Transcription
What is going on? Like, really, take me back to the beginning. What did Trump think was going to happen? How is this linked to Venezuela? Yeah. Why would he do this after saying that he was the president that was going to stop all the wars?
>> What is the big picture here?
>> And literally, one of the eight wars that he said that he had stopped was with Iran. This was not what he was voted in on.
>> He was voted in. He ended the war in Afghanistan. I mean, he cut the deal with the Taliban. Was it a great deal? Yeah, for the Taliban, it was pretty good. But it got the Americans out. 20 years, a trillion dollars fought on the backs of the Afghan people and of Americans—not wealthy Americans, not people like Trump that could find a way out of service, but poor Americans.
>> And Europeans.
>> Yeah. And Europeans who fought side by side with the Americans when the Americans asked them to, almost all of them sending troops and many of them wounded and dying in the same numbers, the same percentages, just as courageous as the Americans were, right? So, Americans wanted an end to that. Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, what the hell are you guys doing? We're not benefiting that. Stop it. Trump stopped it. So, why did he do this?
>> Why did he do this?
>> Why did he do this? I think there are three reasons why he did it. I'll take you through it. First reason: you said Venezuela, not on this map. Shouldn't be relevant to this map. Turns out it's relevant to this map. Trump had plans to take out Maduro. He's got a lot of people inside his administration that see this guy as a real problem. And by the way, a problem for the region: 8 million Venezuelan refugees destabilizing the region, lots of drug export destabilizing the region. So, he had been planning to do something.
>> Was it also linked to oil?
It was relevant. They have the world's largest oil reserves. It is going to take far more years than Trump will be in office to make that meaningful. So, it sounds good from a branding perspective, and you're going to see a few hundred thousand more barrels a day, but it's it's going to be years. If you saw that um testimony by the CEO of Exxon Mobile who said, "You know, Venezuela is not investable today." And Trump was angry at him and all the other energy CEOs, like, "Thank you for saying that. We're not saying anything like him. Look at him. Look at him." Not much courage among those CEOs publicly. So, the oil is a great headline for Trump. It doesn't matter much for Trump's presidency, as we know.
>> Just to get some color on that. Is that because they just can't—they have to build up lots of infrastructure to be able to extract it?
>> Oh, yeah. And and because all their engineers are gone, most of them in the oil patch up in Canada, which has similar uh geology to it, because they've destroyed so much of their infrastructure. It's broken down because the governance structure isn't there yet. They don't have people that are capable of actually ensuring that there will be contracts that you would follow through on, engage in people that still have huge lawsuits that need to be resolved. Right? So, all of this stuff. But to get to your—I don't want to lose sight of your "why did Trump do this in Iran?"
So, the first point is, beginning of the year, Trump goes in to Venezuela, right? It is the most successful military operation you can possibly imagine. Not a single American serviceman or woman is killed. They go in, they take Maduro out. They don't kill him. They don't injure him. They bring him to a jail in Brooklyn, right here in New York. Out of burrow, but still counts. New York City, right? Extraordinary. And he's facing justice. And meanwhile, Deli Rodriguez, right? Suddenly, vice president becomes acting president. It's like, "Sir, we want to work with you guys. We don't want any of that." Right? And so, you've got a new government that is has a different trajectory, but it's basically the same regime. And they say, "Whatever you want, we will work on. You want, we'll open our oil sector. We'll open our mining sector. We'll have better rags. We'll, we'll, we'll try to improve the economy for the average Venezuelan." I mean, they're starting to become popular. In another year, if they had elections in Venezuela, it is not inconceivable that she would win in a democratic election, which is like, blows your mind, right? Whole bunch, hundreds of political prisoners, they have released. I talked to leaders all over South America. They all think this was a success. This is enormously popular among the populations in those countries because they care about security. That's what they've been voting on. Their elections have been about the economy and local security, and Venezuela has been a problem for them, right? I mean, they're exporting people causing crime. Colombia, Peru, Brazil, this Chile, right? This has been a serious issue. So, Trump Trump is hugely feeling great, successful. And now he's like, "I can do that in Iran. I can do it even bigger." That's the first reason. That's the—I said three reasons. That's the first reason.
Second reason: this is not Trump's first rodeo with the Iranians. In his first presidency, the Iranians were engaging in strikes against the Americans directly and with proxies, uh, bases in Iraq, other places also were taking on strikes against the biggest refinery in the world in Saudi Arabia. Those drone strikes, you may remember, the Saudis and the Amiradis were telling the Americans, "When are you going to do something? We need to take some action." Trump didn't want to do anything. They're getting angry, right? Finally, the end of his presidency, he orders, pretty bold move, the assassination of this incredibly charismatic military leader, Kasamsulammani, the head of the Kuds force, as it was called in Iran. And Iran was so angry, and they were going to destroy the United States. "Death to America." What do they actually do? Nothing. And then last June, Iranians are developing their ballistic missiles. They're developing their nuclear enrichment in enrichment. They're like stockpiling at higher levels, 60%, and the Israelis want to go in. Trump's providing intelligence. He doesn't want to go. Kind of dangerous. The Israelis go in. It's enormously popular. It's going well. Succeeding. Trump's like, "I want a part of that. That's successful." So, he joins in. Second time, Israel took casualties, about 100 killed, I think, in the course of that 12-day war. The United States Iran talked big, did not hit the Americans. They threw some missiles at that Alade base in Qatar, the biggest US base. They warned the Americans through Iraq before the missiles were launched. So, it was very clear the Iranians didn't want any part of that fight. So, Trump is thinking to himself, "This is going to be awesome, cuz I'm going to go in. I'm going to pull Venezuela in Iran. I know they don't want to fight me. I kill the Supreme Leader, 86 years old. He's going to die anyway. He's not that popular among the Iranian, the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, the IRGC, because they're the ones that really run the country. I'm going to have this huge military force that shows what I'm capable of doing. Then the rest of the Iranian leadership, they're going to want to work with me, just like they did." That was reason number two.
And then the most important reason, the most important reason, is that unlike Trump's first term, where he had people around him that were patriotic first and foremost to the country, and when they had disagreements with Trump, they let him know, and they leaked, and they also um were willing occasionally to do what they could to undermine an incompetent decision that would hurt the country. And we saw that whether it was with Mike Pompeo or or or Mad Dog Mattis, right? All of these people who were much more independent, strong actors. This time around, Trump has some really good adviserss, people like Marco Rubio and uh Scott Besson. He also has some staggeringly incompetent adviserss, like Pete Hexath, for example. But what they all share is that they are first and foremost loyal to the president, and they will not tell him. They won't push back. And what he hears from them is shaded towards how brilliant he is. And that makes him think that he will be more successful, even when the military thinks this is a horrible idea. And we just saw this with the reporting from the head of the joint chiefs, Dan Kaine, who clearly thinks that this is a really bad idea, and understands that the military um scenarios are super dangerous, and that the Iranians will be able to shut down the straight, and every military in the US for the last 20 30 years has gamed out how the Iranians could shut down the strait in a major conflict, and Trump hears very little of that, and he's taking away, "I'm incredible. I'm confident. I'm going to make this happen." Those are the reasons he went down.
>> And so he thought it would be, take out the Supreme Leader, then they'll negotiate. We'll get a better—we'll have a political system there, or a political leader there that is obedient to us.
>> Yep. It'll be, and it'll be, maybe it won't be a day, but it's not going to be a month.
>> And what actually happened?
>> That did not happen. What actually happened is um the Americans took out—well, the Israelis took out the Supreme Leader and also took out a lot of the military leadership that the Americans had been speaking to, which is why Trump came out and he said, "Well, a lot of the guys we're talking to are dead now, so we don't really know who to work with." He said that in the—not even if it's true, and it was, you don't want the president saying that, right? He has no filter. Um, so, which is which is one of the more interesting things about this presidency. What happened is the Iranian Ian leadership was taken out. The response was immediately what they call this mosaic situation, where they decentralized the um military decision-m to local commanders because they were worried that the highle commanders, if they were on cell phones, if they were engaging with other commanders, the Israelis would know where they were and they'd be able to assassinate them. So then suddenly, the Iranians were taking shots at other at Gulf states, at critical infrastructure, and stopping transit from the straight.
>> This is one of the questions I had: is in several interviews that Trump has done, he alludes to the fact that he thinks he's talking to the right people. Do you really believe—I know there was a meeting recently in Pakistan where they sent JD Vance in to negotiate with Iran. Do you think anyone is running Iran at the moment? Is there leadership in Iran? Is it possible to negotiate and control all of these dispersed forces um at the moment?
>> First, the honest answer is, it's impossible to know because this is right now the the the internal decision-m of Iran is extremely buttoned up. Um, and it they ain't talking to anyone uh about that.
>> But it's very easy to assess two things. First, um, that their ability to make centralized decision plans and implement them is real. So, when their biggest gas field is hit and they say, "We're going to hit you back in return," they are able to implement on that in short order. So, we've seen a number of occasions in the last five weeks where Iran has gone from statement made by the foreign ministry and by spokespeople to action taken by local commander in Iran, which implies that there is a centralized structure. We also see toll taking on the strait by individuals that are being ordered by the central Iranian government to do that. They're not operating by themselves. So, in that regard, the fact that the Iranians showed up in Islamabad in Pakistan with significant leadership—with the foreign minister, also the speaker of the parliament, but also a team of experts who had briefs on negotiating on a number of different points on the strait and on ballistic missiles and on support of proxy actors and on the nuclear issue, which proved the most divisive in those 21 hours of talks—shows that this regime is still very much functioning, despite all of the Israeli and the American efforts to say that, you know, they've done all this incredible damage. This regime is still very much in place.
>> And they couldn't get a deal. So, Trump announced that he's going to block the strait of Hamuz himself.
>> Just hours ago. I think that that is also overstated. You have 21 hours of talks led by the vice president of the United States. I assure you, if these talks were a disaster, they don't last 24 hours. Two or three, and then they're out. 21 hours means very substantive conversations on the entire range of topics that were of importance to the Americans and the Iranians. Trump did not get the outcome he wanted. Ultimately, I'm not super surprised because the Iranians feel like they have more leverage right now than the United States thinks they do. And this frustrates Trump immensely. And so, at the end, remember, he's he's calling and talking with Vance more than 10 times over the course of this entire conversation. It's a they're they're in regular contact. At that point, Trump says, "Okay, I'm blockading the street." But just before markets open on Monday, you also see reporting that, "Well, these talks that were a disaster, we're we're going to engage in further talks." So, maybe it wasn't such a disaster. Maybe what's really going on here is Trump wants to show that he still has more leverage to use against the Iranians because he's lost a lot of his leverage. He gave a speech to the American people, one speech so far about Iran. Prime time speech. In that speech, he said, "War's almost over. Two to three weeks, Max. We're done." If I'm the Iranians and I hear that, I'm like, "Great. The Americans can't take this pain anymore. They can't take it." He keeps saying, "Straits, not my problem. Straits, let them take care of it." I hear that, I'm the Iranians. Great. He can't take this economic pain. He knows he doesn't have a military solution. So, it's not that the Iranians are only hearing for Trump, "I'm going to destroy your civilization." They're seeing what he's actually doing.
>> And he seems to change his mind a lot or not follow through on some of the threats that he makes, of course.
>> And then they also will be aware that he's becoming increasingly unpopular.
>> On this issue specifically.
>> On this issue specifically. He is underwater, just like he was on Greenland, where he eventually completely did a 180. He was going to put tariffs on all the Europeans that supported Denmark. He had to take Greenland. Those things went away.
>> So, you're sat there, Euran, you're going, "Trump's own people are pressurizing him to get the hell out of here."
>> He's unpopular day by day. It's hurting his economy, his midterms, elections that are coming up. He's going to be severely hurt, and he's going to lose power in that regard. So, actually, the Iranian leaders, I mean, they might be incentivized just to wait it out.
>> That's right. Because they don't think they have to wait it out for months.
>> It's a democracy. So, he's going to be unelected at some point in a couple days.
>> They saw China China did this, right? Last year, liberation day, as as Trump called it, where he puts tariffs on all these countries. He puts these high tariffs on China. They hit back. He does it again. They hit back again. He's like, "I'm going to do export controls." They say, "Well, we're going to shut down your critical minerals." Suddenly, CEOs are going to Mara Lago. They say, "You got to deal with the Iranians or or we're going to shut down our factory lines." In red states, Trump has to back down. Right? So, they've we've already seen that when a country has leverage over Trump and they can hit him. He has the most strong military in the world, but he also has a glass jaw. He can't take a hit the way that unelected non-democracies can. The Chinese and now the Iranians over the Strait. So, what Trump is doing with announcing the blockade—and by the way, he hasn't broken the ceasefire. So, even though a blockade is an act of war, he still hasn't said, "Okay, you guys have to start hitting the Iranians again right now." So, he this is still deescalated compared to a week ago. A week ago, this looked much more dangerous than it looks today. He's saying to the Iranians, "Hey, I'm willing to cut off your source of funds. I'm willing to stop you from exporting oil and making money off of it." Same Trump that suspended those sanctions on Iran because he wanted to keep the prices down. So, that's that's what's happening right here.
>> Iran also, again, I'm trying to put myself in the the mind of, you know, the incentive structure of the Iranian leaders. They can't let it be seen or known that dropping bombs on us made us pander to you. Because if they set that precedence, then for the next couple of decades, every American leader is going to know, "Okay, if you want Iran to play ball, all you do is take out their leadership. You drop loads of bombs on everything they have, and then they come and negotiate with you and give up their nuclear weapons and everything else." So, I imagine there's an element of an Iranians now going, "If we buckle here, then for the rest of time, America are going to repeat this playbook."
>> I I hear what you're saying. I I would put it slightly differently. I I think that after the 12-day war last June, the Iranians understood that their deterrent capacity had failed. They were incapable of preventing the Americans and the Israelis from hitting them and their proxies whenever they wanted. We've talked a lot about Iran. We haven't talked at all about Lebanon. There's another war going on in Lebanon right now. The Israelis are hitting the Lebanese very hard. There's over a million displaced people in the last several weeks.
>> Why? Why? What? What is this war?
>> Well, Hezbollah, which is um a terrorist organization uh as recognized by Israel and the United States, though not everybody, continues to have the ability to engage in strikes against Israel. Nowhere close to the strength of the Israeli military, but le the Lebanese government promised to disarm them. They have not done that. And so, Hezbollah has been able to continue to engage in missile strikes, relatively small numbers of missile strikes, into the north of Israel where Israeli citizens live. There was a period of time after the October 7th um attacks by Hamas where over a 100,000 Israelis had to evacuate from their homes and their schools and the rest for like a year because Hezbollah was making their lives hell. Right? So, what Israel is now doing is they're going to take territory about 5 to 7 kilometers of Lebanese land. They're going to occupy it as a buffer zone to protect those Israeli civilians from Hezbollah being able to hit them with their weapons. That is the intention here. And so, what Iran understands is that their ability to deter Israel from hitting Hezbollah—Hezbollah at the beginning, in October 7th, Hezbollah was the most powerful non-state military in the world. No one else was close. And today, Hezbollah has shown that their leadership gets targeted and destroyed, assassinated across the board by the Israelis, that their military is incapable, their critical infrastructure can be disrupted, and that Israel can also hit Beirut, the capital of Lebanon, and no one can do anything and return to Israel.
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