Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 3/1/26: BREAKING: 3 Americans KIA, Oil $ SPIKE, Ayatollah Killed

Episode Date: March 1, 2026

Saagar breaks down the latest on the US war in Iran.   To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show AD FREE, uncut and 1 hour early visit: www.breakingpoints.comMerch Store: https://shop.breakingpoints.com/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed Human. You can scroll the headlines all day and still feel empty. I'm Ben Higgins, and if you can hear me, is where culture meets the soul. Honest conversations about identity, loss, purpose, peace, faith, and everything in between. Celebrities, thinkers, everyday people, some have answers. Most are still figuring it out. And if you've ever felt like there has to be more to the story, this show is for you.

Listen to if you can hear me. on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is Special Agent Regal, Special Agent Bradley Hall. In 2018, the FBI took down a ring of spies working for China's Ministry of State Security, one of the most mysterious intelligence agencies in the world. The Sixth Bureau podcast is a story of the inner workings of the MSS and how one man's ambition and mistakes opened its fault of secrets. Listen to the Sixth Bureau on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Amanda Knox, and in the new podcast, Doubt, the case of Lucy Letby, we unpack the story of an unimaginable tragedy that gripped the UK in 2023.

But what if we didn't get the whole story? Evidence has been made to fit. The moment you look at the whole picture, the case collapsed. What if the truth was disguised by a story we chose to believe? Oh, my God, I think she might be innocent. Listen to Doubt, the case of Lucy Lettby on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hello, everybody. I wanted to give everybody a little bit of a briefing on now the second day of hostilities between the United States and Iran, as well as the entire Middle Eastern region, where multiple different countries have now been struck.

We have fatalities all across the Middle East and new announcements as well of some major attacks with world-changing implications, just out. At the top, I do want to give a caution. This is a fast-moving situation. I'm going to give reports. I'm going to caveat everything together. And I'm going to try and say only when something is confirmed and when something is, of course, reported. So let's start with the most important news that has now been confirmed by the Iranian regime. And this is, of course, the death of the Ayatollah Khomeini.

This was announced by President Trump. He says, Kamani, one of the most evil people in history is dead. This is not only justice for the people of Iran, but for the people. for all great Americans, those people with many countries throughout the world that have been killed or mutilated by Khmer. However, I do want to skip ahead to the most important section here from Trump, perhaps seeking an off-ramp, which I will circle back to later. This is the single greatest chance for the Iranian people to take back their country. We are hearing that many of the IRGC military and other security and police forces no longer want to fight and are looking for immunity. As I said, last night, now they can have immunity.

later, they only get death. Hopefully, the IRGC and police will peacefully merge with Iranian patriots and work together as a unit to bring back the country to the greatness that it deserves. Obviously, that would be a little bit different, perhaps maybe even a Delci Rodriguez-style deal that we could foresee in the future, but of course that is not yet on the table. The Iranians continue to fight just to give everybody a picture as to how the current regime is now structured with the death of the Ayatollah. We're going to look here. The New York Times actually has an interesting graphic. You can see here at the top that the Ayatollah has been killed, that the head of the National Defense Council has been killed, the commander-in-chief of the IRGC, the defense minister, the chief of

Iran's armed forces, the head of the Military Bureau, the Intelligence Chief, and the head of the Iran's advanced weapons program. Much of the political leadership, however, does remain intact or at the very least not dead yet. So the president, of course, is alive as well as the Secretary of Supreme National Security Council and multiple other top officials. There is actually a provision in Iran, which has a now trilateral kind of group, which is leading the country, includes the president as well as other leaders that have been pre-established in the event of the death of the Ayatollah. So continuing, obviously, from the political leadership level, we can go to some of the attack. attacks that have now happened. Some, as I said, major fatalities now across the region. Perhaps most important is one that happened just as I started recording. I'm just going to go ahead

and flag it to all of you with the major caveat that this is from the Iranian state media has not yet been confirmed. Iran targeting U.S. aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln using four ballistic missiles. Now, again, this is something that was announced by the Iranian's. state media has not yet been confirmed by the United States. Obviously, these carrier strike groups are equipped with air defense systems, so it's relatively improbable that they might be able to make impact. But of course, it is showing that they still have the capability to launch these ballistic missiles at U.S. assets, at Israel, and of course all around the Gulf. As I mentioned with Israel, there was a major and the most deadly attack now so far in Israel. There has now been a mass casualty

attack in Beit Shamesh, I apologize, for my pronunciation. This is from Israeli media. Authorities report eight people killed, reportedly young children were inside a shelter, sustained a direct hit. About 30 others have been evacuated, an entire neighborhood has been reduced to rubble. I'm going to go ahead and play some of this so you can see it, and you can actually see this picture standing next to the husk of some of these. So I'm going to go ahead and play the video just to give you an idea of what it looks like inside of Israel in the aftermath of this attack. So you can see that the Iranians still have capability to inflict damage inside of the country. Remember, I will also note that much of Israel is under a very strict censorship regime.

They're not allowed even foreign media to share some of the footage of what's happening. There have been major reports of huge strikes in the city downtown Tel Aviv. as well as in Jerusalem. So that was just video that we were able to get from that particular site, but multiple people, foreign journalists on the ground, reporting huge strikes all across Tel Aviv with rubble. And of course, the entire country is often, you know, air raids and many of their population taking shelter. Turning to the rest of the region. As I said, this is a full-blown regional war that we can all see. Now, perhaps most importantly, Iran has effectively shut down the airspace, of course, also with the United States and Israel, and their attacks in all of the Gulf. So you can see that there was a drone strike on Bahrain's airport that happened early this morning.

There were similar Iranian attacks in Abu Dhabi, in Dubai, and in Kuwait. So if you've never flown through those airports, those are some of the biggest hubs in the world. You know, you have massive numbers of passengers, often from the United States and the rest of the world transiting through the rest of the airport. rest of Asia, some of the scenes coming out of the airport harrowing and terrifying. I mean, I myself, I've flown through those Gulf airports dozens of times in transit. So you can just imagine being on a layover and a flight in Dubai, you know, for example, which again, literally millions of people pass through that every year. And all of a sudden you have smoke billowing, you have a drone attack that strikes as well as in Bahrain and in Kuwait. So this is clearly

an effort by the Iranians to inflict damage on. on U.S. allies in the Gulf, and you can also see that the Gulf allies themselves, I don't know if they were expecting this. I mean, you had downtown Dubai, some of the most prestigious hotels that were struck. You have Abu Dhabi. Again, you have, you know, the Bursch Khalifa. You have some of these iconic structures, which have all been struck. Often, there's some intelligence now coming out that one of the reasons that the Iranians are doing this is that many U.S. personnel may have evacuated actually to those airports. And of course, that's where the rich, the famous, and some of the Westerners are staying in order to try and inflict damage both on the prestige of the country,

but also to show their capabilities with those suicide drones, which they're very well equipped and have honed in the war in Ukraine. Turning a little bit now to Abu Dhabi, again, this is insane video. Like just, again, as somebody who has lived in the Gulf, who has seen this, you are looking here at Abu Dhabi with the skyline and smoke just billowing out in the middle of the day amid some of the construction cranes. This is some of the video from some of the people who are actually in the country. But I mean, it's absolutely just shocking to see videos like this. And it has brought airspace to a standstill in the Middle East. And there's a lot of passengers who are actually stranded inside the country. I just saw today. Abu Dhabi is offering tourists

that they're going to pay, you know, for their hotels while they're stuck inside of the country. So this is a full-blown regional conflict. We have strikes in Jordan and Bahrain and Kuwait, any place, you know, which is a U.S. ally. The Iranians trying to make sure that the entire region feels the pain in order to demonstrate what we laid out very early on in our show is that for them, they believe that this is a big one. They need to try and establish some sort of credible deterrence or go down fighting. And so far, they don't yet seem to be deterred. Current U.S. reporting is clearly. claiming that approximately half of Iranian ballistic missile launch sites have been destroyed. Now, of course, that's from the United States and from Israel.

So we don't know what the true number of that is. But of course, that still means that some 50% are still active. And you have ballistic missiles and interceptors, which are all flying through the air in the Middle East over U.S. bases in Riyadh, by the way, also in Saudi Arabia. So this is, I mean, absolutely insane now so far. zooming out a little bit for the major geopolitical situation, what everybody always had their eyes on with a potential Iranian conflict is the Straits of Hormuz. And right now, there are some very troubling reports now coming out of the Straits of Hormuz. There was initial reporting that Iran had been going over VHF radio to many of the ships in the Gulf, telling them that the Straits of Hormuz

are closed. There were a few ships that were able to transit. I believe that they were Chinese-flagged carriers. However, we do know this from the West, from the Financial Times. Insurers are going to cancel policies and raise prices for ships in the Gulf and the Straits of Hormuz. Brokers say that the cost of coverage will increase by as much as 50% after the conflict has erupted. War risk insurers submitted cancellation policies for notices covering ships moving through the key oil choke point. Prices will be set to rise 50%. Of course, that's going to be passed on for all of us in the price of oil. Insurance prices for ships traveling through the Gulf had been about 0.25% of the replacement cost of the vessel. That could now jump up as much by half. So, for example,

a $100 million vessel, this would mean an increase of $250,000 to $375,000 per voyage. Insurance costs for ships calling at Israeli ports will also be set to rise by some 50% as underwriters are bracing for retaliatory action by Iran. Cargo war risk insurers. which cover commodities on tankers also said they were prepared to cancel policies on Monday. After canceling policies, the insurers are then expected to renegotiate coverage, obviously at higher prices. Pretty interesting, right? A bigger question here about how insurers can just cancel your policy if they want to.

So Reuters reporting this morning from oil analysts that you are probably set to see a major increase in price of gas at the pump. starting this week. Oil is currently set to jump at least 10% on the Iran conflict. Analyst predicting it could go to some $100 per barrel. It was between $72 and $65 at the close of markets on Friday. So it's pretty significant, almost a 30% increase. Also, I talked about the airspace shutdown that happened. Well, there has also been a major shutdown in sea traffic, not just in the streets of Hormuz, but the Dubai port, DP World, will suspend Dubai operation. And MSC is stopping all Middle East bookings. And I believe Mersk also announced that they would not be trafficking through the Straits of Hormuz.

So Dubai Port is one of the, I believe it's a ninth busiest port in the entire world. Shut down for cargo, shut down for a lot of LNG, other oil assets moving through the Gulf, the Straits of Hormuz. It's going to be more expensive for them to take alternative routes as well as oil production itself. I have seen a video that has come out of oil rigs in the sea that have actually been struck by some suicide drones. So the Iranians are really throwing everything that they've got, which kind of gets us to a bigger, interesting question. And I said I would circle back to this, is Trump's goal in all of this. So Trump said a couple of very interesting things. There was, of course, that report or sorry, that truth social that I showed all of you,

from where he said that he potentially could give some sort of Delci Rodriguez-style deal to some of the people who were in the Delci-Rodriguez-style deal to some of the IRGC. Wow, actually, I apologize. I'm going to have to interrupt this. Huge news just coming across the screen. Unfortunate that we have to be able to report this. U.S. Central Command, three American soldiers were killed during the operation against Iran. U.S. Central Command here. As of 9.30 a.m. Eastern time, March 1st, three U.S. service members have been killed in action. Five, seriously wounded as part of Operation Epic Fury. Several other sustained minor shrapnel injuries and concussions and are in the process of being returned to duty. Major combat operations continue. Our response is ongoing. The situation is fluid, so out of respect for the families, we will withhold additional information, including the identities of our fallen warriors. until 24 hours after next of kin have been notified. Wow.

So I'm just taking that in live with all of you. We have our first casualties, American casualties, with hundreds killed in Iran, including Ryan and his team reporting about that girl's school that was struck. You have, you know, at least eight have been killed now in Israel. And this chaos is on Trump. He's unleashed this.

Three families are never going to see their kids. again because of this, because of this action. And that, unfortunately, could just be the first that we may yet see to come. And speaking of that vein, sorry, I'm just transitioning hard on this. I'm just taking it in. It's so unbelievable that it happens so quickly. It does show that you've already got their deterrence. And considering the escalation ladder, now they're going to have to keep climbing it. And I do think that that's something that we're going to spend a lot of time with on Monday is Donald Trump believed that he could just unleash this chaos and suck it back in. He's a gambler. He's like at the craps table who's on a hot roll. And everybody just keeps saying

one more, one warm, one more. But seven's going to come up eventually. And already now we have three Americans killed. That's more than in any other action that he has ever taken. Although, of course, he himself said, you know, it was a sacrifice he was willing to make that unfortunately does sometimes happen in a time of war. Well, now, what we have seen from those indications earlier, Remember when I said he was offering that Delci Rodriguez-style deals to some of the IRGC, a shocking report coming out of Israel. Let me go and put this up here on the screen from Wynet. Trump seeks swift end to Iran operation.

The killing of Iran's supreme leader is a major intelligence and military feat. But Tehran's regime has not collapsed. A U.S. official via mediator proposed an immediate ceasefire. Iran rejected it outright as Trump looks for a quick exit. Now, again, I want to caveat this. This is in Israeli media, although they, of course, have very good sources. It could seem that he wanted this to be like Midnight Hammer. You go in, you kill the Ayatola, you shock the IRGC, and you say, you guys make a deal just like Delci Rodriguez, and I'll leave you alone.

He's even made some public comments about how they need to call him to decide who's going to be the next leader of the country. He's made some comments also about how he's made some comments before about he can keep this coming for a few days and then he can pull back or he can go. quote, do the full thing. He's already floating multiple different types of scenarios. However, what we have seen now is that Iran immediately responded by reaching for the maximum of their escalation ladder. And I want to be clear with Iran, their capabilities are not extraordinary. They have claimed, oh, a new power that the world has never seen. If they had it, they would probably be using it now at this point. But, and this has always been the point, they've got the suicide drones, They've got ballistic missiles.

They've got the IRGC. These are people who went toe to toe with the United States in Iraq, and we lost hundreds of people to their roadside bombs. They know exactly how to do an insurgency. That is their bread and butter. They can inflict maximum damage here. And already for me, personally, I don't know about all of you, my number has already been reached. My number was zero, the amount of American lives that I thought was worth this type of operation. And already we've exceeded that, thanks to Donald Trump and his entire administration.

But it seems Trump is now in this situation where he is grasping at straws potentially to try and end this thing very quickly. He thought that he could unleash this chaos and then suck it back in, just like he did with Venezuela, just like he did with Midnight Hammer. But he did not realize that when he said freedom for the Iranian people and a destruction of their regime, they might take that very seriously. And so if this report is true, they've rejected this ceasefire demand outright. Well, you can see that they're wanting to fight a little bit more to establish real credible deterrence such that this will never happen to them again. Already Israel and the United States have come in and have killed their supreme leader who, of course, look, he may be somewhat unpopular in the country. Nobody really knows. There were videos that came out of people celebrating.

There were also videos that came out of hundreds of people who were mourning his death. I have no idea, right? Obviously, neither do you, despite whatever diaspora community might be marching in the streets of Georgetown or of Tehran. Diaspora communities, March here in Washington during their war in Iraq. It wasn't necessarily reflective of the situation on the ground in Baghdad. I'm of the Indian diaspora. Do you really think I know what's going on on the ground in India? Should you really listen to me as the total barometer or my opinions for the barometer of how a billion people feel of whom I don't even really know that well because I'm born and raised here? It's ridiculous. It's one of the worst

things that our media does is interview diaspora people as if they're somewhat reflective of the people who are back home. In fact, I often find that they're the most out of touch. Includes me, too, by the way, on the situation whenever it comes to India. Mortaza has seen over at Dropside flagging an issue, which is supremely important, and we flagged from the very beginning. You will all recall 25% of U.S. interceptors were, 25% of U.S. interceptors were used just in the 12-day war. As Murtaza says here, interceptors are running low. This was the primary argument against starting a war in the first place. Meanwhile, Iran is still firing missiles and is estimated to have thousands left thanks to reconstitution assistance from China. Responding to this report that I just showed you all about the ceasefire alleged offer that was made by Donald Trump. Already we are, I mean, look, they're never going to tell us the real number. They only told us the 25% number until much later on as a result of some public reporting. We only have several. hundred of these interceptors. They're flying all over the entire Gulf. We don't just have to protect

our assets, our people, the Gulf allies, Israel. We don't have to do it, but we're choosing to do it under this administration. We could be at 50 percent. We could be at 75 percent in a matter of weeks from what I saw from some arms control activists. This will put us in a very dangerous situation. They take years to restockpile. We've talked about our military readiness, some of the problems we have. We could have an insurgency. We could have the Houthis who are firing, obviously, in the Straits of Hormuz and trying to cause chaos there to inflict damage. Unfortunately, I think he has unleashed an absolute Pandora's box now in this region. And now the escalation ladder will only continue. We have three Americans dead. How do you think this administration is going

to respond. So, unfortunately, that's, that's mostly what I have for all of you today. I mean, Crystal and I are going to have a multiple hour show tomorrow. Let's break this down with a lot of different people, various different guests. Thank you to everybody who trusts us at a crazy and insane time like this. Again, literally, we're all processing it together. It's world-shaking events. And thank you to our premium subscribers who enable all of this. We will see you all tomorrow. and of course, caveat for everything from today. I've tried my best to just stick to what's confirmed and what is out there.

And, of course, this is a moving situation. Things are very fluid. And, of course, governments themselves, including ours, including the Israelis, including the Iranians, everybody, many have propaganda. They may not be telling the truth. So the actual casualty number,

unfortunately, could even be higher than what we know as of right now. All right, we will see you all tomorrow. And again, thank you all very much for your trust in our channel at a time like this. You can scroll the headlines all day and still feel empty. I'm Ben Higgins, and if you can hear me, is where culture meets the soul.

Honest conversations about identity, loss, purpose, peace, faith, and everything in between. Celebrities, thinkers, everyday people, some have answers. Most are still figuring it out. And if you've ever felt like there has to be more to the story, this show is for you. Listen to if you can hear me on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever you get your podcast. This is Special Agent Regal, Special Agent Bradley Hall. In 2018, the FBI took down a ring of spies

working for China's Ministry of State Security, one of the most mysterious intelligence agencies in the world. The Sixth Bureau podcast is a story of the inner workings of the MSS and how one man's ambition and mistakes opened its fault of secrets. Listen to the Sixth Bureau on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Hi, it's Jill Winterstein, host of the Spirit Daughter podcast, where we talk about astrology, natal charts, and how to step into your most vibrant life. And today, I'm talking with my dear friend, Krista Williams.

It can change you in the best way possible. Dance with the change. Dance with the breakdowns. The embodiment of Pisces intuition with Capricorn power moves. So I'm, like, delusionally proud of my chart. Listen to the Spirit Daughter podcast starting on February 24th on the IHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your podcast. This is an IHeart podcast. Guaranteed human.