Chapo Trap House - 1015 - Monitoring the Situation feat. Séamus Malekafzali (3/2/26)

Episode Date: March 3, 2026

We are at war with Iran. Journalist and Chapo veteran Séamus Malekafzali returns to help us break down what has happened in the past few days, the spillover into neighboring and nearby Gulf countries, and what the future of this conflict might look like. We also return to the Israeli-USian murder-suicide pact, the protests from neighboring countries versus the celebrations from the Iranian diaspora community, and whether the Fourth Reich will ever fall. Listen to Turbulence wherever you get your podcasts: https://turbulencepod.substack.com/ And follow Turbulence on X/Twitter: https://x.com/turbulence_pod

Hello, everybody. It's Monday, March 2nd, and this is your chopo. Obviously, today we're going to be talking about they finally did it. War with Iran. Joining us on today's show is our good friend Seamus Malikovseh, joining Felix and I. Seamus, how's it going? I've been better, I'll be honest. Yeah, yeah, we all have. So I guess I'd like to open things up with, you know, where we're at right now,

which is like, you know, Saturday morning. You wake up, you find out that, like, the bastards, they finally did the thing. They did the thing that I've been, like, more or less worried about for the last 20, 25 years, is that someone would be, like, stupid, corrupt and compromised enough to start a war with Iran, for real. And I guess, I want to begin here. I think basically all you need to know about this war and the people prosecuting it is that it's called Operation Epic Fury. and it began with blowing up a school full of girls killing.

By this count, I don't know, maybe 150 schoolchildren, all of them girls. That to me says everything about what this war is about and the people behind it. I saw Pete Hegseff, the Secretary of War, as he's called now, his presser today with Kane, the other general on this. And the way that it has been articulated, it is really, quite remarkable. He said, quote, no stupid rules of engagement, no nation building quagmire, no democracy building exercise, no politically correct wars. We fight to win.

This whole thing is being, like, we don't get the existential threat that was the case with Iraq, right? There is no threat of a new 9-11. It is seemingly purely to write the humiliation. that we suffered in Iraq and Afghanistan by not getting involved on the ground or trying to nation bill but just blowing things up

killing everybody and enforcing some sort of capitulation but even as I say that at the presser Hegsef did not rule out who's on the ground nor did Trump later today so they're just throwing everything at the wall desperately trying to

concoct some sort of brave face on this where this is some sort of noble war that is also governed by Reddit-esque masculinity with no regard for who they are bombing what plans

they have for afterward no, no, there is no I'm shocked at how I knew this was going to be a disaster from the first moment, but I am shocked in the ways that it is manifesting and manifesting so brutally

and quickly. Well, I want to talk about what if any strategy is behind America's actions here. But like I, but to your point, Seamus, I'm wondering what you think about this. Like, I think the fact that like we've already heard from Trump, Hegsseth and other various mouthpieces for the U.S. government, I don't know, like a dozen or half a dozen to a dozen like conflicting rationales for this war. And like, you know, no real articulation of what victory will look like or what even they're really trying to accomplish. And I think like that is, in fact,

like if I could analyze it strategically, I think that is their strategy because I think they know that like George W. Bush and company, the problem was is that they like overpromised, you know, and like they set a standard that people could hold them to. And I think they're not trying to do that because like, I don't know what you guys think, Felix and James, but from what I can tell just from the big man himself, Donald Trump, he looks positively ashen. I don't think he wants to be doing this at all. And I think like the comments I've heard from him over the last couple days were like, oh, like maybe they'll come back to the negotiating table.

Maybe we're planning for four or five weeks. Maybe it'll be longer. I'm not ruling anything out. But like he still thinks that like I really think that like he thinks that like there's a way out of this for him that he can declare victory and go home. Like I really think that like he does not want to be doing this and they're looking for a way out. But I think they're finding that there is no way out.

They fucked themselves into this. Right. They're finding out why all these other people that were as rotten as them, but not quite as stupid, didn't actually pull the trigger on this. I mean, I think it was Mark Ames today who pointed out that this is a genuine belief among the Trump cabinet, specifically with Heggseth, probably more than anyone, but with all of them. That, like, woken, there is a magical realism type belief.

in getting rid of wokeism, where the less woke the military is, which, by the way, requires you to think of Afghanistan and Iraq as like, just incredibly woke wars. Like, underneath Mattis's BDUs, he had a shirt that said, sit down, a black woman is speaking. Billy Porter was actually the Supreme Commander of NATO. You have to believe, like, all those wars were like fucking woke. and the reason that we didn't accomplish anything there is because of wokeness.

And because like now the Navy is like making black sailors get skin infections for no reason. Now the gloves are off. And it's true. It has resulted in unprecedented outcomes. The first ever combat loss of not just one but three F-15E strike eagles, which according to Sentcom, is due to friendly fire, which we've mentioned this on the show before. The U.S. military has always had a strange complex about losing planes.

Famously in Vietnam, every time a plane was shot down by Vietnamese MiG-17s and Mig-19s, we said it was due to Sam's because it was less embarrassing to us than losing one to an enemy pilot. Now, friendly fire supposedly is less embarrassing than losing it to. I think I saw some people say that Iran has a sort of dribble. own man pad system. I'd think Kuwaiti air defenses were apparently. Right.

Well, yeah. Well, yeah, that's allegedly, if this was three friendly fire incidents that all shot down at F-15E strike eagle, which has never been shot down in combat, three of them, that's like more embarrassing. That suggests that not only should you like recall your equipment, probably everyone above like lieutenant colonel should kill themselves. I think if we want to separate this out, right? Because obviously military officials knew what a fucking disaster this was going to be.

People who are at Hexsaf, people who actually rose up the ranks in and were on the decision-making boards through, you know, who knows other administrations they were involved with. Trump himself, I think, envisioned this as a very short campaign. Like, he envisioned a Venezuela situation happening. again where he would take out Khomeini, the Supreme Leader, and once that was done, like with Paduro, then they're going to come back to the Oshina table and decide, okay, we don't want to die.

We're going to do whatever you want just so that there's not a total collapse of the state. That did not happen. And there seemed to be confusion on Trump's part. I saw, I mean, I can't know this for sure, but there seemed to be, he talked as if there were three candidates for the leadership that he was thinking,

about which matched the three members of the temporary leadership council. But then he said, no, there were two and second and third choices who were killed by us, so we don't know what's going on. And yeah, he's throwing out all these different dates, talking about an off-ram, maybe in a couple of days or four to five weeks or even longer. And he's refusing questions about the thing whenever reporters ask him about it. He does not want to, and also before this, he was trying to look for office. off ramps like commending Iran for supposedly stopping executions, which prosecutors inside Iran said

did not happen, or looking for some sort of deal. There was talk about that. No, he personally, I think, wants that, wants that off ramp. Israel, though, wants state collapse. That is something they're very firm on, and that is something that there is no real difference on. There's obviously in rhetoric there are talking about, you know, women's liberation. fall of dictatorship. There was a video by the IDF's Farsi spokeswoman just today, just a few hours ago, where they bragged about the fact that the people

bombing Iran were female pilots who were breaking the wall of oppression. But there is an understanding inside Israel that this is state collapse. They don't care really who gets it afterward. They're not talking about Resolf Pahlavi al-a-a-l-latt. Whereas in America, there are all these different schizophrenic reasonings for why

this could be done, like imminent ballistic missile threat, Maybe if we get nuclear weapons off the table, that could be something. Maybe if we just get them to commit to not making IEDs, that could be something. Just any, James. I saw that from Caroline Levitt, right? Like, right before I came on today.

And added to like new mission objective unlocked. She said, we, like, we want to make sure that they're never in a position to build IEDs and roadside bombs again, which killed so many Americans in Iraq or whatever. And it's just like, wait a second. like I can imagine like degrading their their capability of enriching uranium to make nuclear weapons that would seem to be like at least an achievable goal but saying like I want to remove the ability of the Iranian state to make homemade explosive devices like how would you even do that you're just going to we're going to confiscate every alarm clock in the region yeah just just assuming

that like again Iraq war grievance Matthew Petty talked about this is an Iraq war grievance because Trump said that millions of people died from these right side bombs at the state of the Union. Somewhere, I guess every bomb ever. I mean, if you assume that every soldier that was killed, if they were all going to have 20 kids who they themselves were going to have 20, it's a sort of biblical he begat, those who begat situation. It's like how the Mormon, the Church of Latter-day Saints, like, baptized Anne Frank as a Mormon because like one-for-discan relatives. Is this really? Yeah, yeah, they did.

Oh, yeah. Oh, yo, yo, yo, y, oi. So she kind of won in the end. But, uh, and it's, and it's so surreal, like, to be living through this because, like, as compared to the war in Iraq, which had, like, broad public approval at the time it was launched. And it was like a topic of debate and in the national consciousness for like a year leading up to the war and was like, you know, initially very popular.

And the Bush administration, they had. had the wind in their sales and they were ready to go. And they clearly had a vision that they wanted to articulate and, like, bear out upon the world. Like, you know, for lack of a better word, neo-conservatism. And what the surreal thing now is that, like, you know, like the public opinion polls show that like this, nobody really supports maybe like 20, 30% of the country supports this. Or like, maybe they can get it up to 40 if you say, like, you support like, you know, killing the supreme Ayatollah of Iran. But like, there's no debate. There's nothing offered.

There's nothing articulated. There is no sort of like civic vision or ideology at work here. This is just like all of it is being backfilled in or reverse engineered by people who feel the need to support this president. And like they're all doing this thing now. We're like, you know, I guess like on the dissident right wing is like they have to like backfill in a reason to support this that doesn't make them sound like thralls to Israel. So they're like actually this is a brilliant 4D. chess move about weakening China in any future conflict. Or what they're saying is that like on the first day of this conflict, they're just saying,

brilliant. America's back. We can do things. We can kill evil people and there will be absolutely zero negative consequences. And it's like 72 hours haven't even elapsed yet. What are you talking about? And all of that is belied by the fact that the people running this war from Donald Trump on down, like they're at various levels of chess.

out compromised or like and Trump himself doesn't even want to be doing this but is yeah for some strange reason like they're just it's just like it's war without any purpose thought or like war by I don't know inertia or just mental reflex I don't even know how to describe it I like the idea that this is like steaming China in the same way that like in Manchester by the city when Casey Adafleck goes into the police station and points a gun and his mouth that Steinmead all the cops in there. Right. I think, no, I did see that Richard Hananilla, how you pronounce his name, Hannah Barbera, that the concept of blowback has been one of the most dispelled notions. And yeah, February 28th, he had said if you think it happens

instantly, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Like, no, I did see Trump also said today that he was not expecting Iran to have attacked the American bases in Arab states, something that they have been threatening for months that this would happen. He's like, oh, this was a big surprise to me. No, everybody is kind of in a world of their own with what their expectations are of this and that it will be some way, it'll be quick, it'll be clean, and then they can rinse their hands of it and that it'll be an endless shooting gallery, but purely for the Americans and nobody, nothing else will be affected by it. And I think will be interesting. I hate using that phrase, but I think it'll be interesting to see. Now that Qatari energy fields are going dark, apparently there was an oil field

in Saudi Arabia that was hit potentially by shrapnel. I'm not sure if it was a direct hit. UAE stock exchanges down. And there are concerns that energy prices, gas prices could go up in Europe by 130 percent, I want to say is the figure, by next month, who know. knows how much that would affect gas prices. What made Trump back down from this stuff over the tariffs? Was that massive economic instability? And there does not seem to have been any preparation ideologically, economically, anything for what could have occurred here. They really genuinely did believe that there was going to be just total, it was going to be fine. Like, I'm still, I'm still really bewildered by it in a way

like obviously there is intent to collapse the state deep down under all of this under all the different reasonings broadly they want Iran to collapse more than they want resaf Pahlavi or a trillion dollar market as Pahlavi's son has been talking about to open up but they didn't expect anything bad to happen they didn't expect like the American public to question it they didn't expect to have to answer questions like for four to five weeks, they're just expected to be in a bubble around themselves where they never had to justify it clearly

to the public. It's very strange to me. Well, I mean, like, but the thing is they don't have to justify it to the public. I mean, like, this is what, like, running the country, like a corporation is. Like, you know, like, it's like the voters or like the shareholders. Like, they don't fucking, like, they're, like, they're your customers. You want to raise prices? Who gives you shit? Maybe, maybe they'll, maybe they'll squeak. But, like, it doesn't matter. But, like, the thing that's astonishing to me is, like, the tenor, and I see this from European leaders especially, and then we see it in our own media as well, the idea that, like, how dare the Iranian government, like, retaliate against us? Like, or, like, how could you possibly justify attacking American bases in Bahra, military bases in Bahrain?

And it's like, look, just simple point of fact, like, they were at the negotiating table when they were attacked. This is the second time this has fucking happened. And, like, I think it should be noted that, like, uh, I, shamus, like, uh, the, the, the head of the delegation from Oman that was, like, mediating these talks, said a day before this happened that, like, the Iranians had already agreed to something far stronger than what was, like, even proposed in terms of, like, zero. They already agreed to zero enrichment. The fact is, this war was on rails for like months now. The date was chosen. Everybody knew it. Another good example of that. Senate and House Democratic leadership said, let's just wait till Monday for that war power. resolution vote, okay? Because they knew what was coming and they're like, they were in favor of this. They want this to happen. And like, this is the strange thing is that like, nobody in the public supports this for the most part. But like pretty much this is a bipartisan war. Like the Democrats don't want to admit that they want this to happen. They're happy to let Trump take the political

fallout for it. But they certainly don't want to stop it. And if you look at like, I don't know, the media or elected politicians, like all but a few are opposing this war on anything other than weak procedural grounds. Like, we should have been consulted first, or you need to ask Congress, which is like, you know, let's not fool ourselves here. If he had asked Congress to authorize this war, they would have let him. They would have voted for it. No, it was really, I don't want to say, I don't want to say, keep saying strange, but

Mark Carney, you know, a month ago or so, had gone up on stage and said that the world order that previously existed had gone. and that a post-American order needed to be formed that there should not be any nostalgia for it. And then when this war starts, what does Carty do? He immediately throws his full support behind it. And then you have people like Martrutt in the Netherlands, who is actively a big leader in NATO,

going on Fox News in order to support this as well. And all these, of course, these disagreements with the very idea of self-defense, that you're quoting from all these European politicians, British and on the continent as well. No, they don't actually believe in any of this. They fundamentally don't believe in any of this. If it can still be weaponized international law against their enemies, they would like that to still be the case. But if international law has been ripped up, they still want to be able to destroy their enemies,

regardless of what the actual rules that they themselves have set up are. I don't know what they expect to happen when Greenland inevitably comes back on the table, though, because you are giving your, you're giving credence to this American invasion, essentially, of this country, Israeli-American assault on a country that was at the negotiating table, and then you are expecting, I guess, from the support that you will not be targeted again, or that Trump won't find some other thing to target inside of the European Congress. Well, once Trump sees that they will go along with absolutely anything, no matter how much it fucks their own country, just out of pure obedience, he'll immediately respect them and go, okay, hands off. No. No, everybody, like, at that board of peace meeting, like you saw the American vision of what the world should be. And it is all of his different leaders endlessly filleting this man, talking.

about how he's the savior of South Asia, that only he has the vision to solve Gaza and all these other different world conflicts. They're all wearing USA hats. It is total subservience. And somehow these people have gotten into their brains that they will not be the victim of it as long as they try to run out the clock on this, I guess. Or they can utilize it against their own enemies and then hope, maybe it just won't happen to me. I don't think that's going to work. All right. I mean, like as far as the Americans and the Israelis, right? Like I, the line seems to be like from Pete Hegseth and Donald Trump. Like I saw this posted.

The Trump was speaking just before we started recording. And about a minute ago, he said, the war with Iran would take as long as necessary. And quote, I don't get bored. He then moved on to discuss the drapes he selected for the east room in the White House. I'm not kidding. That's actually what he was talking about at this press. conference. And like, we can see, like, the fact that Trump is saying, I don't get bored easily is like, first of all, transparently untrue, but he's already bored with this. He's already bored with

this. He, like, he thought this is going to be Venezuela, where everyone gave him, like, it took like, less than 12 hours, kidnapped Maduro, you know, got them to acquiesce to do his wishes. And then he can clear a big victory. And everyone can say, oh, like, you know, Trump's genius, like he can just do things again. That, it hasn't gone that way so far. But shame is it, you're right. as far as like what the strategy is, as best I can understand it, it's regime change, it's not regime change, but they would like the regime to change. It's not nation building, but they would like a different nation. They want the people of Iran to do that for them. And the way they're going to do that is by basically destroying enough of Iranian civil society and infrastructure that the country will just collapse into civil war and chaos. And they're not particularly concerned about what comes after if the country itself is reduced to like, you know, a poporous basket case in which everyone is killing each other. And like, you know, you see that in the selection of targets that they're hitting. Police stations, hospitals, schools, and then, you know, double and triple tapping.

The rescue efforts is, you know, I've certainly seen reports of that coming out of Tehran this morning. But Seamus, we talked, you brought up that in Iran's retaliation, that they have spread out their missile fire and drones over like, this kind of like the constellation of Arab Gulf. all states that host American military bases and are part of this kind of, I don't know, like American Israeli access of submission, whatever you want to call it. Like, how would you describe the Iran's retaliation? Because like, look, in the early hours of this war, it seems like, yeah, they killed the Supreme Leader. They killed probably 50 other high-level people in the government and military. But the response is, seems like it's, It was decided beforehand, and it's being carried out pretty much as they planned it.

So, like, how would you describe Iran's strategy in terms of, like, how they're defending themselves? This has been really interesting to me because it feels like the exact opposite of Hezbollah situation, right, right on the eve of the Israeli invasion. Because the IDF was able to kill many different Hezbollah leaders, either one after the other, or in mass strike. all at once when they were meeting together. And that really hampered has a law's ability to retaliate effectively because all of these different commanders who wanted an all-out war who had communicated that in strategy meetings, they were no longer in command. And there was sort of a, not a treading water because there was a steady rate of escalation,

but it was not as wide spanning as they had previously threatened in the past and were obviously planning for it at some point in the future. What has been different here is that even though the defense minister was killed, the head of the armed forces was killed, IRGC's commander-in-chief was killed, including the commander-chief of the entirety of the military, Ali Khanai, the escalation has been considerable and severe against the wishes of the elected civilian government. Foreign Minister at Al-Chi, he went on television and said very pointedly that it was not their decision to bomb ports. in Oman, which had happened earlier that day, because the military was operating semi-independently and was decentralized, and they were given general instructions about the course of that battle. And that has allowed them to expand this in a way that puts Israel, America, and its allies in a very difficult situation. The thing that Israel was able to do that left Lebanon,

in such a bad state, a subdued state, I would argue, is because it controlled the ladder of escalation, wherein Hezbollah continuously tried to meet Israel where it was, but was always lagging behind. Yemen was able to control the ladder of escalation, but it lacked capability. and Iran is somewhere in the middle there where it is not going completely scorched earth and severe in the way that it may have wanted to, but it is absolutely going all out, pretty much. I mean, the very idea that Dubai would be bombarded. Yeah. That to me, I genuinely thought to myself, there would be some hesitation. right based on previous

retaliations that Iran had done against Qatar where there was symbolic strikes it took out a radar station but it was the number was specific to the number of bombs that America dropped at Zooker facilities it was very disproportionate here they are meeting fire with fire

I would argue like United Arab member it's Qatar Bahrain Kuwait Saudi Arabia Oman, like all, and American bases in Iraq, Jordan, like all of these different places are getting lit up. And there is no sign that there is going to be any sort of negotiation soon or any sort of settlement or dissent from this position unless they literally start running out of munitions. That is the difference of strategy.

That's what I wanted to get to because like it seems like barring, kind of radical change or barring something extraordinary happening, like within the next couple of days, I think it's pretty clear that this war is going to become evolved or like already is a kind of war of attrition between how many missiles and drones Iran has and how many interceptors the Americans and Israelis have to use to stop it. And from what I've seen, at least in Tel Aviv over this weekend, those interceptors,

they're going through them pretty quickly and it doesn't look like they're that affected. Yeah, I saw also Qatar and the UAE, their missile defenses, their patron missiles are supposed to run out within the next week. It has always been overwhelmingly expensive, prohibitively, I would argue,

expensive to maintain these interceptors. And there was a significant bottleneck that Isr was approaching before the ceasefire came in during the 12th day war last year. Something that I've heard people argue was Iran should have taken advantage of, but that remains to be seen. I am unsure about their bottleneck right now,

but clearly the Iranian strategy of continuous barrages. What they were doing last time was overnight massive barrages, but that allowed Israel to, I think, better prepare and better calculate. here they are continuous. There are spans of maybe hours between these significant barragees. And that has resulted in a, I mean, not just in Tel Aviv, but there was a shelter that was collapsed in Bateshamesh. Bersheba. There was a Microsoft technology park that was just bombarded today as well, the same one that got hit during the last war.

No, I think for Israel, it is very difficult, but for the Gulf of, Arab states, I think it is going to be even more difficult. Well, they're all finding out right now that like the security and defense agreements that they've signed on to that in practice just makes them a bullet sponge or missile sponge for Israel. And that's like that is part of Iran's strategy here is to make it is to show them just how painful that this can be. Like, is this what you want? Like, is this what you really want? Exactly. There was a, I want to find the statement that I had just seen from, I want to say, a representative, yeah, head of Iran's parliamentary National Security Committee,

Abraham Azizi, quote, we will continue targeting U.S. bases and if regional countries want a solution, these bases must be removed. It is clearly the intent here is to make this a overwhelmingly painful experience that they should not have these bases in the future, because America is not protecting them. Israel is obviously not protecting them. They are getting nothing out of this arrangement. They are losing their reputation as safe havens. I did see a lot of people

talk about British expats talk about, I never expecting anything to happen with them. They're in the Middle East. I don't know what to tell you. I wanted to bring up like, I don't know, like reports that like when I see, when I like in Bahrain and Dubai, but Bahrain especially

that like you see these like luxury hotel rooms and it looks like individual rooms. And it looks like individual rooms have been hit with missiles. And, like, originally there was reports that, like, the American army, the military bases or Air Force bases in Bahrain, like, they've already concluded, they've already determined that, like, there's basically no way that they can be defended against, you know, this kind of ballistic missile retaliation. So basically, they just, like, moved out the servicemen to hotels within driving distance

of the base. And that seemed like, like, oh, like, are they really, like, aiming for individual military people in these hotels? I mean, DropSight has some reporting today that would seem to suggest that's exactly what they did and that they knew like to the room where these people were in. Yeah, it makes it a bit difficult just because the Iranian military does not issue individual statements in the same way that the IDF might. But there is definitely a suspicion growing.

I haven't seen this exact DropSat reporting that you're quoting, but I think there is a great suspicion growing that they knew which hotels in Bahrain, for instance, where American. personnel were staying, which were accompanied by reports of American personnel evacuating some of these hotels. No, Bahrain in particular seems to be the real saturation point. Not only these hotels, but the fifth fleet, these American bases getting hit over and over and over again in the capital, Manama. And then, because this wasn't happening in Kuwait or Qatar or the UAE, but in Bahrain specifically,

you had majority Shia members of the population coming out, getting right up to the base and filming with their phones and cheering when this happened. Like, there is clearly, I mean, the kind of massive, we can talk about this though, the kind of massive overwhelming intervention that had been envisioned before October 7th has not come to pass yet, but this earthquake is still, materializing, not only in Bahrain, but in Pakistan, in Iraq, where they tried to storm the green zone multiple different times, protesters. The anarchists in Iraq was reactivated and is hitting American bases in our bill.

But also, Hezbollah finally reentered, has reentered this conflict in retaliation for the killing of Chaminé in the months and months of being hit by Israel. regional war and regional unrest has suddenly gone back on the docket. I guess I'll drop my pretense of like, you know, objective interlocutor to current events and just say, Dubai, when I saw those like

grotesque luxury hotel rooms on fire or like, when I saw Dubai, I was just like, is there any concentration of people and sort of like buildings on the planet outside of Tel Aviv, mind you, that my heart would break the least seeing it get peppered with ballistic missiles. It's got to be Dubai.

Because like when I think about the collection of fucking like crypto criminals, white slavers, and just like, just people who want to live in a world of totally frictionless luxury and wealth where politics has just disappeared and poverty is just like,

you never see anyone you don't want to. And like you are completely removed yourself from humanity, save for those that serve you. It's just like, man, when I think about these people feeling even a moment's amount of fear or anxiety, I'm just like, yes, more please. I don't know if you saw

but Ian Miles Chong Oh, God. Is there? Yes. In possibly the most damaging strike of the entire war said, you know, I think in a message more inspiring than the stiff upper lip showed by Britain's

during the Battle of Britain and the Blitz. He said, doesn't matter. We're club still going up. I love this city. Nothing can stop Dubai. And posted a video of like a bottle service team of, uh,

Southeast Asia guest worker slaves dancing at gunpoint while a British man looked at had like a thousand yards to, he looked like he had just gotten back from the Battle of Kaysan. And then he turned. the camera over to show himself like sexually smoking a hookah. And it undid pretty much every cent that the Emirates have spent on tourism. If Ian Miles Chong could get bottle service, then like, why would, like, even if you're getting flown out there to get pooped on, even if you're like a second tier, even if you're like a second

tier royal who's trying to fly out, whoa, Vicky, you're going to go somewhere else. And like the Dubai airport, which I think generates like billions of dollars in revenue every month or every, no, every year. Like it's a, you know, it's like one of the most, like fanciest airports in the world. That got hit. You know, like that's been shut down. And I, yeah, when I, it's just, when I think about what Dubai represents in like the global consciousness and how it has become this kind of like transnational site of like satanic wealth undergirded by the idea, like all these British people that are like tax. cheats that move there because they're like, like, sick of seeing fucking immigrants in their country. And they move into these, like, obscene luxury towers so they can avoid taxes. And it was,

there was a report from, like, some hedge fund guys who are like, we're trying to get our people out of Dubai right now. And this is kind of crazy because, like, people when they move to Dubai, they never thought politics would be a thing they'd have to deal with. It's just like, like, this idea that, like, through wealth, we can create these zones through which, like, you are untouched by anything. And like I said, you can sever all your bonds with community, with nation, with just responsibility to other human beings, save for the slaves that serve you. I just think like it is Satan's fucking throne when I think about Dubai. Yeah, I just love that too. Oh yeah, it's, we just never thought anything would happen.

It's the most stable form of government. Yeah. Those last the longest nowadays. And I guess like, going back to like, I don't know, when you're looking at it's, this from a domestic perspective because like there is this like this totally weird like just shambolic like sleepwalking we're just we're all just dreaming here in america because like for the most part this hasn't touched us in any way it's all just something that you watch on the news if you're watching the news at all it may be unpopular there certainly have been protest against this war but like what are we to make of the kind of like i said like less than even a week into

this like the triumphalism among people who like up until maybe three months ago, like their claim to fame was just like, we're based and like, we're voting for Trump because he'll keep us out of wars with Iran specifically. But like this idea that like this is not going to be like Iraq. And the thing is, look, it probably won't be like Iraq or Afghanistan. I don't know what this is going to look like.

I think we're kind of in uncharted waters here. But I made this point this morning, which is like, how can you be confident that like, oh, this isn't neo-conservatism? JD Vance said the difference between this and what happened in the past is we've had dumb presidents in the past. That's certainly true. We don't have that now. That's certainly true.

But like Donald Trump and everyone in the administration is transparently somehow even dumber than everyone in the Bush administration. And like they're dumber. They're just as bloodthirsty. But somehow they're even stupider and more compromised. But also they're not really motivated by any kind of like grand vision that they want to achieve other than. just bullying and killing people to prove their own, as you said, Seamus, kind of like warped sense of masculinity? I don't even know how to describe it. No, I think the thing that made Iraq so much of a failure in the eyes of the American public, I mean, it wasn't just

the fact that it was a total fucking loss in that the insurgency raged and democracy, a functioned democracy didn't really erupt. It was the fact that Americans were coming home in coffins, a lot of them. And at a considerably higher rate than what happened in Afghanistan, which allowed things to simmer in the background for 20 plus years, being a nuisance instead of like an active boil on the side of the country. And I've seen these kind of competing takes from American politicians in American officials about the casualties that have started to ramp up, which I'm curious about because they mentioned that people have been killed, but four people have been killed so far, U.S. soldiers.

But they haven't mentioned where it happened or under what circumstances or anything about it, just that they've died and that there are, I think, eight other critically injured soldiers. There is this competing thing of, like, obviously saying this is wrong and that we have to retaliate and they have to take revenge, but also not caring at all. like Mike Waltz, the U.S. ambassador to the UN, just posted freedom isn't free and that an American flag emoji. And that's it. Yeah. Three U.S. soldiers killed.

Yeah. You would fucking like, I'm maybe I'm young. I don't remember this. But I feel like if that happened any, like any other scenario, you would go to war or you would talk about going to war. Like three old soldiers like, like. It's done. Because, and then when the, yeah. It's like, this is the totally weird schizophrenia that I see from like

Trump supporters or like the right wing, I don't know, like, whatever you want to call them. Because like, they see this as like a kind of like renewal through violence. That once again, like, or maybe for the first time ever, a miracle would be like a true global empire in which like, you know, the God king acts and shapes reality. The true violence we can like enact our will. on the world, like war is good. America is good at war, and America, all we care about is winning wars.

At the same time, the same people that are prosecuting this are doing everything in their power to pretend that this isn't a war, and we're not actually fighting a war. We're just bombing another country, killing its leadership, and attempting to topple its government.

So like... No, I've still... I have the same just outright confusion that you do. I remember when the last war happened and we bombed, Iran nuclear facilities. Vance came out and said that we weren't at war with Iran. We were at war with Iran's nuclear program, which is a fucking insane turn of phrase. And I've seen the kind of talk that you're

talking about where they're claiming that they're not at war. Mark Wayne Mullen, the, I want to say the senator. Sorry, the representative. Yeah, senator from Indiana. Where else? No, no, I think he's a, I think he's Oklahoma. Oklahoma. Yeah. Like he said, we're not at war with Iran, we just have to be proactive on a threat. They brought out Anna Paulina Luna to say that I think there's an act of war or something. I wish I could remember Smith of what he said, but it was very stupid. No, none of these people, they want to have their cake and eat it too. Exactly.

And that they're not doing a regime change war because those are disasters. We all know those disasters. Because like if there's no way they can do it without commuting a shitload of American. soldiers in country in Iran. Exactly. And like I think it's pretty clear so far that that is not going to happen. They are not going to do that. I saw talk.

I mean like, Trump keeps saying, oh, like, I'll do, I'll do whatever is possible. Like, maybe I will. Maybe I won't. But like, it's very clear to me that like he shook and he wants out of this as quickly as possible. I saw, I saw talk like maybe a week or so ago, uh, where they were discussing, like, doing special ops raids to take out Iran's, not only their nuclear infrastructure, but also their missile infrastructure.

And it's like they really don't get like what this is. Because there are a few nuclear facilities, sure, but there are missiles, like all of them. If your intent is to take out every single, I mean, Hexsteth had been talking about the fact that the threat from Iran was that they could project any threat against America. Like, what is the threshold here? I don't want to do nostalgia for the Iraq war, but I feel. found myself like routinely saying over and over again like there was at least some sort of coherence as to what they wanted and what would be the end result what comes later you can debate the yeah and as I said at the beginning I think they've learned the lesson that like that's the

mistake that the George Bush administration made was like exactly putting out anything there any anything that they could be held to at a future date precisely I do think they'll never go as far as to say all of this outright. But the goal is Syria. I mean, that is the goal for eventually every nation in the region. A nation that has no sovereignty, no borders, can't and won't defend itself.

And most importantly, has no cohesive civil society and is completely divided. In the best possible world, it would be John Dolan's in a mirror for every city block system. Yeah. But just,

Going back to the idea of, oh, why don't we spend, why don't we send special forces teams to take out all the nuclear scientists, the entire nuclear program, and all the missiles. This is, to harken back to our episode, Josh, this really is like strategy game thinking. Yeah. Oh, we have 20,000 of these special forces units. Let's just click on the map and send them in because it's that easy. It's, why didn't we think of this before? Just take out all, all, just, why not just take out all this? their officers. Why not just send in, why don't we just keep re-rolling and send in all these

special forces teams to take out everyone who's armed? The other thing that you can't separate this from, and I hate to armchair psychologist, but I don't think you can quite separate all of this from like the suicide heavy messaging of Trump world. All the all the communication about how great it is to kill yourself, how great it is to wander off as a syphiletic penguin into the mountains and die for no reason, how cool it was to take an airplane and crash it into a building for reasons only you know. I don't think it's the first, second, or even tenth reason, but you could only valorize suicide so many times publicly before people can fairly guess that it's at least informing some of your actions.

I think I'm not maybe heaven bound. I may be in heaven right now as we fly in Air Force one. I'm not sure I'm going to be able to make heaven. To the talk about like the strategy game stuff, I did see two things to take on my mind. One in that there was a, if anybody remembers the Iranian Israeli who said that every baby in Gaza was an enemy. He was on Channel 14 the other day saying that there were a million

armed men in Iran and they need to be taken care of. A million of them. A million. A convenient number. And what I was going to say about the suicide thing, I go back and forth about like the actual suicidality of this, because there is the Christian suicidality of someone like Mike Huckabee who talks openly about how it would be fine if Israel took from the Nile to the Euphrates and wants like an actual apocalypse to happen.

But a lot of these people, I go back and forth about their actual commitment to the death drive because I don't know if they actually want to die in this war in particular or to die for this specific cause or to die for some sort of they want other people to. But for themselves to be enmesionate, I think they want other people to. I think they want other people to die for them. I don't know if that is what your vision is, but that's how I see. Well, yeah, I mean, kind of.

I don't think that, like, Hegsath and Trump or Vance literally want to be killed by a hypersonic, as funny as that would be. But suicide in a more, in a less literal sense, that involves, you know, the pointless deaths of many other people, including people who are, spending the last merit rewards points of their lives apparently

in the U.S. military. Yes. I agree. Not like not yeah not literally killing themselves that would that you know that there's there's too many great means to repost in the future for them to do that. I think they would love to see like that thing

that happened in Call of Duty ghosts like that aircraft carrier gets taken down and they have something that that they can like really rely on like a startling image. Because when the... And that would be their favorite

Paul Zudy game. I think before the war, there was that Politico piece where they talked about how they wanted their administration officials were apparently saying that they wanted Israel to attack first, which inevitably happened, and that

they wanted an attack to happen on the American so that it would galvanize the public. There is an understanding of the mechanics of this and what needs to happen, that there needs to be some sort of mass casualty event of some kind, but not over a consistent period of time. That's unsustainable.

But something that will show that Iran is a real threat, even if we placed the threat to them there and instigated it. You have to make it real and present, and they don't have that. And they're not sure what to do with this whole process yet. That's what's so weird about it is that, like, for all the, how much of this is just going off half-cocked with no plan, no idea of what they want, just pure chaos, death drive, malice, that it's also like, it operates under the same logic as like the Merrick Garland appointment. If Israel attacks first and then they attack us, then people will see how bad they are. Yeah. they'll be galvanized, resulting in, by the way, one of the least galvanized publics I've ever seen.

Yeah. I think the public is more galvanized to invade like the rock of Jill Bralter. I mean, what I've, I can't speak for the entirety of the American public, but as long as Iran has been an enemy in the American imagination, it has also, but there's also been talk that this is fucking impossible. and the allure has been its impossibility because it would be so like remember Battlefield 3 and how fucking crazy that was that they were just invading Tehran in that game? Yeah, the whole thing is that you would never

this would never happen. This would be something that the world would have to collapse for this to happen. And if the world is on the verge of collapse and something is very, very, very fucking wrong. I can't speak for like, I can't say what would exactly happen if there was kind of mass casualty event. But I think that they would go gung-ho in trying to engineer it. And I mean, things have changed since October 7th. The kind of rallying around a foreign flag, I suppose, that happened afterward.

I don't know if it would happen again, but I can't put a guarantee on it. But even then, yeah, we're not going to like, we're not doing Iraq again. We're not doing the whole. Nobody's booing Michael Mothal Oscars again for this. Yeah. Right. And that's the other thing is that it's not the same media environment as 2003. I mean, I don't know if you've seen this polling.

And obviously it is an entirely different situation. But just think about the full court press they went through with this. Only 22% of Americans think, oh, left-wing guy killed Charlie Kirk. Yeah. It is generally a bad thing that there is no consensus reality. know and trust any source of information and everyone is just they are getting their boutique worldview

from a self-selected nexus of weird YouTube short creators you've never heard of bot farms in Malaysia whatever the fuck right but sometimes it's good and I think like even if there was a

mass casual casualty event only like 22% of Americans who are go to bed wearing dry fit polos would be like, oh, yeah, we have to do this for the USN tennis. And the remaining 80% of Americans will be like, yeah, actually it was Dominicans who said it.

We need to invade T-Mobile. I can't. I think it is very telling that the only, sorry, I think it's very telling that the only, sorry, I think it's very telling that the only people who were really gung-ho about this were the right-wing Iranian diaspora outside the country. You know, there was that. I'm glad you brought them up. I'm glad you brought them up, Seamus.

Because like, as far as the like nauseating spectacles produced by this fucking ongoing disaster, these fucking plastic surgery victims twerking for the bombing of like their home country is like, and you know what, I'm going to just say this on this show. If you are a member of the American Iranian diaspora, shit, how about the Venezuelan and Cuban diaspora as well? There is nothing I like more than talking over your voices, silencing your voices, and generally,

shitting all over your insane evil politics and narcissism. Please go fuck yourselves. I don't give a shit about what you think America should do or like, or your assessment of my morality. Thank you very much. Please go fuck yourself. I support the regime in every one of these countries.

I think like the Iran, though, to listen to local voices, I guess it doesn't apply to the people who were mourning Khomeini after the fact or any of these other people inside the country. No, they always want to make the impression that these are the only public that actually exists. And every single other person is either an actor or is paid or aren't actually Iranian. They're Iraqi or they're from Pakistan or there's some other fucking country. Oh, what? Like those countries that are right next door? They're like right there. Like, I know, but they got to import everybody.

It's like you in Glendale where you're right in the heat of the action. Yeah. Now, these people, when they came out, this is something that I find this phenomenon that I found quite interesting is that for a while these were separate publics. The Iranians inside the kind of. country and the Iranian diaspora outside the country. They were in fundamentally different media spheres. And when they were aware of each other, the Iranians at home were particularly contemptuous of the media sphere that existed outside the country. But now because of opposition

media outlets and the internet, places like Iran international or Manoto, which are funded by the Saudi government, now there has been this cross-pollination, cross-infection, cross-infection, back from these countries inside Iran, which creates these, for the first time, this monarchist mobilization during the protests last January, which had never happened before. And it results in these celebrations that happened after Chaminet's assassination in the middle of the night where they hear the Israeli claims and people come out to the streets in Tehran and in Fords and elsewhere. And they're flying not only monarchist flags, but the flag. of pre-Islamic Persian empires.

They set fires and traffic roundabouts and they start cheering. And then even though they've been called into by Netanyahu and Trump to do something, they don't do it. They just melt back into the crowd and nothing happens. It's created this very strange media ecosystem where they're all feeding off of the same sources, but very little is actually happening, at least at the moment. moment. I would like nothing more than for Trump to just say to Pavlovy, you're in charge now. We're putting you on a C-31 supercal. We're sending you on an airplane over to Iran.

We're going to drop you in your whole family off there and just let you go. Be embraced by the people. They'll hail you as they're new as they're returning God king. I am so sick of having to hear from these fucking people. I am like including that fucking Muppet that I have to see on CNN every day. You know, the side show Bob looking lady. Oh, yeah, I don't. Who's like, I love America. We love Iran. Please, please destroy my country.

I should say, I should say, just as a side note. And I know exactly, maybe exactly what he was about to say. Ali Najat, the Pahlavi people hate Alinajad now. Because apparently there was a break in their coalition, and now they fucking hate her as like a regime supporter. That wasn't what I was going to ask, like, Does he actually like want the job or is it just like a good way for him to continue eating out for free?

I mean like literally. The only reason I could think that he would want the job is because he could then like tell his wife like, oh, now it's like a legal for you to fuck the trainer. I think reason actually. I think I go back and forth about how much he actually wants. wants this position because he is clearly endeared and he loves the obsequious support that the right-wing diaspora gives him. There was a town hall that he did some years ago on Iran International, a town hall for a guy who lives in Virginia.

And they were always calling him crown prince. You know, prince, what do you think about this? And he never corrected them, even though he's not a prince anymore. And he doesn't hold that position anymore. he loves the idea of being a beloved figure, whatever that actually means. His supporters absolutely want him to be the absolute monarch, despite what they say about democracy. They treat him as someone who has already become the absolute monarch, and any criticism

of them has to be stamped out immediately. As for his own personal wants, there was a very illustrative interview he did with a friend of the show Patrick Bet David, some years ago, where he just, The hand of the king in the future on. It just outright said, like, I actually don't know what life I would go back to in Iran. Like, maybe I would go back on a part-time basis, but all of my network, my family, my friends are here in America. Yeah. Like, can I just get 18 hours as the absolute monarch this week?

Are you fucking joking, man? No, he has no idea. Like, he, he lives a very, I had a friend. when he used to go to school who had served Pahlevi at a kebab shop in the in the DC metro area. And he just comes in pretty much every day in a track suit and orders a kebab. That's, and he plays chess and he hangs out with his family and that's it. He's a great life. Why the fuck would you?

That's what I said. That sounds amazing. I would love to do that all the fucking time. But this guy insists, no, I have to put on the suit. I have to pretend I have a job. He does interviews where he talks about how the regime is about the fall. And there's 50,000 regime insiders that are ready to defect as soon as I give the signal. Like, he wants all of the trappings of that more than anything, whether he actually wants the

responsibility of power. That, I think, is an open question. But he wants to keep writing that crown prince stuff as long as he possibly can. That's what gives him anything. What, Seamus, whether it's the monarchists, whether it's our defense department, look, I said it before. I'll say it again. Nobody wants to work anymore.

Nobody wants to work anymore. Everyone's too fucking lazy and stupid. And like, and like, that's, that is what watching this looks like. President pedophile Hitler is just fucking us into possibly

World War III. Oh, like, but with no, with total disconnection from like, from the chain of events from, from action to consequence. And like,

absolutely nothing is more than reality. I agree. Yeah. No, no, everything like the right-wing diaspora truly does believe this is a regime change war that is going to enact this beautiful trillion-dollar ultra-rich government that is going to take power in Iran. America still is believing that capitulation is right around the corner, total capitulation, not just a deal, total capitulation is around the corner. And the only people that are operating in any sort of reality are the Iranians themselves because they are in survival mode right now. their politicians are underground, their leadership is trying to get a new Supreme Leader elected. And they are just, they are trying to keep the country together.

They do not have the luxury of symbolism anymore. Yeah. That is the actual reality. Well, yeah, and exactly, because like we, we, because like, this isn't about America's survival. There's nothing to do with our national security or anything. And this is, I guess what I want to, an issue that I would like to address here. Because, like, we've barely talked about it, but Israel, right? We're talking, I mean, we, Seamus with you, like a year, two years ago.

We described the relationship between America and Israel as a murder suicide pact. And we've seen that in Gaza. And now we're seeing it even more vividly or just like, I don't know, like a further escalation of that murder suicide pact. And I guess, like, what I want to ask, you Seamus and Felix, I don't really know where I stand on this or how to talk about it. like Israel controlling the U.S. government. I don't know to what extent like that can be like,

like, okay, the Zog thesis, right? Right. Like how much is that borne out by what we're seeing here? Because like on the one hand, like the only reason we're doing this is because Israel told us to. And so the president made the very wise decision. We knew that there was going to be an Israeli action. We knew that that would precipitate an attack against American forces.

And we knew that if we didn't preemptive, go after them before they launch those attacks, we would suffer higher casualties and perhaps even higher those killed. Maybe it's not the only reason, but like, come on. I don't know how they're forcing us to do this. And like, it's a question of like, I'm always a little skeptical of narratives that like we've talked about before that would seem to be that like Israel is just making us do this and like we're so innocent and like, oh, we really don't want to be doing this. But these evil Israelis have like bewitched our bribed our government into doing it. But on the other hand, it's just like, they do pretty much own Congress.

Who knows what kind of influence they're exerting over Donald Trump. But, like, still, like, if it were truly just like the case that Israel directly controls the U.S. government, wouldn't this have happened, like, 20 or 30 years ago? Like, I guess what I'm asking us to what extent can we say that this is purely a result of Israeli influence over the United States or whether this is kind of a two mirrors reflecting at each other over like a shared goal, shared and overlapping goals? of like the U.S. National Security State and military industrial complex and our favorite client and ally in the Middle East over the last 56,

40, 40 years. I think it's more comparable to a feedback loop more than anything else. Because there are certain politicians who, I would argue, are like they put Israel first unequivocally. Chuck Schumer, Lindsay Graham, Hakeem Jeffrey. Randy, Randy Fine. Chief among them. Yeah.

That is someone who you can accurately describe as being. We should drop his fat ass on Tehran. That would take out some senior leadership. Like, yeah, but like they could they could make, they could make flammable soap and, and incendiary bombs out of his tailside. And we're trying to prevent that. Like they could light the street lamps of Tehran for months off his fucking parking. Whatever I see Randy Fine on television. I just, I tell the people next to be, I want to see more.

We got to get him everywhere. No. He like wipes his ass. Like, what are the... Oh, God. I don't even, I don't even want to think about it. Rag on a stick. Anyhow.

I think, but I think America still controls the decision making here. This is what Chomenei assessed to be the case. It's what Nassarla assessed to be the case. This is what Khomeini assessed to be the case. I think it's a situation where, America has given Israel so much impunity since it became their primary benefactor taking over from Britain. And it outstrips the prodigal son. They outstrip the father. They become even greater than they are in terms of military capability. And they provide the model for American politicians to follow in what they actually want to achieve.

I've been writing something for Equator, Meg, and I've been doing research with the congressional record. And you see this start to come up in the 90s with the guards to Iraq where they see the executive action that Israel is taking in bombing their nuclear reactor. And they're in Congress of saying, we need to be doing that. Mind you, they've enabled this whole thing. They could be doing it. But now they're saying we need to follow their example. And then conversely, the Americans rush to meet that. And then the Israelis see that as a legitimization of their policies and that they need to go even further.

They need to adopt what America is doing on their scale and that it keeps going back and forth and back and forth. So, like, this is still a bomb that they've strapped themselves to, but it is a bomb that they have willingly strapped themselves to. They want this. This is an, yeah, this is the, like, the state collapse, you know, there's still talk about freedom and democracy and whether or not they actually think they can get something out of this. But state collapse is still the name of the game. on both sides of the aisle. One is just more comfortable saying that outright than the other right now. I mean, it was surreal.

I turned on MSNBC this weekend because I wanted to see what they were saying. And like every fucking newscaster and pundit, it was so clear that like they had to find a way to both hate Donald Trump and support exactly what he's doing. And the word Israel was not mentioned once. Rachel Mada had some long monologue where she was literally saying that Trump was like, cajoled into doing this by the fucking. Gulf Arab states, you know, the ones that are getting pummeled with missiles right now. There's like, yeah, a total veil of surreality here that like pretty much the political

leadership and media that represents the left and right parameters of debate in this country. It's just like the only difference is whether you like Donald Trump or hate him. But like it seems like the political and media class is fully on board with this. Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. Going back to the original question, I don't, I think the idea that of, I don't know how anyone can seriously claim that Israel is just another fucking imperial proxy. I don't know how they could have claimed it for the last 10 years, but they definitely cannot claim it now. I think the way that I look at it now is that America and Israel are the same entity.

now, but it wasn't always that way. Israel was a... you can't really call it a client state just because of the composition of the lobby.

The lobby was by and large made up of Americans who would never fucking live in Israel, but nonetheless prioritized its interests. And the same thing can not be said over numerous other

very powerful foreign lobbies like, you know, Tar for instance. Yeah. Yeah, you can't, Like, no matter how strong Azerbaijan's lobby is, with Azerbaijan's regional goals, you can't like, if an Azerbaijani lobbyist was like, this doctor said something mean about Azerbaijan.

Like, most people would be like, okay, fuck all. Like, where is that? Can you fuck off? But with Israel, it's just, you know, fire the entire hospital. Yeah, I mean, I just, at the same time, yeah, you, that is my big. misgiving about like right-wing anti-Zionism, that it totally exonerates America, which, again, like the most ridiculous thing about it to me is like, oh, we hate, like, we hate finance capital and all this shit, but America's awesome. Yeah. And like, I think there are, there are a few

like principled right-wing anti-interventionists, like particularly at the American conservative magazine. Yeah, yeah. But by and large, everyone who supported Donald Trump and still does supported him when said, I'm the anti-war president, I'll specifically keep us out of a war with Iran. And now that he has gone to war with Iran, they're saying that's why he's, that's why they support him. And I think like, I think it was Matthew Petty, you brought him up again. I think he said this. Democrats pretend to be anti-war, but there are, there are anti-war Democrats and liberals who are genuinely anti-war. With vanishingly few exceptions, there is no such thing as an anti-war right winger. Yeah. I mean, other than Thomas Massey, maybe.

He's functionally libertarian. Yeah. No, no. None of these people, like believing in America as an exception, as an institution that is infallible. Like, there is no vision of that that is not defined by war and by expansionism and by imperialism. It is fundamentally antithetical to that vision. And yet we do this song at dance still where, again, yeah, we're going to keep out of war. or the peace president.

But they never talk about peace as like a new calculus that the government is undertaking, like a fundamentally different approach because they also admonish Obama for going on that fucking apology tour. Still, like 20 years ago now. God knows how long ago that fucking was. No, it's peace through strength. It's carrying a big stick, the Don Roe doctrine of achieving overwhelming, the Pax Americana.

essentially, that is not actually anti-war. That is not actually pro-peace. That is just war by another name. That is imperialism by another name. And the faster that people get this out of their system, that there is an actual anti-war Republican party, the better. Because it'll avoid situations in which we have to do whoever the next Tulsi Gabbard is going to be, where we have to obsessively defend these people somehow from the left.

I get exasperated, but just like, I don't know how this perception has gone on for so long. Like Alex Jones has gone off his fucking rocker. The person who was talking about government suppression for as long as I have been alive. And now he's fully behind Palantir and the war and all of this because he never actually believed in any of this as a Republican, as a conservative. get like get this out of your system really he is possibly the most embarrassing one like out of anyone it is like if david ike he spends his entire career talking about reptilians and then like a slightly different colored reptile shows up like a red iguana and he's like oh this guy's awesome i support this guy no this is different

this is this is tangential to the broader question, but I did want to address this because it became a topic of controversy last week. And I think it is tangentially related to the discussion we're having. Is it totally beyond the pale to use the word goyam, tongue and cheek? Semi ironically. I can't. I can't comment. Is that bad? Should people not do that? I mean, I don't, I don't use it because I think it's kind of embarrassing. And I think it betrays this idea that like I'm actually offended by being referred to as a goyam by Israeli nationalist or just Jewish people. are writ large. I don't really care one way or the other.

But are we really in a world now where we can say that that's being the pale? Like, it's so, I'm so offended by it. I'm so offended by this. I always thought it was weird because it's like, it's a word that describes like 99.8% of the world, right? Yeah. So it has like a, it has like a different meaning to wherever you are. Like for an American, if you're an American and you, let's just say, you grew up with all the movie channels. It means a type of guy. It means like a guy who

has breakfast and Mrs. Fields cookies. You know? Or Shiksa? Yeah. Yeah. For an Israeli, it might literally just mean like the other 99.8% of the fucking world, which is like insane.

But I would say personally, I mean, I'm not, I think if this is about Anna Kasparian saying that the Goyim are waking up. I'm not offended, but that's just a little embarrassing. It's a bit strange.

They're not. They're obviously not. The Goyms said three iPhone alarms and they only slept through two. I think I say it's a bit embarrassing. I think my primary definition of Goim

is I see those Instagram reels of that one Israeli rabbi who is, I don't know Felix if you have made the seamless, of him saying that WhatsApp is goy or type jeans are goi or this haircut is goi. I'm learning a lot

about how Israeli society conceives of this concept. Nevertheless, I do not think that it is a it's like an epic phrase in order to say that you're waking up as a goy. I don't know. Yeah, it's also funny, like, just

how, like, just that isn't enough. It's not enough to, like, categorize everyone in the world who isn't Jewish, which is, like, the overwhelming majority and you get guys like Ovadia Yusuf who are just like oh it actually isn't just like it isn't just

Jews it's like specifically Mizrahi are the only like you everyone else is actually a goy or like anyone who isn't like a hacied or anyone who isn't like my type of hacied it always gets like much more specific until like everyone who has ever lived

except for your like immediate family or goys this is sounding like the Salafi thing where like everyone is a catheter yeah yeah yeah I Exactly. Things are really the same everywhere. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Religious supremacism and nationalism, it like, it manifests in different ways, but it really is all the same pile of shit. And it like eats the brains of anyone who fucking, you know, sips from that cup.

Christ almighty. Christ almighty. Wait, just before we move on. Felix, did you ever hear about that group within ISIS that called Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi cafes? Yeah.

Yeah, those guys are awesome. There was a whole... They were like the Austin Red Guard's vices. They were, yeah, they were black hammer. They were going to create Hammer City and Raqa, you know? I don't know. I mean, I guess like to close things out, to close things out here, like, I guess this is where I want to leave it.

Like, I have no idea what the coming weeks or months will hold. But over the last couple of years, really, I don't know, for like most of my adult life, I have been waiting or at least hoping for something that could be a strong prevailing counterbalance to America, KKK and imperialism. That like Iraq and Afghanistan, those were disasters, but like, you know, I mean, we didn't learn, we didn't learn that lesson too well as current events are currently shaking out. But like, certainly with Gaza and now with Iran, I have to ask, like, when are we going to get our nose bloody? And the thing is, I have a rooting interest here.

I'm not afraid to admit it, like, for any kind of livable, civilized future for either America or the rest of the world. At some point, the American people, any other civilized nation or sovereign nation in the world to the extent that there are any left, is going to have to come together. and do something to stop the Israeli and American military machine and the fucking trail of bodies that they're leaving. And like, and like they're, something will have to be done to damage the total impunity

through which this country and our proxies are able to act. I don't know what that's going to look like. I don't know if that will, what that will look like involves the end of the world. But like, I can't see a future worth living in in which work America as a political and military entity is allowed to just,

keep doing this shit. And I don't see how it's sustainable. And like, I will just state, like, the best possible outcome is that we are defeated as swiftly as possible and that we are humiliated in the process. And like, I don't know what, I don't know how to sketch out a better possible solution. Like, I'm not saying, I think that will happen. I'm saying, that's what I'm hoping will happen. And that's all I have. Lenin had written in 1915 that during a reactionary war, a revolutionary class cannot but desire the defeat of its government. No, there was an opportunity, I think, at 2024, when the axis of resistance was coming towards some sort of cohesion, and there was a chance to overwhelm Israel's air defenses and place it on the back foot

and potentially roll back what we had been seeing. That did not come to pass. Right now, the region is a light in a way that it has not been in years and to some degree has never been despite Yemen not even entering the war yet it may very well I don't pray for the continuation of this war because it's going to enable immense suffering but when these things have been lit up in this way this is like there is a reason why Hezbollah and entered in now. Because when things are this fluid, when things are this torrid, when there is so much uncertainty, that is the only opportunity they could foresee to actually change circumstances on the ground and maybe reverse things. I don't think anything will change in this country unless

America suffers an immense humiliation here, an immense humiliation, greater than the kind that happened in the Iraq war after the invasion when it just went on and on and on. There has to be a situation in which the car just just so, and I think it's going down this path where it is so clearly badly handled, badly planned, fighter jets are dropping out of the sky, maybe even because of Kuwaiti air defenses, friendly air defenses, that it's going to go so badly that Americans will start asking why we got into this in the first place in the way that we tried to get into Vietnam, not just about Iraq and Afghanistan. If that doesn't happen, I think we are going to continue repeating this episode elsewhere, wherever that elsewhere may be.

And that is going to be very difficult for everybody else involved. Okay. One last, one last actual question here. Out of all of the kind of pressure point, that the Iranian government and military can bring to bear on America, Europe, and our allies, the straits of the Strait of Hormuz. That's the main one. Can you sketch off what the status of is that right now? Because as best I can tell, they haven't sunk a single ship yet, but basically like insurance companies, like Lloyd's of London,

has effectively shut down the streets of Hormuz. I did see new, yeah, this is from out to zero two hours ago. I just wanted to check. Iran's IRGC says that it attacked a U.S.-linked oil tanker in the street of Hormuz as part of a wave of strikes retaliating against the Israeli assault. There was a message that was unverified that apparently went out to ships saying that the straight was closed. And I think it might inevitably go in that direction if this continues. It is the one big, this is what they've been threatening for decades. And if that actually happens, then gas price.

prices are going to shoot through the roof. Shipping prices are going to shoot through the roof everywhere. And that is an actual tangible thing that is going to appear in the American markets. Gas prices going up to $5 a gallon or perhaps higher, higher than they were during the financial crisis. And that seems to be the only thing like past actual coffins coming home that Americans really do care about. And that how it affects their pocketbooks. And it will affect their pocketbooks. and it will affect their pocketbooks if this continues. I don't think, I think they're going to have some sort of strategic ambiguity for now in that it is dangerous, but they are not accused of purposefully choking off the oil supply of the world. But the actual result in the sea, I think, is going to be an effective closure of the, like,

the Red Sea was not completely blockaded. There were still ships that were traversing the Babelmandab and into Red Sea. But it was still enough of a bottleneck. There were still enough ships being sunk and hit that the message was sent. The supply lines were severely damaged. And it became enough of a problem that Biden militarily intervened. Iran has a lot of capability here with the with the, with the where where its military is tied up.

It could still do things here, even if the Navy is not able to be present in the way that a regular naval blockade may need to be able to. All right. Well, let's wrap it up there for today. I want to thank our guest, Seamus Malakafselli, for joining us today. Please, please subscribe to Seamus.

Please follow and subscribe to Seamus. We will have links in the episode description. All right, I'm sorry, unless you boys have anything else Let's say, let's wrap it up there for today. Yeah. Okay. All right. Till next time, everybody.

Bye bye-bye.