9/21/26: Houthis Bomb Saudi Capital, Yanis Varoufakis On Moscow Strikes And Petro Dollar Collapse

0:00This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human. Didn't catch the latest Roland Martin Unfiltered podcast? Here's what you missed. There should not be a single law enforcement agency that does not have body cameras. It's real. Black farmers have been under attack. This is just the latest example of them just slapping DEI on anything. It's raw. And I'm sitting here going, they are playing y 'all for fools. Catch Roland Martin's daily commentary on the Black Information Network. And download Roland Martin Unfiltered on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey guys, Ready or Not 2024 is here, and we, here at Breaking Points, are already thinking of ways we can up our game for this critical election.

0:43We rely on our premium subs to expand coverage, upgrade the studio, add staff, give you guys the best independent coverage that is possible. If you like what we're all about, it just means the absolute world to have your support. But enough with that, let's get to the show.

0:59Good morning, everybody. Happy Monday. I have an amazing show for everybody today. What do we have, Crystal? Indeed we do. A lot going on with regards to the Iran war. The Houthis were able to strike the main international airport in Riyadh. Trump is apparently at a complete loss as to what to do about the situation. We've got new inside details there. Yanis Varoufak is going to join us this morning to talk both about the latest with regards to Ukraine. They launched a massive drone attack on Moscow. And we're also going to get them to break down the global bond sell-off, which has been incredibly consequential here and around the world.

1:31The U.S. apparently almost started a war with China based on a faulty chat GPT-AI report. So love that for us and for the world. Truckers are sounding off as diesel tops$6.50 a gallon. And Ed Sheeran weeps and copes after kicking McLemore off his concert. We got a little video for you. Hopefully they don't copyright us. We're going to take the chance. That's right. There's nothing better than Ed crying. Thank you to everybody who has been subscribing, breakingpoints.com. We have our free trial going on right now. Now, Ryan has said that you should only sign up on Wednesdays and Fridays. And so how about we count it so that if you sign up with It's Me, it just goes or it counts exclusively to Ryan's total.

2:15And that way, I no longer am a factor in this conversation whatsoever. So you can sign up whenever you want. All right, I am no longer, I'm taking myself out of this race completely. Breakingpoints.com, go ahead. It's over. It's long been over, you know, at this point. If you're watching this on YouTube, please hit subscribe to our YouTube channel. If you're listening to the podcast, please share this episode with a friend. But as Crystal said, Trump indecisiveness is really kind of one of the major headline stories this morning. Let's put this up here on the screen, breaking early this morning from the New York Times.

2:46Basically, they say Trump gets caught in a dilemma over a Saudi plea for military help. So obviously, the major headline story of the last two weeks has been the extraordinary Houthi military campaign against the Saudi-backed forces in Yemen, where they not only were able to seize strategic port of Mocha, but they were also able to take control of the entire Bab al-Mandeb Strait. By taking control of the strait, they have effectively forced Saudi Arabia to no longer be able to move any oil via their port of Yanbu. And instead, they have to move it through the Suez Canal, which is incredibly costly and very inefficient.

3:22In addition to that, Iranian forces, apparently from Iraq, were able to dismantle at least partially parts of the Saudi east to west pipeline. So they're putting significant pressure on Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia long has held the United States its main military backer, right? We'll remember that one of the main reasons we were even involved in the first place, in the first Gulf War, was to protect Kuwait and stop it from Iraqi invasion. But we also had all those U.S. forces in Saudi Arabia. So it's a decades-long military relationship. And MBS has been lighting Trump up on the phone ever since this prolonged Houthi campaign.

3:57He's like, you need to help me. You need to help me. You said you were going to help me. This is your whole thing. You're the empire. We've bought hundreds of billions of dollars of your military equipment. Like, we're your number one ally. You're supposed to, you know, preserve freedom of navigation. And apparently, Trump was in Camp David over the weekend for a major military deliberation over whether they should go in and strike Yemen. Now, why anyone thinks that's even going to work this time, I don't even know, considering how many times we have tried to bomb Yemen, bomb the Houthis. They were under sustained bombardment for almost 12 years.

4:29The United States alone, I think it's like Operation Rising Lion or something like that back in 2025. Total disaster. Biden famously, we bombed the Houthis. Did it work? No. Are we going to still keep doing this? Yes. So this is multiple presidents now who continue to try the bomb strategy. And Trump was apparently convinced to do it. Trump had met with advisers on Saturday, told them he did not favor strikes. But after speaking with the Saudi crown prince, reversed himself and told the Pentagon to prepare for airstrikes against the Houthis. Midday Sunday, the president appeared to have reversed himself again.

5:00There would be no U.S. airstrikes, despite the fact that the bombs were literally being loaded on the planes at the time, the strike packages and all of that had been drawn up. And just to show you how real this was, let's put A3 on the screen. All of the signs were lining up yesterday for major escalation. The U.S. mission to the UAE, in addition to multiple of the embassies across the region, put out similar statements, basically saying due to tensions in the Middle East, the security environment remained complex. Americans should exercise heightened vigilance and be aware of potential flight cancellations, aerospace closures and travel disruptions.

5:37This was UAE. This was Saudi Arabia. This was Kuwait, Bahrain, all of the entire Gulf. In addition, the U.S. virtual embassy in Tehran basically said all Americans need to leave. And it appears that Trump at the very last second decided to pull back. And this shows the vice that he is in. He can't protect America's allies, Saudi Arabia, without risking Iranian and Houthi backlash to even further constrain the price of oil. All this man cares about at this point is the price of oil. And you and I know at the same time, he also cares about not admitting defeat. Admitting defeat would immediately lower the price of oil and immediately get things flowing throughout the region.

6:18But the Iranians are like, yeah, for that to happen, there's a whole list of conditions which is complete and total surrender. And in addition to that, we're in a worse strategic position than we are. So we either abandon Saudi. That's one option, which is bad, of course, you know, just, you know, strategically for the empire. But then the other part is that we continue on this course, the fecklessness and we or the fecklessness. And we go forward trying some stupid Houthi bombing campaign and still diminish the amount of air strike or the munitions and others. Remember, the United States is currently in a ceasefire from 2025 onward with the Houthis.

6:54And if that were to light up again, now the United States Navy, which is trying to do some convoy system through the Strait of Hormuz. Oops, now we've got a whole other strait that we've got to start worrying about and protect shipping. We just don't have the munitions for it. Yeah, that's exactly right. And that's apparently what Trump ultimately decided is that we are not in any position to open up an entirely new front of this war because we already are failing on the front that we have opened. So right now, these are attacking. Obviously, they're trying to take all of Yemen. They're attacking Saudi Arabia.

7:25We can put a one up on the screen. I mean, this is pretty extraordinary to see. This is the main international airport in Riyadh that was successfully struck by the Houthis. You can see the black smoke rising there. You can see the fire. I can't even imagine. Can you imagine if they hit DCA right here? I mean, or even Dulles, that would be such a shock to the system. And so these Gulf nations have felt very insulated from any sort of regional instability. That's a whole basis of their economies, both in terms of tourism and as destination for global capital. All of that has been completely rocked.

8:02And so, look, the Saudis also were foolish in, according to the reporting, encouraging us at the beginning to get into this war with Iran. Oh, we've got your back. We want you to go ahead because they see Iran, of course, as a regional rival. They wanted Iran to be put in check. And so this is sort of, you know, having to deal with the fruits of their own decision making and pushing Trump in this direction as well. But it's a wild situation. Right now, the Houthis are not attacking American ships. We have had this ceasefire that has taken hold after we basically had to admit defeat. Okay, we're not going to defeat you, even though we've been bombing you for years at this point.

8:37This is not taking you out. So we're going to have to come to some sort of accommodation. Trump was persuaded for a moment to undermine that deal and blow that up and open up this new front and that at the very last second after all of these warnings, he is like, oh, my God, we just we just can't do this. So there is no strategy like any concept that there's some 40 chest going and we're going to squeeze them and we're going to wait them out. And this was what's going to happen. No, he's flying by the seat of his pants because after day two of this war, when the entire Iranian regime did not collapse, he has been out of ideas and desperately scrambling to try to figure something out on the fly ever since then.

9:16Yeah, he's used to a situation where we could do this and there'd be relatively little cost. But when you control the Bab al-Mandeb Strait, you said shoot at U.S. forces. I mean, at that point, that's actually a secondary concern. We could probably shoot all those down. What if they just shoot at every single ship that's moving through Bab al-Mandeb? Oil will probably go to$200 a barrel. It's over at that point. And that's the nightmare scenario. That's exactly why he continues to be stuck in this. Remember, too, though, there are secondary consequences. At some point in the future or in the past, Saudi Arabia had denied the United States use of its airspace and of its bases to be able to launch a preemptive attack on Iran without getting some of the requisite protection that they want.

9:55Well, are they going to do that now? Because they're screwed. I mean, they're in a situation where they are genuinely under attack from their oil infrastructure, the Aramco facility, East-West pipeline. I mean, the entire deal in Saudi Arabia, because Saudi is not the UAE. It is not Qatar. They don't have a tiny population, a bunch of slave Indians and Pakistanis doing all their work. They have tens of millions of people. Like, there actually is like a Saudi middle class, I guess, if you want. And for the entire deal is the kingdom, they get to do whatever they want. Like the House of Saud, they get the Monaco and the yachts and all of that.

10:30In exchange, we all get to have a normal, like pretty stable lifestyle. And we also, you know, we're hyper-religious freaks. The Wahhabists, they get paid. It's a deal that we all make in society. Well, if the security breakdown of that goes apart and you start to live in a world where the kingdom, the House of Saud, you know, all of their deals and their hated deals with the enemy and the West and all of that, if that starts not paying dividends in your airport, I mean, your airport being on fire is insane. The fuel depot, like you said, here at Washington Reagan airport, if the fuel depot there is getting lit up by drones, it's a 10 alarm fire.

11:06Like it's, that is, that breaks, it's kind of like what's happening in Moscow. I mean, that's completely changes the strategic position of the whole situation. So let's go to A2 now on Iran. This is Trump spoke with Trey Yankst over at Fox News while a lot of this was all in the air about a potential attack. And he's just right back to, he's like, oh, maybe I'll just blow up the entire country. Let's take a listen. Yeah. Hey guys, good morning. I just spoke with President Trump about the situation with Iran. He tells Fox News he's in a deciding mode and that very big things are going to be happening in the not so distant future.

11:43The president described the current choices on the table as wiping Iran out, letting them rot economically or making a deal. He added, my question is, if and when do I blow the entire nation up, they better behave. Now, I asked the president about the UN General Assembly this week. Iranian President Masoud Pazeshkian is going to be there. And I asked if he'd be open to meeting with the Iranian leader. and he said he'd probably be open to it, but described this weekend as no different from any other weekend, despite these alerts that went out to US citizens. Right, and that was in the middle of the war planes, literally having the bombs loaded onto them.

12:20So this is like, this is the point too, where you can't even keep any of this stuff secret because they tried launching the secret attack, as we'll all recall. And what happened? Like a million Americans were stranded in the Middle East, unable to get out. So they have to put out the alerts and the Iranians themselves remain very much on high alert. Let's put A5 on the screen. This is from their own broadcasting. They said, the general staff, according to intelligence received, the United States has once again decided with the green light from certain regional countries to resume actions against Iran during a joint meeting in a European nation.

12:54We don't even know exactly what that is alluded to, but it's very likely that there at least had been some briefing or something about the potential attack on Yemen, considering its consequences to the global economy. And we're about to talk about Ukraine with the situation with Yanis. But the constraint on the diesel market at this point, it's just not going anywhere. And, you know, this is the problem when you break apart the entire U.S. energy or the entire global energy infrastructure, even if things were to end. Like when I say gas would go down, it would go down to$3.84 a gallon. Like it's the diesel price.

13:28it's not coming back down to, I don't even know what it was before the war. So yeah, before the war launched$3.69 a gallon a year ago. So it was manageable. Obviously, the spread between that and gasoline, gasoline at that time was only$3.18. And so the spread right now remaining where it's at, the refinery capacity, the amount of refineries in Russia that have all gone offline, and the general price increases that we're seeing, the$1 million a day It is so insane. And we're going to talk about that later with diesel. But as mentioned just right now, it is literally costing these. It's literally costing twenty six dollars a barrel in just to charter the ships to get these things from the United States to Asia.

14:10And that's just because of the constraints from Baba Mondev to the Strait of Hormuz and the general risk premium and demand. It's just craziness. Yeah, and we'll talk more later in the show, but a big piece of this is refinery capacity. You know, the U.S. has not been building new refineries. A lot of that capacity shifted to the Middle East and also to Russia, and that's not working out well for us. But Sagar has forgotten. We do have some secret weapons in this war that were just unveiled to the public. This is A6. Let's take a look. We just got the pleasure and the privilege of getting a tour of the Pentagon, and what a cool experience.

14:45We see all the men and women here. who are serving this great nation. I don't think there is any greater commitment to sacrifice than those who are willing to live, die, and fight for their country. So I think it's you guys who etch your names in history as you fight for and allow us in this country to have that freedom where we can prosper and be happy and be the great nation that we are. So a deep, personal thank you from myself, my brother, and all of our fellow Americans. Each one of you matters. Take this moment and be proud of yourselves for what you do. This is the greatest country in the world, truly.

15:29We are blessed to be born here, come here, and we should never take that for granted. That's what God created us for, is to lift each other up in the hard moments, to be there for each other in the hard moments, and to come together as a collective and fight for good. that's why this country was formed we should never forget that truly inspiring oh yeah department of war hyper real with jake and logan paul there i mean what can you say at this point like we're eyes by the way we're a joke of a nation we should just let the ai overlords take us over except they're about to get us a nuclear war with china yeah we'll get to that later yeah that's true we should just let the chinese take us over i mean And it's just like, so you could not make this up.

16:14Like you really genuinely couldn't script it for a movie. It would be too preposterous. A friend of mine has a great take on this. He says, this is a lot of talk on the right about third worldism. And then he says, this is actual third worldism, by the way. Trump is our first third world president. Pugilistic fights on the lawn of the National Palace, appointing family to do diplomacy, self-enriching via scams from elected office, losing an unpopular war, but making time for celebrity ceremony. And by the way, when we say celebrity, we mean like the D minus tier where most people in polite society are like humiliated that these people are filthy rich and apparently represent the general tastes of our population.

16:53We would all be better off if it didn't exist. So yeah, I mean, that is the reality of this situation. I'd also note from my friends in the Pentagon press corps, that is the press room where that happened, where they have not held a briefing in like, I don't even know, 50 days or something like that. It also comes at a time, this didn't even make the show, just to show you where things are. In the old days, we would have been able to ask the Pentagon press about this. The Washington Post had a blockbuster report that more Americans have died in the Iran war than they're letting on. This would obviously be a crazy revelation because, I mean, I've even said this on the show.

17:30It seems very difficult to assume that actual deaths could be covered up. And the reason why is that we have a system in the United States where like within 24 hours of death, the family has to get notified. And once the family gets notified, you know, people post on Facebook, they have to have, we're not Russia. Like you can't cover up whole funerals and all this stuff and take things down, at least not yet. And so for that, you know, that report, I was honestly stunned. And then, you know, to have this situation happen, like in the Pentagon press briefing room where it's like some hype reel that they're putting out i mean it's just humiliating it's there's just no way around it like these antics look if you're doing it while you're beating somebody's ass fine but there's so many instances like this where they're trying to pull out the kind of 2024 greatest hits they have pat mcafee who literally dominates all of our airwaves and he's like oh when you hear like during a flyover mcafee had this take where he's like more during when the nfl maybe a college football game he's like if you hear that sound running.

18:28Your ass better. He's like, you hear that sound? Your ass better be running. And it was like, dude, it ain't 2002. Right. Like the Iranians heard that sound and they shot the plane down. Yeah. You know, and we had to go rescue Mr. Bravo. Apparently like that. It's not we're not the big bad military anymore. Like we're getting our asses kicked literally right now. Yeah. And so that's why, you know, if anything, this is this is actually a good emblem, I think, for also just remember, you know, how many times we freak out about all these leftoid ridiculous influencers in the Biden press room and their stupid little SNL skits and, you know, whatever, their trans toplessness.

19:01It's like, okay, well, this is just as humiliating, okay? So, sorry. Hyper online presidency, obsessed with influencers. Like, remember all those videos of, like, Kid Rock and RFK Juniors? Like, I mean, Sean Duffy, who's the head of the Department of Transportation, filmed an entire reality show while he was supposed to be doing his job. I mean, it's just completely bonkers. and then meanwhile Hegseth who is literally just like a Fox News weekend TV host is out there talking to the troops and pumping them up with a bunch of religious rhetoric framing this as some sort of freaking holy war like it's so ridiculous and absurd you have to laugh but it's also just deeply disturbing the way that they approach all of this and this it goes back to what Trump told Tucker reportedly when Tucker was expressing all this like I don't think this is going to go well you shouldn't do this and here's the risk etc.

19:52Trump's like don't worry it's going to work out Tucker's like, well, why? Because it always does. That was the rationale. That was the entire rationale. That is how unserious these people are, how little they think about the consequences for anyone in this country, around the world, et cetera. So anyway, perfect emblem of exactly their approach to global affairs, I guess. Yep, that's right. All right, let's get to Ukraine. Didn't catch the latest Roland Martin Unfiltered podcast? Here's what you missed. And the argument is, do you want to win? If you don't win, you have no power. It's real. Those are the very people who I always say vote against their own economic interests, and they complain about the very thing they're receiving.

20:38It's raw. I knew that the issue of transgender athletes was not going well with a lot of black men. Roland Martin unfiltered. I went off. I said, this is exactly what I'm talking about. Y 'all gonna scream at Chanel, but you don't want to see a black luxury company in the same vein. Catch Roland Martin's daily commentary on the Black Information Network. Twelve seats. Those are moving south. So if you Democrats, you don't wait to 2030. You better be hitting the ground going hard in the south now. And download Roland Martin Unfiltered on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

21:21Joining us now is our great friend Yanis Varoufakis. He is the economist, politician, and as he said, a self-described bullshit artist, although we do not think that is true at all. Thank you very much, sir, for joining us. Well, thank you so much for being so forthcoming. All right, we're going to go ahead and start here with the situation in Ukraine. I know that you've been tracking so much of this situation closely, and it has major economic impacts for all of us. Let's start here with the first, which is a huge Ukrainian drone attack on Moscow, which included targeted strikes towards oil infrastructure and specifically diesel refineries.

21:59We have some breaking news this morning of President Trump reacting to this, where he apparently spoke with President Zelensky and begged him to stop these strikes. Yanis, what do you make of Ukraine's now ability to project strikes, drone strikes, including cruise missile strikes, deep not only into Russia, into the capital to strike so much of their backbone of their economy with diesel? What does this heighten the stakes to and potentially lead us to some sort of troubling situation? Well, almost four years since the beginning of this all-out war, we ended up in an aerial stalemate. In the same way that in the First World War, in the Great War, there was a stalemate of trench warfare.

22:45Two sides had stopped and they were just throwing bombs and mortars at one another. Now we have an aerial version of that. You mentioned this barrage of missiles and particularly drones fired by Ukraine against Russia. But, you know, if you read the newspapers two days ago, it was the opposite. It was the jet-powered drones coming from Russia that was devastating Ukraine. So I think, you know, this is pretty symmetrical. What is not symmetrical is what's happening on the ground, in the Donbass in particular, which is the number one priority of Vladimir Putin. There, very painfully, with huge human costs, the Russian army is steadily making encroachments.

23:39It's only a sliver of the Donbass that Vladimir Putin has not gotten. There's no doubt he won't stop before he gets all of the Donbass, at least. And, you know, one hopes and prays that the Europeans and the Americans and the Canadians are going to start having the conversation that we have refused to have so far. Because let's face it, NATO, and in particular Europe, has no plan for peace in Ukraine. If you ask them what kind of peace they envisage, they only talk about the defeat of Russia, which is not going to happen. And they have no plan for war. Because, you know, getting the Ukrainians to keep hoping that they will take back Crimea when there is no chance in hell of that, or in heaven, it doesn't matter.

24:33So we have neither a plan for peace nor a plan for war. And meanwhile, people are dying on both sides. Infrastructure is being destroyed. Donald Trump is right to worry that in addition to his folly in Iran, this war is pushing up, is restricting the supply of diesel, the supply of petrol, of gas, as you call it in the United States. and that has detrimental effects on his MAGA base in the Midwest. So this is where we are. This is what happens when you start a war without a plan and you don't have a plan for war and you don't have a plan for peace. Let's go and put B3 up on the screen. You mentioned some of the Russian attacks on Ukrainian infrastructure.

25:16Those are the Financial Times write-up. They say Russia's new air campaign seeks to destroy the Ukrainian economy. They talk in particular about successful strikes on the steel industry. They have a quote here. As of today, Ukraine does not have a steel industry anymore. That's according to the head of the CEO's office at Medinvest, a steel mining company that owned two of the three plants that were targeted in the recent attacks. What is the reality of the war economy in Ukraine? How able are they to sustain their current efforts? There's no doubt that there's an asymmetry. The Russian economy, and this is the great paradox, the Russian economy over the last few years has strengthened as a result of military Keynesianism, of the war economy.