The Ceasefire That Wasn’t

You're listening to American Power from Findout Media. I'm your host, Nat Tousen. Stand up comedian, speech writer, comedy writer, other kinds of writer, and most famously podcast host. We are recording this at 6 p.m. on Monday, May 4th, 2026.

I'm here with my panel of experts, up first hour expert on military and policy. Chad Scott, chat, how you doing? I'm doing well, glad to be here. Hope everyone is having a great week.

And of course, also joining us as always is our expert on energy,

“Mr. Global himself Matt Randolph, Matt, how you doing?”

Live in the dream, Nat. Live in the dream. You really are. I want to focus on some evergreen topics, some long-term strategy that we can discuss at great length,

but unfortunately, news keeps happening. So I was hoping we could start today's episode by talking a little bit about what has happened in the world of oil and the situation in Iran. Chad, would you kick us off? Yeah, so it seems the ceasefire is effectively over despite the fact

that it's technically still in place on paper. I mean, Iran in the United States are shooting at each other.

If you take a look at Trump's announcement of these escort missions

through the Strait of Hormuz, that's not sitting well with Iran. And the U.S. began supposedly moving ships through the Strait of this project, freedom, US Central Command sent com said to U.S. flag merchant ships, successfully translated the Strait of Hormuz,

with a U.S. Navy destroyer. Interestingly, the original construct for this was for neutral ships, but U.S. flag ships are not neutral. So a bit of a misconception on what's going on there. Shortly after those ships went through, a South Korean operated cargo ship

called the HMMNAMU was hit by an explosion. Likely came from either drone or missile out of Iran. There's no casualties, but Trump publicly blamed Iran and said South Korea should join the war now because of this. There's a new strategy coming out of Iran.

“They're calling this the new responsibility, right?”

They haven't said anything specific as of right now to this. They were trying to create this air of chaos. They're trying to make it seem like they don't want to directly engage with the United States Navy, obviously, but they also want to make it so the shipping doesn't go through.

And they're saying that all of these countries, regardless of where you stand, need to follow these new Iranian maritime rules. And this is kind of their new construct for how they're going to present a permanent structure within the state of Formus. And they're saying that if you don't follow that,

there's the you're going to be stopped. You're going to get fired upon. I don't necessarily think they're going to be firing constantly. They just need to enough to create this air of chaos. And with that chaos, maybe Matt can talk about this as well.

They struck an oil facility that was supposed to be

“a work around pipeline in that's north of Dubai, I believe.”

But basically, there's a pipeline.

And so Iran is not only focusing now on the state of Formus. They're trying to punish anyone who is circumventing the state of Formus's control regime by striking pipelines and things like that. That would be used to go around their pseudo-blockade. And what's their goal? Just do inflict as much pain as possible.

They're just trying to as a certain control. It's this new maritime regime. They're trying to say, hey, we're in charge of the straight to two parties here, kind of sitting on opposite sides of what is common international law is the United States is saying, hey, we're going to block aid as we see fit because this is a war.

It's not really a war. According to many in the in the maga movement, we've already had to deal with that problem because we've passed the 60 days regardless of Iran sitting on the other side saying, no, this body of water borders us. We control it and you guys got to deal with it.

So at that point, we're looking at an approach where you have two countries operating outside of international law, believing what they believe is right. And it's leading to, for all intents and purposes, I don't see a way out of this other than it becoming more of a kinetic fight. And that's kind of overseeing with these small boats being struck by patches in the

state oformous, some six to seven, depending on who the sources of these Iranian swift boats, these small fast boats that come in and try to harass the ships. They were apparently struck by Apache helicopters, destroying them, missile strikes on these countries. And then obviously the missile strikes on a pipeline systems. So CNN's reporting that within the next 24 hours, a coalition of the US and Israel,

And that's why in the beginning, I said, I believe this ceasefire is just effectively over at this point.

“And we're going to move to more kinetic operations.”

Mm-hmm. And so we find ourselves, as you mentioned, we're 60 days past the original invasion or the original strike in Iran, right, which means, which puts us the War Powers Act, which require a declaration of war after 60 days of military activity, is that the, the, so it's either that you either have to have a declaration of war, which we won't get out of Congress, or an authorization for use of military forces.

That's kind of the, we haven't declared war on anyone since like World War II.

So it's always been an authorization for use of military forces.

Basically, Congress saying, hey, we give the President permission to do this. It's not an act that is at a lower threshold than a full declaration of war. Yeah, basically, it kind of divorces the Congress from the action. If there's too many people who are opposed to it, but it's also quicker. There's a quicker mechanism for an authorization for use of military force.

And it allows them to, the Congress to, instead of saying, we want this war, we want to fight this war, we believe wholeheartedly in this war. They just kind of say, have, go do what you need, President, we're not going to get in your way. That's kind of what we've done. We've had this kind of stand in Iraq. It was, it's not equal, and Vietnam, they were all, yeah, they're all authorizations for use of military force.

“Key thing here is right now for this Iran situation, this Iran debacle.”

There is not a declaration of war. Nor is there an authorization for use of military force. So we are in a new area now. We've passed the 60 days. They've, the administration is claiming that because there's been a ceasefire pause that there should be, it's no longer a war as if when bombs to reset the counter, because they, yeah, that's exactly what it is ridiculous. They're trying to reset the clock and, and the thing is, is you can't handle these in tag rules and putting it back on.

Exactly. That's, yeah, it's like, you can't say when the war's only happening as bombs are being dropped and then the war stops when bombs are done being dropped. We're totally, totally new and different war. That's like, exactly. So what there's Trump's previous war from March, no, no, that's over. And that's the thing is we're carrying this over and the, the blockade in itself is an act of war. Further, the, the, I granted it's an older case from civil war, but the Supreme Court has, has reaffirmed that a blockade is a part of active warfare operations. The international law across the board shows a blockade is an act of war.

For all intents and purposes, this is a wartime action that the United States is, is conducting against Iran. We are just, Congress is just kind of kind of backed away and is allowing Trump to do what he wants and it's very concerning because it does give this almost dictatorial power to make and, and continue war. When that power was initially intended to be an article one power of the crowd of institutions granted to Congress specifically. So and do we see this is the first time we've seen this in American history.

“Have we seen a president exceed the 60 day limit and continue acts of war without even an authorization for force authorization of force?”

Yes, in general, there's, I mean, we've seen some, like, when you look at things like the Kosovo and stuff like that, there's been some buffers where they allowed for a little bit of negotiation stuff,

but it's never been this egregious. There was always an understanding that was long ago, at least until recently some still something of a norm.

Like one of, yeah, this is this is completely new to his lack of militarism in the past destroyed yet. No, yeah, this is completely. Generally considered the standard. Okay. Yeah. So it's, it's very much, and I mean, I'm very concerned going forward with what's, what's going to happen, especially since we, we're, we're now seeing Iran circumvent the straight and start striking the pipelines outside of and that's definitely going to have market market implications for sure for us and the world. And I want to ask about that in just a second, but just to recap,

if you can, if you just correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems like what you're saying to me is that Iran is doubling down on this strategy that we've talked about in recent weeks, where obviously they don't have the scale of military force that the US has, but they realize that in order to inflict harm in the US in order to, you know, maintain control, they don't necessarily need to overpower us, they need to let the US burn out its resources and, you know, maintain the situation long enough that it becomes inconvenient and expensive for the US to continue to do this. And you know, as we've discussed before,

where you haven't even felt all the economic impacts that are going to come from this yet. So this is essentially their new strategy and they are, they're doubling down and, and continuing to strengthen their power that way. And of course, yeah, absolutely, of course they're doing that because it's working. They're seeing the cracks formed within the administration. They're seeing the infighting amongst Trump's, even forvets supporters are getting very frustrated. You see the discussions happening in the Midwest,

strategy. I mean, the pain has not been incrementally ramped up against them. We just said we're doing a blockade

“and they're surviving the blockade. It's not great for them. My biggest concern, though, is given”

Trump's kind of cowboy-esque ways of doing things at what point does Iran say no one, one, too many times. And then it becomes, okay, well, Trump did say this is going to end a civilization or something to that effect. Or I'm going to strike bridges and civilian infrastructure and power plants. At some point, I'm concerned that he will start doing that. And that's going to hurt the people of Iran who we should be supporting not so much, obviously, the regime. There's no love loss with this regime, but we need to be supporting these people.

And I absolutely. And well, let's take a moment to talk about how this is affecting, because we're talking,

you know, some of this is the Iran is guarantee banking on this affecting not only Americans,

but American citizens. How is this? I know a lot of Americans are paying a lot of the pump these days. Mr. Global, can you give us a little sense of how is this affecting all of the markets as a whole and how is it affecting costs for Americans at the pump and at home? I had that. It's really bad. Worse than doing worsening, or is this sort of decline as usual at this point? We have to talk about acceleration.

“Honestly, I don't know which is worse. I don't know if today's events are worse with Iran hitting”

so much infrastructure in the UAE, or if all of the tankers coming to the United States are worse, because people really don't understand how bad that is. But that export terminal that Iran hit today, we don't know the extent of the damage yet, so the pipeline might still be functional. In that area, there's a whole storage terminal, there's a pipeline, the start of a pipeline is there. There's a lot of stuff there, a very large area, and it's not clear yet to the extent of the damage.

That pipeline moves about one and a half million barrels of oil a day, but we don't know

if the pipeline itself was damaged. So it's really hard to say what that's, you know, specifically going to do other than the fact that's going to drive up oil prices. I mean, oil closed at 114 today. So it was up nearly six bucks by the end of, and this stuff's been going on since like four o'clock this morning. Tonight, the whole day was like this. And when they came out and said, they were going to escort ships. And then they said, well, we're not going to escort them. We're actually

just going to kind of talk them through it. I was like, what are we doing? Like, obviously, I'm not a military

“strategist, but this whole thing seems kind of odd to me. Do you see it as an manipulation again?”

Is that something, because when he said that it was not going to be an escort mission, it was just going to be, we'll give you the maps and stuff to get through. I'm like, okay, this is a Monday morning from manipulation. Now, you see in the same thing, are you is that you're feeling to, you know, or is it more legit? So when he came out and said that on Sunday night, he does this on Sunday night because international markets open on Sunday night. A lot of people thought

it was in manipulation thing, but the thing was it didn't work. Like, the markets dropped for a couple of minutes, but they had to immediately come out and say, no, we're not actually escorting anyone. We're not doing that, because that's the impression, apparently, that Donald Trump gave, to be fair, he didn't say the word escort in his tweet or truth or whatever it was. He said, we're going to guide ships through the straight and get them all out of the straight. So

everyone assumed that meant, because he said we're going to use naval forces. So, you know, people were like, oh, that means we're going to escort him. They immediately came out within minutes and said, no, we're not escorting anybody. We're going to give them, you know, the maps and we're going to talk them through it. Linda, many year, whatever, whatever the hell it is, we're actually going to ask them, like, what their goals are with the trip and, like, hope they get the most out of

it, do a vision board. Yeah, we're going to do a vision board. We're going to, we're going to do a collage with them before they leave. The whole day's been nuts. Like, Iran immediately this morning claim they had a destroyer or a warship or something. I'm not sure. The US immediately came back and said, they didn't hit nothing. And then the US came back later and said, well, they actually fired on us and then like, we're in this space and time where you can't believe anybody and it

makes it almost impossible to get the right information to the people that you're trying to really really in for me. And all of this just makes the market go nuts. My big concern is, of course, this will post on Wednesday and we'll know about this by the time this podcast comes out. Tomorrow

inventory is dropped and it's going to be a lot. A lot of people think it's going to be the biggest

“American petroleum index? No. No. Institute. Oh, yeah, close. That's us. So you know how, you know,”

how the job numbers come out one day, who is it that releases the job numbers first? The payroll company ADP. Oh, yeah. ADP does their job numbers and then the Bureau Labor Statistics does their job numbers like the next day or the day after. They do the same thing with oil inventories. So API doesn't first and that gives you like some insight into what they might actually look at. And then

the EIA comes out the next day and that's the one that really moves the markets. But the API is always

very close to the EIA. So we'll know Tuesday how much that inventory drop. You could see a parabolic move in gas prices on Wednesday when this show drops. If those inventory levels drop as much as people think they're going to drop. The level more of an idea of how much gas is, or I'm sorry, how much oil is domestically available. Presently that it's like with how much gasoline and diesel we're talking about refined fuel specifically. Yeah, a lot of these tankers aren't getting oil

they're getting our gas and our diesel. And okay, is driving up our gas prices more than if they were getting oil. Because this is getting the robobley of the refined oil is making it worth exporting and therefore there's less of it here. Exactly. Driving up prices domestically. So what we're seeing right now is exactly what caused gas. Go to $5 in 2022 under Joe Biden. Russia attacked Ukraine. We started exporting a lot of gas and diesel to Europe because they cut

Russia off. We brought our inventory levels way down. Gas spike to $5. The difference is in 2022,

it took us six months to send an additional 20 million barrels of gas diesel to Europe.

In 2026, we've done that in one month. So this is a much faster, more drastic thing and there's tankers coming until mid August at least. So we could see gas prices go to places. Honestly, not even willing to predict where the gas prices could go. But this inventory report and the next one and the next one are going to be the biggest driver of gas prices. It's not actually going to be in the oil prices because when your inventory gets this low oil prices can drop and your gas can

still rise a lot. Actually, we're fine and can't be sped up. We're at max. We're at max, but if we are not, if you don't have the full amount of oil to refine at a given time, there's no catching up. You are refining at capacity at this point. We're already at max. So there's no I'm catching up on that scarcity other than to import refined gas and diesel or stop exporting. Well, okay. Yes. So after tomorrow's report, after tomorrow's report, there will are inventory levels will be lower than they

“were in 22. That's what I'm saying. And that's tomorrow after a month, rather than six months. Right,”

with more tankers coming until mid August, this is bad is what I'm saying. That, this is really bad. Because even if the straight opens today, those tankers are coming until mid August. That's how long it takes to cycle the world with oil and gas. Do you think that the president could use something like the Defense Production Act to stay? No, we're not giving you any more gas. Was that just too problematic or and there was too much pushback? Because if you're saying what we're saying,

I'm seeing just reports generally on the news that like states are now hitting new records of diesel, some are like six bucks or something is getting out of control. Yeah. It can the president come in and just say, all right, enough of this, our production is for us for now, stop shipping at or is that going to be too much of the pushback? Is that basically political suicide from the oil companies? They'll say, no, we're not doing that. And it's lawsuit heaven there.

It's going to get to a point where I think he has to do it. But the problem is he's done

nothing but celebrate the fact that these tankers are coming. But it, I fear that it's going to get to the point where he's forced to do that. There was a story out today in Reuters about how that

“is coming. They're going to have to do that. And I don't think you have to use the defense”

production act to do that either. I think you can just declare an emergency. But yeah, that's the real concern right now is our inventory. Because once your inventory gets that low, oil can go up or down $10, it's not going to matter. Gas is still going up, no matter what, because you're just out of inventory. It's the supply side of supply and demand and once you lose that supply side, you're done, right? So, will this have to see what happens?

I mean, I remember some in some choke points in the past or also like in times following Hurricane

you had like a run on gas stations in a lot of cases. Like you saw, you know, I mean,

you happened in New York, but I know it happened all over the place, but you know, you saw people showing up to fill up with, you know, with tank with cans and, you know, buying out these local gas stations. How far are we from a run on gas? Like what, what point does the increase in prices speed up? I mean, obviously you can't predict a human behavior at a mass scale, but is there anything that

“tends to trigger that panic? So here's the thing, if we get a run on gas, we're still going to be fine.”

It's not that we're going to run out of gas. That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying the price of it is going to be very expensive. I'm curious if that's going to happen, cursor or like, would there be a run if prices start to get to the point where people say,

oh, shit, I can't pay for this next week if it goes, keeps going at this rate. Like a preemptive,

like not a supply based run, but like if the cost hike increases in speed, essentially, as I was saying, it's acceleration at this point, right? So if the prices accelerate at a certain level, will people start to hoard gas? Will people, will we see a huge buy-in for a moment? Like just a, yeah, this whole thing creates this vicious feedback loop where every action makes the last action worse. Like, you know what I mean? Like, high gas prices, you get a run, you know, low inventories,

you get a run that makes inventories worse, makes some gas prices higher. It's just, it's a cycle

“that you have to break out of, but what I want to be clear of is even if that happens,”

we're not going to run out of gas. We're just, it's just going to be really expensive. We just can't afford the gas that we have because the lack of supply will just make it so expensive to the average consumer. Yeah. And in many ways, this kind of needs to happen to be honest, like, we need a wake-up call about what's happening in the Middle East. And the markets have been suppressed for so long. People aren't like it's no big deal. Maybe we need gas to hit $7 or $8 a

gallon, so people will wake up and say, oh, this is actually serious. That's the only way the market can correct itself is through that demand destruction that will occur with those higher prices. And I'm curious, am I incorrect in, in, in, in understanding this, uh, in other Western countries, I understand that people pay proportionately more per gallon for, for gasoline, like our gas has been, well, like, traditionally much more subsidized. And so we're used to a

“artificially lower price than say, like, a car driver in the UK. Am I getting that right?”

Oh, yeah, our gas is a lot cheaper than all of the other Western nations. You know, we complain, you know, gas right now in Canada on a, well, if you convert it to gallons, it's over $7 a gallon. Like, you can't remember being in the UK. And then it was almost the same price. And then going, oh, that's pounds. Like, it's almost twice what we were paying at the time. And again, you know, the pound was almost double the dollar at the time. And it was a comparable number. And I went,

oh, my God. And then I really, that was like one of the first time to experience. So we, our price has just for decades been somewhat like artificially suppressed. So Americans are under the impression that gasoline effectively is cheaper than, uh, it could, I mean, obviously it could be all,

it could always be more expensive. But do you think that, at, do you think this is a thing that's

just never going to go all the way back down that we made this major, just be what triggers, like, we have to adjust a little bit to the idea that gas can't be as cheap as we think it is? So this is a deep conversation because I don't think gas is expensive. I think wages are extremely low. And we don't have a cost problem in the United States with everything. We have a problem with what we pay people. If the United States paid people, you know, just a normal amount of money,

gas would not be expensive right now. Gas is expensive because people don't make enough money to live in this country. But we're not doing that in the 80s. So the solution has always grown to make everything cheaper instead of to pay people more. Yes. And who's, who benefits from just making stuff cheaper instead of paying people more? Who benefits from that? From people being able to purchase more things? I would say that people who are being purchased from. In my, in my

very basic economic analysis, based on what you're saying, I would imagine that more people being up to buy things, it would probably benefit the people selling it. And it's kind of wild because when I was, so when I was in Germany, in Germany, there's the US is so hyper-focused on prices that we got what was called an SO card. Now, I know you are in Europe now. I don't know if you got this as well. But soldiers, when we go to the, go to Europe and our station there,

we don't pay their gas prices. We pay American gas prices at their pumps. We use what's called an SO card. We drive up to their pump. We pay with the SO card. And it charges us to our American per gallon rate. And they all have to pay their rate. So I'm running up. I can fill my tank at the

they, while the Europeans were paying like 60 or 50 euro themselves. And it's because there's

this, like Matt was saying, there was this, there's this hyper-focus on trying to keep everything cheap rather than making the market actually work. And it's, it was just kind of, and we figured something might want to go to Europe to find out how the rest of the world is living. We got it. Yeah, like it was a serious culture shock. Well, and it's funny because like if you forget your

“SO card and you need to get gas, you just got to pay their prices. And that happens. I mean,”

I mean, they would happen every once in a while. And so I was like, dang, I had to pay like 80 bucks. On this, on my car, on my BMW to get filled up. But yeah, it's it's really fascinating. And I'm, you look at the, kind of the, the shortages thing. I was kind of thinking about 2008 and how

the United States is so insulated. We are so insulated. 2008 crisis that hit us hard. But it hit us

way less than everyone else around the world. Our recovery was way faster. We were so much more insulated because one of our financial system into a lot of our, all of the inputs come to the US. And you're seeing like, we won't see gas runs here like Matt was saying, but already you see like India and Pakistan. These are countries like, there's a confirmed cooking oil shortage in India because they get a lot of their cooking oil from Iran. You look at Pakistan and they are having

some fuel lines start where people are trying to get fuel. It's things we don't see. And so what ends up happening, unfortunately, politically, we look at it from a kind of whole hum like, okay, well, whatever, I guess we'll keep paying a little bit more. And we don't change anything politically while the rest of the world is really struggling. And it's just kind of fascinating that Matt, like Matt was saying, we're not going to see these gas runs. We're not going to feel the pain

but the rest of the world and humanity outside of the United States certainly is.

“I think you have a point even thinking about 2008 as to what Matt was saying about, you know,”

we focus so much more on costs and wages that a lot of the recovery after that. I mean, obviously there was like bits of stimulus here and there, but it was focused on getting inflation down and focused on and it wasn't focused on the kind of investing in citizens that would create long-term wealth. It was focused on making things affordable as quickly as possible. And you know, of course, that was like the birth of occupied and all these movements there where people were

saying, hey, I actually can't afford to live. But we are very focused on the idea that everything should be, you know, cheap, affordable, available immediately. I'm curious as we go forward, if you guys don't mind pivoting a little bit to talking about the long term of this because I think we're realizing that yeah, these effects are going to be pretty serious and and as often as the case Americans are insulated in a way that people around the world are not from the effects

of the American economy crashing time and time again. This is an ongoing situation with no obvious resolution and sight. So I was wondering if we could take a look at, you know, we're a sane person in charge, given the current narrative, though, given given the way that we've moved forward, assuming anything sort of impeachment or, you know, regime change on our end, what's our way out of here? Can we talk about what a possible, what possible steps forward would look like both

“from the military situation, but also how does the American economy stabilize from this?”

And do we just get used to higher gas prices? But I'm hoping maybe we could start talking you out about your situation first? Yeah, sure, I can. So from a, from a kind of a military geopolitical geostrichs huge stance here, I want to caveat this. This again, like I'm repeating what you said, this would be if we had a competent leader in place. I kind of got a kind of got a question that

last episode in the, in the YouTube comments like Trump would never do that. Yes, of course.

This is if we had someone who would do this type of stuff. This is if we had a good leader in a region that we know that. So just making sure that people are aware. So first, we, we have to understand that this administration is getting played by just hyper focusing on this rate of performance. That is Iran's strongest card. It is narrow focus, economically sensitive, and it lets Iran pressure the global economy without doing anything meaningful. They don't have the

fight the US Navy. They don't have to really do anything other than scare people. So if we stay hyper focused on harm moves, we are fighting Iran where Iran is strongest, and then you're getting into the art of war in Sanzu, we're fighting them on their territory. But does that mean we should be surrendering the straight of harm moves? We should absolutely come to some way to make this open and free again. But it means we stop having the, we stop letting Iran define the entire war around

it. And so we take this fight from the straight of harm moves and we move it out into a global system. We blow it up where America is the strongest. The, the entire world because of our soft

that this strategy of hitting, trying to hit Iran in the mouth and the small spot is not working.

And we need to broaden out by rebuilding our allied front. We need, and again, this isn't going to happen, but this is what we need to do. We need to go to Europe, Japan, Australia, all of our golf partners and say, look, we screwed up. We tried to handle this alone. We tried to take care of this problem. We didn't do it well. We need the help on the diplomatic and economic fronts. And along with that, we got to stop trashing NATO. We got to stop picking fights with our allies. We got to

reaffirm our commitments to Europe. Increase support in Ukraine where we can is kind of a, hey, you help us out. We'll definitely help you out in Ukraine because the next phase of this only works if other major Western economies are aligned with us. Without, without those, those other Western economies, countries like China and Russia will find loopholes to help Iran survive the pressure because they love seeing this pressure on the United States. So it has to become not the United

States pressure. It has to be a coordinated global pressure campaign instead of this unilateral American mess that we'd love to think that we're so star-spangled awesome that we can fix ourselves.

And it ends up turning out, no, we can't. We need help with our allies. Second of all, we got to

separate the immediate crisis from this long-term Iran problem. The immediate crisis is poor moods right now. We need to solve that now and kind of backburner everything else. And I know that sounds really bad to the Trump administration. That means we got to backburner the nuclear program, their missiles, their drones or proxies, all of that. But now we're having actual human suffering from the state-of-porn moves being closed. So that needs to be separated.

And if we try to solve all of it at once, we're not going to get anything. That's kind of the premise of the JCPOA. We got around this whole thing. So before I go on, I just, I mean, because I can talk

“about this. I just, if you mad, if you want to interject absolutely throw out whatever you feel”

or, or not. But I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm listening and I'm hearing, you know, obviously, you're saying number one, uh, not obviously, but if I can recap number one, we're, say, essentially restore our standing among allies. 100% come back to to NATO hand and say, hey, we actually recognize that we need your help, which is, does not a very non-Trumpian thing, but that is the caveat of this discussion, which is how could this be done, we'll Trump do it. And then, secondarily, I'm a little

cool question about this because I do feel like the administration while they're talking about Iran's nuclear concerns and all these things have been pretty focused on the straight, uh, and have been delivering a lot of misinformation about the straight. Are you saying that they need to be focused, they need to be actually solving it and that the focus has been, uh, spin. Yeah, it's a, it's what they're doing. It's not a to me from a, from a news perspective.

“It's a spin, I think it's spin for market. I think it's spin for votes. The midterms are coming. I think”

at this point of Trump was was, I wouldn't say smart in this regard. I think he would just understand that the midterms are lost at this point, and he needs to do the right thing and how to get out of this. And the right thing is going to be a bit painful for the United States, and it's not going to get us our maximalist demands. And that's kind of where our maximalist demands is like no more nuke, no more helping the proxies and hezeble on the hoothies, no more killing your people, which

I really wish we could do that, but that's something that we can't force without our own physical forces on ground there. And so because of that, we, we need to kind of parse this out. We need

to compartmentalize and say, okay, first of all, let's solve four moves. And then if we solve that

and ceasefire holds, then we can move to a framework of how do we address the nuke, which is number two on the list. I think humanitarian is number two, but the American people seem to think nuke's are number two. So then we compartmentalize further and deal with humanitarian issue, deal with proxies, deal with everything else, and that's kind of the requirement there. And there's there's multiple, there's much more steps because it's going to require us to apply pressure

external to Iran, including on Israel, including on China and Russia as well. And we can't do that without our allies. So early on, it feels like a lot of the messaging, even from Democratic electives was not necessarily mudied, but they were all doing the sort of rhetorical Trump is going about this the wrong way, but Iran's leaders are evil. Iran is bad to their civilians. And obviously, there are other countries where that's true that we didn't suddenly invade, that we're not

focusing on. So that standard seems false to me. But I would agree with you that we also can't ignore those humanitarian concerns like we do need to address those humanitarian issues. In my opinion,

“also higher priority than nuclear proliferation. I think that's a higher priority, perhaps the”

Iran's nuclear program, but we don't need to be, as we discuss this, you know, there's no endorsement of Iran's regime, but I think if anything, we have really harmed our ability to have any kind of humanitarian impact on it. I mean, obviously we're bombing civilian populations, that's the

I mean, if anything, this makes it more complicated to encourage that. Am I, am I crazy to say that?

No, I mean, we should be supporting, that was the whole premise initially that we all thought when Trump was like help is coming on the way. We thought that that was going to be the premise that he was going to provide aid, provide intelligence, help provide weapons via the Kurds into them so that they can defend themselves against this regime. And none of that happened. And so the minute that took place, the Iranian regime said help's not coming, and then they just killed

thousands of them in the streets. And since this war started, they've had something like 25 or 26 executions, which is the most executions Iran has conducted in a span of this span of time, since the Iatula came into power. So none of this humanitarian threats or efforts that we've made aimed at the, the new Iatula, much to the community is working. And so I think personally,

“we have, that's why we have to expand globally and have, that's exacerbating the problem that”

sounds like, yeah, it's making it worse. We're focusing so hyper-focused on Iran itself in the state of Formus that I think we need to apply economic pressure on things like Russia and China, and potentially start hitting them where it hurts. And obviously where that where it hurts them is in the energy, not both the energy coming out of Russia, but also the energy coming into China from Iran. And that's kind of where I was like, maybe Matt has his ideas on how we can impact

the energy and trade with those countries. So that we can go kind of end around straight of Formus to have some sort of forcing event with Iran. And later on, I can tell I'll tell you that we have to give a bit to Iran as well. We can't just be assholes here. We got to actually give a bit, they got to actually have something. But in the meantime, there are some other avenues other than a blockade and just trying to hit them in the mouth, which clearly is not working. So yeah, I think

economics is going to play a big part in it, that the economics of Iran's supporters in Iran, Iran, Russia, China, North Korea, etc. Matt, any thoughts on that? I don't have a lot of faith. Look,

when it comes to sanctions on Iran, they were always predicated on what our gas prices were.

Like they weren't, they were never serious. They were a joke. You know, when Donald Trump put sanctions on Iran is when our gas prices got cheap enough that he could afford it. So I mean, you know what I mean? And it was the same thing with, with every administration, you know, how we treat Iran has always been predicated on how does it impact our gas prices at all? Like, oh, gas is high. Let's let's chill out on enforcing the sanctions, you know? So like,

“whether we can really really do it. That's what I mean. Like every decision we make regarding Iran,”

which is supposed to be this existential threat, it's been determined by 50 cents at the gas pump. So how existential of a threat can it actually be? Like when gas is forward allors, we stop enforcing sanctions against Iran and just let in Russia the frustrating weakness of the West. Because what's the motivation of playing this act of, of actually having, I mean, are you, are you assuming that it's in good faith when we can afford it? Or is this more to have a

perpetual boogie man? I don't know. Honestly, I think it's a bunch of BS. Like if, if you tell me that some country is an existential threat to us, then why does 50 cents at the gas pump change that? Right now half of America is saying that they're doing their patriotic duty by paying more for gas. Well, I can't they do their patriotic duty when we're not at war. Like why do we have to be at war

“if you do your patriotic? Like if, you know what I mean? Like the whole thing is too political for me.”

It's it's everyone's decisions on Iran is always based on how it hurts or helps them

selves politically, personally, and not what's best for the whole country. That that has always been the case. Well, I don't want to deal with this existential threat because it might cost me an election. What? Like what does that mean? Like if, if they're this threat, they need to be dealt with. And if they're not, go home and shut up, you know what I mean? Like just stop this existential threat. I agree is complete nonsense because there's only frankly two countries on the face of the

earth that are existential threats to the United States. And by proxy, that means they're existential threats to the world because if that existential threat obviously in nuclear strike comes to bear, we respond end of the world. So this notion that small countries, whether it's Iran, North Korea, whatever, are this existential threat, it's completely bogus. And it's Trump using the same playbook that Putin used saying that Ukraine was some sort of existential threat to Russia. That's

that in there. There's no countries truly an existential threat. And the only countries that are,

it basically becomes a globe ending event at that point. So it's, it's either all or none.

You know, they, they keep talking about all the last 47 years. So what have they done for the last 47 years, right? Uh, financed or helped carry out terrorists threats. Um, when all of this is over, are they still going to be able to do that? Yep. Absolutely. So like what the hell are we doing? Like they're still going to be able to do the thing they've done to us for the last 47 years, after all of this is over. Yeah. And also if we're talking about who funded terrorists,

didn't we fund Elkita? Like, we're not spotless on that record. Yeah. Yeah. Take it easy. Take it easy. Take it easy. Hey, we didn't know what they were going to do. Come on. Yeah. Russia was the best

“guy. Oh, but I mean, just serious. Afghanistan. Oh, and that's why I have concerns about us funding”

and arming Lebanon right now to have white, has black get it. We're, they're trying to fight has blood admirable, but that was the same excuse we used when we funded and helped out, uh, the Mujahideen to fight the Soviets. And then they turn around and use those weapons against us. So it's, we, we love to, we love to quote unquote, step on our own dick when it comes to this type of stuff. Wait, we wrote it myself. I don't know. That's a military term. When you, when you leave

that, do you watch Washington himself at first? Yes. Yeah. I can't even know what I'm sitting down.

I'm much less standing down. It does sound more like that. I don't know. It's a little bit as positioned to do that personally. But it basically is like you, we, we have it, we, we think it, we have such a great idea that we're going to go do this thing. And then we end up, it ends up being a great idea briefly. And then we'd have to deal with several decades. If not a generation of consequences. And that's kind of what, what we're seeing here. And now we're doing

it again and Iran. And we potentially could be doing it again with Lebanon. And so we just aren't

“learning from this stuff. And it's, yeah. So that's why I don't think we need to be focusing so”

closely. And why we need the brain power of the collective of our allies who know more than us in some things. And we know more and other things. That's why when we work together with them, it's, it works out. And, and it's a better situation. Like the lenses are different. We should be asking our goal allies. Hey, how do we do this better? We should be asking Europe. From your experience, what do you see? And we just, we just aren't because Trump seems to think that he

knows best all the time always. And it's, it's, it's becoming more and more of a burden and more

of a detriment to the United States that thinking. So we need to expand outward. I mean, if Donald Trump reversing course publicly is what it's going to take, we're in not a great situation. But I am curious. Right. Now, yeah, Matt, we were talking about, I mean, a lot of this does, I feel like every week we go, I can't believe this comes down to three men or one man that you go. But yeah, publicly changing the narrative. I mean, that's a whole other discussion is to like, how do you

create a, you know, a joke in the past about sending him the fake New York Post headline, like Mom Donnie did, but like literally how do you create a path for Donald Trump to psychologically deescalate, which is a whole other conversation. But I wanted to ask you Matt, we're talking a little bit about, you know, in order for us to actually sanction Iran in a way that's effective, we have to be willing to do so. You, you, you've expressed your, your skepticism. This is actually an existential

threat. But if we want to make changes there, we want to do so via sanctions. You're saying we're only willing to do so at times when gas is cheap, because it won't, it won't threaten the politicians in charge, because the prices are a little lower. You're also talking a little bit about like this might reset our understanding. This crisis might have to reset our understanding of gas prices. We might have to get used to the idea that even if the supply is there, that the prices will be different

from what we, what we've been used to in the past, is there any world in which as things settle, Americans get used to paying 50 cents more anyway, and we have the ability to section Iran without causing immediate political pressure or give some kind of buffer to oil prices there, or are we just going to get back to making gas prices. Sorry, not oil prices, gasoline prices. Are we going to get back to making it as cheap as possible at the pump as quick as possible? I've, look, and this

“is just Iran. This is historically, I've never been a fan of any kind of sanctions. I think they're”

stupid, and I think they don't work. But that's just me, what do I know? You know, our, are you just going to leave sanctions on Iran for 20 years? And then what? Like what exactly is going to come of that? Like what is the end game? And I feel like we do so much stuff without having an end game. Like why can't we, I don't know, maybe write up some kind of agreement on a piece of paper,

you could write, I'm sorry, what did San Francisco had with that? I've aesthetically, what would that be in the initial sport? Join comprehensive plan of action. Oh, that's interesting. Yeah. It's a good idea. Join, meaning, yep, two people, right, two countries. Yeah, or more. The point is, like, twist, I interact, and look, people can disagree with me on sanctions all they were. I

all they want. That's, that's fine. I totally understand the pros and the cons. I've just always thought

they were really stupid. And it's probably the largest thing that's driving countries wanting to get away from the US dollar, by the way, using your currency as a weapon is just not cool in my book. But this is something that needs to settle as far as gas prices are concerned. Like I said before, this has always been a wage thing for me, not a gas price thing. And there's ways, there's a lot of ways we can lower gas prices in the United States. And it's mostly by controlling our exports. But

we live in a country, we cater to corporations and we want them to send, you know, you can pay 50 cents more a gallon so we can have leverage over Europe by sending them fuel. Like that's okay.

“You know, and that's what people don't understand. Like a lot of what they pay for gas is because”

we use our natural resources geopolitically to get leverage over other countries. And you know, they blame it on oil companies or whatever. But you know, if we weren't exporting all the diesel, we export around the world. So we can have some control over someone else in the world. Diesel would be a lot cheaper in the United States. And so whatever thing. So we're using our infrastructure by like underselling other exporters or to use it, put pressure on them for other

purposes. Yeah. And look, I'm not opposed to exporting anything, but I am opposed to unlimited

relentless just export as much, you know, just total give it to the corporations. They'll they always

think about the American people first. Oh, yeah. Let them do everything. You know what I mean? Like we are trickling down with. Yeah. Like it's just like it's all down to us guys. It's so close. Yeah. Our whole LNG strategy is to make countries rely on us instead of Russia. Well, I think there's a great point there because we keep focusing in this administration on the punishment, punish them, punish them, punish them, and one thing that the Obama administration

flipped the script on with the JCPOA was kind of was coming to a common understanding. So that we don't so Iran doesn't feel like they are surrendering that they're at the losing end of this because

“that's what they feel like right now. They're feeling like they have to surrender everything. They're”

losing. They're getting killed. They're being destroyed. They're being blockated. So they're just leveraging anything they can. And I want to I want to make this this clear to everyone. I don't think that this maximalist punishment campaign is going to work at all. I think at some point we have to negotiate with them. And I think that the negotiations that are about to happen, Iran is so angry and I don't say it about to happen like in the near like next few days.

The eventually it has to be negotiated out. You don't a war stop on diplomacy. And so what's going to happen is Iran is probably going to get a better deal than they had in the JCPOA.

They probably are going to get a more money back. I mean Trump is talking about 20 billion dollars

going back to them potentially. And I think Obama's JCPOA was like six billion of that. And then there was gateways to get more as long as you maintain the necessary steps. At the very least, I think the Trump administration has backed off of their maximalist no-nube talk to maybe in 20 years or you can have that 3.67% enrichment, which is what the JCPOA had. So what we're seeing now is we are going to, if we don't find a way to work this out with Iran, they're going to continue

to hold the straight out risk. And even in the best case scenario, we probably are going to get a worse deal than the JCPOA that Trump pulled out of. And we ended up spending what do they say 25 billion dollars on this war so far in 13 lives just to get something that's slightly worse than the joint conference plan of action. So we do have to come to the table in good faith, which Trump has not done. We've attacked him twice now when we went to the like during negotiations,

“we started to fight a fight with them. And that's why I'm concerned, I don't think we have”

the administration capable of doing what is necessary. At least until after the midterms, maybe after the midterms, Trump can be neutered enough that more sane players can come into

claw machine comedy out of the country like we didn't South America and be done with it. Just essentially, we get into development these Middle East conflicts with no understanding of, I mean, again, we a very sudden administration is getting involved in these Middle East conflicts with no understanding of the local culture or economic systems. And our only way forward is,

you know, like I was saying, Trump's never going to admit his wrong, right? So they do,

“well, all Trump can do is claim that he won. And so effectively, I think if any of these”

paths are going to happen, what's going to happen is they're going to have to create some kind of narrative, or someone, as you said, if the pressure of the midterms is high enough, as much as he'll never admit it, he does recognize leaning popularity. He does also take crazy swings when it's popularity is waning, but he is that means he's aware of it. So it is possible that someone creates a narrative that he can latch onto. And you know, if he knows he's losing save some amount of

face and still call it a victory. And again, you know, we could do an entire episode with a psychologist on what it would take to get Donald Trump's ego to, you know, put it to to be plaked enough to pretend that he was okay with what it's going to take. But effectively, it sounds like it's going to take a little eating hat, eating crow, uh, cutting hand, eating crow, excuse me, and we can eat a hat, too.

“But effectively, go at hand. A crow and hand took is worth two in the George Bush administration.”

And, uh, I'm, I'm on a long one now. But it's actually, we're going to need to like trust our allies,

do you have reasonable negotiations effectively except a worst deal than we had in the first place.

And even that seems like an unrealistic course of action at the moment because he goes still driving the ship. Like every episode, I'd like to end this episode with a segment we call the least worst part of my week where we take a look at a silver lining or something that's on the rise or less declining than the rest of the world. On that note, Chad, do you have a story you'd like to share with us? Yeah, I mean, kind of looking at the broader geopolitical space for

for the Ukrainians and their gaining influence around the world. One, one cool thing that took place recently was Ukraine met with Armenia. And that's a, that's a much bigger deal because Armenia's

“relatively small country. But that's a much bigger deal than you think because Armenia is very much”

in Russia's sphere of influence. In fact, they are in the collective security treaty organization, which is the wish version of NATO. It's like Russia's version of NATO. It's like all the, the Kazakhstan, it was back to Stan, it was back to Stan. Armenia isn't in such. And the fact that we have Armenia meeting with Ukraine. Now, there wasn't any kind of military agreements. It was just kind of, they wanted to create a framework for future partnerships, economic cooperation, et cetera.

But the fact that Armenia basically looked at Putin and said, we're done with you for now. We're going

to go work with Ukraine and talk to them. Even when Putin was saying, don't do it, that's a huge win because that means Russia's losing influence on the global stage. They are struggling to keep their allies. And this, this goes back to a bit of the, the Russians were unwilling to help Armenia during the conflict they had with Azerbaijan. It's a whole other story. So Armenia is quite angry with Russia at this point. And they are seeking partners with Western nations, including they've met

with the United States. And now kind of unheard of is them meeting with Ukraine. The clear geopolitical enemy of Russia right now. And it looks like Russia's grip on their allies and global affairs continues to slip. Well, I'm glad that Russia's severe influence is shrinking. I, at firm your story, I'm glad that no one happens to be throwing a huge wrench into the spokes of global order right now. So I'm sure everything will work out fine. Matt, do you have any silver lining best worst least

worst part of your week that you like to share with us? I do. Now, I don't know about United, but I'm one of these people that genuinely despise tourists that don't respect the wildlife and whatever area they are visiting on their $10,000 family vacation that they can't pay for that they put on a capitol one card. So right here with the monkeys now, right at me. The capitol one card. I've got a capitol one card, capitol one of your listening. I love your card.

They're not trading for this. Stop it. Let's ask for money for. I love to travel to like beautiful places like I go to like Yellowstone and like that's my gig. I love that kind of stuff. And I hate seeing tourists that just disrupt or just do anything to the wildlife. Anyway, the monkeys, I know I talked about a monkey last week, but this is two weeks in a row of

Yeah, because next week, how to self-medicate? Yeah. They've figured out how to self-medicate from

all of the junk food that the tourists that go to Gibraltar feed them, chocolate, candy, cookies, potato chips. They're literally getting fed all of this junk by the irresponsible Americans that come down there and spend their hard earned money to feed monkeys chocolate. And they noticed scientists in Gibraltar noticed that the monkeys were eating an extraordinary amount of dirt. There's something in the soil in Gibraltar that gives a very calming effect to the monkeys.

It helps with their gastrointestinal systems. It relieves the symptoms that they suffer from eating all of this ultra-processed American junk food that we're taking and giving to them.

So they're literally medicating themselves from our contours by eating an enormous amount of dirt.

And I just think it's really cool. And they have discovered that these monkeys are communicating

“with other like herds or tribes of monkeys and spreading the word about how you need to eat the dirt.”

And monkeys eating dirt is spreading across Gibraltar like at Gibraltar, like 98 degrees back in 1996. I don't know. Like it's just when it enters a current reference there later. Like I don't know if you got a little bit today because I'm not in my 50s. Yeah, that's that's that. But yeah, I thought that was a great story. You're very late. They have no. They have figured out how to self-medicate. I thought that was the coolest thing ever.

It's like no matter what people do to them, they will figure it out.

I also like the angle of, oh man, I've didn't know that process American food. You know, it would really clear me out of some just straight dirt. Something healthy. I think you might know this McDonald's. I got to eat some soil from the ground. We're like, we're like, I don't know, a month away

“from having going to the palatryl cell dirt. And it'll be like 80 bucks for like a bag of dirt.”

Let's go see the stomach, a pile of dirt. I'm going to pass this on to my wife. Why can't we sell the dirt? My team making wife. I'm going to be like, hey, have you heard of this dirt? Maybe we can add some dirt to our tea. So it's monkey dirt. Yeah, drinking activated charcoal at this point. We're not. Yeah, you know, come on. Madagascar and soil from different places around the world. We could we could market this.

This is really, if find out ever wants to pivot to the like brain supplements and pseudo-science homeopathic yours angle, we could start selling like American power homeopathic. Should go to Gibraltar, get some dirt. Bring it back here. Say it's from Gibraltar and everyone will buy it. It's been a lot special dirt from Gibraltar. And you use our promo code, American power at checkout, at American Express and capital one. Come on. We're at discover

level podcast right now. We haven't. Our diners club podcast right now. If you find someone who accepts us on credit, that's great. We're so happy to be included. But I've got a good story for this week. This is more of a general recap for how my past week went. But as many of you may know, perhaps listeners to an energy podcast are aware of the fact that it was earth week. This past week, the week that contains earth day. Guess what? We've expanded it. It's a crisis. We got us been a

whole week working on it. Also climate week, we got that one in September. We need at least we need climate year at this point. But it was earth week this past week. And as a result, I had the privilege of doing some shows and workshops with students at schools across America. In different places, I actually went up to Massachusetts and did a show and workshop with some of the students there. I worked on a show and also worked for several months with students at CU Boulder for their

inside the greenhouse climate science program where they put on a big show for earth day. And most recently, I actually had a chance to speak to some students at SIVES in high school in New York in a really cool class called writing to make change that works with the students on how to shape your writing for activism. I got to talk to them about it right speeches and write comedy. And I would say that

“there's a lot of doom going on right now. And culturally, if the only way that you”

interact with people between the ages of 15 and 25 is on the internet, you might believe that everyone is completely black-pilled and hopeless. And I do think that we're dealing with a lot of phone addiction and a lot of domerism. It's a very real thing. But I can't say my experiences were representative of all of America. But I found that almost exclusively the people that I talk to in high school in college to be really interested in people really curious with way more awareness

of how fucked everything is than I had as a teenager by a long shot. And I was a real

popular when I was in college. And generally all liberals were against him. But it was considered

“unpopular to be political in many ways. And I'm finding that a lot of young people I work with,”

a lot of people I teach, are way more engaged and way more aware of power structures and class structure in a way that was not popular or not common when I was that age. And so, you know,

I wish this were a funnier story that had a monkey involved. But unfortunately, I'm always

a great story. What is I feel really, I was really invigorated by talking to all these people because I were really interested in it. I was interested in finding climate change. And I thought of it because some of them were telling me that they had to clean up the vapes in the creek down in Boulder, Colorado because animals were vaping. So, they tried dirt. That was my connection to Matt's story. They're doing a lot of clean up and pick up my hand to stop the animals from

sucking on vapes and zins or whatever the hell else people are throwing away on college campuses. It's bleak. But I was really excited to see every, every group of young people I talked to, I say, get off your phone, get off the internet. It seems hopeless. Go stick your fingers in the dirt, go meet people. And I'm really excited to say that I see a lot of people doing it. A lot of people who are actually interested in it. So, I'm not going to be, you know, Pauliana, I should say the kids

are all right. Probably most of them are still racist. I don't know. But I'm meeting a lot of young people who are interested in making a change. And I think that's really exciting right now. I think a lot of people are really becoming aware of what's going on in the world. And that's the least

worst part of my week. Now that's very cool. I'm always hopeful for kids. They're always seem to be

“better than us. That's what I hope. Oh, I'm not hopeful for them. That's why this is exciting for me.”

Everyone. So very cool. You don't really, it's don't know what's going on. No, I try to, I try to, I try to be, I think people like to paint entire generations with a single brush and it's ridiculous. But, you know, we all want to believe that Gen Z is hopeless or Gen Alpha is going to just live with an iPad for and just from their face for their whole lives. But I actually think that to some extent, finally, people, the proliferation of information and the crisis has

got to the point where people are really starting to get a good sense of what's going on in the world. And I think that's really cool. Yeah, very cool. We'll talk to you all next week. This has been the American Power Podcast from Findout Media. I'm Nat Towsen for Chad Scott and Matt Randolph. And before we go, we just want to make sure you can follow us on social. Chad, where can people find you on social media? TikTok, CP Scott 15 YouTube at CP Scott 16. I know it's confusing. And then I'm on

Facebook. Also, CP Scott 15 just find Chad Scott in the NATO, global warfare space, not the NFL coach. So, or but. And Matt, where can we find you? YouTube Facebook, TikTok, Blue Sky, Instagram, Red, Sub-Stack. News Nation. The name of view. Sometimes on the news nation. Yeah. And I am at Nat Towsen on whatever social media I choose to pay attention to at any given time. Usually Instagram. But I also want to tell you folks about a brand new app that I'm on, which is

find out social. It is the first of its kind. It's a social network associated with our

media organization podcast network. You can interact with other listeners and hosts of your favorite podcasts. And there's a news feed. And it's not owned by evil billionaires who will sell your data.

“So, you can find us all there. I believe that is launching today for early adopters on the weight list.”

And in a few days for everyone else, so find us on find out social. I'm at Nat Towsen. And once again, this has been American power from find out media for Chad Scott and Mr. Global Matt Randolph. I'm Nat Towsen. We'll talk to you next week and remember power corrupts, but American power corrupts American Lee.