Transcription
Iran is shifting from survival to ambition. Let me say that again. Iran is shifting from survival to ambition. That is what you are seeing over the last several weeks. That's what you're seeing in these two items, and this is going to go on.
What I mean by ambition is that, uh, Iran is now heading bit by bit on the trajectory of something I told you about months ago in April, in this New York Times piece, uh, published on April 4th, on a trajectory to become the dominant state in the Persian Gulf. This will ultimately, over the next year or so, not right away, become the fourth center of world power. And it is now moving on that trajectory bit by bit.
Just today, before we got on, uh, IRGC has just put out a post where they've, uh, announced a new "resistance security belt." So, if you look this up, Mario, I'm, I'm surprised you don't already have it on your feed, 'cause you're so on top of it.
>> I just woke up.
>> Well, that's, that's true. I, I, and I could tell you are, uh, you wake up fast. Uh, a new resistance security belt, where they're defining an axis of resistance. So, this is what I have been explaining. When you, when I talk about the rise, and I don't mean this will happen overnight, again. People, people can straw man this, but that's not what I'm saying, and I've been very clear about this. This will happen over a course of 12-18 months, where Iran is, is on the trajectory to become the, uh, hegemon in the Persian Gulf.
What does that mean? That means the dominant power where it's, uh, not just worried about its survival, but it's establishing a sphere of influence. A sphere of influence. And that is what hegemons look like. The United States is not just powerful, it has a sphere of influence. It's the regional hegemon in the Western Hemisphere, the dominant power there. China is on the verge of becoming the dominant power in Asia, and it's establishing a sphere of influence bit by bit. Russia, that's number three, that's the third world center of power, is establishing a sphere of influence, uh, widening it in Ukraine and Eastern Europe. That's what it means to be a world power center. Uh, here, it's establishing a sphere of influence and then have global impact with that influence.
Well, that is what you are seeing, and the bits, uh, that you're just reporting this morning, these are just the latest tidbits in what has been happening for really quite some time now, and the world's just, uh, now starting to appreciate there has been a shift. This is not a shift to the end that everybody wants it to be. This is a shift to the middle game that I've been explaining for some time, and in that middle game, Iran is spreading its wings. It's, uh, becoming more ambitious, defining a sphere of influence, and that's what happened last week when, uh, in response to relatively minor attacks by the US Navy, uh, Iran upped the ante. It didn't do tit-for-tat, it upped the ante on Kuwait and, uh, Bahrain. That was in line with establishing a sphere of influence to encourage those states to push American bases out of their territory. That's what sphere of influence looks like.
Also, at almost the exactly the same time, Mario, Iran threatened Israel's homeland. You attack Hezbollah's key stronghold in Beirut, and Iran, not Hezbollah, Iran is going to attack Israel's homeland. Well, Israel did that. Iran carried out its threat. And, and what you see is Iran this morning is not, even though you could say, "Well, okay, they, this was just all one-offs." No, these are patterns. This is a pattern, Mario. And what you have just read to me this morning are the new baby steps. They're relatively small. However, they're part of a pattern, and they all point in the same direction. And it's the direction I've been telling you about for some time, but now it's actually happening.
So, we can see that it's, it's not just verifying a, you know, a whiteboard argument here. It's, you're seeing in real time what it looks like to see the emergence of a hegemon, where it goes from survival to ambition, and then part of the big part of that ambition is a sphere of influence. And that is beyond the territory of the state itself. So, that is what we are witnessing, and this is going to go on, Mario, this middle game well through the summer here.
So, this means a couple of big things, Mario. And I know you don't want to hear this, but it's, we've been talking about this for a long time. Number one, it means that crisis in the world's economy that, that you've also been talking about with so many brilliant experts here. That's def-, that's coming. I mean, it's almost, it's almost a lock at this point. And it's not just because of the oil inventories drawing down as, as your brilliant, you have a lot of people talking about this on your platform, I know, 'cause I, I've been at it. I love it. You did such a great job. But there's a bigger issue here beyond the tactics of this, which is this is in Iran's interest.
See, Iran, if it's going to emerge in this way, is going to want to further weaken America's position. Well, how? And, and that means weaken America, weaken America's economy. That means weaken the Gulf states because what Iran wants is that, um, for that world crisis to shift toward a, a big pressure to withdraw American forces. I believe Donald Trump knows that. That's why he's already announced he's keeping the naval blockade through, uh, Labor Day. So, notice that he's already, he's not, he's not admitting it, but he's already behaving as if he knows what's coming. And what's coming is there's, uh, going to be, uh, the that crisis is going to emerge, and as it emerges, the political cons, or geopolitical consequences, which is my area, is going to, um, uh, create not just generalized bargaining leverage for Iran in some deal. No, this deal's not coming. What's coming is Iran as the, uh, rising hegemon in the Persian Gulf. And then there's even more steps beyond that, Mario.
So, this, this helps. Once you have the right framework, Mario, you can help to see these are not isolated pieces randomly happening. There is a pattern that is emerging that we can see bit by bit, and, and, and Iran is just on a steady course in this direction.
>> So, I, I, um, wrote a few notes. I want to ask you. You were talking about how whenever the US attacks Iran or attacks Iranian ships in the Strait of Hormuz, Iran retaliates. I think when the US struck the Iranian radars that are used to spot the ships. So, what's happening is the US trying to escort ships through or guide ships through the Strait of Hormuz. And when Iran intercepts them, the US tries the Iranian radars. What Iran does is responds in the one to 1.5 to one ratio they warned about. For every attack, they got to respond disproportionately on a 1.5 to one ratio. So, they attack Kuwait and Bahrain, funny enough, not the UAE. And that happened twice. And then they made a warning to Israel. And when Israel issued the evacuation orders to Beirut, Dahiyeh in Beirut, Iran was actually moving the missile launchers in place to actually attack Israel based on reports I've received. And that's why Trump called Netanyahu. And then what we saw was Israel wanted to test that, that limit, that line. They struck one building, didn't, didn't even level the building, seemed like an assassination strike. They struck one building in Dahiyeh. Iran retaliated disproportionately as they warned. And then Israel responded. Is it fair to say that Iran is now trying to establish escalation dominance, and do you think they are succeeding?
>> Oh, absolutely. Yes. The, the phrase escalation dominance here really doesn't apply very well to the United States and Israel. It applies fully to Iran's strategy. So, what Iran is, is doing, and this started literally day one of the war, Mario, is then when on February 28th, when the bombs hit targets, leaders killed, the supreme leader killed, Iran responded back with a horizontal escalation campaign that caught the world by surprise. It shouldn't have caught the world by surprise. It's tragic, but it's predictable. But it did catch the world by surprise. And then what that has done over time is it is morphing into not just a random set of attacks, but a coordinated policy, an orchestrated policy that's in line with geopolitical objectives.
So, recall we, we talk about strategy, means, ends, goal, and recall that we have been, uh, you know, sort of strongly criticizing the Trump administration and Israel for having disconnects between means and goals. Well, Iran is the opposite case. Iran is using, um, means to solidify their goals and doing so in a pretty tight and orchestrated way, where they are establishing escalation dominance. So, whereas Donald Trump will just put out a post, "I have escalation dominance, I am in control." That's not what Iran is putting out some posts and rhetoric. I don't want to, uh, say that, 'cause there's rhetoric that really does solidify this, but they're just not. This isn't just rhetoric or victory happy talk by Iran. They're establishing this in their behavior bit by bit, and now it's credible. Who do we, who do we most listen to right now? A Donald Trump post that, uh, the deal is two or three days away, or a threat opposed by Iran that there's a threat? Right now, it's Iran we pay the most attention to.
>> Yeah. Yeah, surprising. It's been like this for a few weeks. Never thought that would come. Um, so, if we put the, the Apache helicopter being shot down and the infiltration in Israel, how concerning are these? 'Cause, you know, they all look like, and we, I bring it up all the time in the interviews, they all look like, uh, you know, the escalation trap in motion.
>> Oh, for sure.
>> How do we, what are the red lines? When do we know that Iran might have gone too far and dragged the US back into the war, or dragged Israel, at least gotten into a war with Israel?
>> Uh, yeah, so, so what we, uh, one of the things we might hope, uh, Mario, is that Iran will overreach. That Iran will, uh, and, and this, and this happened. So, let me just, the clearest example of an overreach, let's get out of the gulfs for a moment, is Putin. So, Putin from 1999 until 2021 had a clear incremental strategy to gain power in Ukraine, to gain power in with Georgia, exert pressure on the Baltics, and it was actually working to his advantage. And then what did Putin do in 2022? He overreached. So, that's when he launched that, what was supposed to be, in his mind, a six-day war to take Kyiv. Well, that was Putin's escalation trap. So, I'm going to talk about that in more. I'll have a post on that coming out. So, Putin overreached. You see what I mean? Well, we could hope Iran would overreach, but the idea that we're going to count on Iran overreaching, and that's going to bail us out, I think this is where we need to be careful, Mario, because it took, it was over 20 years that Putin was on a steady pace before he overreached. Now, Iran, of course, could overreach tomorrow. I, I'm not saying. And what would overreach look like? What overreach for Iran would look like is taking, say, 25,000 troops and trying to attack into areas of Kuwait. Now,