Transcription
We have breaking news and exclusive news today. Something you're not going to have heard anywhere else. I was actually scouring the news before we came on for this show just minutes ago and I still don't see anything out there.
We have information from Sulyan Ahmed, uh, who is a a podcaster and has a big presence on X, uh, does lots of shows. You may have seen some of the videos. I've been on his show a number of times. We were going to have him on our show today because he has been, as far as we know, the only Western journalist that was allowed by the Iranian side to accompany the funeral of Ali Kami across all of its locations, not just in Tehran. Uh, we had one rare except or view from Patrick Henning on our show, favorite on our show. Uh, but even he was not allowed to go everywhere. Soliman was able to go to all of the Iranian locations and into the uh Iraq and then to its final resting place today in Mashad, uh, the the birthplace of the Supreme Leader.
He told us, uh, number one, we were we were supposed to have him on the show today, but the connection was so bad we weren't able to make it happen. And I'll explain why in a minute. But the bottom line is the most important thing. He said that there is evidence and the people on the ground believe that Iran may be within 36 hours from the time he told me this this afternoon from launching a major strike against the west, whether that's the United States, against the GCC countries, or against Israel. Uh, he said they were being circumspect and weren't clear.
But he said he saw that in fact, the reason why he was not able to to come on the show today is because instead of going back to uh Tehran where he was going to get back in where they have relatively good internet, um, he was not able to get on a plane because Iran had shut down all the airspace. So they're not allowing anybody to fly anywhere. So he's actually having to get in a car and he's going to drive 11 hours to get to Tehran. But before he did, he got, he, we tried to get him on the phone and the the s the signal was so bad it was coming in and I really couldn't play that all. Uh, but there was enough for me to get one excerpt out and then we had a phone call separately where I could cont talk to him and ask him a number of other questions. We'll talk about a lot of that.
But this is a major issue. If Iran does what he's suggesting that, uh, he was told they may do in the next 36 hours, it could really change the dynamic and put President Trump in an even bigger dilemma about what he's going to do next. And either this war could explode into a new level, or it could see President Trump do what we still advise even with this knowledge and that is the walk away plan as the lowest cost way to preserve American national security and economic security.
Let me show you. First of all, uh, one of the things I asked him, I said, we we've seen the videos of all of these different stops along the the path of the funeral. And we've even talked about, you know, people are waving flags and they're show being very uh animated and appear to be angry, people are crying, etc. But I said, but that's just all what we see from, you know, long shots or whatever. What is it like on the ground? And what did you find out from talking to the people at these exercises?
Nobody's talking about the what the implications are because it, I perceive, and this is purely a guess on my part, that that this is solidifying support behind the regime like nobody could ever have imagined ever not and I definitely didn't, uh, to such that it gives their the government a lot more leeway to continue the the conflict and not give in to the west.
How do you see it?
>> No doubt, it's actually the opposite. I would say the people will be forcing the government to act in a more uh harsher manner in the sense of they believe that the government is acting too softly. And so there's a few key points that I noticed while I was here. The first key point was if you look through the streets, what you find is a huge number of red flags. So more red flags than they are yellow flags, which is the flags of the resistance. More red flags than the Iranian flags. And the red flags represent revenge. They want revenge for the assassination of the supreme leader. They want payback for what happened to him and they want justice. And they feel like till this point that hasn't happened that the Americans and the Israelis haven't felt the real repercussions of their actions. And so this has been a consistent theme. I've interviewed a large number of people and not one person believes that there should be a final deal at the moment. Every single person believes either go right back to kinetic wall as there should never have been a deal, or people believe that look, we are allowing, we're trusting. This is the more minority. I said, we're trusting the negotiation team because the negotiation team is well aware that Trump is not capable of making a deal and in reality, it's a way of bringing money in through the, you know, the ability that they had to sell all with the understanding that they're going to go back to war.
So that's the first sentiment. And the second sentiment is again, I spoke to a large number of people on the ground, people who from all walks of life and what I mean by that is rich, poor, conservative, liberal, and all of them are unequivocally, uh, basically mourning the death of the supreme leader. And so it's basically what's happened is, and I can't speak about what before because this is the first time I'm in the country, but it seems like what's happened, and it could have been in the past as well, but definitely from now, that people have almost seen the supreme leader as a representation of what Iran is. And so if you're Iranian, you support the supreme leader. And if you're Iranian, you're against the killing and the murder of him. And so what's happened is this is again, the whole everyone has coalesced together to work or speak against the the kill the killing of the supreme leader.
And the third element is this, and I don't know if this is the bit that frustrated Trump a lot because he did say, or they hate me and I'm on a list and various other things. Now, the list could be some Zionist within Washington who gave him the list. But what he would have seen is the visuals and what I did see is once again, the most consistent banner in all three events without a shadow of a doubt was about Trump. Like there was bounty on Trump. We want repercussions for Trump. Obviously, some words we can't say on YouTube, but like, you know, go after Trump. I'm choosing synonyms because, you know, we're on YouTube, but this is the feelings and the most consistent, uh, banners or posters that were out during these all three or four of these events.
>> And that is one of the biggest problems. There's a number of things I want to talk about. Gary's showing you some on the screen there. Uh, he mentioned there about the red banners. You can see those. You, not many people, and I'm being one of them, didn't really understand what those were. Um, but you see, I mean, you can see what's written on that one right there and these huge banners. These are not minor. We've shown you one, Gary's shown you a number of times, but you see that they're all over the place and you see these flags that are around and those are, uh, for revenge, is is what they're looking for. And this was not a minor thing.
One of the things he said really stood out to him in all the different places was how strong it was. And look, you got to remember that that Trump was already held in in a lot of antipathy because in his first term, he assassinated their version of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Kazim Solommani, and that was that was a huge issue because he was an enormously popular figure inside of Iran, not just an effective leader in the government, but also a very popular person. So that was caused a lot of anxiety and anger already. Uh, then because of a lot of the assassinations, uh, that Israel had done with killing a lot of, uh, in 2025, they assassinated a lot of, uh, generals, they assassinated scientists along with their family. So lots of anger had been coming up for a long time. And then now then here, when President Trump not just assassinated the senior leader, he bragged about it over and over and over. And now then you've heard President Trump here in the last few days has has said on a number of occasions, I'm marked, I'm number. He probably, you got to do is look at those videos and they literally show that on there. But one can imagine that he's probably getting lots of classified intelligence and it would not surprise anyone if that was an active mission if they wanted to do that because you see the level of anger is just so high.
Because, uh, one of the other things he said, I'll get to this here shortly. Well, actually, he mentioned it in that one part there was that it didn't matter what, uh, what strata of society people came from. Whether it was just regular folks on the street, whether it was whether it was the whether it was the elite part, uh, whether it was, uh, you know, somebody in between, middle middle class, high class, whatever. He said everybody he talked to was unified in that they felt that the attack on the supreme leader was an attack on them. That was that became synonymous. That was not the case before.
One of the things that I've, uh, lamented so much is that we took a figure that was genuinely hated by many Iranians and was a lot of form of source of division within the country and and a lot of these protests that happened in January this past earlier this year. A lot of that was legitimate. Some of it we fomented and we actually tried to stir it up and arm some of the people, etc. There's no question we did that because we bragged about it. You don't have to have classified information for that either. But it's also very clear that we piled on something that already existed. And I have some friends I have for for many many years here in Washington that were, uh, enemies of the state that that were kicked out of Iran and had been tortured in one particular case. And so they had a lot of antipathy for the Iranian government and lots of people inside the country did too. We have taken those situations and and by doing these actions and assassinating them and elevating him into martyr status. I mean, it's the equivalent of a saintthood, uh, like in the Catholic faith, the faith here. I mean, we made a saint out of him in their vernacular. And and now then you see that there's never been anything like and certainly not in my lifetime. And I'm from some sources I've heard that there has never been this level in terms of sheer numbers of people turning out for a funeral of any leader that's assassinated anywhere. And apparently the last time that the one there was was in the when the original, uh, Ayatollah Kmeni, the one that was in charge of the, uh, charge of this. Sorry, Gary, if you can silence that other mic there, that would be great. Uh, Solomon, th this one was the bigger by far. Many, many millions. And of course, it went not just into Iran, but even into Iraq. And apparently, there were many millions inside of Iraq as well. And I think I showed you earlier today, there's some interviews on some Iranian media where there was Shia pilgrims from other countries that had come there as well. And they also were feeling the same way because they were feeling unified and they feel that this is an attack by the west on their religion. And that's obviously that that's the case because if you literally assassinated them and have gone to war twice in the span of a year when we started each of these, that's a big problem.
Uh, one of the other issues he said that, um, many of the people that Sulleman told me both in that clip there, but also in some of the other subsequent phone conversation is that the people, the regular people, people you're seeing on the screen right there, they don't want a deal. A large numbers of them did not want the memorandum of understanding. They said, no, we have the leverage, let's keep fighting, let's keep using our missiles and striking Israel, striking America, hitting their bases. They were looking for payback. They wanted revenge for what had happened there and they said, "We have the advantage. Don't negotiate that away."
One of the most interesting things he said to me is that in the the original, uh, the first one, the first funeral service that they had in Tehran, he said, of course, it was this solemn thing and you know, there was lots of crying and lots of emotional thing and speeches by a lot of the people. He said the one thing that happened that he didn't expect was that there was one particular speaker that got booed. Booed at the funeral. Who do you think that might have been? President Pzeskien. Because other than Trump, he might be one of the more reviled figures right now, even more than Galibbach, who was the chief negotiator. President Pesken is getting a lot of heat inside of Iran because they think that he sold them out or that they think that he agreed to a deal that they didn't need to agree to, that they shouldn't have agreed to. He got booed. That is crazy. But that shows you the depth of of animosity and hatred that led to some other things that one of the key things that he told me. And by the way, we're still hoping that he can get to, uh, to Tehran tomorrow and and hopefully we're going to have him back on the show again live tomorrow where you can hear all this from himself plus all kinds of other things that he's discovered. I'm only going to hit a few of the key ones here because we just didn't have that much time. Uh, there was a whole lot more he discovered in this time and then of course, if anything does happen in between now and then, he'll be able to give us firsthand information on that. But, uh, one one of the things that he really knuckled down is that they are willing to suffer a lot.
Now, we had, uh, Alistair Crook on our show early in this process and and I mean like I think in the first days of this war, we had him on our show and and because he has a lot of experience in the history in in the region, he told us, listen, there is the the Iranian people, they have a cultural history thousands of years long. They have, uh, this ability to suffer and just as as a culture and then also in their religion that this the whole Shia itself, even more than just general Islam, the Shia Islam as opposed to Sunni Islam is about suffering. So it's all about that their that their people suffer and so that's kind of part of baked into their mentality and they have demonstrated and he said back in the the first few days of the war, don't expect, you know, hardship to cause these people to start falling apart. Well, that's we ignored all of that. Of course, in the West and a lot of our leaders and people and so-called experts that go on television, they told everybody all the time, hey, you know what? Um, boy, the economy is doing bad and they're they're not being able to pay their army. Uh, they're, you know, they're not they can't even have enough food. The, uh, inflation is through the roof. And probably all those were true to some extent. We some of it may have been made up. We don't know. It doesn't matter because they will suffer a lot. And now then when you add someone who has a history and a tradition and a religion of suffering and then you bake on top of that this incredible anger at being attacked. And now then because of the assassination, we have elevated Ayatollah Ali Ham to a level that he never ever would have attained had he lived. He would have remained a divisive figure. There was already, remember, the the claim was, you know, they're as weak as they've ever been in all their 47 years, right? They said that ad nauseam that that was always exaggerated, but there was always also an element of truth to it. So we took whatever weakness he may have had and just obliterated it and replaced it with concrete and now then it is it is unassalable.
And one of the other interesting things, uh, was really eye opening that, uh, Suliaman told me was he said, listen, even if they, they when they say they want to go back to war, they mean they want to go back to war. And I said, yeah, but there would be, they understand is is even though we're limited, it's not like our bombs aren't powerful. We can blow up a lot of stuff. And if we expanded, as as, uh, I think Reuters, uh, reported yesterday, that the White House is thinking, okay, those targets we've been hitting on Sir and on Kasha Island and in the trade Hormos. Those those aren't having any effect. Let's take it somewhere else. Let's go into the cities. And you remember I said earlier on our show today that that would be a war crime. You can't just punish a civilian population. Well, aside from the morality of it, it's also going to be ineffective.
Because I ask him, if we did that, when these people say that they want that they're willing to go back to full combat, they understand that there could be a severe price to pay, that they could be harmed even more, that more of them could be killed. And he said, "You know what? Everybody I talked to," and he said, "There was no exceptions to this. Everybody I talked to said, if half of our population were to die, but we were able to finally get peace and vanquish our opponents and our foes in the area, then that is something that we would be willing to do." Now, I'll concede when just talking about that theoretically is one thing, especially in the emotion of a of a moment like this where you know all your buddies there and everybody else is reveling in the same kind of emotion. It's easy to say that kind of stuff. It's a lot more difficult to do it. But here's the problem with that. If you're trying to say, "Oh, well, they don't mean it." They've lived it already. Anybody who was born from 1980 onward in the country lived through the Iran-Iraq war. Eight long years of privation. Hundreds of thousands of Iranians died in it. Uh, we we've had, uh, Professor Morandi on our show several times. He was one of them. He fought in that war too. He suffered from, uh, mustard gas attack. Many, many others in his country did as well. Many were killed by it. So they remember, they know what it means to suffer and they've been under all these sanctions. So when they say that, don't dismiss that because this is a country that has been rallied together.
I thought that there would be this rally around the flag syndrome scenario, uh, when this happened. I thought it was logical, but man, even I underestimated how just almost monolith, at least for the moment, these folks have. And I and you know, you can kind of get some idea of it because just think about the United States. Um, I mean, you can look back in history after Pearl Harbor and how that unified everybody in the country that there was a lot of people that were against war and a lot of people didn't want to go into the war, but once that happened, everybody was all in, etc. Or even in our own history of 9/11. I that I have personal memories too. I remember the the day it happened. I'll never forget that. It's literally burned into the four of my mind. And I remember the anger that I had, that everybody in the room had with, you know, you saw it across the country. They're they're ready to go after anybody. They're ready to go to war that afternoon, etc. This is even bigger because this wasn't just a symbols like it was for us, the symbols of our country, the Twin Towers, the Pentagon, uh, you know, somewhere in in, uh, Pennsylvania, etc. This was their supreme leader. This was as though not just a Pearl Harbor. This was as though somebody came into the White House and assassinated the president of the United States. Even if it was the somebody of the other party that you didn't like, that is the symbol of America. And I and I promise you the our country would probably have the same reaction here.
So, let's don't get caught up in the this habit that we have too many times of demonizing the other side and turning them into a caricature because President Trump tried that just yesterday talking about how they're thugs. You know, they're they're evil. They're wicked and whatever. And like they're just Ottomans. They're just robots. They're not really people. They are really people and they do have the same emotions that you have, the same emotions that I've had and put them in the similar situation. There's very little that they won't do.
Now, that's leading into, okay, it's one thing for the people to be angry, but it's another thing when you're talking about a war. You got it. It talks winning, losing. It's it's tactics, it's, uh, missiles, it's, uh, missile defense. It's, you know, how are you going to actually how you going to translate that anger into something that we need to worry about? Well, that means if they're willing to suffer and pay a price, then that means that they're their government is going to be willing to take more provocative actions. And they're not going to do President Trump. Let me just play this. This is what President Trump said yesterday, uh, about here, Gary. Trump, Gary, we're going to do the one that says Trump open, uh, where he was basically saying, um, about whether or not we're going to have a negotiated settlement.
>> We have many ways we can win, but we've already won militarily. They have very little. They have very little left and they want to make a deal so badly. They called a little while ago. They want to make a deal so badly. I just don't know if they're worthy of making a deal. I don't know that they're going to honor the deal. That's.
>> Now, I can't, I can't say right now with any certainty. Is President Trump just lying? Because he said they called me and they want to make a deal so badly. It could be just be a complete lie. Maybe nobody called at all and it's just a figment of his imagination or a consciously known lie. I can't say. It could be either one of those. But whatever he may have had in mind, whatever is on his mind, he's he's thinking that they're going to be begging for terms. So people unfortunately in the United States, especially among his supporters, I don't know why, but they still believe President Trump and they take him at face value, even though, gracious, a huge portion, a majority of the things that he says are proven to be completely false and untrue and just self-evidently so. This should have been one of them. But now I can tell you from, uh, this report from Suliman on the ground that it's not. There is no begging for a deal from Iran. They are doing the opposite. They are angry at their government for having made any deal so far, which means that they're unlikely to make a deal.
Now, understand the context. President Trump before they launched this attack on the 7th of July also rescinded the energy, uh, energy system, uh, that sanctions waiverss that we had. So we took that back away. We gave it that first and now we've taken that back away. As far as I've been able to ascertain, we still have not released any of the funds. President Trump said we hadn't yesterday. Of course, I can't take that at face value, but that's what he said yesterday that we hadn't given them released any of the frozen funds. So if we hadn't released the frozen funds, if we have now unchanged the the sanctions waiver released on their energy infrastructure, and if Israel is still in Lebanon, even though there's a quasi ceasefire there, there's been some skirmishes, but no big in, but Israel hasn't left anywhere. That war is not over. It's just kind of in a suspended state. So none of those things have happened that the Iranian side said they need. Those are the many basically the top three. So where do you think that they're going to be begging for anything? Well, they're not. And now then they're saying since we don't have any of those things and you now took away one of the things that you had given us, which was the sanctions relief, now then you're providing Iran every incentive to go further. And that's one of the things that they're doing.
Uh, let me see, let me show you one of this map that I have here, uh, to kind of point this out because one of the other things that was really, uh, important that he had mentioned was the, if I'm not going to find it very good, I'll show this anyway because it's not that great. The the Bab al-Mandab. Um, this is the, if you haven't seen it, uh, everybody's aware of the, uh, the Strait of Hormuz, obviously, but there's also the Bab al-Mandab and that is, uh, this area down here. Sorry for the map here, uh, in the Red Sea and this is this small area here. It's a lot smaller than the Strait of Hormuz and he said that there is a lot of talk to get together with the, uh, with the, sorry about that, to get together with the, uh, uh, Yemeni people, they call them Ansar al-Islam, that's the what we call the Houthis, is that there was a lot of conversation and and discussion about whether they would get together, the Iranian government and the the Houthis, we together say, we're going to have a unified section and we're also going to close down the the Bab al-Mandab and they may even attack, uh, some of the Saudi oil that comes across that pipeline. They both, they have an oil and a gas pipeline that goes across their country that allows them to to transit oil out that way. That's one of the reasons why the Saudi. Oh, thank you, Carrie. You see they can go up north through the Suez Canal or south through the Bab al-Mandab. And if the Bab al-Mandab is closed down, then that's going to require, uh, Saudi Arabia's oil to go north up through the Suez Canal, if that's not also taken under fire. And so if you shut off an additional, I think it's three to four million barrels per day on that and you completely shut down the Strait of Hormuz, which is apparently on the table right now. It's still cut. It's still going. I think there's 25 vessels, uh, that went through even today. Normally it was between 100 and 130. So it's still way below normal. It's not even a third. It's not even a quarter. But it's something. But if they shut it down completely, then we're going to be back to square one, right where we were before the the, uh, MOU was signed. So Iran has apparently more cards to play. And so and they're also saying whatever they're apparently going to do tonight, they're saying we're tired of just this little you do this, we do that. President Trump bragged about, hey, I did 20 to one and if they don't behave, we're going to do more. Well, the Iranians are side are saying, you know, two can play at that game. And so you you start blowing stuff up like this, a lot of things can change.
And listen, um, the reason why Sulleman is not able to be with us today is because he couldn't take his flight to get to where he had service because the air, uh, service had been shut down because they may be doing something on top of that. Well, before, uh, before we even got off the phone, uh, there is being reports by Al-Jazeera of additional strikes against Iran. Now, curiously, I saw, uh, a US claim that that was not us, that we're not doing that. But here's these, uh, reports of attacks, uh, in in Iran, uh, in the, let's see, the southern Kerman province, Baluchistan province, which has become a really important place. So, it's across from the Gulf of Oman and then there's also in Bandar Abbas, which has already been hit a couple of times. These are, you see this is, you see 10 minutes ago, 35 minutes ago before we came on the air, that's when I captured these here. So, apparently there's more going on right now.
There's also can some concern that if you don't get the Hormuz open quick and this is also this just, uh, now less than an hour ago, uh, some of the concern is that one of these experts, Al-Jazeera query from the Middle East has said there could be up to 45 million people at risk of hunger because of these disruptions on the international trade and we've already talked to you about that too, especially some in, uh, in Africa and Asia, some places that really have relied on the fertilizers that are not coming out and we're talking now months, which, uh, a lot of that is either none or a little bit and that's once you miss the planning season, that's a, it's going to be a big problem. But just to show you the scale of what's, look at that paragraph right above the blue one here. This expert says, we need to sort out Iran's nuclear program, freedom of navigation in the Strait of Hormuz, Iran's interference in the region, Israeli attacks on Palestine, Lebanese and Syrians need to end that, and we also need to look at US behavior in the region. I, I mean, all we have to do is get everything solved and then everything will be fine. That just shows you how big of an issue it is.
And now then on top of that, whatever difficulty we had before the 7th of January of July when we started these shots here is now enormously complicated. On top of that, because we could have gotten some of these things solved, but I still was arguing that we should have done in the walk away plan. But still and without going back into conflict. These people that are so angry and have all their red flags and whatever they wanted revenge, they may be angry on the day and especially during the emotion of the ceremony itself, that can cool down over time unless unless we keep it stirred up. So, they were already upset at their their government for making this deal. And then now here comes President Trump boasting about how he's going to do a 20 to one shot because according to the Iranian side, the way that they view their, uh, I don't have that one handy. The the way that they view the the memorandum of understanding, the paragraph 5, we talked about this earlier today. They interpret that as saying that they had in that's actually what it says that the Iranian side had administrative control even during the 60-day and they get to determine the effective way to keep the strait open. Now, what was left to interpretation is what happens if their method isn't followed. That wasn't addressed in there. So they answered it themselves. We didn't like that answer. And so we chose to use military power instead of if Iran hit three ships, instead of doing something commensurate with maybe taking out three boats and saying, "All right, look, that's all we need to do. Just just go back to it." We didn't even attempt to do that because President Trump doesn't think in those kinds of terms logically, rationally, in foreign policy-wise, diplomacy that doesn't exist. He his mind doesn't work like that. His mind works that I tell you what to do, you do it. I take, you give. What are your questions? That's how he likes to operate. And so he's so filled with arrogance and and pompous, uh, presumption that he said, "How dare you do something that I don't like? I'm going to kill you now and I'm going to blow up a bunch of people and kill a bunch of your troops and I'm going to do 20 times bigger. And if you do something in return, we're going to go 20 times on top of that."
Yeah, thanks for that. That's Gary right there. Hell, you see that upon the side of the MOU, the Islamic Republic of Iran will make arrangements using its best efforts for the safe passage of commercial vessels. That's what it was. Uh, and they would charge no tolls for 60 days, but it said that they would use their efforts for the safe passage. They got to determine that. We left that open. We didn't specify. We didn't say it had to be this, it couldn't be that. We just signed it. President Trump himself did that. And now then he wanted to change the terms. He didn't like those terms, so he wanted to go back. And now we have what we have. And so instead of recognizing an error that we had made that President Trump had made in signing that deal and trying to get that solved, instead he goes in big with a sledgehammer to try and do something that needed, uh, maybe a little love tap because he doesn't know nuance.
Now Iran has said, "Okay, this is this is provided ammunition to all those angry people I just told you because now they're they're looking at their government saying, 'See, I told you it was a mistake. President Trump can't be trusted.' They said that before. They said that many times. They said he can't be trusted. Why are you not getting it? Look at what he's done now. He's blown up more of our people and he's gone back to shooting people. It's time for us to do something different." And that is why the risk if something could happen in the next 36 hours, something overnight. Of course, here is again, this is what we're bragging about earlier today because we blew up a bunch of stuff. Um, nobody knows if this has anything to do with their war effort, but, uh, you know, makes good video and we claim that it does. It's it's more punitive than anything else with President Trump just in anger striking out.
Well, the Iranian side is saying to do some stuff and not just retaliate for something else, but to go bigger on the against the US than they did against us here. And you can imagine where that's going to lead. It's not going to solve any problems. But if the Iranian people genuinely are willing to make the sacrifice and to suffer, they'll suffer a lot more than this. It's interesting also Suliman told me, uh, that because of the funeral and the focus on that, he said hardly anybody he knew even was a that anybody that he interviewed was even aware that there had been the first round of this. It was not until this last round, the one you're seeing here on the screen, that they finally apparently became aware of it and that made them really angry. So if it gets expanded into cities like Reuters was reporting earlier today or yesterday, maybe coming later on, that's just going to add to their anger and their their sense that they're going to suffer.
I asked Sullean because he lives in the UK right now. I said, "Listen, you know British history and you know the the Battle of Britain where in the first of World War II, the Germans tried to bomb London out of the war and they tried to basically be all these terror bombings and stuff to to destroy the morale of the British people, make them feel isolated and, you know, leave the war and of course, is now famous, the exact opposite happened and it solidified the British people and made them willing to suffer anything." And then you had Winston Churchill come and said, you know, we will suffer on the beaches. We will, you know, all that famous speech that he had there and that galvanized the British population. There's no price they wouldn't have paid. And we know how that worked out. There is no reason to think that just because these are Persians and that we don't like a lot of brown people in our country, just being honest, and and President Trump obviously has contempt for them based on his description of them yesterday about how they're scum and all this kind of stuff, that's how he views them. So he doesn't care if he kills a bunch of them because to him they're not even basically they're subhuman. But they care and they are not going to be bullied the way that he has seen in the past. Not like the Syrians were, not like the Venezuelans were, not not like even the Iranians were in in the first round is in 2025. Those days are over. And and I fear we may find out. So we'll see.
Again, this is Sleiman reporting what he had talked to people on the ground. He didn't have an official statement from anybody in in the Iranian government. Uh, so it's it's anecdotal information. We'll have to see what happens. But, uh, based on the people he talked to, there is a real possibility that that could happen. And then the question that I ask every time, and then what what is President Trump going to do now that he's opened this genie bottle and he's starting this potential not just tit for tat, but but strike more potent, counter strike more potent, return strike. And then what what are you going to do? If the Iranians don't just do something commensurate, but they do something like Trump did and go above and beyond that. We can see from what I'm told that the first round of strikes, we shot 80 targets. This last one was about a hundred. So we've already amped it up from the last time. So now the question, we're going to wait to find out whether it's something in the next 36 hours that Soliam hurt or something different. It's pretty unlikely that Iran is not going to do something. Especially with all of that anger that you've seen built up there. They're going to be under pressure.
That was the the last thing I'll tell you is that that was one of the thing that stood out to him. He says he believes that now the issue is not whether or not the government can impose something on the people, but he said whether the people are going to impose something on the government that they don't want to do because he said he thinks that the people are going to push them into more aggressive actions. And if that sounds familiar, let's talk about what may be happening in in Russia right now. Putting more pressure on Putin to go more, not to back off, but to go more. This kind of dynamic we have created in both of these places and it may one day burn back on our own head. We'll wait and see how it's going to work out. I'm still going to hope for the walk away plan because that is probably the only thing that can keep that from happening that could mollify that angry crowd to at least back down. May not do anything for him personally, uh, because, uh, let's see if, yeah, this is the, uh, this is also from just before we came on the air here. This is the top commander vows retribution for the martyr leader's killer sooner or later. That that simple message is what they put down there. They published this right before we came on the air here, validating the likelihood of what Suliman is reporting. So don't think this is going to go anywhere anytime soon, but you I can nearly guarantee you this is not going to go well for us and we are not going to come out of this as a victor. We have already lost. The only question remains, how deep is the loss going to be? We'll keep following this for you and bring you up any new information as it happens. Otherwise, we'll see you on the next episode of the Daniel Davis Deep Dive. You know, we don't have sponsors because we hate to hit you over the head with ads. I don't like them. So, show a little love back. Subscribe, like, and send this to somebody you care about.