Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 3/9/26: Trump Doesn't Rule Out War Draft, Fox Coverup On Trump Fallen Soldier Disgrace, Desalination Plants Struck

Episode Date: March 9, 2026

Krystal and Saagar discuss White House doesn't rule out war draft, Fox coverup of Trump disgrace receiving soldiers, desalination plants struck.   Trita Parsi: https://x.com/tparsi Rory Johnston: https://x.com/Rory_Johnston    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.

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Hey, I'm Jay Chetty, host of the On Purpose podcast. My latest episode is with Hillary Duff, singer, actress, and multi-platinum artist. You desire in family like this picture, and that's not reality. My sister and I don't speak. It's definitely a very painful part of my life. And I hope it's not forever, but it's for right now. Listen to On Purpose with Jay Chetty on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey guys, Saga and Crystal here.

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What do we have, Crystal? Indeed, we do. Once again, we're going to be covering the Iran war from every aspect. Trump out with some new comments saying that it will be a mutual decision between us and Israel when this war ends. So that's pretty interesting. We've also got Trump's disrespectful to display at the dignified transfer of service member

remains. We'll show you that and how Fox News tried to cover it up. Water sources are now being attacked. This is extraordinarily dire for a region that does not have sufficient fresh water there locally. So we'll break down what that means for the war and escalation. We're also going to have an analyst, oil analyst on to take a look at what skyrocketing oil prices mean for the entire economy. Extremely dire warnings from a very sober-minded analyst. So you definitely want to listen to That one. A new Supreme Leader has been chosen. Tari Teparcy is going to join us to break down what that means and also what happened with Iran's attempted de-escalation in the region.

Jeffrey Sacks believes we are already in a world war. We will discuss and debate. And Lindsey Graham is a psychopathic war hawk and also apparently a traitor, according to new reporting. So definitely want to know about that one. Right. Even the Iranians are like, hey, man, if somebody did this over here, we would just, you know, we would put them on trial for treason. So there you go.

All right. Thank you to everybody who has been supporting, signing up for the show, breakingpoints.com. We do have our free month trial going on right now. You can put it up there on the screen. promo code is BP Free 26. Seriously, a thank you to all of you who have joined. We have had literally millions of new people who have joined us in the last week. Last week, every single day was like a new single day record for the show with views and or podcast download.

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Do you think the map of Iran will look the same? The war is complicated enough without getting the Kurds involved. And do you think the map of Iran looks the same after this is all done? I can't tell you. Probably not. Is there going to sense where you'd send in ground troops? How are you thinking about that? I don't want to talk about it now. I mean, that's, I don't think it's an appropriate question. You know, I'm not going to answer it. Could there be possibly for a very good reason? Have to be very good reason. And I would say if we ever did that, they would be so decimated that they would be able to fight at the ground level.

A lot of negotiating leverage, maybe maximum, but we're not looking to settle. They'd like to settle. We're not looking to settle. They're on their third or fourth level of leadership. And they have leaders right now that nobody even knows who they are. They're being decimated now. You know, at some point, I don't think there'll be anybody left maybe to say we surrender, but they're being decimated.

Some Iranians are concerned that the Kurds will carve out kind of an autonomous region as they did in Syria and Iraq. having, we're not looking to the Kurds going in. We're very friendly with the Kurds, as you know, but we don't want to make the war any more complex than it already is. Do you rule that out? We don't want, yeah, I have ruled it out. I don't want the Kurds going in.

I don't want to see the Kurds get hurt, get killed. We've had a good relation. They're willing to go in, but we really, I've told them I don't want them to go in. So completely all over the map comments, but the most noteworthy one is not ruling out boots on the ground saying if we did do it. You can see it's probably going to happen now at this point. But secondary to that are these imperial comments at the very top that we showed you, Crystal, him saying that the map is not going to look the same.

And even though he is talking there about, quote, ruling out the Kurds, he didn't rule out the Kurds. The Kurds ruled it out themselves. The Iraqi Kurds were like, hey, man, we want no part of this. And I'll say why. Because they're right in the range of all of these short-range missiles. The Iranians have already been firing stuff at them, including the U.S. bases. is they have no appetite for some Iran-Iraq war redux. Remember, at one point was that I think one of the bloodiest conflicts in human history.

Almost nobody ever pays any attention to it. But over a million people died in that conflict. They had wanted nothing to do with any sort of incursion, which will put them at risk. But that doesn't mean that we're not going to have all kinds of CIA sponsored groups inside of the country. Potentially the Iranian Kurds who were already there could be armed. The Turks obviously would get involved. But the comment there, I mean, at every turn, all this man does is make it even more existential for the people of Iran.

The map is not going to look at it. What would you do if somebody said that, imperially decided we're going to redraw your borders like it's some Sykes-Picot time, which, by the way, they're talking about in Israel. In Israel, they're like, hey, it's Sykes-Picot. Again, it's an opportunity to redraw the maps of the Middle East. You will fight to the death. Will you not? I mean, that's, if we're going to burn your oil supplies, we're going to talk about here in a bit, we are going to drop bombs all over, you know, collapse the. police forces, kill the Ayatollah, sponsor some third-party groups, and the president says,

we're going to redraw your map. What do you think that they're going to do as a result of this? This is an attack on the polity itself, not just on the regime, on the entire nation state of an idea of Iran. So yeah, they're almost certainly going to just continue to use this, especially Iranian state propaganda. There's been no widespread protests, despite the fact that everybody promised it. And at every turn, all he is doing is turning the switch up. for escalation, which of course is disastrous for them, disastrous for us. And another American service member which just confirmed KIA in the operation, not to mention for the Iranian people, and especially for everybody else in the region.

It just means wider war is even more likely. Yeah. And you've had, in addition to those seven officially KIA, you have two others who have died, one allegedly of a medical episode, the other allegedly of an accident. And then, you know, there are a number of injuries. There's a hospital that's been closed for labor and delivery to handle the wounded U.S. service members coming out of Iran. So that's already where we are. I also have to just say, you know, for these like diaspora Iranian monarchist, what a fool you, like you thought that Trump

really cared about freedom for the Iranian people. You know, the people were the biggest critics of the Iranian regime or in Tehran, and now they're having oil rained down on them. Apocalyptic fires, like it genuinely looks like a literal movie of a hellscape. That's your, you know, your Iranian freedom. I'm sure the women are really grateful for the, their kids breathing in toxic fumes that are probably going to cause them to have cancer 10 or 20 years in the future. And meanwhile, you have Trump coming out and saying, yeah, Iran will probably break apart. Like, I mean, just absolute, absolute insanity. And it speaks to the fact that the goal now is Israel's goal. It's civil war. It's regime collapse. It's chaos. The only reason,

as you said, the Kurds aren't getting involved also is not only are they worried about the danger, but they're like, listen, you people have, especially Trump in particular, have screwed us over multiple times in the past. Like how many times are we going to have to get the fell for it again award before we say, you know what, this battle is yours. Go. Good luck. We'll see what happens on the other side of it. So that's where things stand as of right now. I want to go ahead and play this next piece, which is extraordinarily significant. So it has now been confirmed that it was the U.S. that struck that girls' school and murdered those 168 children, mostly girls, ages 7 to 12. There have been multiple analyses. And now we have actual video of the Tomahawk missile.

Those come from us, not from Israel, not from Iran. Those come from us. Okay, Tomahawk missile that was dropped on that school. And recall also there's reporting this was a double-tap strike. So in any case, this is now incontrovertible, you know, as much as you can learn anything definitively in war. We now, though, this is the case. Trump gets asked about it and what does he do? He just outright lies.

Let's take a listen. Did the United States bomb a girls' elementary school in southern Iran on the first day of the war in kill 100, Based on what I've seen, that was done by Iran. Is that true, Mr. Heggseth? It was Iran who did that? We're certainly investigating. But the only side that targets civilians is Iran. We think it was done.

We think it was done by Iran. Because they're very inaccurate, as you know, with their munitions. They have no accuracy whatsoever. It was done by Iran. Disgusting. So you saw Pete Hegsteth won't back him up on that. He said others in investigation. The ones who were investigating.

Look, I mean, as you said, there's a video. It's literally a Tomahawk missile. There's only one person in the entire conflict that uses an Tomahawk missile. So last time I checked, that's the only time that it could have happened. And all of the background on the strike makes sense. Not to devolve too much, but it shows you the danger. And also, I've always warned about this with air campaigns and everything.

It was, oh, the most sophisticated military. I'm not denying that. But also, there's a lot of error. So let's say you have this IRGC base, which has a school that attached to it, right? And years ago, it was only IRGC and it wasn't a school. What's very obvious that they didn't update whatever their strike package was. And whoever's programming these coordinates into the Tomahawk, they have no idea. They're being passed on by the Pentagon.

So whoever it is that put that, you know, coordinate into the strike package, sent it along to the Tomahawk, they're the ones who are responsible. In the old times, this is a massive scandal. I covered the Kunduz Hospital incident in 2015. That, I mean, that was front page news of every page. in the country. The military, look, you know, hated Obama and all of that, but there were still at least some rules and all that at the time. And at the Pentagon, I mean, their feet were held to the fire whenever that hospital in Afghanistan was struck. This time around, it's like Tomahawk missile, video, you've got multiple geolocated pieces of evidence. By the way, the

military themselves are leaking to Reuters and to everybody else. They're like, yeah, it was probably us, okay? And now, if they never confirm it, and Trump is like, oh, it was Iran, which was some Israeli claim, just so everybody understands. That was a claim, you know, thrown around by Israel, literally completely fake. It's Gaza level stuff. Oh, of course. It was a rocket that happened to come down from Hamas.

Bingo, exactly. It was a misfire that came down and they killed them. This is, like a serious, shameful incident. Even Laura Ingram is like, hey, somebody's head needs to roll for this, right? But this, you know, this is the Gaza. This is what happens when we get in bed with the Israelis. We're going to adopt their tactics

and their talking points. We're literally eroding our entire national sense of In the Iraq war, I can tell you this right now. This might have happened, but seriously something actually would have happened at the military command level. You think Hegsef and Trump are going to do anything? Zero. Of course not.

Okay, it's disgraceful. Yeah, the moment that the media stops asking them this questions, we'll never hear about it again. No, we'll never hear about again. That's what's going to happen. And one last piece on this, because it's important, something we've been focused on. Very, very possible that AI Anthropics Claude in particular was involved in picking this target. And so, you know, and I mean, which opens up a whole other basket of questions.

about the way AI is being utilized. We know that AI continues to hallucinate. You know, obviously this, you know, begs the question of who, then who is responsible if it was AI that picked it and there wasn't sufficient human involvement in review. So just, I mean, just horrifying. Well, you can easily see how it happens. You're like, hey, give me a list of IRGC bases.

Here you go. Yeah. It just pills from an old data set. Old map, old radar, whatever. Right, exactly. And no, no, in that what, you've got 50 different strike, how many, they said in the first day of the campaign that they, did double the amount of strikes that they did in shock and awe in Iraq. Yeah. So one strike was bad,

but this is the problem. This is why you're supposed to have people with, you know, some actual intelligence and others looking it over because the Tomahawk missile doesn't just fly somewhere without a serious level of checks in terms of people who are like, let's do the intelligence, here we go, here's the picture of it. This is why it needs to be struck. Here's its impact. And this, I mean, seriously, a massively shameful incident. Honestly, a huge besmirching on the entire honor of the United States. Next Monday, our 2026 IHeart Podcast Awards are happening live at South by Southwest. This is the biggest night in podcasting.

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Watch live next Monday at 8 p.m. Eastern, 5 p.m. Pacific free at Veeps.com. or the Veeps app. In 2023, a story gripped the UK, evoking horror and disbelief. The nurse who should have been in charge of caring for tiny babies is now the most prolific child killer in modern British history. Everyone thought they knew how it ended. A verdict, a villain, a nurse named Lucy Letby. Lucy Letby has been found guilty.

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or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, this is Joe Winterstein, host of the Spirit Daughter podcast, where we talk about astrology, natal charts, and how to step into your most vibrant life. And I just sat down with a mini driver. The Irish traveler said when I was 16, you're going to have a terrible time with men. Actor, storyteller, and unapologetic, Aquarian visionary.

Aquarius is all about freedom-loving and different perspectives. and I find a lot of people with strong placements in Aquarius are misunderstood. A son and Venus and Aquarius in her seventh house spark her unconventional approach to partnership. He really has taught me to embrace people sleeping in different rooms, on different houses and different places, but just an embracing of the isness of it all. If you're navigating your own transformation or just want a chartside view into how a leading artist integrates astrology, creativity, and real life, this episode is a must listen. Listen to the Spirit Daughter podcast starting on February 24th on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your podcast. Let's put A3 up here next on the screen just to show you everything is rolling towards ground troops right now. I just, I don't see a way out of it. NBC News. Trump has a privately shown interest in U.S. ground troops in Iran. His comments have been focused on the idea of a small contingent of troops that will be used for specific purposes. Let's go to the next.

next one, just to continue to fill this out. This is from A4. There's been a cancellation of an army exercise, quote, fueling speculation about Middle Eastern troop deployments. The elite 82nd Airborne Division, which specializes in ground combat and other fraught missions, is now awaiting new orders after an unexpected change of plans. The army abruptly canceled this major training exercise stationed at Fort Bragg in North Carolina, brigade combat team of four to five thousand soldiers ready to plored on an 18-hour notice for missions as varied as seizing airfields and other critical infrastructure. So you could see paratroopers now who are getting involved here.

And in fact, what we see initially is that some shape of what this strike would look like or for ground troops. Let's put A6, please, on the screen. This is from friend Shelby Talcott over at Semaphore. Trump's Iran options include a special operations raid on nuclear sites. So what it would do is a special unit mission. has long ready to, quote, counter WMD mission, where their job is to go in and get loose nuclear,

like loose nuclear material, fissile material, centrifuges, destroy them. And this is part of the folly of the entire thing. We're told that this is all about nuclear sites. Well, we've bombed some of the nuclear sites, but by U.S. intelligence's own admission, it's all now underground, and they can't get to it. They can't continue to bomb it.

So to go and get it, what do you have to do? Boots on the ground. And so in this instance, You can't just have some special operations team insert when the Iranians know you're probably coming. That's why you would have the 80-second airboards. You're going to have to send thousands of troops in. So the special operation can do it. Those guys have to provide security, you know, to be able to come in.

If anything goes right, an airlift them out of here. You can easily see how much of a disaster that this could easily be inside what? You think that the Iranians don't read the news? What do you think they're going to do right now? They're going to surround that thing and turn it into, you know, a death trap. And I'm not saying that we're not capable of doing something like this, but perhaps it would cost a lot of lives. And what's shocking, too, is the cavalier nature that they're already talking about death, not just of Iranians, but of Americans. With Iranians, I mean, Heggseth, he's a psychopath.

He's like, anybody's still alive. They may not be alive. I mean, he's literally like a video game character. And actually, I do think it's worth meditating here on the White House's propaganda. Everything is like Iron Man, Tropic Thunder. Like, they're trying to meme this into existence. It's some of the worst aspects of, like, 2003, you know, rah-rah, Americanism, which South Park used to do such a good job of parroting.

But to show how insane things are in the White House, they will not even rule out a draft, okay? So A5, let's take a listen. Mothers out there are worried that we're going to have a draft, that they're going to see their sons get in and daughters get involved in this. What do you want to say about the president's plans for troops on the ground. As we know, it's been largely an air campaign up until now. It has been, and it will continue to be, and President Trump wisely does not remove options off

of the table. I know a lot of politicians like to do that quickly, but the president, as commander and chief, wants to continue to assess the success of this military operation. It's not part of the current plan right now, but the president, again, wisely keeps his options on the table. keeping his options on the table for a draft. I mean, it's, first of all, politics-wise, think about that. That's going to rocket to every mom of a 17-year-old in the entire country. All these young men who voted for Trump. All these young men who voted for Trump, I mean, I have no words.

By the way, I mean, I've given you my counterintuitive take. I supported draft for exactly this reason. I'm like, hey, if you want to, you know, if you want to send America's sons and daughters to the war, the whole population better be bought in, or people should riot over the... Send Baron first, and then we'll follow. In the First World War, the Prime Minister of the UK, his son was killed on the front line. The entire, like, highest echelon of society, all of their sons were killed and, like, actually thrown into combat, not some rear-action. And that showed that the society as a whole was actually into the war.

And I'm saying the war was good. But that's the last time that we've ever seen anything like that. From that point forward, the elite of the elite, they always get in the rear echelon. And of course, since Vietnam in particular, the way we got around that one is all poor, young and black, young black and white men are the people who went and fought and died in the war. Same thing unfortunately happened with the war in Iraq and Afghanistan, they all volunteer military force. They are primarily targeted. I mean, look, there's a military culture in the South and a lot of these working class communities,

literally across America. And they're the ones who predominantly suffered while people like me, you know, got to go. to college. It's shameful, actually, that they're allowed to perpetuate something like this. Yeah, I mean, my daughter's a senior in high school. The recruiters are at the high school all the time, you know, and who is interested in that, the people who, yeah, they're not on the college track. They're looking at the economy. They're, you know, this is a way to be able to have a stable job. And next thing you know, you're being sent off to fight some war for Israel in the Middle East. Just to, I just want to drill down a little bit on why there is increasing likelihood, if not certainty,

that U.S. ground troops are going to be on the ground because, you know, I think part of why we're in this place at this point, and Robert Pape, Professor Pape, has been doing a lot of this analysis and predicting this for a while, which is why it's worth listening to what he says, is, you know, you are not going to be able to accomplish either a regime change or destroying the nuclear material from the air. So, you know, in Iraq, it took a year of searching the country to figure out there were no WMD. Okay, so you are not going to be able to figure out where it is. You are not going to be able to bomb it into oblivion

or have confidence that you've bombed it into oblivion without being there on the ground. So option number one is you fail, right? Trump tacos, that's what I'm hoping for. Trump tacos that, you know, bomb something or kills the next Supreme Leader and is like, okay, we're done. Great job, everybody. Let's go home.

In that scenario, number one, Israel, of course, not going to be satisfied with that. Number two, it's not clear that Iran would accept that at this point because they're looking at this. Their new Supreme Leader just had his father, mother, wife, and son murdered by the U.S. and Israel. So I don't think he's going to be in like a really conciliatory mood here, number one. Number two, their strategic calculus now is that they have to hit us hard. They have to make us pay and suffer so that we don't do this again. So even if Trump tacos at this point, it is no guarantee.

that the thing is going to be over. So that's option number one. And of course, Trump, you know, he wants to save faiths, et cetera. So, and you've got a lot of forces from Israel that are continuing to push in this direction. Number two is that you have some sort of ground invasion to try to obtain and destroy this nuclear material so that you can have your mission accomplished moment there. Number three, I guess, is that you like deploy a nuke or something completely insane like that, which we're going to talk about a little bit more of the possibility of that in World War III, which quite frankly, at this point, you can't put anything with Netanyahu and Trump in charge. You cannot put anything off the table because the level of

death and destruction that these men are comfortable with is completely insane. I think Trump thinking about his legacy, I don't think he cares whether that legacy is like as a good leader or as as like notoriously evil leader. I think he's just more interested in leaving a gigantic mark on the world and wanting to be remembered. And so, like, Listen, if you're going in that direction, being the first president since World War II to drop a nuke, again, I'm not saying that's what's going to happen, but I don't think that you can put it off the table. I actually wouldn't rule it out, not just because of Trump, but really because of baby. Let's put A7 up there on the screen. Trump says to the Times of Israel, it'll be a mutual decision with Netanyahu regarding when the war ran. So America literally, you know, we're giving up all of our sovereignty. It's a mutual decision with BB Netanyahu, literally a client state, not exactly somebody who's an equal ally,

partner in this entire thing. But he's the one who's gone all in. We're going to talk later about those oil strikes. It was Israel, apparently, and they're saying, oh, the U.S. They were very upset about the strike, fake, whatever. If you're not going to do anything about it, don't leak it to baroquee, just like Joe Biden's entire presidency did. But their level of barbarism, which we all saw, remember, it's not just Gaza, because Gaza was barbarism at, like, a humanitarian level. But their barbarism, in terms of their, like, gangster action in the whole region is really what showed. It's like, oh, these fuckers will do anything. Yeah. Like Doha, Qatar, Jordan, or sorry, Lebanon. Yeah. Like all over the entire Middle East, Syria. They're mass-landering civilians in Lebanon right now.

Literally, I mean, they're saying we're going to turn Dahlia, area of Beirut, into canyunis. This is Smotrit. They say this stuff out loud, how they're going to level. I've seen, you know, hotels, buildings just completely collapsing in the middle of that city. So that is why I actually wouldn't rule out anything, because you never know. Israel will force your hands. And especially when you layer on the number of like religious fanatics who are wanting to bring about the end times, like how can you rule anything out? And that's, you know, that's in Israel and that's here too. So, again, I sort of feel like I had a blind spot for how much that ideology is significant, both in terms of the some of the base of the

Republican Party, but more importantly, in terms of the leadership, I mean, you think about Huckabee, you think about Hegset, you think about the, you know, Trump's spiritual advisor, and then he has this messianic vision of himself. This is scary stuff that we're playing with. Very scary stuff that they're playing with. Let's turn now to Donald Trump here. This should be a national scandal. You know, I thought that the, remember what, the tan suit, latte salute, all that stuff under Obama. That was Fox News Fair. Here was Trump at the dignified transfer, literally dead American servicemen where he's supposed to be saluting. And he's wearing a baseball cap. Take a look at this. I mean, every other person is not wearing a baseball

cap because that's not what you're supposed to do in this type of situation. The USA cap, apparently it's the exact same USA cap that was worn whenever he announced that war. Remember, in the middle of the night, literally at what, 2 a.m. And then we didn't hear from him for like 24 hours on what the hell was going on there. What's even crazier is this Fox News and the way that they covered it, where they actually played old footage of the dignified transfer, apparently to cover up the baseball cap. Let's go ahead and put this up here on the screen. So as you guys can see all here, they used old footage of a previous dignified transfer, apparently to mislead the audience about the fact that he did wear a baseball cap during that. So,

I mean, that is so crazy. Now, Fox News, I guess to their credit, did eventually apologize after this was pointed out. Let's take a listen. Before we move on, we want to acknowledge a mistake made earlier on our program during our coverage of yesterday's dignified transfer, we inadvertently aired video from an older dignified transfer instead of the ceremony that took place yesterday. We deeply regret the air and extend our respect and condolences to the service members' families. We honor the sacrifice of those six American heroes. Yeah, sure. I'm sure that was still. Ininverting. Just a little oopsie editing together a clip with a previous dignified transfer. I mean, especially here's why I actually don't believe it, because did none of the hosts

Like, everyone saw the pictures. And then they played that. Immediately, if you and I were doing that, I'd be like, hey, that's the wrong. Like, how did something like this happen? Nobody in the control room, nothing? Yeah, not buying it. That only happened because it got leaked out there. But what's even worse, look, I mean, as people know, I'm a dress code fanatic.

But, you know, it's not just about that. It's also about what it represents, which is about dig. It's called a dignified transfer. It's about respect for the people who are dead. But what's even more disrespectful is Trump basically saying, Yeah, this is probably going to be the first of many. I hate to do it, but that's part of war. Whatever, right?

Literally the Lord Farquod meme. Let's take a listen. I'm going to end up coming back to Dover for more of these such dignified transfers. Sure, I hate to do it. But it's a part of war, isn't it? Who are you with? In Washington Post. Would you say it's part of war?

Deaths are part of war, yeah. It's part of war. sad part of war. It's the bad part of war. Sad part of war, bad part of war. I mean, it's just so comfortable with the deaths of American servicemen. You know what? Another thing, and we shouldn't let this one go on notice, anyone noticed Tulsi Gabbard there in full uniform doing her salute? How many times had her on the program talking about, oh, I never want to see Americans come back. You know, my time as a medic, really informed my views. There she is, sitting in front of coffins coming back from this now war with Iran. Again, one of them literally a 20-year-old kid,

born four to five years after 9-11. It's so disgusting. She and J.D. have been very quiet, haven't been? Very quiet. I mean, it is utterly shameful and insane. I mean, we're now at a point where they're actively floating out. We can't rule a draft out where it's almost certain that we're going to have boots on the ground, where they're so cavalier about the death that is going to come to U.S. service members and additional injuries and casualties, just really wild stuff. And then, In terms of, you know, the cost for everyday Americans, we're going to talk more extensively about the price at the pump, what that's going to mean, not only there, but we all live through COVID.

We know the way this ripples surround the economy. We know the level of disruption and how much ordinary people suffer when you have these kinds of supply shocks. So Trump got asked, hey, are you worried about gas prices and so cavalier about this as well? Very easy when you're a billionaire, I guess. Let's take a listen to that. We're worried about gas prices right now? No, this is a short excursion into something that should have been done for 47 years.

47 years it's taken to do this, and no president had the guts to do it. Short excursion, no big deal. There's a new talking point from his lackeys, his administration lackeys, which is like short-term pain for long-term gain. That's what they're selling to the American people right now. Long-term gain of what? For some fake threat from Iran? Exactly. I'm like bullshit. Exactly.

And also the pain, what they're projecting. is not going to be short-term either. Let's be clear about that, too. Even then, I mean, people spent like $200 million more on gas last week than they would have previously. That's a lot of money last time I checked. I mean, look, just, we're going to talk to Rory here in a bit. This just came across the wire. $4.99 a gallon today for diesel. $5 a gallon. I mean, does anybody else, how many segments we do here on this show about diesel and trucking and food inflation? This is where it all comes from. And apparently they don't give us. They do not care at all about us. Okay, let's get to water desalination because that's very important and a major escalation in the war.

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We have now had multiple attacks on regional desalination plants, including a strike on a significant one within Iran. This is obviously a war crime, but it's also, you know, opened up a new. escalatory front. This is actually something Professor Zhang talked to us about how vulnerable this entire region is. And actually the GCC countries outside of Iran, they're the ones who are more reliant on these desalination plants because they lack freshwater sources within their own countries. Let's go ahead and take a listen to Trump getting asked about a U.S. attack on an Iranian desalination plant. Iran today accused U.S. of getting a desalination plant in Iran. And they said no, that I opened the door to

other strikes on infrastructure, non-military? Allow us to also open the door to other strikes against them. Look. Do you respond to that allegation? Did the US head a diesel? They are among the most evil people ever ordered. They cut babies' heads off. They chop women in half.

What they did, take a look at October 7. Take a look at what they've done over the last 47 years. So I know nothing about a desalitization plant other than to say, if they're complaining about a desalitization plant, We complain about the fact that they should be chopping babies' heads off, okay. So, complete deflection there and then just uses some of the Israeli, like, atrocity propaganda. But what is he even talking about? Yeah, what's the reference to Hamas?

Yes, and he's claiming that Iran is now behind, which, you know, all of the reporting suggests Iran had nothing to do with October 7, outside of Hamas, obviously being, you know, allies of theirs. But, yeah, just complete deflection, uses all of this debunked atrocity propaganda. tries to make it so that Iran is directly responsible for October 7th, et cetera. And we're already seeing the consequences of this new escalatory front. Let's put B2 up on the screen. We now have Iran struck, caused material damage to a desalination plant in Bahrain. First time they say an Arab country has reported Iran striking a desalination plant. So just to be clear, U.S. strikes an Iranian desalination plant.

And then they say, okay, all right, game on. Let's go. Two can play this game as well. Let's put B3 up on the screen just so we can take a measure of how impactful this is. So these are the countries in the region listed out here by their level of dependency on these desalination plants, which of course convert salt water into freshwater. Okay, the most dependent with 90% of their water coming from desalination plants is Kuwait. Then at 86% Oman, then at 75% Israel.

Then at 70% Saudi, at 60% Bahrain, which was just struck, 50% Qatar, 42% the UAE, and Iran, now they have some water issues, but it is not nearly the level of the GCC or Israel. Only 2%. Iran is the tweet here says 3% dependent on desalination. The chart says 2% U.S. allies in the region at 40 to 90%. Think about that. Think about that. If you are whole, like Kuwait is basically wholly dependent on these plants, which are vulnerable. And the U.S., you know, running out of interceptors and not doing a good job of defending these allies anyway. And your move is to attack an Iranian desalination plant, just completely opening up that front. Yeah, this is extremely dire for these countries. I'll also raise another one. Are we sure it was us?

Are we sure it was in the Israelis? Because this is something that they love, right, to see the broadened war. And then immediately the strike that happened back on the GCC countries, as we've been talking about, they don't care at all about the GCC. They would be happy to see them collapse. Also, if you know, it's funny, when I lived in Qatar, all of the Americans, we would always joke because gas was literally cheaper than water than water. So gas would be like 89 cents a gallon, whereas water would be a dollar a gallon if you wanted to buy it from CVS or like some sort of grocery store. That is how different like things actually are over there, especially for fresh water. So you can think and just talk about how you've got only a certain amount of runway whenever it comes to water desalination.

But the bigger point is about civilian infrastructure. So this strike on the water desalination plant and the closure of the Straits of Hormuz literally is a choke point for every single person who lives in the Gulf. Because think about it. You've got, everyone talks about the Straits of Hormuz just for oil. But it's not, remember, they have huge, you know, food. Like all their food comes in from there. everything. If you've ever been to these countries, everything is imported. Literally, there's nothing out there. It's a desert for fresh food. Not food sufficient, not water sufficient. Everything has to be imported. Everything is either flown in or shipped in. And if you, two weeks is all they have for runway whenever it comes to food or water. I mean, it is a disastrous situation, especially for the civilian populations of a lot of, not to mention what, a million plus Americans who are all living in the country. Good luck getting out right now.

Look at Dubai Airport, we're going to show you some of that stuff later on. I mean, the civilian infrastructure attacks, this is designed to inflict maximum damage on all of the population. So it's really dangerous. And to your point about who did this, so put B6 up on the screen. The Israelis blamed UAE, okay? UAE is completely denying this that they struck this desalination facility. And they also hit back at what they described as inappropriate, Israeli conduct. So, you know, it definitely, there is a full-scale disinformation campaign

coming from the Israelis. Why? Because they don't want this to be a limited conflict. Their incentives are all in the direction of dragging as many countries into this thing as they possibly can. So, you know, I think given the breadcrumbs here, I think you're probably right. the most likely suspect here is Israel. But ultimately, it doesn't matter from a, you know, whether it's the U.S. or Israel, because certainly the Iranians blame us for everything that's being done to them right now. And you already had, we're going to talk to Trita more about this, but you've already had, you know, the Iranians made this sort of outreach like, okay, regional Arab countries.

If you don't attack us, we're not going to attack you back. Trump immediately comes in and undermines that, and now, you know, that very fragile sort of accord to limit this and contain the conflict and step back from the escalation chain that has already been completely destroyed. And clearly Israel here trying to keep that regional escalation going by saying, oh, it was UAE. They're denying it and saying, you know, basically you all are outrageous for the, you know, the disinformation that you're spreading. we can put B7 up on the screen here as well to see, you know, this analysis, senior analyst on Israel. The crisis group says much of what Israel is Israeli media is reporting in Gulf states as disinformation appears to be part of an effort to escalate the war further between Gulf and Iran. And the, you know, I think that's just like undeniable at this point what they are up to. But last thing here, put before up on the screen, you can see the way that the Iranians are reacting.

So this is the foreign minister of Iran. He says the U.S. committed a blatant and desperate crime by attacking a freshwater desalination plan on Keshem Island. Water supply in 30 villages has been impacted attacking Iran's infrastructure's dangerous move with grave consequences. The U.S. set this precedent, not Iran. Yeah, and that's why they already attacked in, what is it, in Bahrain?

Bahrain. And just, I mean, Bahrain, remember, where are all those Americans who are in the Gulf? In Bahrain, like in Kuwait and all of these countries, massively dependent on these water desalination. So I actually think, look, this is a broader war theory. Like, what do you do? Let's go back to the history of all warfare.

It starts out just troop on troop. Then it's like, well, when you get gridlocked, what do you do? Oh, well, now we have to wage war on the enemy's ability to sustain the front. So what do you do? You no longer care as much about that. Air power is going to go and attack. Remember, ball-bearing factories and all of these places of infrastructure that sustain the war effort. This is what, if you think back to World War I, what did they do?

Why did they have unrestricted sub or U-boat bombing back then? To literally make sure that the Britons couldn't continue the war effort on their home island so that they couldn't continue to send food or any supplies to the people who were on the front. The same things that the Allies did to the Germans. We would attack their food supplies and all these other things. Again, same thing. We wanted to cause mass famine to make sure the population would stop supporting the war. This is what total war looks like, the civil war.

How did it end? go through Atlanta and burn everything to the ground. This is the problem with sustaining these types of conflicts, and it's literally a fight literally to the death. And then you have to say, who has the ability and the will, or at the very least the will, to want to fight to the death.

I don't even want to pay 50 cents more per gallon. The number of American dead for me is already, it's seven too high who are confirmed. Who knows what the real number is. So for the rest of us, we're out here being like, oh, diesel, $5 a gallon, huge disruption to our life. jet fuel is going up. Anybody who wants to fly. By the way, our Asian allies are getting hammered. You know the South Korean index is down 15% over the last five days? They're getting destroyed

because all their oil comes from the Straits of Hormuzum. The Japanese, 90% of their oil comes from the Middle East. The Niki 225, I checked this morning, is down like 9% over the last five days. They're getting hammered the entire world. For what? For literally nothing? And then you've got interceptor stocks that are all falling, civilian infrastructure. This is textbook. for any war, for any war, which doesn't initially find smashing success in the first couple of days, it has to expand. It doesn't have a choice by strategic logic. I mean, theoretically, you do, which is to say, oh, my God, this was a horrible idea. Trump's not going to do that. And even if he wanted to do that, Israel's not going to let him at this one. And even if they did,

then what are the Iranians just going to say, yeah, okay, they're like, no, no, no, we're not done with you yet. And normalizing those attacks on civilian infrastructure, that is to Iran's benefit because this is sort of stuff that's very easy to attack with the drone, right? And, you know, so this is a game they can play all day long. And so what have you accomplished so far in this war? You have a, you know, decapitated the head of the regime. Now you've got a harder line person who has been named as the Supreme Leader, the son of the previous Ayatollah, who just had his whole family murdered by you. So congratulations. You've got another company who is more hard line and then the previous one who's now in charge, okay.

You've likely unified, actually, the Iranian people behind this government, given that they are under siege and under attack. You have now your economy being destroyed in real time. I mean, true threat of like a global depression situation already, just with the closure of the Strait of Hormuz. You are now, you have failed to accomplish whatever the goals are, not that you've been real clear about what those goals even are, so it kind of makes them unaccomplishable,

But you have not collapsed the regime. There isn't civil war. There is not certainly a regime change. You do not have control of the nuclear materials. They continue to be able to strike within Israel. I'm seeing lots of reports this morning about attacks from Iran in Israel and also on GCC member states as well. So, and now you're in sort of this bind where you're very likely to end up sending ground

troops in and having many, many more Americans dead. That is what's been accomplished, quote unquote, so far in this war. It could not be more of a cluster. Like, it's just an absolute disaster and very hard to see how we get out of this any time soon because Trump, you know, there are no good options for Trump to walk away. And as I said before, even if Trump tried to walk away, not at all clear that the Iranians would be like, okay, good. Let's go back to the way things were because they know that they would just be courting another attack yet again in the future. Next Monday, our 2026 IHeart podcast awards are happening live at South by Southwest.

This is the biggest night in podcasting. We'll honor the very best in podcasting from the past year and celebrate the most innovative talent and creators in the industry. And the winner is creativity, knowledge, and passion will all be on full display. Thank you so much. IHeart Radio. Thank you to all the other nominees. You guys are awesome. Watch live next Monday at 8 p.m. Eastern, 5 p.m. Pacific free at Veep.

or the Veeps app. Ego Woda is your host for the 26 IHeart Podcast Awards, live at South by Southwest. Hello, is anybody there? Raised by a single mom, Ego may have a few father-related issues. Are we supposed to talk about your dad?

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