486 - Emergency Podcast: Iran, Israel, & Imminent Destruction

25:30Tim Dillon:So I'm just trying to get this straight. Our ally, our closest ally, who told us that they were launching a war, a regime change war in Iran with our weapons and our money, also very potentially has attacked the oil Saudi Aramco processing facility in another one of our allies, Saudi Arabia, and also kind of one of their allies. Israel and Saudi Arabia have like sort of an understanding, right? So this is what the Iranians are suggesting. And I'm not saying I fully believe it. You know, it could be that they accidentally hit some of these things. It could be that they did do it and they're trying to cover it up.

26:12Although Iran, you know, I think that wouldn't really be to their advantage. It's possible that they did it. But the Saudis claim that it was debris from a drone that they shot down. But let's say for it, we should just take this seriously and investigate it. Because if it is the case and evidence emerges, then you're looking at Israel doing false flags.

26:31Tim Dillon:Yeah. The Saudis are saying it's debris from a drone they shot down. That was the initial statement by the Saudis. First, it was Iran bombed Saudi Aramco. Then a Saudi defense official came out and said, this was actually debris that fell from a drone that we had intercepted. And the Saudis and the Iranians have had an interesting diplomatic back and forth on this. The Saudis are not as aggressive right now in going after the Iranians as, for instance, the Azerbaijani government is. Right. And really, you know, sort of saying that Iran did this. Iranians are denying that as well. So all of which is just to say we should never just take at face value the proclamations of the Iranian government.

27:14Right. But if you think about it on a common sense level, it doesn't benefit Iran to further enrage the populations of these countries because they're already they already are very nervous about what's happening. So who benefits from this, Tim? Who benefits is Israel from the idea that, you know, Iran is this kind of madman, this mad dog loose, and they're just biting everyone. They're biting all their neighbors. They're biting the people who they've been in this rapprochement with for two years. It doesn't make sense. So that's why you have to pursue it and say, is there any legitimacy to what the Iranians are alleging?

27:49Tim Dillon:So now a friend of mine who is kind of deeply connected in that part of the world, Sheikh Carlson, has reported on his show, Sheikh Tucker has reported on his show that in the UAE, two Mossad agents were arrested for potentially trying to start false flag attacks. I don't know if you guys saw that, but it did go pretty big in terms of news. I don't know if you've looked. He said it was in Qatar, Qatar and Saudi Arabia. Right. So is there anything that you guys can add to that? Is that verifiable in any way? I mean, he he is. Here's what I will say about Tucker. He's deeply connected in those parts of the world.

28:37Tim Dillon:I think that, you know, that's quite obvious. And he's goes there and talks to a lot of people there. And I don't think he would come out and make that up. So what I can add to that is they both – Qatar and KSA of Saudi Arabia have denied that this has happened. OK. DropSite had a source with Saudi Arabia that denied to us that it happened. Qatari sources have been a little cagier when it comes to confirming or denying that off the record. On the record, they're denying it. Also, it's the kind of thing that you wouldn't necessarily talk about if it did happen. But it could also have been made up by somebody who told it to Tucker.

29:30Sure. Like they're trying to sow – like it may have been a very credible source that told it to Tucker, but that credible source was just trying to sow misinformation, disinformation, chaos. Yeah. Moments like this, 90 percent of what you hear turns out to be proven incorrect, you know, a year later. So we're in that the heat at that moment where there's going to be a lot of a lot flying around. But, you know, it's, you know, so I don't know. That's that's about what I can add to that. Now, Jeremy, another thing that needs to continue to be investigated.

30:03Tim Dillon:Saudi Arabia is not, you know, if, for example, if Saudi Arabia genuinely believed that Saudi Iran was targeted by Iran, I would imagine there'd be a massive retaliation from Saudi Arabia. Have you seen that? I think that's an important. Yeah. You haven't seen that. No, I think that's it. Yeah. Yeah. And I think that's an important insight that that does go to what Saudi Arabia believes. I think you're right. If Saudi Arabia genuinely believed that Iran had hit it, they would be reacting in a different way. Well, 100%. On the Tucker Carlson issue, Tim, I know that I was in Doha for the Doha Forum when Tucker Carlson appeared there.

30:49And it was like Michael Jackson appearing at the height of his fame somewhere. He is a massive figure there. He's purchased property there. Right. Right. You know, and and Tucker Carlson, he is he is globally famous right now. Yeah. And deeply connected. He meets with with the, you know, the epicenters of power in the Gulf right now. There's no question about that. So I don't believe Tucker Carlson just made this up. It's possible what Ryan said. Somebody mentioned something to him. Maybe it was sort of like floating something. But let's remember that Israel has a decades-long history of engaging in all sorts of covert operations, in false flag operations, in assassinations, in bombings that they then try to blame on other groups.

31:32There's a long history of Israel doing false flag bombings in Lebanon and elsewhere. So again, it's in the category of we need to pursue it. We need to look into it. But the idea that there's Mossad agents running around these countries is not at all a shocker a surprise. You know, it would be surprising if they weren't doing these things. The question is, were their agents arrested and it's being covered up? Or was this floated to Tucker because they wanted to achieve some purpose that we don't quite understand right now? I don't know. But Israel has a long history of doing this stuff. And also, if they did arrest agents, they would not, like, imagine what it would take for them to say that publicly.

32:13Like, for allies of the United States, Saudi Arabian Qatar, to say publicly, yes, this is true. We arrested these Mossad agents. Like that would be a significant diplomatic kind of breach. Like, so the diplomatic thing to do is to deny it. So the denials are worth reporting, but it doesn't necessarily tell you a whole lot.

32:34Tim Dillon:When you look at the time - Tim, can I tell you one brief - Oh, go ahead. Yes, no, go, go. Tell me. No, I just wanted to tell you one story about Israel. In the 1990s, the head of Hamas was a guy named Khaled Mashal. And he was based in Jordan at the time. And he comes out. He's driving his kids to work and then to school. And he gets out of the car with his bodyguards. And these two guys posing as tourists come up and they spray something in his ear. And it was a poison. And it sends Khaled Mashal into a coma. And then there was a pursuit. and his bodyguards and Jordanian police end up tackling and getting the guys.

33:15And it turns out that they were Mossad agents. The King of Jordan then, and this is a public story. People can read about this. There's been documentaries made about it. The King of Jordan then says, we're going to cancel our treaty with Israel and we're going to execute these agents. If Netanyahu, he was prime minister at the time in the nineties, if Netanyahu doesn't give us the antidote to resurrect Khalid Mashal. The head of Mossad gets on a plane from Israel, flies to Jordan to deliver the antidote to save Khaled Mashal's life. And Khaled Mashal is still alive to this day. I just interviewed him a couple of months ago.

33:53But the nature of what Israel is able to do, that's one of the most sort of famous known episodes. Israel has deep penetration throughout the Arab world. And there are many cases where they conduct operations and they get caught where the world never actually

34:08Tim Dillon:There's a penetration here, and that's what I'm proud of. You know, these other countries fell for it, but us, we didn't. And how easy would it have been for us to fall for it? Rocket Money is a personal finance app that helps find and cancel unwanted subscriptions. It monitors your spending, helps lower your bills so you can grow your savings. One of my favorite things about Rocket Money is that it can track subscriptions. It has the ability to cancel unwanted ones with the app with a few taps, giving users an easy way to stop paying for things they don't use. I'm telling you, automatic transaction categorization across accounts plus customizable categories and tags to reveal spending patterns.

34:43Tim Dillon:You can set budgets and goals, get personalized insights and regular reports, and receive real-time alerts for large transactions, upcoming bills, refunds, and low balances. The app consolidates checking, savings, loans, and investments into a single dashboard to give users a clear view of their financial picture. Let Rocket Money help you reach your financial goals faster. Join rocketmoney.com slash TIM. That's rocketmoney.com slash G-I-M. Rocketmoney.com slash G-I-M. Rocket Money is a personal finance app that helps find and cancel unwanted subscriptions. It monitors your spending, it helps lower your bills so you can grow your savings.

35:19Tim Dillon:One of my favorite things about Rocket Money is that it can track subscriptions. It has the ability to cancel unwanted ones with the app with a few taps, giving users an easy way to stop paying for things they don't use. I'm telling you, automatic transaction categorization across accounts plus customizable categories and tags to reveal spending patterns. You can set budgets and goals, get personalized insights and regular reports, and receive real-time alerts for large transactions, upcoming bills, refunds, and low balances. The app consolidates checking, savings, loans, and investments into a single dashboard to give users a clear view of their financial picture.

35:52Tim Dillon:Let Rocket Money help you reach your financial goals faster. Join rocketmoney.com slash GIM. That's rocketmoney.com slash GIM. Rocketmoney.com slash GIM. Let me ask you, what role in your estimation, and maybe it's no role, or maybe it's some role, or maybe it's, I don't know what percentage of a role it is, is controlling politicians through things like blackmail or coercion of some degree. Obviously, APEC spends a lot of money. But then we have these files come out that show that Jeffrey Epstein is in contact with a lot of very highly placed people in governments all over the world. But the ex-Prime Minister of Israel is living in his house.

36:45Tim Dillon:It comes out that an Israeli, I believe the Israeli government, This was reported, put a security system in Jeffrey Epstein's New York townhouse. This is true. This is not a conspiracy. That townhouse is being frequented by some of the wealthiest, most powerful, and most influential people in our society. As well, the man has an island and a ranch in the middle of nowhere in New Mexico. This man is a pedophile, is a human trafficker. He's clearly, when you look at these documents, arranging these parties and events where very powerful people are going. From your reporting, in a very sober-minded way, does that type of control system, is that something you think Israel has employed or is employing in any way to sort of get certain results from certain politicians?

37:48I mean, the Israelis have a history of doing that sort of thing, for sure. The link to Epstein in this case, to me, may be the way that it influenced Trump to try to change the subject. Right. You know, he tried the I think the Venezuelan operation, you know, was it wasn't an attempt to kind of turn the page on that and get it off. But, you know, that that lasted like 12 hours and the public was back to, OK, that's interesting. Let's look at let's look through some more of these Epstein files. So I do wonder, absent the Epstein scandal itself, whether Trump has the kind of motivation to carry through with this.

38:35It has its own logic and motivation to it. Netanyahu said the other day that this is something he's been yearning for for 40 years. And they have been working towards pressuring the United States into it since then. And so like that, that alone, you know, has an enormous kind of gravitational pull to it. But I, but, and I think Trump's going to be sorely disappointed because I think when the war ends, if the, you know, if the war ends with us still alive on this planet, we're going right back to those files, guy. Like we haven't forgotten about this.

39:12Tim Dillon:Jeremy, can you speak to that? And then Jeremy, also adding to that, from your understanding of someone like Jeffrey Epstein, now I'm not accusing Jared Kushner of being a human trafficker, obviously, but when you look at what Jeffrey Epstein was doing, and you look at what Jared Kushner was doing, sort of being a, you know, whatever you want to call it, right? like a rainmaker putting all these people at the table, trying to arrange scenarios to get certain results, working sort of with government, but also outside of government. Would it be completely crazy to say that Jared Kushner is working in an Epstein-like fashion to maintain certain relationships and to build other relationships and to increase the likelihood that certain outcomes happen on a global chessboard?

40:09Tim Dillon:Do you see Kushter as a figure like that or am I overstating it? You know, I think one of the, you know, one of the biggest scandals is what's hidden in plain sight. I think that, you know, a story like the Epstein files and Jeffrey Epstein's relationships with all of these ultra powerful people. And Ryan has done more reporting than anyone on the Israel connection on this. It captures the imagination. But part of why it's so damning is that it's indicative of something that isn't even a secret conspiracy, that what's hidden in plain sight is that the reason that we're at war against Iran right now is because of the way that the US political system is arranged.

40:51It's because of the sameness of policy that exists among the elites of the Democratic party and the kind of most vicious elements of the Republican party. This is an enormous indicator of the influence that Israel has over an issue as sensitive of the decision of a state to go to war, where you have, as you mentioned earlier, the secretary of state mistakenly saying the quiet part out loud that we did, in fact, go to war for Israel. And then he has to walk it back later. And then Trump has to concoct this ridiculous statement about how the US has been in a state of needing to preempt Iran for 47 years.

41:30But what's hidden in plain sight is in a way more damning than the Epstein files. It's that we have a system that produces the kinds of characters that are in power right now, that in the open, you have Miriam Adelson being able to purchase American foreign policy and get it done, that you can have a Jared Kushner. And I think you're nailing it there. He is the fixer extraordinaire right now for the U.S. government as a whole because Trump is the president. And the nexus of corporate power and government, the relationships with the Gulf countries, the relationships with Israel, the political interference around the world, and then the way that they have sort of conducted a coup d 'etat in plain sight against the American Constitution, it's like beyond Dick Cheney's wildest dreams.

42:17Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld spent their entire lives playing by the wrong set of rules. They wanted to do this, but they made the huge mistake of actually believing they needed to follow the rules. Trump has shattered that illusion. And you don't have to read an Epstein file to see it. It's hidden nowhere anymore. It's just out in the open. And what do we have as an opposition? Hakeem Jeffries? Chuck Schumer? What are they doing? Trump laughs at them.

42:45Tim Dillon:Trump's running the deck on these people. Well, is Chuck Schumer or Hakeem Jeffries principally opposed to regime change in Iran? It doesn't feel like that. No, no, no, no, no, no. I mean, bingo. Like, no. I mean, Chuck Schumer, his whole life has wanted to see, his whole political career has wanted to see this happen. I mean, Ryan and I did a report recently. I mean, Ryan should speak to this. But we did a report that was showing that even last June, Schumer and other Democrats saw opportunity in the possibility that Trump would try to go all in in a regime change war. And I mean, Ryan can pick it up because it's kind of an amazing story.

43:25We have just he Schumer did the whole taco Trump thing, trying to trying to taunt Trump into the war. And so a bunch of anti-war groups sent Schumer a letter saying, hey, man, like we get it. Like it's fun to score points against Trump, but let's not kind of goad him into World War III. Let's relax on that one.

43:48Tim Dillon:This is one of the most powerful, just to restate for people, this is one of the most powerful Democratic senators from New York, Chuck Schumer, kind of taunting Trump like you always chicken out. You're not going to follow through on regime change in Iran. Yeah. And so that letter that these groups send to Schumer leads to a phone call between a top foreign policy aide for Schumer and one of the leaders of one of these anti-war groups. And she says to him, look, what you have to understand is that he's under a lot of pressure from the caucus, too, because there are a ton of Democrats in the Senate who really want to see a regime change war.

44:25They hate Iran. They want the military to take out Iran. But they also know that the American people are done with these wars. And so it would be extremely damaging. But it will also then, therefore, be extremely damaging to Trump. So their two worst enemies, the Ayatollah and Trump, you know, both take a hit. So they're like, so we're actually, and she said, well, Schumer, he doesn't believe that. But he's under a lot of pressure from Democrats, unnamed Democrats who believe that. But from our reporting like that, that basically captures a lot of the Democratic lawmakers position on this. Right.

45:02That they want this war and they want Trump to be the one that wages it and takes the hit for it.

45:08Tim Dillon:And loses politically for it. I have heard that Stephen Miller was a huge proponent of this war. I don't know if you've heard that, that Stephen Miller behind the scenes. Who was? Stephen Miller. Oh, interesting. Behind the scenes was a big proponent of this war. It's been reported that J.D. Vance, who was kind of marketed as an isolationist who came on my show and said, you know, we've made a lot of mistakes by, you know, going into these countries like Iraq and Afghanistan and having regime change wars. It was reported that he said, if you're going to do this, go big and go fast, I believe was the quote, or hit hard and go fast.

45:53Tim Dillon:does any of your reporting suggest any internal conflicts in the White House obviously somebody like Tulsi Gabbard which I don't think anyone listens to again said she's more of an isolationist J.D. Vance was marketed and he marketed himself as someone who and I do believe J.D. Vance a lot of what he said has been somewhat consistent about, and he said it on my show, he came on my show and he said, we shouldn't be doing this. And yet they're doing it. So, and I mean, listen, I know there's a lot of people out there that'll say that these people are politicians and especially JD Vance doesn't believe in anything.

46:35Tim Dillon:And that's very possible. But what is your reporting about the dynamics in the white house? Yeah. You know, I, um, uh, the other day I was talking to Daniel Davis, who's, uh, you know, career military, and he was supposed to be one of Tulsi Gabbard's deputies in this administration. And then Republicans and the Israel lobby went ballistic because he had been a critic of the Gaza war and had said critical things about Israel. And there's a career decorated military officer, and he was going to be put in the position of presenting the presidential daily brief to Donald Trump. This just happened right at the beginning of this Trump administration.

47:13So then they withdrew his nomination. So Daniel Davis would have been, you know, a real voice of kind of objectivity and independent thought, but also, you know, a longtime military thinker. And he was saying that he still maintains contact with some people. This was just recently I spoke to him, that he maintains contact with some people. He said there's only like a handful of sane people left in the inner circle when it comes to anything having to do with national security or specifically with this Iran. And that there's a vibe that anybody who sort of speaks up, it's not welcome to sort of be giving contrary views.

47:50It's that you're going to be viewed as disloyal. It's like you're in a kind of authoritarian dictatorship and you're like afraid that Hanukkah from the Democratic German Republic is going to like oust you if you say the wrong thing. That's totally sort of counter to the idea that when it comes to sensitive issues like waging war, especially this kind of war based on nonsense, that you don't want critical voices. I mean, Tulsi Gabbard is the embodiment of what happened to the isolationist wing of the MAGA movement when it came to power and Trump in this second administration. These guys are completely sidelined.

48:30As you said, it's like a joke. The other day, you had another guy who falls into that isolationist category, Eldridge Colby. Yes, Briggs Colby. Who is an assistant secretary of defense. What happened to him? Yeah, so Bridge. So Bridge, I mean, I also, I mean, you know, when I was at the intercept. You get him on the show and wouldn't come on the show. So I interviewed him years ago. He and I had a debate. This was before he was in the Trump administration. But we also agreed on a bunch of things. Bridge Colby was against all this nonsense in the Middle East. He's a China hawk. So he comes into the Pentagon.

49:03The other day, yeah, he's a China hawk. And that's where he and I were arguing about this stuff. But he's known as a China hawk. But he's a very realistic sort of isolationist when it comes to these forever wars and Middle East policy. He sits in front of a congressional hearing the other day. And he is explicitly on record for years of being against a regime change war in Iran. And he gets asked about his previous comments. And he just fumbled around. He couldn't even answer it. You could play clip after clip of Tulsi Gabbard explaining very articulately what's wrong with these kinds of wars.

49:33And they put her in charge. She's the director of national intelligence. She has nothing to do with this stuff. And if she's allowed to speak publicly, oh boy, she needs to toe the party line. That's the reality of this administration. The MAGA movement needs to understand the whole thing was an epic sham. There is no isolationist wing of this administration. There is no America first. This is Israel first right now, and it's Trump family business first.

49:56Tim Dillon:So what's interesting about Briggs Colby is this is a guy who last summer, they are running hit pieces in the Politico on him because he is opposed to the continuing of funding of the Ukraine war. and he was sort of outspoken about that. Now, I know for a fact that serious people, billionaires, media people, were calling Trump going, fire this guy. We don't want him. Like genuine, you know, and I know that not for a fact, for a fact, like I wasn't in the room, but like people saying like, this guy was a thorn in the side of more of the neoconservative, ideologically driven people on that end of the spectrum.

50:41Tim Dillon:They were going, this guy's got to go. And now he's sitting there and he's completely changed his opinion. Yeah. And the only opposition that really came internally came from the military and particularly General Dan Cain, Trump loves to call Raisin Cain, who because they had material concerns about the war. Because if you're reading Dropside or listening to anything that Iran was saying in the months leading up to the war, they were saying, if you come for us, we're going to turn this into a regional war. Right. And we have learned the lesson of the previous conflicts that we need to hit much harder than we hit before.

51:28Like they were saying it out loud in English for anybody who wanted to listen to it. And so Kane was internally sharing these assessments like this is what they're going to do. We got, hey, man, we got a billion dollar radar installation right here. It's radar. We can't put it underground. They could hit it. You know, we got these Patriot missile batteries. They can hit those. Like we have all of these bases that are within range of their ballistic missiles. They can hit those. We've spent decades building up this elaborate military infrastructure to basically control the Middle East and to control global commerce.

52:02And we're putting all that at risk over this war when the Iranians are offering you basically everything you're asking for at the negotiating table. So the only opposition was coming from people who were like, let me just tell you what the reality of this situation is. But everyone else was like, no, man, like they're going to surrender. You push him over. You'll be a historic figure. It's going to be incredible. And he went with the it's going to be beautiful.

52:28Tim Dillon:I mean, Israel's recently signaled that outside of Iran, they feel that Turkey is their biggest threat. Turkey is a NATO country. This is psychotic. I mean, you know, at what point does the United States of America divest from this Israeli foreign policy of attacking any and all countries they feel might be a current or potential threat? But I mean, this is straight up Bush doctrine, preemptive war, the biggest foreign policy failures of my lifetime that I witnessed growing up in the early 2000s. Israel seems to have that foreign policy position about Iran and now about Turkey. When you hear, and I forget who said it, you guys know more than me, but someone came out and said, and I don't know if it was Yair Lapid, I forget who said it, but basically somebody said, outside of Iran, we're looking at Turkey as the biggest potential existential threat to our existence.

53:37Tim Dillon:Why would they come out and say that at this point? Connor, do you know who said that? Can you look that up? Because that definitely was said recently. Benny Gantz? It might have been Benny Gantz. I'm trying to, my producer's looking at it. what exactly would they mean by that? Why telegraph that publicly in the middle of a war with Iran or, or, or soon before? I don't, I don't understand that. You know, one, one thing, and it cuts to this issue of Turkey, et cetera. You know, one, one thing that I think we're, we're witnessing here, I think we're on the verge of, of this being drilled into the heads of an entire generation of young people across the Middle East, that in fact, it is a religious war.

54:26There's been great pains taken to sort of say, this isn't about religion. But the message that's being sent, especially when the US ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, who might as well be the foreign minister of Israel, the way that he talks, is endorsing the idea of a greater Israel that goes from the Mediterranean all the way to the Tigris in Euphrates rivers and starts defending it and kind of some bizarre theological ground. But what we're witnessing right now is that you have all of these Gulf monarchies that are propped up and defended by the presence of American military sites in their countries, by their interwoven, interconnected relationship to the global economy, specifically to the American economy.

55:08There isn't any semblance of democracy in any of those countries. And their populations are bribed and bought off to sort of be quiet. And maybe it's effective, maybe the propaganda or what Iran is doing right now, maybe it's damaging, you know, certain aspects, you know, or making people feel like, well, we should be aggressive toward Iran. But at the end of the day, in a bigger picture, the genocide in Gaza, the absolute obliteration of Gaza, the attempts to further annex the West Bank. Now they just issued forced evacuation orders, displacement orders in Lebanon, clearing out hundreds of thousands of people from the south suburbs of Beirut, the Israelis doing massive bombing there.

55:48They've set the entire region on fire. It will take a generation, but there's going to be blowback, Tim. And it's like the lesson of 9-11, the lesson of the so-called war on terror. It's like we step on the rake in the same place in the yard every few cycles. And I think that it may seem like Israel is, quote unquote, winning right now. but a series of events are being kicked into motion that we don't know what's going to happen. But what is certain is that a lot of people, millions of people are being told, this actually is a religious war against you. And that's going to come back and bite the United States in a major way.

56:23Tim Dillon:Rocket Money is a personal finance app that helps find and cancel unwanted subscriptions. It monitors your spending, helps lower your bills so you can grow your savings. One of my favorite things about Rocket money is that it can track subscriptions and has the ability to cancel unwanted ones with the app with a few taps, giving users an easy way to stop paying for things they don't use. I'm telling you, automatic transaction categorization across accounts plus customizable categories and tags to reveal spending patterns. You can set budgets and goals, get personalized insights and regular reports, and receive real-time alerts for large transactions, upcoming bills, refunds, and low balances.

56:57Tim Dillon:The app consolidates checking, savings, loans, and investments into a single dashboard to give users a clear view of their financial picture. Let Rocket Money help you reach your financial goals faster. Join rocketmoney.com slash GIM. That's rocketmoney.com slash GIM. Rocketmoney.com slash GIM. Rocket Money is a personal finance app that helps find and cancel unwanted subscriptions. It monitors your spending, helps lower your bills so you can grow your savings. One of my favorite things about Rocket Money is that it contracts subscriptions. It has the ability to cancel unwanted ones with the app with a few taps, giving users an easy way to stop paying for things they don't use.

57:33Tim Dillon:I'm telling you, automatic transaction categorization across accounts plus customizable categories and tags to reveal spending patterns. You can set budgets and goals, get personalized insights and regular reports, and receive real-time alerts for large transactions, upcoming bills, refunds, and low balances. The app consolidates checking, savings, loans, and investments into a single dashboard to give users a clear view of their financial picture. Let Rocket Money help you reach your financial goals faster. Join rocketmoney.com slash T-I-M. That's rocketmoney.com slash T-I-M. Rocketmoney.com slash T-I-M.

58:06Tim Dillon:Ryan, the opposition leader in Israel came out and said, this is all of our war. This is our entire country's war. So I know that Netanyahu very rightly gets a ton of criticism. and to say criticism, I mean, to put it mildly, how much of this in your estimation is just Netanyahu, like, you know, the great man of history theory where it's like without Netanyahu, how much of this is happening and how much of this is just the preferred policy of the entire Israeli government? And without Netanyahu, you know, if Netanyahu died tomorrow, are we looking at a major course correction in Israel or not?

58:48I mean, when it was looking like there might be some sort of election for prime minister again, most of the candidates closest to Netanyahu were to his right. So of the top four or so, he was like the most kind of left-wing candidate. And I think what you're seeing from the population there is the natural product of the relationship that the U.S. has set up with Israel, which is, you know, at the beginning, you had a left or a center left within Israel that would say, we should do coexistence with the Palestinians. We should do two states. We're all here. We're all gonna be here. Let's hammer this out.

59:30And then you had a right wing that was saying, why would we give anything away to these subhuman people? Let's just keep using the American military weapons and support that is flowing in to just continue to lock down control of more and more territory. It's free money. Right. It's free real estate. Let's use it. And so they kept being able to win that argument because one side of the political calculation is arguing for some level of compromise in order to get a sustainable coexistence. The other is saying, how about we don't compromise and actually get more stuff? And only by taking away the American kind of military and financial support would you have forced the political conversation to be held on reasonable grounds.

1:00:22Tim Dillon:What is the religious element? You know, when Jeremy says this is a religious war and people are now going to internalize this in the Middle East as a religious war, Tucker got a lot of criticism recently for talking about Chabad and talking about the Third Temple and playing a video of Pete Hegseth saying that the Third Temple could be, you know, rebuilt in our lifetime. and I know this is sort of end times mythology that Christians and Jews actually share to a certain degree, which is why there's so much Christians in America. I've always thought of this maybe, and maybe it's just because I'm uneducated.

1:00:57Tim Dillon:I thought of it more of a secular financial motive of like trying to build a Miami in Gaza, trying to build an AI smart city on this mass grave and trying to have regional hegemony in the Middle East. Is there an element of this that is mystical, spiritual, whatever you want to call it, where you do have really influential clerics pushing certain ideas because they believe that there is some spiritual element to this fight? Oh, I actually think, you know, if you go back and you look at how the Republican Revolution was organized in the 1990s when Newt Gingrich and the Contract of America came to power, or you look at Reagan's electoral campaign in the 1980 election, at the core of it was the Republican strategists mobilizing the evangelical vote, including getting large numbers of evangelicals who were not voters at all to start voting and supporting Republican candidates.

1:01:57And very cynically, there were the Karl Rove's of the world who viewed that section of Americans as kind of the crazies, the loonies. And so we need to constantly be throwing red meat to the loonies to keep them on our side. And I think that those dynamics still exist, and they certainly exist in this. Netanyahu's not a particularly religious guy at all. Right. But he'll talk about Amalek and the need to wipe them out and cite the Torah and all of that. And he'll do it when it's convenient. But I think you're nailing it when you talk about the sort of big real estate project. And what I'm referring to is this, that when you have Kushner and you have Netanyahu, although Netanyahu's is also political, it's Zionism, it's expansionism, it's all of those things.

1:02:38But this is big business. That's why you can have the United Arab Emirates normalizing relations with Israel and posting pictures where they're celebrating together. And you have all, it's all business in a way. But what I'm saying is they're erecting their condominiums and their business projects on a mountain of corpses of Muslims who've been killed in all of these wars. And what I'm saying is you can't do that and expect that it's not going to circle back around to you. So a day may come where some of these Gulf monarchies, they're toppled or they're brought down. And part of the story is going to be what we're all witnessing right at this very moment, because the message has been sent that Israel, it was an Israeli supremacist war that was waged by the United States with the support tacitly and otherwise of these monarchies.

1:03:26Tim Dillon:And when these Gulf monarchies are toppled, you mean by progressive, secular pluralists, right? I mean, you're like, well, obviously it's good, but this is what I mean right you're going to get Syria right you're going to get somebody who is an ISIS who's now going to take so you're going to take a country potentially that's somewhat modernizing a Qatar Oman Jordan whatever and some of these gulf monarchies would be toppled and you would get you they'd probably be toppled by religious fanatics But, well, let me answer that in a little bit of a nuanced way. We have an example, a living example of this.

1:04:05When the Egyptian revolution happened in 2011, when the so-called Arab Spring uprisings were happening, the US-backed dictatorship of Hosni Mubarak was toppled. and there was a popular revolt. And then Egypt, for the first time in decades, had free and fair elections. And the candidate who won those elections with the wide support, not just of religious Egyptians, but also secularists and young people, was Dr. Mohamed Morsi, who came out of the Muslim Brotherhood movement. And he won a democratic election, even though a lot of the people that voted for him were not members or supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood.

1:04:38But he won a sort of consensus of the population. And within like a year or so, the U.S. was backing a coup where General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi took power and Egypt's gone back to the moment of we're not going to have any real democracy anymore. And I think that the question then becomes, you know, Mohamed Morsi in Egypt was an interesting guy because he was modern. He was extremely well educated. He was a political realist. And I don't think it was given a chance to even see what does it look like to have a country that has democratic elections, has a distinctly religious sort of identity to it, but also respects a basic secularism that's never really been allowed to function in the modern era because the United States doesn't want that.

1:05:22The United States isn't actually interested in having democracy in any of these countries. Look who – Trump was asked by Dana Bash from CNN this morning. What about if a religious figure takes power in Iran? Because Trump's saying I have to be involved with the picking of it. Iran needs to pass a national voter ID law real quick to get Trump out of it. But Trump's saying I have no problem with religious leaders. And he's basically saying it doesn't have to be a democracy. They don't care. They don't really care. They want malleable states that in one way or the other are going to do the bidding of the United States.

1:05:51and they couldn't really care less what they do to their own people unless it's convenient to the narrative.

1:05:55Tim Dillon:How generic were the, I mean, I'm not generic, how, when we're looking at footage of Iranian protests, and I'm sure, I live in California for part of the year, and I know a lot of people that, you know, are from Iran, and I know that a lot of them were, you know, genuinely excited when the Ayatollah fell because, you know, they had experienced oppression and they, you know, they have pointed out that women in Iran to some degree, and again, I don't know, I'm not there, you know, how genuine and widespread were those Iranian protests that we saw like small videos of, were some of them engineered by outside forces, potentially Mossad, where they kind of egged on and stoked by that.

1:06:48Tim Dillon:How much of the country does that represent? How powerful is that section of the country in terms of determining the future course of Iran? Are we talking 10 % of people, 30 % of people? I mean, the country has 90 million people. How many of them are we talking about only young people? Are they only in Tehran? What do you think about those Iran protests and how organic they were? There were some huge protests. There were enormous numbers of people that were in the streets. It was started in a market where shop owners started protesting about exchange rates. And the U.S. has been clear. Besant himself, the Treasury Secretary, said publicly, You know, we deliberately engineered a currency crisis in Iran in order to spark a protest.

1:07:44Like, that's almost a direct quote from our Treasury Secretary. What he did is manipulated, you know, through sanctions and through some new sanctions policy, what people's savings were worth and what you could buy, you know, with Iranian money. And all of a sudden, the merchants were just, you know, who depend on, you know, some stable monetary system in order to be able to buy imports and then sell them on the streets. They started protesting against this, which is precisely what the U.S. wanted. The U.S. also said that we shipped like, what, 50 ,000 of Elon Musk's little satellite devices into the country and otherwise have been, you know, fomenting uprisings.

1:08:24But there's no question talking to Iranians that, like, there's a lot of anger. Sure. The country is – the country – I mean, even setting aside your opposition to the regime, if you have it, or to the Iranian government, the economics crisis over the last months and years is – makes daily life very difficult. Now, ironically, most of the opposition to the government would be, like you said, in Tehran. And that is the place that we are now bombing into the 7th century.

1:09:00Tim Dillon:Right. Seems like indiscriminate bombing around one of the oldest and biggest cities in the world. So we're hitting the people that would be most likely to be supportive of, to have been out in the streets protesting. Right. To add to that, Tim, because you're also asking about sort of the broader picture there, you know, what ended up happening, and we also spoke to people who witnessed this themselves, is that you had these huge popular protests and there was almost no response from the state whatsoever. In fact, the supreme leader of Iran, who, of course, was assassinated in the opening stages of this war, had even publicly said that the protesters need to be listened to.

1:09:44And there were no significant reports of any violence until around January 8th. So like they started in late December, they go to January 8th. And, you know, what we know for a fact happened was that small cells of people that were embedded within larger peaceful demonstrations started attacking police stations or attacking police officers. And in some cases they start attacking mosques. Huh.

1:10:40Mossad, and in some cases provided with smuggled in weapons that were coordinating attacks against the government, attacks against mosques, attacks against security personnel. And what it sounds like happened is that there were then these gun battles that start. And I think thousands of Iranians got gunned down. And I'm, you know, we, I don't think we know the extent of the death toll, but what I think is clear is that the narrative that it was simply the Iranian government decided to open fire on peaceful protests is not true. The question is, how overwhelming was the force? How many Iranians did the government kill in the process of trying to put down what they characterized as terrorist rebellions?

1:11:21How excessive was it? How many corpses were there? We don't know that, and it needs to be investigated. But we have to be intellectually honest about this. The Iranian government has said that 3 ,100 people died. That includes everyone, including security forces. International human rights organizations are saying those numbers are much, much higher. Some of the numbers also come from human rights organizations that are connected to the National Endowment for Democracy and have received U.S. government funding. But even the big ones, Amnesty International Human Rights Watch, they all have characterized it as most of the deaths were caused by the Iranian government opening fire on peaceful protesters.

1:11:57I think that we, because these narratives have been weaponized into broader public support initially for some kind of quote unquote action against Iran, there needs to be an actual investigation of the events that took place in Iran in January. But it is not even part of the narrative anymore from the White House. This isn't about we're saving the Iranian people. Trump is, they're not even talking nuclear anymore. Now it's, we're going to get rid of their ballistic missile capacity. What they're actually saying, I want people to understand this. What they're actually saying is Iran shouldn't have any defensive capacity.

1:12:31It shouldn't have any ability, which any nation state worth anything has, to deter other nations from attacking it. The position right now is Iran should be like Syria, where after Assad fell, Israel came in, they bombed the entire conventional military capacity of Syria to make sure that whoever comes next, whatever Arab ruler takes power, won't have a real military. in a way that's kind of the minimum that netanyahu wants of this game ryan let's make it so they

1:12:57Tim Dillon:can't ever be a real nation state again yeah ryan we spoke earlier about the role that ai is playing in actually cord helping these military coordinate attacks can you speak a little bit to that this is one of the uh you know obviously the gaza genocide is another i think example of this but this is one of the first theaters of war that we've seen AI have such a prominent role? Yes. Yeah, it was reported that Israel in the early stages of the bombing of Gaza was using AI to pick targets, and there would be one low-level person at the very end who would just press confirm, confirm, confirm on all of those.

1:13:36But it does appear like the US is using AI in its targeting here. the most absurd example, this is the one you and I were talking about, they bombed in Tehran a place called Police Park. And first of all, it shows you that, and it has nothing to do with police. It's just called Police Park. It shows you that they're that they are doing what Iran says they're doing, which is bombing a lot of civilian infrastructure. Police are, you know, they are part of the civilian infrastructure. You're trying to keep order. They want disorder. And so in their list of, you know, that whoever produced, Claude or somebody else, of police targets, they added police park.

1:14:21And so we dropped a$10 or$20 million missile to blow up a park bench surrounded by a couple of trees. the and and there's a real open question of whether the 180 plus um people killed in the school in manab in southern iran came about because uh it was an ai chosen target because there there had it had previously been part of an irgc base but since then it it was broken off and there's a wall if you went on google earth last month and looked and you can people can look this up, it was labeled as a school, literally on Google Earth. So if they did use AI, why is the AI not checking Google Earth before bombing the school?

1:15:07And if they didn't use AI, what are we doing?

1:15:14Who's checking this?

1:15:16Tim Dillon:Jeremy, a lot of people are saying munitions are running out. A lot of people have been talking about that. A lot of people have been saying that because we've given the Ukraine a lot of weaponry. We've provided Israel with a lot of weaponry, that we have overextended ourselves. We've depleted our munition stockpiles and that the idea that we could, you know, with these missile interceptors, that we could defend Israel, the Gulf states, that we could, you know, that we could continue to have the ability to attack Iran at the level that we need to. Is there any credence to that claim, do you think that we are kind of running a little bit low on certain munitions?

1:15:56Tim Dillon:And to piggyback on that, as Israel runs low on munitions, do they consider using alternative weapons, nuclear weapons, if they feel like they are losing this war? Which right now, it seems to be that they are. And I don't know if that's true or not, and that could be reversed. But it does seem to be that they are taking heavy losses, big hits. As you said, it's censored over there. It's hard to tell. But do we have the munitions to keep fighting this war? Can we defend some of our allies and partners? And if not, what happens next? I mean, this is such an important question that you're asking, and it's one I'm also talking to military experts on.

1:16:39And I'm also interviewing Iranian officials, which is somewhat unusual in the context of American media. And here's what I would say. I think the next couple of days are going to be very telling. What the Iranians are claiming, and this is coming also from the IRGC, their most powerful military entity, they're claiming that the munitions they've used up until this moment that I'm speaking to you, Tim, have largely been missiles manufactured between 2010 and 2014, and that they haven't utilized some of their most modern, longer-range, powerful missile systems. and that they're going to begin deploying those systems.

1:17:18We're going to see if that's true. We're going to see how powerful they are, how effective they are, because I think the Iranians are reaching a trigger point where they're going to start doing that. I think we also are going to see the extent to which the THAAD battery systems, the defense systems that the U.S. put in place throughout these countries, the radar systems that the Iranians have attacked that coordinate the Patriot and THAAD missile defense systems, The early warning detection systems seem to be failing in some countries. You know, we have colleagues in different Gulf countries that are saying that sirens aren't going off now and things are just hitting.

1:17:53Right. There's a lot of censorship happening. So I think the U.S. certainly has enough bombs. They've destroyed enough of Iran's air defenses to bring in aircraft flying at lower altitude, dropping different kinds of munitions. I don't think there's much question that the U.S. and Israel can keep bombing. They're going to start putting planes at risk. They have not decimated the air defenses in the way that Hegseth and others are bragging. I mean, I think it's pretty clear the Iranians have been preparing for a long time for this. They have mobile units. It's a mountainous terrain. It's an enormous country.

1:18:22So I think that the rubber is going to hit the road on what narratives have been true and which haven't over the next couple of days. We could see a scenario where it becomes really clear really fast that a lot of those Gulf Arab countries are extremely vulnerable and that the anti-missile technologies have been severely degraded to a point where the Iranians start striking in a much heavier capacity. And then you're going to have enormous pressure. Already on the oil issue, they're going nuts right now because we're messing with the family businesses all through the Middle East. But on a tactical level, the Iranians have said from the beginning, it's going to look like we're getting waxed.

1:19:02It's going to look like we're being destroyed here. But you haven't seen our most powerful systems, and we know what we're doing. We are causing them to expend all of their energy in the opening week of this war, and then you're going to see how vulnerable they are. And they're talking about— We're going to see which narrative is true and which is false.

1:19:19Tim Dillon:They're talking about hypersonic missiles specifically. They're talking about hypersonic missiles. Yep. Can you talk about the difference between a regular and a hypersonic missile in terms of capabilities and damage that can be done? I mean, one thing just to first to say, you know, there's been a lot of outrage being expressed by Israel over Iran using cluster munitions. First of all, it should be stated that neither Israel nor Iran are party to the convention banning cluster bombs. And the United States itself has used cluster munitions, including under Barack Obama. They used cluster bombs in Yemen and shredded 36 people in a strike that they said was aimed at al-Qaeda, but they shredded a bunch of villagers in Yemen with them.

1:19:59But why are the Iranians using cluster bombs? Personally, I'm completely against them. I've seen the effect of cluster bombs. I think it's a heinous weapon system. But the Iranians are using it as a way to try to trigger the Iron Dome and other air defense systems so that the larger missile itself is able to penetrate or other missiles are able to penetrate. And they're ugly, ugly munitions. No one should ever defend the use of them. Iran, though, is using guided munitions. They are quite precise. But with the hypersonic missiles, it's much easier for them to penetrate through the existing U.S.

1:20:33and Israeli defense systems. It doesn't mean that they work perfectly. They're a much faster missile. In fact, the Yemenis at times have used them on Israel as well, in some cases actually hitting targets. So what you're talking about is a much stronger blast. You're talking about a missile that has a much greater capacity to defeat the technology that the U.S. and Israel have deployed. And if some of the higher end technology has already been used up and they have to get replenishments in terms of combating the ballistic missiles, you could start to see much heavier damage take place inside of Israel.

1:21:09But again, I want to emphasize the Iranians have claimed this for a long time, and we're going to start to see if what they promised is true. We're going to start to see that very, very soon. Last night, very heavy bombing from the Iranians after the U.S. had claimed that they were sort of pausing or it was abating a bit. The Iranians responded by just utterly bombing throughout the region and hitting Israel very hard.

1:21:32Tim Dillon:It's unbelievable. Well, Jeremy, we know you need to get out of here. Ryan, could you stay for another five minutes? Just a few more questions. I want to talk to you about this ship incident. Jeremy, thank you. You are the best. All right, Tim. Appreciate you. Thank you very much. I appreciate you. Ryan, I want you to talk briefly about this incident that was very disturbing that I read about regarding an Iranian ship that got torpedoed by the U.S. because it does just talk about how there is, I think, a misunderstanding from certain people as to the brutality of war in the sense of how truly evil things that happened during a war are and how this is going to be seared into the minds of people.

1:22:20Tim Dillon:And it's so important for people in the U.S. to stand up and go, yeah, this is not something that we co-sign. Can you just talk about that? Yeah, this is a dark one. And India is actually roiled by this right now because it implicates them. So the Indians, they love to project that they have hegemony in the kind of Indian Ocean. They're the ones that are going to, their Navy is going to keep the Indian Ocean safe. And so toward that end, they host this biannual kind of little festival of ships. I think 70 countries, including Iran and the United States, sent ships to these two separate but related events, and they did a live fire drill.

1:23:02And when did they do this? They did it from, I think, February 17th to the 26th. Gotcha. So it wrapped up 48 hours before, maybe 36 hours before the war started. Right. They paraded on land. And the U.S. pulled out of one of the two of these little festivals, but did participate in the other one with the Iranians. So, like, we're there, like, with them. As part of the kind of peace protocol for these events, you're only supposed to bring enough ammunition, you know, to, like, fire off, you know, during your little events. You're not supposed to come all, you know, kitted up in a way that could cause, you know, serious problems.

1:23:45Because also, you're out there doing these complex, coordinated drills. You know, you don't want something to go wrong. Right. And so they try to keep it as safe as possible. And so then, you know, it starts to head back to Iran. And this is where we need more investigation. It appears that it was then held at a port for something like 11 hours near Sri Lanka. Yeah. Or a Sri Lankan port, which we now people are suspicious was allowing kind of the nuclear, this nuclear sub to catch up to it. There's also the question of like, how did they find the exact location? There's some in India, they are speculating that the U.S.

1:24:27exploited its kind of joint intelligence network that it has built with India to get into the Indian system. And because the Indians and the Iranians were, you know, they invited the Iranian ship and then they said goodbye to the Iranian ships. They knew exactly where it was. So then they they the nuclear sub, you know, finds a ship and torpedoes it. And that the laws of war, the Geneva Convention say that if it doesn't put your own ship at risk, you are obligated under international law to try to save drowning sailors. But you have to do the bare minimum. also under the kind of common sense of humanity.

1:25:07Like you see somebody drowning, it's like a meme. You see somebody drowning, like throw them a rope. Right. Like that's what we do. We prosecuted a Nazi at Nuremberg for not doing that.

1:25:19Tim Dillon:Right. But often the Nazis did do it, which is like we're below them at this point. So Sri Lanka's Navy had to come out and get there as fast as they could. And they managed to save, I think, 32 people from drowning. More than 80 Iranians died in the attack. And we posted the video with the caption, something like, this Iranian ship thought it was safe, suckers. You're not. And so now the Indian – so this is interesting, too. The Indian government is under enormous pressure because this is a slap in the face to them. If you noticed yesterday, Trump lifted sanctions on Russia when it came to selling oil to India.

1:26:07Remember a few months ago, the biggest thing that Trump was worked up about was that India was buying oil from Russia. He's like, I'm going to do 25 % sanctions or tariffs. I'm going to do 50 % tariffs. You stop buying oil from Russia. Now, it's all fine. India can buy oil from Russia, and we're lifting the sanctions on Russian oil. That to me feels like a kind of blowback from this, like that Modi is like, I need something here. You're killing me at home. You got to give me something. You may just look like fools. How do you just - Now Putin will get billions out of this.

1:26:40Tim Dillon:What do you think China and Russia, what is the lens through which they're viewing the current Iran conflict? You know, there was this really interesting argument being made by a guy for Barry Weiss's news outlet, Javi Rettinger. He's like one of the smartest Israeli analysts out there. And so they sent their brightest light out there to make the best possible case they could that the war on Iran that the U.S. is waging is not actually for Israel. It's actually about China. And he lays out this case that there's oil that China gets from Iran. You can go read his case. Yeah. But it falls apart extremely quickly because, yes, it's true that Iran exports something like 80 to 90 percent of its oil to China.

1:27:28So you're like, oh, you see that number like, wow, that really involves China a lot. That makes up something like five to 15 percent of Chinese imports. Right. They have plenty of oil that they can get from elsewhere. And also think about it. If we replace this government, if we manage to do a regime change and we put in a new government that Donald Trump says is wonderful, like finds his Delce Rodriguez, why would that country not sell oil to China? To China. Like that. That would make no sense. Of course. Yeah, they'll sell it. They'll sell it to everybody. Like Iran will still be a country.

1:28:04Right. It will still produce oil. Yeah, it would still have an economy.

1:28:08Tim Dillon:And one of their driving... It's still going to have an economy. Unless, unless Javiv is saying that what Trump really wants to do is blockade China from buying oil from anybody around the world. Like, is that... And I'm sure China would have something to say about that. I think they might. I think they might. What do you think about the chances of boots on the ground? Coming? Not coming? I think special... I think the chances of special forces are getting pretty high. reportedly we sent kurdish troops in already with special forces and then and then as we reported actually you guys immediately it wasn't true okay so that was fascinating yeah that was that was leaked by the israelis it seems um that the invasion not the invasion is going to happen because you can you can get that wrong sure or you know and then it doesn't end up happening they said thousands of kurdish fighters have invaded iran and are currently you know fighting inside Iran.

1:29:03That was the reporting from a bunch of outlets. And it clearly seemed to be sourced from Israel. We talked to all of these different Kurdish sources and all of them are like, no, it's not happening. Like not casting judgment on whether it should, but it literally is not happening. And then this Kurdish, this Iranian Kurdish base inside Iraq was bombed, which maybe it was from Iran who thought that the reports were true. Maybe it was from Israel who's like trying to rile them up and say, you need to go in there. We don't know. But it's not happening. So the invasion is not happening. So the U.S.

1:29:47is putting enormous pressure on them to go in. the problem is in 1991 we we told the kurds to rise up in northern iraq yeah uh they rose up

1:29:58Tim Dillon:and then saddam massacred them it's always the yeah we then supported them in syria yeah to go against isis and a couple months ago we sold them out right so so the kurds have been saying publicly got like all right 1991 that's one thing and also all of the betrayals going back hundreds of years but like 91 is one thing you sold us out like two months ago right right you know that's insane yeah it's unbelievable you think we're like but they're still they're still calculating like you know because they're under a lot of pressure to do it and and you know bush and obama were actually pretty decent for northern iraq the kurdish region so they're kind of but they're they're comfortable too they're like we we've got our autonomy we're happy like yeah why get involved like what do you think you know i'm hearing the qatar is basically saying we want to pull our money out of the american economy saudi arabia is you know saying similar things you know people are really upset out there i mean this could be a massive um you know collapse financially here i mean what do you what what is jared kushner doing right now is he calling these people on the phone going hey relax yeah he's got to because he's um so much of his business relies on the Gulf economy continuing to produce oil and gas and dollars and then funneling those dollars into the grifts that the Trump Organization, the Kushner Organization are operating, set aside the entire AI grift that is the US economy at this point.

1:31:31Also, this should be obvious to people, but that stuff is the backbone of everything else. Like if the oil and gas stop coming out, we stop making aluminum. Stop making chlorine. We stop making the copper, like the basics of our economy. And then we can't make semiconductors. And that happens as it's almost as if people forget like March 2020. Like you remember how quickly like the entire world fell apart from supply chain shocks? Yeah. It wasn't that long ago. So that is kind of Iran's strategy, I think, is to say they cannot withstand. They are already driven to absolute poverty and desperation by our sanctions.

1:32:21Right. So they're already there. So they can weather this.

1:32:25Tim Dillon:Final question. But the thinking is Dubai cannot. Dubai cannot, right. Final question for you. How does this play out? what is your prediction from what you know, from what you've seen? Obviously, so many things could change. I mean, you know, what do you think happens here? Does Trump say, hey, we won, even though we didn't, and just get the hell out of there? Or does this, you know, I've seen reports that the Pentagon is asking for money and some troop commitments in terms until September, right? Like, what is this? Are we talking about this on July 4th? I think the most hopeful outcome at this point would be Trump stares into the abyss or the actuality of a global financial crisis that he sparked and declares victory and just stops bombing.

1:33:19Right. And says, here's the list of things I wanted to accomplish. I obliterated their ballistic missile program. I obliterated their nuclear weapons. I killed the Ayatollah. maybe he'll kill his son before the end of the day is over. And so we won and everyone tells me that it's the most incredible war victory that anybody has ever seen.

1:33:42Tim Dillon:But the Revolutionary Guard still controls the country. And you're right, exactly. Will Israel allow that to happen? That is an interesting question. Now, if Israel feels that they have been sufficiently militarily degraded, that they don't have many ballistic missiles left. Their Tehran looks like Gaza, that they can then continue to do routine operations like this. With Gaza, as you know, they call it mowing the lawn. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And in the 90s in Iraq, this was kind of what the West would do to Iraq. They put them under sanctions, impoverished it, and then every six months go bomb it.

1:34:25And then weaken it. So when 2003 came along, and you just kind of pushed it over. Then, of course, it became a gigantic catastrophe through the occupation and everything else. But that was their vision. Like, Iraq was too strong in the 80s to take out. If you take a decade of just pummeling it relentlessly, you tweak it. So maybe Israel's okay with pausing.

1:34:46Tim Dillon:Yeah. And then six months later, they go in and bomb them again. And then six months after that and on and on. Well, Ryan Grimm, DropSite News, thank you so much. We're very grateful that you and Jeremy came on and everybody should go and read your stuff. You guys are great. And this, I think, helped a lot of people understand the mess that we're in. But I don't know how much hope it's given us, but that's never been the point of this show, my career or anything I've been involved in. Ryan Grimm, Dropset News. Thank you very much. Yeah, you got it. If anybody knows Trump, just tell him it's a beautiful win.

1:35:21Just take the win.

1:35:22Tim Dillon:It's the win. We did it. We won. Very good. We won. All right. Ryan, this will be out in a few hours. Thank you. You're the best. Thank you, sir. Appreciate it. Rocket Money is a personal finance app that helps find and cancel unwanted subscriptions. It monitors your spending. It helps lower your bills so you can grow your savings. One of my favorite things about Rocket Money is that it can track subscriptions. It has the ability to cancel unwanted ones with the app with a few taps, giving users an easy way to stop paying for things they don't use. I'm telling you, automatic transaction categorization across accounts plus customizable categories and tags to reveal spending patterns.

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