transcript

Speaker 1:
[00:00] Hey guys, Saagar and Krystal here.

Speaker 2:
[00:01] Independent media just played a truly massive role in this election, and we are so excited about what that means for the future of this show.

Speaker 1:
[00:08] This is the only place where you can find honest perspectives from the left and the right that simply does not exist anywhere else.

Speaker 2:
[00:14] So if that is something that's important to you, please go to breakingpoints.com, become a member today, and you'll get access to our full shows, unedited, ad free, and all put together for you every morning in your inbox.

Speaker 1:
[00:25] We need your help to build the future of independent news media, and we hope to see you at breakingpoints.com.

Speaker 3:
[00:33] Good morning, and welcome to Breaking Points. How are you doing, Emily?

Speaker 4:
[00:36] Doing great. We've got some big breaking news just this morning to get to in a moment when it comes to Iran. So we have all kinds of stuff. We've got Jeremy coming up to talk to us about the negotiations, and Jeremy has been in the middle of reporting from the inside, what actually, I mean, he called like, what, two days ago?

Speaker 3:
[00:56] No, Sunday.

Speaker 4:
[00:56] That this wasn't going to happen?

Speaker 3:
[00:57] Sunday, he and Maz were like, yes, why are you guys reporting that these negotiations are happening in Islamabad? They're not. Like, the Iranians are not going. They haven't said they're going. Like, why are you claiming that they're there? They're not. It's so weird. Like, being in the US and reading US news and being able to then read Jeremy's stuff, and be like, we're just completely lied to. Jesse Waters last night was like, there was a coup in Iran.

Speaker 4:
[01:22] I saw that.

Speaker 3:
[01:22] Which is funny, but it's like, wait a minute, you're the most watched like cable news, primetime show in the country and you're, that is just fake. There was no coup. Is this a game? Right. It's so weird. You're not required to say this stuff. So it's been incredible to watch.

Speaker 4:
[01:42] Well, we'll have Jeremy Scahill. Ryan, of course, is his co-founder at Dropsite, joining us shortly actually to break some of this down. We also have Robert Pape on the show today. The Fed chair, Trump's...

Speaker 3:
[01:54] We get to keep having him back until he's wrong. I mean, he's, unfortunately...

Speaker 4:
[01:59] Cookin.

Speaker 3:
[01:59] Yeah. The escalation trap is you are trapped into having Robert Pape. Every week. Forever. Yes.

Speaker 4:
[02:07] Well, it's a good trap for the audience, of course, because then they leave better informed. All right. Also, Trump's Fed chair pick was testifying in front of the Senate yesterday, and it was brutal. I mean, some Democrats really laid into him. Elizabeth Warren really laid into him. So we'll have some details about that. Really interesting new stuff in the AI front, the data center front, the political part of the data center front that we're going to get into, and a crazy reporting coming out of Mexico. Not surprising, but crazy reporting coming out of Mexico about a potential CIA operation. We don't know exactly what happened yet.

Speaker 3:
[02:41] It was just a little car accident that ended up with the car engulfed in flames.

Speaker 4:
[02:45] As happens regularly when CIA officers are involved. So, two CIA officers killed in Mexico. A lot that we don't know yet, but some reporting starting to come out. We'll be joined by Juan David Rojas to break that story down. And finally, huge political news last night as Virginia's redistricting went through. Barely as where the votes are now, just over a majority of Virginia voters went with the Democrat gerrymandering plan. And Democrats are really excited. Hakeem Jeffries is saying, what do you say, when they go low, we hit back? Florida is then going to be calling a special session, or Ron DeSantis has already called a special session for next week, for a Republican gerrymandering opportunity. And the fate of the House is up in the air.

Speaker 3:
[03:35] Yeah, this will be a fun one.

Speaker 4:
[03:37] Yeah, you got to see these districts. You got to see these districts. They're really something. Also, we should mention Ryan is debating Scott Jennings on the after party channel. So that's going to, I think that pops next week.

Speaker 3:
[03:50] Oh, I didn't know this was going to be on after party, too. It's at GW and it's like a live event.

Speaker 4:
[03:54] Right. Yeah, it's going to be at GW. I don't know if the public can still get in. Probably the public can still get in.

Speaker 3:
[04:00] But an event like that sells out immediately.

Speaker 4:
[04:02] Yeah, it's done. It's in like one of the old classrooms that I took like my history classes in. Yeah, this is some lore.

Speaker 3:
[04:11] Well, school will be back in session for Scott Jennings' birthday.

Speaker 4:
[04:16] Well said, Ryan. All right. breakingpoints.com, if you want to get a premium subscription to the show, we appreciate it. Help us keep doing the independent journalism so that we don't report on false Iranian clues.

Speaker 3:
[04:26] Don't make us do that.

Speaker 4:
[04:28] Please don't make us do that. All right. Let's start with the latest in Iran. We can go ahead, toss this tear sheet up on the screen from the New York Times. This really is breaking news, as we are coming to now. Iranian forces claim seizure of two ships after Trump extends truce. So this is right now in the Strait of Hormuz. The IRGC is saying that it has seized two container ships. Obviously, we have the competing blockades over there. Ryan, Fox is reporting three ships, right?

Speaker 3:
[04:56] Yes. And originally, the New York Times in their first dispatch on this called it an enforcement action on the part of the IRGC, which is kind of delightful because we're talking about American media and Western media and propaganda, etc. It's like, it's rare that you see something neutral or even almost, that's almost favorable language to Iran.

Speaker 4:
[05:18] I would say that's favorable language.

Speaker 3:
[05:20] You could also describe it as just subjective. Like, they say that they're enforcing this blockade.

Speaker 4:
[05:25] Two things can be true.

Speaker 3:
[05:26] This was an enforcement action. Right. This was an action towards the enforcement of their blockade. Now, we have our own blockade of the straits. So when we attacked, now they've changed it. Now it's attacked and boarded. So an editor there had a cup of coffee. He was like, wait a minute, hold on. Get the Western propaganda language back into there. So yeah, so this comes. And it appears that the US attack on the Iranian ship in the Strait of Hormuz that took place over the weekend was quite debilitating to the ceasefire talks. Like that it does seem like the Iranians who had been suspicious of the seriousness of the White House used that as more evidence to say, these guys aren't serious. They're firing on our ships in the Strait of Hormuz. They don't recognize Donald Trump's naval blockade of the Strait of Hormuz as remotely legitimate. They say this is not international waters. I think we don't need to get into the technicalities of it, but it's basically not. Like it's far enough inland. It's like you be like trying to blockade the Mississippi because it pours into the Gulf of America and say, well, Mississippi is international waters. It's like, no, bro. Like this is Mississippi. You can't do this. So they said they would respond, and now they have responded.

Speaker 4:
[06:50] Yeah, they have absolutely responded. So we should also mention that they're actually under fire. They weren't just seized. So I'm reading from NPR here, which also has the three ship number. They say three ships came under fire on the Strait of Hormuz on Wednesday, putting the possibility of any peace talks in jeopardy after a senior Iranian official said that President Trump's last-minute ceasefire extension quote means nothing. We're going to get to that in just one moment. But the first ship, NPR reports, was attacked and damaged by Iran's paramilitary Revolutionary Guard Corps. According to the British military said, no injuries have been reported as of yet. This is according to the UK's Maritime Trade Operations Center. They say the master of a container ship reported that the vessel was approached by one IRGC gunboat. No warning was given, but it then fired upon the vessel, which has caused heavy damage to the bridge. That's according to a post on X from the Maritime Trade Operations Center over in the UK. Iran's, as NPR puts it, quote, semi-official Tasnim news agency confirmed the incident, saying the container ship had ignored repeated warnings. This is also from other Iranian news agencies that are saying the Navy attacked a third ship called the Euphoria. And Iranian media reported that the Iranian Navy had, quote, seized the other two vessels, which it identified as MSC Francesca and the Epimenides. So that's where things stand as of right now, Ryan.

Speaker 3:
[08:17] Yes. And so yesterday the ceasefire was supposed to expire. And you had what? Witkoff and Kushner kind of on the way to Islamabad and then turned their plane around. You had rumors that or you had actually reports that JD Vance was going to Islamabad. Those reports were not true. They turned back around. There's no Iranian delegation in Islamabad. And then Trump came out basically saying, and we can go through his post here.

Speaker 4:
[08:47] Yeah, we can put it up on the screen.

Speaker 3:
[08:48] Basically saying that the ceasefire is extended indefinitely. I don't have my glasses.

Speaker 4:
[08:52] You want to do your Trump impersonation? He says, based on the fact that the government of Iran is seriously fractured, not unexpectedly so. And upon the request of Field Marshal Asim Munir and Prime Minister Shabazz Sharif of Pakistan, we have been asked to hold our attack on the country of Iran until such time as their leaders and representatives can come up with a unified proposal. We have therefore directed our military to continue the blockade and in all other respects remain ready and able and will therefore extend the ceasefire until such time as their proposal is submitted and discussions are concluded one way or the other. Then he signed it President Donald J. Trump. This was after he went on CNBC earlier in the day and said he was not inclined to extend the ceasefire. So the talk of Twitter yesterday was Taco Tuesday.

Speaker 3:
[09:48] Yes. And so and then let's read the next truth from Trump Social and then we'll bring Jeremy in to get his reaction to it. He posted, Iran doesn't want the Strait of Hormuz closed. They want it open so they can make 500 million dollars a day, which is therefore what they are losing if it is closed. They only say they want it closed because I have a totally blockaded parentheses closed. So, they merely want to quote, save face. People approached me four days ago saying, sir, Iran wants to open up the Strait immediately. But if we do that, there can never be a deal with Iran unless we blow up the rest of their country. Their leaders included! President Donald J. Trump. All right. So let's bring in Jeremy Scahill to unpack what on earth President Donald J. Trump is talking about here. Okay, so Jeremy, what is going on here? Let's start with kind of from the kind of MAGA perspective, from the Trump perspective. How are they explaining this series of posts and this kind of about face?

Speaker 5:
[10:52] Yeah, I mean, look, the fact is that Trump just days ago was saying the Iranians capitulated to everything, that they were going to allow US military forces into Iran to pick up the quote unquote nuclear dust, that they were going to work together, that Iran had basically caved in to all of Trump's demands as a result of his threat to bomb their civilization. He said, JD Vance, Steve Wittkopf and Jared Kushner, they're literally on their way to Islamabad. I may even come at some point to attend the talks. Then reality hits last night, when it became clear that the Iranians were holding firm in their rejection of any future talks until Trump lifted the blockade in the Strait of Hormuz. Once that was clear that they weren't going to budge on that, and I was told last night by a senior Iranian official that the highest levels of power in Iran had issued a final decision and that that was their bottom line, then the ball was back in Trump's court and the Pakistanis were going back and forth between Trump and the Iranians, and finally what happened is that Trump comes out with a post on Truth Social and he says, I'm extending the ceasefire. This was just hours from it expiring. But he says, I'm going to keep the naval blockade in place. The Iranians then told the Pakistanis, we're not going to move forward with these negotiations, and so it came to a standstill. What we're seeing now is that a narrative has been crafted by the White House and the kind of Trump-aligned media ecosystem where they're saying Trump had to do this because there's total disarray right now in Tehran, that there's reports that the Foreign Minister Arachi and the Speaker of the Parliament, Mohamed Bagher Galibov, are under house arrest, that the IRGC has essentially seized control of the entire deal-making process, that the diplomats were about to make a deal with Trump, but now the IRGC has intervened. Barack Ravid, who often is the recipient of intentional leaks from the White House or Israeli officials, is now saying, Oh, Trump had to do this so that the Iranians could get their shit together and that it may only last three to five days. In talking to Iranian officials and also well-connected Iranian analysts, what they're saying is that this is pure psychological warfare, that if you look at the way the United States has systems of succession, that the way that the US is a country also of institutions, that Iran is the same, and that this decision that was made on this posture on the Strait of Hormuz actually was made by the highest levels of power in Tehran. It was an attempt to try to allow Trump to save face because as they put it, he blinked first and wasn't prepared for the Iranians to hold their ground diplomatically.

Speaker 4:
[13:36] And what do we know so far? What should we be reading into so far? The decision to take three ships or it looks like take three ships as of just this morning US time, Jeremy.

Speaker 5:
[13:46] Yeah. I mean, look, the Iranians have sort of said that they're not going to strike first. They haven't really officially accepted the extension of the ceasefire. They said that they didn't ask for it and that Trump unilaterally decided to extend this ceasefire. But this does appear to be a quite provocative action. They reportedly fired on one ship and then they seized two others. It's unclear really why they did this other than they said that they were not following rules and that they were interfering with maritime navigational procedures. So they brought them back to Iran's coastal waters. I mean, this type of an action right now, particularly when the Strait of Hormuz is at the center of whether or not there's going to be talks, there's going to be some serious discussion about how this goes down. But it's clear, the Pakistanis have spent an enormous amount of money and that country is in economic shambles as it is. The Pakistanis have been promoting their prime minister and their minister of defense as sort of like the kingpins of modern diplomacy right now. So the Pakistanis have egg on their faces. US Trump-aligned media are reporting that the Pakistanis are furious with Iran. What I was told by Iranian officials last night is that Pakistan had come to Iran and said, Trump has agreed that soon before the expiration of the ceasefire, he's going to announce that he's lifting the blockade on the Strait of Hormuz and extending the ceasefire. The Iranians told me that they had responded to the Pakistanis saying, if that happens, we will schedule a second round of talks for Thursday. Soon after I reported that, Trump posted then his true social saying, he's extending the ceasefire, but he's keeping the maritime blockade in place. I went back to the Iranians and they said, look, this has happened before where the Pakistanis have told us something like this. We don't know if it's that they just said this or that Trump actually told it to them, and then they turned around and told this to Iran. It's really complicated to determine who's exactly telling the truth right now because of the players involved, not the least of which are quite erratic and often contradicting himself president.

Speaker 3:
[15:56] And so that's significant news right there, and as you reported it yesterday too, that the Iranians were ready to come to the table, the meetings would happen tomorrow, the Pakistanis told them, the Pakistanis and the mediators, that Trump was going to make X gesture and the gesture was going to be on lifting the blockade and extending the ceasefire. And then that didn't happen. You know, there's a major trust gap right here, because multiple negotiations have ended with US surprise attacks. It seems like the US is not doing much to try to regain the trust of their kind of Iranian interlocutors. So what is the Iranian thinking at this point about whether, are we back at war? We're in a bizarre situation. Are we back at war? Like, you can't exactly unilaterally declare a ceasefire, but you sort of can.

Speaker 5:
[16:52] I mean, I'll tell you something kind of informal that I think just sort of peels back a layer on something we don't often get to hear about. And that is, you know, in speaking to an Iranian official last night and asking him sort of what do you think happened here, he said, you know, we don't exactly know. Like, we don't know what Pakistan was told and sort of what game is being played here and who the players are that are pulling which levers. But they also said that it's become clear to them that the Pakistani officials that they're dealing with often are scrambling to try to figure out what it is they were just told by Donald Trump and what they can reliably go to the Iranians with. And I tend to think that that's true, that actually, you know, there are cases where Trump probably does say something to the Pakistani prime minister. It seems clear. Then it goes, it gets run up the chain. It gets communicated to Iran. The Iranians come back and they say, okay, if that's the case, we'll move forward here. And then, you know, as happened last week, Abbas Arachi, the foreign minister says, oh, the Strait of Hormuz is going to be open because the United States has compelled Israel to respect the ceasefire in Lebanon. Trump then thanks them and says, he actually refers to it as the Strait of Iran. And then moments later, Trump goes nuclear on Twitter and says, no, you know, we're keeping our military blockade in place and the naval blockade in place. And then the Iranians say, okay, we go back to the status quo before this right now. What I had been told was that this had been choreographed via the Pakistanis that Arachi was going to say X, Trump was going to say Y, things were going to calm down a bit. And then the talks were going to proceed. It all gets entirely blown up. And I suspect that there's a combination of the Pakistanis playing some dirty games to an extent here. And the fact that Trump is erratic. And he does say things that he doesn't mean. I mean, just look at the last 72 hours. All these interviews he did with the New York Post, with PBS, with CNBC, he's saying, I might go to Islamabad. Jared and Steve are on their way. No, actually JD is on his way. Oh, actually, they're not going now. We're going to bomb them back to civilization. Oh, I'm going to extend the ceasefire. Imagine, forget that it's Iran. Let's talk about any country. Imagine having to deal with that when it's actually like war and peace, where you have two nuclear powers attacking another country, where they are a nation of institutions and they're just basically trying to say, let's figure out our red lines here. I mean, it's crazy making and Pakistan has a long history of dirty tricks. So this whole cocktail is really insane that we're looking at right now.

Speaker 4:
[19:32] Let's put A5 on the screen just to the point Jeremy was making. This is a Barack Ravid tweet from yesterday, 12:08 PM Eastern Time. Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner are also still in the US, Ravid reported at the time. The DHS plane that was supposed to take them this morning from Miami to Europe and to Pakistan didn't leave until several minutes ago and is making its way now to Washington, DC. Maybe they are going to see Trump. That was shortly after Barack Ravid had posted that Vice President Vance was also still in Washington and a White House official had told him, Additional policy meetings are taking place at the White House today in which the Vice President will participate. This is all happening around noon yesterday. There's the deadline looming. Jeremy, what is the truth as far as you can tell about whether the Iranian side, Jesse Waters was on Primetime last night saying that there had been a coup in Iran, but what truth is there if any to the idea that the Iranian side is also in shambles, nobody knows who's in charge, that we've started to hear come from Trump and others in MAGA world in the last 24, 48 hours particularly?

Speaker 5:
[20:44] I don't think there's any doubt that there has been ferocious debate within Iran. In fact, I was speaking yesterday to Hassan Amadyan, one of the best connected and most respected Iranian academics, and he's one of the most prominent people now on Al Jazeera Arabic. His appearances go viral because of his debating tactics, but also his ability to sort of predict what's going to happen. And what he said is that there was great debate over Iran's decision to accept this two-week pause because some factions within Iran believed that Iran had its best leverage by not backing down from the war and forcing Trump to agree to softer terms in any kind of a negotiation framework. And so there's no doubt that there is very intense debate. I'm sure there are shouting matches. I'm sure that there is a lot of animation to it. But I really do get the sense that these stories are primarily aimed at propaganda, its information warfare against the Iranians, and it also is a kind of cover story for the utter chaos of the Trump administration that is played out in public. You know, Ghalibov, the speaker of the Iranian parliament, is an IRGC veteran. He's a multi-decade player in Iranian politics. But I'm told that there is no chance that he would be leading this delegation or staking out the positions that he has unless it was signed off on by the Supreme National Security Council of Iran. I mean, I think that we often, or that Western media and commentators, cartoonize the institutions of other countries. This is not Libya, and this is not Syria. This is a nation that for 47 years has recognized that the US at any moment could wage a war against it. They built up institutions, and they built up parallel institutions. They have an official armed forces, and then they have the IRGC. They have an official Ministry of Intelligence, and then they have the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps intelligence. They have religious and judicial and political institutions that run in parallel checks and balances in the same way that the United States does. It is true that the Supreme Leader has the right to veto these decisions, but I really think that it is sort of counter intellectual and really oversimplified, and it does a disservice to the American public to imply that Iran is sort of a banana republic. If anything, I think it's a highly centralized state, and I would be very shocked if any of what is being said in the MAGA media ecosystem turns out to even be minimally true.

Speaker 3:
[23:20] I would just say that on this program, we cannot call into question the intellect of Jesse Waters. I mean, I think that's just beyond the picture.

Speaker 4:
[23:27] Well, it's White House Correspondents' Dinner Weekend, so Ryan is reminiscing on his-

Speaker 5:
[23:32] I want to just strongly denounce any violence between journalists. However, I wouldn't call Jesse Waters a journalist, so anyone can Google Ryan Grim 2016 bar fight with Jesse Waters.

Speaker 4:
[23:46] Fair game.

Speaker 3:
[23:46] Yeah, counter-intellectual indeed. Well, Jeremy, thank you so much for this update. Really appreciate it.

Speaker 5:
[23:54] Thank you, guys.

Speaker 4:
[23:57] Ryan has some original reporting for us this morning. Ryan, take it away.

Speaker 3:
[24:01] This is an interesting one. All right, so on April 4th, the State Department celebrated a new set of arrests, issuing a statement headlined, Secretary Rubio revokes green cards of foreign nationals with ties to Iranian terror regime, announcing that, quote, the niece and grand niece of deceased Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Major General Qasem Soleimani were arrested by federal agents, unquote. So the two women are Hamina Soleimani Afshar, she's 47, and her daughter Serena Hosseini, who is 25, and they are or they were legal permanent residents with green cards living in Los Angeles like a lot of the rest of our Iranian American population. Now, the idea that it's okay to punish two women for being related to a man who previously did battle with the United States when he was alive is itself absurd. None of us are responsible for what our uncles do. God help us all if we are. But because Rubio made such a big deal about these arrests and this claim, it's worth asking whether it's even true. So we reviewed Iranian birth records, identification papers and other personal documents, including wills and other records, and we can reveal that no, these women have no connection to Qasem Soleimani whatsoever. It is entirely a case of mistaken identity sparked by right-wing activist Laura Loomer and also some fans of the Shah. So birth certificates from Iran collected by the family lay out a documented family tree spanning multiple generations with no connection to Soleimani, or even to relatives of the late general. So at DropSite News, my colleague, Martaza Hussein and I also reviewed other personal identifying documents including passports, family photographs, and work documentation from both Iran and the US that strongly contradict the allegations that the two women were connected to the late Iranian commander, or that they were living lavishly from any connection to the Iranian government. I spoke to both women yesterday from their South Texas ICE detention facility, which is privately run by the GEO Group, and they remain shocked at the situation they find themselves in. Hamada, she told me, had actually previously been imprisoned by the Iranian government for protesting it. When she got to the United States, the thing she told me that she was most looking forward to was being able to freely speak her mind. Serena told me that yes, her mother is highly opinionated. But what they are not is related to Qasem Soleimani. Now, in order for Soleimani to be Hamada's uncle, based on her last name, he would need to be the brother of Hamada's father. Hamada's father, Ali Soleimani Afshar, was born in Tehran in 1947. Yet, according to the documents, he had no brothers at all, let alone ones corresponding to the identity of General Soleimani, who was born 10 years later in a small village in the southern province of Kerman. Ali Soleimani Afshar's parents died in his childhood. Historical passport documents also show that Soleimani Afshar's family origins go back generations to the city of Yazd in central Iran, a province away from the roots of General Soleimani. The late general is also known to have two brothers, Sorab and Hossein, who have previously given interviews about their upbringing in Roel Kerman that identify themselves as his only brothers. They have no connection to Ali Soleimani Afshar. The State Department, though, is standing by its entirely false claims. They told me in a statement, quote, Hello, the following is on the record attributable to Assistant Secretary Dillon Johnson. Quote, While we do not comment on matters of classified intelligence, we remain certain of the secretary's determination. If drop site news, scare quotes, is aware of anti-American green card holders with ties to terrorists, present in the United States, we would gladly investigate those individuals for possible termination of legal status and deportation, unquote. Now, one of Serena's friends has set up a GoFundMe to help cover legal bills, which I verified is authentic, and we'll put a link to it in the description. And so, Emily, what we'll do is we'll also put up a Google Drive that has all of these records. So we've got passports, birth certificates, all kinds of other verified documents, like even wills from her grandparents, and the wills list all of the relatives. And so by doing that, you can say, okay, here are the possible people that could be her uncle. And they're saying, Uncle Qasim is their uncle. Then if you look at Qasim Soleimani, here are his brothers and sisters. There's no overlap between them. And also separately, they're from completely different areas. So he is, and also politically, you can understand this. The fact that she was in prison for protesting against the government, of which Soleimani was a leading figure, means it's completely absurd to think that they'd be related. Like there's no world in which the rural conservative family of Qasim Soleimani. The niece. Has a niece who's protesting Soleimani and going to prison for it. Like maybe in America you have those kinds of things happening. And maybe there's some weird case of that happening in Iran. In any event, it didn't happen. Like here are the family trees. They are hundreds of miles apart.

Speaker 4:
[29:35] What was it like trying to verify those documents from the other side of the world?

Speaker 3:
[29:39] Well, huge ups to Maz, who speaks Persian. Of course he does. If you guys know.

Speaker 4:
[29:45] Amazing.

Speaker 3:
[29:46] My colleague, he speaks like seven languages or something. Like, hey Maz, I got a whole bunch of Persian documents. Can you read these? He's like, yeah, of course.

Speaker 4:
[29:53] Wow.

Speaker 3:
[29:54] Here you go. So once you have them, they're pretty straightforward.

Speaker 4:
[29:59] Right. The other thing I wanted to ask you about was the state departments on the record comment to you, which is interesting to me because they say, anti-American green card holders, I think is the phrase that they use in that. They say they're standing by the designation, but that's interesting because it's kind of a shifting of the goalposts from related to Soleimani.

Speaker 3:
[30:23] Right.

Speaker 4:
[30:23] To anti-American. Now, you could see how maybe they're using that in overlapping terms.

Speaker 3:
[30:28] That's a good point. They are kind of backing off that claim. They're saying we stand by the determination.

Speaker 4:
[30:33] Right.

Speaker 3:
[30:33] And by determination, I think what they mean, that's a good point.

Speaker 4:
[30:36] Right.

Speaker 3:
[30:36] They mean our determination, basically, that we want to kick them out of the country.

Speaker 4:
[30:41] That you could be a remains of Ozterk, basically.

Speaker 3:
[30:44] But they don't comment on whether they're standing by the original claim, which was the reason for the arrest.

Speaker 4:
[30:51] It's slippery.

Speaker 3:
[30:51] It's that they're related to Soleimani. And calling them anti-American is, well, first of all, Serena, the daughter, seems to be completely apolitical. She's just caught up in this. Her mom is constantly fighting on Instagram and other places with supporters of Reza Pahlavi. She does not want the king, the Shah, going back to Iran, being brought back to Iran by war.

Speaker 4:
[31:20] Like many Iranians.

Speaker 3:
[31:22] But now there's many rabid Iranians, Iranian Americans, who love the Shah. And what seems to have happened is that they saw her last name, and they whipped up this frenzy that she was related to Soleimani and then told Loomer. And Loomer then went with what she was told by these Iranian Americans who hate her. They don't hate her because she's anti-American or anything. They hate her because she's anti-Shah. And of the different groups who come to this country, to me the ones that are more offensive are the ones who come here and then agitate to use American service members in the American military to then carry out other grudges in their home country.

Speaker 4:
[32:04] Yep, 100%.

Speaker 3:
[32:06] Hate that.

Speaker 4:
[32:06] Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[32:07] Whether you're Cuban, Israeli, whatever. Like that's not America first. Like our military is not your play thing to go like exercise your grudges.

Speaker 4:
[32:18] Right.

Speaker 3:
[32:19] Like, I'm sure like the...

Speaker 4:
[32:21] Maybe that's the argument you make to Laura Loomer.

Speaker 3:
[32:23] Yeah, I'm sure there's a lot of like a lot of Somalians have different grievances with other clans in Somalia.

Speaker 4:
[32:28] Exactly.

Speaker 3:
[32:28] Yeah. We don't want the US military to go in and like settle those scores. That's not what we're here for. Nobody signed up for that.

Speaker 4:
[32:37] So in a way Loomer is just, I mean, you can see how in that sense, the cause of Laura Loomer is almost undermining the like America first mentality as you just explained.

Speaker 3:
[32:47] Yeah, I think so. So we also looked into their asylum claim. So we'll roll through that. So on to the other state department claim, namely that the two arrested women had filed a false claim for asylum, which was undercut, they say, by the fact they had visited Iran in subsequent years. So friends of the family and the family themselves say that they had indeed been forced to leave Iran under duress, and it happened after Serena had taken part in a public dance performance in 2012 when she was about 12 years old. What happened is that she was in Turkey on vacation, and she competed in this dance competition for the satellite channel TV Persia. It's illegal to watch TV Persia in Iran, but people can get it anyway, and it's the kind of soft cultural influence that the US government funds. I don't know if they funded TV Persia at the time, but either way, when it aired back in Iran, it went viral and not in a good way. All hell came down on her and her mom. She was expelled from her public school. Then not long after that, expelled from her next school, a private school, when the scandal resurfaced. Her mother was attacked on occasion, and they continued getting death threats. So here's one of the performances that went viral and aired on TV Persia. So under continuous pressure, they came to the US when she was 14 and filed for asylum. They won and they have since become legal permanent residents. Now Rubio's argument that the women don't deserve asylum is odd because one of the top US complaints about the Iranian government is that they don't respect women's rights. Now in general, a grant of asylum is called into question if the asylum seeker, if the asylum seeker travels back to the country where they claimed they feel unsafe. And that honestly makes sense in general. But in the case of the two women, the threats they faced were indeed real and they were in fact representative of what American authorities say about the repressive nature of the government in Iran. Yet you can also understand that visits home to family would still be relatively safe in their circumstances. You go to the airport, you visit the cousins, you go to the market, you walk in the park, whatever. You're going to be fine, especially if you're covered up. Serena told me she went back to Iran and visited her cousins and her father, but stayed away from those she knew were mad at her and told nobody she was coming. When she returned to the US, she was honest with customs officials, was questioned for about 45 minutes and let back in. It never came up again until now. If the Trump administration insists that their asylum claim is bogus and deports them to Iran, Rubio will be simultaneously saying that Iran is in fact safe for such women, undercutting decades of American claims to the contrary, while we also are waging a war on Iran partly because we say those women are not safe in Iran. So which is it? Serena's friends also disputed characterizations in the press and that were put forward by the State Department that the family had been living lavishly in the United States, pointing out that they had been behind on mortgage payments, that they had been relying on the support of friends to pay for legal support in ICE detention. In reality, the Los Angeles residents had assimilated to the culture of their new country. The jewelry and handbags flaunted on Instagram and highlighted by the US government were, they said, like much else in North Hollywood, entirely fake. Now, worse still, the mother's address was doxed and her house was ransacked and attacked by what appears to be an Iranian American who believed she truly was related to Soleimani. Here is ring camera footage that they presented to me. And so this was April 8th, and they got in and they really trashed her house.

Speaker 4:
[36:54] Let's say one in the morning, four in the morning?

Speaker 3:
[36:57] Yes.

Speaker 4:
[36:57] Four in the morning.

Speaker 3:
[36:58] Yes. And so what really does appear to have happened is that, and there's a lot of kind of Sha supporters in Iran. Shaza Sunset takes his name from that.

Speaker 4:
[37:11] In the LA area?

Speaker 3:
[37:13] I didn't mean Iran. There's a lot of Sha supporters.

Speaker 4:
[37:15] A lot of Sha supporters in Iran, just not as many as the Sha supporters in the US want us to believe there are.

Speaker 3:
[37:20] There's a lot of Sha supporters in Los Angeles. They're constantly doing these weird protests and whatever. They're very excitable. They're very fervent and passionate believers in their cause. And the cause is going terribly. Trump himself agrees with Hamada that the Sha should not... He said the Sha is not really up for this.

Speaker 4:
[37:43] The Sha himself has kind of said that.

Speaker 3:
[37:45] The Sha himself, when he goes to bed at night, knows he's not up for this. I think he's up for exactly what he's doing, pretending to be, pretending to go back, and going on Fox News and urging people to go out in the streets and get killed. So she's against him. She's also against the Iranian government. That is supposed to be a position that you're allowed to take in the United States. So talking to them last night, it was wild. And Serena would translate for her mom. And it was a very kind of, you could feel the mother daughter relationship. She's like, yeah, my mom is pretty fiery. She's pretty passionate about stuff. And she was really excited when she got to the US, that she could finally speak her mind out the mullahs, telling her what she can and can't do. Now Serena too.

Speaker 4:
[38:40] And it's the enemies of the mullahs, the self-declared enemies of the mullahs who are then putting them in a situation.

Speaker 3:
[38:47] Yeah, she's like, she went to prison for speaking out on politics. This is how they describe it. She went to prison for speaking out on politics back in Iran. Now she's back in prison for speaking out on politics here, but she says it's worse here. In Iran, it was one week, here, it's three weeks and counting. And she, yesterday was the first day she was really able to speak, because she has an autoimmune disorder, which requires kind of regular blood transmissions. She has a hemoglobin level that was down to six, which people can look that up. That's not good. She got some pills, finally, from the geo group, ICE Detention Center, which apparently pushed her hemoglobin levels back up to eight, which is still not high enough. But they do not seem to have any interest in offering her the blood transfusions that are regularly required with her condition. But you arrest somebody, accusing them of being related to this guy, you're responsible for her health care at this point. So, it's a dire situation for them. I reached out to Loomer and said, if I can prove to you that these women are not related to Soleimani, would you call for them to be released? She said no. Her direct quote was something like, I can even pull it up, but it said something like, I want all Islamic immigrants, migrants deported.

Speaker 4:
[40:22] But she doesn't even know that they're Muslim.

Speaker 3:
[40:24] Yeah, she doesn't.

Speaker 4:
[40:25] Not that it matters, but she doesn't even know that.

Speaker 3:
[40:28] Here's her quote. I want all Islamic immigrants deported. I don't support any of their asylum claims. She said, and they are related. She still believes that they're related. She was told, I think she was given a bunch of evidence by these Shah supporters that they're related to Soleimani. It's untrue. It's bad evidence. It's bunk. But I think she genuinely believes it. But as she's saying, she also doesn't care. Right.

Speaker 4:
[41:00] You know, I don't think Rubio and Trump are particularly worried about the media backlash that getting these cases wrong causes them. But legally, I mean, I have to imagine that the higher you go up at the State Department, they're looking at the shoddy work in the Oztert case, the Khalil case, where you then had the administration working backwards from their determination gone by to try and come up with reasons that people were threats to make their case in the court of public opinion.

Speaker 3:
[41:33] With Khalil, they thought he was on a student visa.

Speaker 4:
[41:35] And yeah, exactly. That's right.

Speaker 3:
[41:37] They had to like, oh shoot, he's a green card holder. Now we need to make something up. Right.

Speaker 4:
[41:42] And then they were going back to Instagram posts from groups that he was affiliated with, that he didn't have current affiliations with. And it seems like there's a similar situation here where Laura Loomer has a direct line to somebody of some power at the state department. I doubt to Rubio himself, but probably somewhere in the middle that can make these decisions. And then the secretary signs off on them. They put it in front of you. Yeah, maybe Trump. And then they put it in front of the secretary. You have to trust your deputies of your secretary of state. And then you go back and you're like, who the hell got us from point A to point B on this? And so I wouldn't be surprised if we start seeing them work backwards. Their statement saying, for example, anti-American asylum claims. People... Anti-American asylum claims from anti-American people. That is again, moving the goalposts. It's very different than saying this person is related to Soleimani. So it seems like maybe another...

Speaker 3:
[42:38] Also, it really doesn't apply to Serena. Like, if you really want to say her mom is anti-American because she was against the war as it related to bringing the Shah back to power, if you want to make that claim, I think that's insane. I think you're pro-American if you're against this war, frankly. So I think this war is anti-American. It is damaging to America. And if we listen to Serena's mom, instead of to Netanyahu, America would have made a better decision. Setting that aside, Serena doesn't even have, as far as I can tell, much of an opinion on this.

Speaker 4:
[43:13] They might find something, but who knows? They don't have it in front of us right now. That's for sure.

Speaker 3:
[43:18] But she seems mostly like apolitical. Like a normal 25-year-old person in Los Angeles, who just wants to dance and... No, she's a 25-year-old version of the 12-year-old you saw on stage there.

Speaker 4:
[43:32] And then you get into these protracted legal battles where the State Department, whether or not... Again, I don't think Rubio and the State Department and the Trump administration overall are particularly concerned about the fallout in public opinion. I think they feel confident they can make these cases and it's not going to be a big deal to voters. But they do then have to make these cases in court. And it's a pain in the ass when you have to work backwards and start coming up with reasons that you had evidence in the first place.

Speaker 3:
[44:05] And the best they're going to have for them is the fact that they went back to Iran. Immigration attorneys will tell you that's bad for your case because you said you're not safe there, you went there. I think they have an extremely credible point to make. Like yes, it was very dangerous and it would still be dangerous to live there. But flying back, not telling anybody visiting your father and your cousins, if that's all you do, that actually is safe.

Speaker 4:
[44:37] But again, that's just about the asylum claim.

Speaker 3:
[44:40] And Serena says she told the government ahead of time.

Speaker 4:
[44:42] Yeah, that's also still just above.

Speaker 3:
[44:44] And they're like, yeah, it's fine. Your green card holder, because at that point they weren't asylum pending. They were green card holders.

Speaker 4:
[44:50] Which is again different than whether or not they're anti-American.

Speaker 3:
[44:53] Right, and also they had a chance, once they flew back and said, hey, we were just in Iran. This is our situation. And we're like, cool, come on back in. To then, years later, on a false claim that you're related to a dead guy, arrest them is, I would like to say, un-American.

Speaker 4:
[45:17] Yeah. It was a great drop site reporting, Ryan.

Speaker 3:
[45:20] Well, thank you.

Speaker 4:
[45:21] Let's go ahead.

Speaker 3:
[45:21] Well, hopefully it does something. Anyway.

Speaker 4:
[45:23] It probably will.

Speaker 3:
[45:24] We'll see.

Speaker 4:
[45:25] Let's go ahead and bring in Professor Pape. We're happy to be joined once again by a friend of the show, Professor Robert Pape of the University of Chicago, and of course, the Escalation Trap substack. Make sure to subscribe to that if you haven't yet. Professor Pape, thank you so much for joining us once again.

Speaker 6:
[45:42] Yeah, thanks for having me. I really enjoy these discussions. You guys are just the best. So thank you so much for having me.

Speaker 4:
[45:49] Well, we appreciate you for being here.

Speaker 3:
[45:51] Yeah. Keep the compliments flowing and we'll stay happy.

Speaker 6:
[45:56] It'll be part of the escalation promise.

Speaker 4:
[46:00] Yes.

Speaker 3:
[46:00] In fact, I would noticing, and tell me if you've noticed this at all. It feels like Iranian officials have actually been following some of their analysis, particularly the argument that they're becoming a major power. Like I've seen them sort of being that back in similar work.

Speaker 6:
[46:19] That may be right. So just so the listeners know, so Russian television wants me on and has for a long time. Iranian media of various kinds wants me on. I just won't do that here. So I'm laying out what to expect for the world here. And I'm not trying to certainly not help the bad guys here or something like that. You're not seeing somebody who's in any way other than an American supporter here.

Speaker 3:
[46:52] What you're saying, you weren't trying to help the bad guys.

Speaker 6:
[46:53] And also just so everybody knows, my ideal world is where America remains number one. We're the strongest, richest country in the world. We want everybody to come here because we're the best place on the planet to be. And I think we need to get back to being the best place on the planet to be here. But we're not going to get there if we don't understand the world that's coming at us.

Speaker 4:
[47:17] Well, let's just start by getting your reaction to the whirlwind of events yesterday where the deadline was looming, where JD Vance, Jared Kushner, Steve Wittkopf were supposed to go to Islamabad and everybody was waiting, trying to figure out if the plane had taken off. They ended up of course not going and Trump extended the deadline. We woke up this morning to news that there were ships fired on in the Strait of Hormuz. So Professor Pape, wild 24 hours, what do you make of that?

Speaker 6:
[47:48] Yes, but fully in line, if you're following the sub-stack posts here, this is just in line with the expectations I've been laying out on both sides. What you are seeing, number one, and as I've been saying from my early posts about how Trump has the illusion of control, Trump's just lost control. The bottom line is America is not winning, Trump is not in control. What you are seeing is a rising trajectory for Iran. It's just growing bit by bit. It's not exactly linear. There's some pauses, but it is growing just as I've been saying. Iran has cards to play. They are more in control as each day passes. Since the first hour of the bombing, America has been less in control and has less cards to play. That's actually playing itself out. Now, in detail, let me just shift over to the details here because I did post these longer articles about what's happening with why is the ceasefire breaking down. Well, the ceasefire is breaking down. This is not a case of misunderstanding, where you need to have negotiators get to the table, talk to each other face to face to clarify things. Now, that's not what's occurring here. What's occurring is a zero-sum problem. We have two zero-sum problems, and that's what's breaking us in the negotiations to break down. You see, we have two issues, the nuclear enrichment and Iran's control of the Strait of Hormuz, and these are classic zero-sum issues. Iran cannot both control and not control the Strait of Hormuz. There's no middle ground here. Iran cannot both have enriched uranium to make a bomb and not have enriched uranium to make a bomb. There's no real way to cut this pie evenly, 50-50, 60-40. That's just not what's occurring. One side has to give up, essentially. What you're seeing is both sides, rather than give up, prefer to escalate. Now, Donald Trump is also trying to find a third way. I've been arguing this for some time and explain this. I just explain more in detail, that we're on a fork in the road. Either we pull back here from escalation and Iran becomes the fourth center of world power, or we go forward with escalation. Well, Donald Trump is trying so hard to get a third way, which is, can't you just give me the fig leaf of a cover Iran so that I can declare victory, and then I'll maybe even give you the Strait of Hormuz or something here under the table. We'll just kind of, let me just have my victory, okay? They're not doing that, folks. They're not doing that, and there's, I think, a very simple reason they're not doing that, which is they want to torpedo Donald Trump's presidency. I think this has got the classic earmarks here, where they want Donald Trump to become the lamest of lame ducks. Now, he's hurt right now. He's a wounded animal as it comes to his presidency. That's why he's squirming trying to get out of this thing, but he's not unrecoverably wounded. I think what you're seeing on the part of Iran is they're going to want to string this out. Now, I don't know exactly how far they can string it out, but I can tell you they're going to want to string it out at least to November. Now, that's horrible for the economy. Think about that. I'm about to do a new sub-status. I did this one on the economy. I'm about to do a new one projecting out even further here, because what's happening is everybody wants this to be over. Well, that's because they are not Iran. What Iran is now wants is they want to become that emerging power. So how do you do that? You keep the Strait of Hormuz and you make sure everybody knows you're in control, which is what they just did this morning with demonstration. Number two, in about a year, you want nuclear weapons. They're going to want nuclear weapons here. Number three is you want to go down in history as the country that torpedoed Trump's presidency when the Democrats couldn't. Just think about that on their legacy. You see, this would now establish them in this powerful way and if that happens, if they torpedo Donald Trump's presidency, oh my goodness, the cowtowing that's going to come to them from UAE, because the governments in the UAE and Saudi Arabia, they're going to start to be fearful. Well, if you can torpedo Trump's presidency, what are you going to do to me? So the game we're in is power politics of the first order. This is not real estate negotiation. This is not, you know, this idea of just getting to yes. I knew Roger Fisher's son here in Tokyo, so I'm familiar with all of this. This is now power politics of the first order, and we are not playing up to, Iran's just beating us at power politics, and they're doing it almost every single day.

Speaker 3:
[53:06] So Joe Cant, the former Trump official who resigned in protest, has put out a version of another third way that he sort of presented, which is similar to what you were talking about, but not exactly. He was saying what Trump should do is just walk away, and but, and slash but, leave sanctions in place. And you then leave Iran in this situation where they are then left to negotiate bilateral or multilateral deals around passage through the Strait of Hormuz. But it's very difficult for them to then fire on Israel or anybody else at that point, if they're not fired on themselves, because then they become the aggressor rather than defending themselves. But if sanctions continue to choke them, yes, they'll be getting revenue. Yes, they'll have control of the Strait of Hormuz. But without the ability to kind of engage with the kind of international economy, they would be slowly choking out.

Speaker 6:
[54:10] Well, yeah, so Joe Kent's plan is a version actually of you walk away and Iran becomes the fourth center of world's power, maybe a little more slowly because he's trying to slow it down a little bit. It's not really a third way. That's not a third approach because there's no actual way to stop Iran from exerting more power in Kent's plan. What I'm specifically referring to in the whole in Kent's plan is the UAE and Saudi Arabia. If we follow Kent's plan here and we keep the blockade even going here, the US blockade going, what that's going to do is it's still going to open the door for Iran, not necessarily in a week but in several months, to topple the governments of the UAE and Saudi Arabia over time. You can never really put a time clock on how you topple governments and so forth, but they have a lot more powerful ways because they're in the region. There are different groups inside of the UAE and Saudi Arabia that they don't like to talk about, who are minorities, who they try to keep a close eye on, of course. But Iran, if you can penetrate Iran, they can penetrate you. So this whole game here will change. And so the idea that Kent has is, well, we'll have a stable equilibrium that will keep a containment band around Iran. And that's just not what's going to happen. This is not Iraq. This is not a situation like Iraq. It's worse than Iraq. I mean, some similarities, of course, but it's worse than Iraq. And so what he's doing is he's saying there's a fork in the road, as Pape is saying, I want to take this fork over here back away, slow down this rise of Iran becoming the fourth center of world power. And noticing Kent's plan, they still get nuclear weapons. They can still process all that material and become a nuclear weapon state in Kent's plan. So this will, and that's really the hole in the plan. And I'm not saying, I'm telling you what the choices are in front of us, okay? And in this situation, one final point with Kent's plan, is just recognize the world still, the economy still goes over the cliff or the dips here. So he's not actually stopping the, he's not opening the Strait of Hormuz for the UAE and Saudi Arabia to have its oil exports come out here. So just be aware, this is the fork in the road. He's choosing clearly side A and then there's B, escalation, he doesn't want to do that. And I can appreciate that. I'm not really happy about escalation either. I'm not really fundamentally saying that the choice he wants is necessarily wrong. I just think we need to go into this with open eyes and I'm not going to sell the country a bill of goods and say, oh sure, this will all be fine over here. And this is what people are frustrated with me because they want me to be the happy guy who says, well, if only we would not do X and only do this over here, everything's working out and I'm sorry, Donald Trump has doomed us to a trap and what you're seeing is Joe Kent choosing one side of that trap, but he's not getting out of the trap.

Speaker 3:
[57:53] Because the move would be a U-turn at the fork and go backwards. The move would be to pull a U-turn at the fork on the road and go backwards and not do this.

Speaker 6:
[58:03] Well, the move would be go to Star Trek and we go back in time and we don't do this at all. I mean, come on. We're just not in a situation where we can have these magical ideas and go back to February 27th. Iran has learned something even, I think even more than their material gains. They learned something in the last eight weeks they did not know before, which is they can beat America, not just survive, they can actually beat America. And they're not just beating Donald Trump. Nobody in America is coming up with this brilliant plan where you're going to use escalation dominance that we're all going to be happy with to win. And I'm saying this is not good. This is not good. When you're, when a major rival in the world really understands they can beat you here, this is different and this is what Donald Trump has done more than anything else. He's given Iran actual knowledge, they did not have before. They had uncertainty before and they thought, well, could they survive? This is way beyond survival. And this is why, this is what's happened here is Trump will go down as the worst president probably ever that we've had, worse than Jimmy Carter, worse than Lyndon Johnson. And this catastrophic disaster will probably go down, certainly the worst since Vietnam. And it won't have necessarily the military casualties of Vietnam, but Vietnam did not wreck the world's economy. Yeah. And the 2003 Iraq war did not wreck the world's economy. We didn't have gas prices shooting up like this in that. That's why this is, Donald Trump is, this is all on his back, and Iran is not letting him off the hook with some face-saving gesture. And that's going to frustrate people. But now, come January, so as bad as I'm painting it, I'm saying it's going to possibly get quite, much worse here, because I think they want to torpedo Trump's presidency more than the Democrats want to do it. I mean, imagine that. They want to do it worse than the Democrats. So what you're getting here is, maybe by January here, when Trump's presidency is thoroughly wrecked, unrecoverable, the Republicans want to get him out of Dodge, not just simply the Democrats here, then you might actually have a situation where they want to, because they will be around for decades, and US will be around for decades. But I really think this is this missing ingredient that I'm not hearing in the media, that Iran I think has a true interest in wrecking Trump's presidency. And send me e-mails, folks. Listen, if I'm missing this on all these other channels, you just let me know. I'm on those channels, I'm watching them on TV, I'm listening to them on podcast. I'm just not hearing people explain that Iran wants to wreck Trump's presidency, and that's going to take some time. I mean, if you're really going to do this for real, you see, and make it so we can't come back. After January 6th, the Democrats let them back in office. I mean, think about that. They weren't. You want to wreck a president, you got to do worse than what happened here, and I think they're trying to do that.

Speaker 4:
[61:30] Now, I wanted to get you to respond to a very influential, popular historian, Neil Ferguson, who's of course at the Hoover Institute. Now, he posted a viral X, I guess tweet yesterday, and it's super interesting. Now, back when the war began, Professor Pape, you were already warning of the escalation trap. Neil Ferguson's first column on this was tepid, but I would say bullish on the US. Now, as of yesterday, he's saying, his point seven in this was, the Iranians have survived regime change and discovered that closing the strait is just as powerful a lever in economic warfare as they had always hoped. It's not despite the Russian quip, a quote, economic nuke, because unlike a nuclear weapon, you can use it. Then he says, where we go from here is fairly predictable. I would be surprised if Trump now deploys ground forces. There will be more negotiation. So Islamabad, here we come. There may have to be more bombing. If the Iranians dust down the North Vietnamese playbook of stringing the US negotiators along, Neal is actually the Kissinger's biographer. He continues to say, the final compromise will take longer to be agreed upon than Mr. Market currently believes. What's your response to this, Professor Pape? Because in a way, he's come around to your perspective.

Speaker 6:
[62:50] Yeah, that's right. So one thing that your listeners would not be surprised about but won't know is, I do more than talking to the media. I talk to very important people outside of the media. These are people in government. These are people not in government. We have more lengthy back and forth. You're willing to give me quite lengthy back and forth. I really appreciate that. Most of the media won't do that, but we have your audience gets more informed, and so you can actually have that intelligent conversation, and you see right away that he's directly on the pay path. There's no daylight anymore. Well, I'm just pointing out, and I won't talk about these private conversations, who they are and so forth, but it is the case that there are very, very smart people. I highly respect people, even people that may seem to disagree with me. There are people I highly respect in that way. And I will have lengthy conversations with them offline, so we can talk about things that they really want to hear about, which might appear to the ordinary person to be sort of off track or in the weeds. But when you get the experts together, this is what the talk is like, I'm sorry to say, that we get to it to the weeds, we get to certain things. And it really does matter here. And I value that tremendously here. And I think that for me is quite an honor that Ferguson, and whether it's an honor to me or he just come out with his own view, I don't really, that's not real, that's neither here nor there. What it really means is the world is coming around and these frameworks that I've been playing out, super smart people, everybody is, I think I get so much email here about the benefits of the frameworks, the actual frameworks, you see what I mean? Not just simply commenting on yesterday's news, and I think that's what you see here, and I'm really glad I started the Substack. I could not be happier.

Speaker 4:
[64:53] We're glad to have you here, Professor Pape, to talk about the Substack. Hope everybody goes over and subscribes to The Escalation Trap.

Speaker 6:
[65:00] Yeah, I think that people need to be aware, just before we leave here, that so yesterday I published a trajectory on the Substack here, and this was I said, ceasefire is about to end in just a few hours. Don't be surprised if you see the next stage would be demonstration attacks and what you're seeing, and I don't think Iran could have read it and responded in time. It's just not possible. But what you're seeing is the validation of this. When Iran took those ships, and then the other thing you didn't mention is, they had a parade where they brought in the missiles. I don't know if your listeners can see or your viewers can see the missiles. This is just like with North Korea. This is just like with Russia, just like with China. What they're doing with those missiles is they're saying, you mess with us, we're going to go beyond demonstration. Those missiles have American city names on them. Now, they can't really reach American city, so I don't want America to freak out over this. But what they are doing is they're moving up a ladder of escalation that other countries have done. This is just, if you studied this for 30 years, demonstration, there's whole articles on this, you would see they're moving up a standard rung themselves. The fact that they're having those missiles out there, that tells me that this is not going to be over anytime soon. The idea that they're simply now going to kowtow here and just surrender that power, I don't think so. They're feeling their oats here, and they're sending a direct signal. Maybe most Americans don't understand it, but those people in the White House get it, which is, America, you're next. You keep targeting us in our homeland. Maybe Joe Kent's not necessarily all bad.

Speaker 4:
[66:51] Right. I think he's trying to speak Trump's language and be persuasive.

Speaker 6:
[66:54] Well, he's trying to speak Trump's language, but Trump wants a clear victory. He wants the fig leaf of victory, and the reason is because that way he can recover his presidency. I don't think Iran is going to be, if Iran was going to give him the fig leaf of victory, they would have met with JD Vance. I think that's a clear sign that they understand what Trump wants, and he's begging them for this. I think that this is just not, I don't think they're going to play that game because this is signaling to me, Intel to me, that they're revealing their preference. They would rather wreck his presidency than give the fig leaf of a cover for him to declare victory. That's why he can't declare victory now. What's he going to say? You know, they took a ship and now we won? I mean, this is just not, yeah, they're making it impossible for Trump to declare victory and walk away. He can still walk away. He just can't walk away with a victory.

Speaker 3:
[67:54] He can declare it.

Speaker 6:
[67:56] He can try it, but they're going to say, they're going to do the next thing and say, sure, they're going to have the big image. Trump declare victory, we take ship. Trump declare victory, we topple UAE. That's what they want. That's what they're doing. I'm just saying, this is power politics of the first order. Trump's playing domestic politics. Iran is playing power politics. You can see that when our CIA goes in to topple governments, as we have done, including in Iran, we're playing hardball for real. We may paper it over with Trump's saying, we're Mr. Nice. No, we're rarely Mr. Nice guy. When we topple governments here, we're pretending to have the fig leaf of this. We topple, it took us 15 years to topple the Syrian government. Over time, you might be able to topple a government like 15 years, you see? You keep at it for 15 solid years, you might be able to topple the Syrian government. But in that 15 years versus Iran, you can see Iran has a lot of cards to play in that period of time.

Speaker 4:
[69:02] Professor Pape, thank you so much for being so generous with your time once again. We really appreciate it.

Speaker 6:
[69:08] Well, and thank you. It's just a great pleasure and honor to be on with you in every possible way, and I just wish your folks and the audience is here all the best.

Speaker 3:
[69:17] They love to hear that. All right, we'll talk to you later.