Trump's Iran Escalation Raises Fears of a Ground Invasion

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3:01Ben Meiselas:Donald Trump is panicking as Iran refuses to surrender. Trump is flailing. He appears to be preparing U.S. special forces for a ground invasion of Iran. as Donald Trump's continuous bombing campaign of Iran is not working, and as Iran has responded very forcefully attacking U.S. interests in the nearby Arab nations. If you take a look right here at the satellite image of the Oman port of Dukum, look at the Dukum port in Oman, you can see the special forces mothership belonging to the United States right here. It's called the Ocean Trader. In many ways, it's hiding in plain sight. When we saw Iran strike Dukam Port the other day in Oman, lots of people were wondering, well, why were they doing that?

3:53Ben Meiselas:Isn't Oman one of the previous mediators? Why would they be striking Oman? Well, they seem to be striking at the area where the U.S. was positioning special forces for a potential invasion of Iran. Also, we've been covering here on the Midas Touch Network how the U.S. super carriers, the Abraham Lincoln and the George H.W. Bush have positioned themselves around 250 kilometers from the coast of Iran. Also, if you look at where the United States has been targeting in Iran and the types of radar, surveillance, and other infrastructure that the US has been targeting. One would think that that could potentially be trying to prepare the terrain for a ground invasion if ultimately Donald Trump decides to go in that direction.

4:51Ben Meiselas:And he certainly appears to be getting more and more desperate and more and more volatile by the day, which is saying something because he's a very desperate and volatile person. I also want to point out something that I don't think a lot of people are paying attention to as well. We're seeing a lot of top Russian officials flying to Iran right now. Some of the Russian airplanes that would normally be used by their top envoys are heading to Iran, as I think Russia is further preparing to help Iran in the event the United States does launch a ground invasion as we've seen Ukraine continuing to strike deep within Russia with those FP1, FP2, and FP5 drones.

5:43Ben Meiselas:One of the things that informs us that Donald Trump is potentially preparing a ground invasion in addition to the areas where he's striking. And it's been these continuous strikes, which again, appear to be setting the stage for a potential ground invasion. You can see the desperation of Donald Trump's other strikes grow when he's not striking the kind of coastline, radar, surveillance, other weapons that kind of guard the coast. the United States almost had a direct hit of the Bushir nuclear power plant take a look at this before and after right here of the Bushir nuclear power plant and US bombs came dangerously close to blowing it up the other night and so you take a look at the satellite image if there would have been a direct hit and I mean we're talking just a few kilometers away from being a direct hit there would have been a massive radiological disaster right there and just look at the but like look how close it was right there also if you look at the type of locations the United States is hitting in addition to the Bushir nuclear plant we also see that the United States hit Iran's largest petrochemical hub in the Meshare Kuzestan province that's Iran's main oil region.

7:11Ben Meiselas:A water pumping statement in Mashar in southwestern Iran was struck by airstrikes by the U.S., killing one and injuring four per the deputy governor there. And then the U.S. launched those other strikes around the coast. And this desperation that we're seeing is also tied up with the strategic petroleum reserves. I know I sounded like a broken record for the past two weeks. But this is precisely what I thought was going to happen as the strategic petroleum reserves now hit a level that would be deemed to be the estimated minimum operating level. Remember when I showed you this chart that Eric Nuttall posted?

7:54Ben Meiselas:When did he post this? July 8th. The US strategic petroleum reserve is now 19 million barrels away as of July 8th from the estimated minimum operating levels, there very soon will no longer be a safety buffer to protect the world from further losses out of the straight because that strategic petroleum reserve feeds into the entire global oil market. And that's one of the ways that the Trump regime has tried to bring down the price of crude. It hasn't brought down really the price at the pump because the refinery price is a different price than the crude. Remember, I talked about the crack splits.

8:36Ben Meiselas:The other way that the Trump regime is trying to manipulate the price of crude, it's through these short positions that I believe Treasury Secretary Scott Besant has been organizing with a lot of the kind of billionaires that he's been working with. I mean, take a look at this graph that AFI, that HFI Research posted. They call it insane asylum. And they write, I know I'm not a normal person, but I know I'm not crazy. What we are witnessing in the oil market today is history in the making. We have never had Brent short positioning this high and global crude oil inventories this low. So unless there was this massive market manipulation, why in the world would there be such a massive effort to do these shorts when it's so obvious that the Strait of Hormuz is effectively closed and war is escalating?

9:32Ben Meiselas:And we've never had a situation where the strategic reserves have been this low in history. But when you see that CENCOM continues to post messages and says the Strait of Hormuz is open, all of these ships are going out, everything is amazing. And then you see these short positions, you see in my mind, Treasury Secretary Besant, the position of CENCOM, Brad Cooper, and Howard Lutnick, their fingerprints to me are all over this. Now, one of the other aspects that to me informs that a ground invasion may be imminent as well is right now the CENTCOM commander is a guy named Brad Cooper. Brad Cooper's mentor, a former CENTCOM commander, is a guy named retired General Frank McKenzie.

10:23Ben Meiselas:Now, he was on the various regime media programs this morning. He was on Face the Nation on CBS. As you know, CBS has become regime media as well. And he was endorsing the invasion. And so to me, it wasn't just that he was there randomly saying that. CBS is state regime media that's used for floating these types of plans. And this was a test bubble for the ground invasion. You've got the special forces ready to go. You've got the two carriers right there. If you look at where the military is striking on the coast that they've been doing every day, again, they're taking out the kind of radar systems to allow for the invasion a la D-Day.

11:15Ben Meiselas:That's what they're doing, except unlike D-Day, right now, again, there's massive casualties on D-Day. But right now, this is going to be sending our troops and our special forces into a meat grinder. And there's just going to be mass death if this is what they end up doing. But here is the current CENTCOM's mentor, Frank McKenzie, retired general. This guy's the former commander of CENTCOM. Here's what he had to say. I was just looking back at my last conversation on Face the Nation with Lindsey Graham, and the senator said, if this deal fails, President Trump is going to take the Strait of Hormuz over by force.

11:57The U.S. will control the Strait of Hormuz. That was three weeks ago. How does the United States end up controlling the Strait of Hormuz? Well, Margaret, we certainly have the capability to control the Strait of Hormuz if the president chooses to follow that course of action. Look, what he's been trying to do is get to a diplomatic a political solution here, which I applaud and I think we should all want to see as the final instate. Nonetheless, the fact of the matter is the Iranians generally only respond to military force and to extreme pressure. Look, we're not talking about regime change here.

12:33What we're talking about is modifying the views and actions of an extreme hardline regime. That is possible. We have the capability to do that. That capability is resident in the U.S. military should the president elect to employ it. That would include opening the Strait of Hormuz, maintaining the Strait of Hormuz open, and in fact, seizing Karg Island. Should we elect to do that? And I would just say as an aside, that's something we should think about doing because possession of Iranian soil would be a significant factor in future negotiations with Iran. So all those options are on the table.

13:07I'm not sure where we're gonna go with this, but I do know we have these capabilities.

13:11Ben Meiselas:Now, as Donald Trump continues to panic, I mean, he's posting some of the most deranged things while all of this is taking place. I mean, let me show you the scenes of the war. We could just run the B-roll, folks. Here's smoke rising in Manama, Bahrain after Iran's strikes. Several missiles launched from Iran right here into various areas. Iran launched a large scale surprise attack on Kuwait earlier with three ballistic missiles directly impacting the U.S. attack arms ground to ground missiles in Kuwait. More strikes by Iran. Take a look over here. Iran was able to hit numerous other U.S. military sites in the region as well.

14:00Ben Meiselas:Iran's IRGC announced full destruction of fuel tanks and Patriot air defense systems at the U.S. Ali al-Salam airbase in Kuwait and an FPS strategic radar system at the Ahmed al-Jabbar airbase in Kuwait in the third phase of its response last night. Iran's IRGC announced the destruction of helicopter maintenance and repair centers at a P-8 electronic warfare aircraft hangar and the command and control center of the U.S. military drone fleet at the U.S. Sheikh Issa Air Base in Bahrain. I'll play this one for you. Iranian armed forces launching their kamikaze drones at U.S. bases in the region. Let's play this one right here.

14:52Ben Meiselas:And then you've seen previously some of the photos of the fifth fleet in Bahrain, what that looks like after Iran was able to strike there. But here's what Donald Trump is posting while all of this is going down. He's posting this photo of Lindsey Graham. It's a photo of Lindsey Graham, who, as you know, died 48 hours ago or so. Lindsey Graham is wearing a hat in this photo that says, make Iran great again. And he's holding Donald Trump's Wikipedia page with a hat that says, make Iran great again. Donald Trump is posting that he has a 59 % approval rating. His approval rating is in the thirties right now.

15:33Ben Meiselas:And then Trump says prices are coming down along with lowering of oil and gas, by the way, even with all those short positions that I talked about, and even with the manipulation from the strategic reserve and our strategic reserve has now hit functional tank bottom. We're at the emergency level. The prices are going up right now for crude up 5%, 7 % over last night. And they continue to go up as, you know, gas prices, the price that you pay at the pump is going up. Donald Trump posting these weird images of fighter jets and of the Qatari Air Force One surrounded by fighter jets as he fears that Iran is going to kill him.

16:15Ben Meiselas:And then, you know, while he's posting that, I mean, you have these images of war, the massive plume of smoke rising from Kesha Milan near the Strait of Hormuz following the u.s airstrike there and maybe one of the areas that the u.s is looking to invade large explosion reported after u.s airstrike in syrick um the other night and so you know we'll keep you posted every step of the way of course but that's where we're at right now um we're covering this from every angle giving you the data giving you the facts hit subscribe let us know what you think Let's get to 7 million subscribers. Thanks for watching.

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