WAR: U.S. & Israel Strike Iran, Khamenei Killed | EYES ON GEOPOLITICS

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I'm here with Mick Mulroy, Jonathan Hack, and Andy Miller should be joining us soon. Lock on on. I mean, you guys have been glued to your phones and your TVs, just as much as we are. I'm sure if you're watching a podcast about Geopolitics, the huge news story. It was the U.S. and Israel launched a strike on Iran killing the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah

Kamani.

Iran came back, retaliated, and, you know, shop ballistic missiles and drones that basically

“everybody in the region is like nine countries, I think.”

At this point, they've hit and tried to hit UAE's being in smoke, too, which is interesting. I'd love to know why that's like UAE has gotten just almost as much as what Israel's gotten in terms of like firepower retaliation back towards them. Yeah. Fluid situation.

Obviously, Israel just launched another bunch of air strikes again in Tehran right now. Like, as we're recording this, like 11 a.m. Eastern. So yeah, well, I don't know, guys. I mean, that's like the Cliff Notes real quick version.

What do we got, Mick? Um, so to start with, I'd say I do support the strikes. I do support the strikes. I am very happy to see that the Supreme Leader is no longer with us. I'm sure people have seen it on social media if they didn't know it already, but the laundry

list of things that the Iranian regime has been responsible for is extensive, and each one

“of them, I think, um, needed to be addressed, whether it's the Bay Route Brahmins, the”

amount of soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines, killed in Iraq, um, thanks to, uh, cost and salamone who was obviously being directed from above, um, I think it was a long time coming. There are issues around it. I would say, uh, we all thought that they were going to see a meeting on Monday, so tomorrow,

which would have been, uh, I think it'd be Anna, and there was going to be getting down into the technical experts, which meant to most people that the negotiations was going at least in a positive direction. Uh, you generally don't get to the technical experts, unless you could create on the principles or framework of the agreement, right?

So, um, I think there'll be a question about, um, to US and negotiation, uh, and whether you can, uh, essentially trust it to negotiations or in good faith. I don't know if that was not the case, but I think it'd be fair to say that some people would say, kind of looks like you were negotiating just to prepare for, uh, the inevitable

“and your mind, uh, again, I support the strikes, but I think that's going to be a question.”

The, uh, the other issue that we saw all of a sudden start being said is this idea that there was an imminent threat to the United States, um, I don't have access to the intelligence out, but it was kind of like, wait, where, where does happen? Um, they have an ICBM that

can reach the United States. Never heard that before. Uh, I think that had more to do if

you look at the war powers act, it talks about the president's ability to use military force in imminent threat is part of that ability, right? So, they basically, some lawyers are just saying I'm going to threat contingency, right? Um, and again, I do think, I did support strikes. I do think they were going toward a nuclear weapon. There's no reason to enrich uranium to the level they did, you know, 1,000 pounds about 60 percent. We didn't

even know where it was. So, I do think there was real issues being addressed, but I think that part is going to be questioned. It's going to be an investigation, but there's certainly going to look at, well, where's the intel saying that there was an imminent threat? Where's the intel saying that they were getting close to being able to deliver, uh, you know, weapons to the hit the United States, uh, because we just never had heard that before.

Uh, other things to talk about, obviously, you know, the tactical level, you know, I was reading this morning at several friends telling me that it was a real combination of intelligence fusion that led to this massive success of taking out homemade, uh, minister of defense, IRGC commander, the air equivalent of the National Security Advisor. I mean, go down the

was a great combination of the massade, obviously, which focuses almost exclusively on

Iran and the CIA and, uh, and the original strikes were substantial. Um, and of course, we're trying to diminish the nuclear program. And one thing about, you know, I'd say a cautionary tale for future politicians who were undoubtedly not heed my advice is don't exaggerate

“things, right? Because you end up, you're exaggerations than hurt you in the future, right?”

So if you obliterate something, then you can't say there's imminent threat that it's about to be reconstituted because it's at the terms don't actually match. Right? So I know people, the media's making a lot of hair to that probably rightly so, but it's, if it's

a cautionary thing, just say what actually happened. Don't lie. Yeah, don't exaggerate.

Um, so what are we doing now? And okay, so we saw the attacks. They were, it's, it is a work choice. So he's going to have, uh, the president's got to explain that to his side of the, uh, the party that is, uh, more isolationist and under the idea that we should stay out of worse, uh, but that's, that's his murder bear. The retaliation, I just, I'll, I'll say one more thing about that. And then, uh, throw it over to you guys. And before we started,

I think it'd be great to have John, it's an explain, the session that comes, uh, with the spring later. But the, the last thing I'll say before pausing is that the Iranian

response, there's a couple of things. One, it looks like they were going on orders. And then

once the decapitation happened, they just did it, right? And they'd made a very big strategic blunder. They attacked the civilian populations and almost every country in the region. So these countries who either were pushing diplomacy were, were trying to avoid the actual conflict itself are now firmly on the side of the U.S. and Israel in fighting, uh, because I mean, we saw the, the, she, he drones and slamming into hotels and Dubai and Skyrise, uh, civilian,

uh, apartment complexes and Bahrain. That was a huge strategic mistake. Uh, and so I think that, that is something that we're going to have to see. And now we're seeing this nonstop rhetoric about some supersonic weapon system that's going to be used, uh, probably to date or tomorrow by the Iranians that is going to cause all sorts of death and destruction. Uh, so we'll have to see where this goes. I would hope that the U.S. takes the opportunity to say,

okay, we took out the supreme leader. Let's stop and uh, let's go to the negotiation.

“Of course, if you're ready, you have to agree to this. But look for an opportunity to offer”

it this because if it continues too long, um, it's going to have major impacts around the world at about 60%, I think of the traffic's already down. Go with the distrates of her moods. Uh, it is a, in an oil's going to skyrocket. A lot of bad things are going to happen. And of course, if the Iranians really view this as an existential threat to their regimes existence, they're going to use every possible means of L. So clandestine attacks, terrorist attacks

against not only military and diplomatic facilities in personnel, but civilians. And they do have the ability and I have penetrated inside the United States. So there's a lot of reasons why the U.S. and Israel should take the win if you want to call that, um, and see if there's a way out of it. Again, the enemy gets a vote in Iran as promised, specifically led or Johnny to, to retaliate pretty strongly. So we're going to, we're going to see what this goes. Can you blame them?

I would for what it's going to score, stir, they just like they're 87 year old supreme leader just got smoked, including like another dozen or so top guys. What are they supposed to do? Right, because their goal is regime security, obviously. Yeah, if any, any other, the important that they as it made to 5,000 year old civilization, it's an almost important human history yet 47 years they freaking destroy it. And 37 of those 47

“years, community was in charge of it. So they've brutal, the only thing they're good at is brutalizing”

the Iranian people to stay in power. That's it, right? Yeah, they can't run a country. They run out of water. They have one of the biggest oil and gas supplies in the world. They can't, their economy is, well, that's because they were sentient, right? I mean, I'm not saying they were sentient because of their actions. The restrictions, I'm not like crying over fucking community being small. I could care less. What I care about is like the blowback and we are not seeing what's happening now

across the region. We have no plan. It's almost like it looks like 2003 was like a master stroke in Iraq compared to what's going on right now. Frankly, you know, there's going to leave

going to look like. I don't really know what the point of this was to be frank. I don't really,

I mean, I understand community being a bad guy and the regime is a whole being horrific. But if we really cared about the protesters, if some whatever it is, 30,000 people that have been killed, why don't we start doing this? I'm on the half ago when the protesters were at the protest were at their height and the regime actually looked like it was really on its back foot. Frankly, like as the layman here, and I told this to John before we started, you ask people,

like I've asked friends of mine who were like, you know, they just read headlines, really, and they don't really understand or care about the nuances of foreign policy and geopolitics.

“They honestly just blame Israel, and frankly, quote them, it's like the Jews run us. That's what”

they said to me, like, "Layman people," right? Obviously, I don't agree with that. I think Israel's

a belligerent actor in all this, but I can obviously, you know, you could differentiate Israel, IDF, BB Netanyahu, the right wing of them, that party, and like regular Jewish people, like most people don't want war. But frankly, like in terms of like the person on the ground, who pays the taxes that does this, they don't understand what the fuck's going on, and they think that Israel is our daddy here for lack of a better term.

I mean, I want to start saying people are anti-airorship. They disagree with me, because it really, it doesn't. I mean, that's a weak argument, man. Like you could disagree with people and not

be, you know, anti-Semitic or racist or whatever, whatever monarchy you want to use, and obviously,

“I mean, most American Jewish folks disagree with the policy of Netanyahu. Sure, I mean, sure.”

And frankly, there is an argument there to say that Netanyahu is also a war criminal. So, but from the Israeli perspective, I mean, let's face it. They have dealt with proxies that have attacked. They're almost nonstop to include on October 7th, of Tenshoid in by the Houthis, M.D. and Hezbollah, and yeah, they're going to want to get the United States to help them to grade if not to destroy their enemy. I would. So, I see it from their perspective.

I mean, we can go into how they conducted the war in Gaza and got news we have the expert right there. Andy, seriously, I mean, that very sincerely. But the idea that Iran is a threat to the Israelis is clear. So, if I was in their shoes, I would love to try to get my big brother to grow in there and help me take out what they do what they did. And I do think the United States had the justification. I mean, nobody ever, nobody ever gives like any blame to the Iranians here.

They could have actually negotiated in an agreement not to have a nuclear weapon and they wouldn't have the sanctions against them that they do. And they wouldn't have to brutalize their own people. You just said they killed 30,000 of their own people, right? So, what about the actual culpability of the Iranian regime? It's almost like it's like al-Qaeda where they get a complete

“pass. It's just all the criticisms is to the country's reacting to their actions. And I think I think”

they need to, well, accountable and they were held accountable. Well, al-Qaeda is a terrorist organization and like it or not, the regime is the leadership of a sovereign country, right? So, I think there's a little bit of difference there, as well as like a culpable culpable for their own actions. I completely agree with you. A terrorist organization. Right. My standard of actions is somehow different than every other human art. Right. If you're going to commit murder or you're going

to attack another country, stand by for being attacked back. Right. And you can't use proxies to try to avoid responsibility. That that day should be over and as soon as that happens, then proxies will be less effect. Sure. I mean, well, like I think it's arguable that after October 7th, and what Israel's done, not just in Gaza, but in Lebanon and in Syria and Iran back in the 12th day war, that and the us in the Red Sea, like that the proxies in Iran are the

weakest they've ever been in terms of like being a threat. It's definitely to our homeland, like but, you know, even in the region, I would say that like has below got smoked essentially, Alshara hates fucking Iran and Israel still bombs them. Um, so I would I would argue that the Iranian proxies are the weakest they've ever been in the last. Why it's that the case, because Israel did. Right. You they attacked Israel Israel attack back. Yeah, but I don't think

enemy of Israel in the United States. It's because they got their ass kicked. That's what happened.

“Right. Yeah, I just don't know, you know, the capitalating strike on a on a sovereign leaders thing,”

you know, international law. I mean, that's been a myth in the last year anyway. It's just things

we we've never really done before and like now like we're going to a place where like we, you know,

we're acting more like Israel where it's just like, you know, they can stay assassinated whoever they want, whenever they want. Um, but yeah, I don't know. I just don't and plus again, like I'm going to come back to the planning. Like in terms of the fallout and what comes back and the blowback, right? Because has below supposedly as agents everywhere that, you know, there's a huge diaspora of Lebanese people in America. So I would argue that the homeland is more at risk now with like a rudderless ship

and some lunatic, let's say RRGC guy taking over in terms of like attacks on the United States of America, actual like United, I live in New York, you know what I mean? So it's like that's, you know, compared to what it was with like this, you know, he was a jerk off and I'm not sad he's dead. I don't care one way or the other. Um, but like this sickly 87 year old who like kind of was, you know, leave our best case scenario in terms of that regime and, you know, that's crazy. It's you know,

it's a little wild to say, but some like 50 year old crazy IRGC commander coming to power. I don't know if he's going to be like the kind of guy we want to negotiate with like a real sage person that's like thoughtful and considerate in terms of like global, you know, global order

“and the rest of it, but I don't know. I think it just can be messy. And I don't think we've”

really learned our lessons from Iraq or Afghanistan frankly. And we're in a worse position in Iran,

right? Because we don't even have a ground force there. And there's 90 million people there. So even

if even if, you know, the Kurds and other groups come up and like be back like the like the hardcore regime people, how do we, you know, this is going to probably devolve into civil war, right? Most maybe. I mean, most likely. I can't see this being happy. I haven't happy ending anyway. John, what do you got? I was interesting to listen to. Um, yeah, I'm thinking about you mentioning the geriatric 80 year old ruling the country. The thing is that guy's been ruthless

since day one. And it's easy to look from the outside in and kind of think about how it affects the the world and ignore how it affects the inside of the country. And since he became first president and then I had told a he was right there directing every death, every killing, he signed the death war instead of 3,000 people in 1988, where they executed Mujhidini Kalk. You know, frankly, that's a wild cult, the Mujhidini Kalk, but there's still people. There was zero trial, no due

process. They were basically these little slips of paper that had a person's name on it and a

single box where you just check yes and they get executed. And actually, uh, Raisi, who who died tragically for himself in helicopter crash a few years ago, was one of the judges that was signing those slips of paper. And the reason I mentioned the ayatola and Raisi who were later on politicians, all of them started out as these blood-thirsty revolutionaries who wouldn't take no for an answer no matter what. And when the revolution happened in 1979, there were actually eight different groups

that were part of the revolution. One of those groups is what the Islam Republic of Iran came from. The other seven were violently suppressed to become extinguished. The only ones that survived were the Mujhidini Kalk in any big number that actually matters. And they were actually pushed out of the country and they went to go to Iraq. And when Saddam invaded Iraq, the Mujhidini Kalk that remained in Iran helped Saddam come into Iran. And there's that long history is very important

for thinking about today. We think about the ayatola today that he's this old man, you know, can barely walk. There's a reason his left arm doesn't work. And it's because he was almost assassinated in 1981 for the things that he did to other Iranians. So since day one, he has been a target other Iranians because Iranians have been a target of him. Andy? Striction. He's ready to go.

“I can tell. No, I mean, I've been following and learning with great interest. Yeah, I mean, I believe.”

We need to get occasionally people on who don't know what they're talking about so that we can have the Cyprus arguments, right? Maybe I don't know Andrew Fox or someone like that, but because I'm absolutely on board with everything that I'm making sure I'm this set. But I'm not going to simply rest at that. I'm going to say, what's kind of interesting, you know, to kind of sum up what everyone has said so far. Look, the death of committee from illegal and ethical standpoint,

justified. I mean, that's the general argument here within the group. I think, you know,

It's a debt, some consider longer overdue for Iran's support of pro-Aranian militias within a

“rock, right? Which resulted in substantive U.S. casualties. We all know that from the development”

of the EFP's back in what 2005, 2006, all the way up to the fight against ISIS, right? And beyond, when we've been continuously having problems and incurring casualties from Iranian back militias. And so this didn't come out of the blue. I mean, there is a ledger that committee has established not just vis-à-vis his own people in terms of brutality, but in terms of his proven antipathy to the United States, which has resulted in U.S. casualties in the past. So

you could just say setting that right. But one thing, I would say a question going ahead and I'll be interested here, both John and Mick on this is, you know, how does this fit into, we understand what,

you know, Israeli views are. Israeli is always very on point when it comes to pursuing

this strategic objectives. And they have always portrayed Iran as as an existential threat to Israel, whether you believe him on that, 100% or not, it doesn't matter. It's the fact that is, that's Israel's standpoint on this. Israel views Iran's regime, particularly its nuclear missile capabilities as an existential threat. Of course, you'd have to have a convoluted kind of chain of thought to regard, think of both of those as an existential threat to the United States,

but certainly a threat to U.S. interests. Israel justifies targeting, you know, the leadership of an OGRC infrastructure, as a continuation of the war that they've been involved in several years. And this framed as degrading Iran's capacity protect power in the region. All of that,

“we understand, Israel's strategic interests very clear. But what are our assets at this point?”

You know, so the aside from the President reaching out directly to the Iranian people and trying to encourage and uprising, coming out of the Pentagon, though, is very clear that the framing emphasizes, preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, defending American forces and allies from Iranian missiles and proxies in the region. That is how we frame this. But what do we expect to see next? So, so I would, you know, what we've seen is Iran's

I ads, the integrated air defense system totally stripped, right? And that was the goal, presumably apparently by today. We've gone after, come on and control nodes, we've gone after leadership, and I believe we've also gone after nuclear facilities. But what to, what do you guys think is, is the N state number one? Number two, are we only seeing part of this? Do you think, do you think there is, there is stuff going on on the ground with a covert nature to encourage,

a regime change, a takeover, because we've all talked about on this show, the fact that bombing alone no matter how effective is, is not going to the guarantee shift of balance of power, domestic balance of power within Iran. So, how does this all fit? Do you think into the N game, at the N game? The last piece I mentioned, you know, de-broad up there, is there an element of this that is purely punitive, going after Iranian officials for what they have done to their own

people? Or, or again, is this part of a concerted effort for regime change? What do you guys know, based on what you know, what you've seen on the ground? So, I think one, I, you know, I would join the chorus that President could do himself, emanation, a favor by really sitting down and explaining what the plan is here. Generally speaking, that's done well in advance. Perhaps it was

“a little bit of deception, and that's why he hasn't. So, okay. Now, there's no deception needed”

for obviously engaged in fall on conflict. So, I think that would be helpful. There might be, what, what he might say is that the U.S. is prepared to do militarily, what we can't do, to diplomatically. Well, we are prepared to degrade any time they try to build up their nuclear facilities, we're ready to hit them. Every time we think their ballistic missiles reaches a

critical mass, because obviously quantity is also an issue when it comes to dealing with the threat

Israel and on now, what we can see in other countries. And of course, if the regime is going to continue its nonstop, not only threats against Israel, the United States in the West, but actions, right, by supporting proxies that will attack all the above. Let's remember, Hezbollah was responsible for more American deaths than any other group until 9/11, right? So, that might be what they say. With the in goal, hopefully, being to get back into the diplomatic sphere and end up

with an agreement that we could all live with, and that allows the Iranian people to essentially kind of escape the yoke of these maximum pressure campaign in sanctions, but also gives a world

assurances that are on will never get a nuclear weapon and will stop using proxy forces to attack

“its enemies in the region. So, I think it can be explained, but of course, the enemy gets a vote.”

So, what is Iran going to do? Are they going to accept this? Is President Trump going to look at the Venezuelan model as, okay? So, I'm not really going to support the opposition. I'm just going to deal with somebody for practical reasons that are going to be, you know, like the, you're, you're, you're a Rodriguez of the world. Is there somebody like that? Is there, is there any possible way that the, what's left of the regime would be amenable to that? I think

Jonathan should answer that. But there's a lot of questions out there, but I think the first thing we could do, the President could do, the White House could do, is to sit down and explain why we are, where we are and where we hope to be headed with this. Yeah, I'll piggyback right on there. Yeah. So, thinking about, there's two possible outcomes to this. One is a change in the system, which is a new government and the second is status quo, which is remnants of the current

government remaining, like you were mentioning Mick with the Venezuelan model. The problem here is that Venezuelan model can't work in Iran, because the regime is so entrenched and it's so monolithic as far as, as, you know, the shields are stuck together just like a fouling as far as this regime is concerned and they're all in survival mode. Every single one of them shares very similar views and those views aren't perhaps to other people's surprise. They aren't necessarily

religious. They're survival-minded. There are certainly clerics where, you know, fanatic religious folks,

but there are very wealthy, you know, very powerful individuals in Iran that benefit only

from the existence of the regime in any form. And as long as that system stays there, those people will remain corrupt and empower the central bank will continue printing currency left and right, continue destroying everyday Iranians' lives. If you go right now into a grocery store and I saw

“this last weekend in Iran, you have to use a payment plan to pay for yogurt. It's become so expensive,”

and currency is so devalued. You cannot purchase it with money, but because they're not part of the swift banking system, you can't use a credit card either. So you have to do a payment plan where you promise to pay for your yogurt over the next month, which is insane. And that's just a tiny little speck of how this regime is treated to some people because, like you said, they've had plenty of opportunities to come to negotiating table over the last 47 years and say, "Alright, we're

going to change how we're behaving." And they've never done it, except once, which was during

JCPOA, where they changed one element, just one element of how they conduct foreign policy, but still continued instigating and antagonizing people in the region in the world. Let's go back to the two options. So if we have the IRGC remain, like you mentioned, the Venezuelan model, what you're going to have is people like Ali Larrajani, Abbas, Iraq, Xi, Muhammad, Bakr-Gali, Bah, Yaya, Sabawi. Name some of the listeners might never heard before,

but if you watch the regime for a long time, these are people that you don't. Every time you're here, these people's names, you shudder, because these are the people that have been holding power the entire time. When you see the Ayatola up there and is elderly state talking on a Friday to the people, that's not who's in power and has not been in power. The people in power are those names I just mentioned. Those would be the people, and by the way, those are the people that are still

alive. They were not killed yet. Yet, those are the ones that, if we hand over power and say, "Oh, they're these pragmatic people, Ali Larrajani, he's the speaker of the house," or Gali Buff is the speaker of Parliament. Larry Johnny's Supreme National Security. All of these are pragmatists, politicians, absolutely not. These guys have had the levers of power. We've talked about this in the past about the, the, "Sapah, he's with the guardians." These are the guardians. These are the ones that have

been ruling the country. It would be an absolute mistake to hand over the keys in a legitimate fashion, like, "Oh, now we actually recognize that you are our brokers." The country won't just status quo, it'll get worse. Because now they've been exposed, and that there's nothing to hide behind anymore.

“They'll say, "Well, now we're in power," and you have to do exactly what we say. There's no more secrets.”

There's no more hidden black market where the IRGC controls 80% of black market, and that will be 100% of the black market, because they will be the government. Well, legitimately, the government in their eyes. And in our eyes, if we legitimize them,

Yeah, I think it's fair. Right, John, the, since 1979, the regime has, has focused on developing built-in redundancies. Right? I mean, through parallel institutions, so you mentioned the IRGC and the real power broke is behind there. You know, they act as a check, of course, on the regular conventional armed forces, and then you've got the besiege, and the specialised units who pack the regime, and then they're whole, you know, the layer of civil security and intelligence bodies.

You brought up a really interesting point about the economy. So, or although the civilian population is clearly suffering heavily from the state of the economy, isn't it true to say that the regime itself has kind of economic networks built in as buffers, right? I mean, the IRGC has its own linked enterprises smuggling networks, and then there are kind of coyside government bodies, right? That, that, that manner's social

services, economic projects, outside state channels, and continue to function. Yeah, these are called bond yards, and they're kind of like private equity firms in the

equivalent to the United States. They're worth over $150 billion, $200 billion, $300 billion.

“There's one called Huttam, Alambia, which is the construction G-Hutt headquarters. That's what”

it is in English. That's this giant multinational conglomerate that has offices all over the world. They have these shell companies holding companies in places like Hamburg, London. They even have back accounts in the United States. They're they're completely evaded the sanctions regime that is designed to stop them. And in fact, they've enriched themselves because they're the only actors that have access to the money, which means like they control that scarce resource.

And inside Iran, there's these groups that are supposed to support poor people or poverty. All that money gets funneled into regime pockets, all of it. And even the Central Bank of Iran back in the early 2000s, there was a big scandal because the director of the Central Bank

fled to Canada with $3.6 billion. How do you flee with $3.6 billion? That's not really a

thing you can bring with you in your pocket. That means a bank transfer was facilitated and approved

“by a Canadian bank. How is that possible if they're not part of the swift system, right?”

And it's because they're able to get around all these sanctions with what they're doing. And we can have a whole episode on how they do that because I've studied that in great detail. But they're able to do it and the mechanisms exist and states allow it. For example, Germany is a big facilitator of this regime money that flows in and out of Iran. You've got the children of all these regime leaders. The ones I just mentioned like Larry

Johnny Colliebough, even how many their kids live in Canada, London, Paris, and they have Instagram accounts. You can see them. They're all wearing Louis Vuitton, bikinis, zero hijab at all. I mean, they don't look muslim, right? But you have these guys talking on the TV as if like Islam is the end and that's it. And their kids are in Paris at a full party, posting on Instagram. Right? So what it really comes down to in reality is corruption. You have this small group of highly corrupt individuals who

will never change. I mean, you can't come up to a corrupt billionaire and tell them, hey, can I just

get your money back, please? They're not going to do that. Right? There's only one way to go.

“And I think these people see it like, for example, if you see Larry Johnny currently speaking to the”

public, he's right now like the number one guy that's kind of leading the the existence of the regime in the media. And he's talking about like, we'll do everything we can to survive. I mean, he's telling the truth. They will do everything they can to survive. The question is how much longer than can they survive? What's that target list look like that we have? What's that spreadsheet look like? Remember back during the war we had the joint prioritized effects list. I'm sure his names

on there were the objective name. And I'm curious how long he's even going to survive on that spreadsheet. So these fine yards, I mean, you obviously just described it. Is it a lack of will for countries, whether it's Germany or Canada or is it to just they just are being deceived? It's deceptive. And they just don't know what the count. I mean, can you explain that? Maybe we should send this to the Treasury Department this section right here. Yeah, actually we just in class at Yale Law School

had the assassins and money laundering experts speak to us. It's very interesting listen to they were talking about cartel money, but it's a very similar situation where Wachovia bank, for example, there was a big scandal because Wachovia bank got fine several billion dollars for facilitating a much of the cartel money between the US and Mexico. And the problem, there were two problems. One problem is a self interest at the bank because they collect fees from all this money.

So they don't want to criticize that. I mean, they're making a lot of money. That's one issue. The other issue is on banks like this like Wachovia or Bank of America, for example. It trillions of dollars of assets moving through daily. Daily. I mean, how can you track every one of those

If you care about it, if you want to stop it, it's very hard to do it, especially when there's one degree of separation between the sender and receiver. Let's say you've got a small subsidiary bank in Hamburg that sending money to Paris. Well, if you're the Paris bank, it looks like it's

coming from Hamburg. It's hard for you to know who sent that to Hamburg. Now, add a second layer in

there and the amount of complexity you can introduce by adding two or three layers between sender and receiver. It's hard to even add them. I'm not making an excuse for the bank because on the other side, it's that really that first reason in the beginning why they didn't scrutinize it to start. And that's because they're making money off of it. They're corporations. It's normal for

“corporation to maximize the value of shareholders. And that's what a holding company for a bank does.”

Yeah, well, I wish just to say the, you know, the Iranian, the whole regime system is is just built to withstand shocks, right? It's built for redundant sender resilience. And that is that's a significant problem when you're talking about regime change as potentially being a strategic

objective of the United States. But what does Mick points out? We don't know if it is yet.

That was just something that we're talking pondering because of what the president, his address to the Iranian people, his and address to the American people, he had put his address to the Iranian people. Well, we did the same thing with the authorization of use of military force to kill a custom Soleimani. If you read that document, it's about Saddam Hussein and Iraq and Iraqi forces in Iraq. And that was the document that was used as legal justification for that assassination.

Like right around about the assassination, the document they used does not connect to the action. Right. So how is that legal? Well, that's the thing. I mean, if you're the one writing the rules and nobody stops you, everything's legal, right? Yeah. And like you, we've seen like the messaging from the administration even before the strikes happen. It's yo-yoing all over the place. It's the protesters. And it's nuclear weapons. And then it's, you know, proxies. There's no real,

you can put them all together, sure. But there's no real like actual plant in terms of like why we're doing this and to what end is there? Because it does sound like they're extremely

entrenched. And we don't have half a million troops, you know, driving down Main Street and Tehran

“to like start to unravel this. So Andy, I remember a few weeks ago, maybe a week ago,”

you mentioned about like moan, the grass was like every time another guy pops up, like oh, he's the new IRGC guy. He's the new Iatola will smoke him too and like he'll just do this game forever. And another bit about the nuclear program, sure, we no one believed it was obliterated or whatever they said back last year. But a bunch of nuclear experts had mentioned that like their nuclear program had basically stopped, had basically like pause indefinitely after that. So to bring

up, we had WIC call flash week as well, talking about there's a week away. Some bullshit is really talking point. There are a week away from having deliverable shit, like there's no clear messaging here and frankly, like when you send Steve with coffee and Jared Kushner to be the negotiators, I don't, I don't have a ton of confidence in that group going to be honest. I'm sure they be great at negotiating a lease for a hotel person or some bullshit like that. That's good. Great.

This is like real deal for a policy that's extremely nuanced, extremely complicated. So yeah, I'm not exactly confident in this administration and their plan or lack of their love on what happens next. And frankly, I think we're more in danger in the home land right now than we ever will, than we ever were three days ago. Gotta be honest. But I'm an idiot. I don't know who wants to take that up. All jump in here. So we were talking about the nuclear enrichment stuff.

You were talking about that make about how you don't need 90% in enriched uranium for anything except a weapon between 60% to 90% small technical step. This was the issue all the way back to 2015. Well, Larry Johnny, that guy that I mentioned that's like the behind-the-scenes puppet master that's still alive. He's the one that said giving up nuclear fuel abandonment or abandoning it.

“It's like giving up pearl for a candy bar. That's what he said. And he still has said that.”

So if this is the guy that we want to remain, the nuclear issue is going to continue. And we killed something like 40 people in the past three days. Some of whom were scientists. But it's not like you can extinguish science. There will be more people that learn how to do these things. And once you've produced a method to do it, new people can come in with less knowledge and reproduce the thing that that original smarter person created. So earlier in the 2000s, when they set up those

centrifuges and set up the way to do the cascading enrichment and all this kind of little more complex way of enriching uranium to mask the way that it's enriched to hide it from the IAEA. That's been

they can take that plan off the shelf and reproduce it. And that's even what Iran did in the first place

when the AQCon network gave Iran nuclear material back in the late '80s, early '90s. You know, that Pakistani weapons broker came in and sold the uranium plans to Iran. Iran didn't have to invent it. And this is the problem that still exists because that isn't that knowledge is there. It's kind of like killing an ideology. You can't do it. You also can't kill a nuclear knowledge. So a less experienced technician might come in and restart

the program because Larry Johnnie wants them to. Now we have a problem where we're going to have nuclear weapons that might be improperly manufactured, which could be even more devastating

because of unforeseen effects of these weapons. So the threat of the weapons exists.

I just don't know if in the past two months it got worse than it was because the rhetoric they were, you know, the West was saying it sounded like it was a lot worse and worse. And you know,

“for 10 days away, we're a week away, which you remember Netanyahu standing in the UN a few”

years ago holding up the picture of the bomb saying we're five days away. And we've been five days away for 20 years. So I don't know how real that threat has been actually. Also, the nuclear threat we they had known, which uranium during the JCPOA, I know, right, they had a down under five percent, which was incredible commitment to actually follow

the deal. The problem is that it didn't include proxies. So it was never an acceptable deal to Israel.

Yeah, but we're America like we don't give a shit what Israel wants. That's how it should be, I mean, Israel should be safe and secure absolutely, but they cannot dictate our foreign policy. No other country should be able to dictate our foreign policy. That's my position as an American citizen anyway. And I'm a Greek, too, right? My family's from Greece. Greece shouldn't be able to dictate our fucking foreign policy. Sorry, guys. I mean, we call the shots. There's a

reason why we're the big stick. There, there should be anyway. And the issue when we get out of the case, because for a long time, it's been troubled me that the Greek government may be dictating US foreign policy. I'm just saying, even if the, even if we had, they had sway like that,

“I wouldn't be like, "Oh, yeah, let's go for it." I mean, I think that's why it's important,”

like both Lincoln John had said, that the president addresses the American people to explain what the objectives are. You know, we can go back and forth, we can, as we have, and we talked about the, you know, probable possible consequences, what our objectives are, but at the end of the day, only one man can really address that, can conclusively, right? And it's probably time to do that, to explain why that is. And there's, you know, there's good legal and ethical reasons for doing that,

of course. I mean, we, we haven't discussed in depth for the legal basis for what has happened. So far, though, I mean, I would venture, we're probably on legal solid ground. We can justify what has happened under the presidents, you know, the presidents, powers under the War Powers Act, although he's, if that's tied to a limited timeline, right? You could, you can talk about, you can talk about self-defense, you can talk in terms of both past actions by the Iranians and potential imminent action,

although, of course, that's kind of thinnerized. But all of these things probably need to be explained to the American people to Congress, so that everyone understands and what the goals are of these strikes going ahead. And if it is simply to keep Iran within limits when it comes to support for proxies and nuclear, it's nuclear capabilities. In other words, if it is a mowing the grass

“effect, then let's, you know, let's announce it. But I think all of us are concerned about”

kind of an open-ended, unstated goal of regime change without that being fit into any kind of strategic plan without anything else happening beyond the bombing. Yeah, you mentioned earlier, Andy, about the idea of whether the U.S. is really promoting the opposition to take control of the country and its Jonathan said, the change in the actual governing structure. I would be hesitant if I was advising the president to have him ask the protesters to get out in the streets. I mean,

obviously, we'd like to see a regime change. I get that. I would like to see a regime change, but if we're not willing to do much to a system, we could be sending him to their death. Right? So you already mentioned the 30,000 dead. What can you imagine how less of the restrictions the regime would have on protesters now? Right? So it could be just an object slur. So again, it's not because I don't want to see a regime change. But when we ask people to do that and we've

for them. And if they felt like we were promoting them getting out there to do something because we were going to step in and assist them. That could be a problem. I would imagine, I don't know,

but that the agency's been tasked to help phone in it. But those never work unless it's organic.

Right? You can't like create it out of whole cloth. You can enhance something that's actually

“genuine. And I think the, I think the opposition is obviously genuine. But the question is going to be,”

it's easy for us to send them out on the streets, but is it going to, is it there's a real chance for it to be successful? Or is it a real chance that we instead of 30,000 dead? We're looking at 300,000 dead. And I think we have to consider that before just telling them to get out there and protest. So, you know, that gets to, to John. And actually, Nick too, I mean, this is both you, both your baby works, but presumably, one hopes that there are a list of kind of

CCIRs, right? That would indicate. What's that mean? Come on, there's critical information

requirements, right? So, in other words, that presumably the intelligence community has been primed to pick up on certain indications that regime change may be a prospect, right? In which case, there may, that might be a trigger to follow on actions. So, simply, as mixed at simply, where I'm heading on this, there's simply calling people out on the streets. As, as mixed pointed out, it's been disastrous in the past, for us, think back to 1991 with the sheer uprising

in Iraq in Iraq, right? So, me, so maybe before we do that, the IC has been primed to look for certain things. I don't know, you know, visible splits among power centers. The clerical establishment being, kind of being pitched against the IRGC, they're being a riff between them, or perhaps IRGC factions, going against each other, provinces ignoring terranscriptives. So, you know, differences, significant changes in security force behavior, right? Units refusing orders standing

down openly switching sides, or a challenged succession process, right? Or maybe sustained protests, capacity. You know, the protests just continue to get bigger and bigger. And any one of those, or all of those things, might be indications that regime changes, even a prospect,

“but you have to key the intelligence community to look for those things and report them. You”

have to have a plan to follow up on reinforced success in those areas, which is what I mean about having part of a bigger strategy, part of a bigger strategies and simply bombing and then saying, hey guys, I think it's time to overthrow these shitheads. And also for there to be a threat that's credible to the regime, you need the intent which the people have, but you also need the capability for them to materialize that threat. And that means weapons, lethal force, control over communication,

control over media outlets, ways to communicate to disparate widespread groups to actually come together, join together, use that lethal force to then become a threat to the existing system.

And the problem is the regime has done a very good job of having no second amendment in Iran.

So, the regular people cannot own weapons and have not own weapons since 1979. This is a huge gap between the have and the have nots. The regime people have weapons and the 90 percent of the country that opposes it do not. They even went through and took away hunting rifles up in the mountains and things like that. So, there are no weapons except very small amount in the country. If the US was going to help, this is a great way to covertly supply them with weapons,

providing, you know, we did the same thing in Albania actually in World War II when we were supporting the partisans. We dropped huge amounts of weapons and creates what ammunition, medical supplies, all kinds of things to sustain the Albanians and they succeeded. That was a huge success in Albania.

“And I think that's actually a very good resistance model for situations similar to this”

where you have a very repressive regime coming in with zero qualms about harming anyone in their path. And the US and Britain both came in and supplied those resistance forces and those resistance forces were able to become a credible threat. Jonathan, would you mind explaining these session plan and how that works for the spring leader that we were talking about before? Yeah, sure. So, the constitution they have actually talks about it pretty in depth.

The constitution is very lengthy. It's not like ours, which is succinct and easy to understand. I'm just kidding. Sometimes simpler is not better. But yeah, they have right now three people that have come together by the constitution to actually sit in a council similar to how the Pope is selected where they come down secretly and deliberate and talk about the different

foreign advance. So, they're basically deliberating over a list that's already pre-determined. There's a little bit of tension between the people on that list. Two of them that stand out. One is the first Iotola's son, Hassan, and the recently deceased Iotola's son, most of them. Now, the recently deceased Iotola said, "I don't want my son to take over. I don't want it to be a hereditary regime, et cetera, et cetera." I don't know how true that is

because he was president and then became Iotola and then never let go. So, you know,

actually speak louder than words. I'm not sure how that works. The thing with most of us, he's been kind of out of the spotlight, perhaps on purpose, to allow him to look like an aloof cleric because that was a big piece of insecurity that the Iotola had.

“Was he wasn't actually a grand Iotola when he became the leader of the country?”

Somehow that title materialized in 1989 that he was suddenly a grand Iotola, but he wasn't. And he was very insecure. There's actually interviews of him speaking about that in 1988, before he ascended to what is ostensibly a throne. So, what's going to happen now is the three people that are supposed to meet, one of them's dead because he was killed during the initial bombing against harmony. That was Hijazi, his chief of staff.

So, now there's only two that's Pazesky in the president and then the chief of the judiciary, Golem Hussein Ijai. Now, Golem Hussein Ijai's name is on that document. So, you have two people deciding who the Iotola will be and one of their names is on a list. It is not unlikely that his name ends up being the one brought to the assembly of experts, which is this group of 88 clerics, who then take that list and ratify it. And it's very similar again to the Pope, they release the

information to the public and suddenly everyone accepts it. And I mean, if that's far from democracy,

“as you can get, that's that's who it is, but that's that's how their constitution is designed.”

The thing is, these individuals I just named are all top targets for the West. It's not clear if they're going to be alive next week. So, and we saw this with Hezbollah actually in June, where

Nostrola was killed. A successor was named two days later, the successor's dead. Now, we have the third

third string quarterback in charge of the organization who hasn't done anything since then, because he's probably scared for his life if he's even alive. Right. So, this is what they're facing right now. This is what they're deciding. While they're deciding that, there is the group that I mentioned earlier, the real powerbrokers, Oli-Lari-Johnny, Gali-Boff, the Speaker of Parliament, these like hardcore IRGC individuals, they're making their own decisions now about what's going on,

separate from that quote unquote constitutional clerical session system. And we might see a thing where these two groups that religious group and the pragmatic group are coming to head. Because, perhaps, Lari-Johnny wants to rule the country as the IRGC person to that he is, without a clerical backing. It's possible that the clerical component is removed because of an emergency situation that they create or has been created. That would mean that that religious component

is sideline. This is actually what the CIA complained about in last year. As of warning about regime change in Iran, if this is a runaway regime change without actual outside support to stop it from running off on its own, the IRGC will take over the country. This was in the New York

“times last week I believe that this was part of the CIA's assessment. I think that's a realistic”

assessment because the clerics don't have guns either. The people with the guns are the IRGC. So if the IRGC in this moment of danger decides, you know what guys? We're going to change things a little bit. Lari-Johnny's in charge now. Who's going to stop them? That is to say, you know, that's a possible outcome. It's a likely outcome, unless the US does something and what that something is, is that that other option I mentioned earlier in your show, which is a new system.

The most likely new system is raised up all of the crown prince comes into Iran, perhaps on a white horse. I don't know how. He'll come into the country and he actually has something called the Iran Prosperity Project, which is a 10-point plan. You know, this is an ongoing for a very long time talking about, you know, if there is regime change and if outsiders are allowed to come back into the country, this is how it's going to go. Very in depth, it's like a 200-page document

that talks about how they're going to reform the economy and governance, etc. The bottom line is

their plan is a secular government that is either monarchist or not. And they're going to have a referendum, which is like in the very beginning of this plan. It'll be a referendum where the people choose do you want a monarchy similar to the UK, where it's kind of in the background, but you have a parliament that's making a decisions, or do you want a straight democratic system like the United States where we have separation powers and all that without any hierarchy.

Whether that also comes to fruition on it, I don't know, because there's always a change between what someone says before they have power and then what they say when they do have power as we saw even during a revolution. So that even is not a certainty of what people actually look like if that other option comes in. How does the crown prince come back to Iran without his own guns,

you will have immunity. That was very clear in there. He said it a second time in a speech he gave.

So clearly this is part of the narrative that, hey, if you're in the R-Tesh, which is the regular conventional forces, or if you're in the IRGC, even if you put your weapons down now, somehow the U.S. promises that you will not be touched. Now, if I was in Iranian, who just lost 11 family members to these people killing everybody, I don't know if I would listen to that instruction from this guy in another country telling me that these people are suddenly

immune from me, right? So I don't know how enforceable that is, but that is part of the U.S. planet, at least, that if these forces, especially the R-Tesh, the Army, the regular conventional Army who's not involved the way the IRGC is, they put their weapons down, perhaps that will be the new military, perhaps they'll be the new security forces, which is exactly what happened in 79. It's not like the military left the country in 79. The Shah's military put their weapons

down, took off their shafatiques and put on revolutionary fatigues, same thing with Savak,

which was the original intelligence organization that the CIA helped to create. Savak took off their Savak badges and put on Islamic Republic intelligence badges. It was same guys. I mean, Larry Johnny's father was in Savak, and a lot of these guys that are currently in the IRGC to parents who are all in Savak. So there's even a precedent for that in the country in recent memory of some people. So it is possible that that could happen, and we just wonder, you know,

“which of the people hang on to the beliefs that they had before, in which surrender them?”

Yeah, so I think to a point D, the way that Johnny has just laid it out, that gap, that gap between identifying a successor, and him actually taking power, being able to come in and flipping the transition of power, all those things that need to happen. That is that's the gap that it right now, unless we're getting additional information just seems so improbable, right? Because John, the way you've painted this the most likely outcome is going

to be short-term consolidation, horseshoe repression, you know, a tightened roll by the IRGC, even to the point of them taking over from, you know, from their fear crats, but that's the right way. Yeah, and you're on, you have three types of politicians. You've got hard liners, pragmatists, and reformists. And we haven't talked about the reformists at all in this episode. Those are the people that have been signed line, but there actually have been some presidential candidates.

“You remember back in 2009, there was the Green Revolution. That was because Mahmoud Ahmadinejad”

was elected a second time in a dramatically fraudulent election, because the person who running

against him was a reformist, and the government didn't want that reformist, because that would loosen their grip on power. So the contest right now is between the hard liners, which are those theocrats and the pragmatists, which are the Larry Johnny's of the world. Those are the two groups that are currently duking it out, but there still exists a reformist camp in Iran. It's small, but it exists. The question is, is the West willing to accept the West part of a new government,

or are they too tainted with the memories of the past? Because they are part of the regime. But they're these reformists who are trying to remove the hijab law, for example. They're trying to allow women to travel alone, because there's actually a rule in Iran that people know this. Women are not allowed to travel outside the country by themselves. They have to have a guardian, a male guardian with them. This is in their legal system. So these reformists are saying,

we need to stop all that stuff. This is not making sense. It's, you know, ruining our view of others of you of us in the world, and it's not letting us progress. And so on, even though small changes were not, you know, they're too unpalatable for the regime to accept. So we don't know if those reformists will also come up in this transition period and help to bridge that gap between the older regime and the new regime, because their voices have been suppressed since 2009.

Wow. Well, the gap is pretty wide, I'd say, Andy. And I feel like it would be good for whoever the power is that be, whether it's US, CIA to involve the reformists into this. I mean, you're probably going to have to involve IRGC people as well. Do you want to make the same mistakes you did in Iraq by the de-bathification and that stuff? I mean, the similarities

“are there, I would say. I mean, you have to, these people are the people that live in this country.”

So you have to have them involved in terms of how the next steps and what it's going to look like. Yeah, it seems like a tall task to be honest in terms of regime change, going to be honest. But I don't know what I'm talking about. I'm just reading the T-Leaves.

Yeah, pretty good time to wrap with, you know, we've wrestled with the topic. Well, you know,

“it's just, the only thing I was going to say to your point is that, you know, we talked about,”

yes, low prospects for regime change. And in order for it to happen, I think we're probably all agreeing that that needs to be substantive action, right, not just provide weapons or create the conditions by taking out the leadership of the current administration. I mean, then it's to be more to enable a viable opposition to to gain power because of the fact that the the I-O-G-C in particular is so embedded into the fabric of the Iranian society.

And so that's again, gets back to is this part of a coherent strategy that is focused on regime

change or is that not one of our goals and the regime change option is simply a it's not not a

rate-haring, but it's it's something that that would benefit us and if we can bridge that gap by by providing encouragement, then we will certainly do so, but we're not prepared to do more than that. That's the real question, right, whether that's kind of our stance, chairing from the sidelines, or whether we have a plan in place to cove a plan to enable a

“viable opposition to actually seize power. I think that goes to all what we've all said about”

uncertainty, that the leader of the country, our country needs to say what our objectives are, because that will help people understand why step one, two and three are happening in that order

and for what end, you know, purpose method and state, why are we doing this? It's a military

operation, we need to know what the end state is as the people. And Congress needs to know that, too, so that they can understand what are we approving and disapproving? What are we actually debating about? And perhaps there's a good reason for whatever has happened or there's not. We don't know because we're not receiving the information to make that informed decision. Yeah, I would say there's no coherent plan at all, and Congress is completely fucking useless.

They, yeah, I don't have any confidence in Congress, just the way they've been knocked in the last year or plus when it comes to Venezuela and to this now. I mean, you see Congress, you see senators cheering the song. Like, like it's a great thing with no actual plan as to what happens next. And it's kind of scary, frankly. But yeah, Lindsey Graham, he's pretty level headed. Oh, yeah, no, yeah, he's the best, he's the best, so level headed, super pragmatic.

If I have some more fucked up jokes to say, but I'm not he's he's I'm demon. Let's be honest. You guys don't have to say, I'll say he's a demon. He's been a so seeking out coffee together. Yeah, yeah, that'd be a great little coffee date. A couple things from Zach and we'll wrap up soon. I'm sorry, guys, if you guys have to run. There's one thing I wanted to talk about in terms of what the blowback and look like in the United States, Zach Dorfman, National Security Journalist

really respect the great, he does great work. He said, I spoke with a former CIA official with extensive Iran, Hezbollah experience about this. He argued that one sleeper cuts for us and where Hezbollah operatives in the US saw the writing on the wall, they'd opt to lay low instead of committing to error acts, liken it to Soviet, air-a-deep cover spies at the end of Cold War. What do you guys, I push back on the net. There's been a long narrative from certain analysts

that there's this huge sleeper population of Hezbollah in the United States. I've seen estimates the FBI pointed estimate out in the late 90s saying that we're like 1,200 Hezbollah sleeper agents

“in the United States. I think this is a similar approach to the approach we have with North Korea where”

we give them so much credit that part of their threat is derived from the credit that we give them. And what is a sleeper agent from Hezbollah? What does that look like? Is that someone with a gun under their bed that's waiting for the signal to get out? Like the minute men that we had in the revolution? Or is that a Lebanese guy who's shea that maybe you have his phone number? There's zero definition of what this means. And I'm sure there are certainly threats in this country.

Whether that threat is so large that we could call it this sleeper agent network that just sounds so sophisticated. I mean, look at how the attacks have been in the past 20 years from Hezbollah. Are those sophisticated or are those typical guerrilla actions? I mean, if they're best forces which are now destroyed, can't even cross the border into Israel to do a raid anymore. However, you're going to have a sleeper agent who got trained 15 years ago, get activated in 10

well. I haven't used my rifle that way in a long time. If you give me that rifle today and say,

go do X, Y, and Z in this very sophisticated manner, I'll probably make some mistakes because I haven't practiced or trained or kept up that capability. So I just have to kind of push back on the thought that there's this huge sleeper network in the country that might lay low and do this sophisticated long-term mascaroica and, you know, illegal operation that the Russians did during the Soviet Union.

“I just don't think that that's likely. Millburn? Yeah, I mean, I would agree. I think, I mean,”

what we're looking at now is probably, if I was, if I was going to hesitate gas, which I will, right? It's a, that the US will look soon to de-escalate, right? That's been a pattern in the past,

rapid escalation, rapid de-escalation, signaling Iran. That further retaliation will be bad for them,

right? The risk of the risk is still there. The widening regional war, you know, with shipping lanes disrupted. I mean, it really depends on how Iran, how far Iran's prepared to take this, right? I mean, oil markets, convulsing US bases under sustained attack, Israel potentially fighting on multiple fronts. I mean, some of that's unlikely because we've seen the state of Iran's proxy forces, but there's certainly an opening for escalation,

kind of a cumulative escalation, right? And that that may have been Iran's purpose in targeting Gulf countries, even though it seemed like a strategic loss to lose their support.

“But yeah, I mean, I, I, I, I think the next, the thing we're really looking for is”

signaling by the United States on what the end game is because asteroids are easy, right? And they

go on a great publicity and soundbites, but to the end game itself, the strategic goals for the United States, that's, that's the tough pot. How do we define them and how do we explain what we're doing right now leads to leads us to those goals? I have one more question because there's a bunch of, uh, some people talking about, you know, let's say Iran, you know, fractures and civil war and, you know, not unlike what happened in Libya, does Iran have a potential of becoming a terrorist,

like haven, more than it already is. I would say no. And that's the reason is a lot of the terror you see from Libya, Syria, Afghanistan. These are by Sunni, Salafi Jihadis groups that existed before those conflicts existed. They were empowered by those conflicts because of the chaos and power vacuum and weapons, especially in Libya, just freely floating out into the desert. Iran is not like that. And it's so multicultural. It's such a cosmopolitan state that you don't have the same

conditions of this kind of homogenous Salafi Jihadist, you know, receptive population that you had in northern Libya for in Tunisia, for example. It's just, it's not a parallel, and it's not just because of the religion, it's because of culture. You know, if you're in Western Iran, you're in a Kurdish area and within the Kurdish area, there's different types of Kurds. You know, there are even, uh, you know, there's Christian areas, there's Jewish areas, there's Baha'i's, totally separate from

Islam. And not only that, you have lures and you have Balochis, and you have Achavasis, which are like historic thousands of years of history amongst themselves, that are attached to Persian history, but also with their own separate history. And it's not, it's not a similar place like northern Libya that was colonized by European powers for a very long time, and suddenly the colonization was ripped out, and now you've got this strong man rising up, and then he's dead, and now the weapons flow out.

It's not really a similar situation, I don't think. Cool. All right, guys. I mean, that's all I got pretty much. There was one bit of news that we didn't talk about. It came out like probably a few hours before we started that the CIA, and you know, essentially like gave Israel intel about when this meeting would happen with the Iatola and their senior guys, and that supposedly they delayed the attack to wait for this meeting to go down to happen, so they were all colliding in the same place,

like delayed it, they were supposed to go overnight, and then they did it early in the morning, and you were on, I don't know if that's a CIA doing like a curtain call kind of like, you know, yes, you know, we're doing and stuff like that, but that went into like the timing of this

“attack. I just want to put that out there for the audience. I think it makes sense, especially because”

it's Ramadan, and the timing of the attack was right after Suhaar, which is the last meal during evening. So usually that's when people gather together. We did the same thing in 2016 and most of when we were re-taking muscle from ISIS. A lot of our very heavy strikes were during Ramadan, because the high-level leaders were all meeting with each other without any civilians, because they were meeting with their war, right? So they go meet with each other at night,

commanders in the same building. They just had breakfast, another going to bed, and now we're striking.

“And we actually did this very similar things back then. We would track their movements.”

We'd have a funeral that would go on. We'd track where everyone went from the funeral over a few weeks, and once they all gathered together for that breakfast two weeks later, you got it, 20 more funerals. Yeah. Andy, you have anything left in the tank?

All right, guys, this has always a pleasure. I want you guys to do with the favor listening.

Check out Andy Milberg's book when the Tempest Guide, there's incredible memoir. Check out Jonathan's book. Our Ranch Shadow Weapons. Jonathan knows what the

“fuck's up with Iran. He gets it. He's screwed in. If you want to learn something get that book,”

that link is in the description as well. The wife is security conference, security summit is happening early April, April 2nd to the fourth. That link is in the description as well. And any and all links you want to find us, the links are down in the description. Patreon.com/theteamhouse. Help support to show you get both eyes on geopolitics and the teamhouse at free and early. And you help support to show and keep the lights on. So thank you very much, guys.

“A pleasure as always. Yeah, thank you. Hey, all the best, guys.”

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