Are Trump's friends getting filthy rich on his “peace deal“?

0:00Are you trying to get weight loss support through telehealth, but it feels overwhelming and rushed? Check out orderlymeds.com now. Orderlymeds.com was built to be different. Here, you connect with real doctors who take the time to understand your goals, review your eligibility, and guide you through a plan that's right for you. Orderlymeds provides access to proven GLP-1 medications like semaglutide and terzepatide, including both name brand options and personalized compound versions when appropriate. So you have choices backed by clinical oversight, not guesswork. It's a simpler, more supportive telehealth experience designed around people who want clarity, care, and confidence in their weight loss journey.

0:38And your medication is delivered directly to your home in discreet packaging. So your experience stays private from start to finish. Do your research. Ask the right questions. Then visit orderlymeds.com slash podcast for an exclusive offer. Again, that's orderlymeds.com slash podcast. Individual results may vary. Not medical advice. Eligibility required. See site for details. Have some people been getting filthy rich on a peace deal that doesn't even exist? Some Ayatollah in a theocratic state you think is probably more trustworthy to believe than the president of the United States and the leader of the free world.

1:17Napoleon, come and eat your supper, eat your peas, come on, sit down. That's a sort of American press's sort of approach. It does a politician no harm to stand up to Donald Trump.

1:28this is a global player original podcast we're doing a five-day period we'll see how that goes and if it goes well we're going to end up with settling this otherwise we just keep bombing our little hearts out that was donald trump yesterday at the foot of air force one with a shock announcement that there was going to be peace in our time because all over the weekend the only words we'd heard from Donald Trump were bellicose, but something somewhere had changed. But now the alarm is being sounded over suspicions of insider trading. Are some people getting filthy rich on the back of an announcement that probably wasn't even true?

2:11Welcome to The News Agents.

2:16The News Agents. It's John. It's Maylis. Why have you ditched your first name? Is this a permanent thing? Permanent thing. Serious times, my friend. Serious times. So if we get peace, will you go back to Emily? Probably not. Very confusing. So this time yesterday, we knew that Donald Trump had made this big post on Truth Social. And actually, just after we finished recording, we heard that Donald Trump had made some comments at the foot of Air Force One. And on yesterday's episode, I said, you know, you just have the suspicion that this has all been done to manipulate the oil markets. And I bet you there have been people making money.

2:53And I had no basis for saying it. It was just part of a pattern that we've seen over the past year, whether it be tariffs or anything else, where people seem to know slightly in advance what Donald Trump is going to say and make bets accordingly on betting markets, on futures markets, commodity markets and the like. And sure enough, 24 hours on, we are now seeing the evidence of that, particularly on the oil futures market, where just before Donald Trump made the announcement, someone made a one and a half billion dollar bet on future price of oil and has made five hundred million dollars on the transaction.

3:36Nice work if you can get it. Yeah, let's just give you the timeline on that as it breaks down. 6.50 in the morning, just before 7 o 'clock, this is Eastern time,$1.5 billion worth of contracts were bought on the S &P 500. That's the sort of big main stock market. These orders were between four and six times larger than anything else at the time. 14 minutes later, Trump announces the peace deal talks with Iran. And six minutes after that, the S &P 500 rose by 240 points. In other words, there is a suspicion that people with knowledge of what Trump was about to say went in, started scouting around, picking up stocks here, picking up stocks there.

4:26Lots and lots of buying, lots and lots of buying. The announcement comes whack, the price goes up and they have made their millions. It doesn't actually matter what happens after that, because the moment it goes up, if they choose, they can sell. So by the time Iran comes out a little bit later and completely refutes Trump's claim, it is possible that those traders have already got away with millions. They've been in the market, they've got out the market and they have made... It's swift. Yeah, it's a matter of minutes. That's the whole point. But the idea that these trades were going on at such a high volume, just 14 minutes before he makes his statement, has led to many people saying, oh, my God, who did he tell?

5:16Who knew what? Who was in on the game? and the polymarket, which is this kind of, it's a kind of curious body. It's a, I suppose it's a sort of consumer to consumer. Anyone can bet on anything and you're basically, we're betting against each other, right? I bet Emily Maitlis is going to wear blue tomorrow rather than green. Exactly. I think I might win that one, but I'll take it. I'll take that one. Now, the polymarket has faced, you know, accusations, what's going on, what's going on and they are now moving to squash some types of insider trading because they are now under scrutiny. So it's not just sort of wild speculation.

5:53It's not just the two of us sort of sitting here going, oh, I wonder if, I wonder if. It has become recognised by the poly market and other places themselves that they need to look at what kind of trading is going on on their own platforms because right now it's not looking very healthy. Look, there is someone who's made one particular trader on the poly markets, which is, again, you are gambling about which two raindrops going down a window pane are going to get to the bottom. First of all, it's just random stuff and someone will give you odds on it. So you can bet on anything you like and someone will create a market for that bet.

6:30And so there is a particular trader who's made nearly a million dollars since 2024 from literally dozens of well-timed bets that correctly predicted US and Israeli military action against Iran last year. There were a whole series of other bets as well, which seemed to suggest that that person knew exactly what was going to be announced that day from the White House or from the Pentagon and placed bets accordingly. I mean, do you remember what happened with those Tories before the last general election in 2024, who kind of placed a couple of quid here and there on the date of the general election because they knew?

7:11And roundly sanctioned. And roundly sanctioned for it. And taken to court. Well, as ever in America, this pisses all over that. We don't have any finger of guilt to point decisively in one direction. That's the point. I mean, the point is that you can be anonymous. When it happened to the Tory MPs, we had names. Yeah. We saw who'd placed the bets. On the polling market, you just don't know. It's crypto. The identities are completely shielded. But what you can say is that if something is swimming like a fish and it smells like a fish, it's fishy. And what we're seeing right now is something that looks really bloody fishy that has been taking place in American markets that seem to be linked to Donald Trump announcements.

7:57So why are we telling you all this, apart from the fact that it is bluntly outrageous? Because I think 24 hours on. And corrupt. I mean, yeah, let's call it for what it is. Right. And we should say at this point that a director, the Securities Exchange Commission, her name is Margaret Ryan, was actually following a lead of investigation into some of Trump's family's investments. For insider trading. For inside trading and was told to stop and has just resigned from her job. So there are people, I mean, thankfully, there are people in the sort of, you know, American institutional sphere who are taking this stuff seriously and saying, I'm not prepared to work in these conditions.

8:39It's pretty clear. Even if I'm not finding corruption, I should be allowed to investigate it because, as you say, the signs are all there. But she's gone. I mean, look at the optics of all of this. Yeah, she's gone. your job. No, thank you. We do not want you investigate. Do not turn that rock over. It's like all the ethics advisors that Boris Johnson seem to lose, carelessly. So why are we telling you this, apart from the kind of what looks like sort of full-scale corruption, is because we're still trying to decipher, 24 hours on, what prompted Donald Trump to make those remarks yesterday, which have been completely denied by the Iranian regime.

9:17And as we said, it's a pretty weird old world where you're having to wait for Iran's state television to either confirm or deny something that Trump has declared an hour previously. I still think we don't know whether it was just about market manipulation, because as well as the insider trading, I don't think Trump made it just to help his mates. I think he made it to try to bring down the price of oil because he wants the waters there to be calmer. He wants problems to go away. And sure enough, the price of oil did come down. I think it went down to 87 barrels. We should say it's now gone up again.

9:52It's over 100 because the Iranians have denied anything he said. But I think Trump has ever cannot help telling us what he'd like to happen rather than what is happening. And when he says we've had comprehensive talks of peace, what he's kind of doing in his sort of cognitively declining brain is telling us that that's where he wishes he were now. and in a way he's trying to sort of magic them up, right? There is a sense where Trump thinks by saying something he can make it happen and maybe he's not wrong on that because Iran has comprehensively denied any sort of contact and I think it's worth listening to a little bit of Trump trying to explain to a journalist who just wants a few details what actually was agreed.

10:43You said there's many points of agreement with Iran right now. Many. What? Can you give us a number of those? Many, like 15 points. 15 points. Then Iran has said yes to them. Well, they're not going to have a nuclear weapon. That's number one. That's number one, two and three. They will never have a nuclear weapon. Have you said yes to that? They've agreed to that. Are you a political officer? So there are 15 points and Iran, what, decided on Sunday night to tell Trump that they would never make a nuclear weapon. OK, well, that's not true, is it, frankly? They said it three times, so it's points one, two and three.

11:14Well, is it there for a 12-point plan? Right. I mean, just do the math on this, Donald. Yeah, exactly. I mean, because, or is it a six-point plan and one, two, three, four, five, six, seven and eight are the nuclear deal? American journalists are too polite, right? They just sit there and listen to him rather than, you know, as if, oh, you think you're Napoleon. Yeah, very nice. Napoleon, come and eat your supper, eat your peas, come on, sit down. That's a sort of American press's sort of approach to dealing with their president. I think we'd be probably a little bit more lethal, but essentially...

11:43Essentially, he's doing the job anyway. But doesn't it sound like the Gaza plan? Because that was going to be, I think, a 15 point plan. Or was it a 25? Yeah, a 20 point plan. He loves points. It was just a number plucked from the air. Honestly, I listened to Donald Trump with that whole kind of exchange at the bottom of the foot of the steps of Air Force One. And I thought the more I heard, the less there is to see here. This is, as you say, Emily, it's invention of what he wanted to do. And it really does come to something where some Ayatollah in a theocratic state you think is probably more trustworthy to believe than the president of the United States and the leader of the free world.

12:23because it just all sounded so utterly haphazard, ill thought through and so shockingly quick that it had happened seemingly overnight when only on Saturday Donald Trump was threatening to blow up every power plant in Iran. And so you're left with this feeling of, my God, you know, what's going to happen? And then there's the question, of course, of what's going to happen about the Strait of Hormuz. And it's worth listening to Donald Trump on that, too. What about the Strait of Hormuz? Who's going to be in control of that? The President will be open very soon if this works. The Pressure How soon?

12:56And who is in control of it? Will Iran still be able to control the flow of oil? The President will be jointly controlled. The Pressure By whom? The President Maybe me. The Pressure Do you want the United States to be in control of the The President Me and the Ayatollah, whoever the Ayatollah is, whoever the next Ayatollah. Look, and there will also be a form of a very serious form of a regime change. Now, in all fairness, everybody has been killed from the regime. They're really starting off. There's automatically a regime change. But we're dealing with some people that I find to be very reasonable, very solid.

13:32The people within know who they are. They're very respected. And maybe one of them will be exactly what we're looking for. Look at Venezuela, how well that's working. Well, I'm sorry, I don't understand. I don't understand any of it. So hang on, you're talking to people who are good people, but you're not quite sure whether they're in authority or not, let alone the sheer improbability that the Strait of Hormuz in future is going to be controlled by America and Iran. I mean, is it going to be like the Eurostar, where you go through British passport control and then French passport control straight afterwards before you get on the Eurostar?

14:10Will tankers have to show their passport to US passport control and Iranian passport control before they sail down the strait? We should say that the Iranian embassy in South Africa has put out a tweet after that announcement that shows a car with a steering wheel and beside it one of those little kids plastic steering wheels that your toddler can use at your side. And when Iran is trolling the American president in a way that is genuinely, I would say, both shocking and quite funny, it suggests that they're not taking anything, he says, remotely seriously. This is the Iranian embassy putting out tweets that are showing they don't believe Trump has any grip on reality anymore.

14:58I mean, you're right. I don't think this is part of the 15 point plan, dare I say, that Trump and the Ayatollah, whoever he is, control Hormuz between them. I don't think Iran has any concept of reopening the Straits of Hormuz today because they've heard Trump say that. And actually, if you talk to any of the experts, including people who are now telling us about the mines that lie at the bottom of the Hormuz Straits, planted by Iranians, which have the capacity to intercept passing ships, even if they're not touching them. This is not something that happens overnight. Right. This could be weeks away.

15:41This could be months away. And that assumes that it comes after a talk between both sides. So it's really important to draw a distinction here because what you had from Donald Trump over the weekend was this bluster, as I say, that America was going to blow up every power plant. And in reply, Iran said, we will shut the Strait of Hormuz and mine it. Well, from Donald Trump, we have had bluster. And I'm sorry to say from Iran, we have had them carrying out their threat. And it does seem now an American intelligence is reporting this, that the Strait of Hormuz does now have mines that have been laid and presumably ready to blow up any shipping that Iran wants to stop from getting through.

16:28And of course, that complicates the picture still further as the British and the French look at some kind of kind of, you know, naval escort idea. But that can only happen in a permissive environment. And at the moment, it's a hostile environment. There is nothing permissive about the Strait of Hormuz right now. And America still does not dare put a warship anywhere near it. Yeah. And the fact that Trump is pointing the finger at his secretary of war for starting this conflict suggests that in the deepest recesses of his slightly adult mind, he does know it's not going very well. because Pete Hegseth apparently is the member of the cabinet who's kind of pissing everyone off.

17:14They don't think he's delivering very well. They don't think his media appearances are working out very well. And I don't know whether Trump is sort of picking up on that vibe or whether, yeah, Pete Hegseth was one of the ones who was sort of raging for war. But just listen to him dobbing in his defence secretary here. And then unfortunately I called Pete, I called General Kane, I called a lot of our great people. We have great people. And I said, let's talk. We got a problem in the Middle East. We have a country known as Iran that for 47 years has been just a purveyor of terror. And they're very close to having a nuclear weapon.

17:54We can keep going and get that 50 ,000 up to 55 and 60. There's no end. Or we can take a stop and make a little journey into the Middle East and eliminate a big problem. And Pete, I think you were the first one to speak up. And you said, let's do it because you can't let them have a nuclear weapon. So we are now having really good discussions. They started last night. Pete, you were the one to speak up. Your head is firmly above the parapet. Let me just shoot it off. I do think, though, to the earlier point, there is something in what Trump has willed, which may yet start a sequence of events that could take us to the right direction, to the end of conflict.

18:43And today the White House has said the plans for talks with Iran remain fluid. OK, so they are clearly gesturing that it's not final, but something is going on. And now we understand that there are talks which will take place in Pakistan. Right. So we've been trying to work out who the allies were that were sort of looking for the off ramp. But it sounded as if Oman and Turkey had been speaking to Iran behind the scenes. Now it looks as if Pakistan is coming in as a sort of regional player to try and be the place that allows for peace negotiations to happen. Steve Wyckoff has communicated, we understand, with the Iranian governments through Pakistan and possibly through Oman, through Turkey.

19:30They are trying to get something sorted. I mean, people will remember that Steve Witkoff is also the property guy who didn't get very far on those Ukraine-Russia talks, who would turn up without any details and not bother even with a translator. So the idea that Steve Wyckoff is magically going to find us peace in the Middle East might be slightly far fetched. There is even talk now of J.D. Vance being sent. Now, that is one hell of a tightrope. And it might just be a mind game that Trump is playing here because J.D. Vance famously talked ahead of the election of 2024 of Trump being very anti-war, of him being very much the person that Americans needed to have in power so that their sons and daughters wouldn't get sent to war, which is what he said Kamala Harris would do.

20:23And so the whole Vance shtick was about Trump being the peacemaker, right? He's not a hawk like Hillary. He's not a hawk like Biden. He's not a hawk like Kamala. He's going to be the guy that lets your sons and daughters stay at home rather than fighting America's forever wars. So there is something slightly jarring about Vance potentially being the person that has to then go out and clearly sign up to, be the face and the name of the ending of a conflict with Iran that Trump has started.

21:09But we're dealing with some people that I find to be very reasonable, very solid. We have a very serious chance of making a deal. The day on which almost all of the world recognized that Donald Trump is a deranged liar. So what on earth happens next? The fallout of the Iran war. Follow it live on LBC. Listen on our free global player app or the LBC app. When people turn to health care for weight loss, they're looking for real support. That's why more people are choosing orderlymeds.com. Orderly Meds connects you with real doctors and access to proven GLP-1 medications like semaglutide and terzepatide.

21:45No guessing, just a more supportive experience. And all shipped directly to your door in discreet packaging. Do your research. Ask questions. Then visit orderlymeds.com slash podcast for an exclusive offer. That's orderlymeds.com slash podcast. Individual results may vary. Not medical advice. Eligibility required. See site for details.

22:08The News Agents. It's clear that is all possible, that talks will happen in Pakistan, that whether it's J.D. Vance or Steve Wyckoff or Jared Kushner, who knows, that will be there representing the US government and an ayatollah, any ayatollah, anyone who can move will get themselves from Tehran to Pakistan for these talks. All of that is absolutely possible. The other scenario, of course, that is being painted, and maybe the two go in tandem and are not either or, is that that is when US Marines arrive in the Gulf as well. So are we saying that, well, it's either we have these talks or the Marines move in.

22:51Whichever gets there first. Whoever gets there first. Or peace, as the novel might go. Exactly. And, you know, is there a plan in place then? is they're going to be the 82nd Airborne and the 101st Airborne, just as there were in other great conflicts around the world, where they go in and they trans-Seizkharg Island and they take over the Iranian sort of island where all the oil goes from and then use that as leverage to reopen the Straits of Hormuz. I mean, what are all these Marines going to be doing when they get into theatre, as we would call it, in warland? Who knows? And so it's still incredibly unclear.

23:29And when I hear the word fluid, as you said, I just thought that is them, America, rowing back on what they were saying yesterday about, no, the talks are going very well. We've nearly got agreement. You know, it's gone from nearly got agreement to it's all very fluid, which means that anything, frankly, could happen in the next 48, 72 hours. Yeah, I mean, there's still the catapult theory, isn't it? That he is saying something which looks like a retraction. He's kind of just pulling back the band. right and then it all happens in another five days time ten days time when as you say the marines land on har island and trump suddenly goes oh hang on a sec i underestimated myself i'm even more brilliant than i thought we've got this one well meanwhile there is another aspect to this conflict which of course has garnered nothing like as much attention as what is happening in iran because this is not really concerning america that much only insofar as america hasn't tried to stop it and which is israel's increasingly aggressive incursions into southern lebanon and the consequences that could flow from that not just in terms of the displacement of so many people who were living in uh southern lebanon south of the latani river but across lebanon as well where the attacks have continued in Beirut suburbs, where previously thought to be Hezbollah strongholds, but also in the main city of Beirut itself.

25:02Yeah, it won't surprise you, perhaps, if you follow Israeli politics, to know that Bezalel Smotrich, the finance minister, clearly whose job goes into many other areas than finance, has been saying that Israel should extend its border with Lebanon up the Latani River, deep inside the country south. And this might explain some of the strategy that we've seen in Lebanon, where bridges are being bombed, where car parks are being bombed, where main arterial roads are being bombed, homes clearly are being bombed, entire apartment blocks are sort of cascading down to rubble. And on the surface of it, the sort of explanation, pretext, I don't know which of those words you prefer, is that they are targeting Hezbollah.

25:58They are targeting Iranian proxies, which hide out in each and every part of, turns out, civilian infrastructure. I don't know how you measure that, whether, you know, a Hezbollah leader goes across a bridge, so you automatically blow up the bridge. I don't know how you rationalise it. But if Smotrich, is giving us an indication into Netanyahu's thinking, then what we are hearing is something much darker, which is about an annexing of parts of southern Lebanon in the way that we've clearly seen in Gaza. So the context as well for this is Israel has to have a general election by this autumn. The timing, the precise timing, like in British general elections, is down to the prime minister.

26:46Benjamin Netanyahu and what Netanyahu is seeing right now is that the war against Iran and to a limited extent against Lebanon as well is very popular at home because I think the Israelis do think rightly that Iran poses an existential threat to Israel and therefore if you can deal with the Iranian threat you reshape the Middle East everyone can live in peace and we all go on happily ever after that is the theory and you know it's fine as a theory but netanyahu his own his own popularity has been terribly hit since october the 7th when mr security provided no security whatsoever for people living in southern israel and the shock that israel went through that day is hard to exaggerate and the sense of failure by netanyahu and the government and the security services is immense and so you sense that this has also got to do with netanyahu having one eye on the prime ministerial election which is due later this year and you know the longevity of netanyahu is just extraordinary i mean he was first dealing with bill clinton back in the 1990s and here he is in 2026 still looking for a renewal of his mandate yeah and i was talking to Israeli officials actually before the weekend.