Negotiations with Iran Fail & Trump Announces Naval Blockade | EYES ON GEOPOLITICS

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Of Shopify.de, let's record it. Welcome to another episode of Eyes on Geopilotism here with John Hack, Marc P. Mick Mowroy and myself.

“I think Andy's going to come through at some point.”

I'm Lak Orenon. I'm sure everybody's been watching the news and stuff like that. Negotiations were happening in Pakistan. Between the Iranians and us, leading it was JDVance, Vice-President, and I get Jared Whick often.

Jared Kushner and Steve Whick all for both there. I don't know. I'll take notes in the corner. Nothing happened. No deal was reached. It seemed like we were very far apart in terms of like what everybody wanted. Everyone has since left Pakistan and over the last week.

The ceasefire kicked off. We did the live stream.

The first day of the ceasefire didn't look great.

I ran with still bombing people. Israel was still bombing Iran. Israel started really pumping Lebanon too. Initially, there was talk that Lebanon was included in the ceasefire. That turned out not to be true. Messaging is incredible.

Really everyone's really sounds like they're on the same page here. Lebanon got smoke too. I think they 200 + 250 + people died in one day, plus a thousand over a thousand injured. I don't know. Where we're at now.

President Trump just tweeted about a naval blockade. Like literally probably 30 or 40 minutes before we started recording this. So there's a lot to look forward to things you're really looking up. What's going on, guys? How are you guys? What the hell?

Are you happy Easter? Yeah. Good grief. Good grief. I think work Easter, the best one you used to get.

You're alienating all of our lives. Yeah, sorry. I'll drop some Greek too.

Could he stun us on nasty?

Nice. There you go. May I really try to be? I really try to be. I'm not planning to be audience.

If you ever want to be in a really cool place for Easter, it's absolutely grease. Yeah. I mean, what the heck? You should have led your thing.

Yeah, I guess you're right. I know my Greeks of premises lacking in that one day. I got to bring it back hard. I'm going to wear my grandfather's like, So, Evzone outfit.

Like he used to be an Evzone and he fought more work too. Yeah. I'm going to dig that out. Just wear a fucking skirt for you guys. A two, two for you guys.

“Because that's what they were going to wear.”

No underwear. Just skirt. Yeah. I mean, that's the only way to do it. That's a connection between the Irish gods and Greeks there.

Yeah. We have our dresses. No, I even sent you this morning to put from my big factory wedding. Oh, yeah, that's right.

Yeah. Well, I'm going to be in a lot of land today, actually. So our group chat's going to get a lot of pictures of lamb on a spit. Nice. And there's Andy Melbourne.

Hi, Andy. We're recording. That's tough. We used to do that. We used my dad when I was growing up in Jersey.

All those great buddies who all came from Athens and all immigrated. They used to get a lamb and cook it for 13 hours in a garage on a spit. Just drink all day. That's where I'm going right now. It's like three months.

And you got to get. You'll remember this, too. Cook or Etsy. Oh, come on. It's the lamb intestine. It's disgusting.

All right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's disgusting.

It's like a stew. It's all well. It's not a stew. It's like a jerky type stuff. Cook or Etsy is the little pieces.

“My head eats that is that inside in a stew like a soup.”

And it's they're both fucking disgusting. Come on. That's fucking gross. It's tough. And what's a big gigabee?

Yeah. He got this. They're called. Yeah. That's what yeah.

It's my cousin's college. I can't this because they're huge. They're like big beans. But they're called. He got this.

That's got some good food. Soon. Be back soon. Had enough for a month soon. The summer.

What a life. Retired life. All right. So what do we got? Is the world anything or what?

That's it. I don't think so. But okay.

I'll start with the. The negotiations. Right.

“So and I think the guys will back me up on this.”

This isn't really normally how we do negotiations.

We usually have them staffed. Right. So the old version of the NSC where you had. Senior career people from. State.

Military obviously and the agency and other intelligent services. Our generally the people who staffed. These type of negotiations. They begin with them. They try to set the framework.

Obviously with guidance from above. They try to work out the details. They try to get to points of agreement. And then when they get to something that they all think is worth. A agreeing to.

Then they bring in the principles. Right. The principles are supposed to like solidify the deal. They're not supposed to go and start the discussion because there's no way to go from there. Right.

And they can.

You know, basically when you think about how negotiations work.

If you're not the principles, you can concede things. You can argue about things without a turning into just like, let's flip the table and walk off.

“I'm not saying that's what happened, but sounds kind of like that.”

So that's a bit unusual. I would suggest it worked better. I would suggest that starting with the vice president. He got nowhere to go. If it doesn't work out the way you wanted to. But obviously I'm not making the call.

But this is how we did it for both parties since I can remember. So I'd suggest that maybe they want to do that so that it isn't like you agree with everything I say. Or I'm going back to the United States. Because that's how, especially with the Iranians.

The Iranians are used to it and actually all of you can correct me if I'm wrong.

They're used to long term. They used to long negotiations. They're fine with it. That's how they operate. They're not going to change. They sent a lot of people to this negotiation, probably for that purpose. So I just really think about how we're going about this. Because the alternative to a diplomatic solution is probably a major military escalation.

And unless you think that's a good idea, which most people do not, even especially in the military, then we need to try harder on the diplomatic side. So I've started with that. And by the way, if your adversary tells you they want a specific person to be your representative, then don't send that person. Nothing against vice president.

But they don't, that's them setting the stage before we even get to the theater. So also probably not great. The other points, and I'll be brief. I've got a lot of some more folks that need to talk on this. The straight itself. So it's unclear to me whether Iran really did, imagine they did set minds or whether they really can't find them.

Or this is just an effort to shove everybody into Iranian territorial waters, which of course then gives them the ability to charge and all this stuff. That can't be the case. In fact, the idea that we're even negotiating, the idea that they might have some control of the straight is just starting on the wrong principle. It's an international waterway. It's not only for Iran. It's not even up for the United States and negotiate it away. This is where the international community needs to go timeout.

Yeah, nobody's going to control this. That's just not part of the negotiations. And really enforce that. Because that can't be the case. It if it is where Iran is going to drop the rest of their 5,000 sea mines in the straight, then the international community does need to come together as a coalition.

“The best way to do that is after the United States stops attacking Iran.”

There's a different discussion. Other main things we heard the Vice President talk about, really the only thing you talked about, which was we need to ensure that they don't have aspirations for nuclear weapon. We had that under the JCPOA. So we're going to have to be more stringent than JCPOA. There's going to be a lot of legitimate questions with the whole point of this was.

If we're just going to get back to essentially when we had in 2018, we're decided to leave it. Then this is going to look like an exercise and complete futility that's brought the world to the brink of a regional conflict that's damaging the international economy. When we're essentially trying to get back to what we left, probably primarily left because it was political. I don't like it because it didn't do it. So it's going to have to include ballistic missiles.

It's going to have to include potentially restrictions on ballistic missiles and some kind of addressing a proxy support, you know, to US designated terrorist organizations in the region. If it's just getting back to the nuclear issue, then this was this will go down in history as a WTF to be honest.

I just want, you know, I'd say it's come out ahead.

I don't really care who's in office to America, so to speak. But that's that's important, and then the last thing in addition to the fact that we're probably going to have forcefully open the straight and foremost because I don't leave you as a strategic failure of the United States if we close. We're going to have to now address the nuclear material that's left. Like we put ourselves in a position where that has to be addressed, you know, they turn it over or we forceably go get it. If not, then the whole question of the all of the nuclear ambitions is a primary issue of the United States.

We can't leave almost a thousand pounds of highly enriched uranium there. So we're in a position where this is just based on our own objectives. We're going to have to escalate this if it's not, if it's not addressed diplomatic. So, and that that can be means we've got to put way more effort into the diplomacy of this and we need to get professionals involved that understand the issues and they can work through really complex high pressure negotiations so that we can get to something we can all agree.

All right.

“And I think it's a great point on how unusual this was in terms of a principle of kind of taking the lead before it was staffed.”

I mean, in every diplomatic negotiation any kind of let's just say, I mean, this is the first such high level meeting between the US and Iran in five decades.

So a huge deal, but let's let's say, even if it was just a bilateral meeting, you have all the underlings setting the stage with talks with Iranians and then you bring in the principles to kind of close with the all so you're 100% right on that. I was trying to be very clever in the media last week and of course, I usually blow it with line, but I said this was this was advances Daytona 500. And I guess maybe it was what happened, there was a rain animal. I mean, no one won no one lost nothing happened.

I guess storming off would be something akin to maybe someone gave them advice. This is what you do in Middle Eastern negotiations. We've all spent time in the region. This is like going to buy a piece of gold in the suit and you don't like the price and your storm off.

“And so maybe there's the idea that the Iranians will come back, but I think there are three kind of red lines or or asks or in some ways existential.”

It's the new program. It's reparations because they there are economies in the shitter. And then it's it's a it's proxies Lebanon ish. I mean, the ideas to get those is really to stop in Lebanon. And so, you know, the two sides are just too far apart on that.

I think that the one thing to look at now and this is why this and so I mean everything is moving so fast. So we were going to talk about the negotiations, you know, not going anywhere. Now we're talking about the naval blockade, but this is, you know, I was joking. I don't know if I sent it to you guys, maybe I did or some other folks. I mean, you know, my time, my my naval experience is working with naval special warfare and then doing one trap landing on the George Washington.

I mean, I, I don't, you know, so I don't know naval strategy, but it would seem to me that there are a lot of people have worked in this and have talked and talked about the blockade of the straight or removes.

“And so, Trump, of course, tweets that are put out of true social, what does it really mean?”

You know, someone just ping me and said, okay, we understand they're going to blockade ships. Are we really going to be introducing boarding Chinese vessels? There's a supposed to be a summit coming up soon. And that seemed, and, and do we have enough, you know, firepower in the region?

I guess the third carriers on the way, but I just, listen, almost of readies on CNN, he said that you need two carriers and what 12 destroyers and frigates.

There is a risk to force here. I mean, there's so many things that go into this, but I guess the question for you guys who, you know, former military in particular, I would imagine Mick, you probably saw this. But the details is that I assume this has been working out a billion times with Sankham, and, and I guess the, the, the second part is, can we do this on our own, or do we need allied assistance to do so, Trump hinted that there might be some allies who are going to assist with this. Assuming this is less risky than taking carguerland.

I mean, I think you can probably do this in areas. I'm not, we don't have a map here, but it's not as dangerous. And then maybe the last point, too, indeed, you're our resident political expert here is, you know, this is, you know, it's a weird time Jonathan, we're talking about it in our little green room before is. You know, Trump announces on Sunday, markets open tomorrow. This is not going to be good for the U.S. economy for international markets.

People are going to freak out again in terms of the, you know, the, whatever the price of gas or oil going up, and so it is kind of, you know, this is going to cause some more pain. You're going to see, you know, the gas prices in the U.S. stay higher or go much higher. So that's kind of interest, interesting domestically on this.

I mean, the, a naval blockade is an act of war and Jonathan, you're in law school now and so.

And law school is now as Congress comes back, you do the Democrats say, well, we need a war powers resolution. This is now like walked right into the idea. This is an actual literally an act of war and so what will Congress now take an interest. Anyway, I've throw all these out there for when this is 60 day. 60 days of the war powers.

“I mean, they have to, they have to go in for it, right?”

Well, we're certainly a past the one month mark. So yeah, it started on the 28th, right? Of February. So it's probably a couple more weeks. Ask, maybe somebody else could pick up that.

Also fun fact, Andy's also a lawyer. That's right. Oh, I just, I just went to a completed law school by the. Okay. What's going on there?

So this is, this is something that's, you know, people in Congress certainly can,

can, I mean, obviously we're on a war with Iran, even though what I've told it like an expedition or an escapade or anything of the health done thing he was saying, but this seems to be rather, a significant anywhere. What do you guys think of the naval blockade? I mean, I know we want to talk about the negotiations,

but that's almost past news now. We now need. Okay. How does this work? And we've got some of the questions that I raised there.

The questions are that too. Well, I mean, I think you've got to start with asking,

“and I assume that's what Cooper is asking.”

Because you can't assume this. What is the objective, right?

I mean, is the objective to keep commercial ship,

shipping moving through the streets? I mean, that's what I'd like by bringing pressure on Iran. So stopping Iran from telling it, turning it into a toll booth. And that sounds reasonable, right? Even achievable.

And I suppose it is. I mean, US Navy can escort ships. They can, they can patrol the sea lanes. They can intercept missiles, drones. I mean, it's just the full blockade.

And so I think the idea would be to put pressure on India, China, Russia, others who their economies now will be hurt. When some of their ships were getting through. And so the ideas to now put pressure on Iran's allies, so to speak. Because everything could be shut down.

There's no escorting or anything. It was my understanding of this. But sorry. Okay, no, that's. I mean, no, that's exactly.

That's exactly the question in the answer. So, so then it becomes. Look, it's like all of these things that have been touted. Ground operations, amphibious landings. Uranium extraction.

If they're feasible on paper, right? But, but, and even, I'm not a, you know, I'm not a restchipper. I'm the palm of the Navy, so. But, but, you know, I do know that. I mean, they people are throwing around numbers of ships and everything.

It's a types of ships that are important. You need, you know, you need destroyers. But you need ages systems. You need a layered defense because you got to defend against. And we've talked about this.

“The biggest threat are our anti-ship missiles, right?”

And if we are to believe our own intelligence reports. At least 50% of launches are still intact. And, and I believe, and I've got to check this as true. But when you're talking about anti-ship missiles, the ratio is even higher.

So, there is significant number of anti-ship missiles still out there, which means, we're trolling all of these assets right within range of those missiles. So, being able to sustain that for any period of time. Yeah, we may be cutting off oil to China. And, and, you know, other allies of Iran,

but we're also imposing a massive economic cost on ourselves. And not to mention risk to force political risk, risk to mission. And all Iran has to do. Yes, it is an act of war. But arguably, we're already committing an act of war.

Or Iran would have to do is launch a missile or a drone. And then, of course, there's a mine friend. This is where this is our real Achilles tendon. I thought I would use a Greek analogy, or it being orthodoxy stuff. And, and that is the fact that we are, and this is common knowledge.

The United States Navy for a number of reasons is woefully short of mine hunters. I think there's, you know, you can look it up on open source. I think there's like one Avenger class mine hunter in Bahrain if it's still there. And that is it. So, we are very dependent on allies when it comes to counter mine measures. Why is that? I'll make this brief because we have squandered money.

Because if you're a mine hunter dude in the Navy, just like in the Africa Navy, it's not sexy. You don't carry a lot of weight when it's arguing for money.

like aircraft carriers, for instance, which as you know are massive waste of money.

But I digress. So, you know, the bottom line is, even if you, even if you think that the objective itself is feasible,

that by blocking off this artery, you are forcing people to the negotiation table. And I would argue, that's always a risky bet because they will find alternate routes. A guarantee. And, you know, the, the bear must still open. Secondly, you're putting all of your assets in harm swaying. And as I've said, simply by imposing a blockade, legally, you're already at war.

So, a rock, a rock could shoot it our ships and say it was in self defense. And I think that gets back and I'll shut up because I don't want to talk too much.

“But I think, I think that gets back to, to a key part of why the negotiations broke down,”

because we made assumptions that are incorrect.

Aside from the team, we said, aside from the fact that we didn't empower them.

Iran didn't come to the table week. You know, they, they didn't come. Those in the go shit is one there in a, in a desperate state of trying to find it deal. They were feeling fairly resilient. Iran feels as though it has not come out at the bottom of the, of the recent campaign. Doesn't matter what kind of military attrition we have exacted. Yes, they've, you know, they've sustained military pressure.

We've done enough damage to force Iran into concessions, but not real concessions. Not, not, not on the ones that matter, like the streets of whole moves and like a uranium enrichment. I mean, negotiations are driven by what we think is objective reality that driven by perception. And Iran's perception is very different from Washington.

“And that's why the negotiations have broken down.”

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And that's the music for your ears. Videos of the restaurant vendors with Shopify can sit to a real hip-dad. Start a test for an Euro-Promona on Shopify.de/record. Of course, you know, I have two Jonathan to add into his comments on this. So, obviously, I wore with Iran. So, seizing their oil, trying to prevent them from benefiting from their closure of straight makes sense. How would we legally justify seizing another country's vessel with their resources after going through an international waterway that we say should be open.

“Because it's an international waterway. Like, what legal basis would we have for doing that?”

And then, what are we going to do with it? Yeah. I think it's going to keep me facing. Who's going to adjudicate in the international system, whether the US can legally do it or not? I know that's kind of a sensitive question, but the thing is the US isn't part of the ICC. We're not party to some of these treaties that set the outlines for how people should behave in the international system.

It's an act of war according to international humanitarian law, which does come out of the UN, but doesn't bind to the United States to behave a particular way.

And the blockade would not need to be approved by Congress.

“I mean, this is an argument that the administration can make it pretty pretty well that they don't need Congress as approval to position military vessels and international waters, right?”

Because that is certainly an executive function. This is how they would frame this for sure. To save the international waters. They could do this. I mean, they've got the ability to do visit board search and seizure. They can do a pose and on a pose boarding for any suspicion whatsoever because no, there's not normal due process in the high seas.

So you don't need to first suspect a vessel of anything in the high seas.

And I'm thinking back to Veracruz 1914 when the Marines seized Veracruz, we behaved in a very similar way around the Bay of Veracruz before we actually want to shore interveracruz and seized that port. Again, another questionable thing under international humanitarian law, can the US do that? Probably not, but we did and nobody could stop us.

“And there's a couple of points in there that whether it's right or wrong is important, but is that relevant to whether we can do it or not?”

Because we can do it. We go back to the Mealian dialogue that we've talked about before that we can do it. So we do it. And there's no other balancing factor of pull us back into the world where different parties are on the same plane.

Back when we had the multi-polar world or the bipolar world with Russia, for example, the Soviet Union where there were repercussions of us doing something like this.

There was the Cuban naval blockade, of course, which is important, but there was a balance against that to reduce the tensions and break the blockade against Cuba. And there isn't something on the other side like that this time. So the US is able to move in a way that is unchecked, essentially. Especially when we're talking about exclusive economic zones in the international waters of the States, which is very small. And you could functionally blockade it without creating an actual blockade just because of how small it is.

You could create a very difficult area to traverse. I mean, if you look at the actual topography under the water, there's only so much space that those ships can actually traverse safely. Based on the whole depth. So you could essentially actually create just physical obstruction rather than a quote unquote blockade to stop vessels from moving in and out. So this is another consideration that if you were in Trump's team trying to explain this to the world, there are explanations that could be sent forth as a facade to describe it.

Just like when we killed Kassim Solamani, you know, according to the international humanitarian law, that was clearly not allowed, but we came up with an explanation for it and then presented that very thin explanation and acted on it. And then continued forward as if nothing happened and that it was justified. How do you guys think question though? Yeah, so it's going to go in your game. Yeah, just a quick follow on and this is a question really not a comment. Won't that just magnify the issue that Iran's already capitalizing on? Like they've decided to close the straight to make this a global issue.

Then if we start seizing tankers going through like that will do reduce the amount of energy worldwide won't that shoot up the cost of energy and therefore will be like it now they're doing it. I mean, it's it's now like now we're almost equal in this the issue. Just a question like I mean, I'm not a economist, but. Yeah, I mean, if you look at the statistics of who gets the oil out of the straights the recipients, yes, China is a larger recipient. I think it's like 38% of the oil that leaves the straights goes to China, something like that.

But the others, the majority of it is going to South Korean Japan and other allies and partners of the United States that produce a significant amount of highly advanced technical equipment all the way down to very simple items that are important to the United States. Which means there's almost like a value added tax that's going to be de facto imposed on every single good that we get from the from Asia, which again, reason California's gas prices are historically high. It's because most of their petroleum-related items actually don't come from the US that come from the Pacific, just for logistical reasons.

And that also means goods coming into the port of Los Angeles and it things you buy on Amazon and other places coming from that same sea line of communication. There's going to be a step up of increased value on all those items, everything, not just gas. Gas is the thing that people feel at the pump. But over time, you're going to start seeing like the ripple down effect, just like when COVID stopped people from being able to cut trees down to make furniture and suddenly that created these huge expansive costs in other unrelated areas like home building.

Because of how the economics works, that's not an automatic direct increase in price. And we're going to certainly see that it's probably even after the conflict ends. There will still be ripples of increased price that continue to go up even after the wars over whenever that might be. And people are going to wonder why is my stuff still expensive? And it's because of the way economics works is not an automatic overnight. Suddenly the prices are high and suddenly they're low like oil futures.

Because oil futures are speculative, whereas the price of your bananas is an absolute price.

“And that's how much it costs to get on a ship, put diesel in the ship and then sell it to the United States.”

One quick question for those who have experienced with Seencom and the military.

I mean, this was probably in the toolkit somehow, right? The closing of the straighter form is Richard Haas wrote about it last week. Other people have, you know, so clearly policymakers, Richard Haas was in the, you know, the Bush administration.

So this has always been out there.

“I'm sure there was war games. How do you think it transpired in that?”

It was this was this Admiral Cooper was this damn can or hexettes, you know, giving Trump options on what to do. If the negotiations fall apart and Islamabad, this is the next step. Or maybe answer the question, it may normal administration. How would this have come about? I think there's likely these options were known, even prior to the war starting by the most senior leaders.

And they're looking for things that they can do to change the current situation. Even as dramatic as this would be. I just, it seems like it's just a good exacerbate the very issue we're trying to avoid.

Because I mean, I, that was a great answer by the way, Jonathan.

But my understanding, even if China gets 38% of it, if there's just less energy out there, it's going up for everybody. So to keep saying, well, we don't get that much energy from there is kind of like true, but also irrelevant. Because our gas prices are going up anyway. Because if there's less, if if China's going to buy energy from somewhere else, it's going to drive the supply and demand situation to drive the price up. So if we, or seize it, or we're going to take it, or we're going to sell it, we're going to keep the money.

“I mean, what is, what is the ultimate in game? Like what is the potential?”

We're going to see the Chinese tanker. And isn't that, it would be an act of war if they seized ours, right? So what is China going to do?

I doubt they're just going to sit there and go, well, I guess the United States could do what they want.

There's a summit coming up between Trump and Xi, they're supposed to be at least. That's going to be open as they seize the Chinese tanker. I'm going to, I can't. And now, you know, obviously, I haven't worked at the level that may pass, but I was that sucks out for years. And yeah, we, I mean, there were naval blockades from the number of, I mean, essentially the fact to blockades of Yemen to stop the flow of,

leave the way to Yemen. But, but imposing a blockade, a US blockade on the streets of Hormuz.

“I don't know about it being touted as a coer because it gets back to again, what is the objective?”

I, you know, John, no, no one argues those points better than you and you're absolutely correct about this kind of this philosophy, right? That we are, we're no longer in a, we're no longer in the Cold War. We can, we can essentially just do things that we need to do on the justification of national interests and get away with it. But I, I would argue, there's, there's a limit to that. Soleimani is, is, perhaps not a good example because the death of Soleimani, while people, certain people may have said, hey, that's pretty messed up.

It didn't impose economic hardship on, on, you know, significant portion of the world. And, and I'm wondering at what stage we say, we stop saying, hey, I don't care, I don't care. It doesn't matter if we piss the world off. I mean, there are going to be costs imposed on us, right? I mean, think about the Prime Minister of Canada's recent speech about shifting defense contracts and partnerships.

And, you know, we've already seen what's happening in Europe. They're turning away from us. There's, obviously, this isn't, this isn't about losing friends in the play, in the playground. It's, they, they're going to be significant costs for us that perhaps on, on steam right now. So I would say that from a, from a, perhaps more mature perspective and maybe we're showing right now.

These things do matter. It's another issue that I'm pretty sure I'm going to get question on this week. You know, I, I'm up at 6 a.m. our time here in Montana for the Pentagon Briefings. It sounds like the numbers might not be adding up. So I've been touting the fact that we've been getting closer closer to some of our objectives,

because we're, you know, ballistic missiles, drones, etc. Um, that's going to be challenged if it turns out that the numbers that they're saying. And I don't know what's true, but there's obviously reports that we were talking about, or at least texting about yesterday. So what are the actual numbers? And if we can't trust public Pentagon briefings, it's time to pull this into the Senate.

And have hearings that are also open on the record are not on the record, but on the roof, right? Because this is the one part of the war that we collectively, I think, would have knowledge that the US is making progress.

So your guys thoughts on that.

“I'm glad you're, I'm glad you're raising that just because, you know, this is, this is, you know, I've called it kind of fuzzy math.”

And, you know, there's the, and I've used this, I'm guilty as well. I've used this million times.

That famous world war one British saying, you know, we are, we have, you know, lions led by Donkeys. Lions being US military, Donkeys being the civilian leadership, and so on. And it's, it's fun saying that in a sense because it gives the US military a pass because we've seen how successful they've been. And let me just say everything I say on this, and you know, I'm much, I respect I have for you guys who served.

This is not at the, this is at the very senior level. This is not at the junior ranks in listed level.

These are, you know, men and women going to combat, you do what you're told, do it extraordinarily well. This is at the Dan Cain, you know, Admiral Cooper level. And, and, and I kind of have started thinking that, you know, perhaps we have all been romance too much. By these briefings, and then I started thinking back to Iraq and Afghanistan where there were senior level briefings and a lot of it was bullshit.

“And so I think that it is fair to ask those questions. It's not condemning anybody, but and, and Mick, the, the one part, and I know you, you know this.”

The part that's weird is because the intelligence community, there was a leak.

That the intelligence community is the one who's assessing that the Iranian military, the, the, the missile stocks have not been attributed enough. So it's not like we're saying it. It's not the Iranians are saying it's our own intel community saying it. So I do think this kind of, you know, this, this romance we have on, and, and of course Dan Cain sounds really good because headset is a complete clown. But maybe Dan Cain's not telling the truth. And I'm just, and I, you know, hate to say that. He's a respected three star. I've worked at the agency before he is kind of to me the bull work against some of the craziness is, you know, what if these numbers are kind of fuzzy math.

But if you can, it does matter and I've been, and Mick your prescription on this is not to get up and scream in whatever I'm saying now. It's exactly right is the oversight from Congress, where is the house in the Senate committees and Congress as you all know here is totally irrelevant anymore. It is not a co-equal branch. They do absolutely nothing on oversight.

“And in particular, the armed services side has always been even more of a rubber stamp than the intel oversight, but I think it's fair. I'm, you know, I'm glad you raised it.”

It's okay to raise those things because so much is predicated on, okay, even though strategically things might be a little kind of, you know, off now, you know, that we know we have done a significant amount of damage to the Iranian military and ultimately we can kind of, if we're going to fall back on anything that's going to be a good thing. But what if we have it? I mean, I don't think, I'm agreeing with both of you. And yes, I mean, and there's a platform that, you know, aside from the, from the committees, there's a platform to, to leverage accountability on this and that's the war powers act.

But I don't think anyone's lying about this. I think it's, I think it's. Yeah, I think you just got taken out. Oh, no, okay, all right. I don't think anyone's lying about it. I think it just gets back to the notorious difficulties in conducting accurate BDA when you're just using tech means or from the air, especially with an adversary like the Iranians who are masterful at decoying things at hiding things at despair and rocket launchers. The launchers and missile launchers are notoriously difficult things to find and destroy.

So I think, you know, we probably just just as in any war from when you're counting what you're doing to the enemy from pilots reporting. But you know, I'm thinking back, it's a second war notoriously the pilots reporting their own victories over other aircraft. We're always exaggerating. It wasn't anyone was lying. It's part of the fits wishful thinking and part of it is just the technical limitations of conducting remote battle damage assessment. And the other part is the fact that the Iranians have been preparing for this for a while.

They know we have the technical technological competence and they've good at bypassing that and filling us. So the point for your BDA is limited to forward-looking infrared video as the only source of BDA. I mean, all of us have seen these videos in the past real ones, even in high resolution. You don't really know what happened to that transporter or director launcher. Like, maybe it's still operational. It's still dry. If you know, we don't know exactly where we hit it on on the structure. There's all kinds of question marks, right? And it's like you said, Andy, a few weeks ago, once you started approaching that like 80 to 90 percent BDA, the numbers start to just fade away into to idealized descriptions of what's actually happening on the ground.

And Iran has had 47 years to bury their stuff underground. They've been doing it. They taught Hezbollah to do it in the 1980s. Hezbollah did it very successfully in the war in 2006 where in Israel and Hezbollah and Lebanon.

Custom soul money himself was there during that war helping direct the war effort. You know, this is a very close link between the Lebanese way of fighting or the Hezbollah way of fighting and what Iran has. But Iran has it on a much larger scale with a lot more resources and a lot more time and more will to survive as a system because there are governing system of an entire country, right? And they've been under they felt that they've been under attack for so long.

They're the entrenched position they have, almost requires boots in the ground just to assess the BDA. If you want actual truth on what those numbers really look like.

So those are all great points. I mean, I'm not saying anybody's falsifying information, but we do need to have a actual hearing that has intelligence professionals talking about because it's all going to come out eventually, right?

“You can't, you can say something now, but history is going to, I think, be accurate on what we actually did or didn't do. I wish it was 100% on all the above. That's what I'm open.”

But it's not going to do any good to say it is and then we leave sign it agreement.

And the Iranians come back and say it, by the way, half of our ballistic missiles are still here and then we're going to look.

Not good, put it that way. I just think we need to base baseline the truth and figure out just where we are in our efforts to hit those objectives. Let me throw one thing there. And is that I also have memories of things such as the district assessments and Afghanistan, where the military was putting out stuff that was just flat out wrong. You guys remember this, the degree of Taliban control. I mean, I don't know how you define it. Is it bad analytic tradecraft? Is it lying? Whatever it is, it was just flat out wrong. And I remember the Intel community came back and said, now we don't think so.

We're not the Pat Tellman story. I mean, what about burn pits? What about Gulf War syndrome? I mean, it's okay to say that the government actually has not been truthful to us. I'm not sounding like a conspiracy theorist, but we're questioning after the after I rock and Afghanistan. And all the stuff that went around there, the US military, it's senior levels said a lot of things that were not true. You can excuse that. And I mean, and again, this is, you know, it's it's hard for me to say this because I, I'm not a conspiracy theorist at all, but I do think it's fair to question sometimes.

“Some of these statements, because you also don't know the degree of pressure that the chairman of the joint chiefs is under. He's got Pete Heggsett who's firing everybody who disagrees and right next to him.”

And so, you know, is there political pressure to it's not cooking the books, but to say things that perhaps, you know, do you think Dan Kane and you know, deep down would be more comfortable and anonymous setting, saying something a little bit different than when he's sitting next to Pete Heggsett. I don't know. I think it's fair though. To question this. And again, this is not disparaging the military at all. I'm talking about the very senior levels. Yeah, yes, on a key point is when you talk to people and I don't, I don't have the context you do at DOD, when I talk to people inside the intelligence community, I have not found anybody at senior levels who think this is a good idea. Nobody.

And even though in Mick, I share your, you know, share your view on this is you can test the Iranian regime, we can support the war aims, but the execution of this has been a bit of a mess. And so, I do wonder if that, you know, the people we care about kind of the rank and file might have a different view of the way things are going. I just throw that out there. That's a lot of information of what the intelligence community thinks right now. Overside committees for armed services and intelligence can ask for a written assessment right now on one class, right? We don't have to talk about sources and methods, but if it's okay to give your assessment on TV, it's okay to give your assessment, the actual assessment in a written statement that then people can read.

“I think that is great in a functioning democracy, which.”

Well, I, a bit of a range going. Go ahead. Go ahead. I think Mark, I mean, Mark brings up a good point. I don't, I'm not giving a pass to the military. I think, you know, what I hope happened, I'm always, I'm always disappointed when I hear politicians on either side, off civilian leadership, make these grandiose statements about victory overwhelming victory, mission accomplished.

And, and I always hope that behind the scenes, their military leadership is talking to them saying, hey, boss, I recommend you hold up before saying this,

because here's a quick primer on BDA, and here's why, because these guys, you know, at the four star level, obviously on stupid, they know, they understand what's going on. So, I can't answer to why, maybe they have said these things, but we have seen grandiose statements come out of military leaders, and that disappoints me even more. And, and I don't feel sorry for them, because at that level, that's when you make four stars in my opinion, you get treated like a vice floor, you get treated like a guard.

I mean, it is, it's quite sickening, you know, every single, I'll stop, but, but there's a doubt.

“No, the downside is, you're expected to show courage when that courage is needed for the sickly constitution's sake of the nation, and a reminder again, that when officers take that oath of office, they don't promise, they don't swear to obey, right?”

They promised to carry out all the duties, to best their ability, but the enlisted guys do, having been both officer and enlisted, I understand that the oath is different. I have an obligation to all here enlisted men and women in the armed forces who have sworn in obligation to obey you to ensure that when you tell them to do things, it's in good faith, right? So all that, you know, all these cascading effects, all of which is to say, there's more to having a commission than I think sadly, a lot of people realize, and there's more certainly to having holding flag rank at the nexus between policy and strategy.

They, they, they's more of an obligation, then simply offering military advice. I'll stop you. Yeah, I think when General McKenzie was still the sent-computer, I was at the defense at Teshay office in Jordan, and he was coming to. Yeah, he was coming to visit to do some serious related stuff, and we were instructed by his team. Listen to the defense at Teshay office, like we're supposed to represent the sect, and the country, we have high level policy issues to take care of on a daily basis.

We're pulled off of what we were working on, so that when General McKenzie came, he would not touch a single door knob in the embassy.

And we had to have people from the defense at Teshay office from the kernel level, everyone all the way down, standing at doors throughout the embassy, to ensure that his hand would never touch a door handle. And this is exactly what you're talking about, Andy, about the vice-roy behavior of these generals.

“Why, just because so much got to open the door for them?”

I mean, couldn't be bothered to touch a door handle. God, I'm just too impressed. I've got to dress two good patriostories. I'm sure he's not listening to this, because he doesn't like me very much. When I was the deputy station chief in a mod, he hated our station chief.

And he was the sent-com chief, and I was the acting chief has gone, and so he came for a brief. And he said, hey, I want to go see the head of Jordan in the Intel service, and I've responded to his staff, I got to take him. Like, that's my role. I mean, he can't go alone. That's just, you guys know this from an embassy, like the sent-com chief can't go to the head. And he said, no, I'm going alone. I said, you can't. And I'm a GS15, and I'm like, I'm going to get creamed in this down the line.

But ultimately, he agreed, but then he showed up two hours early, so the head of the Jordanian service, and then they call me from G.I.D. headquarters.

So then I went running over there, but it was two hours late, and the head of the service, and spent two hours briefing portrays on the history of the Yemeni tribes. Because he knew that I was supposed to be there. So portrays was just furious with me right there. And then portrays asked to get the PDB in his hotel room, and I refused to break it over, so you got to come read it. And so all of this didn't matter until he then gets named director.

And so my career is that totally fucked. So I see him down in the gym, and I'm lifting, and it comes down there, and I was on the weight bench, and he kind of looked at me, and he remembered, and he basically wanted me to get off the weight bench. And I'm like, I'm not done. Sorry, I mean, the agency is kind of a different place, so I just kept left in, and I think that, you know, until he was removed, my career was on a hold of it. But one of the great things I did see, there was a serious briefing, and a G.I.D.12 analyst told him in the briefing, "Sir, you're wrong."

And he almost fell over, because that's just not done. You guys know better, but that's not done to a forestar. But anyway, the imperial uh-- Well, you know, see, I'm here, through story, though, and I'm surprised that the general--the you just mentioned didn't think about this. And this--this was actually in the military times. In a rock, there was a--I'm so sad to admit this.

The Marine 2 star, whose aid used to go down that set on the gym, like his next station in the gym, so that he could-- Like, fully--for--in full camouflage, you know, all uniform utilities. Like, that little piece of paper floating it down, yeah. Yeah. As I found out when I say to her, "Are you using the bench?"

That's right. It's just right. It has these stories too, but he's not going to tell them. Hey, I worked for Madness. She's the opposite of everything you said. Yeah.

You're right. Right. I'd go down and take--take--take my suit, my sir-sucker suits into the dry cleaner, and he'd be in front of me in line. That's awesome. I mean, these are stories that are all over the place, because it's true.

Yeah. He does haircut at the market shop. Yeah, the bad thing about you.

“That's how you gain the loyalty to the people who work for you, right?”

Yeah.

He was unusual. Yeah, yes. But, you know, we do this to ourselves. And because, at some stage in those offices, careers, they were not like that.

“Maybe they were, but they couldn't get away with it, right?”

When they were lieutenant's captain's smages. But we, as an institution, let them get away with it. And foreign militaries make that observation about us. You know, the Brits call there.

They're first--they're called there are general officers by their first names.

It's Brigadier, Michael, Joe Ward. You know, there isn't that. I mean, they show them respect, but it's not that same. It's not that same idol worship that we show. And, you know, again, they're--so the cast to that,

which isn't commonly understood is that, yeah, you may lose all of that in a heartbeat by doing--by speaking truth to power. That's a risk they run, right? So, go back to the war. What's the next step?

I mean, if there's no plan for further negotiations, the 11th Me UI believe has already departed to Hawaii and headed over the--with the George Bush's on around that be the third. We already know that Jay Sox there.

I mean, that's been pretty obvious with the rescue of the pilot. So, the next stage is starting to see terrain to open the street

“or does this actual blockade the alternative to that?”

I mean, what you mentioned earlier about flowing forces into the Gulf

is probably what you exactly mentioned, pre-positioning for further action as unrelated to a blockade. It's probably the blockade is used to describe it, so it's more palatable to the public. But in fact, it's prepositioning ahead of time to gain that,

you know, force of time, the shortening of the timeline between getting from ship to shore, because you're already there. Which was the problem before the ceasefire was announced. We couldn't get through the streets to get in there. It's a problem with the carguer island seizure question,

because it was so far away. But if you're right, if you can see it from the vessel, big difference. The idea of chief of staff just announced today that he's prepping for resume combat.

That's right. So, I think that maybe a way to say this, too,

is who fires the first shot now again.

It's going to be these rallies. It's going to be a run. I mean, don't forget that one of the things that maybe we can raise too is the use of proxies, wasn't there an attack on our diplomats and Baghdad?

Yes. There was an ambush when they were trying to bring the border back to ambush that convoy. That was after the ceasefire was announced. And so, there's also the asymmetric.

So, how does this kick off again? I guess is a good way to ask that. We could use a Gulf of Tonkin type of framing where it doesn't really matter who actually fires the first shot as long as our narrative describes it a particular way

that it was somebody else's fault. And that's why we're doing it now. Well, the ceasefire. We also have that opening of the straight, right? So, isn't the actual premise of the ceasefire

already folded? Like, do we have an obligation? Or is this right? Right? We don't.

Why did we do that anyway? I mean, do we really think Trump... I mean, so, okay.

“So, I'd best, I mean, if you want to be very kind,”

you know, we want to give diplomats the chance to diplomacy a chance. Both, you know, I think the Trump administration just gave him a bit of a breather, domestically.

Because you know, Trump administration just giving him a bit of a breather. You know, Trump administration, you know, Trump administration just gave him a bit of a breather. You know, Trump administration just gave him a bit of a breather.

You know, Trump administration just gave him a bit of a breather. You know, Trump administration just gave him a bit of a breather. You know, Trump administration just gave him a bit of a breather. You know, Trump administration just gave him a bit of a breather. You know, Trump administration just gave him a bit of a breather.

You know, Trump administration just gave him a bit of a breather. You know, Trump administration just gave him a bit of a breather. Domestically, because he was getting, you know, he's getting so hammered on this issue. I don't know. I'm curious if it was a way to get the streets open to get those vessels into the Persian Gulf without being opposed to get in.

But yesterday we did see two US warships transit straight and they stopped and pulled back. I guess they would probably, you know, dip in their toes. He was going to go happen. So, and now we have the naval blockade announcement today.

And if we do it anti-access area denial technique kind of like what China does in the South China Sea, then Iran can't really do much to stop us from flowing additional forces into the Gulf, because we'll actually control the waterway. And what about the hoothies, guys? You know, is there, is there a, you know, we kind of, we talked about that in the past.

But is that now now that there is a naval blockade in presumably, and you got to tell me what, there's going to be more naval assets, including and Trump hinted in that true social posts ally forces. You know, to the hoothies now come into play again as part of, you know, potential strikes against,

Probably, right? They certainly can.

“And I think it's the Iranians who've been holding back probably for an indication that we're going to seize territory,”

or in this case, start blocking everything coming under there.

Now why aren't we just trying to go seize the ships that are associated with Iran? Like they're, they're actually. Is this a complete blockade, right? I know what happened, right? It's everything, and everything, including. I thought, I'm sorry.

Go ahead. I thought, just, and I don't know at all, just from what, my knowledge is from reading tweets, but I thought the intent was to prevent friendly nations from getting charged to toll for passing, for passing through the streets of Hulu's.

“Yeah, so in his tweet he did mention that, like it was a long rambler.”

So in that whole rambling about the naval blockade he does mention protecting boats that have already paid the toll, or will be paying the toll like that can't happen. That was a big part of the tweet as well. You know, if deployment, the international relations by true social is probably one of the most frustrating things. I mean, you know, there's, you know, there's no, even the ceasefire, there's no written agreement.

I mean, all of this, it's so, it's, you know, everyone, I mean, I guess defenders of the administration defenders of Trump say unorthodox is his kind of mantra, but I mean, so much stuff goes on here that you're just, you know, literally we're talking about foreign policy based on a post on social media. Are we going to let go of make mix, you let it, he threw on his jacket, he was ready to go and talk to the legacy media organizations, which I call the enemy. No, I'm just kidding. The conversation.

Yeah, um, might have potentially criticized the military leadership. That's a, that's a big, big step for him. Yeah.

“Um, I wanted to touch on like a little bit like the confusion with the ceasefire, right?”

Because initially it was a 10 point plan, the Iranians had proposed, which was like insane. I mean, but frankly, they're in a position as strength if you ask me, um, we look like shit strategically. And if it's true that they still have half their ballistic missiles and half their drones left after a month and, you know, more than I like a, almost a month and a half, or, you know, of us bombing the shit out of them, we are not in a strong position for negotiations. Also, I want to ask like, why did they, why did they just sit there for 21 hours, negotiate, not come to a deal and like everyone just went home, right?

Like these things are supposed to be negotiated over the next two weeks, at least in theory until the 21st. Um, why is it now that, like, I got rawled, just going home now? Like should in this be a ball drawn out thing? The 2015 nuclear deal, I mean, we've heard stories about John Kerry and Joads are reformed, or Minister of taking, like, long walks at night together by the Lake Geneva for days, you know, without talking about the negotiations at all.

And like, that was an integral part of the actual end outcome where they spent a lot of time building trust. Because especially, I mean, we just, we just had our own war of choice against that country. It's going to take some time for them to actually sit at the table and believe we have to say, it's not going to happen in 21 hours, you know,

especially if they just got there, they, like, as you mentioned, mark the principles at the table at the first time, that's, that's the reverse order it's supposed to go.

And as you also mentioned, the diplomacy by tweet, what we end up doing is putting ourselves in these untenable public positions that we've told the world we're doing. And it's impossible to come back from that at that point, whereas traditional diplomacy, it's all happening behind closed doors until a very, very end. And there are some strategically that do come out to kind of sample the environment and see what's going on. Nobody's actually putting out their positions publicly, because by doing so you're actually committing yourself to that position.

It's embarrassing or impossible to step back from that. And both of those issues, putting the principles first and then airing our diplomacy publicly is actually taking the air out of our sales and our ability to have momentum and any negotiation. Even if it was a quote unquote, normal one, not one between the US and Iran that we were just at war with, after we, we started the war against them in the past two months, you know. Sometimes we try to make sense of what this administration does and I'm not sure that, you know, if there's, there's some rationality there.

I mean, everything is you just jumped in and would mix it before it was backwards, you know, the idea of principle is going first.

But JD van's someone who the Iranians wanted because they don't like Kushner and, and... For example, with their friendship with Chopefine and Business, and with the checkout with the world for the best conversation, you're right. The checkout with the world for the best conversation. The legendary checkout from Chopefine, just for the shop on their website, just for social media, and for everything. That's the music for your time. How do you deal with Chopefine, with Chopefine, you're able to help each other with a real help. Start your test today for one of your questions on Chopefine.

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That's his role. He shouldn't have been there because no principal should have been there, but if a principal should have been there, it should have been him. And he's yucking it up in Miami at a UFC fight as the vice president is playing Bizarre Merchant and storming off after 21 hours. The whole thing is just so weird and at some point I was thinking, is this all just performative theater? Why did we? If you had a Ron experts, we used to. I don't know if we do anymore again. But they don't. That some people did go with, no, I know. Perhaps they some people did go with, with the traveling party.

So there were some quote experts from somewhere from the state department. So I suppose that's a good thing. But did anyone really anticipate this was, you know, that there would be any progress because as you said, it took a year and a half for the JCPOA to be negotiated with, you know, and so I don't know. You know, some of the times, I've gotten more distrustful of government in my older age.

“And so that's why I was saying before about the US military, but it's the same thing for, you know, in terms of for the top administration now, was this all just designed for what?”

The chance of this, why did we even do this? The Islam. And then the media that now I'm going to kind of support D, like literally there was, I couldn't believe it. There's a CNN reporter who said she had chills. She had tears in her eyes watching the Islamabad thing. There was a New York Post reporter too saying this, the right, the Pakistanis were so, what are we doing? Yeah, that's like so fucking cringe.

I, I, I had tears in my eyes too. Yeah, I was thinking if I got diarrhea in Pakistan every time I went, I never failed to get this shit, it's going to that country.

I had tears that weren't in my eyes though. I ate a number in seven millimeter rockets for a year being fired at us from Pakistani military positions, separate issue. You said that on CNN, any name or? Yeah, I could find it. I mean, I thought it was just, you know, people had chills from this.

That's so cringe-dude, like, but what, but so, so we're all kind of mesmerized by this.

I mean, it is a big deal. The first kind of high level contact in 50 years, but I mean, you know, Jonathan, this is your thing.

“Like you followed Iranian US relationship, but was there ever any chance, like why did, you know, why did we do this?”

I'm not quite sure. And because, by the way, a lot of times people would say, you know, normal world don't have a summit with your adversary, if there can be no chance of success. You know, you don't actually show up when you know it's going to fail, so anyway. And these are maximal positions, which means you needed to have a long period of time to moderate those maximal positions to reach that kind of place on the playing field where you can actually start throwing the ball back and forth. Because right now, they couldn't agree on even which field to play in.

You know, that's going to take time to frame those starting points before they can even get to the actual issues they want to negotiate. And that's that difference between zone of primary agreement and best alternatives to negotiate outcome, the two important negotiating, you know, frameworks where there weren't even agreements on what to agree on yet, which will eventually come. But you first have to hit those, and it seems like they just want to cram this in to make a kind of a show that they were trying the US.

I mean, a show that, hey, we're doing this, they would didn't accept it. We're going back to work kind of or back to war kind of concept.

“That, that's what it really feels like more of a pretext to say that it's okay, we're going back to the conflict now because we tried.”

And I mean, you saw like February 27, there was like a real path to like maybe figuring this out diplomatically. And it was reported that we're caught in Kushner like, oh, that's going to take months. It's like, yeah, no shit. You dumb fuck. It's going to take months. Sorry. I know. I hate Steve with often Jericho. I'm sorry. Like, because it's just dumb and dumb and frankly, I don't blame the Iranians for not wanting to go anywhere near those guys.

Like, what are we talking about? Would you take them seriously?

“You know, in negotiations at the end of the day, you know, wars were going to end in a messy fashion.”

And so the US maximalist positions, which are legitimate positions, but if there's going to be a diplomatic solution unless we have regime change, we are going to have to cave on some stuff. That's just the way diplomacy works. You know, at some point we're going to have to say to the Iranians yet, you can have some low level civilian nuclear program. Or even more so, there's going to be reparations. There's going to be sanctions really for reparations would be politically impossible. But you know, but the maximalist position in the United States, and I'm like, if you want an agreement, if you don't want an agreement, go for full on regime change.

Because I don't see it, you know, and you guys jump in on this. I mean, I don't see how there's any other way to look at this. It's the same thing with like Israel and Hamas, like this idea of, you know, the demobilization of Hamas weapons.

This never going to happen in the history of the planet. That ain't happening.

Thus, there's no agreement. The same with Hezbollah with the UN Security Council resolution that was supposed to disarm Hezbollah and allow the Lebanon armed forces to come into the south and reoccupy the south and all this. That's what the blue line is for down there. Hezbollah will never give up their weapons.

“You know, the only way Hezbollah gives up their weapons is if there's no more Hezbollah hands to hold them. I mean, this is their position.”

And it thoughts? Yeah, you know, I'm sinking into depression quietly here and because I don't have the answer to where you guys are saying. And what really hits me every day, I know it hits you too, Mark and John and D2 is just the loss of confidence. The fact that the world is ridiculing us and our former allies and my case, you know, a lot of friends in the UK. I'm seeing what former, what former children stare us saying about us, about the special relationship and it's painful.

You know, I mean, and I don't think how anyone who understands history, who understands who is educated can say that doesn't matter. That we can alienate the entire world and continue just as though, you know, with just as though nothing's happened. It's going to affect. It's going to affect everyone to some extent. Yeah, we haven't even talked about like the rhetoric that was becoming at the last couple weeks with against NATO from their administration. As well as like, you know, the budding up with Orban who is clearly, at least his regime is a seems more and more like a Russian proxy.

It is hopefully is going to lose in several hours. Yeah, that's coming up the, the election there. So, and make sense something in the chat as well. The 60 day, you know, 60 day clock should expire on April 29. Well, yeah, good luck on Congress doing anything. Yeah, Congress is, you know, gelled it just unix walking around. All right, you went mute. Do you're muted? Sorry. Sorry.

I said, Andy, how to leave us. He was going to go to the push-ups. He just texted me on the side. All right. What do you, what do we expect? No, you know what? I was hanging around. Just waiting for you to say something like that. I'm learning from the Iranians. Yeah, just final quick thoughts.

For me, I'm looking at the market. I want to see what happens when the market opens at 930 tomorrow because I know how sense of the administration is. Trump specifically is to this and I'm curious to see how that tracks with what comes out. And of course, I'm going to look at Pauli Market and look at announcements over the weekend and see how insiders are fairing because this is a growing growing problem over the last 60 days where people in the DOD and at the White House are certainly profiting privately independently of this conflict training and material non-public information.

“And I think that people should be more aware of that and look at that themselves.”

I would agree on the markets. That's going to be a good opportunity. Everything is political now. So Trump really responds to that. And if the markets kind of tank, again, I'm surprised this announcement was made on a Sunday. It usually doesn't happen. All right, guys. We'll see you next week. Don't forget all the links to all the guys are down in the description.

Check them out right there. And the best place to support to shows patreon.com slash the team house.

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And happy Easter the orthodox people. I'm excited for my least. That picture is your lamb. I am. I'm the group chat's going to be filled with it. All right. Bye, guys.

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