Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 4/14/26: China Challenges Trump Blockade, Lindsey Graham Peace Sabotage, Israel Freaks Over IDF Soldier Viral Pic

Episode Date: April 14, 2026

Emily and Saagar discuss Trump Hormuz blockade falls apart, Lindsey Graham sabotaging peace deal, Israel freaks over IDF viral soldier. Sohrab Ahmari: https://x.com/SohrabAhmari?s=20    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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What do we? No, oh, I have to do it whenever somebody else is here. So I think we have something good. Should we do a high-five? Let's do a high-five. So we had the bro show. This is Fascist Point. Welcome to Sagar and Emily, total takeover of the feed for the next two days.

We're going to do our best to convey why we need a benevolent dictator here in the U.S. Just joking, just joking. Don't worry about it. That is the name of the group chat. Fast point is the name of the group chat. And I named it. So, yes, all of my critics were correct the whole time. Okay, I have to do Crystal's journey. This is the hardest part.

It actually is the hardest part. This is absolutely the hardest part. Because people don't realize we do not have teleprompters. Right, exactly. So I have to, like, go off the top of my head, and usually I just sip a coffee. But, all right, I'm going to do my best. Blockade. We're going to start with the blockade.

That's what we're going to do at the very beginning. J.D. Vance gave a very interesting interview. What did he say? Iran started economic terrorism. Well, too, can play at that game. Yikes. Not usually supposed to say the quiet part out loud. We're going to talk about BB, saying, again, more quiet parts out loud,

saying that the vice president and the administration reports to him on a daily basis. It's not talks to him on a daily, reports to him. reports to him on a daily basis. We're also, Emily, I'm gonna need you to break this one down for me. Trump posted a photo of himself as Jesus and is now saying he thought he was a doctor. Yeah. So, yeah, so evangelicals are very upset.

He did delete the image, very, very rare. He also is in a beef with the Pope. That's another thing I need you to explain to me. Pope Leo is weak on crime. A lot of crime apparently out there in the Vatican. That's right, that one will live on for quite some time. Sorabamari is going to join us to discuss this Hungary election where Orban officially lost election for the first of what, it's 16 years. A center-right figure will now supersede him.

But what's more interesting, honestly, is Orban's alliance with the United States. Remember, the vice president, JD, literally flew all the way over there just campaign for him. Orban got completely blown out despite being endorsed by Donald Trump, I think by BB Netanyahu. So big, big shift there. It's not exactly like a bunch of lefties have taken over, but it's interesting. Nonetheless, Sora, it's been following that very closely. And then Emily and I are going to discuss

Sam Altman and a recent attack that happened on his home, perhaps what it says about our current society. The FBI made an arrest and raided that person's home who perpetuated the attack yesterday. So we'll have some updates. And then finally, we're going to do an interview with Kristen Brightweiser. She is a 9-11 widow. She lost her husband on 9-11.

She has some serious accusations against Secretary Howard Lutnik. She alleges that he has not been nearly as helpful to helping 9-11 widows gain access to the funds that they are, of course, you know, they rightfully have. And as well, has not aligned a meeting with Donald Trump, which she claims that on behalf of other than 9-11 widows was promised to them. We did get a response from Secretary Lutnik, and we will tell you all about what he said during that interview. But before we get to that, please hit subscribe to our YouTube channel. If you are listening to this on a podcast, please share an episode with a friend. And of course, please hit breakingpoints.com and become a premium subscriber. Emily and I are going to do the AMA.

But with all of that, a lot of talking. You did so well. No, this is way harder. This is so hard. Haven't even had a sip of that coffee just yet. Let's go ahead and start with Donald Trump and the latest on the blockade. Here he was speaking in front of the Oval Office with a door dash driver from McDonald's. Maybe we'll get to that at one point. Go ahead.

So this was his attempt. It's tax week. So to set the stage a little bit before we roll the sot, he's trying to highlight the one big beautiful bills tax benefits to average Americans, hence the door dash driver you're going to see in this video. And there's no tax on tips initiative. Yes, which is a perfect illustration of politically where he is right now. He's trying to talk about no tax on tips, and instead this is what happens. Let's take a listen. A round of talks planned with Iran, and if so, will you send Vice President Jane Van to him? Well, he's done a good job at Steve and Jared. They've all done a very good job. And I can tell you that we've been called by the other side. They'd like to make a deal very badly, very badly.

What was the sticking point over? You said it was over nuclear. It was over nuclear, very similar. Yeah, very good. I guess you're listening. It's over the fact that they will never have a nuclear weapon. blockade is concerned. What's the end game? Is it to force Iran back to the negotiating table? Is it to open up the strait so the gas prices ultimately come down? Maybe everything. I mean, both of those things, certainly, and more. We can't let a country blackmail or extort the world because that's what they're doing. They're really blackmailing the world. We're not going to let that happen. And you know, the amazing thing is we don't, can you believe this? We don't use this rate. We don't need the street. We have our own oil and gas, much more than we need. We have more oil and gas than

Saudi Arabia. Think of this. We produce more. Saudi Arabia and add Russia to it. If we don't need the straight, why are we blockading it? That's a very good. Why are we blockading the blockade? Look, I mean, the whole thing is crazy. Emily, uh, he is totally in a vice of his own making. And we can even report to everybody this morning that the blockade's not even working. So, no way. Yeah. That's, that can't be right. No, I'm kidding. It sounds exactly right. It sounds exactly right. I thought they were eager to make a deal.

They've been calling President Trump, which is what he just said in that clip, of course. But no, no surprise there at all. As Trump would say, you don't have the cards. Yeah, let's go ahead and put A2 up there on the screen as well. We'll take a listen to this, where Trump claims that other countries want to help in the blockade. Let's take a listen. Your anticipation is the president that other countries will assist in this effort to blockade Iran and those. Yeah, other countries are going to also.

Which country, sir? We don't need other countries, frankly, but they've offered the services. We'll let it, we'll let it be known probably tomorrow. Has the lockings started, sir? Yeah, started at 10 o'clock. So we've been trying to track that down, and so far we haven't been able to find a single one. Well, let's put A3 up there on the screen. Here we have the UK, Kier Starmor, probably the most important naval ally of the United States.

Starmor says the UK will not join Trump's blockade of Iran's ports. We also know from the French that they will not join the blockade. Germany has not yet said. Nobody in NATO has said that they're going to be joining the blockade. The Japanese, as far as I can tell, so far having said, and South Koreans, which we covered yesterday, how furious they are with the nation of Israel. In fact, they have an opposite tactic, Emily, they have an special envoy in Tehran right now on the ground who's trying to negotiate safe passage for Korean vessels. So there's none of that that is happening right now. And of course, the Chinese also issuing threats against Trump on the blockade.

Yeah, and this, by the way, is an important part of the case for the war that we continue to hear for supporters of the war, which is that it has once again isolated Iran, further isolated Iran, and all of America's allies are rallying around the United States. And that is an actual case that I continue to hear. I don't know about you, but I continue to hear that case too. Well, I mean, particularly with the Gulf allies, but, like the free world more broadly, as people talk about. Now, China, we should bring China into this, A4. Let's put it up on the screen. A4, please.

Yeah, this is a Bloomberg tear sheet here. The headline is China urges restraint as Trump threatens to blockade or moves. Sager, the Chinese reaction to all of this, not surprising, but also, again, undermining the case that this was some type of 4D chess move that was going to isolate China. Yeah. What's interesting about the China thing here is they urged restraint. They also came out and they warned Trump. you're not going to threaten our energy alliance with Iran. It has nothing to do with you. Remember, they've been buying a lot of Iranian oil over the years. It's not a huge percent to them, but now at this

point they kind of want to prop up Iran and they want to make sure that they're getting money, especially as an adversary here. We do know that they were some of the people who tried to get Iran to the table in the peace deal, which is very interesting. They're one of the people who actually pushed them over the edge. Now, though, by antagonizing China and directly threatening to inspect and to board their vessels, which would be heading to Iranian ports. You're in a whole other universe, right? Like, I mean, imagine, you know, in the United States, a Chinese vessel, well, if an American vessel was transiting through the Taiwan Strait and it was subject to boarding and it's, I mean, we're going to war over something like that. And a significant amount of

our trade moves through either Taiwan or the Straits of Malacca. Either of those could be very, very easily boarded and or inspected by the Chinese according to their whole nine dash line claims, which, you know, I mean, who exactly are we to say whenever we're going to blockade Iran. And by the way, blockade is, of course, an act of war, which needs to be authorized by Congress. Congress is actually back in session. Are they going to lift the finger? Probably not. The other thing, you know, just to allude to the blockade not even working is let's put A9 up there on the screen. This was from tanker trackers yesterday. They said, we spotted a tanker on satellite imagery, which actually departed Karg Island and was spoofing like its signal to show that it had departed Saudi Arabia.

We also got multiple reports this morning. Let's put A9B, please, up there on the screen. A U.S. sanction tanker, which was linked to China, is actually making its way through the Straits of Hormuz testing Trump's naval blockade. And we also know that there were three separate ships as of yesterday, which were able to get through the Straits of Hormuz. Now, it is unclear exactly what type of ships those are. We do know that some of them are sanctions linked. We don't know whether they're going from Iran or not, it's all very complicated because of this whole spoofing thing where they can claim that they're coming, let's say, from the UAE.

Apparently this is a long tested thing now for Iranian sanctioned oil tankers, but it kind of exploded after the Russian oil sanctions where all of these, they're called like gray tankers where they're technically like kind of uninsured or outside of the normal legal system or sanction system from the United States. But clearly there's a dark network of,

tankers and of oil which is moving across the ocean, testing the blockade so far, at least a few of those ships have gone through. All of this almost doesn't really matter because a few ships here or there basically means nothing to the global markets because you need hundreds of ships which are currently trapped, not to mention all of the oil stored in the Persian Gulf and all of the production capacity. OPEC announced yesterday a 27% cut in production in a single month of March. That is, I mean, millions of barrels. And as Rory, who are a frequent guest here on oil, has said, is that dialing that up just takes a long.

So you have a shortage in the amount that's being produced. You have a backlog in the stuff that's getting out of the street. And now you have China and others testing the blockade. So, I mean, this is a very dangerous situation. Ships can fire upon each other. Maybe the Iranians will threaten to close, you know, know, the Babal Mandab straight and or the Red Sea. Like, this all just demonstrates serious danger, I think, for the U.S. Like, if you're going to threaten a blockade and then there's no actual

blockade, what are people going to think, right? I mean, then it's actually humiliating. And it's very, very much, I think, fitting with the way that this whole war is gone. No, that's exactly right. When Donald Trump is out talking about the blockade, how successful it is, how wonderful it is, and then it's juxtapose on the split screen with this news about Chinese vessels going right through. So let's be careful, because they're not Chinese vessel. They're owned. It's very complicated, right.

I just want to, I don't want to give a false impression. No, you're totally right. The point that I was going to make is that you have all of these other countries involved because of ships coming in and, it's not just a conflict between the United States and Iran when you have vessels flying under other country's flags or what have you, trafficking in and out of the straight, again, even though there's a blockade that's very, very successful, of course, lest we forget. But all that is to say, that is early World War I days.

It has that feel all over it because China obviously also now, this is our deep state leaking to like Natasha Bertrand again, allegedly already starting to help. And I said allegedly, intentionally help Iran rebuild its military supplies. So that can go in a really, really, really scary direction, especially when you're going. have the American president staking some political claim on a successful blockade and then the potential for him being humiliated. Absolutely. As soon as an American soldier gets hurt if it happens, the escalation trap explodes yet again. Yeah, and we have, I think we have 15 different warships in the streets of Hormuz.

Let's go and put A7 up there on the screen just again to show you all how the blockade is going. Trump said 34 ships went through the streets of Hormuz yesterday. by far the highest number since this foolish closure began. Maybe he's right. He has access to information that we don't have, but fortunately for us, there's actually a lot of open source data whenever it comes to these ships. Let's put A8 up there on the screen. This was from Macro Edge, a economic intelligence firm. They say actual number of straits yesterday, or ships in the straight yesterday, was four. Contradicting Trump's claim of 34. One oil tanker apparently was allowed to pass through. And as we've just showed you all, the three at least that we know of so far that we're able to come through, all have been able to do so.

Another very, very troubling bit of news, actually, is A-11. Let's put that up there on the screen. This shows the danger to the U.S. military, and this is from U.S. Naval Institute. So they say the carrier USS George H.W. Bush is currently operating off Southern Africa, as the Iranian blockade begins. Now, you know, they kind of buried the headline because what they're saying is that the USS George W. Bush is off the coast of Namibia because it's going to have to sail around the entire African continent and set to join the growing naval force in the Arabian Sea amid the blockade of the Straits of Hormuz. Now, it deployed at the end of March and it did not sail via a

typical transit for East Coast-based carriers to the Middle East. And the reason why is that this allows the carrier to avoid transiting the Red Sea and the Bob Al-Mandeb Strait, which were both hubs of activity for the Houthis in their drone and missile attacks on commercial shipping in 2024 and 2025. So I think what this confirms more than anything is U.S. fear of the Houthis and of the Red Sea. That has not previously yet been closed in the entire Iran War, but it remains like the ultimate Trump card if they can close both the Straits of Hormuz and the Red Sea. But look, a carrier costs, I don't know, $100 million a month to deploy. So this is an extra transit time.

I forget exactly. But it's a decent amount. And of course, a ton of fuel, which is all very expensive right now, not to mention all the guys there, everybody's getting paid. So you can just think about the multimillion dollar decision that they've just made here to sail around all of Africa just to avoid the Red Sea transit because they're afraid of getting shot at and they don't want to instigate some sort of conflict. If we had complete total and free confidence that we'd be able to do, then that's what

would have happened. But this, I think, really shows the danger also of this current blockade. And there's also a story out this morning from Saudi Arabia, or from the Wall Street Journal about Saudi Arabia. They are very afraid of the blockade. They're urging Trump to reverse it specifically because they said, hey, if you close the Straits of Hormuz, then they're very afraid. they're going to close the Red Sea, and that's where 75% of our oil is currently going through,

and if that's closed, we're dead. It's over. Then there's not a single drop of oil that's even coming out of the region and of OPEC's largest producer. So again, it's very embarrassing, like a U.S. carrier having to divert itself because of a, you know, a stateless group with a couple of, like, cobbed together ballistic missiles. I mean, that's humiliating. We're talking about a, what, multi, I don't even know, how much does an aircraft carrier cost? several hundred million dollars. It's supposed to be the crown jewel of the U.S. Navy. It should be able to sail wherever it wants. So that shows you, again, the asymmetry, I think of the conflict. Yeah, and I was just because I mean, the president also says we've won this

war, and part of the objectives of the war were to end support for the proxies, the terrorist proxies, and then you have the aircraft carrier going around the entire African continent at whatever hundreds of millions of dollars cost it takes. And that just, again, undermines his entire claim that the war has been won and is a major wonderful success, you literally having the aircraft carrier go around Africa to avoid the Houthis. And so the asymmetry is obvious, but at what point does it become necessary for the president to try and completely quash the asymmetry and just say this is asymmetrical, so therefore we're going to like escalate beyond what the public is comfortable with. Yeah, that's the danger. Because, you know, with the Houthis,

We tried in 2024 and in 2025. And as I understand it, it was genuinely no holds barred on the Houthis. We did everything that we possibly could to try to take them out from missiles to bombing. And remember, the Houthis, at the end of the day, they retained their capability. We basically just packed up our toys and left. And that was humiliating to the United States military. And it was a serious test of the U.S. Navy as well. And it demonstrated the same problem that we found in Iran.

Ground or air alone is not going to accomplish it. At the end of the day, a determined adversary will take a lot of damage, but we'll figure things out. Remember, the Houthis even clipped in F-35 during that campaign in 2025, which happened again in the Iran War. You can go and check it if you don't believe me. The interesting thing about all of this, I think, together, again, just shows you the problem of trying to do this ad hoc blockade with the immense consequence of the global oil market. So every day that the straight remains closed, that means higher oil or sustained oil, shortages, shortages in helium, fertilizer. Already the farmers are freaking out about the fertilizer. Trump said something.

I forget exactly. It's something like, you know, I'm watching fertilizer prices very closely. They better not raise their price. And it's like at a certain point, like you have no control over stuff like this, like once you've unleashed completely on Pandora's box. So things not going so well right now. And, you know, for the escalation that you keep warning about, it's not like there isn't a sustained drumbeat here in Washington pushing this along. Here's Mark Levine immediately over the weekend saying that we should use nuclear weapons to end this conflict once and for all. Let's take a listen.

I have in front of me, though, you know, the Potsdam Declaration, July 1945, I wasn't even going to mention this, but I have it. And then we have the instrument of surrender by the Japanese September 2nd, 1945. And in order to implement the Potsdam Declaration and get them to surrender to the terms that the Allies wanted, we dropped two atomic bombs. Now, I'm not encouraging it. I'm asking you about the law. Is that legal today under the law of the war or not? Yeah, so the calculation is a bit different when it comes to weapons of mass destruction. because that's really a, those are munitions that have a strategic level effect. And so for us, it would be the president of the United States who decides whether to launch a nuclear weapons. And so, which was also the case back in World War II.

The considerations are probably a bit different now, but it's still, this law of arm conflict still applies. It's just the decision-making process for weapons of mass destruction is eligible. because of the strategic nature of the impact of those weapons. So I take that as a possible, yes. I'm not encouraging it. You know, the left goes crazy and they try to put words in our mouths. I'm just trying to get the law nailed down here. I think it would be very helpful to go back and read the terms of surrender for the Japanese,

for our envoys to read it because the Japanese were dug in, even after the dropping into atomic bombs. And it took a lot of pressure. even after that, to get them to surrender. So, as you can see there, Mark Levin continues to pound the drum. A lot of A-Historical stuff. Damn. Whatever it comes to his entire reading of Potsdam and all that,

but I'll save that for another lecture. Oh, you're going to save it? No, so we have too much stuff to do to get through. People don't want to hear it. Oh, I thought we were going to get it. Maybe one day. See, I'm tempting it. Friday, yeah, I know.

You're pulling on the strings, but we would have to go much, much deeper. You also flagged this, Emily, from Nikki Haley, if you want to set it up. Yeah, so Nikki Haley was on Sunday shows. This was CNN talking about, she gets asked directly about boots on the ground. And you could probably predict her answer, but still worth noting, this is A6. So do you believe that the U.S. military special forces and those who support special forces just need to go in and extract the enriched uranium? I think that's probably what it's going to come down to. I mean, this is a special force mission.

It would take about a week to 10 days to get done. They know how to do it. It's dangerous. It's not something that we can, you know, just sit and think it's casual. I think they have to do it. But once they do that, they're taking away literally one arm of the Iranian regime to where they no longer can threaten any of our allies. So blue thumb of us anymore.

I think they've already known. It's a small special operations force that they would have to do to be. able to extract that uranium, not just any military man or woman could do this. This is special forces for sure. Break this down. What do we listen to? So Dana Bash says boots on the ground and Nikki Haley doesn't want to say yes. She doesn't want to give the yes answer to that.

You'll notice she also said, well, it's not something that's just casual, you know, but it is special forces. They're trained to do this. So I think that's probably, Saga, you and I have both heard this from different people is Delta Force going and digging up the enriched uranium. Nikki Haley is saying that's, quote, probably what it's going to come down to. It would take a week to 10 days. No big deal.

It's not casual, but it's no big deal. But she is in a position where obviously the Israelis have their zero enrichment line that they're pushing over and over again. That is likely not making J.D. Vance's job any easier or the peace negotiations any easier at all. But this has really become the conventional wisdom in neoconservative or maybe even just, what's the right word interventionist circles, is that you're at some point going to see actual boots on the ground, not just CIA or whatever else,

but an actual boots on the ground operation to retrieve the inter-uranium. And when Nikki Haley says, she thinks that's, quote, probably what it's going to come down to, I think that's correct. I think that's probably true, sorry, that Trump can only resist the temptation to do that for so long as the war continues to go this way.

And, you know, I think it is important also, last thing that we'll put in here. Honestly, kind of a stunning admission from the U.S. vice president and an interview on Fox News, vice president saying Iran tried economic terrorism, so that's what we're going to do. Let's take a listen. The only thing the Iranians have been able to do, they haven't, of course, beaten us militarily. They've had their military been decimated. They haven't been able to prosecute the case when it comes to weapons of war. What they have done is engage in this act of economic terrorism against the entire world. They basically threaten any ship that's moving through the Straits of Hormuz.

Well, as the President of the United States showed, two can play at that game. And if the Iranians are going to try to engage in economic terrorism, we're going to abide by a simple principle that no Iranian ships are getting out either. We know that's a big deal to them. We know that applies additional economic leverage. And again, Brett, the president wants the Iranian people to thrive. So two can play at that game. Yeah, I mean, look, you know, you're not usually supposed to describe these things in the truth.

the truth, but I guess that's what we're talking about here. Two could play at that game that probably strikes very clear to Donald Trump's heart, but it definitely, I think, undermines the entire purpose of it. And it just shows the preposterous nature of it, is they close the Straits of Hormuz and are interrupting international waterway. That's why we're going to blockade the Straits of Hormuz and disrupt an international waterway, all so we can do, restore the February 27 status quo of free passage through the international waterway. What are we doing here? The whole thing is crazy. It reminds me a lot of last week when Trump posted his Easter, closed the fucking straight, or open the fucking straight, you crazy bastards, and then threatened to wipe out an entire

civilization, never to return again, whatever he said, just trying to paraphrase, the insanity there. You heard so many of his defenders say, oh, you mean just like Iran chants death to America? It's like, are you saying that justifies the president of the United States who, the entire point of your argument is, should be held to a higher standard? Because we are, again, their argument is predicated on the idea that we are the good guys. Therefore, we aren't the ones that are threatening people with an entire civilizational genocide. And then here you have them being like, no, he's just, it's just death to America. It's just J.D. Vance saying, well, if they're going to do economic terrorism, we're going to do economic terrorism too. And it's an

example of threatening to stoop to the level that their argument is predicated on them being better than. Like, that is the argument that we are the good guys here because we don't do that. We don't do the economic terrorism. We don't say, oh, you do it too, can play at that game. That was the entire purpose of the Western Agreements after World War II. Yeah, all right. So there you go. It is definitely a little bit of a shocking development, but demonstrates kind of the tenuous and dangerous nature that this entire thing has devolved into.

Where will things go? We have no earthly idea. They say that they want to talk, they're not talking. Maybe they are talking. We have the blockade, but it's not really a blockade. We have countries that are being involved, but we have other countries that have said that they're not going to be involved. Ships are not allowed to translate, but ships are transiting. Economic terrorism not will be tolerated, but we are tolerating and perpetuating economic terrorism.

The only people who are losing is us. What's the price of gas right now? Let's take a look. National price of the gallon, $4.11. California at $5.88 a gallon. God bless you all out there. And the price of diesel, let's see, $5.65 a gallon. Yep, a little bit of a gallon.

nightmare. Let's get to Beebe. Turning now to the status of negotiations, a little bit of a troubling message here from the Israeli Prime Minister, Prime Minister Netanyahu, speaking before the cabinet talking about the negotiations and how the vice president, quote, reported to me in detail. Let's take a listen. I spoke yesterday with Vice President J.D. Vance. He called me from his plane on the way back from Washington. He reported to me in detail. as the people of this administration do every day on the development of the negotiations. In this case, the explosion in the negotiations, the explosion came from the American side, which was not willing to tolerate the blatant violation of the agreement to enter negotiations by Iran.

Essentially, the agreement was that there would be a ceasefire and Iran would immediately open the crossings. They didn't do that. The Americans were not willing to accept it. He also conveyed to me that the central central border. issue on the table from the perspective of President Trump and the United States is the removal of all enriched material and ensuring that there is no more enrichment in the coming years, and this could be for decades. So there you have it. Also, before we continue, this has become a matter of some controversy. So I will tell you that that video that we just played you is from the government press office with the translation, Snap translation, which was provided by the Israeli

government. I did not dub it. Nobody else dubbed it. That was an Israeli government. translation. They did change the translation later on, and I'm going to go ahead and read it to you. They say, he briefed me on the negotiations. I tweeted about this yesterday has become a matter apparently of some controversy. So I will give you that the fact that their snap translations said reported to, which of course to me immediately makes me go reported to me in detail. As for this administration does every day, they change a translation from that translation to brief me. If you speak Hebrew and you want to decide otherwise, that's up to you. Me, I'm going to go with the Snap Translation. But that's, I'm just saying, and I want to make clear that it is

apparently of dispute. And apparently this tweet has become my own personal one has become a bit of a a bit of a controversy inside of the country. So was it on there? I want to present that to everybody. It's on their website like that. Okay. So the government, the government press office of Israel aired that live with that snap translation. It was posted to YouTube. That's That was taken that clip from the Israeli government's YouTube channel. Again, I want to be extremely clear about where that came from. It's not BBC, not Sky News, not some third-party translation. This is really government's translator.

They then changed their translation to brief me, and other people are now claiming that it is differently. So I just want to be very clear about that it has become apparently a matter of some dispute. I don't speak Hebrew, so I cannot be the arbiter of this decision. I will choose to go with what the government's initial translation was. Emily, what do you think? Well, I mean, yes. Which one do you want to go with? The distinction between report and briefed is meaningful in the sense that if Netanyahu was speaking in a way where he wants to convey that J.D. Vance is reporting to him.

It's different than briefing, reporting to has obviously a very particular connotation that you are in some way the inferior and you are reporting to the superior. It's, you know, the boss relationship. Which is why I think that it became a matter of some controversy. Of course. So anyway, they are very desperate to try and to tell me that I am wrong or that their initial translation was wrong. Maybe that's true. If the government of the state of Israel wants to come out and say that that was, that their official translation, again, official initial translation was incorrect and that they change their official translation. I will air it here on the show.

But as of right now, that is where things stand. Well, the reason that it jumps out to you as well is that it's this pattern of Netanyahu, especially speaking Hebrew, boasting about his not a third. authority, but his sway over the American government. Right, exactly. Which is the reason that it... When you saw it, it jumped out of you. Of course, I read that and I said, wow, as an American, I'm outraged that this person is saying reports to me in detail, as this administration does every day.

Now it's theoretically possible, I guess, that he said or meant talked to me every day or brief me. So I will assess it in the totality of the evidence of why we went to Iran of the initial snap translation from the government. I will assess it in terms of our relationship with this country, the fact that there was no ceasefire with Lebanon, that it was immediately broken. And I will allow this audience to do so with all the information that I just gave you to make up your own mind. The New York Times story that Netanyahu was, this was the Maggie Haberman, John Swan story from last week, that Trump was not sitting

at the head of the table in our own situation room, that they were across from each other, almost as equals in the situation room when he was briefing Trump on why we should go to war. Right, exactly. All right. So, there's a lot. So, there's a lot. So, There you have it. That's where things stand as of right now. All right, let's continue then in this about where the talks actually are and what the status of them. Let's put the next one up there on the screen from the Financial Times. Mediators are pursuing an Iran-U.S. deal in back-channel diplomacy. So this one basically alleges that behind the scenes, the U.S. and Iran continue to exchange messages about a deal to end the war through back-channels, despite the failure

of the weekend talks. The marathon negotiations in Islamabad ended with the U.S. Vice President blaming Iran for its unwillingness to commit to not developing a nuclear weapon. But two diplomats said that there were active talks ongoing through mediators to extend the ceasefire and secure a more permanent deal. Donald Trump said on Monday that Iran's negotiators had called and want very badly to reach a deal with the U.S., something that we played earlier. People briefed on the discussion said that intermediaries were seeking to convince the parties to hold lower level technical talks to hammer out disagreements over issues such as reopening the Straits of Hormuz and Iran's nuclear program. So that takes us to B3, and this is what

really we should talk about, is that the alleged disagreement all stems from this uranium enrichment freeze. The United States apparently demanded 20 years. The Iranians offered five years. Now, that five year, I'm told, was the same freeze that was offered in February. So they have it moon moved at all as a result of the war. They offered this in February in those initial talks with Steve Wickoff and with Jared Kushner. Now, what we're basically told here is that this is just like one of many disagreements over the nuclear program. What the U.S. wants is a 20-year commitment of a freeze, and they want to go in, take all the uranium out, and take it out of the country. The Iranians, again, I'm not a nuclear expert or any of this stuff, they want to,

I forget exactly how it works, but they want to, like, dilate it. They want to, like, dilate it. effectively is the way that has been described. Rather than destroy. Rather than have the U.S. come in and take it out and or destroy it. Now, remember, we were told that this was all obliterated, so it's a little complicated. But this remains like the single biggest sticking point. But what everybody is missing is this still doesn't address all of the original demands of the U.S. Ballistic missiles is completely unmentioned, right? Yeah. Ballistic missiles is completely unmentioned. You also have the so-called proxy group is totally unmentioned.

Regime change is like a fantasy at this point. Now, we did change the regime, right? Because we replace the daughtering old Ayatollah with the Fah on nuclear weapons, with his son whose entire family who's basically killed and himself has apparently been injured and who doesn't have a Fadbaa get on nuclear weapons use.

So not great. Whenever I look at all of this. And this is why when we think about all the poison pills that the U.S. or the Israelis or even the Iranians might put in, it's just very it's very difficult to see where things are going to go. Remember, Lebanon was a big talking point. Today, here in Washington, the Lebanese government and the Israeli government will hold, I think, trilateral talks with the U.S. as a broker on those talks, specifically, and that those will be,

I mean, look, we don't know where that's going to go. It's also the Lebanese government situation is complicated because they want to see this right, but it's not like Hezbollah is a Sessala party to those talks. So that's where they stand right now. Yeah, I mean, it's a complete mess for the administration. That's not surprising, to your point, about that particularly being, or about the five-year window being what was already offered and was already on the table in February, that is such a good example of exactly what's been accomplished over the last six weeks, which is things seem to have been even worse, or things seem to be getting actually even worse for the United States throughout the negotiations. And the enrichment question, we should talk about that. We can put B3 up on the screen, this Axios tear sheet. This is, yeah, so this is the Baroque Ravid story that we were just talking about on the enrichment.

U.S. proposed Iran except 20-year moratorium. Okay, so Sagar, they want a single-digit period. If Trump can get them to 15, if Trump can get them to 15, which I don't know that he can, but if he can get them to 10 or 15, I would say it's still a loss because of everything that's happened over the last six weeks, the blood and treasure of the last six weeks,

the possibility that there was something on the table in February, that could potentially end the war, potentially it could end the war, but not with the U.S. in a much stronger position. Well, Mursaza Hussein made a great point where he was like, you know, they should just agree to 20 because it's not exactly like the current government or the international institutions will be around in 20 years to be able to guarantee some sort of a deal. But, I mean, look, this stuff does matter

because if they technically violate in the future, then that could be an excuse for the Israelis or for Trump to bomb them. So I understand why they wouldn't want to do it. But this also, and this is kind of my bigger point about the technical experts, this was, in my opinion, the real reason why the February talks

were designed to fail. And now that we have all that New York Times reporting about how Trump was determined to strike beforehand, it's true. So I talked to some people who were in the government at the time of the JCPOA, and you don't have to be a fan of that to also know that the way it was negotiated, it was a serious endeavor. You don't have to agree with it, but I'm saying it was a two and a half year deal that was negotiated over literally years, not only at the highest levels between the Iranian foreign minister and the U.S. Secretary of State, John Kerry, but also if you, or was he secretary? Yeah, he was. Yeah. Anyway, so the Secretary of State, John Kerry, and you also had the Iranian foreign minister in a two and a half year relationship. The more important talks had nothing to do with those two. It was all about the technical experts. So the U.S. had nuclear experts, along with all

the other P5 plus one powers, I believe, and Russia and China, right, they were all at the table. And what they were all talked, they had nuclear experts who were hashing out exact quantities of uranium, what they were allowed to enrich what they weren't. the Iranians were there on the other side. It was all nuclear scientists bilaterally, right? Or whatever, you know, in some sort of roundtable. None of that occurred with the initial talks of Jared Kushner and Steve Whitkoff. They don't know what they're talking about, right?

So if Iran starts saying stuff like, well, what about 3.67% highly enriched uranium, which is useful for, you know, they're like, no, zero enrichment. They're like, yeah, but what about medical grade? So they don't even know. I mean, I don't know the difference either. I'm not a G, you know, like a nuclear scientist. I have to go and ask one. I like how you started saying I'm not a genius, and then you stopped because you were like, no, I am actually a genius.

I'm that way through the word. I am absolutely not a genius, which all viewers of this program can attest to. However, I think that the nuclear expert, you know, not even being at the table. And remember, even they disagree with each other on all this stuff. That is why, that's why in some ways, like, the deal's not really even serious. Because traditionally, the way that U.S. diplomacy and deals of this type work is you have, like, endless meetings. between these nuclear scientists, and then once they agree, they brief respectively to their principles. And then those principles meet

for some ridiculous handshake ceremony, which is totally fake. Nothing's actually being negotiated, and you sign on the bottom line, and everybody walks away, and they're all happy. That's what the traditional processes. This is like the inverse, and that's part of why I'm very, very skeptical about all of it.

Even ballistic missiles, what do they know about ballistic missiles? And the number, and the range. We're going to cap the range? The whole thing is ridiculous, and they could lie, you know, and we could lie too. Because that's how, that's why these types of like slap shot agreements are bad. And we're, again, I mean, you and Crystal and Ryan make this point all the time, but we are also, our ally in these negotiations is Israel, which is not clear about its nuclear weapons. Right, yeah, very good.

So all of that. A literal NPT noncompliant state, which is crazy. So how are you supposed to come to that conversation with Iran and make this argument? And this is, I mean, your point about how the experts are negotiating, against each other, they're debating against each, like, it's just about world destruction, like the capacity for world destruction. Nuclear geopolitics have been a disaster for the human race, even though we haven't had a post-World War II nuclear explosion yet. Just wait. That's like the most bleak prediction

I have for the future. Look, you may be right. I think a atmospheric nuclear test is not out of the question by any of the nuclear powers, especially at this point and considering what's happen. I also think there will be mass nuclear proliferation in the next 25 years, not only as a result of Iraq, but so if you have Iraq, Libya, and now Iran, all three together, what's the lesson? You better get a nuke. There's only one country in the axis of evil, which survives today. North Korea. Yep. And Iran now has this incentive where the public is, like, is the public supportive of the IRGC? No, a section of the public is supportive of the IRGC, but the United States started the war by bombing a school of girls. And if you think that's not going to have a radicalizing effect on some not insignificant portion of the Iranian public, you're just wrong.

And that's what we see happen with these interventionist conflicts and at least over and over and over again. So if they start racing to enrichment, it won't be a surprise. Yeah, it certainly will. Now, let's continue down this line about enrichment. And again, this is where it all really matters and about latent nuclear deterrence. So, you know, not to get too complicated about it, but basically, they don't want to fully enrich to a bomb because they know that that would mean war.

They don't want to give up any of their enrichment because that would mean Libya and sodomization on camera and complete decapitation by the West. So they want to keep some level of latent nuclear deterrent. That's why they want to have some enrichment. You can understand that.

I think everybody can rationally understand that. And we don't like it, but of course, if we could topple them, we would have, we just spent a month in a war. And our president said he was going to wipe out the civilization. And our president said he was going to wipe other civilization. So the zero enrichment line is an Israeli line, which was adopted by Mike Pompeo in 2018, but it's been very ambiguous.

When you say no nuclear weapon, it's not the same thing as zero enrichment. The zero enrichment standard has remained here and being pushed by, of course, the biggest neocons in the government. Let's put B4 up there on the screen. Lindsay Graham says, I appreciate President Trump's resolve to end the Iranian conflict peacefully and through diplomacy. However, we have to remember who we're dealing with in Iran. terrorists, liars, and cheaters. If this reporting is accurate, the idea we would agree to a moratorium on enrichment

rather than a ban on enrichment would be a mistake. Would we agree to a moratorium for al-Qaeda to enrich? No. The only difference between al-Qaeda and the Iranian regime is that one is a Sunni terrorist organization, and the other is a Shia terrorist state. Both have the same goal when it comes to the U.S., Israel, and the civilized world. No enrichment means no enrichment. Over 20 nations have peaceful, power programs without enrichment capability. You can have peaceful nuclear power without enrichment, but you cannot make a bomb without enrichment. Again, no enrichment for Iran. They want a bomb and they cheat. So this actually, ironically, is an even more maximalist position than the initial conversation that was laid out by J.D. Vance allegedly for some 20-year ban. He's saying,

no, no 20 years, no enrichment ever, forever, which of course is a declaration of war. Last thing, B5, let's put it up there on the screen, some kind of troubling reporting. This is from the South China Morning Post. They report that Iran, Islamabad, after the peace talks, finished, that nine Pakistani Air Force fighter jets escorted the Iranian delegation's aircraft all the way back to Iran after they fear a potential attack on the delegation. They're speculating, presumably fearing an Israeli attack, I will just say, fearing potential attack. It's not like It's not just the Israelis who would want to kill them, right? You've got Saudis, the UAE. There's a lot of other people that they've made very, very angry. And that is why those Pakistani jets had to escort them. But beginning with what we did about Bibi Netanyahu and some of his comments, again, which you can take that translation, whichever way that you would like, you can just see how there is the problem of the pro-Israel lobby here in Washington, the Israeli government and its own lines, the talks by the United States, the lack of experts in all. of this. The deck is just stacked against getting anything like this done. Let's move on to a very

funny story, very interesting story. This one is about a Italian magazine. Didn't think I would be reading an Italian magazine, but here we are in 2026. Let's put this one up here on the screen. So, this was an Italian magazine. It has a cover. It says La Bueso. I'm not going to try and read this, but I am going to give you a quick translation. The headline is abuse. What is in the new issue of Lespresso, which, again, is an Italian magazine, which had that cover, which shows an Israeli soldier.

Huh? It does seem like something you agree. Absolutely. I don't read Italian magazine or Italian press. So you have an Israeli soldier there with a phone in his hand, seemingly filming what looks like a Palestinian woman. And the sub-headline there is,

it is about settlers in the West Bank. Okay, so that was the cover. Now, what ended up happening is that, let's put B8 up here on the screen, is that the Israeli ambassador to Italy, Jonathan Pelled, put out a statement saying, we strongly condemn the manipulative use of the recent cover of L'Aspresso.

The image distorts the complex reality with which Israel must coexist, promoting stereotypes and hatred, responsible journalism must be bowels. balanced and fair, hashtag media responsibility. Now, as people know, I'm not a fan of community notes, but I guess I will. You can say of media responsibility. Sure. Right. People are, I'm not screw that. But of this community note, they say the image on Les Bresso's cover is a real photograph that was taken by an Italian photographer Pietro Mastruzzo as part of a West Bank

Settlers reportage. The same man appears in other photos by the Associated or the Agen's Frey Press. So again, just to show you all that photo, let's put B9 up here on the screen. Here we have from the Middle East Eye. It says Israeli settlers uproot hundreds of trees belonging to Palestinian and West Bank. You can clearly see the same individual, which is there actually in the photograph. We also have video, which has been released now. This video was via a, I believe, an Italian journalist. and we're going to go ahead and play some of it here for you.

Let's go ahead and take a listen if you want to. You can see actually on the screen. There he is. This is presumably when the photograph was taken, him as well as several other soldiers in the IDF. And they are, I mean, there's some sort of confrontation happening. This Palestinian woman is there on the right. These Israeli soldiers are there on the left.

He is filming the incident. He did make some. sounds. It was like unclear exactly what he was saying. But if you want to go and take a listen to the full video for yourself, at one point, you can hear him shouting the word goy, goy, goy at her. And so, yeah, it's clearly not only a true incident, but it is illustrative, obviously, of what a lot of Western governments, including our own government, allegedly opposes, which is Israeli de facto settlement and control of the West Bank. But it is, yeah, it's been fascinating controversy, isn't it? Well, so

interestingly, under the thread of the post from the ambassador that we put up, this is the Israeli ambassador to Italy, Barack Ravid responded. So, former IDF, reporter at Axios, he goes, the photo is not real, it's AI. The ambassador responds,

hard to prove. Okay. So there you have a tacit admission that he actually has no idea whether or not this was responsible media, right? That's his hashtag media responsibility. He actually has no idea. I want to post with the hashtag ambassador responsibility.

Because how dare you say that this journalistic outlet was being irresponsible when you have absolutely no proof that this was somehow AI generated? In fact, the evidence is to the contrary that this was from a video. So he's out there just... No, it's, look, it's obviously... Shooting off his mouth. It's real, right? It's very obvious.

To the point where he can't even say it's not. Yeah, he didn't even deny that it was real. Let's continue. There was this B-10, please. This was Rabbi Pouko. His biography says, 11th generation rabbi, speaker and writer, host of the Jewish world podcast.

He says, Italy's magazine, Espresso Online, is publishing anti-Semitic Derr-Durmer. Derr was a Nazi publication. Worthy imagery that should clarify where they got this image from. The military vest worn here is no longer in use by the idea.

The wedding ring and bracelet are never worn by alter. Orthodox men, the formation of the beard and Kippa are outlandish, and of course the very bizarre smile and showing antith are unnatural. So as they again point out, that photograph was taken by this Italian journalist in the West Bank, and the soldier in question has been photographed in other news outlets, which included the New York Times. A lot of this actually goes back to the olive tree controversy, which we covered here actually on the show with journalist Jasper Nathaniel, so you can go and check our coverage on that in the past, but did certainly want.

to highlight that. And I do think, you know, considering our last story on the show, which we're going to talk about, which is AI, that one of the problems in our modern media age is that you have all of these people who can claim legitimate images are AI in order to cast out. And, you know, not everybody's going to watch this segment or, you know, actually take a look at what happened. They're all going, you know, some people may have initially seen that and have said, oh my God, of course it is AI or something like that. And yeah, that's all you have to claim nowadays and vice versa, AI images, which people think are real. Like after that pilot rescue mission, there was a completely AI generated image of the pilot being rescued that went viral to the point where

like the governor of the state of Texas was like so beautiful. I will never forget this. He didn't say this, but somebody else did. I will never forget this image the rest of my life. It's like, dude is literally AI. You should forget it. Yeah, forget it. It's not even remotely real. So there we go. That's that controversy. Just want to. It's a helpful property. to just be able to muddy the waters and be like, and this is exactly what we saw from the ambassador. Actually bookmark this because it'll come back in, it'll come back in handy in the future because this is a great example where he shoots from the hip and says, this is AI, it's irresponsible. And then one tweet down in the thread, he's like, well, it's hard to prove that it's not.

That's how it's going to work in the future. Yes, certainly is. This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed Human.