¶ Introduction
All right, uh, the cousins together. Uh, Marco is joining us off of a big client call. I have a big client call in 50 minutes, so we don't get to luxuriate in our normal hour and a half. We gotta, we gotta give the people what they want in 50 minutes here, Marco, or let's call it 55.
¶ Postmortem on the Iran-Israel War
Um, we wanted to do a postmortem on the Iran Israel War. Uh, we wanted to talk about how, I mean, the news cycle's already onto the next thing, the crazy things happening at the NATO summit, which there's actually a lot to unpack there. Everything from how the Europeans are treating Donald Trump, uh, versus Japan and South Korea, and some of the things happening on the sidelines, or some of the things not happening on the sidelines. Um, where, where do you wanna start?
What do you wanna say first? And I, and I'm wearing a tie 'cause I was just on with our friend Emray for his CNBC program. I know you did it, uh, for them. Uh, what, earlier this week or last week Time has no meaning anymore, so that's why I look nice.
Um, yeah, so I, I think, uh, you know, we keep delaying our trade value. I'm, I'm very disappointed about this. We we're, we're so excited to do top 30 political leaders to draft board, uh, but we're gonna have to delay it a little bit more. Uh, obviously I think, uh, we should dedicate this, uh, to the postmortem of what just happened.
¶ Debate on the Iran Nuclear Program
So, uh, where I would wanna start with first is there's this, uh, big debate and I find this fascinating, Jacob. Um, there's the big debate whether or not the nuclear program was obliterated, you know, and, um, president Trump obviously claimed total obliteration. And then, uh, there was a leaked, there was a leaked report from the Defense Intelligence Agency, which by the way, I mean. That's, I think, a story in of itself.
Why is the intelligence community leaking a report that's top secret on their assessment, uh, other than to embarrass the president?
Well, or probably for the same reason that there was a decoy group of bombers that went towards the Pacific. And yes, I'm sure that some of it is to embarrass the president. Some of it is also probably, uh, we don't know who is in Pete Hegg, Seth's, uh, WhatsApp groups right now. So, I mean, very real, like non-zero chance you could be getting, you know, information somewhere, you know?
Yeah. Fair, fair. Um, so, so look, I mean, but I think it's a fascinating point because this idea that. Um, the Iran nuclear program was set back by mere months, I think is like just patently ludicrous. That is like objectively just impossible. And, uh, I find it hilarious that some democratic members of Congress are latching onto this because their Trump derangement syndrome is so severe that they're actually now becoming. Like war Monering neocons in order to embarrass President Trump.
So you've got this guy in California who I don't even know what his name is, he's completely irrelevant. He's from LA area of Ventura County. You can look him up. But he came out and said like, you see, we didn't do enough. It's like, okay, so are you calling for like greater war with Iran? It's like, you know, where, where are we headed? Look where I wanna, where I wanna go with this is, is this.
Seeing that the attack on the nuclear program did not a hundred percent destroy the nuclear program is like seeing that the COVID vaccine is not a hundred percent effective. It's like, yes, that's a fact. COVID vaccine is not a hundred percent effective. Like you can still get COVID, you can even still die, but you should still probably take the vaccine. And so the reason I say this is because it's very similar to how like for example, the Joe Biden administration.
Was kind of suggesting that the vaccine really is super effective and so was Trump in a way because policymakers are just saying like, look, this crisis is over. This is the solution we got. It's the best one we have just shut up and take the vaccine. Similarly, right now, I can objectively tell you from everything I know about geopolitics, military affairs and like how science works is you cannot a hundred percent obliterate in nuclear program.
When Israel did it in 1981 by bombing Alli, Iraq in Iraq, did it obliterate the Iraqi nuclear program? Well, George W. Bush would say otherwise.
I mean, they did both in Iraq and Syria, but that was because they were at a much, much, much, much earlier stage of the process. There was like one,
but they didn't, well, they
never found evidence of nuclear weapons in Iraq. That was, they didn't find nuclear
weapons. But there was a nuclear program, and the reason for this is that a nuclear program is not a building. A nuclear program is a holistic combination of factors including human capital, fixed capital, some tools, some toolboxes, and so saying that the underground chambers of fordo are still intact, it's like number one, there's no electricity to place. It's probably gonna take them months, if not years, to get back into those chambers, and if they move the uranium out of the chambers.
This is the part that I just think is so unfair to Trump. They move the uranium because you warn them, the Israeli intelligence knows where the ayatollah goes to the bathroom. If they move the uranium, the enriched uranium out of the underground caverns of photo, it suggests to me that they're now out in the open and we know where they are. Like, you know, like, relax everyone. So yes, it's objectively correct to say that President Trump was being hyperbolic.
That's like accusing, you know, accusing Trump of being hyperbolic is like accusing him of being orange. This is just how he is. The reality is that it's destroyed enough and that's a fact. It is destroyed enough.
¶ Media and Political Reactions
Yeah, I, uh, I, I'm, I'm interested in why you're focused on this point, because total obliteration to me, uh, is the exact same thing as mission accomplished. Any president who pulls off a military operation is going to have to take a victory lap, no matter, like, the job is not to be accurate about what they did, it's to say something happened and it was successful. I think you're right. You know, the Democrats just can't find their way out of a wet paper bag. They had one sharp tool.
That they were starting to use it was that, um, congressional measure on halting US involvement based on war powers. And they got a Republican from Kentucky to sign on and sponsor the bill, but he decided since Trump like stopped bombing already, that he didn't want to do it. And so the speaker's not gonna bring it to the floor. And the Republican, uh, from Kentucky, Thomas Massey, his name is not gonna push it forward if, if the Democrats really wanna like play here. The, you're exactly right.
The wrong thing to do is to say, ah, nothing happened. The right thing to do is to say, Hey. This started with the Democrats with Truman in the Korean War. Like we are the original sin of it. We have to get Congress back in charge of when US military force is deployed because whether it's President Trump or President Obama or President Bush or President Truman, like we opened up Pandora's Box and Republicans, you need to work with us.
To shut Pandora's Box be, and that's Steve Bannon, Tucker Carlson, all of you. We want all of like, yeah, that's free advice there to the Democrats. That's if you want an issue to play on, it's not gonna happen overnight, but like that is the issue. Yeah. So this is, uh, you should be banging
on. So Jacob, that's, that's a great point. Like, if you want something that's anti-Trump and that's bipartisan, go join up with a Mago camp that didn't want the attack in the first place. That didn't want to be Israel's tail. That got wagged by Benjamin Netanyahu's. Right dog. That's what, like if you have a problem with this, there's, it's, but it seems like the Democrats just can't quit the NeoCon line. This is like Kamala Harris campaigning with Liz Cheney, which is hilarious to me.
Like they just don't understand the country has moved on from this. So the media, and by the way, I got journalists tweeting at me like, well, Trump started it by claiming that it was total obliteration. Oh yeah. That's, that's why you are leaking defense intelligent, uh, agency, uh, reports that, you know, that's why. That's why because of semantics.
No, you are just so deranged with the Trump derangement syndrome that you're willing to basically take the stance that he didn't do enough, and therefore we need to go into an endless warfare with Iran over something that clearly has been set back by years, if not decades. So,
yeah. But would you say. Do you think that it was necessary for the US to bomb Fordo and those other sites to set it back? Because I, I think Israel had already set it back meaningfully. I'm not, I'm not sure what else the United States did, and so then like, I want to agree with you and disagree with you at the same time because I think there's a problem.
With the media and that there is Trump derangement syndrome, but there's another part here, which is what the Trump administration was pushing. And I'm not saying this pejoratively, it's just an objective fact in multiple administrations of both stripes do this. Whenever they do a military operation, they just do it in a different style to suit their base. It's propaganda. The whole thing of total obl obliteration was propaganda.
And it is a journalist job to question propaganda and to try and interrogate truth. And so if the justification for bombing the Iranian nuclear sites was we're going to obliterate the Iranian nuclear program, and then you get the Iranian, uh, you get the propaganda, it is a journalist function to push back against the, the propaganda itself. Um, and I think that's where Trump gets into trouble because they made it about the nuclear deal.
When I. Think what really happened, and we talked about this, was Israel struck Iran, uh, Trump and Fareed Zakaria's point of view, had that fomo, foreign policy, wanted to look tough, didn't wanna slap the Israelis down in public. And so he created this thing and went forward. And so I think you're right that the media's focusing. On the wrong thing in that sense. But I do think there was a journalistic function to say, okay, we get it. Like total obliteration.
But that wasn't even the point in the first place. Whoa, there's this relationship with Israel going back and forward. And there was that one reporter who got Trump to say, I dunno if you saw this, uh uh, I'm sure you saw this. I mean, this was incredible. Where he basically, you know, they asked him if he was mad at the Israelis for violating the ceasefire, and he said, these two countries have been fighting for so long. They don't know what the fuck they're doing.
Yeah, exactly. And I, and I honestly wanted to stop it right there and be like, let Trump be Trump. Get rid of all the advisors. Like that's the best foreign policy. Brief agree on Israel, Iran relations. I've heard in years, they don't know what they're doing. Like, just like, stop guys, listen. I, like I, and I think all this other stuff around him gets in the way of it.
Right. But that's where the criticism of the semantics is idiotic. So, no. Mm-hmm. I think if you're a journalist attacking the total obliteration, you're not, I mean, yeah, sure, you're doing your job like, but I still think you're an idiot. And here's why. Because well be, because who, who cares? Like he didn't like Yes. Was, was it necessary to drop. This massive ordinance in Fordo. I mean on some say yeah. Objectively. Why not? Why not also do that on Passant since Israel already started it.
But the real reason that that was done is so that the US gets leverage over both Israel and Iran. So, and that's, and that's something he can't publicly say.
Right? And that, and it's the job of the journalist to try and get that, and if not unearth that from him to Right. But they're not doing that else.
But they're not doing that. No,
I agree. That's why I said agree and disagree. Like I don't want to throw out the function of journalists while also criticizing like how the journalists are doing things. And it also like in that very narrow sense like you and I are trying to do what journalists should be doing. Yeah. Like instead of like some part of our job, instead of analyzing what's going on, we also know have to be truth seekers.
It used to be you could rely on journalists to a certain degree to try and ascertain truth, and then you could take a step back and do analysis. But our job has gotten infinitely harder because you can't even trust the truth function that the journalism is sending out because it's, you know, depending on who the reporter is or what outlet they're with, they have all these other different things. I also wanna push back against one. Okay. No, go, go ahead. No, I'll push back on
something. No, no, no. Finish. Finish. There.
Just the uranium thing. I don't think that's, that's, um, I don't think it's quite that simple. Like uranium doesn't breathe, it doesn't make phone calls. These cylinders can be stored in, uh, my understanding is that they can be stored in things that are basically, you know, 55 pounds roughly. So something that you could theoretically get out and like send it in a bunch of different directions. Um, and if we don't know where it is or if.
If it has been moved all over the place, then you're absolutely right. Not only is does the Iranian nuclear program still live, it can be given to other groups. It can be given to terrorists. Like where, where is it gonna end up? Especially if we have regime change in Iran that is coming. We'll get to that in a second. Like the question of where the uranium is, is one that.
Is a little bit disturbing to me, and I'm not sure that it's quite as easy to track down a 55 pound, you know, uh, canister of stuff, especially when you're tracking, I don't know how many of them, is it like 16 of them or something like that, enough for 10 nuclear bombs rather than just tracking 180 6-year-old dude who probably can't be too far away from the bathroom for too long without something bad happening.
I, I, I, I would push back massively on that look. I mean, Israel has destroyed radar installations that also don't breathe. They've destroyed, um, you know, uh, they, they've known the movements of all the different, um, you know, uh, scientists. I mean, it's just, it's just the reason Fordo is important is because 80 meters underground, you can store something in it. Once you have to pull that out of that, that's where it's out in the open.
Do we know where the 50 pound pound, you know, bag of enriched uranium is right now? Do we know like, no, but we will find out. Because one thing we know for a certain is that this country leaks like a sieve, like the Iranian navy, sorry, the Iranian government leaks like, like, like their navy does. So I'm just not too concerned about that because it's a, it's a, it's, it's this idea that it's now disappeared. Well, evils in fordo for a reason, it was protected there. Now it's out in the open.
Yes. There's, there's a element of mystery of it. I am personally comfortable with that level of mystery. And what Trump is basically saying by using hyperbole is that he just doesn't want to hear any more arguments about this. And he really is not talking to American audience. He's talking to Israel. He's saying like, listen, stop using your sources in American media to leak government, government, uh, like.
Reports so that you can build a case for an endless war that we are supposed to wage on your behalf. That is what's being said, I think with President Trump, and I find it interesting that nobody's picking up on that. There's this like a phony of voices that's saying like, well, no, we need to do more. The same, the same voices in some cases, particularly on the journalist side, who two weeks ago were saying the US should not get involved.
And I think that that's, that's what's interesting to me. This flip-flopping on, on how to make Trump look bad. Yes, you're right. That statement in front of the White House is he was boarding the plane sink to both sides, like they didn't know what they're doing. I think that that was a clear signal, you know, and he actually went after Israel really hard. So the reason he bombed Fordo, the reason the United States bombed Fordo is to tell Israel like, okay, you know, we did it. That's it.
And we're not gonna, you, you got us into this. Well done Chapo, like well done. But now, now it's game over. And in particular, I think that this is something that we discussed on the podcast as well. The longer this conflict went on, the leverage us has over, uh, Israel increases due to the munitions. Uh, I focused on the offensive munitions, uh, wall Street Journal did a great job. There you go. I, I can also give props to journalists.
They did a great job about 10 days ago where they focused on the stockpile of defensive munitions, particularly the aero missiles that intercept ballistic missiles. And so yeah, Israel is running out and so now President Trump's leverage is increasing and he's effectively telling Israel like, okay, that's it. That's why US bond four though, not necessarily because there's a hundred percent effectiveness, but I would again argue that's. That's also a bar. That's, that's just way too high.
How are you gonna kill every single human being in Iran who like, has taken a physics course? You know, like, yeah.
Well, and I, I think that's a pretty high price to pay for what the United States accomplished in Iran. So maybe we, we, I. Put a pin in on this, like, um, maybe I give you my scenarios going forward and you gimme scenarios and then we can turn to nato. 'cause in some ways, I mean, that's like the new thing and in some ways more important I think globally and especially for our listeners.
¶ Iran's Domestic Politics and Future Scenarios
But I've got three scenarios left on my, on my sheet right now, and they're all about Iranian domestic politics and how Iran responds to what, what just happened to it. I think the most likely IST status quo. Um, that the regime survives. Like it showed impressive resilience considering everything that happened to it. Uh, the mark of a, of a strong regime is actually one that's able to take a punch and then counter punch, and that's what they did.
They took a really, really hard punch from the Israelis and then they refocused and they reorganized, and then they started hitting Israel and making it hurt. So that shows me that there's some resilience there that maybe was unappreciated interesting. I think there's also a. A scenario where we go full North Korea. The, the Russians didn't help us, the Chinese didn't help us, nobody helped us.
We're just gonna lock it up full on authoritarianism, nuclear weapons as quickly as possible, like we are the hermit kingdom of the Middle East. Or there's the NeoCon wet dream, which is the people rise up. Liberalizing regime. Sure, this will be an ally of the United States going forward, but I, the reason I say it's a high cost to bomb four oh to get the Israelis to stop, and they didn't even stop. I don't think the Israelis think that they need to stop.
If anything, I think they are convinced that they could do whatever they want. Now once, okay, let's restock the munitions, then we can do this again in 12 months because we found the yellow cake. It moved from four oh to this other site, so we're gonna hit it again. I can hear it going already, but in all of my scenarios, Iran sprints to a nuclear weapon quicker. I think that was the cost of this.
You've basically just given any future Iranian regime, even one that is liberal and friendly to women and homosexuals, like they will also still want a nuclear weapon because the United States, unlike in Russia, Ukraine, unlike in India, Pakistan, unlike in any of the other conflicts of, of the past couple of years, like this was direct US involvement and a different conversation has to be had in foreign capitals and in analyst circles in those different cities. When you're talking about.
Threat of the United States and what the risks are and how to sort of deal with them. So what, what's your takeaway?
Yeah, I think broadly, I agree with everything. What I'm, what I'm fascinated by is how this regime is just really non monolithic and hasn't been. Um, you know, in 1980 to 1988, I keep going back to the Irani Rock War. Half a million people died. Everyone's on Saddam's side. I mean, everybody, Soviet Union and America are aligned together against Iran. How does Iran respond after 1988? Do they triple down on isolation?
Well, actually no. They, they take their licks, you know, I. Men gendering, sorry. But they take their legs and they, um, proceed with actually a period of opening to the rest of the world in the 1990s, which is weird because they did also support terrorism at the same time. So you have the Buenos Aires attack, um, as an example, which clearly was, um, linked to Iranian regime and Hezbollah, but the presidency of r Sanja was quite moderate.
In the nineties, and it led to some opening with the rest of the world. So, you know, I wouldn't be surprised if your first scenario where the regime survives, which is your base case, also includes a domestic internal pivot. I mean, look, if you are a member of the Iranian Elite right now, first of all, you got completely punched in the face. Second of all, you're looking around the region. What are other countries doing? They're, they're taking account of their demographics.
Like Saudi Arabia woke up one day and was like, look, I mean 70% of the countries under the age of 35, like, what are we doing here? And so I could see a similar sort of, not North Korea scenario, but rather the opposite. Taking a page out of the 1990s where President r and Johnny was actually quite, you know, like not liberal, but quite reformist. I mean, he actually ended up award the 2009 in opposition, uh, which cost him off obviously his political career.
You know? Yeah. And, and it's a really important point because another historical analogy and all historical analogies are fraught and imperfect. But I think what happened to Egypt over the second half of the 20th century is actually, um, somewhat explanatory. You can explain the opening in the 1990s because of the unique nature of the Islamic, uh, of, of the Iranian revolution, which was they set up parallel political structures. There was the clerics protected by the IRGC.
The job of the IRGC is literally to protect the revolution. Now they've, they've expanded into Hezbollah and everything else, but their original purpose was protect the revolution. And then you had, you, you still have quote unquote, democratic elections in Iran and you have, you know, civilian politics and they are not the same thing. Yes. And the IRGC was always supposed to be separate from that. And what happened beginning with President Ahmadinejad was that the IRGC.
Started metastasizing into all these other arenas of the Iranian state and economy that they weren't supposed to. They were supposed to stay in their box and protect the clerics and protect the virtue of the revolution. Then they slowly started swallowing, um, you know, businesses, the economy.
Uh, even like the external, uh, military functions that were supposed to be with the Iranian military, and you get to the point where the IRGC controls like something to 50 to 60% of the Iranian economy by most eth uh, by most estimates right now. So no matter what happens, unless you kill all the IRGC, which is not possible. The IRGC is gonna be there.
And I make the analogy to Egypt because think of what, what started in Egypt with Gamal Abdel Nasser, a coup, a charismatic politician who gives this Arab nationalism and socialism, and he dominates for, you know, 10, 15, 20 years, whatever it was. But when he dies, and you know, eventually Sadad is assassinated because he makes peace with Israel. It's the Egyptian military that takes over. Now, Nasser was a military offer. Officer himself.
But when you look at Egypt today, it's a military dictatorship and one that is relatively stable, but the military is calling the shots. I think that's maybe the model here. If you're the IRGC, it's like we've already taken over the economy. Thanks, aog. Now we've got all these other things, the supreme leader's about to die. We'll put in a figurehead.
We are gonna dominate, and once we no longer have to watch our backs and we're completely in control of this, we can behave like Egypt does today. We can go out and deal with the world in general like that. That I think is a path forward for them.
That's the irony, Jacob, because General Soleimani, who was assassinated by the US was on his way to doing that. I mean, there were rumors he was going to run for presidency. He was extremely popular just in Iran in general. Charismatic guy, very successful in the uh, insurgency against the US and Iraq. Um, and so then he was assassinated and IRGC kinda lost that face, but you're right, uh, there are many others.
Uh, there was a mayor of Tehran, I forgot his name, who was also IRGC, uh, commander. In the past life, there are. There are models of this that can, that can definitely emerge as quickly, it doesn't
matter who it is, it's an institutional dictatorship. Yeah. Rather than this weird bifurcated half democratic half theocratic thing. So I, I'm sure, I think, I think the Iranian revolution dies with Ale Khomeini and it becomes a, like a military dictatorship, just like any other military dictatorship in the world. If it's the status quo, you know, of course there, there's that NeoCon wet dream lurking in the background. But that was always a hail Mary.
And I think their military dictatorship, uh, will be very rational. But to your point, military dictatorship will obviously want to pursue a nuclear weapon given what just happened. And so I do think that the negotiations are going to be very interesting. You know, the United States of America has to now really think about what it can give Iran.
In order to avoid them becoming, going for the breakout because the, the thing is, US still does have leverage and the leverage is like, look, we just figure out your S3 hundreds don't work. You have no air defense capabilities. We can mow the grass, you know, every couple of years if we have to, every couple of years that you get a little bit more sophisticated on the nuclear program, we'll just mow it down. So, uh, you know, I do think there can be a grand bargain between the two.
This goes back to my point from the last podcast we did, and a moral foreign policy allows the US to make those kind of deals with rivals that it disagrees with in terms of how they treat the population or whatever. And that's where I think it'll, it'll it, it could be a coup of grant proportions for President Trump to really show his chops in negotiation if he can create a grand bargain with Iran that ensures that whatever that regime evolves into. It doesn't produce a nuclear weapon.
It's a bar. I'm thinking more about that point that you made. Uh, it is a high bar and I, I've been thinking more about that point you made about the amoral foreign policy and actually maybe President Trump is the right person for it, that that White House thing he did where he was castigating, both of them. Like I said, I wanted to isolate him from all his advisors and all the polls and everything else and just be like, if that's your instinct, like.
That's the instinct I would like start with, if I was starting the briefing with you. That's the sentence I would start with. And then we would go to like what your goals are. Like really great. So you already know it. You don't need to listen to cousins President Trump. That's fine. But you have to sell that to the American people.
And the American people in his base are not a moral, and this very, you saw this in the Ted Cruz interview, you saw this in all of the talk around this going into it. This is not a moral at all. If anything, it is super moral. It is righteous. It's part of of especially in. Well, very important part of the base of, without which Trump doesn't have anything.
So in the same way that FDR had to sell foreign policy to the American people and wait for a moment, which he got something like, president Trump is constrained by the same things. He cannot just snap his fingers and say, I'm gonna be a moral, and then go to the base who are just like, well, wait, we thought this was part of the soul. So I'm, I'm just saying like he is subject to the same constraints as any American president
I know, but I, I think the median voter has moved on. So I think that President Trump is far more in line with where the median voter is than, and, and I think who, who is President Trump's base. Is it the sort of moralistic neocons like Ted Cruz, or is it the MAGA camp, or is it the MAGA camp? You know, which is, which we've seen in some of the commentary over the past several weeks where they're seeing like, why are we in this fight? Why are we letting Israel draw us into their conflict?
It's, it's, it's, it's not talking about like, well, Israel's a democracy. It's a friend of ours. It's a li like, I mean, a lot of things that, you know, people may disagree with, but. It's a democracy that's the most liberal regime in the Middle East. Again, caveats here, I'm just saying what Juan might say.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
And that MAGA camp, I think is more in line with the Bernie Sanders voters, and I think that there is, the median voter in the US is becoming much more aligned with that kind of Machiavellian, real politic foreign policy. And we've seen President Trump abandon parts of his base on different issues before, and this may be one of those as well. So that's. That's what's interesting.
But one thing, one thing by the way, I just want to, uh, before we pivot to NATO and other things, there's two things I wanna say. One, one of, uh, one of our listeners, uh, from last podcast criticized, uh, one of the points I made, which is that President Trump was generally speaking, uh, doing right things in with this, with this particular conflict in mind. I think that's proven correct by him going after both Israel and Iran. Clearly he is.
Amoral in this, but we should probably use a different term and just say he's being real politic, realist, whatever you wanna call it. But one of our listeners was like, but wait a minute, what about leaving J-C-P-O-A? So, yes, yes, dear, dear listener, you are correct. Uh, that was, that was stupid. I will, well, it, that, that was unnecessary. There was just no need to leave J-C-P-O-A, uh, Iranian in Richmond. Was it zero? Yes, the, the deal would expire anyways.
There was a moment where he could have renegotiated, uh, there was a way to renegotiate. I mean, there was a way to impose or so like get better terms, but leaving it
and remember that, that that was Trump won where he was surrounded by Bolton and the coterie of neocons who used the Iran issue, both on the campaign trail to get him elected. And they thought they were gonna use Trump as a useful idiot. And in the first term he was. I think he still cared about different norms. Um, and he doesn't now for better and for worse, but he let himself be sort of taken along the garden path there and he made that promise to voters.
And if you're, if you're defending him, like you can also say like, yes, there was a deal. But after there was a deal and, and part of the reason for the deal, by the way, was that ISIS looked like it was taking over the Middle East. Like that was the background context for the United States and Iran looking at each other, being like, maybe we should like. Put this to bed for a second and deal with these crazy people and then we can go back to what we were doing. Yeah. Fought together.
'cause like they saw the bigger threat. Really what we need is ISIS to come back for peace in the Middle East, is what you're saying.
No, but, but I, I think, I think ISIS was the basis of a lot of peace in the Middle East. Yeah. I mean, the reason that Saudi Arabia and Iran have Deante is isis Iranian linked Iraqi militant groups. So Iraqi militants who were supported by Iran. Al KZ force was calling in airstrikes from American Warthogs outside of Baghdad to arrest the invasion by al-Baghdadi. So like I, I agree with you. Um, there are far worse things, in other words, in the, in the region. I. Than the Islamic Republic One.
One thing I do wanna say, mention your, well,
no, and, and just, but well hold on, just on the J-C-P-O-A though, because the, the other thing to think about the Iran nuclear deal is that, first of all, it was supported by two lame duck presidents who didn't have a lot of domestic support for it. So Hassan Rouhani was president in Iran at the time. He did not have a lot of support for it. The IRGC was at his heels. He was trying to push back against the IRGC and that thing that I just talked about.
And then you had Obama who was also on his heels with Iran. Also, after the JCPO is signed and after ISIS is dealt with. Um, the, the Iranians, yes. Like you can say that they were, um, they, they followed the letter of the, the law on enrichment, but the deal said nothing about missiles and they started testing ICBMs and all sorts of missile technology immediately, all over the place. And so, like, if the J-C-P-O-A was gonna be effective, there was more to a nuclear program.
Program than just the uranium. There's also the missiles, there's also all these other things. So they just kept on going full speed ahead at the other stuff and said, okay, like we will get to the uranium when we get to it. Because as you've noted before, that's old technology. Like they could probably get there like yes, it's hard, but like they have a lot of human capital there. So if you really wanted A-J-C-P-O-A, we would need to go back to the way that treaties used to be, which is.
¶ The JCPOA and Its Shortcomings
Supported by Congress so that a future president can't just rip it up because he feels in a particular way. So the, the J-C-P-O-A was really, it was a, a weak effort by two weak presidents to try and set their countries on a path away from what we just saw. And because they didn't have the requisite support. It didn't work.
And whether it was a failure, like maybe whether they should have done it because it was the best they could have done, or they should have just accepted that it was not realistic and done something else. I don't know. But I think that context is, is useful. So like, yes, he shouldn't have pulled out of the J-C-P-O-A, he could have built up on it, but there was no way that the Trump won was going to do that.
And also the deal itself was not going to prevent the Iranian nuclear program from going forward. Like that critique is accurate.
That's, that's a, that's a really, uh, uh, a well-founded defense. Look, look at how the rules have have flipped. Uh, one, okay, so one thing I wanna say, uh, your scenarios I have no comment on. So they're, they're, they're fine.
¶ Iran's Influence in Iraq
Uh, the one thing that I think we should think about though is I think it's objectively clear that the Iran regime has weakened, not domestically. So this isn't the point about regime change, but if you are allied with Iran. And there are fewer and fewer of those around Middle East, but if you are allied with Iran, you are worried. And in particular, what I'm worried about, and this is, this can be the last point we, we have for the postmortem. I'm worried about Iraq. Yeah.
You know, Iraq has a, um, basically a balance of fire. Uh, it's, it's very important to Iran. It's their buffer against a lot of different, uh, challenges. And currently it's being run by effectively. Tehran linked Iranian, uh, militias, uh, Shia militias and Shia politicians. Now there is different groups of Shia politicians in Iraq. The nationalists who are opposed to Iranian influence effectively gave up in 2021. I thought a civil war was going to happen.
And then Muta al sadder the leader of this faction who fought against Americans on behalf of Iran, but then flipped and became pretty ardent. Shia nationalist, opposing Iranian influence in Iraq. He retired at the end of 2021, early 2022. He just retired.
Yeah.
And that was part of, for Yeah. Good for him. Uh, I think he took a job at booking. Um, he writes Wall Street Journal,
uh, the Tda Al Sutter chair for geopolitical analysis that, uh, coming into a think tank. Me, you, uh,
militancy and liberalism. At Discourse. Um, so this will obviously
be one of the, the fake sponsors that we read in future episodes. I can't wait to write the copy for that.
No, but so, uh, yeah, that'd be awesome. Uh, so Mta, Suder just retires and, and I suspect part of the reason is that Saudis pressured both Aldo Suder and the Shia nationalists in Iraq. Look, we have a deal with Iran. We're giving up Iraq to them. God bless him. They can take it. We wanna focus on economic modernization. We're done with this Shia Sunni stuff. You don't care.
And so for the past, you know, four years, Iraq has been surprisingly calm, surprisingly stable because that side just gave up. What happens when that side realizes that maybe they don't need Saudi support because Iran is weak now? I think that would be a mistake. Iran may not have the technological capability to fight against Israeli fighter jets, but it does have the technological capability to support an insurgency in Iraq. You know, those are two different things.
You're not fighting Israeli fighter jets. You're fighting a war door to door. That's something Iran has done in Iraq for the past 20 years. Nonetheless, this is something that I'm worried about Jacob, like when I think about the postmortem of what just happened. I do think this, uh, ceasefire is highly sustainable. I think President Trump has just smacked both Israel and Iran and said, I don't want to hear.
It's like when I get sick of my kids fighting and I show up and the sun is like, she started and I'm like, I don't care if I have to come up back up here one more time. She's like, you're both in, you know, and it's like, Serbian, Serbian. Dad is coming out, not Santa Monica dad. So that's
what Trump did. Did, um, I I did, did you see that? Somebody asked Mark Ruddy about, about Trump's language and he literally said sometimes daddy has to use harsh language.
No. And, and I mean, it's like, that's exactly, like, that's what Trump I like, I I see myself in him, like with my kids and it's, uh, and so I think this is sustainable. I really think if Israel crosses Trump again, I think it's gonna be very bad for the country. So. That's great, but the negative is Iraq and I really worry about the destabilization of that neighboring country. So that's it. Like that's, that's where I'm at right now with this.
¶ The Kurdish Opportunity
All right. And, and, and turn on the TikTok camera for one thing from your, I think this is the first time I've asked for the TikTok camera on, for all of you ardent Kurdish nationalists listening to this podcast. Your time is now and you might not get another chance. So if there's going to be an independent Kurdish state. Like the, the dynamics that Marco was talking about right now, this is where they come from.
ISIS used, uh, you know, a vacuum of power in Iraq to do what it did to build dec caliphate. You can use a vacuum of power in these lands to build the thing that you're talking about. So stop squabbling with each other and if this is something that you want, like now would be the moment. And if, if there is a plan in an Israeli drawer that says the next phase of this is not regime change in Iran, but.
Supporting the establishment of an independent Kurdish state, which is something the Israelis have toyed with back and forth through their history. Like, I will, I will eat my lunch. If, if there is, if this is part of some broader strategic plan for the record, I don't think that's gonna happen. But like, if there was a moment for it to happen, like the, the power vacuum that you're talking about, is it Okay, there's my, I. I think of that as, as out there, but maybe people won't.
¶ NATO Summit and Defense Spending
Um, let's turn Marco to our last 20 minutes for the NATO summit. Um, I want to read to you what Mark Ruddy sent. Is it Mark Ruddy Rutt? How do you pronounce that? Ru I think it's Ute Ru.
Our Dutch, Dutch, uh, like, uh, Dutch fans tell us. Yeah, I'm,
I'm, I'm trained in Arabic, not in Dutch. Sorry guys. So, um, I, I, I, I just wanna read what he sent to, to Donald Trump, but Donald Trump posted this on his truth. Uh, and I also wanna say this sounds like, uh, he went to chat GPT and said, could you create a message for me that makes Donald Trump happy? Mr. President, dear Donald, congratulations and thank you for your decisive action in Iran. That was truly extraordinary and something no one else dared to do. It makes us all safer.
You are flying into another big success in The Hague this evening. It was not easy, but we've got them all signed on to 5%. Donald, you have driven us to a really, really important moment for America and Europe and the world. You will achieve something. No American president in decades could get done. Europe is going to pay in a big way as they should, and it will be your win. Safe travels and see you at his Majesty's dinner.
We should all be so happy as, as Mark, whatever his name is, to be happy to pay, uh, at the expense of the Americans. There's the European side of this, which we'll get to. I also just wanna say in the background here. Big problems in US Japanese relations, prime Minister Ishiba decided not to attend the summit. Japan also very summarily canceled a two plus two meeting that was supposed to be July 1st. South Korea has attended the summit the last couple of years. They decided not to.
Um, and this is amid reports that the Trump administration is pushing for these Asian countries to spend up to 5% on uh, uh, on. Uh, military spending as a percent of GDP as well and trying to retrofit NATO into an anti-China alliance. So I think there's an Asia Pacific angle to this. There's the NATO summit to it, and then there's just the sheer comedy of all of these European leaders understanding that kissing, you know, see being seen to kiss the knee is gonna get you what you want.
So no more isolating Trump off on stage left. It's like, hey, as much flattery language as we want. Um, so take it from there, Marco. Let's do some cooking.
Well, first of all, I would say that any man would be so lucky. That their partner looks at them and texts them the way that Mark speaks to Trump. You know, may you live a long and fruitful life full of romance, and that it be filled with little, cute notes of love and affection. The way that Mark texts Donald, that was just dripping like, dear Mr. President. Comma, Donald, you didn't read it. You didn't read it. You're, you're speeding. You're rushing through this pod episode, Jacob.
I know we have limited time, but you have to No, no. Due the cadence. You have to say Donald. Pause. It was, uh, it was incredible. And the fact that Trump shared it with everyone was so diabolically mean. You know, it's like, it's like he's acting like. There's some girl that's texting him and he's sharing it with buddies, you know, it's like, Hey, look at this. Look at what, look at what Mark said to me. You know, like, I'm the man. So, yeah, I think flattery is definitely working.
Um, did you see that Pakistan nomin nominated, uh, president Trump for the noble, uh, peace prize? Like how did Oh, yeah. I actually, I knew what, did nobody else think of it? Yeah. Like, hey. Hats off to Pakistan. Like what a brilliant move. Did they, they nominated him and made it publicly like we nominated President Trump, you know, like not anyone else. Well, and
I believe that, I believe they did it 48 hours before the Israel Iran War started, or, or was it 48 hours before the US decided to bomb Iran? Like really afraid. I'm
right. President Trump bombed Iran. Not a single person died in the that bombing, and now the conflict is over. Well deserved. I mean, I mean like truth, I mean, look, it's subjective, like, you know, but no, some journalists will say, like, you use the term, it's been obliterated. Okay. Uh, that's why nobody reads media anymore. Anyways, uh, going back to nato, uh, so your point, uh, yeah, I mean, look, I think that, um.
It's interesting because President Trump has now said that it's an extraordinary success, that they're gonna hit this 5% target. Uh, just to explain to everybody, I mean, nobody spends 3% on their defense, like really in the world. Like nobody. The United States of America, I think in 2024 was like 2.7% of its GDPI, I dunno if you'll look it up, but like, oh, yeah, I'll tell you. Look, getting to 3.5% defense spending as percent of your GDP is like.
Double what's probably rational for most of these countries, um, their target, uh, of 5% is false. It's not 5%. That's just pr. They're committing to 3.5% in defense, 1.5% on infrastructure, like broadly conceived, where I can see, like, I think some of these countries are gonna justify, like improvements to their healthcare system as as necessary for defense.
So. Let's, let's just, and the other thing is that this is by 2035 a year at which, you know, president Trump is highly unlikely to call him out on it. The world will be different. And so this is where I would say, you know, yes, I do expect increase in spending in Europe, absolutely. But they want to increase spending in Europe for other reasons too. They wanna do it for fiscal stimulus reasons. They want to just have their economies grow more.
So they're not spending 5% of their GDP on military because nobody is, including the us The US isn't a 3.5%, uh, expenditure on defense.
Yeah.
¶ Global Military Spending Insights
Uh, well first of all, uh, about the spending on military, did you, did you see what German Chancellor, Friedrich Mers said about, um, the German army? Um,
uh, yeah. It was very. Yeah, he was saying like, they're going Korea. He said, quote that he
wants Germany to have the strongest conventional army in army in Europe. End quote, because that went so well the first time. Thank you US government for encouraging Germany to return to the notion that it means the la the largest army in Europe. I'm just, excuse me. I'm so happy about this. Jacob, I am
sorry to have to correct your knowledge. Please do. No, I'm
happy to be corrected. Yeah, please.
Two times. It went great. Two times, not worse. Wait, wait.
And I looked up, I looked up military spending as a percent of GDP. There are five countries in the world that spend more than 7% of their GDP on the military. Can you guess?
Okay. Oh, this is great. Yes. Live. Uh, let's see. North Korea is one.
No, although I don't, maybe they're not on here 'cause we don't have data probably. So that's probably a good guess, but we just don't have data, so. Huh, interesting. I don't, I don't think the North Koreans are saying to cpr, yeah, this is how much we're we're spending on this. That's where I'm getting this data.
Do they have data on Ukraine then? Is Ukraine one of them? They do.
Okay. So Ukraine is, Ukraine is by far and away, number one at 34.5% is their calculation right now. Second, I guess, what's your next four Russia. Russia is number five, 7.1%. Okay. Uh, let me see. You've got one in five off the table. Alright. Uh, is Sudan one of them? No, I'll, I'll give you a hint. The rest of our countries are in the MENA region.
Oh, okay.
Interesting.
Alright.
Uh, two you should get and one I would've never gotten in a bajillion years,
Iran in Israel.
Israel at 8.8%. Number two, not Iran, but our Saudi friends at 7.3% at number four, and coming in at number three, 8% Algeria.
Oh, that's, that would be okay. But that's, you know why those are salaries, benefits.
Okay. But still, like it's, it's still 8% by the way.
That's an important point. Sorry, go ahead.
No, no, no, no, no. You go,
no one, one of the things. The easiest way to boost defense spending is just to give people in military higher salaries, and that's in a lot of North African countries like Egypt or Algeria, like Algeria or
Fasu. Your favorite on this list at 4.7%.
Yeah, like a lot of that is just like, you know, the, it's this sclerotic economy. The highly, highly entrenched interest of the military elite. So I would say that's, uh, that's not like Algeria doesn't really have a military that is equivalent to how much they spend because they don't spend it correctly. But, um, but yeah, the point
is the only other country on this list that spends more as a percentage of GDP than the United States. And by the way, Columbia tied with the United States in terms of how much, you know, 3.4%, but, uh, 3.4%. Also US been
3.4% of GDP.
3.4% according to this data. Um, the only country that is not in like North Africa or a place like that, that's, that's high. Up to your point is Poland at 4.2%.
Yeah, that's right. Poland does spend the most. So look, the point of this is like 3.5% is a lot. It's a lot. The US is a global, you know, superpower. It spends 3.4% of its GDP on the feds. I'm not sure that Portugal or Italy, it makes really any sense for them to do the same.
Well, and you probably saw that Spain, uh, has secured an exception so that it doesn't have to do this. I, I, I actually put on our, our internal research platform at at work that, you know, is this the end of NATO here? If you're gonna start carving out exceptions for different countries, and if some countries are gonna say are worried about defense, so they'll say nice things to Trump and others won't.
And already the Asian economies are like, all right, we flirted with this for a while, but why should we do this? And, and the bombing of Iran, I think, sort of reinforces this.
But here's my argument for that. Here's my argument for that. So like, does it make sense for Canada to spend 3.5% of its GDP on military? Why not get Canada to build refining processing centers for critical minerals? So if you're trying to create the Western Alliance. Like, maybe you should start by ensuring that it's not Chinese rare earth minerals in your missiles. Uh, maybe that's, yeah. I don't know. Like I'm just a stupid geopolitical strategist.
But if your missile is built with like 70% Chinese components, maybe part of the military spending and security should be that. So like, I'm not sure that it makes sense for every country to just buy more fighter jets and tanks. Instead, you can look at critical advantages that other countries have. Canada, as an example, has a lot of natural resources. It has some processing of these complicated, um, minerals in, in certain parts of Canada.
For example, in trail British Columbia, a very interesting piece of Western critical infrastructure, one of the largest lead processing centers that also does some rare earth minerals as well. So like you could, you could contribute to the western. Effort, if you will, without just giving salaries to colonels, you know, to meet the 3.5% line. And I fear that that's what's gonna happen. A lot of countries, like, you know, Belgium, what are they gonna do?
Like, Hey, should we buy more fighter jets? Should we buy more tanks? You know, that's all really difficult. It's just like, double everyone's salary and we'll satisfy Donald Trump. You know, that's, that's where I think this is a little bit too, like rote. But, but you're,
you're betraying, you're betraying your globalist credentials. You global fillic, uh, apolitical analyst. You, the point here is not to import refined materials from Canada and some of these other places. First of all, Canada's supposed to be part of the United States in this metaphor. The goal here is to make really, really good shiny military equipment and sell it to the rest of the world to balance the trade ballots and make these US military industrial companies.
We're gonna do the refining here in the United States too. So. And by the way, in, in your one big beautiful bill that you think is like, uh, is fiscally conservative, like, you know, you know, where we're, uh, increasing spending on the military budget so that we can sell those guns and those weapons to all these other different countries.
Well, we, we all hope that you enjoyed the four door air show that we put on here to show you some of this wonderful bunker busting technology that we'll be offering to the, it's like Dwight Eisenhower is rolling in his grave.
No, I mean, that's so, yes. I mean, a, a lot of this is just, um, yeah, I, I. The media's covering this as if it's a, a fair, complete, it's all these countries have until 2035 to do it. I think that they will do it in many ways, but they will spend it really on defense. Um, and so, you know, it, it's just aligns with political interest of whoever, everyone, president Trump cannot say that he got Europeans to do something nobody else did.
Europeans can satisfy their own domestic political logic by boosting their economy. But I don't, you know, I don't expect every one of these countries to spend as much as the us.
¶ Trump's Influence on NATO
The other thing though, I would say what is significant, Jacob, is that a lot of people went into the Trump presidency expecting him to withdraw from nato. That he is, you know, like not committed to nato. He now, after this Brussels summit, I mean, the words he's using, he's now like committed to the pod. He's saying this was his achievement. He's put his stamp on it. We know how President Trump's ego works.
He's now, you know, as, as far as the next three years of his presidency go and perhaps beyond, like he's now pro nato. And that's, I think the big picture here. Like President Trump is not going to pull out of nato. Um, and that's kinda a sweet spot for Europe where it both has Friedrich Merz out there saying we need to re-arm. And at the same time, it still has that American umbrella because he doesn't seem to have qualified it at this summit unless I'm
wrong. Well, and another, another betrayal of Trump's principles like America. First, we're not gonna defend the Europeans, but we are gonna defend the Europeans via, via nato, and the Europeans are gonna be strong again. Maybe they'll rename it tto, the Trump Atlantic Treaty Organization. That sounds sort of good.
If they were smart, they would.
Well, and this is why I, we, we started with the media and then we start to close in or start to land the plane on the media, which is the way the media is covering this thing, is they're saying, oh, isn't it so gross and odious that all of these European leaders like the, like Mark, are texting Trump and treating him like this king. It's the courtier and everything else. And it's like the story you should be telling is of.
Course they're doing that because that's how you get things out of the man. I don't think anything has fundamentally changed here. I think the Europeans and all the South Koreans, Japan, they've all woken up and realized that the United States is not reliable or dependable anymore. Now they can't flip the switch and just turn on the United States immediately. They still need things from the United States, and as much as they can get things from the United States, they will. And if you are.
Gonna deal with Trump, you either have to be big enough as China to punch back and willing to absorb the pain or like get ready to kiss a lot of Trump butt because that's the way you get to him. You say really, really nice things to him. You flatter him, all these other things. So the way to cover that is these European leaders are actually getting the things they want out of Trump. Things that are against the things that he's campaigned on before, by saying really, really nice things to them.
So you may feel that it's odious because you don't wanna say things to leaders like that, but you're a journalist. If you wanna report on what's going on here, report on how the Europeans are playing him and report on how Japan and South Korea are basically being like, I. Uh, we're not even sending PlayStations. What the f You just bombed Iran.
And you want us to show up and do things because you tell us to, you can't even decide, you know, how much you want us to spend on military or what tariffs you want on or off. We're, we're leaving the meetings until you can figure something out. Like I think this is actually a big signal that like you, like multipolarity is accelerating and us strength. Is not what it used to be. I think you can say that exactly about the Israelis too.
Like even Trump saying, stop the bombs, like having to scream, stop the bombs. Like, true. Nobody's listening to this guy. They're just all flattering.
Well, I, I think, you know, um, there's limits to every argument, you know, and I think multiple is clearly. Uh, otherwise Israel would not have attacked Iran, uh, without much of a warning to the US without really involvement that would not have happened in a unipolar world. But at the same time, just limits to that, right? Like the US And this is always something that I always caveat, especially for American audience. I. A multipolar world doesn't mean that every country is equally powerful.
That's not what it means. It just, there just no one country with preponderance of power. But it doesn't mean that the US is still not the most powerful country in the world. It is. As President Trump said, the only country that can deliver a payload, such as it was and Fordo from Missouri, like that's the only country in the world that can go that distance with that payload. And it's the only country that can tell Israel after watching it for two weeks disobey the US effectively.
Eventually Israel runs outta rockets, you know, to defend itself. And now us is Aha. Now what, so, you know, the problem with these arguments, Jacob, is sometimes people get too literal and too, like, well, what do you mean? Like, well, it's nuanced, but in a, in a unipolar world like this would not have happened either way. You're, you're correct.
I mean, it's, it's, it's a push and pull, you know, and one of the things that will deepen multipolarity, like what will deepen it, is that Germany will have the largest conventional army. In Europe, which will mean that it's one of the top five greatest military powers in the world again.
Yeah.
And that will deepen, I dunno if you saw.
I dunno if you saw also, uh, president Trump, just in the last, as we've been talking, has been just railing on the Spaniards for not, not agreeing to spend this much money. Um, Spanish markets also down as a result that, uh, I don't do much trading, but I'm, I'm pretty bullish on, on Spain in general. But, uh, yeah, I, I, I think that just reinforces what we're talking about. Like if you don't, if you're not nice to him, if you don't do what he says, like he's gonna do this to you, so.
Why wouldn't the Spanish government just be like, sure, we'll spend it, we'll do whatever you want, and then not spend it. Like that's an own goal. May maybe they're powerful enough or they're They're fine enough, they don't want to, but yeah,
it's a total own goal. It's a total own goal. And the reason it's an own goal is because it's until 2035. Why would you stick your neck out? Everybody else fell in line, you know, not because they're afraid of Trump, but because why would you go through the trouble of fighting? United States of America on this, like the, the, the goalposts are so wide on this target that you can drive a brand new aircraft carrier through it. So like why push against it?
And so, yeah, I I would argue that, you know, um, we have that top 30 leaders, um, trade value coming up. Pedro Sanchez may have to drop a little bit.
Uh, he was. Uh, newsflash. He was not in my top 30. All keep mind. Anything else, Marco, before we go? I gotta get outta here.
¶ Concluding Thoughts and Future Outlook
No, that's it. Uh, I think the postmortem is done. Um, just as a summary, I think this, uh, it's nonsense to discuss whether the nuclear program is obliterated or not. It is highly, highly, um, unlikely that, uh, Iran's going to get a nuke in the next like 12 months. US can mow the grass with further military strikes. And then the thing, uh, is regime survival. Probably here to stay. The question is how it evolves. That was your point. And then finally, I would focus on Iraq.
That's where I would wanna watch for signed And Iranian weakness is going to lead to more destabilization in the region. And finally, um, in closing, what I would say is send your loved one a text. And if you need help with how to structure it, read Mark Ruiz comments to Donald Trump. They were very sweet. I.
Uh, lessons on sensuality from a political nihilist. That's great. Uh, rest of the world. Please don't blow anything up. So we can do our leadership column, uh, podcast next week. Like give us a week here, guys. Jesus. All right, me too. See you later.