Does Iran have Nukes? w/ Ron Dodson: Ep. 455

particular piece of that. This is perhaps a more broad topic relevant to this war and our ongoing relations with Iran. But I sort of joked when we started, I'm not going to go overboard. I think about one show a week at least for the duration of this war is probably warranted. But ron with all that said, great to have you back on. And what are we going to launch into.

there's some reason here. But also there's a whole lot of misconceptions about nuclear development cycles that just need to be dealt with and in a way that that we can all just get a firm grasp of when are we being when are we being led carrot and stick? Because that's not that doesn't make for good voters, good Twitter posters, for folks having a just maybe an informed conversation with your wife and kids or the guy that

you work with. So that's kind of the point today is let's try to demystify and de mythify some of these this nuclear weapons thing.

themselves long enough to construct a nuclear one. And therefore that is why we are at war with a rant to prevent them from becoming a sort of middle eastern North Korea. Now, there are several things there. One, it assumes that we we could do such a thing, right,

we'll set that aside. But also it assumes that the Iranians have for a long time been pushing for nuclear weapons, and as you know, Vamp said, nuclear weapons that could be miniaturized to such a degree that they could be smuggled into the US, detonated as a suicide bomb, or alternately, you know, fire rained down from the sky, right, intercontinists,

intercontinental nuclear ballistic missiles, the really scary stuff. So obviously, the Iranian nuclear program has been in the news for much longer than that, certainly going back to the Obama era. But let's be honest, we destroyed or were told that we destroyed Iran's nuclear sites less than a year ago. So ron for the thinking man, where do we start with this?

of so what does that mean? Well, so you really have to go from or to deliverable weapon, and what does that require? And what happens is in the in the in the in the popular level, you know discussion, the Fox News discussion, we equate those two things and there's a huge difference between or yellow cake and a W eighty seven or W eighty eight. Those are our kind of our thermonuclear there's a it's from here to

the moon from there, So what does that mean? So the the claim that you hear on TV is nuclear weapons are a flip a switch that you flip, and that's not true. It's a ladder that you climb, and it's it's it's like the concave climbing wall. Every every next handhold gets exponentially harder as one who is a horrific climber. This is why I picked that. Uh, you know, I I can kind of do the ones that are kind of slope the way I like, you know, I'm i'm I'm. I'm shocked at the spider monkeys that can

climb that. And the question is Iran a spider monkey? And no, the answer is no. So what are the What are the stages? So you can think of it kind of in five broad stages, and there's some intermediate steps. But again, our job here is not to make us all experts. Our job here is to get informed. So Stage one is resource acquisition uranium. Iran's great with that, they've got three or four sites. Uranium is not a rare earth element, it is it is relatively plentiful in

the Earth's crust. You just got to go dig and process it. And they they have and and so they've got plenty of uranium domestically and that's not going to change. And honestly, that's not a huge deal. Now we get to the real stuff, conversion and enrichment. So what does conversion mean. Conversion means you've taken it from or into a form. You combine uranium with fluoride and so it becomes this this new molecule that is easily turned into

a gas. So at about fifty degrees celsius, you can that that uh, that combination of uranium and fluoride becomes a gas. And now you can enrich it via centerfuge. So how does we'll get into the indo because that's where a lot of the talk comes in, is in this centerfuge deal. And we'll explain that a little bit again without getting too technical and without a bunch of pictures and all that kind of thing. We'll describe that. So that's stage two conversion enrichment. Stage three is weaponization.

So that's where you develop a what's called the physics package. And that's not just the pit or the part that explodes, but all the stuff that goes around it that helps it explode. And then you have stage four, which is testing in validation, and then STAY five delivery system integration. Iran is at stage two. Okay, So those other three stages are orders of magnitude harder beyond a certain kind of first elementary step, and we'll talk about that. Okay,

So stage one uranium. It's necessary, but it's trivial for iran because uranium's not rare mining and milling that these are industrial processes. It's not exotic and yellow cake and yellow cake. It's it's yellow to our eyes and powdery. You've seen pictures. You can go google it right now and see what it looks like. That's try let me see if I can remember this. Try uranium octo oxide.

It's it's eight oxygen atoms and three uranium app or uranium atoms, and so you're oxidizing uranium to make this yellow cake, and that's just makes it stable. And then that's not a weapons material. And so in the Earth, uranium, which again is plentiful but ninety ninety nine point three percent of it is uranium two thirty eight and only a point seven percent of it naturally occurring in the

ores called pitch blend. Maybe you've heard of that before in your high school, uh, you know your high school science class. Only seven percent of that is uranium two thirty five and uranium two thirty five. These different versions of the same element are called isotopes. Uranium two thirty five is the one that is able to sustain a nuclear reaction. So you have to end That's why you

have to enrich. Okay, so you have to get that and you have to get that natural two thirty five point seven up to eighty between eighty and ninety five percent, and in order for it to be weapons grade. And so right now, Iran has I think the latest numbers are about four hundred and fifty kilograms. We don't know how much of this is accessible. About four hundred and fifty kilograms that's enriched to the sixty percent mark, so

not weapons grade. But to be fair, that distance between sixty and eighty to ninety percent is doable in the in the not long term. If they have in this why well we'll talk about how that happens. So having uranium, here's what you need to think of. Here's your big picture. Having uranium is like having crude oil. It tells you nothing about whether or not you can build a Ferrari, you know, a V eight engine, much less a jet engine. Okay, you might be able to build a very simple two

stroke engine. And that's kind of where Iran is. And we'll talk about what that analog device is. And stop me at any point if you have any questions, Jay, because this is.

so Russia helped them, uh fuel fuel their plants. But other than other than that one plant, and they have several uh or have I don't know what the state status of them is right now, you know, uh, real quick sidebar. Traditionally, when we've gone to war, we've had press embedded in you know, Vietnam, World War two, uh, the Iraq War one and two, we had press embedded in the and and that's kind of a normal thing.

We've got nothing now. Part of that is it's hard to do you embed in in on the you know, on an aircraft carrier at the bases and stuff. You know. But the fact that we don't have any on site press coverage, we're having to rely on a bunch of uh uh you know, ocent feeds is a little bit problematic to me. But anyway, so they do have So you do need to enrich in order to get to

medical uranium. That's twenty about twenty percent. And you do need to enrich to get to a nuclear fuel in the sense for a power plant, but that's about five to seven percent depending on the design. Older designs require a higher like the the graphite reactors. As I understand it, the Russian designs needed a higher level of enrichment in

order to maintain a chain reaction. So anyway, the reason they've enriched to sixty percent is so that they can have and this is the and I consider this kind of legitimate, is so that they can have a bargaining chip in order to get out of the sanctions regime. And they have offered repeatedly. They're they're now deceased Supreme

Leader Patata Fatwah against nuclear weapons development. Uh. And it has long been the Iranian position that they would submit to I a e A inspections upon removal of sanctions. This seems like a complex. A no brainer to me is why why would we not want a pro if and even for the neocons. Honestly, let's take the neocon position. The neocon position, you know, says prosperity equals democracy equals let's get along with our neighbors, you know, prosperity in trade,

you know, forget the cosmopolitan byproducts of that. But but it seems to me for the longest time, and Obama this swhere. You know, we make fun of Obama's palettes of cash, but uh, I think Obama. You could make the argument Obama hand the Iranians pretty well. They didn't cause any problems. They kept in their lane, they didn't cause any issues with it. They weren't threatening to send missiles all this stuff. So, you know, far be it for me to praise one of the worst presidents we've

ever had, Barack Hassean Obama. But uh, I think he handled the Iranians in a you know, at least you can argue a rational way. But it's always been their position. We don't want nuclear weapons, but we do want out of this long term. We're a Shia nation. You need to get over it. That's what we are. We self identify as that uh you know, and until you quit, get us off the sanctioned regime. UH, We're going to

keep this enrichment capability. The problem with the Iranians has been uh and to jump ahead a little bit, is that they have used their oil proceeds to fund uh you know, uh hamas uh uh uh some terrorism that that uh that tends to uh harass our most beloved

and trusted ally in the Middle East. So and we have long there's a sense in which, you know, the the realist or the classical realists says, is it good in a balance of power situation to have one actor have that much control over one of the world's most valuable choke points? What are you going to do about it? Though?

That's the question, And that's a little bit beyond the scope of what I want to talk about, because we were told that one of the main reasons we were going to war is because they had two weeks towards reigning down hell fire on the world. And that's what I want to mainly deal with. And if you want to talk about some of that other stuff, that's fine too.

to completely ever do away with that. So I don't know if y'all are concerned with the how the uranium enrichment process works, I'm going to be very very brief. You convert the this uranium oxid oxidation, you know, the U three eight, You convert that to a process to this uranium hexafluoride. That's that's the enrichment stuff. You use

gas centerfuge. You heat it up so that it sublimates, it becomes a gas, and then you have a series of these gas centrifuges, and all they are is you put the gas in this long cylinder that has basically kind of a weather van kind of thing inside that spins it up really really fast. And because two thirty eight the isotope, that doesn't do much for us for enrichment because it's just a tiny bit heavier, it moves to the outside in the two thirty five generally because

it's lighter, stays in the middle. So you you you try to remove the center part of the centerfuge process while it's spinning. You remove that you tube thirty five, and each stage just is a to nine amount more pure and it's a cascade. So you'll have two hundred of these centrifuges in a row row, kind of like daisy chained hot water heaters, but skinnier. And so as it's taking out that you're putting it into a new centerfuge,

and it's spinning it up. In every stage you get a little bit more of the two thirty five versus the two thirty eight. So that's how centrifuges work. This is what was destroyed by a work of the CIA and Masade when the stucks Net program was put in. And these are the the older versions of the centrifuges were Semens run by Siemens controllers. Semens is a German electronics giant, and uh so these these centrifuges had Semens controllers.

Stuck's Net was a program that infected the Semens controllers to while they were spinning to stop and start them, which would like a dryer that has way too many towels on one side, they would get unbalanced and tear themselves apart. Amazingly effective. Uh and uh kind of a brilliant look. You got to give those the the Israelis. We know the Israelis were behind part of it because that stuck'snet code but was actually released. People found it.

The way it propagated was through through broad propagation, and the source code had Miritis in it. Miritus is uh. If you go back to your Book of Esther, Esther is myrtle Latin for esther is is miritis. And so anyway, the Book of Esther takes place in Persia. So that's how we knew Masad was in on the game. Anyway. Okay, so you've got enrichment. What happens after enrichment, well, uh, you you so to close that loop? Uh, Iran has

the capability at varying enriched, varying enrichment levels. But we don't know what is left of these of these centrifuge enrichment cascades. We don't We did bomb their system. These are not super robust. I mean, they're not like, you know, super fragile. But if if you you know, you can damage them or take them offline. If it does, it's that's not hard. If it's just a matter of getting to them because you you know, Iran's placed them in

very secured areas. So that and again that leap from sixty percent enrichment to ninety percent in enrichment is smaller in effort, but it's it requires massive, massive cascade coordination. So anyway, so enrichment is where it's a way to think about that is enrichment is where physics meets industrial discipline. It's not brilliant or conceptually complicated. It just takes sustained competence. And so you know that's where again, that's where Iran is.

Let's I'm going to skip ahead in my presentation because you don't I don't you know. There's there's the Basher. I'm just gonna mention there's the Basher power reactor that's low proliferation. That's the one the Russians built. That's the one that the Russians fuel and supply and maintain and

remove the fuel. And they did that because they didn't want They said, look, we'll fuel this and we'll remove the fuel because we don't want you having plutonium because plutonium you can use if you enrich and then using rich fuel in a reactor, one of the byproducts can be plutonium. We don't want you having that, so we'll remove the fuel. Iran said, that's great. We get basically we get you're coming and we've got a service contract

with you. Awesome, So that's not a viable path. The Tran Research reactor uses twenty percent enriched uranium that basically produces medical isotopes, which provides the justification to twenty percent. Can they use that twenty percent to jump start their chain? Yeah, but we've got twenty percent enrichment isotopes all over the US, you know, But that's is it an issue? Well? I

mean yeah, but inspection fixes all this, right. So Obama tried to deal with this because the well and then you have the Iraq a raq A r Ak heavy water reactor and this is this one's kind of the problem because that's designed for natural uranium and heavy water and that's where you get plutonium. So that one's an issue. That's an issue. Neokon not neokan. This needs to be I think this this is the one you need to

deal with. And Obama dealt with that under the JCPOA, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action that was the twenty fifteen agreement between Iran and the USA, UK, France, China, Russia and Germany, and that restricts their nuclear program in exchange for some sanctions relief. That's kind of in a This war has thrown that into a complete that's out the door right now. So you know, if you're gonna bomb us, we're not gonna. But so anyway, that was

the one area where they submitted to IAEA inspections. So Iran in that case chose showed their good faith. Look, will you're worried about this reactor. We're subject to these uh i a e A inspection the i a e A Inspection regime here, So they showed good faith not to the You notice there's one nation that didn't sign that Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. So all right, so weapon weaponization. So now we've got we know how we enrich, we know how we mine, we know how we enrich.

What do we do now? We want to create a weapon. This is where everybody said, this is where they are, Well, okay, could they there's there's there's two paths you take to making a nuclear weapon, well three paths, but but we'll put the third one aside for a bit. The first is a gun type of device, and this is one that if given the materials, you me and three or four guys and a really good machine shop, and if

we had enough uranium, could possibly build one of these. Okay, this is not a complex it's a very complex from an engineering standpoint, it's not complex from a nuclear science standpoint. So what's the concept. Well, this is the bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima. Didn't need any testing. It was just a gun type of device. This was a Little Boy. And all you're doing is firing one subcritical mass into another.

When you get enough uranium two thirty five together in a close mass that reaches what's called critical mass, and you get a sustained you get a sustained nuclear chain reaction, and if it's super critical, you get an explosive critical reaction. And this is how we built Little Boy. And what is that? So there's no need for complex timing or implosion symmetry. We'll talk about that. This can be built without testing. You kind of know what you're gonna get.

It does require large amounts of highly enriched uranium. We only used eighty percent enriched in Little Boy. But that's why it was so inefficient. Little Boy was only about one percent efficiency and it's incredibly large and heavy. Why is that?

of the gun barrel with high explosives behind it. And the idea is you, just like you're firing a gun, you draw the explosives, drive this hollow cylinder to meet up with the with the solid cylinder of machine uranium two thirty five so fast that they reach super criticality and it blows up. That's the simple thing. The hard

thing is is around that. In order for this to really do much of anything, you need what's called a neutron reflector, usually beryllium, although you can use other heavy things, and you wrap that around this target area. And what that does is that makes sure it's neutrons that are making this chain reaction go. You want those neutrons to not escape, but stay within this confine pross area to make the reaction more efficient. You get more neutrons, you

get more fission. Each fission each atom that that uh undergoes fission reduced produces several million electron vaults. That's what provides the energy. So you have this, yeah, to.

And this physically and the best material for that is uranium two thirty eight. You get a little extra, but you can use tungsten, you can use, you can use. But the goal of this is to something that's incredibly that is going to keep this explosion together for a couple of more nano micro microseconds, so that more of this reaction happens because all that matters is the last iteration, so it's it's a chain reaction, so it's happening logarithmically.

So if you can keep it together for two more iterations, that's one hundred or one thousand times bigger of an explosion. Does that make sense. So literally, you have a neutron reflector, and then you have a tamper, and this is massive and he to keep the thing together. So this gun device, the barrel has to be massively heavy just to hold this together. And then this tamp, this reflector in tamper

together is very is much heavier than the barrel. And then because this is an inefficient device, you need a couple hundred pounds of uranium to make it work. So this gun device is large. Little boy was about eight feet including the casing and altimeter package and everything about eight feet long, and was close to twenty thousand pounds all told. So that's not going on the top of a missile. The Iranians can put about five hundred kilograms on top of a missile. They're short range. They have

some space launch vehicles as well, nowhere near. So this is the type of device they could, theoretically, if left alone, over time, build without testing.

incredibly inconsistent. You'd get ten kilo tons or a hundred kilotons and it was just kind of a roll of the dice, and so we we stopped that program. But the suit there's never been a such thing that could fit in a Haliburton case. That's just science fiction because of the just the physics involved. But anyway, so this one device that theoretically you could build without testing is incredibly large and incredibly heavy. We were able to deliver it because we had the B twenty nine and it

took a special version. The Anola Gay had to be stripped of certain amounts of equipment and everything just to carry this massive thing and deliver it. So anything any other type of system, when we talk about that, requires massive amounts of testing. And why does that matter? Because you test a nuclear device, we're going to know about it. The Brits are going to know about it, the Russians are going to know about it, the Chinese are going

to know about it. We have incredible systems underground, atmospheric, on water. These tests leave a have a very defined signature. It's why every time the North Koreans, who aren't a obvious aren't a part to you know, a partner in the in the Nuclear non Proliferation Agreement. That's why whenever they test something underground, we know about it. So there's ways to try to hide it, but you know about it, usually via seismic It leaves a seismic fingerprint and you

can't help but there be some isotope leakage. So anyway, so the Iranians aren't going and by the way, we have no evidence at all that they have any enrichment beyond sixty percent, which it would to even do one of these devices. They if they built one of these devices, they can't deliver it. I mean, in theory they could put it on a ship and sail it somewhere. Uh, but we've we've you know where their ships are anyway. Uh, but they're not putting it on a missile. No way

to do that anything beyond that. So an implosion device, like all our devices now are implosion devices, and they all have secondary so thermonuclear secondaries. And that's why we our re entry vehicles are so small because it's a small, smaller fission stage and then a fusion stage that fuses uh uh you know hydrogen deuteride. Uh. Anyway, really cool, really cool science beyond the scope of this talk. But we basically construct a miniature sun, which scientifically is really cool.

And uh but that's why, like our re entry vehicles are only four hundred kilograms and about four feet long and only this big around that takes such a level of complexity and testing that Iran is fifty years from something like that. We would know what they were doing at every stage, So that's not an issue. The concern is so anyway, implosion think about it this way, implosion or that next level of deliverable type of device that

can be made smaller is not just harder. It's a different category of difficulty and it requires a testable and mature scientific ecosystem. That's a whole different thing you have. Most folks don't know. Like we have pantexts in the Texas Panantal, we have our facility in Tennessee. These are massive to build tests and house the the pits. So that's the nuclear material and the science package, which is what the physics package, which is what turns it into

a deliverable warhead. These are massive scientific undertakings. My cousin in law who was a contractor for the nuclear UH in the nuclear UH sub fleet. He participated in the refueling of nuclear submarines, the Los Angeles Class. He was recruited to go work for Sandia uh UH and UH with a possible uh sypath with pantecs and this guy is He ended up going into the super Computing UH the Supercomputing uh UH division of Dell Computers. These are

very specialized, highly highly trained. Everybody knows who these people are are. They work in these massive scientific undertakings. Because this is a very complex deal and Iran has nothing like that. So anyway we've talked about testing, we can talk about miniaturization. I kind of feel like i've, you know, real quick. So so warhead weight and size restraints. We've already talked about how the Little Boy guns style device just can't be miniaturized beyond a certain degree with it's

it's just big and heavy. So if they wanted to build something that was actually miniaturized and deliverable and hardened, you're talking about massive weight and size constraints. You would need a specific re entry vehicle that's different from a conventional warhead, conventional T and T or the offshoots of T and T. See the plastic or solid the solid type of explosives are very hardened. You can there's there's

no real vibration constraints. You get them to wherever you're going, and as long as you have a good igniter or you're they're gonna go boom. Very different from a deliverable physics package. So uh, and then miniaturizing a nuclear device down, I mean, we talked about that a little bit. You can go and google the W eighty seven slash W eighty eight program if you want to, if you're listening and you really find this interesting and see all that

was in a lot of this. The Federation of American Scientists have a great site that basically tells you how this was all put together and built. I mean without you know, you're not gonna go do this in your backyard, so it's actually kind of okay. But you can look at the FAS dot org and read up about all the steps we we're now most people think we're a

model or two beyond that. This was when I was studying this in school, when I studied, Yes, I was accounting finance double major, but I wrote my senior thesis in well actually infusion and tacamac design. But I studied all this stuff. That's why it's interesting to me. At that point, the W eighty seven W eighty eight, which went on our Poseidon and try it well, our Trident missiles and our minimm missiles, that warhead was the state of the art. Then I think we're a stage or

two beyond that. But this is where my training stopped. You can anyway, you go to FAS dot org and put in W eighty eight. You can read all about this if you're really interested about what it would take. So, so what it matters for nuclear delivery remember warhead mass limits, re entry vehicle design, and then you have accurate c versus yield trade off. We're not really worry about that. So anyway, what does Iran have in the sense of deliverability?

So they have short range ballistic missiles and they have a couple of intermediate range ballistic missiles. The main thing the difference is being in range and difficulty of maintenance. A short range ballistic missile is all solid two stage and solid fuel. So it's like a firecracker. You can set it over there, very low maintenance. You like the fuse, it's going okay, hey this The intermediate range are two stage, but the upper stage is liquid fuel and that's much harder.

These are. These are much less stable, much less storable. There's usually a cryogenics, not always the non cryogenic wayte to fuel. These are very, very toxic. So I think there was a video that came out the other night of the upper stage falling in part of Israel and this red smoke coming out. Dude, that will kill you. You breathe in that red smoke, you are dead in five minutes kind of thing. It will eat your longus out from the inside. So this isn't These aren't fun things.

And then the Iranians have a three stage space launch vehicle. I think they the space launch vehicle conversion is what they use to try to launch something towards Diego Garcia, which was never gonna work. These are completely different guidance packages. A ballistic missile is like a single use well they're both single use in theory, but use you use this. It's designed to hit something on the other end of a ballistic curve with very good aiming on the front

end and minimal course correction. A space launch vehicle uses a closed loop, constant course correction type of model so that you can get something into orbit. But neither one of them have the capability to have that kind of range, just due to the to the payload trade off. These are designed to deliver five hundred kilogram type of things, and these the range that they needed to get to Diego Garcia was such that we think they basically didn't

even have much of a payload. They just wanted to see if they could launch something and you know, taunt us. That's my opinion. There are people who disagree with that. So a space launch vehicle proves that you could throw something into space into orbit. It does not prove that you can deliver a nuclear weapon through the atmosphere onto a target. Just a completely different thing. So anyway, that's kind of let's let's kind of land this plane, so to speak, and then we can have kind of question.

You know, I'll let you talk because I know I've been lecturing. Basically, here's the thing. Tier one with Iran latent capability. They have uranium, they have enrichment infrastructure that we've tried to we supposedly just completely utterly destroyed. Well we don't know, but they have a tech nical knowledge base. I mean the Iranians are these are these are north of one hundred on the uh uh w ai s for uh Bell curve. I mean these are this is as a group a bright people. These are capable people.

They have a crew device potential possibly achievable, not deliverable. Tier three is a reliable implosion weapon nowhere near nowhere on the radar nowhere. And they've and they by the way, that that gun type device again to just hammer this home. We have no evidence anywhere that they have enriched beyond sixty percent, or that they've tried to test or construct any device. And then a Tier four is a deliverable

missile warhead. That's science fiction for the Iranians. So the debate often jumps from Tier one to Tier four as if they are adjacent, and they are not. These are separated by years of compounding difficulty. Again that ladder that think of it as I'm climbing that I'm at the uh, I'm at the the climb wall, and it keeps just getting more and more folding back on itself in difficulty. So that's how you make that's kind of the ladder

of nuclear development. This is why we have not this is why it's it's not easy, but you can police this pretty well. And uh, Iran wasn't. We have no evidence that they were anywhere close to any of this, but you scare people with ah, they've got uranium, and uh, that's kind of where I think we were. So there were I think obviously either either the players just didn't understand, or they were being manipulated, or there are other factors involved.

Now we get a bunch of birds with one stone, and I think that's kind of the way this was thought. And we can use nuclear this nuclear threat as a way to move public opinion, because nobody's gonna go sit through Ron's lecture on nuclear proliferation in the ladder of development. So that's kind of where I think the calculus was. Do I think that's where Trump or Rubio or or any of these other players were. I, you know, I don't. I don't know these guys, and the guys I do know,

I don't want to. I don't think it's fair to to talk about them in a public form. They can speak for themselves, but I just don't have enough visible I just don't know. I do know very much where the lobby is on all this. And they were fine with chaos, uh and using you know, they were fine with chaos, And I think do I think all of

it was completely dishonest? No. I think that there is a certain paranoia due to world events, and and you know, I don't want to paint with a mop that there is you know, I spoke with I was Tucker and Darryl Cooper's guest at one of his h when he was doing the big town hall public town halls and uh and oh good night. Roseanne Barr was the guest.

And Roseanne was very entertaining and uh she but you know, she's a Jewish lady, and she was very when I visited, she visited with us, and she was very open that Look, we were raised to be afraid everyone is just waiting to throw us in the ovens and and and indicate. So there's uh, this is what we were all raised with. This is what we were We were shown these videos and movies from a very early age. So I think, you know, and I had a little bit of a

public falling out with Dave. Uh uh real boy. And you know I always got along with Dave, but uh, and I don't want to air anything publicly, but but he basically accused me of wanting to throw Jews in the ovens, and which is just ridiculous. But there I don't think all of that paranoia is dishonest. I think

it's unfounded. I think it may be uh unjustified. But but but there is a certain amount of this paranoia that comes from the the way a lot of these folks will raise the environment and so on and so forth. Does that make sense? I'm trying to be as fair as possible to the psychology of this. I don't think

it's born of a faithful following of Torah, uh whatsoever? Uh? I, you know, and I think this paranoia is used by certain political actors to advance a a a strategy that has little or nothing to do with a faithful Jewish way of life in the levant you know this is. Does that make sense? Oh?

And this is a point that Eric Weinstein made in both of his conversations with Tucker, which were quite good, they're worth your time, And he mentioned that there is sort of a self fulfilling prophecy to these in the sense that that attitude will produce persecution people won't like you,

either on a personal or a national stage. And to me, and this is a going back to a conversation you and I had, geez, I guess the last time, you know, we kicked off something with Iran, which is effectively, well, if Iranian leadership didn't want nukes before, they really do now simply from the perspective of you know we mentioned Pyongyang early here, Well, if you are the enemy of the global you know, the global liberal order, well you're looking around for well, who's made it and who hasn't?

And right, sure there are problems with North Korea, but you know, no one's launching ill conceived five week wars with North Korea because you know it's a crazy guy with a gun.

Because are the Russians? Uh is Putin really looking to and everybody goes, oh, well look what he's doing with Ukraine. Well, we were looking to set up shop next door. Uh provoked. Go listen to this where Scott Horton is outstanding, his book provoked outstanding. I'll throw a plug at a at

another podcaster. But uh, the but the the the the reason the Russians are hated is because they're not neoliberals, and there's some cultural bias because there's some powerful oligarchs of a certain ethnic inclination that were muscled out of being the Northern European cheekdom. So you know, there's part of that where a true russe in in In Putin said no, you're you're gonna you're gonna serve Russia or you're out and we'll take all your wealth. And uh anyway,

that another topic for another day. But but the point is it's not up for discussion because the Russians have the King's x uh so, and Iran isn't neoliberal. Okay, what strikes me is as as non rational is let's say we do go in the end result of this is a complete Persian or I say, I keep saying Persia. There there are a thousand ethnicities within this area. The Persians are like the Han Chinese, they're the dominant and gifted.

If you know, we're we're human biodiversity realists here right. Uh, they're the gifted class that and just like the Han are in in China uh and South Asia uh uh so, or or Southeast Asia uh so? The so the it's it's it's the Iranians. Which is this kind of the result of three thousand years of Persian imperial dominance? Uh? Are you know they are the way they are? And

and and uh. But if you balkanize this region and you turn it into chaos, now you're gonna have five or six actors with with hegemonic with quasi hegemonic control or the ability to close the straight How does that make sense as opposed to as opposed to one that you may not agree with their philosophical, non neoliberal point of view, but at least it's one group that you

deal with. Now you're gonna deal with five or six That makes that makes no sense from a from a game theory standpoint, but I don't think it's been thought of. I think it's we just want chaos because there's there is a push for a greater Israel. And I don't want to be you know, too speculative about Israel's you know,

I don't think there is a monolithic Israel. There's like Cood and the and the kind of the atheist socialistic like Cood version of what they want, the Net and Yahoo vision, and then I don't know what the rest of Israel wants. They've been out of power for so long. Who knows, you know, I really don't know. If some if if one of these other groups got control, who knows, maybe they'd be just a different same song, you know, different verse.

Quincy Institute for UH for Realism and Restraint. And then I write on my substack at the Eyes of Apilles or you can find it at Ron Dodson dot substack dot com. And then I'm on x causing you know, great consternation.

saying for years now. Uh wait, never mind, I'm not going to make that joke because anyway, five bucks a month on Patreon, substack or comroad no ads early not a bad deal. It's twenty eighteen cents an hour, I think is what it comes out to. So I'm working for it, right, I'm not one of these guys that puts out one show a month and charge you ten bucks for the privilege. Anyway, Ron, this is fascinating everyone at home. Keep your head up well, I can't last forever. Good Night,