Is JSOC Spinning Up to Capture Uranium in Iran? | EYES ON GEOPOLITICS

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Very welcome to another episode of Eyes On Geo Politics, I'm the Micheal Contacos.

I'm here with Mick Moulroy, Jack Murphy, the Irish contingent of the Eyes On Teamhouse Crew. They didn't do it on purpose, I swear. We might be joined by an Englishman/American with Eddie Miller and Soon. Let's get right into it.

Still happening.

“I think we're like second week into the US, or strikes on a run.”

We just saw yesterday that we started hitting some oil infrastructure and stuff like that.

Tone going on, there's also talk.

There was an initial talk about the curge getting in on the fighting in terms of as a ground force, that kind of has gone, hasn't really materialized as a yet. There is also some talk, there was a couple articles that came out yesterday that the president and the US are mulling and Israel are mulling, special operations move to go and secure, it's found where all the the enriched uranium is, you know, that is in

J. Sox Wheelhouse, obviously, they trained for that. So as a ton more stuff going on, let's just start off, let's get up to speed, make what's going on. There's a lot to cover. Yeah, you can do a show on each one of this.

I know. Things you just listed out there, so I guess we start from beginning. I can see, if you look at it from Israeli point of view, if I was a national security adviser, I thought I had the opportunity to dismantle the Islamic Republic, I'd probably take it.

“And that's why they were going to go either way, and they were going to unleash everything”

they had, and they would love the fact that they kind of pulled their big brother along with them. And we'll get to that. Right. But I think the interests are similar, especially the military objective, right, degradation

of the nuclear capacity, reduction of the ballistic missile stock and launchers and ability to make more manufactured sites, and the Navy, which, of course, I think, think we're at something like 78 ships and vessels of salt right now. And that has to do, of course, with our own ability to block aid, the Straits of Hormoods which we can get into, which in and of itself could be a whole episode.

But it diverges a bit, because what I would be saying, if I was in the White House would be, we need to have very specific objectives. When we meet those objectives, we need to be able to bring it into this. It could be a pause, right? I'm not into chest up and in declaring victory like on a board of aircraft carrier, if

you remember those days, I say we have a pause. We see what happens, and then we really push for negotiations, and they can either do up or don't. And it's in their own interest, because right now, it looks like the regime is going to survive. The military objectives, we go a little bit about those, and then we'll talk about some

of the issues that we have to address.

“The military objectives, we struck, is the fawn, fortale, and one more with 12 mobs, right?”

We essentially buried the uranium, which makes it a challenge now to say that we're concerned about, or on getting nuclear weapons, because we're successful, right?

So I think that's actually like what's frozen since that struck, it really like make moves to continue there in Richmond or whatever. Right.

“There's some indication that they were starting to rebuild, okay?”

And I'm all about making sure they never get a nuclear weapon.

So I support the strikes on the nuclear facilities. The challenge, and we can do all other part on the JSON operation, but generally speaking, units trained for what exists, not what's been demolished. So I'm not quite sure how that would go, but we can get in that separately. But degradation of the nuclear facilities, 100%, degradation of the ballistic missile capacity,

also the same thing. That's their biggest threat. They reach out and strike their perceived enemies, and with those missiles, and if they get to a certain point, they can overwhelm even the iron dome, iron beam, that patriot, which of course are super expensive, another whole topic, you know, you think about a pack three

is about $12 million, she'd down a $30,000.

But so that was important. And then the naval aspect I agree with, the other thing that they are talking about, which

“I think we should come off of, is a regime change.”

I would love for it to change, love for it to change. But simply telling on our people to go into the streets and protest is not going to facilitate a change, it's probably just going to get them all killed. I do think there's, and obviously I'm biased, this is what I did for 11, working a cover program, if that's in fact accurate, reporting, to give the regime a dilemma.

But I don't think, I think there's around 4,000 fighting Iranian Kurds, IRGCs over 200,000,

the ash desks, you know, I don't, the besiege alone, you know, a million, I mean, you're

fighting in a possible fight, you could be in that, you can give the regime a hard time, you can give them another reason to come to the negotiation table, but I don't think you're going to be able to facilitate a regime change from the air with just, you know, 4,000 fighters. And now, last thing I'll say before, if I wanted to check, then any of us move, the straight to hard modes, right?

This is a problem, gas is going up, 30% of the, the nitrate, the fertilizer comes through there, the whole world uses 20% of the oil, 20% of the liquefied gas, including 30%, 30% of Taiwan's liquefied gas comes from there, right? So this is going to start having, like, and I'm not on a economist, but you don't have to be an economist to, to realize that this is going to get worse and worse and worse.

So another reason why I think the US can both claim, they met their military objectives and also find it off for it, and I think that's in our interest, maybe not Israel's interest. If I was Israel, probably do what they're doing, but our interest, I think, is to find a way to get back to the negotiation table and potentially a better agreement than we ever expected. So I mean, just a couple things that I would mention here's, I mean, I think one of the big

“ones is, we're about a week in, I think, what is this day nine?”

So we're, we're in the week two, and we've run out of military targets to hit, it seems. So we're moving on to economic targets and even civilian infrastructure that is debatable how legitimate the target is, allegedly an oil refinery, allegedly a desalination plant. But then we also have Israel as possible, the liability because they hit it or did we hit it, and that's something that will come out and wash down the line.

But the point is we've run out of military targets and now we're having to look for other things to blow up, and it seems that, although this isn't really a public dispute or feud right now, if you just listen to the public statements between President Trump and Netanyahu, they seem to be at loggerheads as far as what their strategic goals are, because Netanyahu is saying, Israel is going to kill every successor that the Iranians put forward,

whereas President Trump seems like he's looking in, in desiring Iran to put forward successors, and he wants to have a role in choosing who it's going to be. So these goals are obviously incompatible, and as Mick pointed out, I mean, there's going to come a strategic conflict there about, you know, which direction we're going to go in, and quite frankly, I think Israel kind of dogwalked America right into this conflict without

any sort of long-term planning or long-term strategic goal, and now we're at a point where, you know, one of these views is going to have to prevail, and probably it'll be something closer, you know, I suspect to what Mick mentions as the administration starts not seeing the regime

you know, and I think President Trump could declare victory in a sense, he probably already

“achieved the thing that he really wanted to achieve, which is killing the leadership element”

of the Iranian government, and maybe he can move on, he's already talking about Cuba in public statements, as far as the J-sock piece of it, that is a mission that I've looked at and written about a little bit in the past. It's high-risk, but these guys have trained for it extensively. Out at the Nevada Test Site, they go and do these full-mission rehearsals, where they'll jump in with all their equipment, and go and train to breach underground facilities, like, I mean,

underground actually, like, blowing up bunker doors and things like this, and none of that's administrative, like they do it with real explosives to train for exactly this scenario, and then they would have to go in and destroy the center of futures, or if it's some sort of other WMD facility, there's like chemical vats and things like that, that would be destroyed during

“an operation like that. In the context of Iran, I mean, I'm not a J-sock planner, but when I think”

about it and I look at it, it feels like a one-way trip. I mean, you can get in there and you can do the operation, but my question is sort of how are you going to get out? So it is a high-risk mission if they decide to do it, and as Mick pointed out, we've already hit those facilities, I think numerous times. So it's even a question of, like, is there anything to breach or is it just a collapsed facility at this point filled with sand and dirt? And then the last thing I would

point out is the Kurdish situation that we spoke with John Hackett on the last episode, and as Mick said, there's something like 4,000 to 3,000, some estimates put it as low as 1,000, able-bodied Kurdish fighters in Iran. They are in several regions, or one fairly small region in North West

“Iran. And can you get them armed? Can you get them fighting? Do they want to fight? I believe they'll”

fight for an autonomous Kurdish region, but then there's the entire rest of the country. It's a

country of like 90 million people, and they would be fighting in nine Kurdish areas. And how are

the locals going to respond to that? The Iranians aren't as tribal as say the Iraqis are, but still, it's going to be like, you're carving out a Kurdish homeland, like over in this, you know, other part of Iran, it doesn't make any sense. And it seems like the, you know, so-called Kurdish resistance, at least for the moment, is vaporware, that it's something that was proclaimed and declared quite loudly in the press over the last week. But it almost is like a coping mechanism,

because we don't have a plan for what comes next. It doesn't seem that they're even close to ready to get serious about that. So I'll pause there and, you know, let Andy jump into it. Hey, guys. I'll keep this short because very sadly, I find myself agreeing with Mick and Jack. But it's a, it's several other, it's just, you know, go over what they've said. I want to emphasize or ask this question, actually, because I don't know the answer. So, you know, we talked about

the disparity between Netanyahu's goals and President Trump's, you know, between Israel and

United States, because our interests are not always 100% in that alignment, and it's becoming clear here.

What I'm interested in, I'm interested in that, but I'm interested also in, in the fact that we're in the situation that Jack just described or sum it up very briefly, right? So we have essentially we United States attained our military goals. If our military goals are confined to reducing Iran's capability, um, kind of a moving, the grass approach, but the fact that we've, we've removed a significant amount of the leadership, Iran's a leadership, um, we've reduced their eye ads,

almost enough, and that's an integrated ad-defense system. We've clearly reduced, although who knows whether it's to zero, there are inventory of ballistic missiles and drones, um, their connection with, uh, proxies, their support for proxies has been reduced at the user rent, right, at the demand level that has borne is, if not on the ropes, the capability has been severely, um, impeded and in the last year or so. So all of these things, military side, all of these things, um,

that were perhaps, you know, practical objectives have been achieved. My question is this,

and perhaps the intelligence community are saying, hey, boss, this is about it. You know,

if we need to go further and continue this campaign, we need clearly outlined strategic goals, and if the strategic goal is regime change, as we've learned in the last couple of days, the, the recommendation the intelligence community has said, we're not going to get there from here. In other words, we're not going to get there from the air campaign, and as Jack just described it, hopefully someone is also saying, we're not going to get there even by backing

4,000 Kurds because that is a drop in the bucket. Um, do, does anyone since is there any talk of,

of, of, you know, kind of this tension at the, the nexus between military leadership and political

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Close. If I was to encourage, there'd have to be some serious promises for getting involved in

“this thing because it could easily turn south on them fast. I think the chances of the regime”

surviving are probably more importantly. The IC, thanks to the chances of the regime surviving is high and it might be mostly controlled by the RGC. There is a power struggle. We're seeing the president apologize and immediately another element in the government say, don't pay an attention to the president. He doesn't control the military. We're not going to apologize for any of it. So I think what's happening is you've got like the large honies for RGC, the Iraq cheese,

the foreign minister, IRGC, they want to take control. Yes, they'll be. It may be another premature victim next 24 hours, but I don't think he'll be the same type of leader as a home any.

“I think he's going to be like, sit there, shut up and say prayers. The IRGC is going to run this”

stuff because it's how we got into this, right? Because IRGC, even though I'm one of the things

they should never get a nuclear weapon, they're the ones who've been pushing for them to get a nuclear

weapon. Right? So we might end up with a worse scenario, at least as far as attitudes towards us, but a much better scenario in that they don't have the capacity to do much about it. Right? So

should be our foreign policy, understand Israel's understand if I was them, I might be one in the same thing, but we're not going to get let around, right? We're the US. I think we should decide we meet our military objectives. We move to a pause. We try to get this back in the diplomatic

track, which means the intelligence agency has got to talk first, and then once they get something

going, they throw it over to the traditional side, which is the foreign ministry and, you know,

“state department. But that's why I think we should be going. I also don't think we need to get our”

stuff in one sock when it comes to messaging. I mean, the idea that, you know, it was an immigrant threat because they had ICBM, a weight that's going to take 10 years. That's not him, but a weight that we're going to attack us first. Nope. The IC just brief Congress like that wasn't the case. And then the idea that Israel's going to attack them. So they're going to attack us. So

now we have to go to war because Israel wants to war that was not helpful at all. And then the

president talked that back, right? They need that one message and just keep saying, not an influence guy, but that needs to happen. And one is just call it a war. You've named it the word apartment. The president keeps calling it a war. You just get an argument with the media and then you're

“countering your own argument, literally in the next press conference. So it's small potatoes,”

but the messaging is new to get. The other, like, no, no word that they really don't want to use is regime change, but they keep talking about changing the regime. And so the double talk is yeah, that's confusing on the additional surrender, too, as well. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And some kind of explanation to the American people, or at least certainly to elected representatives, which whatever shape will form that that takes on what the strategy is rather than kind of opaque comments about how

long this could last. And you know, and it's just kind of double tab where everyone's been saying I mean, the Iranian regime is going to survive because it's spent four decades building a system designed to survive, right? To resist of external pressure, politically militarily economically, I mean that it's it's just so firmly embedded, as we said, it's like, you know, all the the surviving regime has had to do is close all watertight doors, right? It's the contingency plan.

“And and will emerge from this, although how else around will emerge from this is anyone's gas?”

Yeah, a strategic coherence, strategic messaging for domestic and international audience. And for Iran. And I support it. I just think we need to fix that. Yeah. Make another issue undoubtedly. I agree. Good things have happened. I mean, guys, you know, make a course you familiar with this, but I mean, the plan is not a new plan. The plan is crossed many administrations. It's not something that was pulled out in the last few weeks, months. And the plan was there for a reason

because we had national interest at stake. But arguably now we have, you know, we've reached those national aid. Those interests as much as we can through military force. And it's time to perhaps declare victory. Another side issue, we probably should touch on is the fact that Russia's providing intelligence to the Iranians. Yeah, I was going to bring that up, too. Yeah. Oh, yeah.

Yeah, do you want to summarize it? Yeah, sure. There were reports saying that Russia was basically

providing targeting information to Iran on our positions. Asked about at the president kind of spit spun a little bit said like, oh, Russia, we do this to Russia and Ukraine. So why wouldn't they do that to us, which is insane for a fucking US-American president to say about Russia? You know, clearly, Russia is the enemy. They've started a war and Ukraine unprovoked war. And we should continue to support Ukraine with everything we can possibly do. So yeah, that's also another

little wrinkle. Another thing was, you know, about a month ago, the president was, you know, berating India about buying oil from Russia, put tariffs on that. And now they have lift the tariffs and ease sanctions on Russia to be able to sell oil to India. So another little, I guess piece of blowback economic blowback, anyway, is there's money going into Russian pockets that is just going to continue to fuel the war in Ukraine? So yeah, there's that little tidbit.

in the send folks during the time of war and we should come back to Ukraine.

“War, because there's actually some happen in there. They're willing to send us to help us in”

our partners that are getting attacked because of our war, the help. And then we have Russia that is willing to give very detailed, exquisite intelligence on the location of our naval assets. They're very hard to hit, but they're a lot easier to hit with that kind of intelligence. That's beyond just a foe. That's an enemy. The idea that we justify them attacking us because some, you know, because we're helping Ukraine is, I mean, maybe as an objective observer,

you could say that, but certainly not as a commander chief of the army. Yeah, navy air force and marine, right? Your responsibility to protect us period or us being the US military.

So there is no justification for providing critical intelligence to our enemy that could use

target. And God, hope they don't actually, you know, get successful. Because there's talk about us escorting tankers through the Dreads of Hormotes, right? What's that? I like 21 kilometers or something? We're going to be super vulnerable, right? So, and if they got intelligence of where are we going to be, where they can replace mines, they can place mines, they can place the mines, they detach, they come up right at the, I mean, there's all sorts of stuff that they could do based,

if they have the type of information they need to do the targeting. And if Russia's providing it, we need to be given them a straight-up warning, the intelligence channels, which, you know, is usually believed. Like, you do this. Bad things gonna happen. Super bad things gonna happen to you. I'm not just making, you know, okay, well, they're going to do what they're going to do. Here, you know, on that point, Meg mentioned countries within the police nastying for Ukrainian

“helps, specifically, I think that was Bahrain and UAE, and perhaps Jordan, I can't remember. But,”

you know, what that emphasises, again, aside from the fact that Ukraine's kind of a natural ally, rather than Russia, what it emphasises, I think, is that the United States and, and our allies, were just not prepared for the scale of, of drone attacks, right? I know that seems like we're stealing the obvious. But, but the real issue here, and it's gonna get worse is, you know,

there's a lot of talk about cost matching with the Petriate intercept, you know, a million dollars

at pop against the $10,000 Shahit Dream drone. I would argue it's not so much about cost for the United States. It's about magazine depth, right? How many defensive shots you actually have available? And, and clearly, and also the fact that it's a mismatch of capability, that that high-end defenders like that, like Petriate are just simply not the most effective, counters to drones, you know, the low altitude, slow relatively slow moving, small radar intersections. So there's clearly a gap

in, in our capability and the capability of all of our allies. Andy, yeah. I have a question for you, what do we use outside of Petriate? And we're not using fat missiles on Shahit's, I hope, because we have like 200 of them in total. Are we using just CRAM? Is there other things, John Hackett last week mentioned that we do have capabilities that are classified that we don't

“want to show. So, instead of other using that stuff, is it just CRAM like what are we using?”

No, I mean, there are, you know, and I don't have John's expertise, but yes, there's a spectrum of capabilities, right? Kinetic non-kinetic. Yes, there is a layer of UAS defense. My point is, it's not effective enough, right? Because we're still, you know, in again, I mean, this is, I'm not getting into classified info. I don't have the classified info. I don't have access and if I could, I couldn't discuss it here. But the point is clearly, they're not effective,

because enough drones are still getting through, right? Even even when those drones have to travel, however many thousands of kilometers, kilometers it is, so there's plenty of time for interception. These aren't, you know, for the most part, aside from, in Iraq, these are not short-range attacks. So, and we're dealing with an enemy whose inventory of drones has been vastly depleted. We're not going against, you know, a major power, and yet we're still struggling to intercept all those drones

coming in. So clearly, our short-range air defense isn't where it needs to be, regardless of how much classified shit that we have, right? And so my point is that, on the other hand, Ukraine has been dealing with this kind of exact inventory problem for years, right? And in the

intercepted drones, right? And with health from the U.S. companies. And yet we haven't adapted

this technology, and if we have, we haven't done it on scale, we haven't done it quickly enough,

“and I think, you know, the events of the last couple of weeks have been evidence of that.”

You can say, well, we, you know, there's been very few casualties. There have been very few casualties. But, on the other hand, we're dealing with an adversary on the ropes, and we still can't stop these things from getting through. And the Iranians aren't at the high end when it comes to target acquisition and direction of drones that they're pretty good in other areas, and they're getting help from the Russians. My point is, this does not all go well if we go against the

APA competitor with mass use of drones. So, yeah, so the goal states are kind of bypassing us now and turning directly to Ukraine. So, let's get said, yeah, sure, we'll help you. And you know, and the Ukraine has had been remarkably successful. And when you look at the scale of drone attacks on Ukraine, on Kiev alone, and the fact that the interception rates, they are, they're pretty,

“with a very impressive, but we didn't reach out to Ukraine beforehand. We know that for sure,”

we don't know that for sure, but those ain't an order called the Atlantic by a Nazi use from the last few days, you pointed out that Ukraine is now off of Ukraine. We haven't reached out beforehand. Hey, for now, I'm an old journalist, I got a Nazi use of that is. The other part about Ukraine is they are starting to take back territory. There's so much other stuff of the news that we're not talking about. And Russia's events have, in certain sectors,

have slowed. So, it's actually, I'm not saying, you know, it's all over and we should, you know, help them celebrate. But that is a much better than the opposite, right? So, we should increase our support to Ukraine period, and we should help them capitalize on the gains they're making. Right now,

I mean, Russia is at one point two, one point three million cash police in this by the,

I think the UK's estimate. It's, they're not going anywhere. The Ukrainians aren't going anywhere. They have, they have not only fought Russia to essentially a standstill. They've become the most effective military in Europe, period, period, right? So, they're now, not only should we just be supporting a partner because they're a partner, but they would be a great ally for the United States. They're an exceptional military. They have more experience, probably, than any right now. So,

“that's why, to 80's point, all these countries are going to that, face us.”

We, we sometimes seem collectively, perhaps it's an American side and no, but a reluctant to learn these lessons. And I'll give you a quick example. So, in the, in the offensive, right, of way back, it was the summer of 2004. Sorry, it's summer of 2024. Ukrainian offensive. You know, do, or do, do you can, the US have provided Ukraine with all this training, all this breaching equipment. And, and then afterwards, when the, when the, when the offensive didn't achieve

its objectives, I'll comment, well, when Ukrainian didn't use our assets the way they were supposed to be used. And, and, and all of our focus, our filter was through the combined arms breach that we used to practice for, um, you know, the Cold War. The, the things they remember, we do in the Marine Corps in a 29 pounds. It's a very set piece. So, sir, you laid out an obscuration, right? You've

laid out suppression. You do this. You do that. But it never occurred to us that our methodology might

just be obsolete, right, on the transparent battlefield. And the, and the Ukrainians learned the hard way. We kept saying what they didn't listen to us, you know, they didn't, they just not to experience enough in combined arms. The Ukrainians learned from that. And now the way they launch attacks or they defend against attacks, it's, it's quite different. And when they launch attacks and Russians, too, it's in these penny packet assault groups, right, on, on quad bikes, on motorcycles,

very, you know, having, having, the idea, they have a very low, low profile, right? These guys are all, and the way, the, the, you're down to individual camouflage, right? Total face fails because drones, um, you can, identify faces. I mean, the, just, the, the techniques, tactics and procedures at the tactical through the operational level that have been developed in the conflict, we haven't looked at this, and we haven't adapted it, and we've been too dismissive saying,

yeah, but those things won't apply if we go to war with China. Well, a lot of them will probably

example, right? Why don't we have an inventory of intercepted drones at $1,000 a, a park with a, you know,

99% interception rate. Why, why we still relying on these old, you know, on, on high-end interceptors combined with, uh, some, you know, a few exquisite platforms that we can't afford to spread liberally

“around through every, every place that needs it. So, good point. What is the answer for that?”

Is it just because we don't, we think it has to be expensive to be worth it? I think we talk about it like, you've mentioned it about the procurement process super slow. It is. We keep saying we're going to fix it. Um, mix got a good point. I think we, I think we've got this kind of

attraction to expensive shit, right? I mean, we've never, I mean, we developed the prayer and, um,

and that was like $30 million a pop and we thought, okay, that's it, right? And if we didn't realize, it was not in there, right? Yeah, and it's definitely became more and more obsolete to the point where we wouldn't fly, um, we wouldn't fly high-end ISR platforms over areas with, uh, with the strong EDA threat. I mean, that happened, right? And Magnosis is true. So it came to the self-defeating of the whole point of having unmanned systems is that they are ultimately

“expendable, at least they're more expendable than man systems, right? I think we can all”

know that. And yet we don't manufacture them that way and we don't treat them that way.

And we need to start to include unmanned tanks. Yeah, you're here. I don't know. Let's start to sort of unmanned tank company. Let's get in on it. Is that it? But I want to start me started on the tank. Did it? I think so. Thank you. Yeah, the Ukrainians have a heavily-elected unmanned tank, um, pretty impressive by all accounts. You can look it up on YouTube video, uh, heavily incorporates AI, photography, and navigation, um, and it is exactly what you need in any environment

where you're using infantry or, I mean, any, any environment, right? You've got a, you've got a, uh, a rolling, stable, uh, relatively survival, very capable gun platform to support maneuver,

“direct five gun platform to which is really what tanks provide and, and, and the gap”

that is left when when we abandon tanks. Yeah. And then once you take out the people, then the, the cost of the actual, you know, tank itself goes down considerably. Most of the, a lot of the expenses to keep people alive inside the tank. And you know, each, do we do tactical training out here, um, and Montana, and we have started incorporating lessons learned from Ukraine, and he said a couple of them. But another one we hear a lot of, uh, of is, they don't want

any more armored personnel carriers. Like, yeah, those things are death traps. They, they do the drive a motorcycle, like they put their whole platoon on individual motorcycles to sparse and then, you know, consolidate, you know, prior to whatever objectives are going after. But they, the expensive, Bradley, et cetera, at least from that, what we're here, and I'm sure the Department of Defense is collecting their own information, but they don't want them. They just don't want them.

It's too expensive. They drive it. I mean, think how many motorcycles you could buy electric motorcycles you could buy for the cost of a variety. Yeah. And it's a simple with some, it's an understanding of the enemy's target prioritization, right? You, you stick, whatever, you know, you stick, uh, tendudes in a, in a Bradley, which is a high-end expensive system, and you start rolling across the, the battlefield. Now you've become a target. Yeah. But, but it's a much more

difficult targeting proposition when you've got 30, 40, 50 dudes, you know, or tearing, towards an objective from different directions. Even if you pick them all up, right? I mean, you just don't have enough systems now to intercept and you've got the target prioritization calculus becomes that much more difficult. Yeah. It's, um, it's really interesting. But before we get more on, you know, the, the serious stuff, I just want to, I want to welcome Jack and say, Jack, you're a,

your social media feeds. I recommend to everyone because they are hilarious. Uh, very, very a, um, uh, quite rightly a survey, and, uh, and, and, uh, and cynical about all those, some of the,

chest, who ever had the most narrow and sunk in chest, seen most prone to chest beating, I should

say. You're talking about the, uh, you're about the post I made about how, you know, I've seen military veterans kind of oscillate back and forth being the war in the anti war, depending on which way the wind is blowing. That's right. I mean, yeah, just briefly on that. I mean, what I was commenting on was that, you know, during the war, the war on terror, um, you know, and I include myself and this to some extent, you know, we were all gung-ho, you know, kill the enemy and some

guys were all into the Spartan warriors and the Templar knights and all this sort of stuff. And then after, you know, they left service and I would include myself and this to some extent also. Again, um, you start reflecting on the wars and Afghanistan Iraq and you get kind of angry about them, um, you get kind of angry with your government and there are some reasons for that,

“some good reasons, I think. And, and a lot of guys, so a lot of guys I saw went from being very”

pro-war to being very anti war actually and like even in some of it plays into the like America

first, like we got to take care of America here and not be fighting these Middle Eastern wars.

And it's sort of dismaying the last a month or so. I mean, all of those guys kind of swing right back to supporting a, um, seemingly endless war in the Middle East that doesn't have any strategic and state, um, at least none we've been told about. Um, and, um, it's, it's very, that's a very disorienting thing to say, um, and to be a part of to some extent. Well, you made a good point. I mean, I think the, it is primary motivator now is politics, right? And pay in more so than, okay, more

than so than two decades ago, um, even among veterans, I've noticed big change, perhaps especially in my veterans and, and, and perhaps among active duty troops too, um, the, I think just the,

“the politics has been coming, the, the deciding point on, on, on how you judge any of these”

foreign adventures, it's, what, what, what the, what the rationale is being behind him. What I was,

what I was saying was that, you know, we sort of use politics today to fulfill a role that we used to use religion for in the past. Yeah. And we use politics to seek reassurance and affirmation. And in my opinion, that's really looking in the wrong place for those things. So, my, I'm not political, but I, I hope the trend toward independence, uh, continues, right? You shame it with the young people, in other words, not necessarily tied to a political party, because, you know,

just speaking as an American, we should be over rationally deciding each issue based on the issue. Not just ask what you're supposed to think, and then that's your, that's your position, because you don't actually have to think to do that. You can just say whatever that guy said or go. Right? Um, hopefully Americans go back to, and, and get their independence from political parties. Not, not just the independence from, you know, tyranny.

But involved in the wider picture doesn't it? So, for instance, it involves, when, when the Senate refuses really to debate, you, around war, the rights and wrongs are around war, whether the executive is overstated, stepped at slimming, it becomes a, uh, kind of, uh, it becomes, it becomes yet another political battleground, and what those perhaps on the right don't realize is that by, by, by kind of saying, hey, that doesn't matter. We don't need

congressional oversight. You put yourself in the position where any administration can do the same. But, maybe they should adjust the war powers act to say if you don't act, then you've just endorsed the war. Yeah. Yeah, exactly.

“They're within a certain amount of times. No, 60 days, I think, is what's in there. But if you don't,”

if you don't act to, uh, you know, either stop the war or continue the war, then you've got a place to continue the war. Yeah. Listen, then we, that is a declaration of war by that, because Congress doesn't want politically. They're, they don't want to actually claim any ownership, so that they can let us, it later, say it wasn't awesome, was it? Yeah, it was awesome.

Is it that like the most bizarre thing of all of this is, you know, I mean, not that we have a particularly high expectation for Congress, but this, this position they've chosen of like, we don't support the war, but we also don't not support it. Like, like, what is going on here? Yeah. It's, it's just too difficult. It's just too much, it's just too much, guys. And then the fact that, I mean, if you look at the war powers act,

every president, not just the current president, has said it's on unconstitutional. Well, there's the means to find out whether it is Constitution,

core thing of any federal government, right? Right? War or not. The idea that we're still, and that was passed in 1972. And so President's comply with, uh, what's laid out in it, but they don't agree that it's that they actually have to. So why hasn't the Supreme Court decided under the Constitution, which is a job, whether the war powers act, his constitutional or not? The idea is still that still a mystery is a mystery to me, right? Because that is like,

one of the number one things in Article 1 is the power to declare war and raise and support

Army's and Navy's, right? Or Congress. And one of the first things in Article 2 is the President

as Commander and Chief. So how is that supposed to actually work? Does the President get to be the one to declare war and be the Commander and Chief? Or does Congress actually have a

“constitutional responsibility? Right? And that's what the War powers act was supposed to address,”

but it's still a mystery in whether it's, you know, binding on the Commander and Chief. I read a hilarious tweet. It said, uh, I wish Congress was alive to see this. Oh, I think, I think Congress is in a life to see this, which is funny, but it's kind of sad, too, you know, like they're not doing their job. It is. Hey, I'd like to pick up on something, you know, Mick mentioned about, and we started talking

about Ukraine briefly, and and Mick said, hey, the tide appears to be turning there, at least things aren't as dire for Ukraine as perhaps the US has made out. And I think absolutely that's true. I mean, it's not that Ukraine's about to conquer Russia or even quickly retake all territory, but instead, it's clear that Ukraine is perhaps winning in the strategic sense, preventing Russia from achieving its objectives, while imposing, you know, really harsh long-term

costs, right? I mean, think about it. So Russia's failed in all its core strategic objectives. Topping the Ukrainian government and stalling a pro-Russian regime, destroying Ukraine's military, preventing Ukraine's integration with the West, right? Those were the seated objectives, and in fact, none of those have occurred, and if anything, it's Russia's strength in Ukraine.

So let's strengthen NATO. We've talked about it. Ukraine's armies now, the most powerful in

Europe as Mick said, expanded dramatically, NATO's expanded, and Ukraine potentially is moving towards EU membership. You know, meanwhile, the Russian offensive has stalled, and you know, how long have we been reading about Russian forces closing on Pock-Ross, for instance, which every time I mentioned that town, I mentioned, half-dimension, it's a shit hole, because one of our favourite listeners is from there and gets in sense every time I do that. It is indeed a shit hole. Pock-Ross gives a horrible

horrible place, and it's worse now, but the Russians have failed to take it, and they've been trying

“now for 18 months, okay? So they've advanced, I think, it's like a plummetice, right? Total,”

square plummetice, and all of February, which is apparently the slowest according to Rusey's slowest progress in two years, and multiple of their attacks have failed and car-keve advanced, you know, across the front in Donbass. So they clearly, they can't break through, even if they could, even if they could form a penetration, they don't have enough, they don't have a tactical or operational reserve to exploit it, and they're, you know, we talked about the losing tens of

thousands of soldiers per month, right? I mean, you know, we talked about the Rusey saying that they're losing on a good day, a thousand guys a month. Now there's casualties, but average around 1200 guys a month. I mean, I'm sorry, per day, per day, per day, which is just phenomenal, think about it. You know, I mean, what impact does that have on Russian society, hard to tell, but certainly rural regions inside Russia are experiencing heavy casualties and demographic

depletion, you know, as reports coming out of Russia about that. So Russia's pleading man,

“parent equipment faster than it can replace them. That's the key part here, because we can”

talk about Will to fight or we want, but the key thing is, can our replacements meeting

attrition rates, and they are not, right? So, and meanwhile, Ukraine's striking deep inside Russia, right, you know, drone strikes on auto terminals, naval bases, taking out general officers,

chessboard, right, and and the continued attacks on logistics and energy infrastructure.

So, and while all of that's happening, Ukraine's defense industry is expanding rapidly, you know,

“I mean, so I think, yeah, I mean, it's difficult to predict an outcome, but Russia's not in a”

good position right now, at all, these are the Ukraine. I would like to ask you guys a question that was, would have been maybe an academic question until fairly recent, but now it's, I think, pragmatic. The situation that we're in right now with Iran, with Ukraine, we talked about the Ukrainians sending people to the Gulf States to help them with drone defense. We talked about Russia feeding intelligence to Iran. I'm sure in the past, we've spoken about,

you know, North Korean soldiers being sent to Ukraine. I read an article about Colombian

mercenaries fighting in Ukraine on the Ukrainian side, like 500 of them have died during the war. All the partisan warfare and, you know, behind enemy lines, stuff that Andy just mentioned, acts of sabotage and assassination and espionage. At what point do we call this situation that we're

“in right now, a global world war threat? I think we'd have to see the major players”

focus on each other directly. Yeah, right. So, I don't know. Yeah, on each other, right? That's another way saying it, right? So, once we've done this throughout the Cold War, we don't directly fight each other, but we go through proxies and, you know, you name it from Latin America to Africa, Afghanistan. I think to be a global war, it would have to be a peer-on-peer type or close to it, right? You take China and Russia and you get to close to a peer to the United States, right?

And not a good call. You could see something like that maybe happening, Mick, and, I mean, making predictions about the future and speculating, it almost feels pointless, but just for hypothetically speaking, if the Russians helped the Iranians blow up an American, you know, aircraft carrier or whatever it is in the Persian Gulf, we could respond to that in Ukraine by establishing a no-fly zone over Ukrainian airspace and blowing the hell out of Russian targets.

I mean, that would probably satisfy the prerequisites that you're laying out.

“That's a great idea. I think they should write that down. If any intelligence that they use”

does anything to any of our assets, military assets, then I think, I mean, I actually think we should be doing a lot more as you guys know, and you're crying right now, but that'd be a perfect opportunity. No-fly zone. Take away Russian air power, unleash all of the weapon systems that we've given them, no more range restrictions, none of that. And that, of course, increase the actual security assistance itself. But to your point, if we don't want to get into direct conflict with Russia,

but, you know, we also don't want to be pushed around by Russia. They've got to be scared of us. And right now, I mean, we're agree with a lot of the military objectives that we're already stated in Iran, but it is going to give China an opportunity, right? They realize that we're, even though we wrote a strategy, you said everything was supposed to be focused on the Western Hemisphere and how we're at war in Iran. China is like, these guys don't know what they want, but they're not

paying any attention to us. So if there's a time to do Taiwan, probably not an invasion, that one go out for the Chinese, but potentially a blockade, which could have the same impact, right? Yeah, so far, the Chinese are kind of fence sitting on this. They're just like, hey, we're going to sit here and watch what you guys do. We're just going to watch you make mistakes. And a longer this goes on, the longer we're depleted of the resources we need to fight globally.

We already haven't challenges, so I mean, I imagine the Chinese intelligence service is looking at when it would be the opportunity to time on the U.S. I mean, we're sending the third aircraft gear striker, right, and I think the George H. W. Bush is kind of, I think it's supposed to relieve the forward. Okay, so it's just, it's just a relief and I think scenario. Yeah, yeah, that makes sense because as Jack said, we're getting close to run out of targets. I don't know why

we necessarily need three aircraft gear striker. I'm sure the chairman is looking at all that stuff.

But yeah, it's a challenge. When it's China, I'm going to say it's never going to get better to

the now. Well, we talked about a lot. I mean, you guys really think that if we could find in tell and like it's reported widely and it's like obvious that Russia gave Iran in tell,

would actually do anything to P.P. Wach, Russia back. I mean, I think it's an absolute obligation

“as a kind of energy. I think it brings up, you know, this, this Tordree cliche of best military advice,”

you know, I keep coming back to what is, what is his military leadership, strategic level, right? What, what are they advising? And so, I mean, outside the scope of military advice is, hey, boss, you know, you really should punish Russia because blah, blah, blah, blah, but a way to influence that is certainly to say, hey, listen, there are a lot of things, you know, if you, if you do, you know, his, the evidence, right, his work was saying, here are ways potentially

best military advice that we could counter this or we could punish Russia or disweigh Russia from doing this again, right? I mean, hopefully those conversations, the, the type of things, the type of actions, courses of action, that jackshest outlined are being brief to the president. We don't know.

“But normally it's, there's a little more, the dialogues a little more open, right? And we're just”

not seeing that, so it's very opaque and it's the same thing with these discussions about regime change, you know, we're not expecting to hear cover plants and outstout loud, although indeed that has happened before, right? But, you know, some kind of indication that there is a plan would be nice, right, and, and all that, that is the goal, that, that is, you know, essentially what we're coming back to, that, that in, in a democracy, we're, that we understand everyone understands the requirements

for keeping classified things classified, but at the same time, there needs to be an open dialogue about the ways and where falls, so what's going on, and that seems to be lacking right now. Anything else, guys? Jack, you got anything? Covered a lot.

“No, I don't, I don't, I don't think so. Cool. I want everyone to do it's a favor. I want everyone”

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