DeProgram with John Kiriakou and Ted Rall - Same Time Next Year | DeProgram with Ted Rall and Jamarl Thomas

Episode Date: April 22, 2026

Editorial cartoonist Ted Rall and political analyst Jamarl Thomas deprogram you from mainstream media every weekday at 9 AM EST. Today we discuss:• So, there IS more “Mr. Nice Guy.” Trump blinked again by extending the ceasefire with Iran. His critics are mocking another TACO Tuesday. But the derision is better than risking more Iranian and US lives by doubling down to preserve his tough-guy persona. Inside Iran, though, Trump’s threats of military escalation lack credibility. The challenge for diplomats, from Pakistan and elsewhere, will be to find a way for Trump to claim some kind of win.• Leaked documents reveal details of a secret Saudi Arabia–Pakistan Mutual Defense Pact, now that Pakistan is playing a key role mediating the US-Israel-Iran War. We dig into this entanglement with journalist Murtaza Hussain, who broke this story for DropSite News. Hussain is a journalist specializing in national security and foreign policy. A former Intercept reporter now at Drop Site News, he offers commentary on U.S. interventions, human rights, and global affairs. He appears regularly on CNN, BBC, and MSNBC.• Trump asks Congress to increase the Defense budget by 42% (2/3 over Biden’s last one), to $1.5 trillion. Trump is seeking a 10% cut in discretionary domestic spending, chopping medical research, job training, home heating assistance, environmental protection and disaster relief after hurricanes. At a private Easter luncheon, Trump said: “We’re fighting wars,” he said. “It’s not possible for us to take care of daycare, Medicaid, Medicare.” Will Trump get his way?MERCH STORE: https://www.deprogram.livehttps://x.com/tedrallhttps://x.com/JamarlThomasLIVE ON RUMBLE: https://rumble.com/c/DeProgramShowSPOTIFY: https://open.spotify.com/show/2kdFlw2w8sSPhKI8NRx8ZuAPPLE MUSIC: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/deprogram-with-ted-rall-and-jamarl-thomas/id1825379504

Good morning. It is Wednesday, April 22nd, 2026. Welcome to Deep Program with Ted Roll and Jamaral Thomas. Hey, J.T. How are you? I'm doing okay. What's going on, man? You doing okay this morning? I'm doing it okay. And our colleague, Manila Chan, is in hospital right now delivering her child. Is she? She is. Wow. Yeah, 45 years old. Manila. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So TMI show still goes on doing that in the 10 o'clock hour, but Robbie Yal was sitting in. I've chose some topics that will fit. I think she was going to be doing it from the emergency room or from the hospital. Well, if she was truly professional. No work ethic, that one.

Anyway, all right. So please like, follow and share the show. a lot going on today, so we should just get into it. I mean, there's always a lot going on, but this is just, you know, it doesn't not make that untrue. Coming up at 9.30, we're going to have a special guest, journalist Murtaza Hussein, who broke this story on DropSight News, is going to talk about the details of a secret mutual defense treaty between Saudi Arabia and Pakistan.

Obviously, with Pakistan is serving as the intermediary between Iran and the United States and Saudi Arabia being Iran's biggest enemy in the Middle East, that has some major foreign policy implications. Join us in 25 minutes to talk to Mertaza, and he and we will be taking your questions during that time. Speaking of which, if you do have any questions for either JT or myself, just pop them into the live chat on YouTube or Rumble, 9 a.m. in the 9 a.m. Eastern hour, if you're watching live,

Otherwise, you know, you can post them in the comment section on YouTube or Rumble, and we will get to those the next day. It's probably priority. We'll go to the superchats. And that's so trying to think of there's any other other housekeeping to know about. Oh, I didn't hear back from you guys. Are you guys going to do Q&A without me? Because I can't do it today at 12 noon.

Maybe. So I have a doctor's appointment at one. I just realized. Oh, okay. Is it far away? yesterday and I just remember the fact that it was yesterday. It was too late in the day to give a heads up. I'm not against it though.

Maybe do a shorter version. It shouldn't take 30 minutes to get to the doctor's office. Well, okay, but it's at 12 noon is the Q&A. So maybe just do a half hour one with Robbie. I'm fine with that. Okay. Yeah, let's know what you're going to. All right, let me just ask.

Let me put you guys together. Robbie, is that cool? Q and a half an hour Q&A or we can skip it reschedule for tomorrow I can't do tomorrow because I've got DMZ tomorrow oh it'll be Friday Friday works fry yay I've got something listen no no that's not true at all anyway it's only half an hour but anyway look you guys work it out and let the world know what you guys want to do listen we're going to make the sausage

right here live in any color but I feel like the I feel like the Yenta Like, come on. Like, Robbie's a lovely boy. J.T. you love him. Rob, you love J.T. He's awesome. Hey, I love, listen, I love JT. And I'll throw in a couple of goats to sweeten the pot. I don't worship ball. I don't eat goats.

You know, they make good food and milk, too. Actually, I love goat cheese. Oh, yeah. See, I've never had goat cheese. Have you ever ate? You never had goat cheese? Huh. How come?

I mean, it must have been offered to on numerous occasions. I mean, when I was abroad, they had it, but it wasn't something that I actually set up. You ever had any, like, one approach you in a dark, anyone approach you in a dark alley and say, like, come on, little boy. You know you want some goat cheese. Come on. That would be very awkward. Very strange. The best thing, seriously, that you'll ever have is raccoon.

if you've never had raccoon raccoon is awesome it's a little bit salty but I like salty the best way to do raccoon though is that you got to dress it out right away grill it just slow it on a grill put some bacon grease down there on the irons just slow it just I've never processed

Robbie I've got to be honest I've never processed an animal right so like I've never I've processed a fish I've scaled like getting an animal oh yeah yeah like like dead take a dead animal cut off its fur and then like you know I don't I've seen that done. I don't know how to do it, though.

Well, at the end of the world, I will be fighting my cousin who knows how to do that stuff. Well, it depends on the animal, right? I mean, for most of them, unless I don't know if you have a show, who cares? But what you do is, like, you get a knife. The best thing you do is just you cut an X in the fur, and then you just roll the skin off. And then once you get the skin actually done, then you cut from, you cut from the anus up to the chest, and then you just pull the guts out. easy to do and then you just kind of go in just kind of quarter it after me and kizzy first got married but you have to get rid of all the all of the yucky organs too right like the like the stomach

and the intestines well that's why but you get the skin off first and then after being kizzie got married the first thing i did is that i fed her squirrel and rice and she still married you she did right it's like most interesting this is what did you say like this is what happens when you date a white guy this is they're all like a they're all like a they're all like listen not just a white guy a white guy from the deep south so there's there's a difference because ted last time i checked you're a white dude and and you're like you're like the yankees janky i've ever seen in my life no offense i love you brother but i mean oh i could i could treat if only you i introduced you i mean i hear your point i'm not claiming not to be super white but if i introduced you

to my old classmates at columbia who went to phillips exeter and sorry andover and and these like these northeastern prep schools. Holy shit. I mean, they are like Nick Lowe's songs. So white, so white, refrigerator white.

Everything's about you refrigerator white. But see, here's the thing, though. I'm a redneck from the deep south and the blood of the Confederacy flows through my veins. And so that is a heritage

that I just fully just embrace. I'm talking to a black dude about this. Does not matter. I mean, y'all see this right here. just that it just says when it is my son i think j t gets to decide whether it matters but well doesn't matter to me but my son right it's individual right for sure no and no my son i mean he's like me but with a much darker town and he's more redneck than i am and it's a great thing to see it's awesome you know there's redneck and then it's confederate and they're not

the same right right oh my son is a hardcore confederate too i mean Keep in mind, I was born to raise in Richmond, like the home of the Confederacy. Right. Sure. Like, why was the capital of the Confederacy in Richmond? It doesn't it seem like dangerous to have it so close to the north? It's because Virginia was the richest, the most populous state. And so that's why.

And also it would have been wiser to have it like in Western Tennessee or something. Well, also, though, I mean, you got to think about the mythology, right? The majority of the founding fathers, especially the founding presidents, were Virginians. And George Washington was the first, light, Of course, Harry Lee, who is Washington's right hand, was Robert Lee's dad. So that connection to the revolution is like right there. So that's why. I mean, so question, and we'll move on to talk about real shit, although this is real shit.

What happened like, so like if you capture Paris, you've captured France, right? If you capture Moscow, pretty much, you've captured Russia. These are centralized societies. If you captured Richmond, did you automatically capture, well, France is a centralized country. If you capture Berlin, you have Germany. Maybe in Russia, maybe not, point taken. But like, the United, so like if you captured Richmond, did that mean game over for the South? No, it was too, it was decentralized.

The problem, the whole issue with the South is it was so devastated by 1865 is that there was, I mean, the war was effectively over. in 1864. But it was called a curse with the German invasion of the Soviet Union. I mean, it's just it took a year for me to figure it out. And another 100,000 men die. That's the problem.

Yeah, yeah. That makes sense. All right. We'll have a historical lesson of the civil war later on. All right. Or the battle between the, or what is it the War of Northern aggression, as you call it? You know what? I heard that I was in Longwood.

And, you know, yeah, I knew I was in the south, but there's the south and there's the south. Right. And I remember having it. There are striations, right? There are striations, right? There are parts of Virginia that you go to where their accidents, deeper than Robbie's, right? Whereas like, women, I mean, I'm that still in Virginia?

She, for one, she was attractive, which always is, and that helps. That helps. Yeah. And she's like, we're having to. having this conversation and she brings up this notion of the war of northern aggression. I'm like, what the hell are you talking about? And she's like, the War of Northern aggression, we were attacked, we're attacked. And I'm like, okay, fair enough.

But she was cute, so hopefully things could be working. I'm going to ignore all of this, right? I had this friend, he was a very Jewish punk rocker and a great guy, George. And he told me the story about, like, in punk rock scene, there was always a substrata of, like, neo-Nazis. And he told me how, like, some neo-Nazi girl, like, picked him up at a bar, and he ended up, like, boning her in, like, his van. And then he realized he pulled out and came on her swastika tattoo. And he said that just he looked.

And I was like, your grandparents would be so proud. Yeah, for sure. And he was like, he said, like, oh, my God, I felt so great about that. And I was like, okay, all right. J.T. I've got to tell you this, and then we'll go, because I guess we have a show we got to do. Oh, that's too funny. I'm sorry. Go ahead. Our wedding. When I got married with Kizzy, it was epic because my family is just white trash. I mean, not just redneck. I mean, just

straight on meth head white trash. Like as far, if you think stereotypical hic, that's that that's my stock back on. Okay. And then of course, here I am marrying a, marrying a black woman. And her family, like her mom or grandmother, of course they were, they grew up in segregation and stuff. And so we all got this church.

And these are they going to be a very entertaining wedding or it was going to turn it into a race war. It was with one or the other. And we had no idea how this is going to go. And it was just the, it was the nicest wedding. Everyone got along after it.

They were just, it was just out just hanging out. You are alive. So, yeah, clearly. But we had no idea, though, like what was, it's kind of like with water and sodium. If you put the two of them together, bad things don't tend to happen. We did not know what was going to happen here. And it just turned out just to be such a good time.

I think we set race relations forward probably like 100 years in North Dust, Florida. I mean, at the end of the day, we brought us a race, I mean, the family just wants you to treat her, right? Oh, oh, no. Oh, no. Oh, no. So some of her folks were very, very not happy with her taking up with the white guy. Like none at all. It was just like, you're, you are literally with the enemy here. See, usually I see it the other way around, right? Like when you're dating a white woman and black women are looking at it, you like, you motherfucker. Yeah, so no one.

But no, my first started dating Kizzy, I went for a walk with her mama. And we were, we were walking around and we were talking. And she expressed her concerns. I was like, Ms. Modell said, listen, I understand. I said, I love you. I said, but she doesn't understand. I ain't asking to marry you. I'm asking to marry your daughter.

That's the difference. And I said, I'll love her. I'll take good care of her. So I'll do everything I can to know, to make sure that she has everything she needs, that she's a happiest woman in the world. but I mean, I can't change what I am. You can't change what you are. And even if I could, I wouldn't do it.

Right. And it's like, well, sounds good, Robbie. But if you ever get tired of her, please don't kill her. Just bring her home. Is that what she said for real? That is 100% what she said. And I said that I'll 100% make you that promise. I won't kill her and I'll bring her home.

But I'm not going to take her back to the beyond, okay? Kill her just bring her home. Oh, my God. And with that, I am. I mean, we are like to. But, I mean, me and Maudale, I mean, honest to God, I love that woman. And I told you all the story last week. Poor thing.

She's fighting dimension and stuff right now. She's just like, Robbie, you're my favorite white person. It's like, I said, you're my second favorite black person. Does she know any others? Oh, yeah. Oh, okay. Just checking. What are you the only one?

You're the only cracker she knows? He knows. I'm a journalist. I got to fact check this. All right. You can stay on, but we've got to talk about, we've got to get on. Actually, go find some comments. Okay.

All right. So listen, it turns out, remember last week, Donald Trump said there's, I'm not even going to run through, do the run through, we're just going to hit the stories. So last week, Trump was threatening, no more Mr. Nice Guy. And, well, it turns out there is a Mr. There is actually more Mr. Nice Guy. So Trump blinked again, another Taco Tuesday, 2.5. actually maybe 3.0 by now.

It's 3.0. And anyway, so here's the story, right? It's very clear now to all but the most insane MAGA supporters that there is no master plan here. Donald Trump has been bluffing all along. He knows that Iran has all the advantages. JT just a couple of minutes ago, USA Today reported that Iran fired at three ships in the Strait of Ormuz and also seized.

two ships in the Strait of Hormuz and brought them over to an Iranian port. No word on which countries those ships belong to. Obviously, the Strait of Hormuz has never been more closed ever. So, you know, the challenge now for everybody concerned is how to frame any kind of post-war agreement in a way that doesn't make Donald Trump look like the loser that he is. And I don't know the, I mean, I guess there must be a way to thread this needle, but that's hard. And so, you know, once again,

he's like, you know, the military's raring to go. You know, we'll bomb them. But I mean, at this point, you know, the boy has cried and screamed and shouted Wolf so many times that we have to kind of think,

you know, you're, you don't have the cards, Donald. You don't have them. I know, right? I know. I would like to point out that I was right. You were right. There was no way Iran could negotiate under these terms because it's like if I kick you in the balls and then you sit down and it's like, all right, let's negotiate.

What does it mean if you do? Right? It's like, I've just kicked you into balls. You better take your sore balls and go home. Otherwise, they're going to look at you and say they're weak. And it's like even if you want to negotiate, how do you do it under these terms, right? you have a moderate quote-unquote government that's in office they want to negotiate even clashing against the r gc um and hardliners in this particular situation but how do you do it because the moment

that i sit down it's like dude you've been stealing my ships you have a blockade down that's going on there is no ceasefire um in iran or in the middle east in the context of lebanon none of these things have happened and if i sit down after basically saying these are my preconditions how what do you view me as in this case? You view it as I'm sitting down because I have to, right? Which is not the signal that I want to get that makes the war longer and it makes the negotiation even that much worse or that much harder because now I'm dealing with this notion that you're looking at me as if I'm prey. Yeah, the strongest position that they took was silence. We're not talking to you under these terms. You got blessing for it. God bless me. Yeah, that's, I mean,

I'm glad that they took this approach. And I guess my concern is that the highly emasculated, totally gelded, majorly cucked Donald Trump is going to feel a need to reestablish his his Y chromosome by nuking something. And that's my only concern. Yeah. I mean, look, man, it is a concern. I don't, look, I don't, I have a hard time wrapping my head around the U.S.

attacking a non-nuclear state with nukes. Is it possible? Well, it did it before. True, but that was in the middle of a war where life was very, had very little value. I mean, we're talking about 50 million people dying, right? What does it matter if you add in another 100,000 to 30, 40, 50 million people? I mean, I'm not saying that that's nothing. I'm just saying in the context of a struggle that was total against,

the Germans and let's be honest from the standpoint of the United States, we got nooks, might as well to see what they look like and let's, you know, scare the shit out the Russians or the Soviets. I guess I'm saying we're in, it's different. It's not the same. It's, I don't know, look, you could be right. And this could be something that Trump comes up with. I would hope there's somebody in the room saying no. Is it, but is it possible? Sure, it's possible. But I get the sense. I mean, did you see those were reporting that came out. I believe it was CNN and there We're talking about the munitions that the United States effectively utilize in this war.

50% of THAAD interceptors we utilize. 50% of Patriots, 45% of precision strike missiles, 30% of Tomahawk missiles, 20% of JASMS, 20% of standoff. He used all of this in like, what, two months? Mm-hmm. Yeah. We had to ask the UKIs for some of our stuff back. It's amazing. And the UKEs don't have it because, you know, you know what they do with our stuff.

They don't really fire that much of it at the Ruskis. They sell it on the dark web. Make a buck. Make a profit. It's a hell of, it would be to expend this much material, but this little results. And not just this little results. It's even worse than that because Iran took the straight of remove something that wasn't true before the war started. Right.

Yeah. Yeah, let's not forget that, right? Like, if Donald Trump has a colossal victory, he winds up right back where he started. Yes. if he wins. I mean, that's, that's, that's, that's piss poor. I mean, the question becomes how does he extricate himself from this? Because the problem is a U.S. President is loathe to accept the fact that they fail. And even if you're looking at the Ukraine war, for example, right? It's clear as day that Ukraine has lost that war. And yet it rolls on. And even I accept that Trump may want to deal,

but he can never accept the deal under the terms to which Russia would give him because losers don't get to dictate terms. And I feel the same way about the Iran thing. What the difference is Iran doesn't have nooks? So the catch becomes back to your court, our nukes utilize as a wild card last resort in order to avoid humiliation. Well, I know you don't buy this. I'm just wondering now that you've had a chance to think about a little more if you've changed your mind, no offense if you haven't. But what do you think of my theory, my advice to the president, that he transformed this into a grand bargain and say, listen, we're going to normalize relations. That doesn't have to look like a surrender. It can look like, listen, you know, you know how like the cliche two guys get into a bar

fight, they hate each other, but then they like start to respect each other and then they end up drinking and they become the best of friends, right? I mean, that's kind of what happened with me and Scott Stantis, minus the drinking and the, you know, we used to hate each other and we were combatants in the world of politics. we're best friends. He's on the right. I'm on the left. Who cares? I mean, isn't it possible for Trump to say, listen, I thought it over. Fighting with the Iranians is stupid. I thought about all the money America could make. We could sell them stuff. We can have, we can do business, make a deal. It's like bring them into the fold. It's a big win for us. I mean, honestly, that's not so hard

to frame. See, it's running against inertia. Like there's political inertia. But Donald Trump runs against his whole career. Or not running against inertia, right? You don't think so? Like, basically, that he would have to... Well, he'd have to tell Dibi to fuck off. Well, there's that, too.

But who cares? I mean, like, no one likes Israel anymore. It's never coming back. The American people, Israel's dead to them. APEC has lost its power. They're done. So, why not just... I mean, we can all see it coming.

But that's such a... that's such a change of direction. It is. It's radical. I mean, not just radical. It is jarring. And I feel like it's jarring in a way, like, if Superman catches somebody falling off of a cliff, Superman is going to break their back.

Right. They're moving at 9.08 meters per second square, straight down. There's like, here, we rescued you. And it's like, oh, my God, this person is mush. I guess, look, from your mouth to God's ears, fair enough. I don't know how that works in our political space. what is Congress going to say? What is the media going to say?

Look, I was at the Joe Biden, Vladimir Putin summit, right? Where Joe Biden and Putin talk, because there was a situation of this concern that there was no communication between the two and that things could spiral out of control. I watch the media. Joe Biden gives a speech. Joe Biden sounds a lot like Putin in that speech, meaning they've obviously correlated what they were going to say. And I watched the media eat Joe Biden alive, screaming at him. about, you know, did you stick it to Putin? Did you tell Putin to fuck off? Did you, you know, did you talk about the Ukrainians? Did you talk about this? Did you talk about that? And Joe Biden,

this is that moment what Joe Biden so screaming at the reporter saying, you don't understand the situation that we're dealing with. Like, that's what a U.S. president would have to deal with if a U.S. president all of a sudden. But the difference is that Joe Biden had a sympathetic media before that happened and he was worried about losing it. Donald Trump doesn't have a sympathetic media. So he's not losing anything. It's the political issue. It's just hard for me to say it politically. And that's saying you're wrong. Look, I think it's a simple matter of like anyone with clarity can see that this is what's in the, this is what's in the cards. So the only question now is, you know, when are you going to realize it and respond to it? Are you going to wait

until it's upon you and like, you know, the wolf is eating your ass? Or are you going to It's just, you know, accept the reality and deal with it now. That's really the question. I mean, and if you're Trump, it's to your advantage to accept it on the earlier side because then it solves a bunch of your problems. I mean, you know, I mean, first of all, cutting BB, you know, BB is a serious drag on his popularity, right? I mean, he's down at 35%. You and I know that just by cutting Israel loose, he'd be bounced up to back to, back up to 40.

You know, he's not going to lose Maga World over that. And he'd pick up some people who, you know, are pissed off about Gaza and Israel and Iran. I mean, it would be good for him. I do get it. But I think ultimately what you're going to see is he will need to try to find a way short of the nuclear option, right? And doing something just catastrophic. He would need to find a way to spin it. I mean, Trump has for sure.

No need for honestly or the truth, morality, good sense. No. Rationality, any of those things? And he can walk out. Mark Zabodipa tells us about this. Like Trump one time went out and was like, yeah, Ukraine, Zelensky is a dictator. And then the next day, he's like, what? I never said that.

And it's like, what? How do you do that? Right? Like most people don't have this Herculean ability to lie. And just rabble, part of the truth. Trump does. So obviously he's going to try to spin it. But I guess my biggest concern is that the ceasefire, it's not really a ceasefire. If you remember in many other situations, Donald Trump used negotiations as a way of attack, basically saying lolling his opponent into this sense of complacency. Is that true this time? With the missile inventories, I don't know. And with what seems to be him being stuck in this situation, I don't know. What do you think about that, by the way? The chances of, of this kind of launching an attack under this guise of getting of lulling Iran into a false sense of security. Do you see that happen in December?

Perhaps that's on, I mean, certainly it's a possibility. But the thing is, I don't think, I don't think the Iranians are lullable at this point. You know, I mean, they've been through down this primrose path a bunch of times with the Americans. They know they can't trust them at all. They, you know, so therefore, they're completely. completely, they've got to be at least mentally prepared for anything that comes and probably militarily prepared for quite a bit. I mean, they know what the Americans are about. You know, I mean, at this point, I mean, the Iranians are right. Anything short of an armistice is not going to cut it. I mean, they need, they need something. And even that might not, you know,

the American, Donald Trump is so feckless. You might like ignore it. But bottom line is, if I were them, I'd be like, if it's not signed in blood and engraved with multiple carbon copies, like, I don't know if I can take this seriously, right? It's like, it's got to be notarized, you know, docu-signed, everything. Agreed. I guess the question is, how do you do that? Like, I can see it potentially going to do with you in the Security Council. That's assuming that, you know, you can even make a deal with the U.S. in this case. But Congress? Well, I mean, Congress is, Congress is, is, is Trump's, like. like, but boy, they'll do whatever the fuck he wants.

Besides which, they don't, the thing is, even if it's a treaty, okay, and let's just say they don't ratify. So what? It's still, it's still like a president signed the treaty. The president's still bound by it. And it doesn't have the full force of American law as a Senate ratified treaty obligation. But it's still something that the U.S. that the Trump administration has to do. I mean, you know, you can, and in the world, in the, in the court of international

public opinion. Like, the U.S. would be, would be fucked if it's just like, if it, if it made, signed a peace treaty and then reneged. I mean, why? Because no one would ever believe anything the U.S. ever had to say ever again. But they don't believe what there's, I guess that's the rub, right? Like, how, why would anybody trust anything that you have? The U.S. has been pulling out one treaty after the next one standpoint of Soviet Union, the whole those missile treaties. And then if you look at the JCPOA, we just blew that off all in completely. And it's in We attack people in the middle of negotiations, and we continue and we back a literal genocide. How, like, why would blowing off a treaty obligation all of a sudden be the deal breaker?

It's like, everything was going well until this. You might be right, but it's a whole new level. I mean, it's so like, because, I mean, a treaty obligation is so serious. I mean, at that point, then why have diplomacy, right? Like, why bother? You don't have diplomacy. But that's not the way. They're going there and issuing demands.

Empires are not. You know, I don't know. I see what we're doing is this kind of Hitlerian, like, radical breach of norms in regards to the way countries, but we've gone rogue. And, I mean, we've been murdering fishermen in Venezuela. We literally kidnapped

a world leader. I know. Well, it's not even, and hilariously, it's not even the first time we've done it. Yes, Mangua Noriego was another one, right? I never understood that. Why did that guy? Why does that guy go to a prison in Georgia? Like, how does that work?

It's random. That's what I mean. And the fact that he was probably innocent. It doesn't help. But yeah. I'm just saying, like, that's my point. Like, all of this shit is off the rails. Like, we're not in a normal operating space.

I agree. What will be different? We're blown off a treaty. You can't. Okay. Well. I could be wrong. I mean, look, I can be talking about.

We have Murtaza waiting in the, waiting to, uh, to join us. So let's go ahead. and bring him on in. Murtaza Hussein, thanks for joining us on D-Program. Nice to see you, Ted, and nice to meet you, tomorrow. Nice to see you, too. So we leaked documents, which you've been reporting on, reveal a secret pact between Saudi Arabia and Pakistan,

a mutual defense treaty. So let me introduce you. Murtaza Hussein is a journalist specializing in national security and foreign policy. He's a former reporter at the interstate. except now at DropSight News. He offers commentary on U.S. interventions, human rights, and global affairs. He appears regularly on CNN, BBC, and MS now. Still says MSNBC.

We'll have to change that. Retaza, tell us about this treaty and why it's important. Yeah, so currently Pakistan is serving as a mediator in the talks between Iran and the U.S. ostensibly to end the war. The issue is that Pakistan, while serving us theoretically as a neutral mediator, has deep ties to the U.S. as well, but also more critically perhaps to Saudi Arabia. Now, Saudi Arabia is also participant in the war by virtue of the fact of hosting U.S. military assets that were used in the war against Iran. And also, Iran is retaliated by firing missiles and drones at many Saudi targets during the course of the war. including U.S. military assets, but also energy targets and infrastructure targets to a more limited degree.

So, Pakistan has a basically secret agreement with Saudi Arabia, mutual defense agreement. The existence of the agreement itself has been known and announced various times, but the terms of it were never really shared either with the public media or even with the Pakistan Republic and the parliament. so forth. It's always remained classified. We received that agreement, the classified agreement, and we wrote about it at dropside last week. So the issue is in the current conflict, if the talks break down, the Pakistani government does not want to be put in a position where it will be forced to enforce this mutual defense treaty and fight Iran in defense of Saudi Arabia. That would be very problematic for the Pakistani government. It didn't want to get involved in the war.

But it also wants to keep the Saudis happy with the agreement. That's kind of the hidden subtext of these talks, where Pakistan really has an urgent need to keep the war not happening, to keep the ceasefire from breaking down, not just because it doesn't want to see the war in the neighborhood, because it doesn't want to be put into the war itself. So tell us about some of the terms of this treaty. I mean, whenever I hear mutual defense treaty,

I mean, obviously that's what NATO is essentially. But, you know, I think of World War I and the buildup to that, the intertangling alliances in Europe and in the Middle East that sort of, you know, caused an Archduke taking a wrong turn to lead to global conflagration. What are some of the, what are some of the triggers that make this, that put this treaty into effect? And how does it, what does it look like if and when it is activated? So the treaty itself, it commits, it actually is interesting because at least as of 2024, it didn't really put any stated reciprocal stipulations on Saudi Arabia. It was more about Pakistan protecting Saudi Arabia. And notably it was about the deployment of Pakistani troops. So it's not so mutual.

At least, you know, there's gone to multiple iterations and we have iterations going to, from the 80s to 24. And up to that point, there were no reciprocal, you know, obligations on Saudi Arabia. There was a new version updated in 2025, which we didn't have a copy of, which, you theoretically, could alter it such that Saudi Arabia offers mutual defense obligations. But I don't think so, because there have been Pakistani armed conflicts since then. There's currently a war in Afghanistan that Pakistan is involved in. And Saudi Arabia is not involved itself in the war or suggested even that it would do so.

And they really have limited capacity to help Pakistan in any conflict. The mutual obligation really does seem to be quite one-sided despite the denominator. So what does Pakistan get out of this? It's just sort of respectability or what? Well, in theory, although it's not stated in the agreement, we can completely. this for the statements of Pakistani officials is that their goal in the agreement is to get financial support and investment from Saudi Arabia in exchange for offering a defense umbrella to Saudi territory to the Pakistani military. Now it's not really clear to what degree that

obligation has really been satisfied or that implicit obligation. Saudi Arabia is not a huge investor in Pakistan. It could be a corrupt deal. where there is off the books agreements with certain Pakistani military leaders to pay them, to give them financial rewards, the exchange, peace agreement. That could be the case, if it would make a lot of sense. There's a lot of deep, elite connection between the two countries. But, you know, on top of that, maybe there could be in the future Saudi investments in Pakistan's defense industrial base, and they do have a significant defense sector.

They manufacture aircrafts and weapons and so forth. have obviously a nuclear program, those things could all be there. But the Pakistanis have publicly in recent months expressed frustration we've seen in the press about what they see as a lack of actual reward from the agreement. So at the same time, the Pakistanis have also, despite the disagreement existing for a long time, they really always try to avoid having to honor it in the sense. The Saudis have tried to induce them to fight in Yemen or maybe even now fight in Iran. they've really done everything we can to avoid having to enforce the agreement. They really don't want to enforce it.

So it really shows you the weakness of the agreement to date, at least. It's not like NATO or something where there's very strong stipulations, at least in the past, to enforce an alliance. It's much more touch and go, let me say, as far. Murtaza, there's, you know, it's a little bit strange for, I think a lot of American ears to hear, to sort of think that the Saudis who are swimming in cash and are suddenly in need of assistance, militaries, albeit a military from a country as desperately poor as Pakistan is comparatively. And, you know, that comes at the same time as this report that, that Trump is considering using U.S. tax dollars to compensate the, you know,

UAE for the damage that they've sustained during the Israel-U.S. attack on Iran. And it's kind of like, well, wait, we have Americans sleeping outside and we're sending money to the Emirates? I mean, are we misreading the financial relationship here? Well, that's the sad thing about one of the many sad things about this whole episode, is just shows how democracy has been so degraded. To such that it's just these guys who, these elites, transnational elites who have the relationship with each other. Obviously, Trump and his son-in-law and many others have very close ties with people in the Gulf. We're also very wealthy.

They're just all bailing each other out. And the U.S. military is being deployed as, you know, like a gang and in practice to serve the interests of this small group of networked elite people in U.S. or Tel Aviv or Abu Dhabi or Riyadh or wherever else. So it really has no. Yeah, you're absolutely right. why would be bailing out these very wealthy people? Why are we even spending billions of dollars a day fighting this war in the first place when there's all these pressing problems at home? And the Trump administration specifically campaigned on the idea that it was going to

deployed resources at home and not just not fight wars abroad, specifically not fight an Iran war. That was a war that they campaigned against specifically. Now they're doing it. So it really shows institutional breakdown. You know, you can't help it be a bit simple about it. The midterms are coming out, inflation is going to be really high by the time of midterms. This blockade of the street of Hormuz, it's already affecting people in Asia and Africa and elsewhere. It's really going to start affecting Europe and the United States in the weeks and months ahead.

So people are going to be really, really upset about that. And whatever, I think that anything else Trump promised he's going to do in this administration, it's just going to be out the window at this point. He's just going to be dealing with the consequences of this decision. And that's pretty much all that's going to be happening, economic and political and other ones. Mataza, yeah, I mean, I couldn't agree more. So before you came on, Jamar and I were kind of bandying about the current state of the ceasefire negotiations that Pakistan is brokering or trying to broker. First of all, one quick question, do you think that the message that went out from the Pakistan prime minister last night asking, quote unquote,

the Americans to return to extend the deadline and to allow more space for diplomatic negotiations. Do you think that one was like the last one from a couple of weeks ago, authored in Washington, and then sent to him and he posted it? Maybe. Maybe. I don't have a great faith in the Pakistanis as mediators in the situation. Although I do think that they do sincerely want to see an end to the war. And inside Pakistan, which is a neighboring country of Iran, there's tremendous sympathy for Iran because they believe that they were victims of aggression in this case in this war. So I do think they want to end the war. It's just that the Pakistani military government is not really independent from Washington.

We've done law reporting about this at drop site. And even before that, they are very dependent. They're very keen on winning the favor of Trump. And they want to please Trump in this situation. So that has to be balanced against whatever ostensibly neutral role as an interlocutor they're playing or a mediator that they're playing here. So because of that, they're very incentivized to portray things as more positive than they are, to put more pressure on the Iranians to agree to American positions rather than vice versa. And, you know, they've probably done some good things.

It probably helped egg along the Lebanon ceasefire and just encourage everyone to get back to the table and so forth. Despite that, I'm not sure that they could really, it's possible that they're the ones who are conveying messages for Trump through their own auspices. Because Trump clearly is the one who, you know, he blusters and bluffs, and then he gets caught out. And then he wants to, and his way out as he sees it, is to be seen as fake it,

as benevolently granting the, you know, more negotiations that the world wants. when really it's he who wants it desperately. Yeah, absolutely. He wants. And the Iranians, we were talking about them, they're not desperate to have a deal here. They actually would prefer to fight

and sign what they see is a bad deal. Because they're waiting for the world markets to tank. They know time is on their side if they can hold out. They're waiting for the world markets to tank. And also, they're fighting a war for existence. This is like the second war of independence. They're not thinking about midterms or, you know, short-term inflation.

and things like that, they see as they're fighting for survival, and they could fight for years if they have to. They already fought a previous war in the 80s against Saddam Hussein, which the U.S. supporters, Saddam Hussein that war years, and a million people were killed in the war, they sought as a war for survival, so they're willing to pay a huge cost. It's the same thing now.

Whereas for Trump, this Iran situation, he just kind of got into it without thinking about too much, it seems. It was one of many things that he wants to get out his checklist, so to speak. He doesn't have the same investment. emotionally or ideologically having a war to the death of the Iranians. So, you know, the time preferences favor the Iranians here for numerous reasons. And even Trump's strategy of trying to change the time preference by putting this blockade

on the Iranians and so forth. Two things. They have a lot of slack in the system in Iran. They have oil storage space domestically. A lot of tankers seem to still be getting by despite the blockade. And finally, even if it resulted in damage to their own. oil production or huge, you know, significant drop in oil sales and so forth, that's a price they're willing to pay because they're fighting for survival.

And it's happened in the past in the 2020s when the 19, when Trump put his maximum pressure sanctions, Iranian oil experts went almost zero for quite a long time. They didn't collapse at that time. So why would they collapse now when they also have this reciprocal blockade and straight-of-form move? So it really doesn't make any sense. It's a horrible decision he made to get in this war. he's trying to find one solution to get out of it.

I think there's two likely options here. Well, actually, there's three options. First, the war would start a game, which I see is possible, but the least likely option. The second is that, you know, Trump capitulates in some way and makes an agreement, which is kind of like the Iran deal that Obama made. JCPOA. Or, and this could actually be the most likely outcome,

and I've seen other people assess this as well, and I agree with it, is that Trump could just walk away. He could say, you know, we're done with this. We smashed the situation and we broke the status quo here. It's worse now. The Iranians control the street, but we don't want to make a deal with them. So let's just leave and let everyone else, you know, sort things out. The problem with option three, though, is that it leaves the straight under Iranian control

and therefore, you know, the global economy hangs on the balance. And, you know, you can only imagine all the phone calls Trump is taking from world leaders and corporate leaders saying, please make the pain stop. Exactly. I think that's why he's still in it right now. The issue is there's only two ways making the pain stop. One, you do it militarily. You force it all. But it seems like they can't do that because it's not that hard to shut down the street. You have to actually invade Iran and probably overthrow the government. The whole thing. Yeah, it's a country of 90 million people in Europe, impossible. So that's a really unattractive option. And secondly, is you can make a deal

to open it. So that's the logical thing. But if he can't bring himself to do that. What about normalization? I've been saying that that's Trump's way out. I mean, I know it's like radical, but, you know, literally just say, I mean, Trump had floated that in the 2016 election saying, I would talk to the mullahs, I would talk to the Ayatollahs, you know, I would go to Tehran, you know, like bring Iran back into the fold and say, hey, we're friends now.

The fight's over. I think that would be entailed making a comprehensive deal with it, but I think it's very difficult because you'd have to give them things in that situation. He seems very unwilling to make durable concessions or credible concessions because in DC there are a lot of people who will fight through the nail, even if you wanted to make a deal, to undermine it, to destroy it and so forth. And, you know, I don't see that he's a very, Trump's negotiating style is very zero-sum.

And, you know, it's interesting. Last week, it seemed like they almost had a deal, to be honest, or something edging on a deal theoretically. And Trump really single-handly destroyed it by going on social media and claiming that the Iranians agreed to everything and he's giving them nothing, just, you know, completely trying to humiliate them after the deal was made. They didn't respond well to that. No.

So I don't know if he's, you know, his internal, he's capable of making the conciliatory, you know, gestures and concessions necessary to make a deal. Nothing in his history suggests that. Exactly. So, you know, it's a very sensitive negotiation. And, you know, the Iran nuclear deal, the original one, it's a question. almost two years of sensitive messaging and talks to bring to conclusion. Very delicate situation. It's hard to imagine Trump being able to do that now. It would be great if he did, but that's just

probably, you know, not maybe the most likely outcome here. Yeah, I'm going to agree with you on that. Would you be willing to take a question from one of our viewers? Sure. Manchild, thanks for the donation. Is Pakistan just a high-end mercenary force now with the Saudis paying the bill? has the world's only Muslim nuclear power basically pawned its nukes to Riyadh in order to avoid going broke? Well, you know, what interesting thing in these documents, the sure brought up, and it was actually very fascinating, is that in this mutual defense agreement, the Pakistan specifically delimited it to exclude the nuclear weapon. That's interesting because for many, many years,

we'd assume that Pakistan had given a nuclear umbrella to Saudi Arabia, and some Pakistani civilian officials that even suggested that was the case, but as for the terms of the agreement, they went out of their way to make sure that that was not considered in part of the unit. Now, that may have changed in the 2025 version, but again, I haven't seen any evidence suggest that no missile silos or basing being done in Saudi Arabia visible to anybody else that would suggest that's the case. So, yeah, they actually have tried to not have that part of there, which is a very interesting revelation from the documents. Did you mind if I pick it back on this real quick? Please. If that's the case, then what's the point?

I mean, the biggest actor in the Middle East, in this case, from Saudi Arabia's standpoint, is Iran. And so what's the goal to get Pakistan effectively on the hook if there's a war between Iran and Saudi Arabia? Is that the thought? Well, so this is the thing. So basically the deal itself does not, and also they specifically made sure the language suggested this, It does not require obligate Pakistan to engage in foreign conflicts on behalf of Saudi Arabia. It's only about deployment of troops to Saudi territory to defend the government against a threat. So in 2015, the Saudis tried to activate it when they're going to war in Yemen to get the Pakistani school fight in Yemen.

But that was vetoed by the Pakistani parliaments, and the deal itself also does not really accommodate that. And, you know, this deal as currently structured, it would not suggest Pakistan would fight in Iran, for instance, or attack Iranian assets. It does suggest, and it's happening now, that they would deploy Pakistani ground troops to Saudi Arabia to maybe defend critical assets inside the country from attack. And also very key, the Pakistani Air Force. Pakistan is a very large, sophisticated Air Force. Many of those planes are currently in Saudi Arabia or some number of them are in Saudi Arabia. to defend you against drones or missiles. So that's kind of the way it seems that the treaty is written and also being implemented.

It's a treaty to defend Saudi Arabia against attack and also potentially defend Saudi Arabia against internal security crisis. Maybe if there was a rebellion inside Saudi Arabia, theoretically, the term the deal was not exclude Pakistan from defending the Saudi royal family against that. So yeah, it's kind of like a military contractor agreement. absent any sort of reciprocal Saudi military concession, which I haven't seen. I think that's kind of how people would interpret it. Thank you so much for joining us.

Mertaza, where can people find your work? Thanks. I'm at Dropside News and you can find me on X and Substack as well. Rattasa, I hope you'll come back. That was really great. Yeah, absolutely. Thanks for having me, guys. Thank you so much.

Mertaza Hussein is a reporter for Dropsite News. He specializes in national security and foreign policy. He's a former reporter for The Intercept and offers commentary on U.S. interventions, human rights, and global affairs. It appears regularly on the big networks like CNN, BBC, and MS now. All right. So that was cool. We should talk about, we should take, first of all, a few little superchats we have to get to. Count zero.

Thanks for the two pounds. Need more Robbie. More Robbie you shall have, especially in the next hour if you stay tuned to TMI because it'll just be me and Robbie. Jbaria Media, thanks for the 99. So Robbie brought up the Confederacy, so I had to ask. Are you saying that you're a non-racist Confederate? If so, what does that mean? And why are black people born like my family excluded, Robbie? Well, the Confederacy doesn't exist. So it would be very hard for me to be a racist Confederate. So I'm just kind of put that out there.

Second, I really don't know how else that I can say this. Americans have a very difficult problem with over simplifying things and putting everything into a cartoon rapper. The good guys don't always wear black or don't always wear white and the bad guys don't always wear black. American history is very complicated. It's always been complicated. It's always going to be complicated. So trying to put things into this good, bad paradigm.

It just doesn't work. If you go through, if you study American history, you're going to see so much contradiction. you're going to see so much double dealing. You're going to see it all. In terms of the war between the states, it comes down to ultimately to what your politics are at the end of the day. Is the federal government a creation of the states or are the states a creation of the federal government? Which one has supremacy? That's the question.

I'm a states rights guy. I believe that the Constitution is a dead document. It says what it says, and it cannot be interpreted to the Times. That's the whole issue. The Constitution is a bill of negative rights. It tells the federal government what it is allowed to do. And anything that's not in the Constitution, per the 9th, the 10th amendments, are reserved to the states and specifically to the people.

It also tells the government what it's not allowed to do. But we do have to talk about one more topic here. And, Robbie, why don't you just stay on? Because I think you'll have thoughts about this. So Trump has just, we anticipated that this would happen. And now it has, Trump has officially asked Congress to increase the U.S. defense budget by 42%. So to put that into perspective, to $1.5 trillion, that's 42% over last year.

And that's two thirds of an increase over Biden's last budget, 2024. In to help pay for that, he wants to gut domestic spending. Getting rid of medical research, job training, which is a Ted Raul thing. I think job training is super important. Home heating assistance. Yeah, because let's let people freeze to death in the winter. Environmental protection and disaster relief after tornadoes and hurricanes. At a private luncheon on Easter Sunday, Trump said, we're fighting wars.

It's not possible for us to take care of daycare, Medicaid, Medicare. A lovely man. will Trump get his way? Will Congress, which always votes yes on defense spending? Not only votes yes, but usually gives the Defense Department a tip. It usually gives them more appropriations than they request. So what will happen this time? I mean, this is by far the biggest defense increase in U.S. history.

Fuck it. I think, like, I know that sounds brutal. But look, man, like, The idea that a president would even say that is amazing. We spend a trillion dollars. We spend more than what, like nine of the next countries combined in regards to the military. The president is choosing to go to war. So the idea that you're choosing wars of aggression and then turn around and say, hey, man, we need more money because I need to fight wars.

The guy who got in office screaming about peace and attacking Joe Biden for fighting wars. That's outrageous. will he get it? I don't know. Put it this way. I don't think he's going to be able to gut those agencies because I think there'll be consequences for doing so. But would he get the money? That may be a separate matter. I think he would do it.

I don't think he cares. And I've said this before. I think it just goes to show how, not just disdain that our ruling class has for us, but the absolute hatred. If you're a parent and if you're always neglecting your kids and you go over to your neighbor's house and you keep taking their kids to Disney, before long your kids realize that your dad hates you, that's our government.

That's what this is. Ted. Guys, close out the show for me. Oh, okay. Well, we've come to the end. Shout out to Ted Roth. Shout out to a shout out to Robbie. My name is Jamarlemus.

You guys are listening to Deprogrammed, and we will see you right and early tomorrow morning at 9 a.m. We may see you later today. for a Q&A, but at the bare least, tomorrow morning at 9 a.m. Be safe. Be good. Be good.

Love, peace and soul. Have a good one, y'all. Stay tuned for TMI. And we are, oh, wait. I did it get to get the only streaming for BNAM. Okay. All right, guys, be safe.

It's harder whenever, usually Manila sits up the room. So whenever we're having to do this, it just makes it a lot more difficult. So. Oh, I see. Okay. So, so. I was confused.

I was confused. You are, you are good. But stay tuned for TMI. I will be rating us over there now. Have it going, guys.