Fourth Reich Archaeology - #109 - Contra Iran, Part 5

Episode Date: August 14, 2026

Well, it’s been almost 4 months since we’ve issued an episode in our Contra Iran series (not about Iran Contra), and yet it feels like there has been no real change in the status of the so-called “war” in Iran. (Of course, we eschew calling the US/Israeli illegal invasion without provocation a “war” at all.) Things seem trapped in a cycle of - fake ceasefire → stock market bounces → (usually) Israel keeps on bombing, burning, and looting ceasefire be damned → Iran asserts control over the strait of Hormuz → Trump says “no I’m gonna blockade YOU!” → Trump’s threats are empty and he backs down → rinse, repeat.We talk about the actual factual updates that have taken place over the past couple of months to illustrate just how insane this operation really is. We think it is important to have some information at the ready to support the obviously correct communist position against this imperial war.  If we are going to have any success opposing the war from a Marxist perspective, we must first analyze it using the tools of dialectical historical materialism. So that’s just what we do: who’s doing what, who’s benefiting, where are the potential weaknesses in the imperialists’ armor. We then take stock of where things stand now, the lamentable state of affairs besetting the people of Iran, and the people of Lebanon, of Palestine. And we even get into a little prognostication about what might be coming down the pike. How will the cycle be broken? By peaceful transfer of power away from Trump? We also consider the continuity between both parties, and the recurrence of the type of mendacity we see from the Trump administration throughout history.Don’t miss it!!! Let’s get digging. www.patreon.com/fourthreicharchaeology Email: [e-mail]: @fourthreichpod

The following is an excerpt from the poem Lament by Mehdi Achavan Salas. Our dear martyr's body is left unburied, left upon our hands, left upon our hearts like the dumb gaze of disbelief. Our chieftain he was, this noble warrior, crusader of our cause, leader of our host, with his message of purity, with his divine nobility, he bade us to go forth and with him we came to this holy war and he cried out, Tomorrow no doubt is a better day, no doubt it is ours. But now for many a day, his dear body is left unburied, left upon our hands like sighs in our hearts and ours are evil days. Today we are broken and we are weary and instead of us you are the victors.

May this defeat and this victory be wholesome to you, however you must. mock our cause, whoever you capture, whoever you torture, whatever you pillage, whatever you plunder, it is yours by your might. May it be wholesome, but at least bury this noble body. As the slave system of the West is called, it's not something that's just confined to England or France or the United States. Every nation, in every region, now has a decision to make. or combine. Either you are with us or you are with the terrorists. And this international power structure is used to suppress the masses of dark-skinned people

all over the world and exploit them of their natural resources. We found no evidence of a conspiracy, foreign or domestic, the Warren Commission of science. I'll never apologize for the United States of America. United States of America ever I don't care what the facts are nineteen forty five we began to require information which showed that there were two wars going on his job he said was to protect the Western way of life the primitive simplicity of their minds renders the more easy victims of a big lie than a small one for example the CIA now he has a mom

he knows so long this is nine I afraid of we never must be It usually takes a national crisis. Freedom can never be secure. Pearl Harbor. A lot of killers. We've got a lot of killers. Why you think our country's so innocent? This is the CIA.

I'm a national. This is Fourth Reich archaeology. I'm Dick. And I'm Don. Welcome back, listener. We are thrilled to welcome you. And we are thrilled to be back. recording live together, albeit unfortunately not in the same room. We are nevertheless

back together after a couple of weeks doing this project asynchronously. And it feels great. So Dick is great to hear your voice. It's great to be with you, my brother, and you too, listener. We're glad to have you back. We're glad to be back in the present day with you. and we've got a great show coming up. It's a new installment in our Contra-Iran series. We hope it will be both informative and, you know, provocative to really get you scratch in your head and maybe even blowing your blood over the absolute insanity of our leaders. Before we get into it, thank you as always for tuning in.

you for either in the past, in the present, or right after you finish this program, or indeed, if you pause the program right now and do these little favors for us that help spread our words, and those favors include things like liking the pod, subscribing to the pod, leaving comments, especially on publicly available podcasting platforms like Apple, like Spotify. and telling your friends, family, loved ones, classmates, professors, students, and all the rest of your homies and comrades about this little project of ours. We are on social media at Fourth Reich POD. That's Twitter and Instagram.

And we can always, always be reached by email at forthrightepod at gmail.com. Dick, you want to give a little bit of a recap. I think it's been about almost four months, actually, since we've done an installment of Contra Iran. And I wish I could say that a lot has happened, but really it's kind of just been the same old, same old. But maybe just to situate where we're at, you could let the listeners know,

obviously the best thing they should do is listen to all of the preceding episodes if they've not already. But let's bring them up to speed, shall we? Absolutely. So as you said, Don, this is our Contra-Iran series. And although the name might suggest it, let's just be clear, the show, the series has little to do with Iran-Contra, at least as of now. Right? Maybe one day we'll go and delve into the Iran-Contra scandal. but right now as it were this series has little to do with Iran-Contra and in fact the name is a play on Iran-Contra

and really has to do with the fact that these days it seems like the whole world is Contra Iran. And it's hard to believe that we have done one of these episodes, as you said, in a couple months. I think you're right. It's been like three or four months. but it's even harder to believe that the so-called war in Iran has been going on now for almost half a year. And on this show, we have avoided calling it a war. Instead, we've referred to it as military aggression against Iran, illegal invasion of Iran, an illegal act of military aggression against Iran,

and other descriptors that highlight, really do, they highlight the criminal nature of the Trump administration and its Israeli partners and these ghouls and they're unprovoked and truly insane maneuvering against the Islamic Republic of Iran. And since it has been quite a bit of time since we've last published an episode in this series, I think a recap would be helpful. So let's start from the beginning. Let's start from our very first episode in the series, which, believe it or not, came out before the U.S. Israeli invasion way back in the middle of January. And at the time, we were covering a completely different topic that was bubbling up in Iran. These protests that were happening, these uprisings that were happening all across Iran.

And we were reporting on the fact that this time it seemed different. And in our very first episode, what we did, as we always do, is we provided a deep dive into Iranian history. You know, a lot of folks when they, and even to this day, when they talk about Iran, when they talk about the modern condition of the country of Iran, they start in the 1950s in the post-war era. And they start with things like the Mossadegh regime. They start with things like the CIA and British intelligence meddling in the. the Iranian domestic affairs. They, you know, they will talk about the installation of the Shah, Reza Palavi, and all of that. And, well, you know, your boys, and especially myself, who happens to be an Iranian-American,

we could not let that stand. So we started where I thought was a much more fitting starting point, which is the term. of the 20th century. That is the 1800s turning into the 1900s and the Qajar dynasty, the Qadjar kings. And we covered really the beginning of the European and Russian thirst for oil, the lifeblood of the modern imperialist, capitalist, military, industrial complex hellscape that we live in. everything, everything, everything runs on oil. And we were sort of laying the track, we were laying the background for eventual discussion into what was happening, what the time was happening in the present day, which was these headline-grabbing stories about

Iranian forces allegedly massacring thousands and tens of thousands of allegedly peaceful protesters. and we talked about things like the incredibly sus astronomical death tolls being reported in the news. And we were doing all of this with an eye towards the fact that it was basically predictable what the next step would be. Right. We were covering the fact that the Iranians were, you know, we couldn't tell at the time what the source of these protests of the uprising was, right? We had our suspicious suspicions because the country is such a fertile breeding ground for subterfuge, for espionage, right? The Mossad, the CIA, they are on the ground in Iran.

And so we couldn't really tell whether, and this is part of, I guess, by design, right, whether the facts that we were getting from the country were real or fake or what. but what we could tell was that the United States and Israel were both calling on the Iranian people to stand up and overthrow the regime. And we pretty much called it when we said that they're going to use what was happening in Iran as a launching point to start yet another absolutely diabolical military aggression against. a country that for as far as we could tell had no real um no real goal in attacking or harming the united states harming israel any of that or building a nuclear weapon for that matter right the classic canard that they're always working on building a nuclear weapon and we have to bomb them into oblivion to prevent that from happening i mean it is was and always

has been utter horseshit, except for the fact that, you know, obviously the rational thing for Iran to do is precisely to develop a nuclear weapon as a deterrent against the very sorts of unprovoked attacks that the U.S. and Israel have proven time and again that they're willing to undertake against the people of Iran to great devastation. Absolutely. Absolutely. And I think that's a great point to pick up on what our second episode was about. And that episode came shortly after the launch of this invasion into the country.

And what we did was we pretty much took the opportunity to deconstruct all the different media narratives that were circling around the so-called war about Iran. And we covered, you know, the news of the day, which at the time was the assassination of its supreme leader, Ayatollah Khomeini, Ali Khomeini, not to be confused, of course, with the Ayatollah Khomeini. But I think in that episode, the takeaway was like, yeah, they could get rid of the Supreme Leader, but that doesn't mean there's going to be a regime change. And in fact, the writing was on the wall that whoever would come in and replace the Supreme Leader would be just that. It would be effectively just a replacement. And the regime would carry on. And we sort of covered the spectacle of it all. And that led to our third and fourth installments, which were effectively

just catching up with the goings on in the country, in the military situation, in the propaganda situation, and debunking all of these crazy, phony claims of like, you know, coming from the Department of Defense and Pete Hagset saying that the Iranian military is no more, right? What was the talk he would give is like the Navy, the Army, the Army. the Air Force, choose your adjective, decimate it, destroy, right? We all can see now with the benefit of hindsight how that was utter horseshit, but we also use those episodes as an opportunity to debunk the phony cease-file deal and the, you know, possible reasons for Trump's insane commitment to a clearly losing game that will not only have

disastrous consequences for Iran and the region, but also for the United States and the entire world economy. Yeah. And another thing I liked that we focused on was the sort of detangling, or at least attempting to disentangle the whodunit question that, you know, we see, especially in quote unquote left media, a lot of a rush to sort of do the tail wagging the dog narrative about Israel, kind of calling the shots and the U.S., just being totally incapable of making decisions for itself and being just this hopeless giant, helpless giant that's being led astray by its little, you know, vassal state. And we obviously took a different view, a much more materialist view informed by the history of imperialism and the concept of imperialism

as it's been developed by the likes of Lenin and other Marxist theorists and scholars that no, in fact, this Amer-Israeli Empire has actually coalesced into almost a unit. That certainly Israel has desires that are not in what you might call the U.S. national interest, but then again, the entire concept of a national interest is itself a sort of smokescreen. It is really a fiction that is used by, mainstream media and mainstream academicians as sort of an excuse and a mask for the true material motives behind the interests of any bourgeois state who ultimately, of course, is simply acting in the perceived interests of the ruling class or of whatever factions of the

ruling class because remember the ruling class is not a monolith. The ruling class represents many often competing factions and we'll talk more about this in this episode, but we think that it's important to understand how shots are really getting called and to not fall prey to any one of these sort of sci-op narratives about, oh, poor U.S. we just need to get rid of Israel so that we can get back to defending our national interests or some such nonsense. So that was another thing that the last couple of episodes have really explored. And I think that we've set a very good stage for the discussion we'll bring today, which will be sort of factual and then also analytical, you know, combining the old tools in that.

Boredian Marxist toolkit that we love to employ. What do you say, Dick? Is there anything else to recap or preview before we say the old line and get into it? I think the only thing left to do is say the magic words, and please, would you do me the honor of doing that? I sure will. Let's get digging. Okay, so like we said, it has been a long time. since we've had an episode in this series.

But it will be pretty easy for us to recap what's happened on the ground because it's not really much of a play-by-play. It's really just describing a cycle or a pattern that has recurred over and over and over again. Real Groundhog Day War that the United States has gotten itself into without really moving the needle. You know, the U.S. certainly has not moved the needle towards a resolution in its favor. And if anything, the opposite is true. We see Iran taking ever bolder stances in its negotiating positions and demanding ever more as it shows its resilience against the onslaught from the world's largest military in combination with the world's most quote unquote moral army.

I say that with tongue very deeply embedded in cheek. Of course, the IDF is a genocidal criminal organization, every member of which belongs in prison. Okay. Not much has happened except for, if you look at it week by week, and we've talked about this off-air a bunch, but it's like every Monday it seems like,

or every Sunday night, it seems like there's a new ceasefire or peace deal or reopening up the Strait of Hormuz just in time for the Monday morning markets. And then as the week rolls along, by the time the weekend heads, you know, is in sight, things sort of deteriorate and all these military aggressions start happening. And, you know, any sort of advancement that was promised or alluded to in the beginning of the week is completely thrown out the window. and it's been that way for now, I don't know how many months, right? This repeated series of events that are just occurring. And you mentioned, like, what has happened in the last five months or whatever is that Iran has exposed the weaknesses of the most powerful military in the world.

I'm going to say most powerful military in the world in heavy air quotes, because it's not just that they've exposed the weaknesses. they've evolved and developed their military strategy in such a way that with every week, the Iranian military strategy is getting stronger and stronger. And with every week, the United States military is effectively falling apart. I mean, it's ironic, right, where you had Pete Hegset talking about in April about how, like, the Iranian Air Force is no more. we've taken down their defenses, all that bullshit.

And I was just looking at the numbers before we got on here. It's like all of the United States defensive weaponry, right? The Patriot missiles, all of the things that we have in our weapon stores, we've like gone through. The United States has gone through almost half of that stuff, right? Like we are at a critically critical low point in the United States on our defensive posture because of the way that the Iranians have been fighting this military aggression by using low-tech, by using their scrappy sort of entrepreneurial method of fighting a war against this massive military

that is forced fighting this rich man's war. And I think that's important to point out, right? Because what that does is it's not just exposing the weaknesses of the most powerful, for military world, but also really bringing it to its knees, right, to a point where in the foreseeable future, in the very near future, we're going to have a serious situation where the United States won't be able to engage or protect itself in any other military intervention and any other encounter with, say, the likes of, I don't know, if you ask the libs, the mainstream lives, it would be China or Russia or whatever, but seriously, like, they are at a point where they can no

longer seriously say that they're invested in this war with Iran and also able to protect the region or even protect their own bases against a much heavier hitter in the geopolitical landscape. Yeah, for sure. And, you know, I think it does bear drilling down maybe on just a few of the actual sort of chronological inflection points over the past few months that have kind of marked this pattern just so that you know you don't take our word for it but you have a little bit of factual evidence right uh i think one thing that dick and i often talk about off mic is how our professional training as lawyers is very helpful to making a podcast because you know, when you are writing a legal brief, you have to make an argument and then support that

argument with facts, you know, facts and law. And so we want to flesh this out a little bit because way too much of podcasting and I think it has a negative impact on even like left-wing political discourse is a little superficial sometimes. You know, tends to be conclusory, it tends to make points which may be obvious, but are so unsupported or, you know, lack that surface level. Yeah, exactly, exactly. So I will just mention a few. You know, let's start with the second fake ceasefire. I think our last episode we were talking about the first fake ceasefire, which was obviously a total joke that Israel wiped its ass with before the ink was even dry. Not a good idea to wipe your ass with wet ink, but, you know, they do a lot of things

that aren't good ideas. The second fake ceasefire was signed in a very auspicious location, a very fourth Reich location, and one that's near and dear to us, talking about the palace of Versailles. outside of Paris. That was signed on June 17th. True diehard listeners of the program will be very familiar with the significance of Versailles as a location for treaties that serve as stepping stones towards fascist hell. Because of course that is where the treaty resolving the First World War was signed that imposed these conditions on Germany, which allegedly gave rise to all the economic pain that paved the way for the rise of the Nazis and so on and so on.

So it's very fitting that Trump would, you know, repeat as farce a Versailles Treaty of sorts by signing this piece of paper at the G7 summit amongst, his spineless European friends as he was getting just dog walked by the forces behind the curtain of the Amerisraeli Empire into a furtherance of this apocalyptic conflict, this apocalyptic economic ticking time bomb. So, you know, it's also interesting to note that this was signed in France. Obviously, France this summer has been in the headlines for its massive, massive wildfires. And the irony is not lost on us that wildfires caused by climate change. And climate change is exacerbated, of course, by the single largest polluter in the world, the U.S. military, and the explosion of all of that

ordinance that you were just talking about, to the point that it's depleting the stockpiles, of course, is sending up untold quantities of CO2 and other toxic fossil fuel gases into the Earth's atmosphere and creating an invisible prolongation of this war, an extension of this war that, like the economic consequences, there is no escape from. So, you know, there's symbolic meaning there to that, to that second fake ceasefire. Absolutely. The wildfires in Europe, also all across the United States this summer. Also, as you're speaking, it's like the idea that this whole bloodlust, this military aggression is for oil, you know, the root cause to all of this shit, it's all so insane, right? And I think we can now say, you know, spoiler alert,

the June ceasefire deal was again violated before it even took effect by Israel in Lebanon, in which they blamed Hezbollah for defending itself against invading. Israeli troops pursuing an open policy of territorial expansion and colonization of southern Lebanon. That was all happening earlier this summer. And predictably, the ceasefire agreement or, you know, the memorandum of understanding, as it was called, fell apart within weeks. But that didn't stop Trump and the Trump administration from making these exaggerated threats of apocalyptic violence that would fall on Iran, these exaggerated claims that the war was over, that the United States has won, that the Iranian military has been decimated, and it didn't stop Iran from using the leverage it has

over the Strait of Hormuz to demonstrate its refusal to capitulate to the threats of the United States and the, you know, United States has continued bumbling around trying to pursue this goal, including by, I think it was after, right, it was like in June or July that there was this call from Trump for this double blockade strategy to, you know, besieze Iranian ports, basically put up a blockade on the other side of the blockade, right? Yeah, even, it might have even started earlier than that. It's been sort of on and on. throughout but it's just again it's one of these things where he talks about it as though it's this amazing effective military tool of the u.s the strongest military in the world and then they do the

thing and nothing changes and in fact it it just is like a playground six-year-old saying like know you're stupid no you're stupid like no I'm blockading you can't blockade me because I'm blockading you Jeremy are you

look if there's anyone who's going nuts here it's not me it's you that they could section you for trying to section me if you try to section me Mark you'll have crossed the line and I will section you so help me guys

you've had your fun with the sectioning there's going to be no more sectioning today and just like ridiculous puerile discourse from this absolutely insane carnival barking president that we have, which again, not to say that he's calling the shots here, but he is perhaps the only person that could sell this dog shit to the American public and have still a substantial number of people believe him. notwithstanding the utter transparency of the dishonesty at heart.

And it's just been this continual cycle of Trump making these crazy threats and then almost immediately backing down or doing an about face from every single one of these like braggadocious positions that the United States has taken. For example, the July 13th announcement that Trump made that he would tell, HAC ships seeking to pass through the Strait of Hormuz 20%. What the hell does that even mean, right? Like, no doubt. No surprise that this was reversed.

This position was reversed in just one day. And for anyone out there listening, you guessed it. It's because Iran controls the fucking straight, not the U.S., and nobody is going to want to pay 20% for fucking nothing. And I think it's only Donald Trump who would think that he could get someone to pay him 20% for fucking nothing, right? And it's so crazy that with every time, like every cycle, every iteration of this process of like the administration making some crazy threat, some crazy claim, and then within a day to, you know, within a matter of hours backing down,

with every iteration, it just becomes an emptier and emptier threat to the point where like now the president, like, doesn't matter what he's saying. it's just utter bullshit totally and it's like you would think that at some point like maybe the second time that he does it maybe the third time maybe the fourth time the fifth six seventh time but yet like well we'll talk about it in a little bit you know i think some cracks are starting to show some quote unquote allies are starting to look askance at the United States and Israel. But really, it's pretty pathetic that he can keep doing just this song and dance, this dog and pony,

you know, but not the kind of dog and pony that you're thinking about, talking about a show where like the dog is fucking the pony and then shitting and then the pony is eating the shit. Like, just imagine the most disgusting animal display that you could see. And what Trump is doing is 10 times worse because many people are dying and the global economy is going to crash even worse than it already has. Yet, you know, somehow really there's not been a coalescing of forces of other countries. in what passes as an international community, an empty phrase, if ever there was one, to stand up and say, enough is enough.

This guy and this regime of mafia looters can't plunge this planet into catastrophe. Enough, yet crickets. Yeah, it seems like our leaders, at here in the United States and even throughout the world, they're just completely incapable of addressing this. Either they don't want to or they're just not able to bring themselves to do anything about it. And I think it speaks to this greater culture. I'll call it a culture, the modern time with these leaders,

which is basically don't rock the boat. Don't shake things up. Just let things play out and keep business as usual going. and we'll sort of figure it out. And I think that's what lets someone like Donald Trump and his administration sort of run amok, right? Because no one is willing to put together any sort of meaningful response to this unchecked aggression.

Yeah. And you raise a great point. And I think that that can also be understood in the broader continuity of, what we've called the Fourth Reich, right? We've made it clear. We're not saying like it's the next phase after the Nazis in some German sequence of Reichs.

We're saying this is the latest iteration in the Western imperialist struggle for world domination and mass exploitation of the rest of the world, it's people and resources. and that project has always survived based on lies and based on hypocrisy. And I think in a lot of ways what we're seeing from Trump is just like Mark said, right, first is strategy then is farce and we are six or seven steps beyond the farce at this point to just... Yeah, we're at the dog and pony show. Right.

The aristocrats. Yeah, the aristocrats. I was about to say that. That's where we're at. That's where we're at. People just be sucking and fucking on stage at this point. And shitting and pissing. Don't forget.

Yeah. And dying, right? So that's another thing that has been a punctuation occasionally, especially over the last month or so, that we've had fatality. of U.S. troops. Think a couple of them were in Jordan. There was an Iranian strike

against a U.S. military installation in Jordan, and some other U.S. military sites have been severely damaged. I mean, many military sites have been damaged. And Iran has also killed some sailors on ships to show that it means business when enforcing its control over the straight of war moves. And so, you know, you have the mainstream media now,

and this is another, I think, newer piece on the chessboard, a new sort of feature on the landscape of this conflict, which is the treatment of these deaths, right? And I, as usual, tortured myself by listening to a bunch of, of episodes of the New York Times, The Daily podcast, and reading mainstream media articles covering the last month or so of updates in Iran. And still, they have held fast to perhaps not as blatantly absurd a rhetorical framework as the one that Trump at all use, but nevertheless, a very outdated, a very preposterous way of discussing war that would make you think that you woke up in

2006 or something, and it's Iraq all over again, because it's, well, the Iranians are sneaky, and they will try to get language into the agreements that gives them a loophole to get out of things. Ooh, the Iranians are ruthless because they've killed U.S. troops. Not, you know, this ignores the fact. Right. Or, yeah, or they'll be like, the Iranians are ruthless because they're targeting these Gulf countries that have nothing to do with the war, right? And not mentioning the fact that they're actually targeting military bases or they're targeting sites that have some association with the military industrial complex. or with military contractors or things like that.

Absolutely. Or simply retaliating for the types of strikes that the U.S. has carried out against civilian targets in Iran, you know, talking about bridges, water treatment facilities, and highways, all kinds of civilian infrastructure that has been destroyed or damaged by U.S. air strikes. And, of course, the civilian death toll, not only of the U.S. strikes against Iran, including the early and spectacular mass murder of children, right, at that school that was deliberately targeted and struck by the U.S. military, but also by Israel in its relentless assault, not only on Lebanon, where the casualties are in the thousands and deaths are in the

hundreds, but also in the West Bank, where Israel has taken again the gloves off, as it always does whenever the spotlight is somewhere else and just goes on a mass murdering campaign. So all these dynamics are part of the bigger picture here. And when you talk about this as a low-intensity conflict or something like that, you hear these types of descriptors in the mainstream media that are just beyond misleading and truly criminal in the degree to which they're covering up war crimes committed by especially the Amer-Israeli side of this aggression. And the Israelis, for their part, are certainly not targeted. military targets. They are doing what they have been doing since the Nakhba. They are murdering

in the name of ethnic cleansing to genocide the Palestinian people and steal their land. And they're doing the same in Lebanon in pursuit of this psychotic greater Israel project that we still have the media in the United States saying is somehow anti-Semitic to even bring up. So, yeah, it's somehow a defensive act. It's an act to preserve the country and the people and somehow a way to defend against this existential threat of the Arabs and the Arab countries around Israel. So, you know, that's kind of what we have. have seen over the last few months, and it's continuing till this day into the month of August

that we are now coming up on the halfway point of, hard to believe. But, you know, as recently as I think last week, Trump was talking about an invasion that will be the greatest thing since World War II, and just using this just ridiculous, ridiculous laughable language that every fucking person with three brain cells lighting up knows is never going to happen. Like this war has a popularity rate under, I think, 33%. It's like extremely unpopular. We'll talk more about that later too.

There's no fucking way in hell that the. administration would, I mean, it's very stupid, but it's not stupid enough to do some kind of a mass deployment of boots on the ground. That's just simply not going to happen absent some massive false flag. But it's gotten so dishonest. It's so embarrassing for everyone involved in the U.S. side, right? Even like to this day, I was just reading how Trump everyone around him is saying how Trump wants out. He wants out of Gaza. He wants out of Iran.

He wants to be done with this because it's just dragging on and it is very clear that he's got egg on his face. Yeah. And the egg keeps on coming. So I think this is a good point to transition to talking about where things stand currently and to follow up on some of these cracks that are starting to emerge. I mean, to Trump, I would say there is a very easy way out of all of your problems, Mr. President. Talking, of course, about therapy, yes. Permanent therapy.

Yeah, so currently there are these cracks starting. And I think to tee this up, Dick, maybe you want to talk about a point that you had raised earlier, which is that, you know, these Gulf countries think it's important for listeners to understand their involvement and kind of what's been going on with all of those guys. Yeah, totally. I think you're talking about, for example, the Saudis, right, have started to play. publicly signal some distance from the Trump administration from the United States and this military aggression. And all of these other Gulf countries that have been engulfed in the so-called war, right? Because at bottom, like, just calling this the, quote, Iran war is pretty inaccurate, right?

Because the whole region has gotten involved. Beyond Israel and Lebanon, the Saudis, the Emirates, the Yemen, including the Saudi-back puppet dictatorship, and the Houthis, they have all been in one way, shape, or form involved. The Houthis have been going to town with drone strikes against the House of Saud and the Saudi aligned Yemeni targets. the so if you look at the region right it's like there is the straight of Hormuz but then the Houthis also have this strategic position with their blockade the Bab al-Minab straight between the red sea and the Indian Ocean so that's like actually one of the not too often talked about realities is like the straight of Hormuz is blocked and you hear sometimes now and again from the administration administration and those in the news being like, okay, well, why don't we find another way to get this

oil out of the region? Well, the only other way to get the oil out of the region is very much controlled by, or at least, um, easily targeted by the Houthis. Yeah. Yeah. And that's now been going on for several weeks. I think it was like July 20th or something when they first announced that they were going to blockade the bab al-mandab and ever since then i think traffic there has also crawled to a halt and obviously in both cases there's some few exceptions to that but it takes a toll and the exchange of drones and bombs between the houthis and the Saudis has escalated substantially, including, I think they even hit civilian airports in Saudi Arabia, and they've been just really opening up a whole other front of this conflict. Like a war is never between two

combating sides. Like that just very rarely happens in today's world. And this is no exception. Like it's at least a regional war and it's potentially, you know, obviously it has global consequences, but with the potential to expand even further with other countries, other groups having some skin in the game here. And I think the Saudis have long been very hawkish against Iran, right? They've always sort of gassed up the U.S. in its efforts of regime change, maybe due to their religious disagreements. You know, Iran being a Shia regime and the House of Saud being Wahhabi and supporting all the Sunni terrorist groups like al-Qaeda for a very long time. But also geopolitically, their rivals in the oil market and much more. So they were, I think, happy at the beginning to see some real efforts to change the regime.

But now they're getting a little buyer's remorse, it looks like. And same goes for the Emirates, who kind of fall with the GCC. right, the Gulf cooperation countries. And UAE tankers, for example, have been some of the biggest targets hit as a result of the closure of the Strait of Formuz, besides civilian targets and military targets in the Emirati countries. And these are countries that they don't have large militaries or large defensive systems themselves. and they do rely on these U.S. military installations to give them some protection. And so part of it is that they're like getting buyers remorse, but part of it's also them seeing that like,

actually the U.S. isn't that great at protecting them. Right. And as the stockpiles dwindle on the U.S. munitions, these countries are dependent on imports from the U.S. And up until now, the U.S. has been replenishing the militaries of these countries with assistance and with sales of arms. And it's kind of like you could imagine a bunch of crackheads. And, you know, the one crackhead with a bag at the end of the day, when the other crackheads start to run out and look to the holding crackhead. As his bag gets smaller, he's not going to want to share that crack. And I think the analogy is apt because really these weapons are crack to the exploitative

and venal ruling class like the one in Saudi Arabia. they need that hit, they need that little piece. And the supply is not coming through. It's drying up. And if anybody has ever been around junkies who are jonesing, you know, they will turn against each other in a minute. Maybe now we talk about where this leaves things. and the nuts and bolts of what needs to happen in order for there to be any sort of path forward.

And I think it's a good point to bring up what the Iranians are saying is needed, right? The Iran's Supreme National Security Council's outlined conditions for the U.S. to fulfill before reopening the Strait of Hormuz, including all of the stuff that they've been asking for this whole. time, right? Like a commitment from the United States to stop threats against Iran, to end strikes against non-state actors like Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Houthis, to lift this naval blockade on Iranian ports, to withdraw U.S. troops, to provide reparations to compensate for the losses from the 12-day war and the current war, and of course, to remove sanctions and release all Iranian frozen assets in the United States' custody.

UAE just, I think, did release some Iranian assets, by the way, apropos of what we were just discussing. Yeah, but otherwise, they've sort of just rejected direct talks with the U.S. at this point, right? And you can't really knock them for that. Well, yeah, that's, yeah, I was saying the UAE released some Iranian assets that had had frozen and that's kind of a sign that they're trying to get Iran to the negotiating table. They're trying to come up with a solution. And the U.S., of course, rejected out of hand the Iranian demands. And so as a result, I think that's what you were saying, Dick. As a result, Iran is like,

we're not even interested in talking with the U.S. We're not going to talk with you directly. We're going to work through intermediaries. We're going to come up with deals one to one with these other guys and leave you, you know, pissing into the wind. And that seems to be a strategy with some effectiveness, because what does the U.S. do in response? It just stomp their feet and crash out and make all these insane false claims. And like when Iran issued its list of demands, Trump released a counter list of demands and started saying just demonstrably false shit like that Iran was responsible for the 2000 attack on the USS Cole and demanding reparations for that, besides reparations for the

current war that he and Israel started, which is, you know, just the non-starter of all non-starters and beyond a sick joke of a demand. So it's like, once again, we're exactly where we have been for months as both the death toll keeps rising and the economic burden on the rest of the world keeps rising. meanwhile like it's not just trump of course it's his whole cabinet scott besent right remember the secretary of the treasury and former investment manager for george sorrows like another kind of head scratcher that really leaves you wondering how maga and it's arch villain george sorrows kind of co-parent this sick baby, Scott Bessent, but he's been making the rounds, peacocking,

about the crippling U.S. sanctions and how they're devastating the Iranian economy. And meanwhile, of course, Iran is like, bring all of their fucking sanctions and go fuck yourself. This is simply proving our whole point that you the great Satan, America and Israel, are evil, that you want to kill innocence, and that you have no scruples or morals. And we are here for it and we will not back down. And you got to think that even the people of Iran, the people who are victims of all of this bullshit, remember, like in December of 2025, there were these protests and the uprising. I mean, at this point, they've got to be thinking, like, this Trump guy, he's full of shit, right?

Because it was in December, January that he was like, don't worry, folks, I got your back, I'm coming, the U.S. has coming to save you. And here we are six months later. And, you know, even the Iranian people at this point see how full of shit the leader of the so-called free world is. For sure. For sure. And the Iranian government is making some changes to its military leadership that were reported recently in favor of a harder line stance, like putting battlefield commanders into these high-level posts and seemingly preparing to keep things going for the long haul, which is obviously like a strong-haul. strategically unassailable thing for Iran to do because they were the ones who were attacked and the demands coming from the United States are absurd and the statements of the United States

are entirely, entirely unreliable because they don't stop lying. So that's kind of where things are now. I think this stalemate is going to sink in pretty deeply with, at least as to the U.S. and Iran, while Iran could try to pursue some sort of bilateral or multilateral agreements with other countries and sort of break up the alliance, I think that they just have been talking with Oman about opening up a certain part of the strait that is further to the south that, you know, doesn't touch on the Iranian territorial waters as much. And the U.S. is totally outside of the tent on those talks.

So the sort of breakup is on the horizon. It's a real potential. And the U.S., again, it's a potentially hopeful sign that it's getting more and more isolated from even its allies. And it's struggling to try and keep them on side by offering bribes. right? Like, I think a couple weeks ago, one of the big bribes that the U.S. was offering to Saudi Arabia was, hey, do you guys want a nuclear program? Why don't you guys have a nuclear program? We won't send any inspectors. It'll be totally chill. Like, oh, gee, what could possibly go wrong there? The guys who

brought you Al-Qaeda and, you know, babysat the 9-11 hijackers with their U.S. intelligence counterparts have access to nuclear fissile material. I think that nothing could possibly go wrong. You want to touch on Israel and Lebanon where they're at now? Yeah, so if you look at beyond the region, beyond the immediate region, turn to the ever-ensuing conflict between Israel and Lebanon, they've been doing some fake-ass negotiating of their own with the governments of the two countries agreeing,

at least in principle, to a long-term deal with terms TBD for Hezbollah to disarm in exchange for Israel withdrawing from Lebanese territory. And there's one problem with all of this, and that is that Hezbollah is not a party to these talks and does not agree to disarm. And if you think about it, would be pretty dumb for them to do so

considering Israel's ruthless targeting of their military and civilian leaders and their families in these crazy operations that the Israelis have, like with these crazy names, like eternal darkness. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

So we'll see. We'll see where those go. But really, it's like, again, seems like another recurring pattern where there will be negotiations between some people about some issues that affect others. And then like the others would be like, well, that's not my deal. Like, you can't make this deal for me or without me or whatever. And it just, it's happening all the time. The, you know, I think like last month it was Israel that the U.S., like Kushner and Witkoff, their fucking board of peace, which I think actually it should be spelled B-O-R-E-D of peace.

They're bored of peace. You know, they want a little action. They want a little violence. but they had negotiated something with one of the i think it was with hamas actually and israel was the one that was like i wasn't there it's not my deal uh so yeah this is again just this fucking idiotic merry go round that makes it very easy to lose all hope in any solution short of catastrophe. And while all this wage is on, there's like some serious consequences. Beyond those we've been talking about, beyond the lives lost, the many injured, the people

who are suffering on the ground floor, there's actually like serious economic consequences for the global markets. Yeah. I mean, I think we don't even need to belabor the point, but here's a point where just a sort of methodological point to make. You know, Chomsky would always say, like, I think the best place for information is looking at the mainstream media and how they talk to the ruling class about the issues that concern investors and bankers and the readers of the financial times.

I actually think he was kind of right about that. And so I have, and I would encourage others, you know, listening to do so as well, to actually get sort of conversant in financial reporting on the market outlooks to understand what's going on because what you'll see is, again, it's like totally predictable, but it's good to have a little bit of evidence to back up. the broad brush claims that like, oh yeah, this, this aggression is going to tank and is tanking the global economy. Sure, it is. But what does that mean? How is that happening? So, obviously, the closing of the strait, the closing off of shipping has jacked up oil prices by reducing supplies that are making it to their destinations. The United States, the United States has tried to make up for this by pumping out more oil and by depleting its strategic reserves to keep the supply levels up and curb increases to oil prices. Like, it could be even

worse than it is if those sort of remedial measures were not being taken. And the Saudis and Amarades are also taking remedial measures by opening up terrestrial pipelines to full throttle, right? They're pump and oil over land that cannot be passed through the sea. Of course, those land routes, those pipelines are also vulnerable to attack. And I'm sure that the Iranians have that in mind as they consider their. options. But meanwhile, you know, everybody is doing whatever they can to try and prevent this, you know, economic budding crisis from catching fire, you know, like a wildfire. It's like a real powder keg right now. OPEC production is down 30% since the beginning of the war. Insurance premiums

on oil vessels are up by 50% and you know with all of the damaged infrastructure both already damaged and to be damaged like should something happen to these overland oil routes the full effects will not really be felt for some time and the residual effects will continue to be felt for a long time even after assuming that it happens, the straight is fully reopen and restore to status quo anti-conditions. And so, like, the losers are every fucking person on earth, right? Because even if you don't drive a car, like, you're still a consumer of oil and gas products. Right, exactly. And to be clear, like, for the short term, these oil companies, they're making money,

and they're actually getting somewhat of a cash windfall because the oil price. are going up. But it's the supply chain. It's the everyone down the line, right? It's not just people who drive cars, anyone who takes air travel, but also anyone who buys consumer goods that's reliant on gasoline to get to you, right? And it's not just oil and it's not just gas, but it's other petrochemicals, ammonia, things that are used in the industrial agriculture fertilizer, all of this stuff that's coming out through the Strait of Hormuz is being blocked off. And so you're absolutely right. All of this stuff will be felt for many, many months and possibly years after the straight is finally, quote, opened up again.

Right. And of course, besides the economic consequences, we already mentioned the climate consequences as well, which are considerable and actually terrifying. Yeah. And just like we are, we're not that old, Dick and I, but even talking to much older people who have been alive for a very long time, this recurrent wildfires all the time, the getting hit by smoke in cities thousands of miles away from the center of wildfires like this stuff

it's not normal it hasn't been going on forever it's getting worse and you know the cliche about the boiling frog is just like at this point who cares because we know we know that we're boiling we know that the water is boiling. What are we supposed to do about it? But if you have enough frogs in the pot, you know, and they all kind of try to push the pot over, maybe they could tip that boiling water on the fucker that turned up the heat in the first fucking place.

And so this begs the question and marks a good transition point to start talking about what other countries are doing and what they might do other countries and other political formations in the United States to counter this insanity. Obviously, I think we've already been pretty clear. We don't think that anybody is doing enough, but there's going to come a point in time when the dam breaks and people will demand more action, both from their guys. governments and, you know, from the ruling class itself, from these companies that are engaged

in all of this activity. So, for example, look at the Asian continent. The billions of Asian people are staring straight down the barrel of stagflation, largely as a result of this aggression. and stagflation of course our true heads out there will know was something that our boy jerry ford had to deal with this is when the GDP declines there's an economic recession and at the same time inflation increases the prices of goods go up so you have less money and prices are higher and why is that happening in asia well because Asia is the prime destination for energy that passes through the Strait of Hormuz. In 2025, 80% of the oil that passed through the straight, and 90% of the liquid natural gas went to Asia.

And the agricultural consequences that Dick was just discussing are strongest felt in, Asia and also to a very large degree in Africa as well but for example South Asia home to over a billion people right encompassing India Pakistan Bangladesh Sri Lanka that region gets over a third of its fertilizer through the Straits and so cutting that off is likely to lead to massive famines. And, you know, obviously imposing conditions of famine on South Asia is something that the Western empires have done very effectively in the past, talking, of course, about the Victorian Holocaust in the British Raj. But it's something that today, you know, you really have to remember what Bob Marley's saying.

A hungry mob is an angry mob. And, you know, China has been biting its time, but at some point it is likely to escalate its role as, you know, its geopolitical rival in the United States continues to shoot itself in every single. toe and other appendage. But already China has kind of come off the sidelines, allegedly sharing satellite imagery with Iran to aid it in targeting U.S. military targets. And obviously China would stand to benefit by the downfall or decrease in the hegemony of the Amerisraeli Empire. So not holding my breath for China to take an active role here. You know, I think people that put their hopes in an interventionist, internationalist, Chinese Communist Party have those hopes repeatedly dashed, don't count myself among them.

And it's not a surprise because the Chinese economy is extremely deeply intertwined with the American economy. Like you just really can't cut the tie and expect China to remain as strong as it is without its biggest consumer of those cheap exports. That's exactly right. And turning to other regions in the world, Europe and Latin America, I mean, it would be nice if there were some global reactions, some global consensus to come together and react in a way that's commensurate with the scale of this crisis. And as we discussed a little bit in the anniversary ep this year, we are in desperate need of a BDS-type moment. movement of the United States and then some in order to shake things up and get things on the side of justice. Again, all of these progressive governments that I'm about to talk about in Europe

and in Latin America, they only go so far as to denounce the war. And in some cases, they refuse to offer support. For example, Spain is a leading critic, at least theoretically refusing to let the US use its joint bases in the country for operations targeting Iran and also closing its airspace to the U.S. military and military aircraft. France, which is a much bigger EU country, has largely supported the United States with military assistance and vocal support. And other Europeans are characteristically mealy-mouthed and wobbly under the imperial thumb of the United States. turning to Latin America, the left-leaning governments there have largely avoided the smoke, too. I mean, big disappointments coming out of Mexico, Brazil, and Colombia.

I think that there's also a lot of disappointment to be had with the domestic political scene here. So on the one hand, there are some encouraging signs that this war is extremely unpopular. We talked about it a lot. you know, this phenomenon where you have a very unpopular war, but one that nevertheless continues apace unabated by popular opposition because the popular opposition doesn't really have an effective outlet. So, for example, on the Republican side, a political poll that was conducted recently, shows that support for the war among self-described MAGA Trump supporters fell 13% between May and July, and stands now at just 37% supporting their cult leader, Donald Trump,

which is pretty crazy, if you think about it. And in fact, 20% of MAGA says that the U.S. should end the war regardless of whether it will cost the U.S. more or less to do so. Meanwhile, of course, the vast majority of the population at large is against the war and something that they will have in mind as they head to the polls to vote in all of their stupid elections between shitty candidates is the fact that 63% of Americans blame the war for increasing oil prices. And, you know, the old dictum of it's the economy stupid, well, it actually usually plays out, not in the sense of like making an informed decision to find the best candidate, no, but simply to vote against incumbents.

So, you know, I think it's extremely likely. It's, like, practically a sure thing that the Democrats will retake at least the House of Representatives, but who knows what that means because the rhetoric that we hear from the mainstream Democratic Party is not the type of justified rage that we should be hearing, that, you know, your boys are spitting here on the mic. Instead, what we hear is, oh, look, Donald Trump started this war and he's losing it, as though the fact that he's losing is the bad thing, not the fact that the war is insane, not the fact that it's entirely premised on lies, not the fact that Iran is really the rational actor here, and that the U.S. Empire is the flailing toddler having a fatal history.

fit on the world stage. No, for the Democrats and for most of the mainstream media, it's, oh, this is tragically leading to the loss of U.S. troops. Oh, this is a war that doesn't have a clear exit strategy. Oh, the Iranian regime should change. And it's such a tragedy that Trump is unable to deliver on that and, you know, almost implying that a Democrat president would do a better job. It's pathetic, it's sad, and it's utterly predictable and unsurprising. And maybe this is where we talk about who benefits from all of this. And specifically, who within Trump's inner circle benefits from all of this? Because I tell you who's not benefiting. The Navy men and women who are on the USS Abraham Lincoln who have been out at sea for I think the largest,

the longest deployment in modern history. They've been out at sea, I think, since like November of 2025 and they are just suffering dire conditions. Dyer conditions are being reported on that ship with Navy men and women being forced to eat something like two tortillas and a cup of rice. for dinner. And there are folks who are writing back home saying that they just wanted to end, threatening their own lives. And there are folks who are trying to escape the ship. So those are people who aren't benefiting on top of everyone else who's not benefiting. But who is benefiting. And you guessed it, it's folks within the Trump family, folks within the Trump empire. For one, you have Trump's sons and their 1789 capital investment fund, which, by the way, was sort of started with seed money from Peter Thiel, Rebecca Mercer, Blake Masters.

And these people are investing in these very companies that are a part of the military industrial complex. These people are investing in untested defense startups, and they're winning massive government contracts in a time where the country is in heavy air quotes here, but the country is in, quote, war, right? So they are 100 percent benefiting from the very political actions that Trump is taking. and this is not to mention, not to mention, you know, the recent news of Trump media selling early access to truth social posts for something like $100,000 a month. And you can tell that's already a bad idea. And I think there's already been lawsuits on this. But the idea that Trump would openly do something like this in this day and age, well, it shouldn't be surprising, but it doesn't make it any. less insane. And in fact, all of the Trump family members have been seen, you know, have seen exploding net worth, right? Including enemy of the pod, Jared Kushner.

Who else is benefiting from this? Well, like we mentioned earlier, in the short run, at least, it's the oil companies because they're getting this massive cash windfall for rising oil prices. Beyond that, it's the insurance industry who is put up these massive contracts to ensure these ships, right? And of course, insert any number of corrupt government officials who are on the take from all of the things in sectors I just mentioned. Geopolitically, I would say that China is winning by sitting this one out. The Islamic Republic of Iran as the government is winning. And other powers could potentially rack a W by uniting against this utter insanity.

But for now, it seems like the cravenness appears to be prevailing. In conclusion, I don't think that there's really anything too positive that can be said about this military aggression. You know, we obviously want our listeners to be aware of the mendacity of the rulers, which you know about, but, you know, what's important to. about calling out the lies. What are the key facts that are concealed beneath the lies? And I think that those facts are, you know, one, the targeting of civilians, especially

by Israel, especially sort of outside of the spotlight in places like southern Lebanon and the West Bank and Gaza, continuing to just murder people in pursuit of territorial expansion. and the U.S. obviously has done its fair share of murder in this campaign as well. And the other thing that is key to keep in mind is, you know, where are the cracks? And maybe in the next installment of this series or maybe in some other episode, we can talk a little bit more about what can we as, imperial subjects do to actually intervene, to actually try and disrupt or take advantage of and exploit the cracks in the armor of this imperial hegemon whose bloodlust appears insatiable

because there are these cracks, there are these sort of fraying alliances, and that they must be, exploited if we are to survive. You know, I think at this point it's inevitable that human survival on earth will be deeply degraded from the standards of living that we know today. But the question is how much, you know, and how enslaved are the millions and billions of us going to be by this utterly psychotic ruling class, I for one, you know, in the interests of my self and my family and posterity and all of the good comrades out there hope that we can mitigate the depth of the disastrous nadir into which we are poised to plunge as. a result not only of the cravenness of our rulers but of the spinelessness of the so-called

opposition so with that I'm Don and I am Dick saying farewell and keep on digging