars, by the way. And that has now, I guess, taken its maiden voyage.

30:45We can put A11 up on the screen with regard to the stock trading. 22 ,000 stock transactions made in 2025, according to a Financial Times analysis, His immediate predecessor, Joe Biden, made 13 transactions over four years. In Trump's first term, the whole first term, he made 517, which was, I guess, a significant amount, but nowhere near 22 ,000 in a single year. And this year already, we've seen 6 ,100. In addition, put A6 up on the screen. So what's he doing in those stock trades? To what purpose, what sort of companies is he investing in here? Well, his latest financial disclosures reveal he invested about$500 ,000 in Abbott Laboratories.

31:32Abbott Laboratories is one of the primary baby formula manufacturers in the country responsible for a large portion of the market. You guys will probably remember when there was a lot of problems with the formula coming from Abbott Laboratories. They had to shut some of their manufacturing down. It created a baby formula shortage that was a major, major issue. The Justice Department had spent years investigating them over how this is for more perfect union. They managed a baby formula facility where potentially deadly bacteria was discovered and suspected of causing infant deaths. Well, guess what?

32:06Just after Trump invested in Abbott Laboratories, two months later, the Trump DOJ dropped that investigation. And, you know, and you would think Trump would be in a position to profit off of that since he had had significant holdings in their stock. This is one of many examples that have been tracked of the type of corrupt dealings, potentially, potential insider trading, potentially, that was going on here with these 22 ,000 stock transactions. I should put a 12 up on the screen, that he also invested in Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, NVIDIA, Broadcom, Meta, as much as$5 million each in those in July of 2025.

32:53And on that same day that he invested in each of these, he unveiled his AI action plan, which could help each of those companies. Prices for most of those stocks have since increased. So just on every level, in every way. And these are just the ones, Emily, too, that people can kind of like track and follow. So much of this is completely opaque that we have no idea. But we see all of this very likely insider trading that's happening. And it could easily be the president himself, his sons, his family, etc. We just we don't know. But as we covered as we covered last time on Tuesday, if the government was interested in some of these blatant insider trading issues, They could investigate, but they don't, which does raise some questions over why are they uninterested in investigating those sorts of things.

33:40Well, I hope people also took a look yesterday and you can read about this on Matt Stoller's newsletter, Big, about the Justice Department settlement with these big egg companies where they're getting like three million dollar fines for naked, naked corruption. They have them dead to rights in these transcripts of like phone calls and emails where you see them colluding to drive up egg prices, which caused so much financial stress for average American families for a really long time. You can see on a chart that Stoller posted exactly when the Justice Department investigation is announced, the prices start to go down.

34:14That's not even the biggest piece of evidence. So people should check that out as well. The Trump Justice Department settled with them. They didn't have to admit they did anything wrong, which obviously prevents certain future legal actions. And it's a great deal for them because they have to donate eggs and pay like three million dollar fines after they raked in tons and tons of money. This isn't directly tied back to like Trump's investments. It may be. We don't know yet because we can't necessarily trace all of it. But this is just I'm a pessimist. If there is an optimistic take, it's that he's pushing it to such an extreme that at some point it's not like Pelosi's.

34:47Right. It's not just like who else was like Marjorie Taylor Greene was trading while she was in office. Like it's not like that. It's something on such a different scale that maybe what comes after Trump is finally you get a ban on congressional stock trading. Finally, you get some prohibitions on politicians doing this because you can't possibly extricate their professional knowledge from what they're doing with these investments. You can't do it. So if there is an optimistic case to be made, I'm not optimistic about the optimistic case, but if there is one, this has been pushed to such a logical extreme.

35:22The economy is bad. There's a crypto bubble. Very clearly, there's a crypto bubble that could pop. And what can come after that is really dangerous. It could be potentially violent, not to be a fear mongerer, but I think we all understand how these cycles work and how they worked in the 20th century. So we'll see. But if you want to feel hopeful, maybe that's the dose of optimism. Last two things that I wanted to highlight here, one in particular. So in the financial disclosure, it also shows him receiving$86.5 million from settlements in five separate lawsuits against ABC, CBS, YouTube, Meta, and X.

36:00You know,$86.5 million is, I guess, pennies when you compare it to the billions he's getting from crypto. But I think it shows you the way that he is systematically profiting off of every aspect of his presidency that he possibly can, including his ability to weaponize the federal government in order to bully companies into submission. All or most of these cases would have been, I mean, laughable on their face. Oh, you edited an interview in a way that I didn't like. But all of these companies decided to settle because they were fearful of the consequences of continuing to push forward in these lawsuits.

36:38So they just decided easier and better to effectively pay off the president and not have to worry about it. So you can see that as well in terms of the way that he's operated and his personalized view of the presidency, the way that he uses the whole of government to advance not the interest of the country, but the interest of himself, the interest of his ability to accumulate power and certainly his ability to accumulate wealth. And then the last one that I'll mention, too, that I didn't even pull the element for because there's just so much here, again, that it's kind of overwhelming. There's also like the pardon granting operation is deeply corrupt.

37:16And one insider said, yeah, it's well known in my industry that for$2 million, you can have a pardon. We talked to Jonathan Swan and Maggie Haberman, and they said that he's basically said, look, anyone who gets within however many feet of the Oval Office, I'm going to give them a pardon. There was a conversation about for the celebration of America's 250th anniversary that they were going to maybe release like a whole boatload of pardons, move forward with a bunch of pardons. And if you look again at the track record here, it's like who donated to him, who has business dealings with his family, who gave the right person millions of dollars, etc.

37:49et cetera. And so it speaks both to the corruption and also to the level of impunity that they act with because he abuses the pardon power to just an extraordinary extent that we, again, have never seen before. Not that the pardon power has never been abused before. It certainly has been by most, if not all presidents. But, you know, the level that he's taken to means that it's not just him. It's everybody around him who feels they can act with impunity because they know at the end of the day, oh, Trump's going to pardon me. So there's not going to be any real accountability for anything that I do that is criminal here.

38:19Yeah. And I think that's just a great point to emphasize as we wrap up the segment. It's that there are real substantial consequences to policy and to governance that stem from all of this. It's not just Trump getting rich on this kind of icky scheme to leverage his influence and, you know, like get a prosecutor fired to go back to the Burisma comparison. It's not like that. I mean, these are like hugely consequential psychological effects on people who are in public office right now, but then also on, I mean, we're about to talk about Iran. Qatar is in the center of those UAE, the Saudis. We're about to talk about this big New York Times story on MBS and the Saudis, who are heavily invested in Kushner's affinity in his fund.

39:05It's just completely insane. There's no way to capture it. but that's where we are right now. And just so we're clear, as the economy goes into a shakier and shakier place, this could get so, so ugly. And Trump is to blame. Yep. Well said. And that's a good transition to the very latest with regard to Iran. Checking in on the latest with regards to the Iran war, the negotiations, are they on, are they not on? What is the vice president of the United States saying? We are joined this morning by our friend, Trito Parsi of the Quincy Institute. Great to see you, sir. Good to be with you guys. So let me first get your reaction to these comments from J.D.

39:46Vance that caught a lot of attention where he seems to indicate that they are using this moment of a pause in hostilities to quote unquote refill the oil market. Let's take a lesson. There are a few things that we want. We want durable commitments that are verifiable and backed up by inspections that Iran will denuclearize their entire country. Okay. We're going to see how we get there. Number two, we want to see what kind of an arrangement actually exists in the Middle East between not just Iran and the United States, but the GCC, Israel, Lebanon. We're going to play that situation out. And then on the Strait of Hormuz, I mean, I think you actually said it well, which is that the Strait is open in the sense that to oil traffic, we're seeing more oil come out of the Strait of Hormuz.

40:29And some days, actually, more oil coming out of the Strait than came out before the war even started. So there's this element of the, you know, where the world oil economy is kind of getting back into gear. That's going to take a little bit of time, but you've already seen the prices come way down. Now, what the cynics will say is, well, if you look at the number of ships that are trafficking, that's actually down from the pre-war start. But they're mostly talking about cargo ships and other vessels. At least so far, what we've seen is the oil traffic has reached its pre-war height. So I think what the president has told us to do is use this MOU to sort of refill the world's oil economy.

41:02Yeah. to refill some stocks, and then to see where the hand is. And, you know, as I've said this repeatedly, if the Iranians are willing to make the commitments that we would like them to make and are willing to back those up with verifiable milestones, then we are going to change our relationship with Iran. And if they don't do that, then nothing has really changed except for what we've already accomplished from the military campaign. So he says there the president wants to use the MOU to refill the oil market and then see where the hand is. What did you make of that? I'm frankly not terribly surprised.

41:35What I see this being is essentially that the administration has a plan B, that they're trying diplomacy. I think there's some people in the administration that are probably not that excited about this diplomacy. And they have a plan B in case it doesn't work out. And they want to pursue their plan A in a manner that ensures that their plan B is stronger. I think the Iranians are doing exactly the same thing. This is part of the reason why they're insisting on their position on the Strait of Hormuz. part of the reason why they're insisting on their position in Lebanon. It's very much in case there is no plan A, there is no deal, that they will be in a position to be able to face the United States in another war, if that is what it comes to.

42:17So in and of itself, I'm not particularly surprised. Perhaps it was formulated in a way that gives the impression that the plan B actually is the plan A, that this whole thing is all about making sure that you restock the storage of oil in order to make sure that you can go to war again. I'm not under that impression that that is actually what the administration is doing. I do think, however, there's a significant risk that that is where we will end up. Not because the intent is to go there, but because either diplomacy doesn't work or because diplomacy is sabotaged. I also want to point out one thing.

42:55Part of the reason why oil prices never went up as high as they could have during this war was because by pure happenstance, the inventory of oil globally was extremely high. So if the idea is to go back and in some ways improve on that situation, I think it might be actually difficult because it was extremely high in the first place. And we still had a major, major oil shock and increase of prices. And again, the Iranians never went after the infrastructure of oil in the Persian Gulf states in a manner that they could have, which was one of the cars that they kept close to their chest. They could have played it if there was further escalation.

43:36So if the idea is that some way, somehow, because of the MOU, the United States is going to be in a much better position to launch a war that militarily will be more successful than the previous one, Call me skeptic. I don't think the U.S. has that option, even if the inventory of oil is restocked. And this is exactly what we wanted to ask you about next. We can put B2 up on the screen. Trita, professor at the University of Tehran, Sayed Mirandi, responded to the Michael Knowles interview that J.D. Vance did. You just watched that by saying, Iran is rapidly rebuilding its civilian infrastructure, stockpiling critical supplies, advancing new weapon systems, replacing thousands of destroyed decoys, fielding emerging technologies and expanding its network of underground bases and command and control centers.

44:20From your understanding, is that an accurate description of what's happening right now? I suspect so. This is also exactly what the Iranians did after the June war. And they did it much more successfully than I think U.S. intelligence and Israeli intelligence expected, because they were quite ready for that war that came later on. So again, I think it's very important to understand both sides are taking a bet on a plan A that diplomacy could work. But neither one of them are walking into this situation thinking plan A is so solid, so likely to succeed that there is no need for a plan B and for a plan C.

44:59Both of them are investing heavily in those as well. The question is, does it mean that the plan A is fake, that there actually isn't a real intent to make it work? at least when it comes to what I've seen so far, given how far the administration has gone in, for instance, pushing back the Israelis, the progress that is made at the negotiating table, the signals they are sending about a new relationship and how the Iranians are responding and receiving those. I do think that there is a serious plan A from both sides. I'm more worried about that there may be elements who are trying to sabotage this, whether it is the Israelis or whether it is some of these recent things that have happened.

45:38So, for instance, the MOU that the U.S. side mediated between Israel and Lebanon, to me, looks very much like an effort to sabotage the MOU altogether. And that was done by a different part of the administration. Let's talk a little bit more about that. Put B3 up on the screen. This was your analysis over at your Substack, which, guys, if you aren't subscribed to Trita Substack yet, I don't know what you're doing. The headline here is why Iran believes Israel will attack again before October, the recent Israeli-Lebanese agreement. And Hezbollah's unreported role in the previous war is leading Tehran to this conclusion.

46:12So break down your analysis here and why you think that deal with Lebanon is such a problem. So the deal with Lebanon puts forward a completely different approach on how to deal with Israel's presence in Lebanon. It makes a condition for the Israelis to leave Lebanon, and that condition is the disarmament of Hezbollah. The disarmament of Hezbollah will not happen unless there is some sort of a civil war that breaks out in Lebanon, in which against all odds Hezbollah loses. So it essentially ensures that Israel will stay in Lebanon for a very long time. The entire document is read as if the Lebanese government is partnering with Israel, who is occupying Lebanese territory against Hezbollah, as if Hezbollah is a common threat to both of them, rather than Israel being a threat to Lebanon's sovereignty and territorial integrity.

47:08This is completely different from the MOU. The MOU essentially suggests that Israelis have to leave all of Lebanese territory by the end of the MOU. It does not make a condition for that being that Hezbollah has to be disarmed, although there's going to be part of the negotiations on whether Hezbollah will move further up north in Lebanon, north of the Litani River or other things. But nevertheless, there is no suggestion that Israel will stay in Lebanon for as long as Hezbollah is not disarmed. So this completely flips the entire equation. And part of the reason why this is now really worried the Iranians is because they believe that the Israelis have managed to do this because they're currently holding certain positions in Lebanon that were held by Hezbollah during the war and were critical for Hezbollah's participation in that war, which has been highly underreported.

48:08The Iranians tell me that they've only used about 40 % of their offensive capability against Israel during the war because they didn't need to because Hezbollah was so active. And this diverted Israeli forces and defense capabilities because they had to face that front from Hezbollah as well. By now having taken those positions, Hezbollah's ability to participate in the next war is compromised. And this gives the Israelis a very significant advantage, not a decisive one according to the Iranians, but a significant advantage in which they can launch a war again without having to worry about Hezbollah having the same potency that it did during the war.

48:50And incidentally, we never heard about any of Hezbollah's activities or at least the extent to which they were affected because of this near complete Israeli censorship of what was going on during the war inside of Israel. You mentioned that the Hezbollah part of the agreement was being negotiated by a different part of the administration. I'm assuming, Trita, you're referring to Rubio State Department world versus Vance Whitcoff world. Is that what your understanding is of the dynamic here between what's being negotiated with the Iranians on the Strait of Hormuz and other territorial Iranian questions versus what's happening with the Lebanese negotiations?

49:32I think there's a very common perception that Rubio is not particularly excited about the nuclear deal, about the MOU. And now suddenly he got very active in the region, which he had not been before. He spent most of his time focusing on Cuba and Venezuela. And then you have this agreement as well as a joint statement by the GCC states that took a very pro-American position when it comes to the Strait of Hormuz. So there was a flurry of activities by Rubio suddenly in the region, the perception region-wide, not just on the Iranian side, is that this is done in a way that undermines the MOU because there is a struggle within the administration.

50:17I can't claim that I can confirm that that is true or not, but if you're standing on the outside, it certainly does look this way. And I find it very difficult to read the MOU and the Lebanese agreement in a manner that makes them compatible with each other. They actually seem to be almost designed to be incompatible. The time frame, the conditions, everything is different. And this also tells you why it was so important for the Iranians to make sure that Lebanon was a red line for them. Because it meant that if it wasn't, if Israel could remain in Lebanese territory, if they were not pushed out as part of the MOU, the Israelis and the U.S.

50:56would be in a much stronger position to attack Iran again. which goes back to what I said earlier on. Obviously, the Iranians have been working on their plan B and their plan C just as much as the U.S. administration has. And this contradicts their plan B. If the Israelis remain in Lebanon, it means that Iran's ability to defend itself if Israel attacks again, which incidentally the Iranians believe is now inevitable because there's another aspect that comes into play here, which is by October, the Israelis are going to have their elections. and Prime Minister Netanyahu is already in a bad shape as a result of the MOU, as a result of him not being able to deliver the United States.

51:37He's being attacked by all sides for this failure from their perspective and if he loses that election, he just doesn't lose his political career, he will then also lose his immunity when it comes to the corruption charges that he faced and as a result may end up in jail. So he has all the incentives in the world right now, both political, personal, and strategic to launch a war. And keeping those positions in Lebanon makes it much easier for Israel to do so.

52:07Let's talk a little bit more about the economic realities. If we go back to the first clip we played there, Vice President J.D. Vance saying basically like, yeah, we're getting the oil market back to normal. We're refilling it. Certainly the administration wants to project a lot of economic confidence. At the same time, can put before up on the screen. There was a declaration of emergency and authorization for temporary duty-free importation of phosphate fertilizer from Morocco. It is not just the oil markets that are impacted by disruptions in the Strait of Hormuz. Fertilizer, we've all learned, is also a very important commodity that flows through that area and comes from that area.

52:48So what did you make of this announcement? Does it indicate that there is perhaps more economic pressure and strain continuing on the U.S. and the global economy than what the administration wants to project? Well, there certainly is much more because there is the oil impact, it's the fuel impact, and then it's all of the different secondary impacts. And one of the most important secondary impacts is fertilizer, for which a lot of oil products, of course, are needed for. And the fertilizer, of course, are tremendously important because it feeds all of our agriculture, which means that it feeds our food.

53:22And if we don't have food, we have a completely different crisis rather than just people having to pay a little bit too much at the gas pumps. So we always knew that there was going to be these repercussions. Now, if this repercussions coincided with the continued closure of the Strait of Hormuz, obviously it would have been much worse. But this is at a minimum reducing it, but it doesn't mean that we're completely out of the woods or that these secondary impacts are not going to occur. They're going to occur, but they're likely going to be less impactful or detrimental than they would have been, of course, had the straits continued to be closed.

53:56But this is part of the reason why I'm very skeptical about the idea that just restocking the oil inventory is going to make sure that everything is going to be fine and the next war is going to be fantastic. I think that's a highly optimistic view from the perspective of anyone in the administration who would think that. And I'm not really sure that that is what they're thinking. Do you think the Iranians and the U.S. have a slightly different conception of the pressures on the oil market? I was reading one analysis that said effectively what the Iranians are really watching is the strategic petroleum reserves, which continue to go down.

54:31So even as there is more flow into the oil market, that there continues to be a pressure that is mounting over this time period? Because I know one of the internal arguments in Iran is whether or not they should have even moved forward with this MOU, whether they are losing some leverage in the meantime. What's your understanding of those arguments? I think the strategic reserves are tremendously important. And first, you're going to see the rest of the global economy being able to absorb this oil before you will see the strategic reserves being restocked. And that, again, is going to take some time before you have that type of a full restocking that would bring us back to the previous situation.

55:12There is obviously an argument on the Iranian side that says that they should have gone further. They should have attacked the GCC states more aggressively, particularly the UAE. They should have kept this going longer than they did in order to get the strategic reserves to go down even further. And the question is, at the same time, there is a flip side of that argument, which is, if you wait too long, you will also then make it more difficult for the administration to have the time needed to be able to provide the sanctions relief that would come through a deal that you're trying to achieve.

55:48it. After the midterms, most likely the Republicans are not going to do that well, at least in the House. Trump is going to have less leverage than he did before. He's going to walk into becoming more of a lame duck. His ability to provide and deliver on the sanctions relief that would be agreed upon in a potential MOU starts to get compromised. And as a result, it actually weakens Iran's ability to be able to get a good deal. This is part of the problem that was happening during the JCPOA. The JCPOA, in many ways, was over-negotiated. It took them way too long to get to that deal. And as a result, by the time they got the deal, the administration had very little time left to make sure that the implementation was solid enough to protect it from any future presidents trying to walk out of it.

56:39And as a result, it became weaker than what it otherwise could have been. You don't want to repeat that mistake now by allowing the negotiations to take way too long time. And then by the time the deliverance of the different agreements is supposed to take place, the U.S. side is going to be too weak to be able to fulfill those promises. I wanted to get your take on this big New York Times piece as well. We can put the next element up on the screen about U.S.-Saudi relations. Kind of going under the radar this week is that the Saudi foreign minister is in China. The Times' headline is how the Iran war ignited a clash between Trump and the Saudi crown prince, which is sort of a remarkable headline, of course, given the close ties between Trump, certainly between Jared Kushner, his son-in-law, and the Saudi crown prince.

57:24Reading a bit from the piece here, it reports, since the U.S. and Israel attacked Iran on February 28th, Saudi Arabia has tried to chart a middle course to protect its interests. It gave military and diplomatic support to the U.S. and was attacked by Iran, but the kingdom has also opposed Mr. Trump at critical moments, flexing its muscles when it sensed greater dangers resulting from American and Israeli aggression. The piece also asserts that the Saudis are seeing the U.S. increasingly as a less reliable partner. Does this story resonate with you, Trita? Does this sound like an accurate rendering of what's happening behind the scenes and what could the consequences be of that, if so?

58:00I think the overall picture absolutely resonates that you're seeing, first of all, that the Saudis at first were actually in favor of this war. They did provide military support. But I think they were deeply disappointed. They thought the U.S. was going to be much more effective in this war. They too had underestimated the strength of the Iranians. They had overestimated the impact of the protests when it came to the fragility of the Iranian theocracy. So they were disappointed in seeing how this whole thing went down, and then were questioning many of the different decisions that the U.S. made going forward, and did not want to see meaningless escalation that only would lead to the Saudis and the other GCC states suffering more without really changing the strategic picture.

58:46And that's part of the reason why they stood up in a few couple of occasions against this. But they had also struck their own deal, most likely with the Iranians. Part of the reason why the Saudis did not get the brunt of the attacks. In fact, a very little amount of attacks from the Iranians in comparison to other states such as Kuwait, Bahrain, and the UAE. So I think at least relatively early on in the war, the Saudis realized this is not going the way they thought. This is not going the way the U.S. thought. And they started to look at their options instead of blindly following the United States, realizing that the U.S.

59:21didn't know where it was going. And the fact that they are now coordinating with the Chinese, that they're looking for further diversification, is going to be a pattern that we are very likely to see, not just with them, but with many of the other GCC states as well, including the UAE. The UAE may very well double down on its relations with Israel and Saudi Arabia, but it is simultaneously striking deals with the Iranians. They struck a deal with the Iranians just in the last couple of weeks, which is part of the reason why when it came to the last round of exchange of fire between the U.S. and Iran, the Iranians retaliated against Kuwait and Bahrain and did not strike the Emiratis because they had already struck a deal.

1:00:02So you're going to see a lot of double play, a lot of countries making deals with many of the different actors instead of just simply putting all of their eggs back into one basket. That's what they did before. It didn't work. They're going for diversification now. And lastly, what is your understanding? Are talks happening this week? Are they not happening this week? Do we expect another market-timed resume of bombing campaigns here over the weekend? What do you think? I mean, talks did occur in Doha, whether they get renewed or not remains to be seen. You know, I think we should also remember, we've seen a tremendous amount of drama and tremendous high decibel of all kinds of statements, even threats, etc.

1:00:46Nevertheless, with some delay, talks have gone forward. And I think it is a reminder of the fact, and in fact, on top of just, you know, high discipline, we also saw attacks from both sides. I think it is a reminder that at the end of the day, neither side really wants to go back to a full-scale war. It is not to their benefit. They need to get to some sort of diplomatic arrangement. It is to the benefit of both of them as well as for many others as well. So there will, and unfortunately, a lot of snafus and a lot of elements of escalation. But so far, we have not seen the talks collapse altogether.

1:01:25Could they? Absolutely. You have a couple of more of these type of exchanges of fire between the U.S. and Iran, and it's very difficult to see that this MOU will collapse. But it will not collapse easily. I think that's the lesson we should learn from the last two or three weeks. All right. Well, that's a hopeful note to end on. Dr. Trita Parsi of the Quincy Institute and also of the Trita Parsi Substack. Great to have you, sir. Great to see you again. Thanks so much for having me. Appreciate it. My pleasure.

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