EP:42 - Will the Ceasefire Hold?

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All right, time to show again. Hey, don't Cooper, how you doing, man? Good, brother, how are you? I'm doing good. All right, how's the world doing?

Well, the world said better days, there are problems need to be resolved.

For sure, I've had a very busy day being interviewed about things I already know.

“So the problem with that is that I didn't learn anything new today, really, about the most important”

recent developments. And by the way, we're recording this about 24 hours before it's going to go live here on Thursday, so there could be even worse developments or better ones, I guess, between now and then. But I'm traveling. I'm going to the Texas State Limitary Party Convention this weekend and giving us speech.

And so there's that, but anyway, there is a ceasefire, which is really great, as we talked about Donald Trump could just stop and it turns out even all the worst bluster of evasing

Iranian civilization up the face of the earth was really just cover for him back and all

the way down. But then changing his mind about whether he's back and down, of course, it's very controversial that Israel's still bombing Lebanon and claiming it's exempt from the deal on America's taken Israel's side, even though that was not the deal that the Trump administration originally struck with the Iranians there, so already breaking it on Israel's behalf.

And I don't know if he saw it's more than 300 killed in Beirut and they bombed a funeral in the Bukhavali with a massive bomb and all kinds of civilians called in November 300 killed. Their bomb in all different parts of Beirut that are not the so-called Asbala strongholds in the southern suburbs, but all across the territory.

And I was asked actually in an interview today, what was the strategy behind that and I don't really know, but I guess my best idea is it's an attempt to turn the rest of the different factions in Lebanon against the Shiites and against Asbala for that. And in fact, I got to email Darrell from God that I interviewed on the show back years ago.

I don't know if this was supposed to be on the record or not, but I won't quote his name directly to you, but he emailed me said he's in Beirut now and said that that strategy seems to be working.

“Maybe I could find that email and read exactly how he put it, but essentially I think”

he was saying like surprisingly, because this doesn't usually work in other countries, but this is working in Lebanon and making people blame Hezbollah for getting them into this mess, which there's obviously some truth to that, but anyway, so that's where I'm at. That's what I know. What do you think about what's going on here, man?

Well, we kind of have Schrödinger's ceasefire right now, right? Nobody's really sure if it's, you know, is this a tenuous ceasefire? Is there really even one like nobody's really really seems to be quite sure? Yeah, I was really interested in the sort of sequence of events leading up to the announcement of the ceasefire and the cancellation of the destruction of Iranian civilisation, you know?

The day like the day that the ceasefire was announced and the day prior, there were several news items, all very prominent, well, some of them were prominent than others, but all of them were in major outlets.

“There was a general, a retired general that went on, I think MSNBC might have been CNN and”

was reporting on a rumor, he said it wasn't like he had firsthand knowledge of this, but it's what he was hearing from his friends who were flag officers, still in the service that there was some brewing discontent and even talk of like potential in subordination after Trump, you know, started making the threats about destroying civilisation and whatnot that they felt like some people at least within the flag ranks felt like they were going

to have to be the ones to say no. Then there was, there was, there was, did you say, what the source was for that, this is something you heard? No, it was a retired general went on MSNBC or anything. And he was reporting it as a rumor, like he wasn't saying I know this for a fact, but

this is what I'm hearing from my friends who were still active, you know? And then there was also the story that St. Com was vetoing target selection from that Pete Hegseth was sending them and demanding certain things get hit and they were refusing

is significant, but what's really significant to me about that is the fact that that leaked

out and when public when it did, then there was the crazy story, the day that he not the day of ceasefire in the New York Times by Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan, where, I mean, they just lay out in not in general terms, like they have quotes from all these senior cabinet members, which tells you like, however they got this information out there was coming from people like in the room that everybody in the Trump administration was

like the exception of Hegseth tried to tell him not to do this, tried to warn him off of this. Some of them were like more assertive about it than others, but like the entire attitude virtually all of his advisors, again, with the exception of Hegseth, was, this is a bad idea.

And for that to come out that day, it was another story.

This one didn't get, you know, it wasn't quite as prominent because the New York Times

“won kind of sucked up all the oxygen, but there was another one, I think it was Suzy Wiles”

or maybe another source in the cabinet who was concerned that Trump was not getting, like all picture of what was going on, like people were presenting a rosy, you know, a rosy picture of what was going on in the ground in Iran. And so all of these came out either the day of or the day before the ceasefire was announced right.

And when you couple that with what had just happened with this sort of, you know, was it a failed raid, was it just a, you know, a really kind of strange rescue mission or whatever, like, you know, I think what probably happened is somewhere in the middle of the official story and the speculation that people are putting out there, I think that probably it was something like, you know, pilot went down or a plane went down in the region, general

vicinity of Isfahan. And it was too far inland to just try to send a couple of hellows to go scoop this guy

“up or do some small operation like that.”

And they already had this large special operations force that had been studying the area and was like ready to do another operation there called upon and that they, that they, that they just sent them in there to either rescue the guy or maybe, you know, in the meantime while the guy was being rescued, try something, I don't know. But we all know how it ended, you know, something six or seven aircraft destroyed, including

two HC-130s, you know, large planes that that, you know, that's specific configuration is very expensive. There's a lot of gear on board destroyed those things. And our guys, you know, they, they ended up on the ground waiting for another pickup. I mean, there's a few hundred guys apparently on the ground and arranging to pick those

guys up when they're C-130s have been destroyed. And you've got to figure something out is, you know, there were people scrambling to get that done. And they were on the ground for three, four hours apparently waiting for that to happen.

And, you know, it was only just through overwhelming close air support, blowing up basically

with from what it sounds like every military age male and vehicle within several kilometers of those guys who knows how many innocent people got killed as a result of that. Because it sounds like we're blasting everything that even was close to them.

“You know, it's probably the only thing that kept them from being overrun.”

And, you know, if, if there had been like a point, if they had gotten stuck out there for a few more hours, so that just because of the available resources, there had to be a gap in the Saudi generation, you know, where it had to slow down as planes refueled and kind of like, you just, you know, a gap of even, you know, an hour or two, there's a chance that the Iranian militias and forces around there would have been able to come to grips

with our special ops guys there and get close enough that couldn't use close air support on them. And who knows what would have happened? And so this was a very close run thing, you know, obviously the aircraft losses are the big story.

But, I mean, this was an operation that was very close to going terribly wrong. And so when you have that happen in which whether or not it was a, you know, an attempt to use the pilot rescue pull off this is for Henri or whatever, whatever it was, it was definitely those guys who were planning that raid, doing an operation that was very similar to the one that got leaked to the press just a couple of days before about finding

the landing strip and all the different things right in the vicinity of where it would take in place, which, you know, whatever it was, would mean you would think that that operation after the way that just went, that that whole thing about going steel and their uranium

And so if you think about where we had arrived up to that point, like why was Trump saying,

I'm going to destroy Iranian civilization, you know, you're just going crazy like this. It was because we had gone to the point where, you know, our military target deck was starting to run very thin. I mean, there were, there are several of these underground, missile and drone bases underneath mountains and just heavily underground bunkers that we've hit three, four times with heavy,

heavy, heavy weapons and we have not stopped them from being able to continue to produce out of those things. And so we got into sort of the limit of what we could do to their military capabilities

directly through air power alone.

And we were facing, you know, this sort of moment of truth, which was, are we going to do what the Israelis want to do, which is just destroyed Iranian civilization, you know, bomb everything that people, all the life support systems that the people there need. Or are we going to, you know, do some even crazier versions of what we're just tried in your history on and, you know, send guys in to go try to secure these places like

manual. And so in other words, we were at a point where all of our options were, we're both extremely risky uncertain to meet with success and certain to be just massive escalations that would have caused immediate massive reprisals across the region.

“And, you know, once Trump got to the point, you know, I think this whole time he's really”

been hoping that there'd be this Deus Ex Machina, you know, with Delta guys, we'd go in there and get the uranium and they come out and now he can say, all right, we win again. And, you know, let's slow this down and run and like, look for this way out that would be face saving for him and that would be the way to exfiltrate himself from the situation. But once that was taken off that elbow and you have all of these stories coming out that

are clearly based on very, very high level cabinet and Pentagon leaks saying that, you know, either we're telling them no to some of the targets they want to hit or, you know, we all tried to tell them this was a bad idea from start where all of these things starting to come out shows you. There was some real resistance that was starting to push back from within the system. And, you know, he was at this point where it was either massive

escalation when you know you don't have the full support of your own people, you know,

“because they're, they're showing you that or figure out a way out. And that's why we got”

all the Pakistan and said, you guys got to help us do this. And then it makes sense, too, because when you think about like how strange the whole sequence was regarding Lebanon, right? Where it was like the day that the, that the cease fires released, it includes all of the allies and including Lebanon. The Pakistani Prime Minister puts out the official message, like announcing the thing and it mentions Lebanon directly, the White House doesn't contradict them, nobody

in the, in the U.S. government contradicts that. And the next day, Benjamin Netanyahu says, "Yeah, we're not doing that. We're gonna, we're gonna bomb a route and do whatever we want in Lebanon." And you have all these U.S. officials who are backtracking like, "Oh, it was a misunderstanding

or, you know, it was never meant to be Lebanon or what they're talking about or, you know,

just all of these sort of just equivocations and denials of something that is very obvious, they're very obvious of lying. I mean, like, there's just, you know, the Pakistanis say they're lying everybody knows they're lying because everybody who would have been involved with this situation knows that Iran never would have accepted a ceasefire, that they didn't include Lebanon."

“And so, you know, the only way I can make sense of that, you know, people want to say like,”

"Well, Benjamin Netanyahu got on the phone and like put his foot down." But they knew Benjamin Netanyahu was gonna be unhappy with it when they did it to begin with. Like, I think it was just the moment was coming where his civilization ending threat was either gonna have to be carried out or his bluff called. And we were just like telling whatever they need to hear to take the ceasefire. But 10 point plan, yeah, sounds awesome. Lebanon, yeah, whatever, just fine ceasefire. Just do whatever

you have to do to sort of get us away from this deadline and then we'll work out, you know, the consequences of that the day after. And so now we're in this place where it's gonna be very interesting because, you know, if this thing wants, if they want to restart this thing, we're gonna be right back where we were that same day where the military targets are hardened and going to be very hard to access with any like really good return on investment.

And our only real options are extremely risky operations with involving a lot of ground troops or just massive escalation against civilian infrastructure. And we're gonna be right back

and force our hand again. But now that we really do see through all of these media stories that

“came out, you know, the, I mean, they're literal like word-for-word quotes of what Rubio and,”

you know, some of the other cabinet members said to Trump in the situation room when he was after he was briefed by Netanyahu. So I mean, this is like, these are very high-level leaks, you know. And for these things all to come out like in the two days before this big moment of truth comes, right after this operation really goes south, any escalation is going to be like Trump's

in the position of, he's gonna have to once again basically tell his entire cabinet, his

and video D. I don't care what you think. We're gonna do what I want to do and what I want to do is what Benjamin Netanyahu wants to do or he's gonna have to finally grow a sack and tell these people know, you know, and tell Benjamin Netanyahu and the Israelis know and we're kind of at this form. We're gonna find out if he's really capable of that, you know, because all of the things

“that are arrayed against continuing and escalating this war, you know, that's a, that was a litany”

of stories that came out that really like sends the message that there is a huge amount of resistance within the American system, that pushing this any further, that we have done what we could using military means that wouldn't involve just a massive long protracted destructive war that nobody wants, that Trump really at this point, you know, if he can't say no to Israel went under those circumstances when there is so much public resistance from his own

highest level officials and military advisors, I mean, we might as well just bring Netanyahu over here and let him sit in the Oklahoma office. Yeah, I was my joke is when Mr. President made in the prime minister of the Senate somehow, whatever, kicked himself up stairs to just supreme overlord while Netanyahu were on the whole government, you know, has been like that.

“So yeah, well, look, I mean, right off the bat, they took the Israeli side, they sent J.D.”

Vance out there to go, oh, you know what? This was a misunderstanding, but we never said left

him on. Oh, come on, man. Well, have you seen you said you were like wrapped up in interviews today, so you might not have seen the stories, like it's being reported now. First it was reported that we helped draft the Pakistani statement. Oh, yeah, that was a yesterday because the original post on Twitter, including the thing at the top that said, this is for the Pakistanis, which like the Pakistanis, all Americans, and maybe 11 on right his own staff would not say the

Pakistan prime minister, they would just say the prime minister, right? So, like there was first, there's always reporting that that is like we did help draft that apparently. And then there was further reporting saying that President Trump personally and specifically approved the message that included Lebanon as part of the ceasefire. And so of course, no one, if he just stopped

and think about it for a second, does anyone believe that Iran would have ever agreed to a ceasefire

that didn't include Lebanon? Give me a break. Just forget about that. Yes. They're trying to entertain the possibility that the lie is true. It's a lie. Yes. And the fact that they would, this is, this is what really gets me, you know, like the fact that they would lie so obviously and so brazenly about something that, you know, this is not a neutral lie. This isn't like what were you doing in the closet over there? Oh, nothing wrong. Don't worry about it. By saying

what they're saying, they're saying that the Pakistanis are locked. You know, and that all the people who were involved in our present, like, you know, for this thing as it was going all those people are liars. And that's a dramatic step to take. I mean, and it's the second time that we have done this with mediators that we engage with, we asked to like mediate. First with the Oman prime foreign minister, you know, they just, he came out and just said, we're, you know,

right before this whole thing started, we're extremely close to a deal. The Iranians have made all of these just unprecedented offers far and excess of anything they've ever offered before. And then they just come out like the next week, you know, as we start the war, saying, oh, they were like bragging about how many nukes they could make and like just refusing to budge on any, just calling that foreign minister a liar, which, you know, if you really think about it,

like when you, this is like a real question of like, it's not a, it's not just a regular lie, because, you know, when you ask somebody to mediate, you're getting them to vouch for your honesty, right? Like if we're not just lying about Iran now, we're not just doing deception that involves Iran, we're bringing you in as a mediator because now, if we lie, if we deceive, we're deceiving you too.

in international diplomacy. And we've done it twice now. And I'll be honest with you, I think probably

“at both times, you know, both times, probably went the same way. I think that we probably,”

like, at least a lot of people involved on our side probably wanted to go a de-estalatory direction. But, again, they's railies. They just, they have the power, dude. I mean, he was funny. I don't know if you saw this today. And I'm kind of half joking about this, but only half, I guess at this point, because who knows, there was this, there was this really strain, like, Melania Trump called this like short notice press conference.

If she goes out and gives it short speech, just denying that she and Jeffrey Epstein had any like, kind of close relationship and like, you know, just that kind of thing, like just to announce that, I guess, like, and then a couple hours later, the story comes out in the daily beast. And now there, there was another story. I just saw a come out. There's like a 2002 email from her to Elaine Maxwell, asking about Jeff and Palm Beach and all this other kind of stuff. So, like, hmm, it's like,

okay, wait a second. So, you've got the country that Jeffrey Epstein word for is very, very,

very upset with Donald Trump for doing something that agreeing to a ceasefire that they did not want. And then the next day, Donald Trump totally backtracks and flip flops and says, okay, yeah, they were right, like, forget about it, like, whatever, whatever they say is true. And then this little, this little story about Epstein comes out. It's like, that feels like a warning shot to me.

“Yeah, it comes to me like, because people were flipping out. Like, why does she even do this?”

It seems so apropos of nothing that she would come out and do this speech. And then it's like, oh, I get it. What happened was the daily beast called for comment before they publish their piece. Yeah. And her and her people slap together to do this thing to let her go out and kind of preempt

the thing, positioning the way she said, I was never a victim of Epstein. I just saw him at a

party a couple of times, but that's all, you know, man. And yeah, it's pretty hard to to conclude any other thing than, yeah, the Israeli state is using their cutouts at the daily beast to do this hit. And I know, at this point, it's like, okay, we're going to go meet in, you know, Islamabad, or that seems to be like on suspension right now, too. But like, we're going to go meet and talk about what? Like, is that cancel? It seems like it's in a state of uncertainty, like right now,

you know, because the Iranians are saying, you know, look, it's like you, you just, you know, you just said, like anybody that thought that the Iranians were just going to abandon Hezbollah, I forget the fact that Hezbollah was, you know, they proved their loyalty to Iran, fighting ISIS, taking thousands of casualties, proved their loyalty again by stepping into this war. There's that, and that there's like a matter of just, you know, of honor and reciprocal loyalty there that I'm

sure a lot of the IRGC officials like really take seriously. But it's more than that. I mean, it's just, everybody talks about the ballistic missile program and the drones, dude, like the loyalty of their regional proxies is a massive, massive component of the Iran's deterrent capability. I mean, the fact that they get into a war, and you got the PMRF, Hezbollah, and the Houthis who were all there, like, either ready to go at a moment's notice or just jump

into it. I mean, that's, that's a huge part of their deterrent. And if they abandon Hezbollah,

“which is the most important one, by far, you know, an organization that has, I think, distinguished”

itself, you know, in 2006, and in this most recent conflict, it's probably the best light infantry in the region. I mean, they're just, you know, just for that reason, you wouldn't think Iran would want to abandon them. But if they abandon Hezbollah, the Houthis, the PMRF, like, all this Hezbollah, they're going to look at them and be like, oh, okay, they'll drop us, like, a bad habit, like, no problem. So they're just not going to do that. And anybody who's remotely involved

with this situation wouldn't have done that. And that's just, again, leaving aside the fact that that issue was made completely explicit in the negotiation for the ceasefire and in the announcement that came out. Well, so let me change this subject backwards a little bit to the New York Times story and what it reveals about the talks there. So, or then decision making, so not the talks,

we're talking about, but the decision to start the war. The first part is about Netanyahu came to town.

And amazingly Trump doesn't even sit at the head of the table. He sits, you know, right hand of his own seat so that he can sit directly across from Netanyahu. And then Netanyahu, you know,

he's in charge in a way or whatever. And then he gives them this lie that we already knew this.

“We said this, you know, at the time, they said this publicly at the time. I got to do his hit them”

in no fall. It's such a weak and crumbling regime. They had to put down, they had to murder 45,000 people or 85,000 people or whatever number you like in order to just barely cling on the power just six weeks before. And so, oh, he got to do his just hit him and no fall right down and all that. And then the story says that then Netanyahu left. And then the head of the CIA, Radcliffe and the Secretary of State, Slash National Security Advisor, Rubio and then all agreed

that it's bullshit. In fact, I thought it was funny. Radcliffe says it's forceful. And then

Rubio says in other words, it's bullshit just to make sure that Trump understands what the word

forceful means. I mean, according to Maggie Haberman, who knows. But here's my point, Derek Cooper, I do have a point. The point is that the way they recount the story in the times, this is credible enough is that at least coming from principles involved, obviously, not just from their deputies, but somebody, you know, at the highest level was given in that stuff. And to me, it's sort of highlighted and just what a regular guy Trump is, rather than the

cartoon character, we're so used to all the time, that when he's not on TV and he's just in a room with his guys, that they all are really just kind of regular dudes. And so it's he, like Radcliffe and J.D. Vance, like there's nothing particularly special about these guys in terms of, you know, their deep experience and diplomacy or their deep readings of international policy or their, whatever study of Iranian nuclear technology or, I mean, there was no Kissinger in that room,

you know, yeah, that's right. And there's no, look, and they even excluded Tulsi Gabbard,

“and you have to assume, I think, fairly to be fair to her. I think it had to have been because”

she would have too much to say that the president didn't want to hear. She just knows too much about this. And the fact is, she can be in a wrong hawk. And I think in certain circumstances, I mean, we saw her come out and give rhetorical support for this thing after it started.

And I think, you know, it's even possible that she supported it in the first place for all

I know. I don't know. But I know that she really hates Al-Qaeda. And that's the opposite of Iran. And she knows that. And so, you know, I could see how she would be excluded from knowing too much about it. Anyway, my point is this. And honestly, I ain't bragging only slightly a little bit bragging about this piece that I wrote in August. I'm sorry. I said on some other guys showed July, but that's not right. There's August, 2005. Okay, 21 years ago, who's behind the coming war with Iran?

And in this article, you got to page down. I had this whole thing about what's, you know, how these idiots empowered Iran in Iraq or two. I even say in one of these articles,

“I think it's this. When I say, if you think this fighting is bad, just wait until the real civil”

war kicks off. Does this still just a summer of '05, right? Anyway, they got much worse after that. So, anyway, here I say our soldiers could get killed in Iraq because they're embedded with this she likes there. You got to look out for that. And then I have this exactly backwards here by the way. Think of Iran as a fancy Western word for Persia. It's coastline comprising one side of the Persian Gulf, access to Saudi oil and the Arabian sea could easily be, could be easily halted,

which would destroy the world economy and quickly. And so, there's me when I was 28 years old or just during 29 years old, 21 years ago, and warning about that Iran could close down the Persian Gulf because how are you going to stop them? Because it's called that because it's Persia. And they own that entire coastline on the northeast side there. And so, the point being is not hey, poop, look at me like I'm so bright or whatever. Although, yeah, I was doing a good job.

But the point is that I was just reading the American conservative interview in their guys, but the point is that man's someone in that room should have been able to say to Trump. I mean, hell, this is a year and a half before the chiefs took George W. Bush to the tank and explained to him why we don't want to attack Iran, boss because it's too much to bite off and chew. Man, they got too many missiles and too many levers that they can push back. We don't have escalation

dominance. We don't want to do it. They told W. Bush that a year and a half after I wrote this article, they told him explicitly what for why not. And then Joel Klein leaked that and wrote

in early spring 2007. And, you know, of course, I got access to the great Garth Porter sources.

We've known about this anti-war dot com folk have always known that the real danger here. I mean,

for 20 years that the real danger here is they got more missiles than we know how to defend from. And also, we got troops in Iraq that are embedded with the Shiites and can be, you know, turned on and when these guys are very close to Iran and all this stuff. So, but then if you read that time story, listening to, you know, they're retelling of even the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff now, along with the Vice President, the Secretary of State, the CIA director

and the President sitting there talking about all this, that essentially none of them said this. None of them said, listen, Mr. President, worst case scenario, they decide to go and we talked about this on our show over and over again for weeks. Ourself. Whereas case scenario, they do the

thing they've been saying for weeks that they will do. Yeah, yeah, exactly. They were very explicit

about it and that they can do it, you know, and apparently not. Apparently they, he bought the earlier kind of Israeli line that like, now, whatever it is that they have, we can handle it. Don't worry about that. For the field, no fall before it becomes an issue. Yeah. And I just, I can picture the conversation have been, you know, had between like any six drinking buddies anywhere in America. Well, I heard they're making nukes. Well, come on, nobody can stop us. We should just kick

their ass. Should we wait or should we do it now? Let's do it now. Blah, blah, blah, but it's just Tommy and Billy and Joey and they just, they don't really know what they're talking about. And they don't know anybody who really knows about this stuff, you know? Yeah, it's even a little bit worse. And

“that I think that Tommy Billy and Joey would be like a group of buddies who all are, you know,”

at least, you know, I'm on some level like each other's, each other's equals in terms of the respect they have for each other. And, you know, Trump is a guy who surrounds himself with sycophants and with people who, you know, he surrounds himself with people like, look, somebody like Marco Rubio, who I'm not like a Rubio hater. I think he sounds like he's an intelligent guy, certainly like in comparison to what you get out of Washington most of the time. He sounds very articulate and

fairly knowledgeable. But, you know, this is a guy who Trump was, I mean, he was, he was belittling and mocking him and just like, just the most, you know, emasculating terms. And now he has this guy who's just out there running cover form, telling lies for him, just sucking up to him. And, you know, you even have Trump given that speech at the Saudi forum in Miami a few weeks ago when he was saying, he doesn't like to surround himself with people who are really successful

“because then you have to listen to them and tell their stories about their success. I like to surround”

my people, myself with people who aren't so successful because then they got to sit around and listen to me, talk about my success. And so when you have that kind of like a narcissistic personality complex and you relate to people in that way, you get into this trap where anybody that you're able to get on your side, anybody you're able to either manipulate or intimidate or do whatever your magic is to get them to come over and be one of the people in your entrepreneurs. You're going to have

around. You do not respect those people because if they were respectable people, they would have stood up to you and they wouldn't put up with it. They wouldn't have been, you know, so easily manipulated by you. And so when he is rarely come and they make a presentation and everybody else in the room around him, people he doesn't respect, tell him something opposite of what the Israelis are saying. I think you just sanctioned the Israelis no better than any you idiots, you know? And you know,

it's, but it's really remarkable about it, though, as you would think that Trump, I mean, he just, you'd think he would have a certain level of just understanding that of the Israelis willingness to to line manipulate him. I mean, because I don't know about how you feel about this,

I don't believe for one second that the Israelis actually like, I believe Trump thought about it,

but I don't think the Israelis for one second thought that we were going to go in there and kill the Iatola and the whole government was going to collapse and we win the lose. I don't think they thought that for one second. They know better than that. And I think that what they were thinking is we just got to get the U.S. into the war. Like once they're in there and we've killed the Iatola and we've done all this to boy, they're in it now and we'll figure out how to win after that. Once we got the U.S.

“like completely embroiled, you know, that's what they're doing. Yeah, no, they're doing this on stupid.”

Do they've penetrated Iranian society for so many years, so deeply, they don't mean stupid, but not this time, not like that, because I'm putting, put actual screw to them and say,

Paola, Paola, you can take over. You really think that the P. Jack or Jondalara or whatever

combination of these groups could sack Tehran and take it from the I.G.C. Get the hell out of here, dude. Not to mention the fact that they already shot their shot in January. You know, they had this network of insurgents that they probably spent a decade or more building up and prepared to come in. Yeah, and it got blown up, you know, and once that was out of the picture,

“I mean, they definitely should have known better. But, you know, I think one thing I do think is”

is possible. I don't think the Israeli stuff that what they were selling Trump was actually going to happen, but I do think the Israelis probably like Trump, like so many of our own people, they probably did buy in to this myth of just unlimited American military power. You know, like, because like, I was talking to, I was talking to Sony about this yesterday, how, you know, you go back, you look at Iraq, you look at Afghanistan, and you say, well, we lost those words.

It's like, yeah, we failed to achieve our mission in those countries. You know, for sure, but it wasn't like we went in and, and lost to another military. This was not like a military defeat where, you know, they just, they overcome our ability to continue carrying on the war or something. It was said, you know, it was a more proof that, you know, the U.S. military is not well-suited to turning a bunch of post-tune, you know, goat herders into Vermont Democrats, right? But,

“nobody looked at it as a military defeat. And so, nobody was really quite sure, like, what are”

the limits of American power? Like, when it just comes to just kicking another military's ass and beating them into submission. Like, what are the limits of that? And nobody really knew. And obviously, on both sides, Israel and ours, we just dramatically over-estimated it, you know, and under-estimated the Iranians ability and willingness to take it and keep getting up and punching back. And it's weird. The great Gareth Porter wrote a book about this about Vietnam, or his Vietnam

book, is called "Parals of Dominants." And the parallel of dominance, in this case, it was a reference to the fact that the leaders of the National Security State at that time, they knew good and well, despite the lives they were telling the American people. They knew good and well that the United

States was far more powerful than the Soviet Union and China combined, and that there's no power

that could resist us. At that time, the Russians had four intercontinental ballistic missiles, and they were all within one atom bomb's blast radius of each other, and, you know, completely take outable in a first strike, no problem. And so they were so full of hubris about the overwhelming technological power of the American Empire. That was how they knew that OG men would simply have to give in to them. And this is how they got caught in that escalation trap. I don't know if Robert Pape coined the phrase,

but he's the one talking about that. That's his sub-stack about it right now. And it starts with what you do is you hit them really hard, and then they do what you say. And then if that doesn't work, then you hit them again. And then you just keep hitting them until you freak out and say, "I'm going to end your whole civilization." And then they better give in. And then, of course,

underlying all this is the mythology of Harry Truman ending the Second World War by using nuclear weapons

against Japan, when that's not what did it. But they all kind of believe that. And so, if you either threaten to hit them that hard, you do hit them that hard, then they'll give in, even though there are so many examples about not working, including Gaza recently, where they just absolutely pummeled the crap out of those people. But they're fighting age males. Guess what? They're not just throwing down their arms and surrender. And so...

That's remarkable. And then Yahoo was giving a speech to in Hebrew, too, in Israeli audience,

“television audience. Yes, if your day I think it was. And he was bragging about you. He was telling”

all the accomplishments of these wars and everything. And he was bragging about how we now occupy 50% of Gaza. And I remember, like, I followed, you know, over the course of the last couple of years, as this has been going on. Like, you know, I haven't been following you day to day as closely as I was in the early days. And I was like, kind of surprised. I was like, you only can control 50% of the Gaza hit this point after all this, you know, and all the crap out of every day.

Yes, and you're on footage today. Man, right before we went on here, Darah, I saw horrible footage of the bombing of Gaza. They shot a little girl in the head today, too, and nine-year-old girl. Yeah, it's really nasty that, like, you know, the Israelis. They've done this, they've done this on multiple occasions, where, you know, they'll be doing something to the Palestinians and they'll start another more flashier war with somebody else and

Lebanon or something that takes everybody's eye off of what's going on. And while that's happening,

And now Iran is big enough that they can ramp up Lebanon, the West Bank, and Gaza under the

“cover of Iran. Although, hopefully now that's kind of canceled, but I guess we'll see how it goes.”

I mean, Iran is still firing rockets and Israel still bomb in Lebanon. Yeah, it seems to me very simple. Like, if we are really going to allow Netanyahu to derail this thing over the question of Lebanon, then the war's just going to pick back up, because there's just a, I can't see any way that the Iranians can afford to just abandon and Hezbollah like that, you know, the idea of time like this. Like, there are own deterrent,

their own national security just requires, you know, the loyalty of their proxies. And I just can't see that happening. And so, if we're going to allow Netanyahu to, I mean, just think about, like how stupid he made the administration look. You know, where they're out there, literally like retweeting and sending out the Pakistani Prime Minister's message announcing the ceasefire that includes Lebanon. When they know that President Trump personally approved it,

when they know that we helped draft the statement that the Pakistani Prime Minister put out, they know all that. And despite it all, they're just going to go out the next day and be like, oh, I don't know what they're talking about. Like, there's nobody that believes that. It launched a massive bombing campaign that kills hundreds of innocent people. And one that is like, you know, that I mean, this isn't like huge change in their ammo, but maybe an escalation of it, where,

you know, there was not even a pretension that these were like strikes against Hezbollah headquarters, or anything like that. These were pure terror strikes against, you know, civilian targets in Lebanon. As you said, just to put pressure on the non-Chiyat civilian population there,

“which is, that's, we have a word for that's terrorism. That's what terrorism is.”

Yeah. That's the one. That's exactly what it is. All right. So now, listen, let me ask you more about your opinion about their wrong situation here. I mentioned Robert A. Pate earlier, the academic from the professor from the University of Chicago. I know from writing the books dying to win and cutting the fuse about suicide terrorism back in the terror war years. I think I interviewed him for the first time back in 2005 as well, man, I'm old. But the thing is, so he also

wrote a book. In fact, before that, called bombing to win, that's his study of the use of air power. And again, it's lack of efficacy. And you can see how the airplane video brochure guys can put

together a slick package and can promise incredible results with exquisite weapons that, you know,

are highly accurate in their delivery and all of that. But translating it to strategic goals is a

“whole other thing and they have not been able to do that. And so, you know, I saw some guy on the”

Twitter there who was saying, so all the terrible things that the people warning against the war said would happen haven't happened like the war spreading to World War III, worst case scenario, or whatever was all he said, massive refugee crisis, nuclear weapons being used, massive American boots on the ground and casualties there. None of that has happened. And then some of my obvious responses. Yeah, but that's because they canceled all the goals. If you really want to get that

uranium, you're going to need a massive effort. And it might still not where you might lose a whole army trying to get that uranium. If you really put that kind of a force on the ground near Isfahan, whatever you put in there, you really could lose in the time that it would take to get bulldozers in there. And and and find all the uranium cascades and our casks and hold them all up and all of that from wherever all their disperse and buried, be a massive mission that absolutely would include

massive casualties and what probably include some sort of absolute massive bombing campaign in order to, you know, in the attempt to protect the troops that are trying to do it. Reopening the straight of our moves by force would require sending in dumb Marine Corps, not some guys, but then to go and reconcers them out conquer that straight. Those those nearby islands and that coastline which is lined with mountains and all of that. And so and destroying the entire missile force of

the country, you're talking about having low flying airplanes and special operations forces on the ground, essentially wherever they want to go at will to somehow discover all these in a big scud hunt and take, not from the air, you're talking about an absolutely, I won't say impossible, but a

near impossible effort, you're talking D Day level, let's invade Western Europe in the second world war

type effort. Yeah, in order to accomplish those goals inside Persia is absolutely, it's virtually

that you're just barely staying afloat in this economy, it's such a wreck, but you got your own

business or maybe you don't, but hopefully you do and you got to control your own destiny, you know, somehow and you're trying to pay as little tax as you possibly can and so the deal is there's this no gimmick, there's no technicalitarian, you know, trick into not paying your taxes here, you got to pay them, but what it is is with Matt Cersley's advice, you pay as little as you are absolutely legally obligated to pay and not one red scent, if those exist anymore, I guess,

not more than that, not one nickel more. So check out Agarist Tax Advice that is Agarist Tax Advice dot com for Matt Cersley and he will maybe you're in trouble with the IRS monsters and you need somebody to help pull your chest and it's out of the fire, this is your guy for that too. So check him out at Agarist Tax Advice dot com and thank him for supporting his show. Now, yes, Mr. Cooper, so I was going

“off and explaining something, but do you remember what it was? Yeah, you were talking about,”

you would brought up the guy raising the issue of, you know, all of the dire predictions that people were making not happen and how, boy, it would have taken all of that to accomplish what they said they wanted to do. Yeah, and also, you know, the thing is, it's like I was saying at the beginning, like we had gotten to the point in the war where, I mean, we were either faced with doing the things that that guy said didn't happen or backing away, like that's where the war was,

I mean, the, you know, Iran was at a point, like we were at a point where it was clear that their regime was not going to fall and that we did not have the capability to stop them from launching drones and missiles at the rate that they were. And, you know, you talk about our missile defense capability, not being able to handle the number of missiles that they have,

“that turned out to be even worse than, you know, then people expected before it, because,”

I mean, we talked about this early on when I told you that I was watching the videos at the very beginning and you'd see a vampire coming in and it'd be like maybe two, maybe four interceptors would go up like max and then it's like by the time you got a week, we can have in. It's like every ballistic missile is coming in. You're seeing just six, eight,

ten interceptors coming up. And when I, when I first, when I first said publicly that I don't think

the intercept rates are the hit rates are anywhere close to what, you know, are being claimed. A lot of people, you know, kind of called BS on that. And they were like, no, we're shooting down 99% of them, 98% of them, whatever. And it's like, that's kind of misunderstanding what I'm saying. Like, yeah, that's true. But you're taking eight, ten interceptors to do it. Like, that's, that is just a-- They literally screwed you to say, so many more getting through when you're

saying, no, no, no, just takes that many more to shoot each one down. And so when you look at the, I mean, Israel was at the point where, like, there were whole regions of the country that they weren't even bothering to defend anymore. You had, like, some of the mares of these northern towns and stuff complain, because they weren't even getting air defense, because they were running low enough that they had to ration that and protect them on on some of the other,

“like, really important strategic spots and dedicated to that. They just, and so, you know,”

when you, when you, when you couple all that with the fact that, you know, we have intelligence estimates of how many missiles Iran has, what their ability to rebuild on the fly like in these underground missile cities is, their ability to repair and build new launchers or repair existing launchers. We have, and drones as well. We have, like, our estimates of what those are. But we don't know, you know, you had people saying in the, like, people in the US government saying in the early days

of this war, week, week and a half in that we had taken out 90% of their launch capability and you hear that and it's like, okay, it was just another matter of a few days, right? And this thing is going to be wrapped up just as Iranians aren't going to be able to do anything. Well, you know, you look, you haven't already seen the chart, you know, they had the big, big, big explosion on the

first day and a half where they were launching tons of stuff, just to say, we're here and the war's

on. But the next, you know, after the third day it dropped down and it stayed level, you know, it stayed to the point where, you know, they, they were launching as many missiles and drones on day 35 as they were on day three or four. And because of their, their adapting, you know, to new tactics and because we were

we couldn't have the US Navy as close as we thought we could to help, you know, participate in

air defense campaign. And, you know, in the first couple days, we found out now a huge number

of our sad and early warning radar systems got wiped out. And so by the time you get to day 35, it's the same number of missiles and drones they're launching on day three or four, but now, you know, on day three or four, it was like 98% of them getting shot down. And now it was like, you know, 30% are getting through. It was a lot of time this evening that said, I didn't get chance to read the thing, but it, it was a leak from the Americans saying,

oh, it's to drop sight news. It was Ryan Graham to be saying that these railings are down to 10 of interceptors. Yeah, which, I mean, you know, that being the case, like, it, it, you know, well, if, you know, if that really is true or if it's anywhere close to true, then, I mean, it doesn't matter like what happens after this. I mean, unless, unless, because, like, people

“would hear that and they would say, well, then why would Iran accept a ceasefire at this time?”

It's like, well, they can actually, they can rebuild, they can build ballistic missiles faster than we can build interceptors. Like, for sure, like, you know, our supply chain on that stuff is not very impressive. And, and so, you know, a brief breather other than us being able to rush new forces into the reason and stuff, you know, might benefit them. I think that, like, it really comes down to this, right? That Iran, what they have proven, is that as long as the regime remains

intact, there is nothing you can do, short of going full World War II, tell Chevy and Ford to start making tank parts and, you know, pumping out 10,000 aircraft a day and just full mass conscription, you know, there is absolutely nothing we can do to keep them from controlling the straddle moves. There's just not. And there's nothing we can do to keep them from devastating, regional infrastructure to the direct proportion to how we damage theirs. There's just nothing

you can do. Let me turn that into a question for you, then, because this is how I want to finish the thing here. So, this is something that Robert Paype has been talking about. And I interviewed him on my show yesterday, and it's on my sub stack, but it'll be out for everybody. Well, I'm Friday by time anybody sees this. It'll be on my on my sub stack, Scottward Show.com, and Scottward.org and YouTube and all that. Anyway, so Bob Paype has been saying that

look, this is a massive strategic defeat for the United States, way worse than Iraq War II, even, because of what you just said, essentially, I'm going to, you know, paraphrase you both here, because America's entire bluff, that our Navy guarantee security in the Persian Gulf and the international mess of those waters from all enemies and whatever through our fifth, fifth, fleet naval base at Bahrain, but also just our entire military presence throughout the Gulf from

Iraqi Kurdistan all the way to Oman and everywhere in between there. That that bluff has been completely called and blown by the worst case scenario Iranian missile salvo attack, as we've talked about. And that's not that everyone of those bases has been devastated, but they've all been hit,

and they've all been basically evacuated, although I guess there's still flying sorties out of Saudi

“Arabia. I'm not sure where all things are flying out of. I think they're mostly Israel and”

Cyprus, but yeah, there's still flying some out of Saudi Arabia. Yeah. So, but regardless, the ability of the United States to continue to maintain those bases or to claim that we literally can protect the GCC states from Iran, like that has been already proven false there. So, that changes the dynamic of power in the region, at least as much as Iraq or two, handing Baghdad to Tehran's best friends there. And then, but also it's given them control over

this choke point that as paper confirmed to me, since the age of oil being exported out of that

Gulf, it's always been treated as international waters. And nobody has put a toll booth on the

straightaway, or moves in that kind of way. And that now they have total dominance there. They've shown we can't even sail our ships, and there are our nady in there without their permission. Now, and neither can anybody else ship the sail their oil in and out of there. And so Robert Pate, anyway, long story short, is saying, hey, man, oh, and also he says it's virtually guaranteed

“by his academic math, which makes a lot of sense. You have to admit that they are going to”

race to an atomic bomb now. And then they'll have an atomic bomb, and they will have a huge

they will be able to exercise global power on a level competitive with Russia and China and the United States and the world. And that America is really just enthroned Iranian power in a way far beyond what anyone would have guessed could happen as a result of this thing. I don't know

anyone, but I guess I never played out the word game that far in my own mind, Darla. What does

happen after they close the straight of Hormuz? And the president has to come back and for them to reopen it again and all of that. So, but I wonder what you think about the idea that Iran is now now that this power's been handed to him, they're going to lord it over the Gulf states on the other side of the water there. And they're going to lord it over the world's oil supplies, extract as much as they can, and expand their power in influence, as much as they can,

“which will be a lot in these circumstances. I think that they recognize that one of the things”

I was impressed was as far as their approach went at the beginning of this war, especially considering

it came on the heels of the 12-day war, and they had done so much damage to Israel in those 12

days that, you know, a lot of people were expecting Iran to respond to this by just hammer and tell of the just everything into downtown Tel Aviv and West Jerusalem, just hammer the Israelis, make them pay, and they really did not focus on that this entire time. Like they, because they understood very clearly that the Israelis by themselves are not a problem for them. The Americans are the problem, and if they can get the Americans out of here, or, you know, at least clip our wings

enough and show the world and the region that, you know, their power has limits and, you know, we meet that limit when we try to go all out against Iran, that they can handle everything else.

“It's one of the reasons that I'm not, I'm still not convinced like I could be wrong, I was not”

wrong slightly in the right work, so I'm not like married to this idea, but like I'm still not convinced that they'll race to a nuclear weapon. For the singer, I agree with you on both counts,

actually. There's a simple reason that, you know, right now, they've got Turkey is a powerful country,

you know, Pakistan as nuclear weapons are, you know, particularly powerful country, and then Israel is over there, but Israel can't invade them, or you seem like that, they're a problem obviously, but, you know, if Iran goes and gets a nuclear weapon and then Saudi gets one, and then UAE gets one, and then, you know, Qatar gets one, all of a sudden these Gulf countries that right now, Iran is a dominant conventional power with, you know, we'll expect to those guys,

that now they're all a parody, they're all nuclear powers, and so like why would they invite that, you know, and create a situation where that might be possible, like as it is right now as a conventional power, because, you know, the thing is like what they have learned and what we have all learned during this period is they already have a mutually assured destruction deterrent, if it's not nuclear, they can pull up the whole world economy by shutting down that spray,

and, you know, the alternative access to the Red Sea if it came down to it, that's a mutually assured destruction capability right there. And so, I mean, you kind of, you've seen like anybody who is trying to address this, I mean, look, it this could still end up where, you know, whatever, two weeks goes by and the sea's fire breaks down and we knew Iran or something, who knows what's going to happen, but as of right now, like if this sea's fire holds,

and this thing kind of peed us out, anybody trying to spend this into anything other than a massive,

“honestly like strategic defeat that is going to define geopolitics or the rest of this century,”

like that's like the scale of defeat we're talking about, and people don't feel it that way because like Washington, D.C. isn't burning and, you know, we don't have like just pictures of ships sainting everywhere and whatnot, and so they don't feel it like that, but I mean, just look at what happened yesterday where the leader of Taiwan went and met with Xi Jinping and pledged to embark on a path of reconciliation with China. So, right? Yeah, and it's because before this happened,

everybody, friends, enemies, rivals, we ourselves, like all of us sort of wondered, like man, like how, how bad ass are the Americans, like, you know, the Russians might, they might think to themselves, like, you know, I think if they came in here and like met us on the battlefield and Ukraine, I think we could take them, the Chinese might think, you know, if I don't, I think we could take Taiwan, I don't think they could stop us, but still there was like there had to have been some

doubt, like, but I don't know if I want to test that, but now everybody sees it, everybody sees

have just been, you know, proverbially provoking and patrolling post-tunes in Pectica province over

“there all this time, and the limit on counter insurgency is you can't just use nukes and kill them all,”

so you can either tame them or you can't, but it's essentially our professional soldiers standing around trying to impose themselves as the security force of the families of the men that they're fighting

and some idiot, you know, mathematics that never works out and then finally they quit.

But that just isn't at all the same question of what happens if it's our armor up against their armor, our planes up against airplanes, our missile defenses up against their missile offenses, and our Navy versus theirs and the rest of these things, and then we find out our Navy can't get anywhere near their country, right? And I've always told you that our military base is our no good there at all. And I always said, didn't I always say that, see, just like that map of everyone would

always joke about me, if we're on that mean at any harm, how come they put their country so close

“to all our military base, and say, but yeah, essentially those things are the guarantors and”

things because they're all at risk. Our own government has put all these bases and in a hostage situation. And so actually in a way, it's good that they're there because they're preventing us from starting a war in which we lose all our bases. Well, so much for that logic, Morton, but I was trying to make the best of a bad situation. Yeah, the performance of the Navy is really been eye-opening because it, it's the starkest example and one of many, but the starkest example

of just how completely, how completely our forced structure is not matched to the reality of Morton warfare at all. You know, you've had all these doom-sares for a long time talking about the end of the carrier, strike group, and all that. These things are just floating targets. And you know, look, if you're sitting off the literal of a country with, you know, no anti-ship cruise missiles or

“drones or anything like that, you're just, you know, using your F-18s to blow up a bunch of dudes”

with AK-47s. And yeah, it's an amazing platform. It's great. But what we learned in this, I mean,

you think, I mean, just think about it. Dude, like, I've always told people with regard to China.

They think there's going to be some time like the China's going to do a massive invasion of Taiwan. Let me tell them, like, why would they risk? Why would they do something that even risks anything going wrong? Like a fail? You're like that. They could literally blockade Taiwan completely without putting a single ship in the water. It's like a hundred miles from the Chinese mainland, just from their own aircraft flying over China itself, land-based missiles and other assets.

They could just say, nobody is to come near Taiwan if you do. We're going to blow you up. That's it. And then there's nothing anybody can do about it. We just learned that. We couldn't get within eight, you know, we we we crept up one time. The Lincoln strike group to about 350 kilometers from the Iranian coast. And we got chased away like within hours. And we didn't go closer than seven or 800 kilometers after that. And when he think about like the range

of our air defense systems on those things is nowhere close to, I'll tell you, it's not even close

to seven hundred kilometers. You know, okay, it's a bottom line here, Kube. First of all,

there's two things. One is the expiration of the American world empire here, our entire conventional bluff call. We still got H bombs. Don't nobody mess with us. But don't nobody call 911, expect America to intervene and do your job for you now because it's proven we can. And then the second quiet one, say whatever you want about that still more. But then also get around back to also, what does this mean for the enhancement of Iranian power and influence in the region

from Iran? I mean, look, once the dust, once the dust settles from this, there's going to be I assume probably there's going to be a period of time where the regimes legitimacy is going to be bolstered by this by these events, assuming they come out of this, like on the trajectories on right now, again, anything can change or happen. But like, but that eventually is going to wear off. And they're going to have to actually govern. And if I was running Iran, what I would be doing

is I'd be going to, you know, not the people who were taking starlink terminals and explosives from the massade and the CIA back in January, not those people. But the people who were out protesting in masses before that, the people who, you know, who's who's who's protest got hijacked by those insurgents that we sent in there, I would be going to those people and and working with them and making some concessions and reforms. And because it's just as you said, like, if this

regime can hold on, they are in a dominant and unquestioned dominant position in that region.

who knows, it'll actually follow through with extracting tolls from the straightaway moves.

“I would, if I was them, I'd call it reparations. And, you know, that is hard to argue with, I think,”

especially if they're splitting them with Oman or maybe even splitting them with Saudi and Qatar as well, the like, help pay for the damages they incur. That probably have a more legitimacy than we would like. It may, it may be a bargaining chip to who knows. But, you know, what they have shown is that when they go forward in the future and sit down across the table from American negotiators, that the threat of military force is, it really has lost its potency. And so you, and what that

means is if the threat of military force is lost its potency, it's another way of saying that if we

want to fight you, then it's got to be an all-in, like real commitment for. Because short of that,

we can't compel you to do anything you don't want to do. Then another word for that is, you know, you're essentially talking about a, maybe not a great power because they don't have power projection capabilities like, you know, in South America or something, but a regional, a great power, you know. And what this is is, it's, you know, this is our ideas of how things work, running into the reality of how things actually work, right? Like the fact that Iran has this

long coastline over the straight of war moves that a massive portion of the world's energy, fertilizer, or all this other kind of just core core core level trade passes through and the structure

of that coastline with the cliffs and all the mountains in Iran that make it damn near impossible to

invade all of those things, make it so that no dude like Iran controls the straight of our moves and you can not like that, you can rage against it all you want. That is the geographical reality of the situation, period, you know, Turkey controls the dark knows. It doesn't matter if

“anybody likes that or not, that's how it is, you know. And, and, you know, the, the thing that's”

worrying, I guess, is it no matter how clear things like that, no matter how clear reality it makes itself accepting reality has not been one of the strong suits of American policy makers for a very, very long time. And so who knows, who knows where this is still going to go, you know, let's pray that, that, that the ceasefire holds and we manage to get Israel back on a police and, and we can just, you know, sweep this thing aside and, you know, if I was president,

I'd be paying reparations to the families of those little girls, we killed just as a gesture of goodwill and and hopefully moving on like, but yeah, I mean, we're, we're, you know, it's actually interesting, right? Because the American empire has suffered a massive defeat and even if even we go new Iran in two weeks and like destroy everything and we win, they lose whatever, it doesn't

“matter. Like the damage has been done, we are credibility and to the, you know, exposure of”

the limits of our conventional power. And so the American empire has suffered this massive defeat is going to be much worse off than it was. But the American people, the American nation, I don't know, man like might be way better off. So I want to say this thing as like unpatriotic as it sounds to say, I hope we lose this war. I was saying that and hoping it could be done with, as few, you know, American casualties is possible. But for the simple reason that I would much rather find out the

limits of our power against Iran than against China or Russia. You know, or somebody where it could really, really, really come back on us. Like, you know, if you, if there's like a bully who's beaten everybody up, you know, and he's just, you know, pushing everybody around. And one day he decides to go down to the bar where all the bikers hang out and kick over their Harley Davidsons and he gets murdered, you're going to say it would have been great if that nerd had kicked his ass at school one time

because he might have stopped that from happening, you know, and you know, it might not have gotten to that point. And so, let me put it like this, let me put it like this, like from our standpoint, like the standpoint of our sort of perspective on this thing, if the ceasefire holds now, it's almost a best case scenario. In the sense that we have been chasing, we have found out the limits of our own capabilities without having to lose a hundred thousand soldiers or something like that.

You know, I'm like a lot of people suffer. I don't want to downplay that. But yeah, no, and yeah, there's, you know, 14, 15 guys have been killed and hundreds wounded. And, you know, actually I saw people had reacted against that tweet. I was describing earlier where I was saying

objected that I didn't list the, the casualties. And it wasn't not a disrespect to the casualties.

It was just I was making a point about the strategic defeats there and losing 15 men is not a strategic defeat. It's a tragedy as hell is to strategic defeat for those families for sure. I wouldn't play it down. But I was just saying, this is what the American Empire, what leverage it has lost in all of this game and all that. So different discussion. But of course, that is absolutely huge. And it should have been none. This whole thing is absolutely crazy. But, you know,

and most likely, rather than learning any lesson, just like all the previous ones, this will just be another crisis that says the stage for the next intervention,

“which will set the stage for the next crisis. I mean, maybe they're, I think there's reason for”

hope on that front though. Dude, did you see the poll that came out from Pew? I think it was yesterday, maybe the day before he was yesterday. Or for Israel, 4%, 6% have a negative view of Israel. And even Republicans under 50, 57% have a negative view of Israel. And so, if this thing comes to an end, and I don't think we're going, I don't think that they're going to be able to gather the support to go back and do something like this again. Because Trump is the only one who would do this.

They tried it with Bush. They tried it with everything else. They all said no. And now, after seeing how this played out, I just don't think we're going to do it again. I'm sorry, man, I wanted to bring this up earlier, and I forgot. There has been, you know, all these reports are still massive numbers of troops being moved into the region. In other words, and

“the narrative being built that the ceasefire is really a joke. And despite even just the violations”

that we're talking about, that it's meant to only be a timeout before we go to a much worse stage of the war. Do you put any stock in that? It's possible. But, you know, you really have to keep in mind that when they say massive numbers of troops, it's not enclosed to invading your ran numbers of troops. You know, even when they say there's 50,000 troops, that's not all guys with rifles. Like, that's a lot of the poor personnel that's maintenance

crews. That's a lot of like, you know, these units have a lot more people on them than just shooters. And so, like, one of the, you know, the marine expeditionary units is 2,500-ish guys there. That's like 11,200 shooters. And then a lot of airplane mechanics and support personnel of other kinds. And so, I don't know how many actual, I mean, look, if you're, even if even if it's 20,000,

“you get 20,000 light infantry, which is all any of these guys are. Amazing light infantry, you know,”

the rangers and all these guys amazing at what they do. But there's just, they have certain capabilities.

And there are certain things that they don't have. They don't have heavy armor. They don't have heavy weapons that can go in and deal with certain things. They don't have the capability to park themselves in a place without air defense for like a significant period of time and survive. Like, there's just limitations to what they can do. And so, I would be, I don't know, man. Like, after the, after the near debacle of that pilot rescue, if they put a bunch more troops on the ground,

I mean, what that really tell, I'm just going to default to, you know, like guilty until proven innocent that they've got something on Trump. Because I mean, it's just, you know, again, like with all those stories that were being leaked out in the last couple of days, it's very clear. There is massive resistance to going any further with this from within the highest levels of the system. And if Trump overrides all that again and just

escalates, then I don't know. We're in kind of uncharted territory, you know. All right. Let's get

out of here. But first, we got to pay some bills. Moon does artisan coffees. They support Scott Horton

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