NTK: A Fig Leaf for Surrender

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This is Deep State Radio, coming to you direct from our super secret studio in the third

sub-basement of the Ministry of Snark in Washington, DC and from other, undisclosed locations across America and around the world. Hello, and welcome to Need to know, I'm David Rothkuff, I'm joined this week by two experts who will talk to us about a variety of things that are really, really important. They may seem like they're about foreign policy or something, but they're really about

your lives. One of them, what's going on in Iran? What's that deal going to look like?

“What are we doing with Iranian nukes and what are we doing with nukes at home?”

There's new stories about that every single day.

Unfortunately, we have our two friends who are the two wisest heads we do here in Washington,

DC, to talk about these things. One, Joe Serencione, who is, he writes like every day now, and in fact, it's getting a little intimidating, but he's got an article in the New Republic, he's got an article in MS now. We'll talk about both of those, he's Vice Chairman of Foreign Policy from America, he teaches

these speaks, he's everywhere, and an example to all of us, how are you doing today, Joe? I'm doing just great. Thank you very much. I was on vacation for the last week, down at Zion National Park. But yeah.

So where did the stories come from, Joe? Were you writing in a tattoo of these pent-up ideas that when I came back, it just blew there. I see. And there's a lot going on.

Not to discuss. Yeah, there certainly is, and we also have our friend, John Wolfstall, who, you know, he is one of the folks behind that agreement that Obama struck, that so irritated Donald Trump that it's like started a war, and I blame John Wolfstall.

“And also expert writer, author, how are you doing, John?”

I'm good, I mean, like, you know, the last guy at the party, you know, the Obama nuclear deals, looking pretty good, so I guess I am by comparison as well. Yeah, well, that was one of Joe's great articles. You know, he wrote so many, and that was one of the new Republican, it's like, new deals same as the old deal.

That's a rock and roll reference folks, but not that any, no, no, not Springsteen. Oh, no. Pink Floyd. Pink Floyd. No, no, no, no, no, it's the, it's the, it's the, it's a, it's a, meet the old boss,

a, it's the new boss, it's the new boss, it's the old boss, it's the old, oh, like these

old geezers are talking about the music from 16 years ago, it's amazing.

“I remember that from the medical, medical commercial, right, yeah, yeah, you do, yeah, well,”

you're just a different generation, John, because you're like six months younger than us, uh, new deal, same as the old deal. The deal, same as the old deal, you say, well, you know, there's all this talk, you know, there's going to be a deal, and we've talked about it for the past four months. What are we likely to end up with?

And every time we say, he's not going to be able to get what he wants, which is Iran to give up Nix, he will be able to get them to say that they don't want to have nuclear weapons, because that's been their position for 20 years, um, he will not be able to get back to where he was on the straightaway moves, um, and so we're going to end up with a deal that is worse than where we were in February, 27, and worse than where we were, uh, 11

years ago with the JCPLA, uh, that's kind of the thrust of your article. Is it not, or is it something happened? Right. No, no, no, it's pretty much it David, there's only two ways to get Iran to stop Iran from building a nuclear bomb, and one is go to war, and you just try to take out the regime,

as everyone knew, that does it work.

It doesn't work. And I mean, we can talk more about this, but this also profound strategic implications for Trump's failure. Probably the most humiliating strategic defeat in the US history, but I'm just a nuclear question. It clearly doesn't didn't work. Iran is still there. The regime is still there.

The equipment is still there. The uranium is still there. So the only other choice is to negotiate. And if you negotiate, you end up doing something that looks a lot like the Obama deal. We give them something they want, which is access to, um, their frozen assets, so billions of dollars will be sent to Iran. US sanctions will leave so that Iran can then do business in the world. And in exchange, they give us something we want. In this case, it looks

like we're talking again about getting rid of the uranium stockpile. Trump calls a destroying

“the uranium, with that actually means you should take no, it doesn't. He says, we're going”

to get rid of the nuclear dust. Well, this nuclear, what he calls nuclear dust, the, the, enriched uranium. And this is going to be a deal for dollars for dust. We will give them billions of dollars, and they appear ready to agree to eliminate their, their highly enriched uranium at various levels, not just the 600 pounds or so or thousand pounds or so of, of the uranium, which to 60% level,

close to bond level, but they have 10 tons of rich uranium at various levels, 20%, 5%. And they would be going to downblend all that and ship it out of the country. And Trump has changed his position. He, he wanted it to be shipped to the United States, but he appears to be happy to have it be what he says destroyed in place. They're willing to do that. Are they doing, John, John, is Joe telling the truth? Do we know that they're actually

able to do this?

Well, unlike, unlike our president Joe, always tells the truth. Um, yeah, the Iranians have

indicated both privately, and I think even publicly, they've said, you know, look, you want to negotiate, right, that we don't have to have this material. They, they have clearly in the negotiations said, we will downblend this material. They wanted, they did it before. They are willing to do it again. Remember, this is material they would never have had, under the agreement that we negotiated in 2015. But if the prices right, they're prepared to sell

it. Um, there was some discussion that they would do it for unfreezing the $25 billion in Iranian assets overseas, um, but Iran is also very interested in getting the sanctions lifted, which would require the Congress to vote and approve, which is, I think, not a forebond conclusion.

“But I think it's important to remember that in in 2011, when President Obama began to really”

engage, um, very seriously on the Iran negotiations, he didn't set out to negotiate the JCPOE. He didn't negotiate, he didn't set out to say, okay, let's give Iran the ability to do low-level enrichment under monitoring with intrusive inspections and downblend this and destroy that reactor. He said, look, let's go for everything. And Iran said what they had said for decades, no. If you want to deal, this is what a deal would have to look like. We have

to have the ability to do some enrichment, but we'll do that over the long-term under inspections.

We will not have nuclear weapons ever. We will give you incredible transparency,

and you've got to give us the money that is owed to us and lift the sanctions that weren't posed for nuclear. And so Trump finds himself now desperate to get back into anything looking remotely that good with fewer assets at his disposal. And by the way, reopening the streets of Hormuz,

“which is strangling the global economy and his driven gas up, you know, by almost 75% in the United”

States. So he'll be lucky to get back there, but he has not shown the ability nor the discipline required to get anywhere close. So if I understand this correctly, Joe, we didn't obliterate their nuclear facilities, because we were told like a lot that we obliterated them. During the first term, we were told that the Obama deal was a terrible deal, and the no one would be stupid enough to strike a deal like that. And that we needed Trump to get us a good deal, but it doesn't sound

to me like from what I'm hearing, even with what you were saying. And I've heard mixed things about how much enriched uranium they're going to give up. But even with that, in terms of inspection regimes, in terms of the sort of geopolitics of the region and their incentives for having nukes, in terms of the state of their ability to deliver weapons, missiles, and so forth, which don't seem to be part of this, this still doesn't sound to me better than the last deal. And in some ways,

sudden, we're negotiating with Iran over there, control over something they didn't control for months.

“Exactly. That is a major chip that Iran now has, and it's side of the table, that it didn't”

ever have before. They have, they've demonstrated now, they can close the straight,

cheaply, and that we can't stop them from closing the straight. We, the most powerful military in

the world, we spend a trillion dollars a year on our military. Iran spends seven billion, we spend, they spend seven billion, we spend a thousand billion on military, and they beat us, and they can control the straight-of-war movement. Everybody beats us. Okay. I mean, I've been around a long time, as John pointed out, and just slightly less long than you, Joe. And here's the reality. We've got and fought a lot of wars with the biggest

most powerful military in the world, and we lose them all the time. Yeah, all the other seconds. So let me, let me two things. We don't lose every war, right? We are able to do certain things.

No, no, we're, no, Grenada. You're absolutely right. We liberated Grenada. We liberated Grenada.

We liberate and equate. We got rid of Saddam Hussein. We have tactical successes, and we have strategic failures, right? So yes, those are defeats, but to be clear, if the United States wanted to open the streets of Hormuz, we could. President Trump just doesn't want to risk what it would require in terms of thousands of American troops, being in the firing line, and the loss of dozens of American ships in order to do it.

He's, he's, it's taco. He's not, he's courageous enough to launch a war when he thinks it's easy, and he's not brave enough to finish one. Now, there's no guarantee of success. But if we wanted the streets to be open, we could indemnify the ships. We could ensure them. We could flag them, and we could protect them. I am not sure that's true at all, John. I'm just, I mean, you're talking about hundreds of thousands of U.S. troops going ashore to effectively occupy a

large part of the Iranian coastline in order to stop the drone attacks. Because otherwise, a few drones can hit a tanker, and that stops the traffic. They don't have to sink U.S. destroyers.

“They can just sink a tanker or two. We are in agreement, Joe, which is, could we do it?”

It would take hundreds of thousands of troops, and that's good. We should have thought of before we launch this war. But there is everybody told Trump, or should have told Trump, they're going to close the streets. They've threatened to do it. Right? When we were worried about cruise missile silkworms deployed on the Iranian side 30 years ago, they got from the Chinese. We knew this was there. But we also had this problem, this Washington problem, which is,

if you spend enough money, and you have it much advanced technology as you can, and you have

better technology than the other guy, you can win. And the reality is this, the Vietkong proved that

was wrong. And, you know, the terrorists around the world improved that was wrong. And by going to ground and waiting and being patient and so forth, the Taliban proved that was wrong. And here we are in this situation. And the tools that Iran is using to greatest effect are low tech. They're little inflatable rubber boats, little minds that people drop out. $10,000 Shahead drones, which we are like sending, you know, multi-million dollar drones off in response to. And here's

the other thing. And, you know, I remember this from Vietnam. I was tiny child in my mother's arms,

“but I remember that that, you know, we talked about winning hearts in my in Vietnam.”

The issue was, how long could they hold out? How resilient were they? And in each of the cases that I just enumerated, the people are like, come on, hit us, baby. We can take this for as long as you want us to take it. And we can do it. And, and they win, they rope a dope. And they win. So that that I think gets to this question of strategic decision making, right? If I'm not defending this administration, right? I have opposed them across the board. Sound sounds like you are.

But, but I think that if Donald Trump strategy was simply, let's bomb the nuclear facilities period, we could set back that program. And we'd have to do it again in six months or a year or 18 months or two years. And you could keep doing that. The strategic flaw here was we're going to destroy the regime. We're going to get regime change. We're going to just, we're going to lead to a

with regard to that job before you step in, which is that, I'm not sure that was the plan,

“because the story did come out that said, we will take off Medina Judd, the former president,”

you know, to be the replacement. And, and by the way, this totally scans. It scans what would happen in Venezuela. Trump doesn't give a shit. Whether these countries are democracies, whether they're good countries, he only cares that he can say he changed the situation. And to cut a deal with somebody new who will give him a little bit of action on the side. And I don't know what the action is on the side. You know, in Venezuela, it's a periodically. There's some oil

tanker full of dark, crappy oil that gets sold to somebody and who knows where the money is going.

But all I'm saying is we, you know, this regime change thing doesn't really scan

with popular uprising in democracy. It's a little less than that. Anyway, Joe, go ahead. Two things. One, this is a larger discussion about the American way of war,

“which I believe is now up and proven to be obsolete, because I agree with your point.”

And, in fact, Trump makes his point, even in the cabinet meeting yesterday, he says, he's complaining that people are impatient with this war. He says, well, what are you talking about? We've only been at this a few months. Look how long we're in Vietnam for eight years. We're in Afghanistan. We're in Iraq. And that's right. In all those wars, this is your point, David. We were there for years. And we didn't go into those wars, expected to be there for years.

And to make sure point that this, we do not know how to do this kind of counter and sort of counter and surgesy warfare and the US investment in very big, highly complex, usually expensive weapon systems has been proven to be a failure. These are no longer the weapons you need as proven by Ukraine and Iran. That has changed the face of warfare. That is not the way we're going to be fighting wars in the future with the possible exception of a war with

with China, but maybe not even then. So that's a whole other discussion. But on the Iran case, again, you're right. This is not what Trump intended to do. This is not liberating the Iranian people. This is not changing the regime. This is not destroying their program. This is not weakening their Iran. I mean, none of the objectives that were laid out at the begin. We haven't even eliminated

their missile force. You see the data now. Hexet claimed in the first couple of weeks of the

war that we had eliminated 70% of their missiles. No, no, no, no, no. It's the other way around. They have retained 70% of their missiles. According to the administration's own intelligence reports. So these guys are extremely capable. And the flare-up that we've seen just in the last couple of days proved that. You know, we've had the U.S. attacking Iran a base on the coast of the state of our moves and in response Iran has launched some drones that hit Kuwait. And that's all

it takes. That's all it takes. It's a Kuwait. And among many of the other Arab countries, not all of them, but many of the Persian Gulf countries just want this war to end. It's Trump and Netanyahu that I've reluctant to do it. Netanyahu for his own reasons, he's intensifying his war with Lebanon.

“We should remember that that is another front. But I thought that was part of the deal here.”

I thought it was so, and that's why they, you know, so Netanyahu is doing his best to kill these negotiations by opening up this heavy bombardment over 130 sites targeted just in the last couple of days and Southern Lebanon, hundreds of people killed. That front is going to end. It doesn't end. It doesn't end. It doesn't end. I have to say, it doesn't help that our quote partner in this thing is a war criminal. One of the worst people in the war. Yeah. It just doesn't help. Right.

Who's strategic plan is endless war. Just continue the war without any clear strategic objective. And it's not clear that BB really holds much sway directly over Trump the way he did when the war was launched, right? I think that that bridge has been largely burned Trump over BBs not in it for him. But that doesn't mean that they can't queer the deal, right? As they're trying to do in Lebanon. And if there is, let's say Trump decides to swallow every ounce of pride and ego he has

and cut some sort of deal similar to the Iran nuclear deal. What makes him think that BB's not going to make the same play and it interfered American politics to undermine the ability to get that done too. So Trump is, you know, put a technical term on it. Trump is an American. We are totally screwed in this. Yeah. Yeah. Let me just just jump on that again. Then I'll shut up to you. Don't shut up. He's my one. He's my one. He's my one. He's my one. He's my one. He likes that.

That's that. I love you guys. And we're going to tell you, our listeners love you guys.

you. So just keep talking. So when this news broke over the weekend, you know, a Sunday in

“Monday, we're close to a deal and when Rubio goes out and says, we're sent it's a way, a word or”

way. I mean, who knows if that was true? If very well, if very well could have been done. But then fucking Trump is the worst negotiator in the world. I mean, he's not just a bad negotiator. He's a terrible negotiator. What does he do? He goes and spikes the football because he's looking to declare some great victory that that he's his way of his mafia way of negotiating, bullying, threatening. We're going to wipe you off the map. You know, you're running on fumes. He goes and spikes

the football 25 yards from the end zone and Iran does wait him at the IRGC because whoa whoa whoa we're not and so you it's quite possible that Trump himself has now extended these negotiations.

But here's the second point. This is not a deal. What we're talking about is not a full agreement.

It's a memorandum of understanding, even Trump used that word in his cabin and beating. It's a one or two pager that just lays out some very simple steps to open the straits yet traffic flowing again and to end the war. But it's not the full nuclear negotiations. It's just a, it would be a statement of intent. We intend to negotiate this. We've agreed. We're going to do this. We should be followed by the reports are correct. 60 days of negotiations was quite which

probably isn't enough to get a deal. Probably how long did it take for the 2015 deal? You know, and back in those days we actually had nuclear experts who were involved in the deals.

“We fired all those people. Trump doesn't like experts anyway. And so that's why, you know,”

there's, there's two parts of this deal. And now I want to break it down in simple terms.

John, tell me if I'm wrong. One part is a shitty deal which is worse than where we were. And the other part is that that deal is bullshit. It's not a real deal. Do I have this roughly correct? I didn't use a bull's eye. And remember, the people that that Trump is going to send and negotiate, right? His, his business console Yary Whitkoff and his son-in-law are the ones that helped create this war. Because he runs, we'll get rid of it all. We'll suspend enrichment

for 10 years. We'll, you know, downblend all this material. But we got to hold onto this research reactor that by the way, you sold us back in the 60s. And they said, oh, no, no, no, that's a weapons program. No deal. And then we went to war, right? Which our friend Kelsey Davinport called diplomatic malpractice. Because they didn't have an expert in the room to say, like, that reactor is useless for, for, because we're completely useless. So it's, it's no deal. Even if they get to the

negotiating table, Iran will run laps around these guys. And we're unlikely to get anywhere close. Well, there is one tantalizing part of this prospective deal that would be better than the JCPOA. And as a big fan of that deal, it's, you know, it pains me to say that. But in 2014, 2015, Iran was not willing to go to zero enrichment. That is to go to shut everything down. The deal did tremendous job. It took our three-fourths of their centrifuges. It took out all their enriched uranium,

shifted all out of the country, put the whole thing under lock and camera. And it was going to, you know, hem in the program for good 20 years until Trump tore it up in 2018. But this time, Iran is offering disassembled enrichment. The deal on the table before the war. Yes. February 26 was suspended for three to five years. Trump says, no, no, it's got to be 20 years. But you can see there's a place in there. They might be willing to do that job. Don't count your

nuclear chickens. Yeah, right. So one, Iran already knows how to run and build advanced centrifuges that they didn't know how to do a decade ago. Yes, they do. Yes, we don't have a running start with limited enrichment. Two, we have no idea how much carbon fiber, how many motors, vacuum tubes, managing steel Iran is imported over the last 10 years. So they could have stock piles of centrifuges underground somewhere ready to go in months. So they can suspend for a few

“years. And if anything goes wrong, they could, right? So so even that, I think is a morage.”

No, in fact, I just like to put a finer point of what John said, which is, if they agreed to suspend for a few years before, the question becomes, where would they be at the conclusion of that suspension? And compare that to where we would be, in this case, and because they have all this capacity, they would have the ability to get farther faster than they did in the past. And so therefore, the threat could materialize much more quickly in the current circumstances

experts. So I think we put it in the simplest terms. The deal we negotiated was built on a simple

premise that Iran would take at least one year to acquire enough material to build a single nuclear weapon. That was the standard that President Obama laid out. And you cannot put all the different, you know, calculations back in place, that would get you to exactly the same sort of deal. And so I would suggest that the standard against which any deal should be judged is can't Trump get us to a point where Iran is at least one full year away from acquiring enough material

to build a single nuclear weapon with effective verification and transparency. I'm betting he can't.

“Maybe he can. I think you might be right about that. That's right, because it was all”

calculated on the old centrifuges, the so-called IR ones, the basic centrifuges they got from ACUCon and that design. But now they have sixth generation IR sixes, maybe IR eights, which are much more efficient that don't take very long to be able to enrich the Iran. And so even if they suspended something goes wrong with the deal, you're right. They can probably and David, this is your point. From a standing start, they can probably enrich enough uranium to build a

bomb or two within months. But here's the other thing. Iran doesn't need to have a nuclear weapon. Ah, there we go. See, this is very interesting part of what's happened to you. Go. Right. No, but it's, you know, from a strategic perspective, they have demonstrated

that they can be a world leader. Iran will never be a world leader nuclear weapons. They are a

world leader in the production of cheat drugs. And a world leader in choking off oil. And well,

“exactly. And that's what that's my other point. And they geographically have an advantage that”

they've had for 5,000 years, which all of a sudden is much more valuable than it's ever made. So David, I'm going to give you the pivot here, because I think this gets to this question about what's going on here in the United States, right? And our nuclear program. So for years, we deterred Iran from closing the streets. Because we said, we have this military capability. If we go to war, you will lose. Yeah. We've lost that. And one of the, one of the debates. Really, really important

point, I think. And now one of the debates that's really alive in the United States, which is driving massive investments in nuclear weapons is that, look, we've lost our edge with regard to Russia and China. And if we ever had a conflict, we need to re-establish deterrence. And the only way you can re-establish deterrence with these horrible states is to have a lot of nuclear options. And this is

“I think one of the most, um, uh, egregious fantasies. Once nuclear deterrence collapses, and nuclear”

weapons are used, nobody controls escalation. The ability to re-establish deterrence basically means I'm willing to destroy my society faster than you're willing to destroy your society. And so,

but right now we have a, a US nuclear program that's spending a hundred plus billion dollars a year.

We've now launching a multiple new nuclear variants. And there was just an article this weekend that proposes a whole new nuclear posture review for the United States that would give, this is almost a direct quote, give the president every conceivable option to employ nuclear weapons possible. Yes. Without even talking about the fact that why would you want to give this president, let alone any other as many nuclear weapons options is possible? Well, and also,

I mean, it, it, it is predicated on the idea that there is any option for using a nuclear weapon that doesn't immediately do what you set, which is, you know, I mean, I, I remember having conversations with people in the Biden administration about Ukraine. And they were like, well, if we cross this red line, Putin will detonate a tactical nuke over the Black Sea. And then who knows where we are? And, you know, Trump has often said, well, let's use tactical nukes.

But nobody knows where that leads. Right? Nobody, nobody knows what, you know, what happens after that. And so, I, I do think, though, and, and I'd like to hear a comment on this, Jo, that John brings up an important point, which is this story, which is this administration, in addition to all of its other fucking insanity. And I mean, there is insanity everywhere you look. I mean, RFK junior with handfills of snakes and starting cocaine opportunities. And, you know,

you know, you're everywhere, behind the White House, right? You know, the Octagonia, the South, when, whatever, I mean, all this kind of insanity, there is this $1.5 trillion budget in which, I mean, I mean, it just needs to be seen in the context of what we said, which is if there's anything

country in the world hasn't helped us achieve the kinds of goals we want to achieve with the military. And, but he's got, hey, let's spend hundreds of billions on news. Hey, let's spend hundreds of billions on what I call the Joe Serencian Golden Tell, which is your favorite project because he's the longest running scam in the history of the Department of Defense, Russia and a silver fence.

It'll never work. Thank you. Thank you very much. Right, but, but, but the point is,

there are all these kind of crazy things that seem to show that we haven't learned anything for many of this. Right. And again, because that's, so to do another double pivot to add on to John's,

“you know, one of the things that Iran War has shown us and I think, shown Iran is that”

and as you pointed out, they don't really need a nuclear weapon. I mean, the whole purpose of Iran even having the option of building a nuclear weapon was to deter the United States from attacking it or Israel from attacking it. Well, Israel United States, I'm already attacked it. And it turns out they can take that punch and they now have something that's, I think, to emphasize your point, closing these traits of our moves is a massive deterrent. They now have

a weapon that much less cost can help protect them from future attacks. Although I can raise their regional power. Although I feel compelled to play that one other thing, which is kind of dress, which is our government's motto is on a regular basis. I recall not too long ago, everybody going, oh my God, we hate BB, but BB destroyed Amos, BB destroyed Hezbollah,

“BB destroyed, you know, the hooties, Iran's proxy forces are no longer in the region.”

We have a whole new strategic landscape. And there were all these little guys writing articles

for different publications, but I guess it's this amazing. Hey, guess what? None of it's true.

Exactly right. Exactly right. None of it by Hamas is the God and Hezbollah is not God, the hooties are not God, et cetera. Oh, that's true. So, go to the United States posture. And the United States has not learned these lessons. We're still trying to muscle up on nuclear weapons instead of working to decrease them and get them down because they are the only weapon in the world that can destroy the United States. So, we have a vested interest in preventing anyone from

ever using a nuclear weapon and for reducing the global stockpiles. That's an our national strategic interest, but instead we have this very Trumpian, you know, spin on an already over-overloaded nuclear arsenal to add more. We need more weapons. We need to cover every conceivable option. And this is what John is talking about. And this has been a conservative view for decades and Trump is about to unleash it. And the idea is that we will have so many weapons that we can

know for would dare attack us. And if they do, we will have this magical shield that we can build that will be able to intercept all those weapons that golden dome. Well, the congressional and the

“golden dome is going to be cheap. When Trump announced it, he said it was going to be, I think,”

75 billion dollars and it would be in place by the end of his turn by 2028. Ballony, absolute, Ballony, the CBO, the congressional budget office just came out with it. It's estimate saying it was going to cost $1.2 trillion to build this thing. And by the way, the time scale is forever. And it might be you none of this stuff works. You can't get away. That's the perfect against Christmas, old, drone, shades like it's useless against that.

Right, and our boat ship, a cargo ship with a nuclear bomb and it's pulling into the port. But it also, it also gets into a strategic question, right? Because the strategic question is, what are the threats you're likely to face? What are the things you'd likely to model a cheap? What do you want to protect yourself against? What do you want to achieve? The thing that we invest all this money in protecting ourselves against is something that

is not going to happen as never going to happen, right? They're in the invasion of the,

at the United States. In terms of the general scale of things, obviously you want to defend it. The thing that we, you know, we have global interests. And every time one of those are threatened, we try to use this one tool to advance those global interests, we fail. But the Iranians have also revealed something else, which is, democracies have sensitive body parts and ways that autocracies don't, right? And if I squeeze hard on the sensitive, I sense, I sense a metaphor

here, David. Yeah, well, yeah, right. And I'm not getting exactly to, no, if I, right, I'm going to go there. If I squeeze the economic balls of the United States,

By squeezing their economic balls. And we have proven to the Iranians here that they have

their hands around our testicles economically speaking. I'm okay. I've got as far as I go with this. It's almost as if they have translated Herman Khan and Kissinger into Persian, right,

“to deter your adversary. You must be able to hold it risk the things that they care about.”

What do Americans, politicians care about? The price of eggs in the price of oil. Exactly. Exactly. Exactly, right. But that's where we are. And so here we're going to get a shitty ordeal. But let me ask a one, Joe, one question here. Before I move on to another thing in the few remaining minutes, we have. How Joe, because you're a strategic mastermind,

and I don't you teach a course in being a strategic mastermind at Georgia State University,

you can ask you mine. What don't you want to do? Exactly. Yeah. So how to be a strategic mastermind? So as a strategic mastermind, how does it help us to threaten to blow up a mind, which is the president, the president it, and to tell all of our Gulf allies that they must manually join the Abraham accord. Because that's that happened over the weekend. And our president is a strategic mastermind. So could you explain it? Because I can't get it. Right. So yesterday in the cabinet meeting,

he was complaining about Oman, which is the other, which is the country across the trade over

“removes from Iran. So these two countries basically, you know, you have to pass by them to get through”

the straight. He was worried that Oman was talking to Iran about some kind of fee arrangement that would go on in the future, which will probably, by the way, almost certain to see. And he said,

don't do that, Oman, if you do that, we're going to blow you up. Okay, I believe that is the first

time in American history that a US president has threatened to blow up a US ally. Oman, if I were Danish, I would have to say it even then. But that, but that, and that's because he doesn't believe in allies. He doesn't think he knows how to say it. This is all transactional. I want to hear the things I want. I want you to give them to me if you don't give them to me. I'm going to hurt you. And in that same cabinet meeting, he talked about Iran, blustering, and he said that they don't

give us what we want. You know, this guy over here, Pete Hanks, that will finish them off. Oh, well, but these are all empty blusters. I mean, none of this is real, but this is his mafia boss way of talking. This is how he thinks you get the negotiation. Nice story. You got here to be a shame if anything happened to it. Your brains are your signature. We'll have to be on this contract by the end of the day, right? But it's all bluster. And increasingly people realize that

this is, it's funny. So it's, what does it do? And then, and then this ridiculous demand that came out of nowhere, that in exchange for us, making a deal with their bomb, which we want to make for our own interest, all the Arab countries should now join the Abraham Accords, and that is recognized Israel. There's not a chance to help that any of those countries. Well, it's part of it. Right. And it was met with complete silence that that you see all the, that that's a part

of these couples, capitals. They would say, what the hell is this all about when they just ignored it? Well, and one of the reasons that's true, just to sort of put a bow on the whole thing, is that our Gaza deal is the same as this, which is the point, right? Which is the Gaza deal. As here's the 22 point plan. We've got one of the points agreed to. We'll agree to the other 21 points in the future. And we're not agreeing to them. And this week, just the other day, we learned,

oh yeah, nobody's funding the board of peace either. There's no money in it. It's complete bullshit. And that's part of the problem here. Is that Trump? Trump doesn't care about the future. But he does care about the headlines. And I think the Abraham Accords is easily understood. He needs something desperately to say, this deal is better than what Obama negotiated. He can get the Arab States to sign on the Abraham Accords. He could probably try to sell this.

Okay, maybe we didn't achieve this objective, but we now have peace and recognition. He's desperate for anything. You know, you're so right. And I blame Obama because because you, thanks, Obama. I thought it was a big deal. But no. You, John Willstall, were there, you know, in Obama's team,

“you could send him a note and say, look, just tell him whatever. Just all you have to do is say this”

deal is better. And the war's over. No, because his friends and Israel and his friends at FDD and his friends at APAC are going to say, no, right? Well, that's a, well, one of the things that I love about this and there's very little to love about this is that those people, and you specifically mean John Bolton,

I mean, there are whole strategic viewpoint here has been obliterated. If anything's gotten obliterated,

“it's their strategic viewpoint. Yes, it's exactly right. For 25 years or more, we've been arguing”

in this time about how to deal with Iran. Do you do regime change? Do you do negotiations? Well, okay, now we've had the regime change option just tried as full as we could possibly do it, and it's failed miserably. You know, as well as I do, the message will be, oh, the message was good.

This messenger was flawed, right? That, that idea has never go away. These people will be recycled

in the next Republican administration, in the next time MSNBC or CNN needs an on-air spokesperson that we back and they married. And you know what, you know why that we back? Because there is a big business in the United States that depends on our having enemies. And the people in that business have a bunch of people to whom they throw a few little bits of chicken feet every year to keep writing fucking articles that say, oh my God, you know, this, you know, China's going to be

“to something. I mean, we talk about this, John, you and I have talked a lot about the fact that”

the same discussion is going on right now about AI, where people are going, well, you know, if China gets ahead of us in our AI arms race, we're dead. And so therefore, we can't have any regulation on AI. AI should just, you know, leave it to the big companies, leave it to Peter Dale who's out of this fucking mind and and and and Elon and so forth. And here's the reality. It's almost, it's almost a mirror image of the nuclear thing where they're all talking about

AGI and the ability to destroy the world with AI. Meanwhile, the Chinese are crunching along on applied AI, which is essentially the tactical application of AI. They're getting miles ahead and we're saying, you know, those AI scientists you have, let's not let them in this country. Yeah, you know, that AI research, we're not going to actually do that research. It would look, it shows you how fast the insanity comes. It was less than two weeks ago

that the news came out that President Trump was going to sign a new executive order, which was require the frontier labs developing these new AI models to submit them to the government 90 days ahead of release. So we can make sure they're not going to make it easy for somebody else to build a biological weapon or a nuclear weapon. And as soon as this report came out, you know that the people bank rolling Trump, whether to lawn musk or Peter, Theo called them

up and said, hey, this no, we own you. We also have you buy the testicles. You say no, and then it next day came out. Oh, I got a lot of problems with this with this EA. We're not going to sign it. And it's disappeared. And what ties the AI and the nuclear together is this same motivation. I mean, the reason we have all these proposals for new nuclear weapons is because people make money building nuclear weapons. This is a very profitable business. The American

government is going to spend $100 billion this year. As we did last year on new nuclear weapons,

that is a big market, plus 50 billion on missile defense systems that won't work. That's a lot of money out there. And everybody wants to compete for them. And you know, God bless the contractors that keep coming up at brand new ideas. Well, we do this kind of miskindness. I understand, I understand Don and Eric have a little drone company that they're trying to get the same interesting thing that they, you know, go way into the drone business, right? Yeah.

Nothing wrong with the son of a president getting a contract from the U.S. government. I'm sure it's completely fair. Absolutely. Well, how why would you bring up Hunter Biden in this if that's terrible? Has the man been thrown off? Has it hasn't? No, we hasn't. And I'm sure E. Jean Carole

is buying this and the new prosecution of her is going to feed into that. So basically what

you're saying is that when they announce a deal, which they will, it won't be a deal because most of it will be put into the future. And the elements of the deal will not be as good as the past deal that we had. And it won't be very meaningful because, you know, elements of it are bullshit or based on other standards, or we don't have experts involved and so forth. And so just don't buy it, check it. It'll be a, it'll be a, it'll be a, will be a fig leaf for surrender. It'll be the

way for Trump to back out of a complete catastrophic failure. I'll, I'll bring it back to how we

“explain the, the 2015 deal. Because people said, oh, we need a better deal. And I think it was Colin”

Carl who coined the phrase or used it pretty regularly. He's like, well, you're basically saying is you're going to build a unicorn. And unicorn doesn't exist in real world. Right? It's a fantasy. And so everything is still you, something that sounds too good to be true. It is going to be too

which is so that you can actually like, that's because they've got a shot. Don't say that don't,

“don't you be talking. Don't shit about the net and ship. Then Trump does a negotiating to deal”

with Iran. Then again, the red socks have a better chance of winning the world series this year.

Then Trump has of negotiating to deal with Iran. I go further. And I would say the 1908 red

“socks have a better chance of winning the world series this year. They could, players could get hit by”

page a lot, right? Yeah, across a couple of months. Okay. Well, once again, it has been

elevating and illuminating and innovating and creating, and entertaining, and entertaining,

“and entertaining to talk to both of you guys. And I'm sure we will do so again,”

because you're in big demand. Whenever there's like some big story like this, people are like, well, we went here from Joe and John, and I'm glad, because I enjoyed it. So I have a deep state radio red telephone on my desk. Ready? Yeah, yeah, hot one. Part of part of part of our our vast infrastructure net, where it deeps in radio. Well, folks, that's as far as we're going with this one. Here, it needs to know if you like what we're doing, go and go to YouTube, subscribe, subscribe

on Substacks, subscribe at DSRNetwork.com, and we'll be more of this to come. For now, thanks Joe. Thanks, John. Thanks, everybody. Bye-bye.