Hey, guys, ready or not, twenty twenty four is here, and we here at breaking Points, are already thinking of ways we can up our game for this critical election.
We rely on our premium subs to expand coverage, upgrade the studio ad staff, give you, guys, the best independent coverage that is possible. If you like what we're all about, it just means the absolute world to have your support. But enough with that, let's get to the show.
Good morning, everybody, Happy Friday. We've got the whole team here, plus special guests. Congressman Rocana, fresh off a THEO Von appearance.
Great to see Zar, great to say you not quite a breaking points appearance, but you know it was a good lot.
This is are you yeah, what are you talking about?
You get the full team, very rarely the team he's.
Talking about THEO Von does. It isn't quite as big as the Breaking Points appearent, but you know that's very kind, you know. So we're gonna talk to the Congressman here for a little while. Then he's gonna run and catch a flight. There's a bunch of updates with regard to Iron and Israel we want to get to. We'll see how far we are able to get with that. We've also got some Zora on news we might jump on.
We've got some Obama comments we might get to here is she ask the congressman about the Obama comments, and then Ryan is turtle Boy joining? Is that a thing that's happening?
Oh you're muted, Ryan, Yes, Producer Griffin says, the Turtle Boy will be in the back end of the show. So if there's ever been a reason to become a paying subscriber, that's the guy.
I was thinking that when I get off, I've Google I heard her boy, I.
Just have never heard.
I don't have to mean make sure it's doctor you google doctor turtle Boy, not just turtle Boy. He's the he's the local Massachusetts reporter who kind of broke the Karen Reid's story out into in a national view and he's so he's now on taking his victory laps.
After her acquittal.
Gotcha.
Okay, So lots to get to you in the show. So first, Congressman, I wanted to start off by getting you to react to a little bit of you and just play a little piece of this. Theovan appearance can tell us what your you know, what your experience was and what he sort of wanted to focus on here.
I thought, I thought this part was interesting.
He started off the podcast world run Now you like react to yourself on podcasts exactly?
Yeah.
Well, and this is, you know, exclusive, your first reaction to you being on So in any case, he wanted to start off talking about Ron talking about Gaza. I'm about like thirty minutes into the podcast thus far. But let's go ahead and pick up with this part and then we'll get your reaction.
It is trumple is ilmly Trump afraid of it?
Yah.
I I don't understand that, you know, because Trump certainly feels like he's seems he is a guy who does not seem afraid to say what he wants to say.
I don't think I don't know what it is because I I want Trump to do the right thing, Like I want him to start to end the war in Gaza, to actually figure out how we get peace there.
And I think he could.
He could if he picks up the phone and he says, then yell, you're done, then you know is going to stop the bombing. And then you know, I was going to say, okay, but we got Jmas. I can't stay here with him, and Trump can say, Okay, I'm going to help you get rid of Hamas, but you can't keep bombing and killing women and children. That's not getting rid of Hamas.
Yeah, it's freaking crazy, dude.
I mean it's just like.
So, you get Egypt, you get Jordan, you get Saudi Arabia. I call it the twenty three state solution. You get all of those erabors.
Mississippi, dude, I'll tell you that we can give Mississippi to palaes On I've been saying that, for give.
Mississippi to palestinevonnssolves finds Middle East piece. But Congressman, what was your experience and were there any particular moments that we should really pay attention to or that you found particularly noteworthy.
I was amazed by his passion, his empathy, his outrage with what's going on in Gaza.
I mean you could just see it in his voice.
It was just this utter frustration that the United States was complicit in the killing.
Of women and children.
And theobon is always someone who takes the side of the under and also kind of just reflects American values of someone who hasn't thought read every bookings paper.
He's just like, look, this is wrong.
And I was also struck by how concerned scare outraging was that we were thinking of getting into another more in Iran.
That's so Congress, and that's actually one of the main things we wanted to focus on with you is the role here of the Democratic Party and of the opposition. One of the things that's really rhyming for me going back and really thinking about what happened in Iraq is I don't see a mobilization of the Democratic establishment on the Iran question. You know, we've had Thomas Massey and leaders like you who have introduced, you know, the need
for a declaration or an approval by Congress. I guess we can give it to the Bush administration at least
they went to the links with that. But here the Trump administration has taken completely unilateral approach and we have not yet seen calls from major Democratic leaders you know for this, Yeah, exactly, Like as you say here, what does this mean from Senator Schumer, I'm just wondering if you could expound on that and the lack of leadership right now from the Democratic Party on the Iran war question.
It's deeply disappointing. This is like the Iraq War moment. The Democratic Party should be in unison, screaming from the rooftop, we don't want another war in the Middle East. Donald Trump won the presidency because he said that the Iraq War was a disaster, and Jeb Bush wasn't willing to say that. He won over a lot of people who previously supported Democrats because he committed that we weren't going to get into another war in the Middle East.
We've had Iraq War cheerleaders.
In our party who ran for president John Kerry, Hillary Clinton, John Edwards. It didn't work out so well for them. And then we had people who stood opposed to the war, like Barack Obama, who did very very well at Bertie Sanders. My view is that this is the moment the Democratic Party can reclaim the anti war mantle. Obviously, we should have unison of Democrats on my War Powers Resolution in
the House. This isn't even a close call, and we should have Senator Schumer instead of saying, oh, I don't know, maybe they should strike him.
Maybe Trump isn't tough enough.
He should be behind Tim Kaine and saying every Democrat needs to oppose this war.
Yeah, just from a cynical perspective, it seems like if you're a politician looking for future advantage, the play here would be, even if you're not against war, would be to speak out against war and reap those benefits going forward. At the same time, the No King's protests had, you know, hundreds of thousands of people around the country. You have Democrats saying that he's an authoritarian, that he's a threat to democracy. They've been saying that for a very long time.
How do they lend this idea that Okay, yes, he's a threat to democracy's authoritarian tyrant maybe, but I'm okay with this war, that this tyrant is going to operate. When you talk to people privately, what is holding them back from just coming out with a full throated opposition to Donald Trump just launching a war against Iran.
Well, your first point, Garry Ryan, was kay that it's not just that we should be opposed to this war, but we should be opposed to Donald Trump waking up and deciding whether to commit us to a war based on the last conversation he had. I mean, everyone should be for this coming to Congress, especially if you think that Crump has overreached his constitutional authority and consolidated power a number of people or they have been itching, some of them candidly in the Congress to take out Iran's
nuclear facilities. And this is something that there are a number of Democrats and Republicans that they want to do this, and they think magically, Okay, we're going to have a military strike against Ferdoh and Iran will not have a nuclear bomb and then everything will be peaceful in the Middle East. Well, first of all, we know that this story has been told before. We're going to have a successful military operation. Everything will work out. We took out
saddamusin then what happened. We got stuck for almost a decade in Iraq. We're going to get rid of l Kaida in Afghaniskan. Everything will be fine. We got to stuck for nearly twenty years in Afghanistan. The idea that we can strike for Doh and that Iran isn't going to retaliate against American troops in Iraq, that they aren't going to retaliate, but counter terrorism against Americans is utter
naive thinking. It's going to draw us into a conflict and for what we don't even know if the bunker bombs can destroy the entire Ferdeau site, at best, it's going to push Iran back two to three years in developing nuclear weapons. And they're going to get then rip up the NPT. They're a put involvement in the NPT. They're going to push out all inspectors. And we know in the past, the Obama deal had it so that Iran couldn't enrich beyond.
Five percent at any place other than the Tans.
Now they're enriching at sixty percent at Florideaux. We know we've had a deal before. Even if you think the deal wasn't perfect, it was much much, much better than the situation we have now or the situation we will have if Iran gets out of the NPT and kicks out all the inspectors. So those are just the facts. I don't know why the Democratic Party isn't bolder. It's a symptom not just of being acquiescent to another war.
It's a symptom of a lack of leadership.
You know, I almost see more conviction on Lindsay Graham being like, let's Obama.
Mean, yeah, I don't right position, that's.
The worst of all world well, in Congrison, can I ask to what extent you assess? I mean, we are all looking around and thinking why Democrats, even from the cynical perspective that Ryan raised, are you not, you know, mustering the same level of opposition that Soccer pointed out you used to see during.
The Iraq War.
Why is that not happening?
And to what extent would you attribute that to the donor class of the Democratic Party? Do you think that's who's in the ear of truck Schumer, stopping him and other high profile Democrats from going all in with a sense of conviction, first of all on the war powers question and then on the question of the war itself.
I think it's the foreign policy hawks in the belt Way that people listen to.
I'm sure there is.
I mean, Schumer wasn't for the Obama nuclear deal.
So Obama neclearion. He was one of the cheerleaders for the war in Iraq.
Like, how are these people still around with credibility of Ford policy?
Why should we care at all?
Should he resign.
Another war in the Middle East?
Like why did you think he resigned? Congressman? At this point, it.
Almost doesn't matter.
He should be seen as totally irrelevant, like the average person on the street had more.
Common sense at the Middle East than Chuck Schumer.
Chuck Schumer's record on the Middle East is opposing Obama Iran. Deal is cheerleading George W. Bush to get into a war in ira is now having nonsensical statements about Tim Kaine's war power resolution.
Why does he matter on this debate? What does matter?
You know?
People say, oh, go on podcasts, go on theovon, and they're usually thinking about it from an electoral perspective, And of course they're right that we should be going on these podcasts. But you know why they should go on theovon because Deal levonn talks to truck drivers and talks to folks or working in construction and industry and young kids or recent college graduates, and he's reflecting what most
Americans are thinking about issues. Agree with him or not, And he is saying overwhelmingly, people don't want another war. They're afraid that they may get called up and have to serve in Iran. They're concerned about the costs. They're wondering why we're not spending that money in time in
the United States. And I feel like instead of listening to the people at Basing Chuck sure where maybe this party should be listening to people who are talking to theobon and we do much better in terms of building a coalition, and we one need these ridiculous twenty million consultant studies that are going.
To go to the same people that are advising Chuck Schumer.
Unbelievable And I wanted to ask you about this though. We've got Thomas Massey sponsored the War Power Resolution. You're one of the you know, the lead co sponsors here. There's no other Republicans on it though, So for all the talk of America, first, you know the split in MAGA et cetera. And there's zero Republicans on the Senate version of it. So what is the reluctance here? What's going on?
You're right?
I mean at the base of MAGA, I would say at least a third of them don't want this war. And you have very outspoken people like Tucker Carlton, like Steve Bannon, like marsh Leay Taylor Green. What they're saying. The reason they're giving for us for not getting on this War Power Resolution as well, there's not a war. Well, don't you think traders should weigh in before there's a war.
I mean, also there is a war.
I mean, that's just a nonsense way of thinking about it, but go ahead, yeah.
I mean they're saying, well, we haven't struck Iran yet, that the United States hasn't tried now. Ted Cruz admitted on that Pepper Carlton tape that the clip that we are helping Israel in the bombing of a run. But the point is that they're trying to avoid the issue because they don't want to get in the cross heres of Donald Trump. I believe that the pressure is going to build on the MAGA base for some of these Republicans to break and look, people say it doesn't matter.
I do think the fact that Trump is saying now, I'm going to wait two weeks is partly a recognition that the bunker bombs may not even achieve the objective.
But it's also.
Partly a recognition that a lot of the MAGA base is upset and he's hearing the anti war sentiment. And if the Democratic Party was unified in our opposition, maybe we could actually prevent this war. I mean, it would influence Donald Trump, who's so susceptible to where public opinion is it is not just a lack of leadership for how do we win? It's an actual moral moment. Like you're in Congress for these big decisions, and the vast majority of members of Congress have just been solid.
Yeah, go ahead, Ryan.
So, just speaking of going on THEO Vaughn, have you reached out all to Bannon or Tucker Carlson to appear on their program, because that seems like the kind of seal that hasn't been hasn't been broken yet. But if you listen to you know, as you have been lately, a lot of you know, Tucker Carlson, like you know, eighty percent of the time he's making he's making a lot of sense. Then he goes then yeah.
Tucker, and on some of the clips, I'm just concidered b I go on, He's going to start asking me the population of every country.
Do your job and study. I have no sympathy.
You can handle that a little better, guy.
But also if you say, look, I don't want to invade that country, therefore I don't need to know their population, but you know, I do.
Think we need to.
I mean, I'd be open to going on. But more importantly, I think we need to be sharing their clubs, sharing what they're saying. Again, I was on CNN and they thought they had a gotcha question saying, oh, that means you agree with Steve Bannon and Tucker Carlton, And yes it does.
On this issue, I agree with them, and.
I'm hoping that they actually can convince some of the Republicans to get.
On one of the things. Congressmen, I know you're on the Senate Armed Services Committee, so maybe you can speak a little bit to this. There has been now open questioning by Donald Trump and actually a lot in the open source environment as to whether these massive ordinance penetrators could even accomplish the goal of taking out the fourdoh
nuclear facility. So I'm wondering, you know, based on your own knowledge, I'm sure you've said in briefings and others, what your assessment of this easy strike which is being pushed by the Sentcom Commander Carilla, and what the reality of something like that could look like?
Well, based on.
Public information, I don't know, and I don't think most people knows the real issue. I mean, first of all, maybe it's fifty to fifty over, but it could be too deep. Maybe we hit some of it, but don't get all of it. And the reality is the best case scenario that we hit all of it. We don't know how widespread Iran's nuclear capability is. We know that they have scientists who can rebuild it. We know they
have spare centrifuges. You're not going to destroy all of it, and we know that within a year to three years they can start to rebuild their nuclear sites. Then why because they're going to then kick out the inspectors. We won't even know where they're building it. And the lesson they'll draw is the lesson that Pakistan and North Korean drove that if you have nuclear bomb you're safe from American invasion. If you don't, you could be Livia, Iraq,
or Afghanistan or Iran. The logic on this makes makes no sense for us to get and especially when we had a deal where Iran was committed to less than five percent in rich Even if they were cheating, let's say they were at ten percent fifty percent, they weren't at sixty percent, and so the effort needs to be to get a deal.
I was one of the Democrats, so I got criticized for this too. I don't make every call.
Right.
I was cheering Donald Trump when he said let's get a deal Trump. Schumer was saying, oh, you're making side deals with a rod. I was like, great, let him make a deal.
With it, right.
Taco Trump making me no, no, no, let him let him do.
Taco might be one of the most destructive like things that's ever happened to Wall Street.
Yeah, horrible, horrible, All right, Congress, I know we got to let you go. Thank you so much for jumping on this morning. It's almost craz photography and get your insights.
Thank you, We appreciate it.
Take care.
So he brought up the two weeks thing. The White House is floating. Caroline Lovitt said, like, oh, Trump's going to decide in the next two weeks. I mean, I just like, I don't know what do you guys make of it, because I just you can't trust anything these people say. It could be another faint to just, you know, let the Iranian sort of relax again before they bomb them in five minutes.
I don't know what's yours.
What I think And this is based on a little bit of some people I've had it to is and at first time he's at the stage. What we're dealing with. This is not a normal White House. We are basically in the court of Versailles, all right. No one can criticize the legitimacy of the monarch. So that's why, you know, Steve Bannon and Tucker have to target the neo cons who were talking with him. Everything is about gaining the audience of the king and of the ear of the king.
And the king can vacillate from time to time, but his own legitimacy of the throne cannot be called into question. He's all powerful and he's all knowing. So what's really happened I think over the last couple of days is I can say equivocally the Bannon lunch was a pivotal moment. So Steve Bannon was yesterday at the White House, had lunch with Donald Trump. I don't think he said anything
different in his private comments than he did publicly. So that's very encouraging, and that did lead to the so called two week debt.
Life.
Now, if it were up to Donald Trump, I'm actually relatively confident that we would be heading towards some sort of diplomatic solution. The problem is, of course, the Israeli question on the side, because what Israel now has is two weeks to mount the pressure campaign of the century. First and foremost, there's a credible report out today from the Iranian Foreign minister who's in Geneva to speak with the European foreign ministers, that somebody tried to kill him,
possibly even the Israelis and or advisors around them. Remember, they already took out one of the negotiators who spoke with Steve Wikoff. There's also crystal maybe you can pull this up. I tweeted it out from the Times of Israel, the Israeli Foreign the Israeli Defense Minister today said he has officially greenlit strikes on the regime. We're not even
talking specifically about nuclear facilities. They are in the next two weeks basically have a free military hand to ramp up military strikes on the Iranian regime and specifically to try to kill all of the people around the Ayatola. So, like I said, if it were just up to Donald Trump, I genuinely do believe we would be heading to this.
It does seem that he's been spooked a bit by some of these reports and questioning the scentcom intelligence as to whether the fod Oho facility really could be taken out by the US military. But Israel really could, you know, really could force our hand. Yeah, you could see it right there. Katz instructs the IDF to quote destabilize the Iranian regime with intensified air strikes. And Israel they're not
doing well right now. I mean, I know that sounds crazy to say, because of all their propaganda, they're running out of interceptors. The war is costing Israel hundreds of millions of dollars per day, per the Wall Street Journal. Commercial air shutdown is devastating the economy. Nobody's going to work. You know, how can you work when every single night you're spending in a bomb shelter looking at your phone.
So their society is in chaos. Every single time one of those interceptor gets fired, it's seven hundred thousand to two million dollars. The flight cost of an F thirty five is, like, I don't even know, thirty five thousand dollars per hour. They're going bankrupt, you know, and will, according to their own former like bank official I was reading this morning, we're looking at at a bill well over twelve billion a single month of the war in Iran, which no, not a lot for US, but that's a
lot over for them. So I would say like we have had a factional victory in getting to the two week period. But obviously I really don't think Trump is the principal actor here, especially because the Iranians won't meet with us. They're meeting right now with the Europeans. It's the Israelis who are going to try to destabilize, and then it's really Trump and to the extent that he wants to insert himself as the primary policy maker in this process.
Yeah, and I think, sorry curious and your guys to take on this, but like if fifty years from now when they look back at kind of how the conflict overall between the United States and the up and coming powers played out, the US decision based on pressure from the military industrial complex to go into this like Rolls Royce style approach to and literally Rolls Royce is one of the main contractors for US weapons, to make it so that you have these this massively high margin industry
that is making lots of people very rich, despite the fact that strategically the numbers are just idiotic. In other words, if you're spending seven hundred thousand to two million dollars on an interceptor against a missile that costs your adversary ten thousand or fifty thousand dollars to put together. In the case of Yemen, the orders of magnitude or were even further apart. Yes, we're a couple, were like a week plus into this, imagine a year out like It's
as if nobody did the math on this. But the Israelis they did do the math, and the math for them is, we cannot afford this. We also cannot do it ourselves militarily, but the United States can afford it at least in the medium term. And the United States can do it militarily. So they did the math, and they didn't conclude, well, I guess we shouldn't do this. They concluded, let's do this and just bank on the fact that the United States is going to come in
behind us. That's a small conflict between these two countries, Israel and Iran. If there is ever a bigger conflict, you could just see how long the United States would be able to carry on before it's it is itself bankrupt isn't the right word, but just out of ammunition, we can give the ammunition.
Costs that actually let me find that.
Yeah, I mean, this is a tried and true thing about countries that always you know, one of the for example, if you there's a great book behind me which is about the ammunition shortage during World War One, and the amount of ammunition they used in the first month of the war is what they projected they were going to have to use for the entire war. And so after like three weeks they're like, oh shit, They're like now what, and they're like, you know what you do? You have
to go into total war. You have to lock down your economy, you have to seize control of all of the industry and basically marshal and mobilize to produce as much as humanly possible, and you will literally go bankrupt, as all of the European great powers did, basically became subservient, you know, bank bank loaners to the United States of America. That's the entire story behind the fall of the British Empire.
So that is a very very good lesson. Now I'm not saying it can't be done, but the point is is that you have to marshal your entire society towards it. But you're exactly right, Ryan. From what I've read, these Raelies are like, yeah, we knew we couldn't afford it. We're just going to get America to pay for it, and that's the problem.
Usually a pretty safe bet put it.
On the visa. Yeah, they're right though. See that's the thing. At the end of the day, they are right. And this is why I'm still pessimist, even though I do think we have won a victory people who want to, you know, to avoid this going all out. Yet I do think we have one sum of a victory and we may still have a chance. Right the Europeans are meeting all of them. But I would still put it around twenty five thirty percent, simply because of unrestrained Israeli
military action. There's a story out this morning from the New York Times. The US intelligence assesses that there's two scenarios right now where Iron goes for a nuclear bob. One is killed the Iatola. Two is the US military strikes four doo. Well, you know what is the Israeli option there? For they're going to try and kill the Ayatola. Just yesterday they hit a bunker in which the Iatola was thought to be in. Now the ostensible target was
one of the Iatola's quote advisors. He's survived, by the way, at least according to the Iranians. But that's where things are, like you see the IDF action. And also they can do math too, Ryan, they can't afford this shit for too much longer. You know, already there are you know, prioritizing their interceptors. Remember the censorship blackout in Israel is real. We have no idea what is being hit or not.
And there's a reason for that, and it's because these they are now having to prioritize maybe military interceptors, but they have to let civilians get hit, right, So you're gonna start to see the death toll rack up trade off. Sorry, I would, I forgot that. I'm not talking about these the most moral army in the world would never make
that decision. But that's my point is the Israelis are the these Reelis are the most aggressive, you know actor in this and they just have such an incredible ability to shape events without being restrained by US policy shape events. That's very okay, I mean I know what I'm saying. They can just they can just do whatever they want to do and master Trump and does not pick up the phone. I mean, it's like the one there's But this.
Is Pobe's claim to fame is that he knows how to work is over and it's freaking true.
I mean, he is one of us.
He is an.
American, He's born in Philadelphia.
Okay, So I.
Really want to go Emily, Emily, what are you? What are your thoughts?
Like are you what are you hearing? And what are your thoughts on where we stand right now?
Well, I think actually Sager just did a little like very helpful reporting by saying, having talked to folks, he thinks that ban in lunch was significant because there's a real question as to whether the two weeks is cold water, whether it is on you know, sort of the lust for another interventionist conflict, or is it a negotiating tactic where Trump is, as you said at the start of the show, Crystal, giving the two week window and then immediately going to move the next day or the day
after something like that. But everything that we've just laid out about the costs and about the sort of timeline tells me two weeks is most likely going to be two days in some respect or another. I mean, I just I think the cold weeks feels like I think it feels like a sort of last ditch, helpful dose of cold water. But the machine has been turned on and it's lurching towards the conflict. I mean, at this point, it feels like turning the Titanic around to do so.
The two weeks, I agree with Sager, is obviously better than you know, not having.
Us being at work, you know, directly right now.
But yeah, right, I mean, but for all those reasons, it's.
Like I'm very cognizant of the fact that, first of all, at least according to the Trump administration, you know, the last movements towards diplomatic negotiations were.
Just a ruse. So there's that.
There also previously were these reports out that effectively the plan was to give Ran one final deal ultimatum that contains in it the sort of poison pills that we know will make it, you know, guaranteed that the Iranians won't take it. Not to mention, if you're the Iranians at this point, how can you negotiate with these people? Like on every level, not only did you already negotiate a deal with them that they just were like, yeah, well,
we're not going to do that anymore. But then they're broadcasting to the world that like, yeah, we pretended we were going to go forward with these negotiations. We were just tricking you so that you could be attacked and destroyed.
So Iranian nationalism is mounting because.
Of all of that, Oh yeah, definitely.
Oh yeah. By the way, they took to the streets on Friday, and actually across the Muslim world, Friday prayers have reportedly been like overwhelming in their support for the Iranians, even amongst the Sunni populations, which that's hard to do. Yeah, for for everybody out there.
I mean that's what you know. Sorab and Trita have been telling us. They've you know, they're seeing unfold this rally around the I mean.
It's entirely predictable. It's entirely predictable.
Think about us after nine to eleven, right, George Wish had like a ninety percent approval rating, and I was like, yes, let's go.
So of course that's going to happen.
And I just you know, obviously the space for negotiating a deal has dramatically, dramatically closed. And then to your point, Cyber like, you have this incredibly nefarious actor in Netanyahu who you can't put anything past this guy in terms of what he's willing to do to make sure that working to be there to help him effactuate the plans that he has had for decades at this point.
So it's you know, precarious.
Is like the probably like lowest nicest thing I could say about where we sit right now.
It's really quite dire.
Yeah, it's not good until I well go ahead, Ryan, just real quickly to respond to what Chrystal said, I actually I put that question that you asked about how can they trust us to get back into negotiations directly to a couple of Iranian sources, and they said, well, look, the thing you have to understand is like maybe you had a better perception of the United States ten years ago.
We never did. Like, we have never trusted the United States, no matter who the president was, and so we were not shocked that they pulled out of the JCPOA, and we were not shocked that they attacked us. You know, they in Israel attacked us. They expected it, they saw it coming. So their answer was, you know, you make deals not based on trust, but you know, expediency, necessity, and then you put everything into the deal that you
possibly can to make it enforceable. And that's why, you know, the Russians and the Europeans were part of the JCPOA.
There's some hope that.
Like you know, global involvement, you know, would would pressure the United States to want Yeah, thinking it obviously didn't, but go ahead, Yeah, let.
Me pick up on that, because this is actually one thing that gives me a little bit of hope is that the main parties meeting with the Iranians today are the European powers and Macron actually has a quote comprehensive offer to Tehran. I can read a little bit from this,
and I'm reading from the Financial Times Crystal. It says Macrone said negotiations have to move towards the zero and uranium enrichment as and foreign ministers will meet with them and they will present to them this quote comprehensive negotiation offer, which would put an end to the hostilities. Namely, it would cause a ceasefire as well as lead to zero enrichment from the Iranians. Again, I don't know if that's
what the Iranians would agree to. But really the real problem here is that the so called comprehensive offer, even according to the French and the Europeans, is that it also has to be acceptable to Israel. I just don't think that there is any deal at this point which is acceptable to Israel, which again is one of those things where it's the United States of America who would probably take that deal, but the Israelis would be like, oh, how can we trust it?
Another yeah?
Right, but even with zero and Richmond, they would say, how can we trust you that you're not going to They'd be like, you need to basically let me occupy your nuclear facility. Right, They're gonna be no, that's not going to happen. Another really nightmas ut, Yeah right, but one like nightmare scenario I see right now is Israelis are now talking about some sort of grand commando raid on the four Todah facility, like occupying the way that
they did in Syria. But I mean, look, the risk there is just so insanely fraught, and especially if it were to become a disaster, and then you could easily see how things snowball from there have failed Israeli commando slash strike ray that fails to take out power, doesn't finish the job, and then the Iranians are like, screw it, let's go sprint to the bomb, right. I mean, there's so much here which would obviously just almost immediately draw
America in. So I'm like cautiously, like twenty five percent optimistic about this, but I just I don't see how we can surmount, you know, the Israeli I don't see how we can surmount like all of their clear strategic objectives at this point, unless a different Donald Trump emerges who is like, no, we're done. This is what we're doing. But I mean, he couldn't even stop Israel from striking Iran, if that's even to be believed.
You know, they wanted to, he didn't want to. I mean, let's not be foolish here, right.
And I think Ken Cleppenstein, and now his reporting was confirmed by Reuters, I think that, you know, Trump for a while, and Biden too, by the way, was like, no, you're not doing that, You're not doing that, You're not doing that. And then Trump was doing the same for a while and then he stopped saying no. And that is the equivalent of a green light. Now maybe you know that way you have plausible deniability that you didn't
affirmatively say yes, go ahead. But of course the Israelis are going to know as soon as you are like, oh, well, do what you want to do, they know exactly what that means. And so you know, Trump knew exactly what was unfolding here. He he green lit this. I mean, we saw the build up. We all were watching closely as to what was ultimately going to unfold.
So he wanted this to happen. He green lit it.
We shipped hundreds of hellfire missiles to Israel in advance of these strikes. So you know, it's like, I don't want to Yes, Nan Yahoo is doing everything he can to create that outcome. But ultimately it's Donald Trump who decided, yes, this is this is the direction that we're ultimately going to go, and we're going to let Israel attack ran days before we're supposed to have the next round of negotiations.
Even though I mean, from all indications, there was a plausible chance of actually being able to seal some sort of a deal and achieve a diplomatic solution, which is much more unlikely at this point after you know, after we blew up our own our own deal making ability.
And we have some relevant comments I can put up from a senior arining advisor that goes exactly to this point. Let me put this up where basically he's saying do and this is a close advisor to the IOTOL saying that it is it would be a mistake to reach a ceasefire at this point because Israel is going to break the ceasefire in two months and they will use the two months or whatever the period is to restock their supplies, particularly of interceptor missiles. So any cease fire
that is implemented now will lead to renewed war. We should not allow the enemy, which is currently in a weak position, to revive itself with a ceasefire. And he
goes on through, you know, with that analysis. But I think this is a consequence of you know, the US and Israel not abiding by any of its agreements, whether it's the January ceasefire that they reached with Hamas and then said they were going to break and then broke broke, whether it was the deal over Eaton Alexander where they said, if you release eat On Alexander, will let in aid and we'll push for a ceasefire and they and they
did none of that. Whether it's you know, assassinating Hondya in Tehran as they're getting very close to a deal, and on and on. If you believe that a ceasefire can't be trusted, then then why reach a ceasefire unless you are fit on the brink of like regiment elimination.
Let me put this up on the screen and get your reaction to it. This was the just to put it out there. This is the reporting from sihirsh of what his sources are telling him it's going to happen. Say, mixed bag in terms of his reporting accuracy, but I think it's good to put it all on the table. Michael Tracy tweeted these portions. So he, according to is reporting this report on what was most likely to happen
in Iran as early as this weekend. According to is really and and American officials I've relied upon for decades, will entail heavy American bombing. I have vetted this report with a long time US official, and Washington told me that it will all be under control if Iran Supreme leader Ali Commany departs.
Just how that might happen short of his assassinations not known.
There's been a great deal of talk about American firepower targets inside Iran, but little practical thinking, as far as I can tell, about how to remove a revered religious leader with an enormous following. Next piece, here he says, I've been told the White House is signed off on an all out bombing campaign in Iran, But the ultimate targets, the centrifuge, is buried at least eighty meters below the surface at four dough will as of this writing, not
be struck until the weekend. Delay has come at Trump's insistence, because now this does kind of ring true. The president wants the shock of the bombing to be diminished before the opening of Wall Street trading on Monday. Trump took issue on social media this morning with the Wall Street Journal report that said he had decided on the attack on Iran riding he had yet to decide on a path forward.
So what are saying, Chrystal?
Could you Okay? So I was going to say keep that up? Yeah, there was sorry, I'll reach heare no, no.
Because I just wanted to zoom in on Thean. A post about the disputed accuracy of sy Hirsch's record, because Hanania sort of has this like snarky reply. I remember Seymour Hirsch reporting that we were sent to bomb Iran during the Bush administration, and I know what he's saying, but I actually think that's an interesting point because it tells you who has been leaking over the course of decades to try to force a bombing of Iran. And I think that's like whether or not this report specifically
is an accurate assessment of Trump's thinking. What it is is Seymour Hirsh having a source who he is describing accurately as a senior US official.
I'm sure that part is.
True talking to him and saying that this is what's being discussed in a serious way. So I actually, I mean, yes, take it with a grain of salt, but I think it's actually not insane that this is likely a serious,
high level conversation that's happening. I don't know how this is going to be affected by Trump's Bannon lunch yesterday and the two week I don't know what we call it, like deadline extension, but it did feel like we were in a forty eight hour window and I don't know that we actually are out of the forty eight hour window at all, because it's hard to know when Trump' has two weeks what he's trying to telegraph to Iran.
It's hard to know what Israel then does. There's no way that Noahu is happy with Trump's two week announcement yesterday, and so do they escalate in a way that forces the hand? I don't know, but that reporting to me doesn't seem insane.
Sager, what do you make of this tactical nukes talk?
Oh my god, don't even get me started. I'm getting me.
Started, buddy, let me pull it up. I got it here.
Let's go ahead and play it.
It's a senior White House correspondent, Jackie heinright the cot.
Away from the shots Son headlines this afternoon one from The Guardian that claimed that US military has doubts about whether the bunker buster bombs could get the job done and further claiming that only a tactical nuke may be finish it. And it further stated that the President is not considering a tactical nuke, that it was not one of the options.
That was presented to him.
I was just told by a top officials here that none of that report is true, that none of the options are off the table, and the US military is very confident that bunker busters could get the job done at Porto.
The President is giving so she says that it's not the tactical none of it's true. The tactical nukes are actually not off the table.
Tactical nukes are on the table.
She kind of buries the lead there.
You kind of have to like really listen in in, which seems kind of significant.
It's insane preposterous. It also though, I really want people to see here how the slippery slope happens. First, it's just we just one bomb, that's all it is. Oh, actually it's a couple of bombs, and that's why you leak this stuff.
Right.
Maybe the bombs though, can actually do the job. So then it was only a tactical nuke. Oh so you drop a tactical nuke on here. Now we're in a whole different other world. And you know, this just demonstrates, Look, these generals, they make all kinds of promises from what I hear General Gorilla has been, you know, in all these like meetings with the President being like mister President, we can do this. He wants to cement his legacy as the guy who took out the Iranian nuclear program.
His term is up in only two weeks, and he's given all these pie in this guy bullshit military assessments to Donald Trump. Of course Donald Trump is loving it, right. Gorilla is like jacked. He looks good. He's got a nice figure on camera, straight out of Central casting, as Trump would say. So this is the Listen the gorilla, the gorilla, Gorilla, the gorilla. So like, we can all see how the wheels are turning. It's obviously it would
be devastating. I think one of the main reasons they're keeping it open is just basically to scare the shit out of the Iranians. But really what it's about is they are being so reckless in their rhetoric that they're actually again just increasing the odds of the Iranians being like, you people are crazy, we are just going to sprint to the bomb. And the only reason why this really is all happening is again because of Israel's actions basically ratcheting up where the US has to go from the
escalation ladder. Also, can we all keep in mind that when Russia was even openly talking about a tactical nuclear weapon in Ukraine. That everyone was like that would be a red line and that we should basically go to war with Russia. So should Russia go to war with us? You know that Rana is technically their client state in a similar manner. It's maybe not exactly the same, but
everyone just see how crazy this all is. And this is again you know where I've been going back and I've been reading even more about all these these military guys are the kings of over promising and under delivering. So we can all talk about Libya. We actually delivered in Libya. We took out their air defense. It was just the strategic problem of the fact that the country collapse into civil war. But what about Serbia? Serbia is
actually a very apt example. So in nineteen ninety nine, NATO and the United States wanted to take out Melosovich and basically get to stop the civil war and all of his actions. Right, well, the US military predicted and NATO said it will just take three days of bombing to get Melosovich to back down. It took eleven weeks, and at the end of those eleven weeks, the US military was presenting options to President Clinton to fully invade and to take over Serbia because air power could not
get the job done. We have to just keep learning these lessons over and over and over and over again. These guys don't actually know what they're talking about. They said Iraq was going to be a cakewalk. One hundred and fifty thousand troops, mister President, no question, no problem. Afghanistan, don't worry about it. We should get a couple of special forces overthrow the government. We could take out the
Taliban with limited air strikes. It never works. It's always going to lead to the ground troop and or way more than we ever thought from the very beginning.
Go at.
The incredible irony of all of this is that Iran itself should have been the first lesson of this decade ago. This is the text book example playing out in front of us. So it's a tragic irony that, you know, again, they thought they had that completely under control, no unintended consequences that happened down the line from meddling, and here we are in twenty twenty five, still groping to figure out what happens.
Talking about bringing back the Shaw's son too yet learning any lessons.
Okay, I talk about that too. Fox News is referring to this guy as his Royal Highness.
Oh my god, No they aren't.
No, no, they are.
Check it out.
You can tweeted it out. They go his Royal Highness the show, I go, Where am I on bizarro planet? What's happening? You know, just being the son of a deposed king does not make you hrh is a title. It has meaning. Okay, I mean, I don't know what are we doing here, not to be a royal expert or whatever. But you know it's like if we had on Edward Habsburg and we're like, his Royal Highness of lost your hungary, Like what but I think he's like a banker in Switzerland.
Poem.
He'd be like, I'm Edward, you don't have to call me that. And he's like the dynasty is gone. You know when you when you get thrown out, you don't get the title anymore. I thought we all acknowledge that, but they're seriously having this guy on and he's like, Oh, Iranians cry out for monarchy and for its insanity, the sanity.
We I have the media clips on here, the coverage, the level of undul I don't even know what to say. I mean, we truly do, like cable news really does never learn anything. Ever, it's so wild to see the propaganda march and it matters. I mean, we were covering that polling where it really depends people feel about this
all kinds of ways, depending on how it's framed. So I guarantee if you ask people do you want to get America entrenched in some like potentially catastrophic regime change or regime collapse war, they could be like are you hot?
Like what, why would we do that?
Why?
I think it would be ninety ten. But if you ask, you know, oh.
Well, should Orn have a nuke? Well? Should we let Israel strike Roan to get rid of their nuclear proga?
Who could object to that?
Well? Should we supply the weapons that Israel useless? Well, you know, should we maybe be the ones just to go ahead and take out these nuclear weapons? Because you've already said Oran can't have a nuke. When it's framed in that way, suddenly you get a disturbing amount of public consensus. And we also have to be real about the quote unquote anti war mega base. The Republican base
is vastly more pro war than the Democratic base. They will go and support whatever Donald Trump wants to do, including Steve Bannon, who already has told the Financial Times at the end of the day, Me Tucker, Marjorie Taylor Green, all these people will support the president's decision and just assume he has more intelligence and more wisdom and more understanding that we do.
At the end of the day, they will all bend the ney to whatever it is that Trump decides.
Most of them will, and most of the base will. But you know, you made an important point yesterday, Chrystal on our show. Independence won't And.
That's yeah, that difficult, absolutely, and that's why.
That show does matter. And you know, I want to get this guy on the show, this guy Rich Barris. He's like a maga like aligned Ulster, and he's been making some great points where he's like, hey, guys, Trump's entire margin of victory in Michigan is the anti war independent base. He's like the dearborn people who voted for Trump and or people who were union and anti Iraq war.
That is the margin of victory. So Donald Trump, it's striking the parallels with George W. Bush, Like if you look at the ninety six electoral map and the two thousand electoral map. It's actually insane how much things can change in just four years. George W. Bush, everybody forgets this. He ran as a restraintist. He thought that the US can pain in Serbia was a disaster. He was like, that's not something that I'm interested in doing. He ran
on reducing America's footprint abroad. And then of course we got you know, mister Neocon himself. Things changed a lot after nine to eleven because he literally had a messianic complex where he believed he was put on earth by God to be there at nine to eleven and to destroy the access of evil, which is telling Trump right now, this is look, I'm trying to drop parallels here.
Yeah, he believes it.
I mean, it's raw by Huckabye. There's a reason why he shared that text. And he talked about himself this way. I mean his inaugural speech, he talked about how you know, he's basically put there by God for this great moment. And so when I mean, Emily, you're gonna have to you're gonna have to be my deacoder in some of
this stuff. But the religious fervor of you know, the Israeli fanatics, and then you've got the Huckabee End Times people and Ted Cruz, and then you've got you know, Trump believing he's, you know, the second coming of Jesus Christ.
To me, this is a terrifying mix, a totally terrifying mix, because then you're like, you can't presume anyone's even acting rationally when you have this divine justification behind you, when you believe that it's your mission from God, as Ted Cruz explained, to always serve the government of met Yahoo.
Yeah, the so I do have good news on that front, which is that's so boomer brain. Even in evangelical circles, it's people like there was this time before Y two K where the Left Behind series and this millenarian Christianity pointed straight towards Israel and created this real, very like, very very serious political support for Israel that we all kind of think of when we think of American evangelicals.
That has not really trickled down.
And in fact, what I saw of the last like forty eight hours after the Huckaby thing and after the cruising in particular, was a ton of pushback. For example, the Federalists published a long pushback to what Ted Cruz was saying, and I don't think that would have happened fifteen years ago. It doesn't make it any less frightening that Mike Kakabee, who has played very fast in loose
with whether he's a dispensationalist or not, is there. I mean, I think in all likelihood, yes, Mike Kaukabee believes that political Israel is. You can sort of swap that in and out with when the Bible refers to the nation of Israel that today twenty twenty five political nation state Israel is. You can read that into scripture.
You could read that it's a revelation.
It's completely ridiculous, but it's it is popular where with evangelical boomers like Mike Huckabee, so to the extent that Huckabee is the ambassador to Israel, that matters. But I don't think that's it's certainly now not how like a Catholic like Jdevance or Mark or Rubio is seeing this.
I know that's cold comfort to everyone.
But the good news is the boom and brain dispensationalism hasn't trickled down to millennials, right now.
I guess I wanted to get your Okay, good to know.
Hopefully we all survive until those millennials have a little more power.
Right, you'll know when we're not raptured. Okay, all right, good to know.
I wanted to get you to explain Ryan this report from drop site about how the Israelis are reposting some of the same strike footage from Moz obviously, you know, has been tracking this and broke down this reporting. So what should people like, what's the significance here?
What is he finding?
Yeah, I mean, so this is allegedly two different strikes on two different days posted by the Israeli military, and as as Moz points out, like if you look closely, there's just a little bit of tweaking done to the color and to the angle.
Yeah, let's blurred a little bit.
Yeah, but if you look at it, if you look at that kind of the markings around the rest of the image, you're like, oh, you know, it doesn't take you know, pH D and osent to be like this is actually the same picture.
And so.
It raises the question of, you know, have they exhausted kind of a target bank in the sense that they're not you know, they're not able to produce new pictures, which is strange because they have you know, free reign over the Iranian sky and.
All.
This is not exclusive to Israel.
All of these belligerent powers are capable of bombing even something that has nothing, no military value whatsoever and putting a clip out and saying that it's a command and control center. So it's not like they have a shortage of videos. It's just it shows I think it shows a sloppiness and potentially shows you know that they're that they're really scraping the bottom of the barrel at this point.
Well, and this was also a significant in that vein NBC News is reporting that according to the seniors really intelligence official, only sixty five percent of Iranian missiles were intercepted in the past twenty four hours. That's down from nearly ninety percent the day before. And we have other reports as well that they're having to ration interceptors. I mean, this is something something that Soccer was talking about before. It's just part of why you know, they're obviously we
have to be involved. We've been and not have to be, but we choose to be involved and have been from the beginning and I think this is one of the hopes of the Iranians probably is that they can learn more about the missile defense systems and that as time goes on, they will you know, have to further ration interceptors, and also that they will have more understanding of how to evade those interceptors and those missile defense systems.
And on top of that they use their older and crappier missiles as as you would expect logically, the first ones out of the gate were the cheap, cheap, old guys that aren't as good because so do.
We know, we know that for a fact, because I saw that speculation.
Too, Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And so because you know that when when your first volley comes in, they're gonna they have their entire bank of interceptors ready to go. So you throw the cheapest stuff that's the worst, and so the interceptors then take all of that out and then gradually you start you know, using their that and you know, hypersonic missiles and you know, yesterday they fired fired one. It sounds like one missile at Bearsheva and it got through, but it seems to
maybe have missed his target. It landed right near the Microsoft building there, and then the IRGC said they were actually aiming for the Microsoft building, which may have been because you know, citing Microsoft's role and in Israeli industrial complex, which may have been kind of reverse engineered. Cope like that, they're probably aiming for Elbot Systems, which is nearby there, but hit closer to Microsoft, so that they're like, you know,
there's a lot of reverse engineering. We're like, oh, yeah, that's definitely what we were aiming for. After you try to figure out where it landed. And then we're getting reports right now that there was another missile landed right around Bearsheva. So you know, if they're two for two in Beersheva getting through you know, missile defenses, that allows them to shoot many fewer missiles and still have the
same amount of impact. You know, if they were firing off you know, three hundred in the beginning just to land ten or twenty, that's not a sustainable pace if you have, you know, a missiles missile stockpile in the low thousands. But if you're hitting at a fifty to one hundred percent clip, that causes a lot more damage and helps you win in a war of attrition.
I think sager.
Do you have to jump?
Yeah, I do, unfortunately, but yeah, just last thoughts is I think we have a twenty five percent chance of avoiding miss probably seventy five percent chance. By the way, literally as we're talking, Israel's getting rocked by ballistic missiles. In terms of at least some of the images that have made it out. They are going to come under intense pressure in the government. They are going to ramp up regime change and destabilization efforts to the best of
their possible ability. And yeah, I think it's going to be a very, very dangerous two weeks. But you know, I'm hoping for some success coming out of Europe and at least see what they're able to get out of the Uranians and publicly as well, you know, some of the statements to get them on the record, and presumably a press conference with some statements from the Iranian foreign minister, they could at least keep us out of the woods. But I also want to echo Emily's warning, we could
be in a forty eight hour time window. This could all be fake, and this could buy Monday on our show, we can be covering a four dough strike.
Yeah, all right, Well, as we let Sager go. I think we're also going to conclude the free portion. Premiums, We're going to cover a bunch of more stuff. I've got a bunch of clips I got Dave Smith on Piers Morgan. You guys, now you don't want to miss on on that. I've had it lady. Even Emily has to admit she was kind of cooking on CNN. She's like more based than we expected her to be, so
that's kind of cool. We've got more coming out of Israel, in particular BBNAT and Yahoo is paying a personal price, guys, and I want to share with you what that personal price is. And we all should thoughts in prayers with Bib and his family during this very difficult time. And so in any case, a bunch of stuff to get to. We'll try to get to zor On maybe talk about Obama.
See how much we get to. But for those of you who want to join us for the full show Breakingpoints dot Com, that monthly subscription is back.
So you know, partake in that to your full delight, see how you like it.
And for premiums, we'll see in just about all right, guys, thank you so much for watching the free portion of the Friday Show, we're going to move into some premium bonus content, so if you want to watch that as well, make sure to go and subscribe at breakingpoints dot com. And for all of you guys who are already premium subscribers, that portion is going to start right now,