NTK: Trump’s Humiliating Defeat: The Next Edition of "The Art of the Deal" Will Be in Farsi

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Coming to you direct from our super secret studio in the third sub-basement of the Ministry of Snark in Washington, D.C.

And from other, undisclosed locations across America and around the world. Hello and welcome to a special edition of Need to Know. I am David Rothkoff and I am joined today by two of our friends. To the people we've been turning to throughout this Iran conflict and frankly for a long time before it. Because they are among this country's leading experts on nuclear issues and associated issues.

“And by them, I mean Joe Serencione. How are you doing today, Joe?”

Just great David. And John Wolfstall. How are you doing today, John? I'm great David. Thanks. And I noticed the other day that you were doing like a podcast with each other and you left me out. I was like, "Oh, no, you know." Yeah, I was everywhere. I was like, "Oh, I see. I'm not important to all this anymore."

Well, like, I knew that. But I think our... It's just a side gig. It means nothing to us. It didn't mean anything, David. It was just a side gig. It was meaningless sex, right.

Anyway, I thought it was appropriate. Our listeners and viewers considered the appropriate because so much is going on. And, you know, the president announced that there was a deal. Of course, there was no deal. It was exactly what we've all discussed over and over again. It was a concept of a fantasy, of a framework, of an MOU, of a something that might happen.

But the interesting thing about it this time around is somehow something that's signed by auto-pan on Sunday, according to JDVN. And we still don't know what it is because it won't go into effect until Friday. But the president is letting out little bits and pieces of, you know, his position. Which are kind of interesting at the beginning of a period of 60 days of negotiation on the "hard issues", which seems to be part of this deal.

And although I want to get into the deal first, the president said something today.

It's Tuesday, as we're recording this, that I found so spectacularly meaningful that I thought we would start with commenting on it first. Because the president said today, and perhaps I should read the quote exactly. He was talking about Iran's enriched nuclear material. You remember that, right, guys? That enriched nuclear material, the reason we went to work.

“And he said, "You could make the case why even bother getting it?”

It's not very valuable stuff." It's like, wait a minute, we've just spent hundreds of billions of dollars. Thousands of Iranians are dead. Thousands of people are dead in Lebanon. There were 20-30,000 strikes that have destroyed most of Iran.

We'd have a hard-line government in Iran. They now believe they control the straight-of-war moves. They won't do a deal unless we pay the court. And the president is saying, "It's not even worth it." Joe?

Well, that is a completely absurd statement. And first, it's part of the president's attempt to shift the focus from the numerous failures of this war. The catastrophes, the disasters, the unfulfilled goals that we can talk about later. And shifted over to this frame, where he's trying to cast this as a tremendous victory, because he's done two things, open the straits, which of course were open before he started the war.

And that he's going to get a pledge from Iran never to develop a nuclear weapon, which, of course, has been in effect.

And John knows this since 1966, which is the first time Iran pledged never to get a nuclear weapon.

And as we do, those kinds of pledges and all kinds of places, including the very first page of the 2015

So these are no victories.

These are just repairing the damage that he's done. And then, to the question itself of whether this stuff is valuable, it is enormously valuable. It has been the focus of all previous negotiations.

“And the reason is this, if you want to stop Iran from getting a bomb, what you have to do is affect two basic things.”

One, the machinery that they use to make to a rich uranium and the supply of enriched uranium that they have. And that's what the previous deal did. And presumably, that's what this deal, if we ever get it, will do. If Iran has a stockpile of highly enriched uranium, they can take that highly enriched uranium, put it back into a centrifuge.

Now, thanks to Trump advanced centrifuges and spin it up to the core of a bomb.

And so what you want to do is get rid of that stockpile. We did that in 2015, Iran agreed to ship all of it, except for a small token amount out of the country. It appears that eventually, the objective of these negotiations will be to get Iran to do that again. So no, it's not meaningless. It, in fact, is at the core of any future agreement the US and Iran could strike.

Yeah, but the President said it's meaningless before the negotiations begin, John. So, you know, if I were a Iranian, I would say, oh, okay. Let's just move on to give in us some money. Yeah, well, Iran is going to be saying give us some money. And until we see the text of the agreement, which hasn't been released and already members of Congress are saying, look, you know, we can't, we can't comment on this until we see what the text is.

So, you know, hopefully it's going to be released. But Iran's going to get paid, right, Trump is desperate for a deal for a number of reasons. One, he wants to quiet the Iran issue. He wants to get oil flowing because he knows the Republicans are going to be deluged in the election in November. And they need to try to get the economy back up to something semblance of power.

And he wants to move on to Cuba.

“You know, he went from Venezuela, I think David, you mentioned this morning on Blue sky that, you know, or Joe as a you that, you know, these are wars of distraction.”

We've gone to Warren Venezuela. We're going to wars in Iran. He wants to move on to Cuba because I called, I called the, I'm Blue sky, called them the Epstein wars. Yeah, right, because he wants this back people from, you know, and, and the grift, right, I mean, you know, we, we talked about this last week. David, you and I on Blue sky as well.

You know, I'm glad that they've removed the apparently removed the words Donald Trump from the Kennedy Center, though, it's still covered up with a tarp. But that's a distraction from the billions of dollars that Donald Trump is ripping off from the U.S. government through his sons, through cryptocurrency, through, I ultimate fighting championship battles on the White House lawn. But Iran's going to get their money and Trump wants to move on from what has been a colossal failure. That gets to the central point, though, that every administration since the late 1980s has been focused on, which is that Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon.

This is something everybody agrees on.

“And the only way they can get a nuclear weapon is that they have the nuclear material to build.”

And so the idea that the uranium is not valuable, that we don't have to get it that Iran doesn't have to dilute it is ludicrous. Yeah, so let's, you know, sort of go back and frame this properly. Because Trump is saying and has said many, many times that he has won a great victory in Iran. And Trump wants to portray this deal as a peace deal that is associated with that great victory. But I don't think any of these things are true.

And I just want to sort of break it down to the basics here. So, if you heard that a country launched a war against a weaker foe achieved none of its objectives. Didn't achieve regime change, did not reduce the likelihood of having a nuclear program actually increased its regional strategic influence. And then, because the position of the attacker was deteriorating so rapidly and there were under so much economic pressure. And the public view of it was so grim, that they sued for peace.

And they said, "We'll pay you $24 billion, half this week, half in another week.

There's $300 billion more where that came from. Please just walk away." Wouldn't that be in military diplomatic terms, what we would call a defeat and a surrender? Yes, in the last podcast we did together, you called it based on a comment I made at the very end. That this deal was going to be a fig leaf for surrender.

We are covering up a humiliating defeat, perhaps the greatest strategic defeat in American military history. In previous millennia, this would be the kind of deal that the one nation would make to China after they had conquered them and they'd be paying tribute to them. They'd be giving them resources. That's what's happened here. So just to break it down, that's be very clear.

“Donald Trump and BB Netanyahu went into this war with 4 key objectives.”

One overthrow the regime. That was the objective. You do that and everything else doesn't matter. Well, they didn't do that. So they had to try to do the other objectives. That is to eliminate Iran's ability to make nuclear weapons.

Didn't do that. Didn't accomplish that. They had to eliminate Iran's ability to make and fire missiles. Didn't do that. We know from U.S. intelligence. 70% of Iran's missile capability still intact.

And finally, and this might have been the most important strategic objective for Israel.

Several Iran's support for proxy groups. The regional militias. Hamas says below the hooties. Three ages. So none of that was accomplished. So therefore, at some point, Trump was stuck. He couldn't advance the war, the fight, the main fighting ended, you know, in the first month.

But he couldn't retreat without suffering a public humiliation. Very similar to the problem that Putin has in Ukraine, almost identical to that situation. So what he's now trying to do is present this retreat, present this surrender as an overwhelming victory. And it's very similar to what he's doing at the Kennedy Center.

He literally is hiding, hiding the truth from the American public. And the Kennedy Center has got shrouds over the name change.

“Here, he's keeping the terms of the deal secret for as long as possible.”

So he can try to spin his case.

In both cases, he's hiding essential details from the American public in order to try to convince them,

as he's done repeatedly, do not believe your own lying eyes, believe me. And for about 40% of the American public that's done a work. But the rest of us, we're still firmly planted in reality. And we can see this for what it is, a humiliating defeat, an illegal unnecessary war that never should have been started.

I was pretty good metaphor with the Kennedy Center. You've got to give him. Thank you, brother. I mean, that was no notes. I have no notes.

No, yeah, no. That was a nice, that was a nice job. But you know, when you do go down the checklist, not only did we not achieve our goal of regime change, or make it less likely that Iran has a nuclear weapon,

or reducing Iran's malign influence in the region. But we got a more hard-thine administration in Iran. We gave Iran effectively control of the straight-of-war moves. And although Trump is saying that there will be no tolls, there isn't a story in the New York Times that said,

"Well, Iran says, yeah, there no tolls, there'll be fees." Navigation fees, safety fees. Right, right. Not a toll. It would be a shame if something were to happen in your nice ship.

Right, right. Yeah, well, exactly. But fees, right. And by the way, there's also the lump sum, 24 billion, a plus $300 billion toll.

Let's be clear about that. You pay them, you pay them. And we have to pay them all. And they've achieved something else, which strangely has manifested itself in all the news media simultaneously did that,

which to me says somebody at the White House is doing something. Even though some of the places it's manifested itself were like with our friend Edluse. But Edluse is a story today about how Trump doesn't like Netanyahu anymore. Newsweek has a story today about how Trump doesn't like Netanyahu anymore. The Economist is a story about how Trump doesn't like Netanyahu anymore.

Trump this morning in another, just, I mean, this guy's brain is soup at this point. But, you know, he said, "Well, you know what?

“I think we should leave Lebanon to the Syrians."”

He said, "They could do a better job." Is this the Israelis? Is this before or after? He said, "You could walk. There's a land border between."

Between Qatar and Qatar. Yeah. Which, but by the way, Qatar, which is an island, right? But let's leave that aside. But the point is, we didn't just achieve none of our objectives.

In every single area possible, we lost ground where in a worse position today than we were before. That's why this is not just a defeat. This is one of the great fiascos. We have ever seen from any president ever in US history.

So, David, it's going to get worse. So, as I was thinking about it. Thank you.

That's why I always like to have a Jewish person.

You think this is bad? The food here is terrible and the portions are so small. So, I was thinking about it this morning. Friday, we're going to start a 60-day clock to negotiate with the Iranian.

Oh, God. And the Iranian have said, we can't wait to sit down with you. One, you're desperate for a deal, right? Two, the streets are open. We're making money again, right?

Remember that Iran closed the streets. And then the United States said, oh, no, no.

We're going to break up with you first.

So, we then imposed a embargo, even though the streets were closed. But, once we lift that, Iran is going to continue or restart shipping oil through its shadow fleet and bringing in a bunch of money. And so, the time is not on the side of the United States

and these negotiations. In any negotiating day one in negotiating class in grad school,

“what's your best alternative to a negotiated agreement?”

If Iran, that best alternative is pretty good. I keep to your radio. I keep the ability to close the streets at almost any time. America's allies in the region are like, wait a second. If the US goes to war again, we get bombed in our economies.

Go back in the crapper. That's no good. The US can't sustain its level of military operations

in the Middle East indefinitely.

One, because Trump wants to move on to Cuba. But, like, ships have to go home, right? Air fleets have to go home. I would just add, I'd just interject there. The Iranians have calculated.

People have written about this. But the Iranians have calculated. There's no way the United States is going back in hard on this because there is zero political will to do that. And even if they did, Iran has demonstrated.

I'm very cautious about this because there is worse that US could do.

“Remember that President was threatening in a very thinly-valued way”

to use nuclear weapons. We're going to see unconditional surrender. We're going to destroy Iranians society. We're not overnight. But Trump could do worse to Iran,

but Iran has taken our best conventional shots and come out ahead. So they don't have any fear of the United States anymore. The deterrent of military force by the United States is gone. And so Iran is saying to Saudi Arabia, UAE, gutter, all of our friends by rain.

Oh, you know, as they have for decades, the US might be here today. They might even be here tomorrow. But in 50 years, we're still going to be here. Would you like to talk about arrangements for security?

Would you like to talk about shared oil revenue? Would you like to talk about who's in charge of these regional affairs? So the US has even a good negotiating team. Whatever, really tough time getting a good deal out of Iran. We were able to do what we did in 2015 because we had a global regime of sanctions.

“We even had the Russians and Chinese on our side.”

Iran was strangled economically and politically, and they had nowhere to turn. And we had the threat of military force. All of that is off the table. And Iran is like, "Great, you want to talk? Bring it on."

Yeah, you know, picking up two things from that. Yeah, one. This is undoubtedly. I haven't even seen the MOU yet. Nobody has.

Not even Trump. Not even Trump, probably. But undoubtedly, it says 60 days renewable. Undoubtedly, it says that this period can be extended into the indefinite future. How do we know that?

Well, we know the Gaza deal. Because the Gaza deal was 100% the same bullshit. It was like, "Yeah, we've got one little thing. There are 22 other points. We'll get to those." And guess what?

We've gotten the none of them. He just wanted to change the subject. But, you know, there are other dimensions of this. And John, I'm kind of disappointed because you haven't hit all the things that could go wrong with this. One of the others is that Trump is doing this

to reduce the price of gasoline so that he doesn't have as much heat in the fall, right, in the elections. But here's the problem.

First of all, if you reopen the streets,

there's 188 ships or something out in there. The first ones that are going to go through maybe oil and gas tankers, the super tankers. The ones that are going to go through last in months are fertilizer ships, which means that the price of food is going to stay high. Secondly, even though the price of a barrel of oil has come down,

that doesn't mean that it's going to be lower at the pumps. And in fact, the price of gas is likely to stay high at the pumps through election day. So there is going to be no benefit for doing all of this for the American people. And there are a lot of Republicans, including, you know, Lindsey Graham, who spends most of the time with his lips firmly attached to the President's ass,

who are saying how to like this. So it's causing prop distress for him within his own party. So I agree with all of that. We've learned about global supply chains starting with the pandemic, right?

Put aside for a second, the infrastructure damage that's been done,

“where the oil and gas fields around the Middle East have been damaged,”

can take years to get back up to a production. But everybody notices, as soon as there's a rumor that there might be a war on conflict, the price of gasoline spikes. And then it takes a long time for those prices to come back down at the gas station. And then, of course, that works its way through the economy.

So all the food that's going to be at the supermarket next week, next month, had to get shipped on gas prices today. So you're right, that price line, that elephant of the war is going to have to work through the snakes digest and system. And it's going to be a major political burden for the Republicans.

For any incumbent. But Joan, I talked about this yesterday on the podcast that will not be named. It's okay. I don't know if I'm not it. No, I'll leave the fucking room now. Are you guys going talk without me?

“It's not you, it's you were essential, but it turns out your staff that produces these things”

are like, are going to get replaced by AI pretty quickly. No, they're not.

No, no, no, no, no. Finally, I know I love Riley's not actually real person in.

But you know, it's soon, you know, who knows what Donald Trump is going to do with things like the constitution or the Iran nuclear agreement review act. But there is a law that says any deal that relieves sanctions on Iran has to go in front of the Congress. He may or may not submit it. But you know, there's a dynamic here at work where Republicans will be in lockstep to support the president, maybe. Democrats don't want war to restart, but they're tempted to say we told you so this guy's terrible and opposed the deal.

But like the deal is likely going to go through, but it doesn't solve the political problems for the president. Café in his best form, with the new Cuban one capsule machine from Shibu. In every Cuban capsule expert café from special places, for espresso, coffee cream or coffee cream, at Knopfdruck. The new Cuban one shows with premium design, compact bar cruiser and small one-sticks price of 1920 Euro. Thank innovative press-broutechnology would every tassel besonders aromattish with samtiga creamer. And there's the Cuba capsule machine in Diner, Shibu, Fiali and Chibu D.E.

A perfect following day, sunny, park, picnic, and so many pollen. The next year, we'll take a look at the European Union and direct one-listen. I hate to interrupt this thrilling podcast, but we have some exciting news at the DSR Network. Our sub-stack is now live. Our sub-stack is going to be the new home for free and paid content here at the DSR Network.

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Now back to the show. I tell you, you seem to be chomping at the bit and don't write a question for me to say it.

We don't know what it's going to be and we've got 60 days and maybe it will never happen, which is supposedly the reason we fought this war.

That's been pushed aside and let's look at the strategic consequences of this disaster and one of them David you started with is the relationship between the United States and Israel is probably worse now than it's ever been. An previous administration's Democratic administration's Barack Obama Joe Biden, when the American president is disagreed with Benjamin and Yahoo Benjamin and Yahoo could go to the Republican Party and fix it. And could outflime the Democrats with, you know, call them weak and enemies of Israel, but he can't go there anymore. He doesn't have that tool, so he is really left in the lurch here and the Israeli media is withering about this deal.

Left, right, and center are highly critical. Many people are happy the war is over and we all should understand that the main benefit. By the way, I don't want to get compete with progressive credentials with you, but they're plenty of Americans who are perfectly happy with the US relationship with Israel being over to.

I know many of our friends, John, want to put the whole thing on Trump. This is Trump's choice, but I can't believe that if it wasn't for BB net and Yahoo, I don't think we would have fought this way.

“You know, you'll get a resolution. Yeah, that is a way or a plus, you know, that was the idea. So, but let me just rejuice something.”

From what Netanyahu supporters are saying about this, and I wouldn't read this on any other podcasts that's in the Washington Post today. The anchor of Channel 14, one of the more hard right channels in Israel, is often seen as Netanyahu's most prominent mouthpiece. And he yesterday lanced out at Trump as a loser accurate, advanced low life, but then he called his special envoy's Christian Steve Whitcarf as I can only say this here. Two little Jews whom Qatar bought for a lot of money and he sold out their brothers in Israel.

Whoa, whoa, dude. And that's Netanyahu's version of events. So Netanyahu's getting hammered. This is terrible for his reelection changes. You know, our relationship is further strained. Okay, that's big strategic change number one. Strategic change number two is our Gulf Allies reevaluating the relationship to us. You know, forget the nuclear deal, all that.

The US bases that we built there starting in 1991 and for the successful mind, you want to rock war. We're seeing a security assets now. They're security liabilities. And by the way, according to the alleged terms of this deal, the United States has to remove troops from the region. I mean, that's increased right and not increased. So, you know, Joe, it is a great point.

I mean, China's going to go to those same Gulf Allies and say like, we will never drag you into a war.

By our military equipment and we will never judge you be whatever you want to do whatever all your people in jail. You want to, you know, put your women and veils, you know, whatever. We're good, right? You know, I was going to get the third consequence under this real quick. I mean, China and Russia benefit from this. They are the winners of this and China's influence is going to grow in the Gulf of some of the reasons you said. And Russia, perhaps also as well. And finally, there's the energy consequences starting to see articles about how this is going to accelerate a massive change in global energy.

What climate, the threat of climate change couldn't do the Iran war might. It's increasing the search for renewable alternative energy sources of all kinds. But the United States has unilaterally disarmed in the competition for that. Exactly. But Trump's policies are slashing interests and investments in solar, in wind, in geothermal, etc. across the board, other countries are now going to be turning to resources in earnest.

And who again is the beneficiary of this China? Because China is investing big time and is cornered the market on many of the key technological aspects of renewable energies. It's a strategic catastrophe. I want to say one other thing. And John, you know, you can respond to this. I was on MSNow yesterday talking about this and on it was General Barry McAfrey. He was the other guy on it. For a star general, very highly regarded, very thoughtful guy. I've been on with him a lot. I agree with him often.

But I noticed a subtext and I would say this to his face because I think it's something that needs to be discussed.

But he was always very quick to say the US military went in there and they were super successful.

We destroyed, you know, tactically we achieved all these wonderful results.

“And you know, I hear this and I think, well, yeah, that's what happened in Vietnam.”

That's what happened in the Iraq War. That's what happened in Afghanistan. The US military keeps patting itself on the back for tactical success and accepting strategic failure. And why is that? Do they just say, well, that's the responsibility of the civilian overseers of our military? I don't know. But I mean, it troubles me that we've got, you know, the world's biggest most advanced military. And we don't seem to understand how to use it.

And that that just is another sort of strategic level conclusion or substance of level conclusion I come to from this. I mean, there is a big meta point here about how does the United States exercise power in all of its aspects around the world? And there's no doubt that American power has been diminished, political, economic, brand, military, all of it.

“What does it mean to have a trillion dollar plus defense budget if you can achieve your military goals?”

But I would redirect this a little bit, David, to say,

He's a pathological liar. Pete Hegsev is not to be believed.

“Doug Borgham is not to be believed. The ODE and I is not to be believed that Marco Rubio is not to be believed. So why should we believe that we have achieved the military goals?”

Right, we're told Iran's missiles were destroyed. Then the intelligence community says no, actually 70% are intact, right? Iran has been preparing for 30 plus years to absorb American conventional attack and then live to fight another day. So until we actually have congressional oversight, until we actually have an honest defense department that reveals details about why we killed 150 Iranian schoolgirls on the first days of the war, why we've lost planes in friendly fire, whether or not. I mean, we can hit a target and our planes can survive.

But what does Iran have left? Was it worth the price, right?

We're having Apache helicopters, $10 million pieces of equipment taking down what she drones across 1020 grand.

And we're shooting down what she drones with multi-million dollar interceptors. That it's not even a tactical success. You're absolutely right. Let me ask you one more question to tomorrow. We're going to do another podcast. We've got a couple of regional experts who are the world's leading experts on Iran and the region. And I do want to talk to them about some of these strategic points.

“But there's one I think we can also acknowledge here that has not factored in this.”

And that is that weeks before Trump launched this war, there were thousands of people in the streets of Iran protesting against the government. There were thousands of people, there was a national movement to try to produce the kind of change in Iran. That the people of Iran, frankly, deserve two things. One, that's over.

We have strengthened the hard-line regime.

And we are about to give them billions of dollars to enable them to strengthen themselves further. So we have undermined that movement. Secondly, Trump doesn't give a shit. We saw it happen in Venezuela, which he keeps touting as a success. Except we achieved nothing for the U.S. in Venezuela.

Some of Trump's friends have made some money. But remember there was a bad regime there. There was anti-democratic. There was the reason we attacked, you know, we will criticize them for many, many years. And Trump went in and said, "Get rid of this one guy. You can keep the regime.

You don't have to be democratic. Everything's fine." As long as I get my deal, I don't give a shit what happens in your country. So we have strengthened the Iranian regime. And we have a president who doesn't give a shit about it.

“And so I think this is also in the end a huge defeat for the people of Iran.”

While it's a victory for the government of Iran. You could argue that Trump's war saved the Iranian regime. I think that's right. They were on the rocks. They were getting weaker by the day. And they had a strong repressive apparatus that could suppress the demonstrations.

But they never defeated the ideas or the emotions or the cause behind those demonstrations.

We're here, the war comes and everything shifts. As you say, a more consolidated, more hard line, more militarily controlled regime at this point. And they're about to get rich from this, but in two ways. Three, the assets that they'll get from fees on the straight. The immediate infusion of cash from a frozen Iranian assets that will now be unfrozen.

And then the lifting of sanctions, which will allow them to make a lot more money. And possibly dip into this fund to the J.D. Vance acknowledged what they proposed. A $300 billion we construction fund. Well, that's an enormous amount of money. Some of it will go to line the pockets of the corrupt Iranian regime officials.

Some of it will go to Iranian backed militia movements in the region. But some of it's going to go to subsidize prices in Iran to reduce the outrageous inflation that's there. So that's going to calm the arrest on rest. So all of that is going to make it much more difficult for the Iranian people to do what only they can do, which is being about regime change in Iran.

I'm afraid we put that off for years more maybe a decade. So Joe, one of the benefit of being as old as, well, we are. I'll give you that. We are. You're very fine, John. We remember stuff. So if you remember in 1991.

How long has he been giving you shit for this? Let's see, we met in the early 90s, so probably since at least that.

But in 1991 before the United States moved to liberate Kuwait,

“George H. W. Bush called for the people in southern Iraq to rise up.”

Yes. You rise up against your government. We will be there to support you and they did. And we left them out to dry and they were all killed. And so Trump did the exact same thing.

Rise up against your government and Iran. We're coming to help you. And instead of leaving what he found, which was a diffuse balance of power in Iran between the religious community, between the IRGC, between the different regional factions of between.

What is a multicultural society, right? There are zares and Persians and, you know, a Turkmenz in Iran. He's left a military huntah in charge with the means to suppress its population at will.

And that's going to be, it was all, a nuclear armed.

Military huntah that can close the straits and strangled the global economy at will. If you're threshold, but that doesn't. That, yeah, right, exactly. Well, that doesn't said so good. So I mean, it's been a tactical, it's been a strategic defeat.

Geopolitically with regard to Iran. The region, our allies in the region, our allies around the world, our geopolitical rivals around the world, global energy prices, the global economy, and the nuclear program in Iran. But other than that.

And Iran tied New Zealand at the World Cup. In front of Germany now's ensuring, yeah, but, you know, the United States, the mother fucking United States of America, to doesn't let those guys stay in the US. They have to, there's the forcing them to stay in Mexico,

to ride a bus into the US, ride a bus out. They weren't allowed into it. It is so despicable. And those guys, you know, I was listening on Fox last night. And, you know, they're like, well, you know,

due to the domestic problems that they're having in Iran. These people have gone through a lot.

“And it's like, what the fuck are you talking about?”

Due to the fact that we attacked their country and killed their friends and relatives, and they haven't been able to play, you know, and, but they won't say that because it's fine. So it's like looking at it through this propaganda lens. It's, it's, it's so offensive to me.

If there is, there is a God, we're going to have an Iran US quarter final. I have to look at the schedules, see how it all matches are. I hope I hope it has a more mother of all soccer matches. Of course, we have to move it to Canada.

I hope it happens. I'm looking forward to the Iran Cabo Verde final, actually. But, but, but, but, look, let's, let's come back to this for one. Yeah, that second. Because there will be a deal.

It will be announced in a couple of days, probably. Elements of it will be. The Iranians will announce their elements, the US will announce their elements. What is the best outcome that we could expect, Joe and then John, from this negotiating period?

I mean, not the best possible outcome. Not, you know, is, is better and everybody gets a unicorn. What's the best possible outcome? Yeah, so I wouldn't call this a deal. This is a one and a half page MOU.

So that's an agreement and an understanding. The best possible outcome is the war actually stops, not just in Iran but also in Lebanon, which is arguably the more ferocious war that's going on right now.

A million people displaced, maybe 10,000 killed.

Part of the deal is the understanding is supposed to be that Israel will withdraw from Lebanon. Israel says no way. We're not going to withdraw. So that's, that's a hotspot to watch.

But let's say that we solve that somehow. The wars over and all its theaters. The traffic begins again. The minds are cleared. There is talk about a nuclear arrangement.

And then nuclear arrangement does include. And as Iran offered to do before the war. Take the uranium out of the country. Put a moratorium on further enrichment. And make other arrangements and exchange for tens of billions of dollars.

In you in unfrozen Iranian assets. That's, that's the best case.

“And that's I think what Trump is in the Iranians are aiming for.”

If Netanyahu doesn't screw it up by continuing his war on Lebanon, then they might be able to get that. I don't, I don't want you to talk about the best case. Because I don't think you're capable of talking about the best case. Because I don't think that's in your personality.

I want you to tell me what your worry is going to happen. Oh, well, I agree. Thanks for thinking so much of me, David. I'll give you both. In 60 days, the best that can happen is maybe you get the international topic.

Energy agency back into the country. And they can begin to figure out where the uranium is and what shape it is.

It takes weeks to get the teams together.

“These are nuclear industrial sites that have been bombed that are toxic.”

And you've got to put people into those locations. And it's not like these people are just sitting around at the pool of waiting to be deployed. So, best case is you get the teams in. And the worst case, Iran just says, no, we'll take out the uranium. But these terms are not acceptable.

What else you got? Iran has been doing this for a long time. Iran are tough negotiators. I've been in Iran. I've negotiated with the Iranians.

This team, you know, there are no jack Kennedy. They don't have what it takes to go toe to toe with the Iranians when they have a good hand to play.

And they've got, you know, they've got a low straight with a seven kicker.

Yeah, I think the worst case is worse than that. Which is the Iranians play the US, say that they are giving up. They're claimed to have a nuclear weapon. The US pays them for that. They agree to in the future, you know, have some kind of inspection regime.

And we are back where we were, except they have more leverage, more power, more money at their disposal.

“In other words, I think they can, you know, the last thing Trump, Trump, he doesn't seem to be able to do the math, right?”

60 days from now is essentially Labor Day. So he wants to begin the negotiations. He wants to hit the, the, the, the, the beginning of the campaign season. With an announcement of a failure in this negotiation. No, he doesn't.

Right. And he can't afford to go back to war, right? Right. And no, and there's no option to go back to war. So that's it.

Every day from here on Iran gets stronger in the US position gets weaker. And that's just the way it is. That's right. And whatever it is, it, well, let me put it this way. The next edition of the art of the deal will be in Farsi.

Yeah, I mean, if you look, we have to, it's why it's why you, you're free. What's the new epilogue? Yeah. You deserve credit.

“You know, the media ecosystem that Trump supporters live in is not going to get into details, right?”

You got a great deal. He, he solved this problem. He says so. Deal. What, what details?

Unnecessary. I take the president's word. So he's going to be able to sell that to his Joe said 35, 40% of the population.

Whether they actually say, well, wait a second.

I drive to the polls. It's going to cost me 450 a gallon. That somebody's fault or not remains to be seen. You guys are great. I really enjoy talking to you.

I hope that you enjoy talking to me enough. That you'll talk to me again and you won't be doing this all the time. I knew I was going to regret it. I knew I should eat this off. It's okay.

It's okay. No, it's okay. I'm fine out here. There's nobody. There's nobody else to talk to.

But there's squirrels. Except for tomorrow. Yeah. I have squirrels. It will be my favorite.

All right. We're done. We're done. Okay. It's great to see you.

See you all soon. Thank you, everybody. Bye bye. Thanks. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.