Transcription
All right, what's going on everyone? So, the US, Iran, maybe Israel, maybe Lebanon ceasefire is still in place, but the first round of negotiations have fallen through. No real tangible progress, which is understandable if you saw where both sides stood going in. There were a lot of indications that the US and Iranian delegations felt that they had the upper hand or at least a significant amount of leverage over the other to where they could probably exact more concessions. When both parties go into a negotiation like that, you have to expect this outcome. Kind of a stalemate of sorts. No real tangible progress.
Now, one thing we did learn yesterday, incredible and totally unexpected, is Vice President Vance during his statements verified the best place to go for your war and conflict related news. The best source in that regard, he said, is uh truly humbling, Mr. Vice President. Thank you so much for that. And that clip is definitely not taken out of context.
Now, I think it's worth starting with uh Vice President Vance's remarks. He's the one who led the American delegation in this regard. And he put together, it was all in like a three minute session in front of the cameras. I'll put the whole thing in the description below, but his first 30 seconds really kind of summarized this is what we just did, what we failed to accomplish, and what comes next. "We have been at it now for 21 hours, and uh we've had a number of substantive discussions with the Iranians. That's the good news. The bad news is that we have not reached an agreement. And I think that's bad news for Iran much more than it's bad news for the United States of America. So we go back to the United States having not come to an agreement. We've made very clear what our red lines are, what things we're willing to accommodate them on, and what things we're not willing to accommodate them on. And uh we've made that as clear as we possibly could. And they have chosen not to accept our terms."
Pretty straightforward. And that's largely the same type of language we're hearing from the Iranians at this point. So, the uh Iranian speaker Halbe said, quote, "My colleagues on the Iranian delegation raised forward-looking initiatives, but the opposing side ultimately failed to gain the trust of the Iranian delegation in this round of negotiations."
A key component from the Iranian side that we've seen since this ceasefire was was called in place and really something a drum they've been beating for a while now is they're saying, "How can we trust you, the United States?" And the context there is that the last two times they've entered into serious negotiations with the US and at times Israel, it has led to two wars. So the first one of course the 12-day war this past June. The second time as negotiations were ongoing. Remember I think it was the Qatari uh foreign minister that said we're actually very close to seeing some arrangement here. And then you know Ham was killed like six hours later. So from the Iranian perspective, they're entering this with kind of a you need to prove to us that we can trust you mentality. And that definitely is not that is not a defeated regime, right? And we're going to get into that here in a second. But there's a lot of speculation that Iran is going into this thinking they have the upper hand. Not just that they're still alive, but they are in a position to be able to dictate terms to the United States, which probably means that we are going to have to change up our strategy if we expect any sort of changes here.
Now, the New York Times put out an article saying by early Sunday, three main sticking points remained according to two Iranian officials. So, recognize this is sourced exclusively, excuse me, from the Iranian side, right? They say the reopening of the Straight of Hormuz, the fate of nearly 900 pounds of highly enriched uranium, and Iran's demand that about 27 billion in frozen revenues held abroad be released. The United States had demanded that Iran immediately reopen the straight to all maritime traffic, but Iran refused to relinquish leverage over the critical choke point for oil tankers, saying it would do so only after a final peace deal. Iran also sought reparations for damage from six weeks of air strikes and asked for frozen oil revenues. The Americans refused these requests. Again, recognize that is exclusively coming from an Iranian source. It does line up with past reporting we've seen on these subjects.
So the re what I think is is incredible here is the reopening of the straight of Hormuz has has skyrocketed at the top of this list again and look there's like the meme out there of how do you open the straight of Hormuz it was open before the war started right this is the Iranian leverage right so we knew this was the type of thing they could do but it's it's interesting to see that move towards the top of the demands to end the war right when it of course was not on the list and it's it's kind of in a sense the pessimistic side here is that has provided Iran with another talking point with another another negotiation point that we've talked about this recently would not have been in the cards seven weeks ago. But all of a sudden now they realize that's something they can negotiate over. The frozen revenues was one that was brought up by the Iranian delegation as Vice President Vance was in route to Pakistan. There was a lot of speculation. Of course, we don't know what goes on behind the scenes. A lot of speculation that that was brought up uh with the Iranians trying to exact more concessions from the United States at the last moment. The 900 lb of highly enriched uranium, of course, pretty key component here. That is arguably the main reason that this war kicked off in the first place does not seem at this point there is any sort of resolution to that one.
Now, a good kind of assessment of where things sit right now, I think personally, comes from Denny Centrowitz over at the Atlantic Council. I'll link his uh this assessment of his in the description below. And it just what hit home for me on on this is is something we've talked about in recent videos where if what we've done to this point has not achieved the desired result, you have to do something different. All right, that's kind of the gist of this argument. Or he says, quote, "For weeks the US policy appears to have been guided by the assumption that sustained kinetic pressure had eroded Iran's position enough to force meaningful concessions, particularly on uranium enrichment and freedom of navigation in the straight of Hormuz. But negotiations are not shaped by objective reality alone. They are driven by perception. And Iran's perception is fundamentally different. From Iran's perspective, it has withstood pressure, absorbed blows, and demonstrated its capacity to retaliate across multiple arenas. The gap between American expectations and Iranian self-perception now lies at the heart of a growing strategic deadlock."
I think this is such an important aspect of this war right now because we are going to hear over and over again and I've got a video kind of in the works right now to walk through the known battle damage assessments of US strikes in Iran and it is staggering the damage that we did to their military in a very short period of time. There's really no questioning of that. So it's very easy to look at that and say they must feel defeated. They must feel uh vulnerable when there's American aircraft, manned aircraft flying over Iran in broad daylight, right? And we I think at times and right now is one of them. We we fail to understand how the other side is perceiving that. And in some ways it looks like Iran is viewing this so far as not necessarily that they are winning but they are far from having lost and they still have a lot of things that they can leverage.
Crowitz says quote, "This leaves Washington with a difficult but unavoidable conclusion. The burden of recalibrating strategy rests primarily on the United States. That does not mean conceding to Iranian demands, but it does require a more sober assessment of what pressure alone can achieve and a clearer understanding of the risks embedded in escalation. The alternative is to continue operating under an illusion of leverage, one that recent events have already begun to expose."
I think he's spot on with that. From everything we've seen at this point, it looks like a key component of the US strategy was hit Iran and hit Iran hard and kind of expect them to topple. Either the regime falls uh or they come to the negotiating table right away and say this is too much. Clearly, that didn't happen. And it's hard looking at Iran right now based off of the volume of munitions and the number of targets that we've hit across the country to say that we're, you know, three more weeks of bombing away from that. This is the time where we need to recalibrate strategy and find a different way of pursuing those objectives. That might be at the negotiating table. There's also still plenty of military means available to the United States as well.
One of those that President Trump seems somewhat interested in right now is a blockade of Iran. I I we've talked about this a little bit. I don't think blockade is the term I would use, but after all of this news of the uh of the uh of the uh kind of I don't want to say failed talks, right? Because there's entirely possible the two sides found some middle ground there. They just weren't able to agree on anything. But the the ending of the phase one of talks, President Trump posted that he still has a card to play here. And he quoted a news organization called Just News. I'm not familiar with this one, so I don't know the legitimacy of it or not, but the important part here is the president pointed to their assessment and said, "Hey, that actually is a good idea." and that idea. They said if Iran refuses to accept the final deal the United States offered Saturday, Trump could bomb Iran back to the stone ages as he vowed. Or he might just reprise his successful blockade strategy to choke an already teetering Iranian economy and ratchet up diplomatic pressure on China and India by cutting them off of their key sources of oil.
All right, so actually a bit of an update here. As we were recording, President Trump just announced, quote, "Effective immediately, the United States Navy, the finest in the world, will begin the process of blockading any and all ships trying to enter or leave the straight of Hormuz." He said he has also instructed our Navy to seek and interdict every vessel in international waters that has paid a toll to Iran. He added that there are going to be other countries involved with this blockade.
This is where I think the the term blockade is is maybe not the best use here. There is a scenario where the Marines that we already have in the region uh with there's one amphibious ready group there another one set to arrive here in the coming weeks right about right right about the time this ceasefire expires the boxer amphibious ready group should be arriving in theater those Marines would provide enough resources to a degree to be able to board Iranian vessels or sanctioned vessels very similar to what we were doing off the coast of Venezuela. I don't know that I would necessarily call that a blockade because there's a lot of implications with blockades, but that is another way that we could exert pressure that would mark a noticeable change in our strategy. If Iran is going to continue to hold the straight of Hormuz hostage and only allow ships through that they deem acceptable or even their own ships, then we start taking control on the backside. We can do that. It'd be dangerous. It'd be risky. There's a lot that comes with that. That is one way that we could try to change the calculus as we continue this ceasefire with the possibility of another round of talks coming up soon.
There's nothing verified at this point. Uh but again, with the ceasefire going for another roughly 10 days, we should expect that there's at least an attempt to get back to the negotiating table at some point between the United States and Iranian delegations.
Now, for anyone interested, the best way to support the channel is over on Substack. It's an incredible new platform. I like it. I think they're doing a really good job there. Everything is there. So these YouTube videos are there for free, ad free, sponsor free, short form videos, uh snippets from research throughout the day, podcast, interviews, all that stuff, all on Substack. The only thing we have uh a paywall for or charging for is to initiate a new thread in the community chat, which I think is a great tool because it allows all of you, incredibly smart people, most of you much much smarter than me, to add your uh two cents, kind of add resources and uh and places you're looking for information. And it's not just me seeing it, it's the entire community again over on Substack for those interested.
That's all we got for now. Thanks for watching and I'll see you all next time.