transcript

Speaker 1:
[00:07] You're listening to American Power. I'm your host, Nat Towsen, stand-up comedian, speechwriter, other kind of writer, and most importantly, podcast host. With me is our panel of experts. Up first, our military expert, Chad Scott.

Speaker 2:
[00:21] Hey, how's it going, everyone? Former US Army officer with more than 16 years of experience in combat, command and multinational military planning. I've had deployments to South Korea, Iraq, in service of NATO and Europe, and Hopkins grad.

Speaker 1:
[00:37] Chad, thanks so much for being here. And I would also like to introduce our second expert, our expert on energy. You know him as Mr. Global. Please welcome Matt Randolph.

Speaker 3:
[00:47] Thanks, Nat. Globally recognized oil and gas expert, an energy expert, and Forbes energy contributor. Thanks for having me.

Speaker 1:
[00:55] So as our focus right here on this podcast is the intersection of how power is amassed in America, in both the energy sector and the military sector. A lot of that is in the news lately. Where are we at right now militarily, March 30th, 2026?

Speaker 2:
[01:13] Well, currently we're kind of at this weird intersection of not really understanding what we're going to be doing versus what we have already done. Clearly, the United States showed extraordinary military power by being able to essentially disable the entirety of Iran's Navy, their air defenses, their air power. So from, for all intents and purposes, we control the military aspects of what Iran can do within their country. The problem is, as we're seeing in the news is we are very, very much struggling to control what is happening in the Strait of Hormuz. And that means that obviously trade energy prices, everything like that are going up. And as of right now, we're seeing this, this potential push for a resolution of that by using troops on ground. That is a highly volatile situation. There's a lot of potential political toxicity and certainly economic toxicity, as I'm sure Matt can attest to in the oil markets with having a boots on ground approach. The United States is very capable of, of conducting the kind of operations necessary, but it's not going to be easy. It's not going to be without casualties. And the concern right now is what does that look like? Because as with everything in this campaign, it's quite vague. We're getting a lot of vagueness. We don't necessarily know what the outcomes are. The goals keep shifting and evolving. Currently the goal is from Trump is opening the Strait of Hormuz. But as we saw today from Secretary Rubio, he said is disabling their ballistic missiles, dismantling their nuclear program.

Speaker 1:
[02:53] And if I could just jump in as a news-watching simpleton myself, when I hear that the goal of the war is to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, part of my mind immediately goes, wasn't that a direct consequence of starting the war?

Speaker 2:
[03:08] Yeah, you're right.

Speaker 1:
[03:09] You can't slip one over me that quickly, because I have to feel like that wasn't the original point of this war, if it was caused by the war.

Speaker 2:
[03:16] No, and you're 100% right, because we're trying to solve a problem we created.

Speaker 1:
[03:22] We should put that on the money.

Speaker 2:
[03:24] Yeah. Solving problems we created. The US dollar, but no, it's like...

Speaker 1:
[03:30] When he adds his signature, I think we can do a few more. That's what we're at.

Speaker 2:
[03:34] But it's really just, we are trying to escalate our way out of this militarily, but without the understanding that every escalation you make creates another set of problems. And that is what we're seeing now is as we attack Iran, they never planned for the Strait of Hormuz to be closed, which is absolutely wild to me, that they completely glossed over that, because every planner in the history of the world of planning on when it comes to Iran planned for this, and they just did not. And so we created the problem of the Strait of Hormuz closing, and not just for us, for the whole world. And so everyone's frustrated with us. And if we continue to escalate, we may solve the Hormuz problem, but we might end up causing more problems elsewhere, such as unfortunately, maybe more service members coming home in body bags, or perhaps the Houthis react in the Bab-Am-End-Up Strait, which is in the Red Sea, and that closes.

Speaker 1:
[04:33] And again, for no targetable reason.

Speaker 2:
[04:35] Yeah, you're exactly right, though.

Speaker 1:
[04:36] And we're not really being presented with not only a strategy, but a trajectory. But I wanted to jump in for a second, because you're talking about even if the Strait of Hormuz is re-open, right? I was hoping, Matt, you could talk a little bit about what is the impact currently, and then also sort of the delayed impact that we're going to experience, even if the Strait were opened tomorrow morning.

Speaker 3:
[05:01] As I've been saying from the beginning of this deal, this is all about time, right? The longer it's closed, the worse it is, and the longer we're going to suffer down the road. If it was to open up right now, you would see oil prices would fall, gas prices would fall, but they certainly wouldn't go back to pre-war levels. Probably see a baseline oil price $80 to $85, gas baseline $350, and it would stay there for quite a while because we have to replace everything we've lost over the last month. That would mean inflation would creep up, you know, food is going to get more expensive. We also have a loss of fertilizer, which is going to have a huge impact on food prices three, four, six months from now that we're going to start seeing. So the quicker we get out, the less pain we're going to feel down the road.

Speaker 1:
[05:54] Correct me if I'm wrong, but part of the reason we're experiencing, for example, an increase in food prices is not because we're purchasing oil from Iran, but because shipping oil is being purchased from Iran, which impacts the price of shipping food to America, and other goods to America, I should say.

Speaker 3:
[06:11] Yeah, all goods. Shipping fuel in Singapore is at record highs. It broke the record in 2022. And in addition to that, with really, really high shipping fuel prices, you get a lot of delays in delivery of goods because ships slow way down because they're literally burning through millions of dollars worth of fuel if they don't slow down. So, you get... But in addition to that, I think it's 30% of the fertilizer in Urea comes through the Strait of Hormuz, and that's going to have a huge impact on crop yields in the future. There's literally going to be less food in the world now because of this. And that's best case scenario. That's if this doesn't escalate any farther at all.

Speaker 1:
[06:55] Right. It's not as if we can suddenly compensate production to make up for the amount of time that we have not been shipping goods. And that's if, as we're discussing, the Strait were to be opened right now with no future consequences. And it doesn't exactly sound to me like the Trump administration is going to fold this up neatly in the next week. What are we looking at as potential, as greater consequences down the road?

Speaker 3:
[07:20] So just to go back, if the Strait opens today, it's effectively still closed. There's over 2000 ships sitting in the Strait of Hormuz that need to be refueled before they can leave. Like, it'll probably take a month to just clear out the Strait once it's open. So, you know, it's not like they open the door and everyone just leaves and goes to where they're going. These sailors on these ships have been sitting on these ships for now for a month. They don't have food, they don't have water, they're low on fuel. They certainly can't get to their destination, right? I think there's seven or eight fueling places in the Persian Gulf, but thousands of ships. And it can take up to 24 hours to refuel one of these ships. So even if it opens today, it's effectively not fully open for a month. Now, moving forward with the Houthis getting involved, what this has done, it has expanded the geographic area of the war. Yemen is in the southwest corner of Saudi Arabia, all the way on the other side, away from Iran. And they've already attacked Israel, stated that they are likely to close the Bab el-Mendeb Strait, which would effectively be another massive choke point, making it nearly twice as bad as the Strait of Hormuz, because we're currently bypassing the Strait with about 5 million barrels of oil a day through Saudi Arabia's east-west pipeline and the Farajah pipeline. If you close the Strait of Hormuz, the Bab el-Mendeb Strait, now everything has to go through the Suez Canal. Guess what doesn't fit through the Suez Canal?

Speaker 1:
[08:58] Oh, I know this one. It's a big boat at a 45-degree angle, right?

Speaker 3:
[09:04] A very large crude tanker, a VLCC, the largest tankers. They're too deep in the water. Well, they call it the draft. They could pass, but they could only be partially loaded. And so there's a lot of those in the Red Sea right now that would have to figure out some way to offload oil or just sit there because they can't get through the Strait of Hormuz. Now, all the other tankers and ships can't. But but having to route through the or I mean, the Suez Canal, having to route through the Suez Canal, adds weeks to delivery as well, depending on where they're going. There's a reason they go through the the Babel Mandab Strait. It's faster.

Speaker 1:
[09:45] So adds weeks and then reduces some capacity as well.

Speaker 3:
[09:48] You're saying adds weeks will probably reduce capacity through the Red Sea by a couple of million barrels a day over what they have in it right now. So that's why oil prices today jumped to 105. You know, they've kind of languished in the low to mid 90s here for a few weeks, even dropped into 80s a couple of times today. They hit 105. That's because the Houthis entered the war. Trump said, we're thinking about putting troops on the ground and hitting Karg Island of all places. He wants to take over Iran's oil. The second those troops' feet hit the ground, anywhere east of the halfway point through the Persian Gulf, that Bab al-Mendeb Strait will be closed.

Speaker 1:
[10:31] Okay, so not to go full doomer mode, but let's imagine, you know, we're prepping, we're managing for this reality. Let's say they don't get the Strait of Hormuz opened, then the Bab al-Mendeb Strait is closed. What does that look like for us? Like if that happens in the foreseeable future, I'm saying, you know, if this troops surge, if this troops on putting troops on the ground leads to closing the Strait, and now we're getting right to the Suez Canal, let's say this happens this week. What does that look like for the reality of the energy market and for prices on everything? Like the economic impacts of that?

Speaker 3:
[11:09] Well, there's good news and there's bad news. So the bad news is that I think it's 12% of all global trade goes through that strait and the Suez Canal and through the Red Sea. And that's not just oil, that's everything, all global trade, right? So the bad news is, you know, some people are predicting $200 oil prices. I know the governments even have plans for it. I don't know that that happens. Or if it does, maybe it's for a day, you get like a quick spike and then it comes back down. 150 oil, easy. We hit 150 oil easy. The price of everything skyrockets. The good news, I guess if you could call it good news, is prices would come back down fairly fast when the global economy collapsed and we started experiencing deflation. So if that's good news, if there's any silver lining, it's once the global economy collapses, stuff will get cheaper.

Speaker 1:
[12:06] So the good news involves global economic collapse. Yes, I actually might have called that one the worst of the two news.

Speaker 3:
[12:14] Well, that's the only way you get lower prices in this deal, right?

Speaker 1:
[12:17] So that's more of what we would call a silver lining. Matt, I don't know. Yeah, I don't know if I would consider that to be 100 percent. Well, down the line, you did. When you framed it as good news and bad news, I was really hoping for a little uplifting antecedent.

Speaker 3:
[12:32] Well, I think what I mean by the good news is if that happened, there has to be an end to the war coming. Like, there's just no way it can't end really quick. And you likely see a global coalition of forces. Maybe you can ask Chad about that, but move in at that point. Because now you're talking about global economic collapse. And no matter how much our allies currently hate Donald Trump and are laughing at him and not helping him in any way because he got himself in this mess and it just makes him look bad, at that point, they would have to do something.

Speaker 1:
[13:02] Chad, do you want to jump in there and speculate as to what the military approach might be at that point?

Speaker 2:
[13:08] Well, at that point, it's going to stretch the military's capabilities. And whether the Trump administration wants to or not, they would essentially have to start deploying far more troops because then it becomes a security problem, not only with dealing with the Strait of Hormuz, but also dealing with the Yemen aspect, which is where the Houthis operate out of. In 2024, when we saw the Houthis close the Red Sea, close the Bab al-Mindab Strait, we saw a 50% drop in trade, and that hit every aspect of trade across the globe. It was a small shock in time because the US military was able to hyper-focus on that specific problem and solve it. But I could say solve it, but when you say solve it, quote unquote, it means we just basically killed a bunch of Houthis until they gave up. And this time around, though, the United States is very focused on Iran. There's this potential for Karg Island or any of the others, some of the other islands that may be an amphibious assault or airborne assault. If we have to now stretch ourselves to deal with the Houthis on the other side of the Middle East, where we can, so we can secure the Baobab and the Strait, I'm concerned that the current leadership within the Department of Defense, because I'm not going to call it the Department of War, that annoys me to my core, the Department of Defense, they don't, I don't think they have the plans to be able to deal with this on a two front approach outside of just, let's just keep blowing everything up. And as we've seen when it comes to some of these, quote unquote proxy organizations or terrorist organizations or others that aren't a part of the state apparatus for conducting war, they're very difficult to control, they're very difficult to manage. And so when that happens, we're going to see a United States trying to prioritize the Karg Island, the Iranian situation, the Yemen situation. And this assumes no one else activates. We have Shia militias in Iraq that have no problem activating. In fact, they have already started some of those, some of those attacks, very minor attacks on US infrastructure within the country of Iraq. And with that, that was that video of that Black Hawk, where the Black Hawk was struck by, it was a Medevac Black Hawk, was struck by a drone. That was a Iraqi Shia militia that did that. So they are out there, and Iran is doing something very smart. They're taking a phased approach, and this is not me rooting for Iran, and I have no love laws for the farmer Ayatollah, but they are taking a phased approach to this war. Originally, we had wondered, why aren't they just throwing everything in the kitchen sink at this so they can try to get the advantage? They calculated correctly that the United States and Israel combined is just far too powerful for them to go toe to toe with them. So what they did was they're, as Matt said, their goal is to stretch time and make it politically toxic and economically toxic. Basically, using a playbook of how to defeat the United States that's been around for 70 years. The Koreans did it, the Viet Cong did it in the Vietnam War, and then the Taliban did it in Afghanistan. And they're using the same exact approach. And we have learned nothing. And now we're once again showing that we are being stretched thin. And I don't know if we're going to be able to, even with all of our conventional power, our military might, bring enough security to the Strait of Hormuz that companies want to ship through.

Speaker 1:
[16:56] Well, on that note, I think it's time that we do a wars check. And now I'm imagining a sound effect where someone says wars check. War check. It can be hard to keep up in this modern world. You're running late to work. Oh, I spilled coffee down my sleeve. I overdressed because it was cold yesterday. I thought it was spring, and then it got cold again. Oh, how many wars are we in? It can be so hard to keep track with everything else going on in the world. Chad, can you just remind me how many countries we're currently taking military action against or restricting the borders of or otherwise fighting a war in?

Speaker 2:
[17:31] I mean, there's this huge list, obviously, this US-Israel war with Iran. There's also the spillover fronts there. So technically, if we're going by the spillover fronts, we're striking potential Shia militias in places like Iraq, Yemen. This war, because of what US caused, has spilled over to tons of countries. Everything from Cyprus to Oman, Bahrain, Qatar, just a myriad of, Saudi Arabia, a myriad of countries that, because of this, now are being drawn in. It's not that we're necessarily fighting there, but there is now operations taking place because Iran has decided to shoot missiles. On top of that, we're still supporting Ukraine, albeit not as much, and obviously that's not something we're directly involved in, but that is still part of the calculus, because as we send munitions, whether it's missiles, defensive weapons, to Ukraine as per agreed through all those deals we did, those get taken away from our assets for the Middle East. And so now we're having to prioritize, well, how much does Ukraine get versus how much do we use ourselves? Some of the more minor ones, we're still advising and providing intelligence on Sudan's civil war, part of Myanmar's civil war as well. There's providing several insurgencies across seven countries in the Sahel region. So if you don't know what the Sahel region is, it's kind of the central band of Africa that runs along the top. And it includes like everything from Somalia to Ethiopia and just across the Chad is another one. So it's so and then in South America, we have advisors in several South American countries. There's talk of potentially having to reengage in Venezuela because Rodriguez is not really playing a lot of ball with us anymore. So the no wars president has gotten us into just several conflicts. Some of them are legitimate. Like we really, I believe we should be assisting in places like Sudan, Myanmar, Congo, Haiti, all the gang warfare in Haiti. We're assisting in that. Those are things that I think are good humanitarian efforts. But there was no reason that we needed to start a war on Iran and cause like exponentially more problems for the globe because of whatever the perceived benefit was going to be, which as of right now, I just don't think there was any. So that's probably a fraud. I probably missed a bunch. All the people will be in the comments like you missed.

Speaker 1:
[20:05] I know. I want to every time you name another front, every time you name another country, you know, maybe we can tell them up at the end. What's going on in Cuba?

Speaker 2:
[20:14] Oh, shoot. Well, I don't know. So the Cuba thing, Matt, you posted a great thing on Twitter when you're like, it's going to be far worse for the US than any kind of Iran situation. And my focus on Cuba militarily is, yes, it's closer in theater, but we've been down that route before, where we've tried things, whether it was the Bay of Pigs invasion, which look that up, it's a whole, there's a whole dissertations written about that, where that was failed. And then we had the successful, quote unquote, successful Cuban missile crisis situation, where that deescalated. But we're now dealing with an administration when it comes to Cuba, who wants to potentially overthrow the Cuban leadership. But this is one of those areas where Russia and China, will look at Iran and go, okay, they did their thing. We'll look at Venezuela and go, US kind of overthrew that. And they're a bit more acquiescing to what the US does. Cuba is a very strong red line for both Russia and China. In fact, we just saw this a couple days ago when Trump backed down. He backed down and is allowing the Russian oil to get to Cuba and he reframed it as, oh, well, they'll lose that oil because we're just gonna take it from Cuba. But in the end, when Kennedy conducted his embargo, he stared down the Soviet Union and they backed down. When Trump had oil coming in and he said, no one's oil is allowed in, he backed down. So the US is in this phase of we are backing down and it's putting us in a weaker position because now everyone's just going to start running that if China shows up, they're gonna dare the US. And so whether we go in militarily, I don't know. But I also said I didn't think we would go in militarily into Iran. Here we are. We have an administration that very much is doing exactly the opposite on the in the warfare stage than what they campaigned on.

Speaker 1:
[22:15] Is there anyone sane at the, I'm sorry, Pete Hexhast presents the Department of War in Trump's ear anymore? Are there any former Joint Chiefs of Staff who are still running the ship, who have some sense of proportion? Or is it just complete chaos over there?

Speaker 2:
[22:35] From the people I've talked to, what we see is a lot more extreme coming out of the Trump administration than what we see, because there are mitigating factors. It's that old, okay, the boss told me to do this, but I'm going to kind of blunt it a bit and do it a little bit lesser and such. And that's what's happening when it comes to, not current operations, but kind of the future operations potentially in Cuba. It's something actually that appeared in the Trump administration. Little known fact, Trump was considering using nuclear weapons, and he had many generals say no, they talked him down from that. And I fully believe that he is having those discussions. Why can't we just nuke Iran? And as of right now, I think sane people in the room, including somewhat Rubio and such, probably not Hegseth, but including Rubio, are like, that's not somewhere we want to go. So I think there are sane people, and they are in his ear, they just aren't... I think their voice diminishes over time. And that's how we see that with this troop movement. I think this is something that most military leaders were said, this is going to be not necessarily a bloodbath, but it's going to be very, very problematic, something that they wouldn't want to deal with tactically. And at that point, they weren't listened to.

Speaker 1:
[23:55] Yeah, I can't say it's too reassuring to find out that the fate of nuclear de-escalation relies on Marco Rubio. I don't think that's... I'm not sleeping tighter knowing that.

Speaker 2:
[24:08] Who Trump insulted forever.

Speaker 1:
[24:10] That's what I'm saying. Who Trump inherently respects, we all know.

Speaker 3:
[24:14] I have a question.

Speaker 1:
[24:14] Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[24:16] Chad, there's something I've been thinking about. Do you think it's possible that Donald Trump asked Putin, you know, hey, if you'll stop helping Iran, I'll let you get that oil to Cuba. And because that oil to Cuba story broke the day after the story broke about Russia helping Iran with satellite imagery and other stuff. And of course, Putin would say, sure. And then of course, Putin wouldn't follow through, but it would make Trump feel good. Like do you think that's a thing that could have happened?

Speaker 2:
[24:48] I think when it comes to anything that Trump deals with Putin, Putin is playing Trump consistently. And so, yeah, he could have said, it's just like that situation where China does the same thing, where these were Chinese oil on Pakistani tankers. There was some deal made where China was going to limit some more, some more of the efforts they were going to provide to Russia. That's what they told Trump. And from, for intelligence purposes, they have not stopped. And then when those Pakistani tankers, those 20 tankers traversed, Trump saw that he got nothing for it. And so he just claimed that that was his deal and said, oh, they have gifted me 20 tankers through the Strait of Hormuz. And it wasn't even American bound or Western bound oil. It was Chinese oil on Pakistani tankers and he claimed it as his own. So it's, I fully believe that if there's anyone, any country on the global stage that is benefiting consistently from what Trump is doing in Iran, it is Russia.

Speaker 1:
[25:56] Yeah. And as you're saying, I mean, it's not that it's, I mean, one of our old favorite phrases quid pro quo with Putin, it's that Trump, I think has, as you said, weird fondness, I would say sort of he's enamored with successful autocrats. And it's strange how much of his emotions are what seemed to be driving the ship, but that does seem to be a big part of it. And I think in the relationship with Putin, you see that really clearly. And I think to what you said earlier is that he's clearly being, I mean, I'm not shocked that the former KGB agent leader of Russia is getting the upper hand in familiar negotiations with our former real estate huckster president. Like, those are different levels of con man or of manipulation, I think.

Speaker 2:
[26:46] What's frustrating is Putin is not even very good at it. For all his KGB history, he's not very good at conning people. You talk to any decent European leader, they see right through his crap. They just don't have the back end power to confront it directly like the US does. He's no different than every other former Soviet or Soviet, whether it was Brezhnev or any of them, where they tried to think they were these con men. But when the United States stepped up and the chips were down, they backed off. The problem is, Trump doesn't do that. He gets caught. He thinks he is art of the dealing everything, and they're burning him consistently. And it's hurting not only the American people, but the Europeans, and frankly, the global order for the future.

Speaker 1:
[27:30] I mean, to what extent? I mean, I can't ask you to get inside of his head, but you're like, he believes he's art of the dealing everything, or he's spinning that map. As we just said, it's like, oh yeah, they let my oil through, you know, the oil tankers that had nothing to do with the US. So I think to some, I mean, I don't know to what extent that's self-soothing for him, and to what extent that is trying to control the narrative, but I mean, I don't know if you want to try to speak to that, but I think it's interesting to look at, like, you know, again, I said, I can't believe quite how much of this is emotionally motivated on his part, but it does feel like to some extent, he's like creating a public narrative, and to some extent believes it in himself.

Speaker 2:
[28:06] Well, and I wanted to bring this up to Matt, because you had, you saw the market manipulation take place this morning, didn't you, where what he's doing is he's tweeting ahead of the markets good news, whether it's true or not. So, I mean, what are you seeing in that regard where he can't do anything physically, so he just has to manipulate through social media?

Speaker 3:
[28:29] It didn't work this morning. So one thing we all noticed this morning was that the attempt at market manipulation did not work this time. And I've probably made a half a dozen pieces of content over the last week saying, yeah, he's going to wake up one morning and it's not going to work anymore because markets just don't believe him anymore. And it didn't work at all.

Speaker 1:
[28:49] Matt, can you back up for just a second and tell listeners what's been going on in the past week? Like how specifically Trump has been attempting to manipulate energy markets?

Speaker 3:
[28:58] Sure. So anytime there's been a market opening where oil prices are expected to increase a lot. We've seen market manipulation through large shorts of oil or large buys of S&P stock. Also through his messaging coming out and saying, you know, we were really close to a deal right before the market opens. Like this has been going on. So much so even mainstream media managed to pick it up, which was shocking to me because people that run in my circles have been talking about this for nearly a month now, how he's been actively manipulating the market and how dangerous that is because it only prolongs the amount of time that we have these oil and energy and fertilizer disruptions. And it literally buys him more time that we can't afford to pay for down the road. So a lot of market manipulation. And he tried it again this morning. You know, markets were about to open. Everyone knew today was going to be a pretty good increase with the Houthis entering the conflict and the threats of Bab el-Mandeb and then him talking about troops. He came out and said he wanted to seize all of Iran's oil, which would mean occupying the entire country of Iran for years. Like all of that language, you know.

Speaker 1:
[30:18] Do we think that he knows how big Iran is?

Speaker 3:
[30:21] I don't think he does. I don't, you know.

Speaker 1:
[30:24] That idea of just seizing the entire oil industry of the country. I mean, that's that's a full occupation. That's you can't you can't pick and choose. That's that's seizing control of the entire Iranian government. He's describing. Well, yeah, essentially, there's no there's no half measure. I mean, I'm making fun of his intelligence, but literally like like it does seem like he's talking at a proportion of like how big of an escalation from even where we're at now, that would be.

Speaker 3:
[30:50] Well, even even the Financial Times reporter he was talking to said, like, do you realize what you're saying? Like how big Iran is and how long? And he's like, yeah, it would be an indefinite occupation is what Donald Trump himself said of a massive country. I think a lot of people are just now learning how big Iran is like it is. It's as big as Western Europe. Like, I think people think about Iraq or, you know, Iran's a huge country.

Speaker 2:
[31:17] It's four times the size of Iraq.

Speaker 3:
[31:19] Four times. Yeah. I mean, I don't personally know how many troops it would take to occupy Iran, but I know how many troops Iran has. I know that. And I know it would take a lot, hundreds of thousands.

Speaker 1:
[31:32] Did you see the onions headline last week that was Trump ponders deploying 340 million more troops?

Speaker 2:
[31:39] Yeah, I saw that.

Speaker 3:
[31:40] I did not see that.

Speaker 1:
[31:41] This is my podcast where I just say onion headlines that I read.

Speaker 2:
[31:45] To put it just in the perspective, Iran is close, is not only similar in size, but in geography where you have large flat terrain but massive mountainous terrain. And so a lot of the infrastructure we want to go after, they've embedded into that mountainous terrain and mountain warfare is exceptionally difficult. And so when you have a country the size of Alaska, it's more well defended than Alaska. And obviously Iran has 93 million people versus Iraq's 48 million people. So almost twice as much as what we dealt with in Iraq. And you're running into a massive issue of what strategy you use. And we're talking at a minimum of a million troops to do that, to do what he's saying. And I just don't, I don't think he politically survives that saying that out loud. So, yeah. And it was funny because Matt, you were talking about how he had an announcement and the Iranians are like getting ahead of this. They already are aware this is going to happen. And so it was like at 701, Trump fired off his tweet that there is a deal being made. Everything is good. Everything is where everything is. We're going to move to a deal and then like at like 704, three minutes later, Iran released a statement saying, no, there's not. We didn't do anything. No one's talked to us. This is all BS. And it's kind of, it's kind of becoming-

Speaker 1:
[33:07] You're telling me they had the press release pre-written with a couple of like-

Speaker 2:
[33:10] They knew what was coming.

Speaker 1:
[33:11] Square brackets to fill in very specific details.

Speaker 2:
[33:14] It's really gross to me that I'm having to internally struggle with who I trust. Inherently, generally, I would usually say, yeah, the Iranians just, they lie. They've lied and killed people and they're terrible. Absolutely. But at this point, we've had so much trust broken with this current administration that we're now like, well, probably wasn't a deal because the missiles are still flying and the drones are still flying. And we all see that taking place. And now Iran knows the messaging. And as Matt said, I think it's going to be less and less effective.

Speaker 3:
[33:45] Well, not only did they come out with that statement, they also followed that up by telling investors in the United States how to take advantage of Donald Trump manipulating the markets ahead of them opening by lying about talks with Iran. Like they were describing in detail, when Donald Trump says this, this is what you need to buy. Right.

Speaker 1:
[34:04] I'm following Iran's state media on TikTok for my investment tips, because our market's too unstable here.

Speaker 3:
[34:12] But one thing that's real important to add to what Chad said is where Iran's oil fields are in country. 90% of their oil is along the Iran-Iraq border and the parts of Iraq where the people there don't like us either. So we wouldn't just be fighting Iran trying to take those fields, because just feet away are the people in Iraq that support Iran. That's where the oil fields are geographically in the northwest corner of Iran.

Speaker 1:
[34:46] Well, and again, while we're doing worst-case scenario fantasizing, let's say he decides we're taking Iran's oil industry, which means we're essentially taking Iran, which means essentially we're taking Alaska, but without the thriving legal cannabis industry and brew pub, local gastro brew pub scene as well. So it's a very different climate and they're ready for us. Okay, so you're saying it's taking a million troops. How many enlisted troops are there available to us at the current moment?

Speaker 2:
[35:20] If you could look across the totality of the military with National Guard reserves, it waffles between 2.9 and 3.2 million troops in total. But we are operating globally in contingencies. So we have troops that secure South Korea. We have troops in Japan. We have naval assets all over the world basically saying, hey, don't mess with our friends in things like Taiwan or in the Baltic Sea. And so because of that, if we were to try to pull a million troops, it would be extraordinarily detrimental to the global missions. On top of that, what people don't know in the United States is a lot of these troops, when you have 3 million troops and a million of them leave, they leave their homes and they stop consuming in their towns. So a lot of these base towns, Junction City and Manhattan and Kansas, for instance, you have Columbus, Georgia, these are all base cities. When those troops deploy, their economies, they choke. And so if we decide we're going to send a million troops or more to try to secure Iran, that is going to cause outsized problems more so than what we just think of when it comes to the actual war itself, which is the casualties, the logistics. And Matt is right. We have no, we had kind of an easy button when it came to Iraq, because we could stage in Kuwait. Kuwait is a very, very good friend of ours. We did them a solid, obviously, in 1991 when we ejected Iraq or ejected Saddam Hussein. And so we've been able to use them to stage for operations into Iraq. There's nothing like that when it comes to Iran. We can try to stage in Iraq, but as Matt said, outside of the Kurds and the Peshmerga, who are generally friendly to the United States, there's no where else for us to go. Turkey's not going to let us, and they're the only ally in the region. Outside of that, the countries that surround Iran are Pakistan. Yeah, we're not super good friends with them. Afghanistan, that was a great time there. You have Turkmenistan, which they're in the Russian sphere of influence. And then you have, basically, Azerbaijan and Iraq. Of those countries, Azerbaijan and Iraq would be the ones that play ball the most, but I guarantee you Azerbaijan would want some sort of massive quid pro quo to counter Armenia, which would, once again, anger Russia. And I'm going down a rabbit hole with this. But, and then Iraq is their only place. And again, when you launch from Iraq, you're funneled in a 1,500 kilometer space. And with because of that, Iran can focus all of whatever little firepower they have on that, there will be casualties. If we try to amphibious land into Iran, that would be extraordinarily dumb. So we are kind of in a place now where if Trump is wanting to do what he says, where there's a long term occupation of the country of Iran, that is potentially a bridge too far for the US. And even if we do commit to that, it immediately signals to literally anyone else that is a foe, it's go time.

Speaker 1:
[38:36] If the United States is bogged down in Iran, moving troops from sensitive regions too, right?

Speaker 2:
[38:41] China will look at Taiwan and go, okay, gotcha.

Speaker 1:
[38:44] What about soldiers of fortune? Can we buy those guys anymore? We got black water. Can we outsource this? Can we go into massive debt for some soldiers who have no skin in the game? Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[38:54] And that's, I mean, that's kind of you joke. That's kind of where it starts to get, because we had to do that in Iran.

Speaker 1:
[38:58] I just sound sarcastic. I'm not. I sound sarcastic when I say everything. It doesn't mean I'm joking. The world is very bad. I just, this is my detachment from it. I do. I am asking the question of are there or I mean, also not to not to double two questions on you, but I've seen they're announcing the restrict, changing the army recruitment restrictions age to 42 and dropping marijuana restrictions. I got to say that one felt personal. All right. I'm 40 years old. That was a little like Trump administration announces they're dropping the like talks too much about his mental health at stand up comedy shows, restriction for recruitment into the army. Who's 42 and smoking weed and clamoring to go to Iran?

Speaker 2:
[39:44] Well, that's the concern is traditionally when it comes to, for instance, we have a scenario that is similar. During the surge in Iraq in 2007, 2008 roughly, they lowered enlistment standards because they needed the troops to surge to Iraq. Iraq never crossed more than, at most, with all our assistance and everything, we had somewhere between 500 and 600,000 troops there. And again, as I said, that was in a country that is one quarter of the size with half the population of Iran. When you see reductions in standards for troop enlistments and things like that, such as we just saw, it usually signals that there's an anticipation of something that is, they need the troop levels to rise rapidly. Russia did the very same thing. I think now their conscription level is anywhere between 16 to like 64 because of the problems they have in Ukraine. And so because of that, that concerned me. It's like, well, what is driving that? Because we've been hearing either one of two things happens. We've either been lied to by the Department of Defense or Hegseth Department of War. That you, that recruiting is...

Speaker 1:
[41:02] Hegseth presents the Department of War. With a trademark sign at the end.

Speaker 2:
[41:07] Yeah. And so it, it either Hegseth was essentially lying about the recruiting and how awesome it is and how star spangled amazing the military is and everyone's joining. And we really weren't reaching the numbers they were saying. And so now they have to lower the standards to get those numbers to where it was. Or this is contingency driven, meaning when I say contingency driven, I mean, it is a war somewhere. And the one that's in our face is Iran. But maybe they anticipate that we are going to get bogged down in Iran. So we need to grow our forces to continue to counter China or Russia and the Baltic Sea or something like that. It's just very, that's a very concerning situation because it shows that we were hugely unprepared for what it was going to take to effectively deal with Iran, the Islamic Republic within Iran, and their ability to cause chaos for the Western order around the world.

Speaker 1:
[42:07] Yeah, and I don't even know if we have the infrastructure to get enough fake IDs that say people are 43 years old. You know, our bodegas and our cheap tattoo shops that make fake IDs, I don't know that they have that real production ready.

Speaker 2:
[42:20] And not to go down that just real quick rabbit hole here, one of our biggest enlistment numbers come from immigrants, and what are we doing to them right now? So, it's a scenario where we could really use those people if we are trying to grow our numbers, but who wants to fight for an administration that's doing what they did to these immigrant people? You know what I mean?

Speaker 1:
[42:40] Yeah, you couldn't have said it better. So okay, this has been obviously, as I said, I don't want to go down to doom or rabbit hole, and then I forced everyone down to multiple worst case scenarios. So I'm going to ask you guys a little challenge before we leave. What is the best case scenario? What is the, from our current situation, what is the best we can hope for right now? What do you think?

Speaker 3:
[43:00] Claim victory. No one's going to believe you anyway. So just claim victory and leave. But I think you would have to secure some type of agreement to ensure the continuous flow of oil through the Strait of Hormuz, because I'm not convinced that if we just left, that they would open it up. Why would they? They've already won in that respect, right? So if you can secure that somehow through agreement or whatever, maybe you got to leave troops in the region or something.

Speaker 1:
[43:32] And do you put Trump on an aircraft carrier for that photo shoot, or do you maybe do an oil tanker this time for the mission to accomplish?

Speaker 3:
[43:38] However you want to do it.

Speaker 2:
[43:40] But if the best case scenario, a sign that says mission happened.

Speaker 3:
[43:45] Well, no, because what I think about is, think about how many people were struggling in this country before this started. And a lot of people were struggling with food, inflation, and $1,200 electric bills, and health insurance has tripled. My health insurance almost quadrupled this year. Like, I don't know how people that aren't as fortunate as I am survive anymore. And so this is what I think about.

Speaker 1:
[44:11] This is still part of your best case scenario, I just want to point out.

Speaker 3:
[44:14] This is what I think about when I'm thinking about the effects this war is going to have on the people that were already struggling to no end. Like, what's going to happen to these people? Because it's going to get bad. So the best case scenario is we get the hell out of there right now. Because there's no payoff. There's nothing else for us to do there, as far as I'm concerned. You know, Trump wants to say, oh, well, there's new people in charge. Technically, that's regime change. Whatever you want to say, nobody believes you anyway. Let's go. Like, I'm not going to hold you to account for anything. I never did. I never believed a word you said.

Speaker 1:
[44:49] Make the branding whatever it's going to be. He's already going to set the narrative regardless and just get out of this as fast as possible. You know, I think you're right. A lot of people are struggling, but I also think it's not fair when you talk about American families and you're not considering the seven or eight families that control half of our entire country's wealth. I think those people are actually doing really well right now. And so not everyone was struggling before the war started. Just a reminder.

Speaker 3:
[45:11] Can we get that in a percentage?

Speaker 1:
[45:13] In a percent? Yeah. What's the ratio there? Yeah, I think I'm sorry. I think it's something more like seven families control 40 percent of the entire world's wealth, which is even more deeply evil. I'm sorry to distract. That was a very thoughtful answer.

Speaker 3:
[45:29] Well, you know, they used to have the five families, you know, the mob thing.

Speaker 1:
[45:33] You're talking about the godfather.

Speaker 3:
[45:34] Yeah, remember the five families?

Speaker 1:
[45:36] That's based on, yes.

Speaker 3:
[45:37] Now we have the seven families, but yeah.

Speaker 1:
[45:39] But it's global. I'd like to hear your answer. What do you think is, obviously again, from a military standpoint, but just in general, what's the best we can hope for right now?

Speaker 2:
[45:47] So understand that when it sounds optimistic, when you say best we can hope for, or there's no there's no good out right now. There's no way for us. I know. And so the most optimistic is not a good scenario. The best out was to never have started this, and Nat Katz already, we can't put that back in the bag. So what, I agree with Matt, what we have to do is, it would be a controlled de-escalation that with guarantees to Iran. Otherwise, he's right. They're going to continue to cause problems. And I think this becomes extraordinarily politically toxic for Trump. So that's a good scenario, I suppose, no matter what happens. So he would have to do, to the domestic audience's base, the vast majority of us would understand that this was a massive folly for the Trump administration. But if he does a controlled de-escalation and says, hey, I'm going to go to the American people and say, we hammered Iran, we took out their missiles, we took out their drones, we eliminated their nuclear program. But what I'm going to do is quietly say, I'm going to let you preserve your regime. We're not going to continue to kill you. We won't, and we will try to press the Israelis to not do the same thing. Now, again, us making a deal with Iran is not necessarily guarantee their safety from Israel. It probably does because Israel can't fight this war on their own. But if Trump, the Trump administration quietly guarantees that the Islamic Republic will continue, which is awful because they're an awful regime that kills their own people and oppresses. But if that's the only way out of this, that's what he's going to have to do. They guarantee that the Strait of Hormuz reopens and there will be, again, very quietly. And if it gets discovered, he can just lie about it, a lessening of any kind of sanctions because Iran's going to want something. Matt is right. They kind of have us by the balls, essentially, because we can't do anything other than escalate in order to actually win. And that does mean boots on ground, and that does mean potentially committing war crimes, as Trump wants to say, by hitting their infrastructure. So there's going to have to be some sort of out loud, hooray, we declared victory, and yeah, be on some aircraft carrier, somewhere with a stupid big sign saying they won. But really in the true diplomatic arena, Rubio or whoever, best case it's Rubio, and not Witkoff, that moron. Best case it's Rubio saying, okay, stop, I'll open the strait, we'll give you some, we'll reduce some sanctions that don't overtly look like we're reducing sanctions. We'll guarantee that you guys are continue as the regime in charge. We'll quietly just kind of let this go and you'll get some benefit out of it or whatnot. Maybe we'll call it some, we've decided to invest in oil infrastructure in the Middle East because, and some of that money goes to them.

Speaker 1:
[48:59] You're saying rebrand paying them off. Basically just rebrand, yeah. I mean, what I'm hearing from both of you is that we kind of have to give them the Zuron Mamdani treatment. Someone's got to show up at Trump's office with a New York Post headline that says, war over, Trump wins, and frame it for them and call it a day. Maybe you don't even need the photo shoot. You're like, hey, this is Trump saves Iran. Put it on the front page of the newspaper and tell them it's over. Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[49:27] And the thing is, that's the best case scenario. That's probably the least likely scenario. I think Trump cannot stomach that possibility in the near term. He's going to escalate at least a little more, which means that our exit's going to be exponentially. Even a small escalation of troops deploying or striking infrastructure that is critical within Iran, such as their desalinization plants or their power plants or whatever, is going to have an exponential ripple effect on the ability of us to get out of this quagmire. And so, we have the capability to absolutely glass that entire country parking lot, if we want to eliminate our morals, if we want to eliminate our rules of engagement, if we want to just become the worst parts of humanity, we have the power. My concern is that Trump wants to use a fraction of that because he doesn't want to just cut his losses and run, because frankly, when it came to other situations, he didn't have to. Venezuela, he didn't have to cut his losses. Last time we bombed Iran back in June of last year, that was, in his mind, a success. So this will be the first time he has to deal with a true global loss. And I don't know if he's going to do it. I think he's probably best case scenario is, yeah, he cuts his losses and we get a bad deal out of it. And nothing changes other than Iran continues to exist. And we have to deal with this again in 10 years or he escalates because that's what Trump does, he escalates.

Speaker 1:
[51:05] Well I hope you're wrong.

Speaker 2:
[51:06] Sorry, that's the good news.

Speaker 1:
[51:08] No, I hope that our awful best case scenario is actually what happens, but we'll check in on the situation again in a week. This has been American Power from Find Out Media. I am your host Nat Towsen for Chad Scott and Matt Randolph, American Power, solving problems that we created in the first place.