Grubstakers - Episode 129: Thomas Kaplan and United Against Nuclear Iran

Episode Date: January 7, 2020

Welcome back. We're ringing in the new year with Thomas Kaplan, an obscure minerals billionaire who happens to be a major funder of the "not a CIA/Mossad front company" United Against a Nuclear Iran. The man loves gold, panthers, Rembrandt, and genocidal war. Also we forgot to mention in the episode that he's a bundler who's raised $25,000 for none other than one Joe Biden. Also also Andy confuses Rembrandt and Raphael at one point and is kind of embarrassed now.

It's the kind of thing that makes the average citizen puke. I look at this system and say, yeah, you know, what's going on? The red countries are the countries we sell arms to. The green countries are the countries where we wash our money. We are more than just one coin. We create the world around this coin. In 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. The evil has gone. Hello, welcome back to Grubstakers, the podcast about billionaires. Happy New Year to you.

My name is Sean P. McCarthy, and I'm joined here by... Steve Jeffries. Andy Palmer. And so, we had a plan. We had some sort of idea for what we wanted the first episode of the new year, the new decade to be. But the commander-in-chief of the United States decided to scuttle that plan. And now we have a new episode to bring in the year 2020. We're going to talk about Iran. We're going to talk about an organization called United Against

Nuclear Iran. And we're going to talk about a billionaire named Thomas Kaplan, who is one of the main founders of that organization. And we're doing this because you might have heard the news that on January 3, 2020, the United States decided to start World War III. Or maybe not even that much, but we decided to blow up the second most powerful person in Iran leaving the airport in Baghdad. Yeah, at an international airport. Not in a convoy out in the desert like in those videos you see but like if there were a drone strike in the middle of jfk yeah like denver international airport yeah just being the person like leaving the airport and seeing that explosion being like fuck it's gonna take forever to get an uber now and like god i gotta they're gonna do search

pricing i just want to get to my mother-in-law's and the us just dropped a fucking tomahawk missile on the uber pickup area my uber driver just left weird like all pretenses of uh the coat of the drone program being a covert precision operation just lost when they're just shooting missiles at an airport and they didn't uh i mean it's already a violation of what passes for international law it's just on the face of it but they also didn't allow the they didn't tell the iraqi security forces that this was happening beforehand we're there to protect them and liberate them and like one of well one of the the local iraqi militia like a popular militia leader also died in the blast well you see what the the purpose

of this is we're in iraq to increase their self-determination and uh we want we want to give iraq back to the iraq Iraqis is our main goal there. Right, which is why the Iraqi parliament has just passed legislation demanding all U.S. troops leave, and we're just going to ignore that. That's not going to be obeyed. This democracy we just created is telling us to get the fuck out. But, you know, like Steve just said, so not only did we not tell the Iraqis we were going to do this, we didn't tell the u.s congress either he didn't inform the u.s congress but he did inform israel several days in advance according

to press reports that this was going to happen uh and if you talk about that you are anti-semitic so don't get any fucking ideas about who might have been uh suggesting or benefiting from this operation my favorite thing about the uh right before the strike when the embassy was taken was the people who were uh crying about how expensive the embassy was they're like oh no this is the most expensive american embassy it's like yeah because it was built with a 500 markup to the contractors yeah i'm sure i'm sure fucking kbr cleared uh some great fourth quarter returns on that one so it could be a pretty different world by the time you actually hear this recording right well that's the thing so we're recording this sunday uh january 5th and like just today

we've gotten the news that customs and border patrol has been ordered to detain all suspicious iranians entering this country. Jesus Christ. Including, regardless of citizenship status. So there's, like, reports that at least 60 people have been detained by this. Soleimani, according to other reports, was there in Baghdad to deliver the Iranian response to a Saudi offer to de-escalate tensions. Because the thing is, you know, and again, you know, this is all based on various press reporting, so we don't know for sure, but the New York Times reports that Pompeo and Mike Pence, the vice president, were kind of the ones pushing the

assassination in the administration. And they're like smart enough that they went on Twitter and said, Soleimani was going to launch an eminent threat against Americans, uh, because that's the only way that under our extremely fucked up national security laws, you even have the pretense of legality of doing this kind of assassination. Um, and then immediately Donald Trump tweets out that this was a retaliation. So just like, there's just no pretense or pretending that any of this was legal at all

whatsoever. Did it at least get ratioed? That's true. My personal theory about this is, like, after Trump posted that American flag, people were like, oh, he's trying to start World War III. And I don't think that's what happened at all. What I think happened is Pompeo and Pence, every time they want to do something like this,

they just convince him that it will be his killing of bin Laden. And it didn't work with the uh the last guy baghdadis uh like he everyone just laughed at him after that with the dog and so then they convinced him that this would be as bin laden while you know most likely trying to push war with iran right so according to the new york times and some other outlets the uh several u.s intelligence officials privy to the intelligence that suggested a supposed eminent threat said the evidence was quote-unquote razor thin to suggest any sort of eminent threat um and also the new york doesn't sound like uh it's 2003 again baby we're back in iraq fucking starting wars based on razor thin evidence um but also the new york times points out that uh the killing of uh kusam solomani was a major

general of the iranian revolutionary guard the head of the kud's force this is the first uh uh senior military officer of a foreign country killed by the united states since we shot down admiral yamamoto in world war ii so i mean like it's just so mind they waited until that plane left the airport it's just so mind-blowing it's a military target you know so at least there's that because like by any fucking reasonable standard it is a declaration or an act of war to assassinate the strongest military official in a sovereign government you know and when i say by any reasonable standard i mean no national security lawyer will agree with me on that uh but you know we've just gone so fucking far beyond the pale that you'll just

see people on twitter talking about yeah no that uh blank check uh the authorization for use of military force after 9-11 that just lets the president start a war with anybody you know we don't even pretend there's any sort of legality or any sort of requirement of a constitutional declaration of war before you can just start assassinating major government officials in foreign nations like if it if iran uh when petraeus was in charge of iraq if iran just hit him with a drone strike that's what this would have been oh yeah yeah well the great thing is like i mean probably don't need to explain any of this to our listeners i'm sure they know the magnitude of this it's worth going through because you know the kud's the kud's force is kind of combination intelligence agency and uh you know irregular warfare arm uh they were

heavily involved in you know iraq assyria and all that but assassinating the head of the kud's force and then saying that is not an assassination is literally identical to if iran assassinated the head of the cia and then said no this is not an assassination this is a terrorist which inshallah you know like look let's just keep a consistent legal definition going here if if the head of the quds force is not a official of the iranian government the head of the Quds Force is not an official of the Iranian government, the head of the CIA is not an official of the U.S. government. I mean, I think, and I mean this as parody, that the best way to diffuse this is to give Iran a free drone strike on, I don't know, I say this as parody, john bolton david from parody um you know just to even the scales right right well they've given iran has given like vague idea of what their revenge could possibly be in the future like actually they haven't given any idea but um it'll be quoted a time and place of their choosing which is a pretty

cool statement yeah like it could be years from now yeah what i think what i see going down is like they'll just wait one year and then kidnap and possibly murder a nato general or something like that and then call it good yeah i mean they're also in a bind because i'm sure they don't want a world war but like such a brazen uh yeah they have to respond yeah they have to respond somehow so they have to optimize their response between satisfying the conservative iranian nationalists and not getting invaded and or nuked by the u.s right so they have to find the sweet spot there solve that lagrangian and find the answer you also posted on the um on our discord uh the great wikipedia page about the american iranian uh or the it was a war game carried out in 2000 to simulate war with Iran.

Yeah, it was called Millennium Challenge 2002. Yeah. It was like a simulated war game. Yeah, and they had to stop it because immediately America... The guy who was playing as Iran just used a bunch of low-tech strategies to subvert America's high-tech strategies and won immediately. It was like a combination of computer simulations and also real forces using fake weapons against each other. And they didn't say it was Iran at the time, but military strategists looking back

on it knew absolutely it was Iran. And they kept having to make the assumptions of the simulation easier and easier until the u.s quote one yeah eventually they the the general who was in charge of um uh the quote opponent resigned mid simulation uh on the second go-round because in the second go-round instead of letting him do what he wanted which was uh subverting american uh signal interceptions by just having motorcycle messengers and subverting radar by just having small crafts uh find american uh aircraft carriers uh they then he he won the first time doing that and so then they gave him a script of operations to follow that essentially guaranteed american victory and so he resigned mid yeah and they like operation the but that just makes the simulation more realistic

because if we'll give the iranians a script and they will follow it when the war breaks out this week. But even in the toughest scenario, after a couple of rounds of making it easier, in a few of the iterations of the simulation, the Iranians still sunk an entire aircraft carrier. Which, side note, aircraft aircraft carriers it just reminds me of how much of a boondoggle they are in terms of like defending against like surface to sea missiles and stuff yeah yeah like leftover from the soviets yeah so like there are certain surface to sea systems that are like still extremely effective against aircraft carriers if they get into like uh within range of them like with that you would need to like support an invasion or something yeah the only advantage america really has militarily is long-range bombers right so yeah

you'd have to be like far far out to to sea servicing bombers to make the aircraft carrier worth it in, like, an invasion scenario. But you can't have them anywhere to, like, have fighters, like, coming and going. Yeah. Yeah. But so, we'll see what Iran actually does. And, you know, maybe more things have happened by the time we actually release this podcast. But as of the recording... Remain indoors. happened by the time we actually released this podcast but as of the the recording remain indoors as of the recording we just got uh information that iran has said they are going to totally withdraw from the nuclear agreement so uh it's very possible they will make a straight dash to

a nuclear weapon and nobody could fucking blame them yeah jesus christ um and you know uh i guess there was some some fear-mongering about uh hezbollah sleeper cells there was some guy arrested in new jersey for apparently being a hezbollah sleeper cell so they i mean they do have the ability to project force in a way that uh he's very religious he prays like five times a day they do have a way to uh they have an ability to project force that uh might not be aware of. And this is a very dangerous time. Oh, I did just want to mention before we move on.

According to the Daily Beast, in the five days prior to launching this strike, Donald Trump dropped hints to guests at Mar-a-Lago about what was coming. So not only did they not inform the U.s congress they didn't inform the iraqi government but just fucking uh rich dipshits at his resort property were getting hints that he was about to start a war with iran um yeah i bet jisling maxwell knew about this before we did so just from daily beast according to three people who had been at the president's palm Beach club over the past several days, Trump began telling friends and allies hanging out at his vacation getaway that he was working on a, quote, big response to the Iranian regime that they would be hearing or reading about, quote, very soon. His comments went beyond the New Year's Eve tweet. He sent warning of a big price Iran would pay. Two of the sources tell Daily Beast that the president specifically mentioned that he'd been in close contact with his top

national security and military advisors gaming out options for an aggressive action that could quickly materialize. He kept saying, quote, you'll see, one of the sources recalls, describing a conversation with Trump in the days before the strike.

So, you know, I mean, and then the New York Times also reported that basically the generals were giving him options of responses to, you know, this, whatever, the protest, the siege at the embassy. Because he was like very infuriated that he didn't want a Benghazi. And he tweeted about this will be the anti-Benghazi. that he didn't want a bangazi and he tweeted about this will be the anti-bangazi so he didn't want to look weak and the generals gave him some options it won't be a bangazi because it's not an obscure cia front running guns to isis the the generals gave him some options and according to the new york times uh they got sources that said the generals presented the option of killing sulamani as a way of seeing more extreme and getting him to pick one

of the less extreme options yeah it presented as like a joke option right but like to make the middle one seem like to point him in the direction of something reasonable it's like it's like the uh the big tv that gets you to buy the mid-sized tv exactly and trump always buys the big tv so he's like the x factor that yeah shows what no one thought was tenable oh my god like yeah apparently according to the new york times according to the new york times account of how this all went down you know he originally picked like one of the bomb some militia convoy options and then with the embassy strike being on tv he got really enraged and went immediately to the kill sulamani option uh so i mean it is just something where it's horrifying to think about these are how these decisions are made uh you pitch to your boss or whoever like

hey so these are the three options and i want you to go with this one so i'm gonna have the really extreme one over here to get you to not go with that but then as soon as you're required to present three yeah so but you only want them to pick one so um but also like the um sulamani i mean apparently i think he also wasn't i'm sure he was aware that something crazy option like this was out there but he took a calculated risk by doing his conducting his business semi-publicly at an airport he's like i mean there no one's gonna just fucking drop a bomb on me here yeah i'm a public official in a country that's not at war with anyone right i mean he was also assuming that there'd be norm enforcement to some degree with this

but no there's not not with trump yeah and trump has tweeted that he is uh warning iran not to retaliate at all and he has promised to strike quote 52 sites across iran representing the number of american hostages taken by iran in 1979 uh all of whom were released by the way survived and were so sad that they had to get kept in a room yeah they got to be portrayed by ben affleck or yeah uh but they were only imprisoned because their government had implemented the most brutal regime in the country's history. Yeah. That tortured one in, what was it, family, one in four family people in Iran knew someone or were directly connected to someone who had been tortured by the shah regime that the embassy at that time was helping prop up just yeah mass torture mass executions of any dissidents the overthrowing of a democratic government that was attempting to nationalize natural resources

that belonged to it uh and they got cut in a room so money was being floated as a presidential candidate right to give you an idea of his popularity right he was clearly except for the supreme leader the second most powerful person in Iran and there was even speculation that this might actually benefit some of the some of the competitors for power within Iran they kept our ambassador in a room but Trump said that at a very he will hit these 52 sites across iran at a very high level and important to iran and the iranian culture and those targets in iran itself will

all caps be hit very fast and very hard so i mean you know we're just in a really an ungodly position here where you have to expect iran will do something and then you know if trump just starts bombing iran we're functioning we're at war with the major regional power in the middle east for no goddamn reason remember in the mid-2000s when everything was super jingoistic and people were like in iran they call us the great sat Satan and I was like oh yeah we're the great Satan we're really leaning into the great Satan right now are we the great

Satan are we are we the baddies there's also video on Twitter of Soleimani's funeral procession which people are calling the largest funeral procession in history I mean like I don't know if it actually is but you look at these videos, just wave after wave of people all out in the streets.

Yeah, just blocks and blocks packed with people. And, you know, it is just something where it totally undermines any domestic opposition to the Iranian government, because there have been protests against the Iranian government, which have been violently suppressed. But of course, if you have, if you murder a very popular official within a government, you are thumbing your nose at the people there, the sovereignty, everything.

Yeah. And speaking of violent repression against protests, remember the Dakota Access Pipeline? But I guess we should kind of start with the subject today and why we're talking about this rather obscure American billionaire named Thomas Kaplan, because I learned about this organization called United Against a Nuclear Iran. And the story of United Against a Nuclear Iran is very fascinating.

And I guess maybe we could even just have Thomas Kaplan start by explaining a little bit about it. Because, again, so this is an American billionaire, Thomas Kaplan. He receives an award from the French embassy in 2014. And he gives a short speech where he mentions an organization called United Against a Nuclear Iran and the work that they have done. A friend's comment that one day our kids might ask us what our generation did when we knew what the Iranians' intentions were prompted me to become part of something bigger. It's hard to know what the outcome will be,

but I do know that as much as United Against Nuclear Iran may not have had Tomahawk missiles and aircraft carriers at its disposal, we've done more to bring Iran to heel than any other private sector initiative and most public ones. Right. So you heard him there say United Against Nuclear Iran has done more than any other private sector initiative and most public ones. Right. So you heard him there say United Against a Nuclear Iran has done more than any other private sector initiative and most public ones. You might think he's exaggerating. He is not. By the way, if you're trying to place that accent, it's born in New York, raised in Florida.

So United Against a Nuclear Iran... Insanely rich. Yes. Right. And so we'll go through briefly how he actually made his money. But I did just want to start with just a little bit of comment on United Against a Nuclear Iran, just for people who do helped co-found it, a former George W. Bush alternate ambassador to the United Nations is the CEO, a guy named Mike Wallace. So it has all these hawks on the board and all these connections,

the U.S. intelligence and the Mossad. And interestingly enough, what it kind of does is it names and shames corporations that do business with Iran, tries to get them to divest and such. British Petroleum? Yes. Oh, no, they're not there anymore. But so a Greek, and we'll talk about this in a little more detail later, but a Greek shipping magnate actually sued them for calling him out.

He said that they had damaged his business and cost him millions of dollars. So he sued them in federal court, and he just wanted to see their donor list, and he wanted to see their methodology for how they identify companies that do business with Iran. And for the first time in United States history, the U.S. Department of Justice intervened in a case that it or any of its contractors were not a party in, and invoked state secrecy to say that the United Against Nuclear Iran does not have to turn over any of this information about its donors or its methodology or anything, because it is a US state secret. And in 2015, a judge agreed and

threw out the lawsuit. Not a front company. Yes. So that is exactly it, where there's, you know, a write up in the New York Times that says it is actually under, I don't know if it's under CIA charter or actual federal law, it is illegal for the CIA to attempt to influence public opinion why the U.S. Department of Justice might be intervening to say that it might be bad for us if the donor list and other methodologies and basic documents of this organization are turned over, because it might reveal that the CIA and or the Mossad have been trying to influence the U.S. public into going to war with Iran. And which administration was this? The Obama administration. Which is like, what's the really mind-blowing thing about it is, united against a nuclear Iran, you would assume transparent president in history well you know no scandals

yes no scandals well he did wear a tan suit once he did also uh have more espionage act prosecutions of journalists and whistleblowers than any president up until that point i believe every president combined up until that point and the believe every president combined up until that point. And the New York Times points out that they have previously, the Obama administration had at the time of this, prosecuted people under the Espionage Act for having access to sensitive information, just having the actual information. So if they are filing in federal court to say that, no, you can't turn over these documents, you can't get these documents because it is sensitive federal information,

well, why aren't they prosecuting United Against a Nuclear Iran under the Espionage Act the exact same way they do these journalists and whistleblowers? The only thing he did wrong was he wore that tan suit. But it is something where, I guess it is disturbing, and we'll go through all the various different pieces of evidence that we have.

But having done a few hours of research, I am almost 100% convinced that United Against a Nuclear Iran is either a Mossad or a CIA front, or both. And that Thomas Kaplan, one of the two major billionaire funders of United Against a Nuclear Iran. The other is, of course, Sheldon Adelson, who we've done an episode about, which, minor irony, United Against a Nuclear Iran funder who wants to nuke Iran and has said publicly that we should detonate a nuclear weapon in the desert of Iran in order to threaten them. But we'll focus today on Thomas Kaplan just because we've already covered uh sheldon adelson on a previous episode um but but it is something where i am absolutely convinced that this is an intelligence front and that the billionaire robert thomas caplan is probably linked to intelligence either of the israeli or uh united states variety and uh we'll get to all that but i guess we can just kind of start from the beginning yeah no i'm i'm i'm still uh i've still got recoil from the sheldon adelson let's set off a nuke in the desert thing it's understandable yeah that's fucking insane yeah and from yeah

and united against a nuke okay sheldon adelson presents trump with three options like two of them are nukes right the least extreme is assassinate sulu mani one of them is change my diaper yeah um so uh our boy thomas caplan he uh uh he has a wikipedia page that was definitely not written by his employees but here's a sentence from his wikipedia page in his youth he developed a passion for wildlife conservation and for rembrandt which decades later inspired him respectively to found the field conservation group panthera and to establish the leiden collection the world's largest private grouping of works from the Dutch Golden Age. So, yeah, I had to go to other places for his biography. But he was born September 14, 1962 in New York,

raised in Florida, and then he got a bachelor's. Yeah, sorry to interrupt you, but just to say, I'm told that he has the largest collection of Dutch masters in the entire world. And I want to say, whatever our disagreements, I do respect his commitment to a good solid rolling paper he's been there for me and as much as i hate to support a billionaire when i roll up a spliff you know it's the most the best consistency is the dutch masters you're trying to act cool but

you haven't smoked pot in like my wife doesn't let me yeah your wife you don't smoke pop because your wife won't let you that's that's part of being a badass i'm not whipped do not play any sound effects over this uh but sorry please go on he um uh he got his bachelor's master's and doctorate in history at Oxford. And I guess that's how you get his weird accent. His dissertation that we – you can't get the text of it, and you can barely find the reference to it. It was on the Malayan counterinsurgency and the way that commodities influence strategic planning. And apparently, while earning his PhD in history, he was working as an analyst covering Israeli companies that are publicly

traded in the US, which, you know, is a normal side job when you're getting a PhD in history is to be an analyst like being a waiter. Yeah, it's like being a waiter, you know, or some people they'll, they'll TA, they'll they'll TA, they'll lecture the 100 level classes. He worked as an analyst covering Israeli companies publicly traded in the US from Oxford. So we were trying to figure out before we recorded the episode where he got his almost guaranteed Mossad connections. Yeah. And so this seems like one potential point. Another one is that right after he graduated, he got a job through, well, first he met his wife,

Daphne Reconati, and she introduced him to this guy, A.V. Timokin, who is an Israeli investor. Yeah, and so he's at Oxford working on his dissertation in 1988, and according to the story he tells, he flies on a six-day trip to Israel and meets his wife there, though apparently him and his wife also went to the same boarding school in Switzerland. They didn't know each other then. Yeah, they didn't know each other, but they went to the same elite boarding school in Switzerland, and then they met in Israel and got married. Oh so he's got switzerland in that accent too yeah that's part that's part of it yeah like the only it's very clear that they've like shrunk all of the official biography information which again makes me more suspicious that he is connected to

intelligence but i did find this small profile from worth.com about the King of the Cats. It's mostly a puff piece about his conservation efforts for big cats, which we'll talk about a little bit. But according to them, he was born in 1962 in New York City. He's the son of a Jewish American businessman, Jason, who is apparently an entrepreneur who was successful enough that he was able to retire when he was young uh and you know his mother was a homemaker named lillian and he had kind of a privileged upbringing uh the family moved to florida when he was eight years old though before that apparently he tells the story that his mom would take him to moma and he would demand to see the rembrandts and that's where he got his taste

for the dutch masters but they moved to florida when he's eight and then he goes to rembrandt's and moma well maybe they had some i don't quite now they might have some now actually not in the moma maybe in the um in the met but the moma's modern art it's like someone's diarrhea smeared on a canvas that's supposed to represent longing so maybe he's just into rembrandt's because if he was into modern art the cia connection would be too obvious um but i did just like there's this one short story from this that i found very weird so he's of course he's in he moves to florida when he's eight he's going to boarding school in switzerland but he tells the story of how he got into big cats um he says that for his 11th birthday, his mother took him to the Amazon rainforest to see jaguars

in the wild. And he gives this quote, I went down to Columbia to this basically CIA outpost called Leticia. It was run by a smuggler called Captain Mike. And then he saw some massive anacondas and he brought some turtles and snakes home with him from the Amazon. So it's just kind of weird where it's like his family can take him down to what he describes

as a CIA outpost in fucking Columbia when he's 11 years old. And we'll kind of go through the rest of these connections in a minute here. Oh, I mean, maybe that's if... If it's a CIAia outpost isn't something that's going to be public knowledge it's not like oh let's go to columbia and check out the cia outpost you know that's it that it seems to almost directly imply that his family had cia connections

right um and maybe that's how he got into intelligence. Yeah, the only other profile of him is a profile from Bloomberg that is a dead link on Wikipedia, so I had to pull it up on the web archive. And what's interesting is that there is a copy, or at least there was. In the last two days, this article has been jumping around. First, I could only find it on the web archive, and then I found it on NBC. And then just an hour ago, I tried to pull it up on NBC again, and it's a dead link now. But the one that was on NBC seems to have been a heavily edited version of the bloomberg business week profile definitely no intelligence connections here folks so we'll go into kind of the main non-iranian stuff real quick about him and i guess the best way to introduce it is how the bloomberg article starts which is with a quote from him which is i'm not a gold bug. And then the rest of the article is about how he's a gold bug.

And I do not eat dust, Mr. Mullen. So after, I guess, joining up with A.V. Timonkin, after he wrote his dissertation, and then apparently his big breakthrough was predicting that Saddam Hussein would invade Kuwait. And I guess that helped with their investments because everyone else, the conventional wisdom was that one Arab country would not attack another. And so him being right about that is his cover story. We've realized for how he, or we suspect for how he became a billionaire.

Yeah. It's just one other quote from that worth.com profile. Basically, like we suspect, for how he became a billionaire. Right. Yeah, it's just one other quote from that Worth.com profile. Basically, like we said, he's doing, he does his undergraduate, his master's, and then he's working on his PhD dissertation at Oxford in 1988. You know, he flies to Israel, meets his wife. And then, according to this Worth.com profile, on a trip back from Israel to Oxford to oxford in 89 quote he had an epiphany which was that saddam hussein was going to invade kuwait and then i'll just quote from this here by this time 1989 kaplan perhaps through his wife perhaps through others had connections in the saudi and israeli intelligence communities they both reported that neither the massad nor the saudi

intelligence believed an iraqi invasion of kuwait was possible, Kaplan recalls. They were senior people and very well connected. They came back with you're a nice Jewish boy, but you're delusional. And so the official story is that Avi Tionkin, his business partner is an Israeli businessman who kind of puts

him in business initially. He tells Avi that Saddam's going to invade kuwait here's how you invest to make money off this and this is how he makes his first big score and again maybe it went down like this but this could also totally just be a cover story for a jeffrey epstein type figure fake billionaire he also describes avi tionkin um he he says that they got along immediately and says his views his convictions were impressive which uh that doesn't sound like something you would say about an investor that his convictions are impressive that's something you say about a spy right uh so

in 1993 he stops i guess predicting saddam Hussein and goes into natural resource investing. And he, on paper, appears to be, well, at first he appears to be somewhat successful at it. In Bolivia, he relocates 200 people and a cemetery in San Crist cristobal um with a company apac apex um but then he was on apex no no no it's apex yeah yeah uh with the company apac apex it's confusing because they're both run by the massad he he resigned from the company in 2004, and then it went bankrupt four years later. And what's interesting is that he keeps on talking about how gold is – he's not a gold bug, but that gold is an important commodity because it will keep going up in value because it's scarce, which is exactly what a gold bug would say. Well, just like he you know he puts a spin on it he puts a spin on it most gold bugs will let you know that in times of political strife geopolitical conflict you want to get out of stocks and go to gold yeah because like you know

stocks can companies can issue as much stock as they want and then they can buy it back and supply goes all over the place. Right. And this, to the gold bug anyway, says that gold, its production is more stable and also declining because it's harder to find new sources of gold. And that hasn't stopped him from trying.

And we'll get to that in a second. Yeah, so like he won, his innovation with his gold investment thesis i guess is he wants to bring in the long-term investors into gold with this supply oriented argument yeah and also early in his career we were talking about this he was investing with soros around the same time that or this was in the the mid-2000s around the same time that glenn beck was talking about how soros was a puppet master and at the same time if you've ever seen fox news uh you know at a gym uh you'll probably see on the fox news tv during one of their many commercial breaks an advertisement scamming old people out of their gold, either

offering to sell it to them at a severe markup or buy it from them at a severe markdown. Right. Like Glenn Beck, during the height of his Obama-era popularity, when he warned hyperinflation was coming, would do these unmarked ad reads just in the middle of his radio show or his Fox News program where he would say, the hyperinflation is coming. You have to buy gold now. So, you know, of course, the great, and many of these, it's been revealed that he was being paid to do some of these. But the great irony is, you know, he's talking about George Soros being the puppet master. Well, George Soros is the person, according to all public accounts,

who puts Thomas Kaplan in business. Thomas Kaplan around 2008 or 2009, 2010 becomes a huge gold bug. So, of course, the irony is Glenn Beck is calling out George Soros while at the same time enriching him by selling gold. Because George Soros is, of course, in that position too. Yes. And gold, of course, it has a very limited inherent value. And its value is that as an asset class, it's volatile. Yeah, yeah. The pitch is that it's not volatile,

but then its value is based on scarcity, which is an incredibly, like, in itself, a fairly volatile, like... It's not based on inherent value. And it should be just noted, you know, with Thomas Kaplan, just a couple things like he made his fortune in commodities which we'll go through but uh first of all people have pointed out most people who make their money in commodities whether it's oil or silver and uh most people who do that

get their degrees in you know advanced mathematics physics it's just very rare for a history PhD to get into this field. And again, it is kind of suspicious that, as we mentioned, while he's at Oxford, he gets a job as an analyst. We're looking at what you said, it was Israeli stocks. Yeah, Israeli stocks being traded in the United States. Yeah, like there's so many Oxford PhDs from Florida and New York City doing that extremely specific job. So it is kind of a question as to, I'm convinced that he has intelligence questions, connections. My only question is when they developed.

But, you know, there's that element of it. And then there's just the other fact that commodities prices spike during war and instability. And he's filed, you know, his companies have filed sec uh what are they called prospectus documents saying essentially that you know we are heavily invested in silver we predict regional instability i think one of his prospectuses even said uh the possibility of a nuclear iran offers a serious um uh price spike for silver i believe believe it was silver. But the point here is, like, we don't... I think his Bolivian mine... Oh, wait, he has

silver mines in Idaho, actually. I'll get to that in a minute, too. But I guess the point here is, we can't get inside this guy's head as to how much of it is, like, he's a true believer in the Zionist project, how much of it he thinks, you know, Iran is going to carry out the second Holocaust.

But what is undeniable is that his business investments would hugely benefit from a war with Iran, as would many commodities, many people who are long in commodities. We've already seen the oil spike with all this regional tension. It's also interesting how he's a Rembrandt collector, because, you know, we've talked about art collectors uh billionaire art collectors uh previously on this podcast several times and what's especially interesting about him being a Rembrandt collector first of all um I'm glad that the school of Athens is affixed to a wall in the Vatican so that he can't get his hands on it um but it's it's also it it works very similarly to gold where its value is in its scarcity. It doesn't have an inherent value. It doesn't have a use value.

And it's largely, he talks about how magnanimous he is by loaning it out to museums. strategy to uh create more to increase the value of his investments uh because they're placed in uh by having them placed in a museum they are of course seen as more valuable yeah so i mean he he goes out of his way to say well my i i've lent out a higher percentage of my art portfolio to public institutions than you know most people most other wealthy millionaires and billionaires who have an art portfolio as large as mine i'm like to me like all i hear when i hear that is just like okay so you get rental income from your art gallery yeah great congratulations and on top of that like the people like a rim brand is very easy to loan out to a gallery because galleries want stuff like that because they're you know in a more realistic sense uh priceless culturally the people who tend to sit on their art collections generally

have shitty modern art that museums already have too much of. It's like, you know, here's a, here's, I put a pint of my blood into a fire extinguisher and sprayed it on clothes that I wore to summer camp. And then it goes for a million at Sotheby's and someone keeps it in a

closet because it might, you know, gain value. But, yeah. And part of and under underlying a lot of his purchases is the debt that he took on in order to buy a lot of the art. So he needs to part of this is he needs to rental income from lending it out to these museums in order to pay off the loans and like he wants them to appreciate and he wants to market them and you need like part of part of marketing art and generating demand for it is having it be seen by the public yeah and as well as your rich friends privately when they come over to your house and whatnot yeah but there needs to be like a combination of those two things happening and also receiving some income in the middle in order for it to really work as like a a uh a type of asset

management technique i guess it's really sickening that this great world historical art is being used in this way yeah as just like one more technique to manage their assets and another thing we've talked about is how good art is, you know, multi-million dollar art sales are for laundering money or for getting, you know, dark money, which, of course, a member of an intelligence agency would not need access to for any reason. And this should not be read too much into at all. operations um well or i guess his other uh public face and how that ties into his mining operations he plays himself up as a major conservationist yeah and he has uh support the panthers charity i guess panthera panthera which which apparently david portrayas former cia director is a board member of and uh there's a bunch of connections that I can go through in a second where David Petraeus came to, I believe, a 2018 event for United Against a Nuclear Iran. Thomas Kaplan describes him as a friend. David Petraeus and Thomas Kaplan together

launched an intelligence agencies fellowship at Harvard Kennedy School in 2016, where intelligence agencies in the United States, France, and Israel can nominate potential candidates to get a scholarship to go to the Harvard Kennedy School, the Kennedy School of Government, to study to be better intelligence agencies. Again... The Kennedy School of the Americas? Yeah. Don't read too much into any of this. So he obviously gets questions, which are, how do you reconcile being a conservationist and being someone who makes his money from mining?

And he says, well, I have the most ecologically friendly minds. mines. And so looking into his mines, it turns out that they're mostly open pit mines, which is the most environmentally destructive kind of mining. A report from MIT said open pit mining, where material is excavated from an open pit, is one of the most common forms of mining for strategic minerals. This type of mining is particularly damaging to the environment because strategic minerals are often available in small concentrations, which increases the amount of ore needed to be mined. Also, from this article from Iranian scientists, ironically, has a pretty good overview of the problems of open pit mining. Maybe he just wants to destroy Iran to get these people to shut up.

It says the effects of open pit mining. That's what to destroy iran to get these people to shut up uh it says the effects of open pit mining that's what happened with those iranian scientists that israel assassinated they were running off in their mouths on open pit mining presenting a problem for our business he's like faxing targets to to trump and it's just these people's houses. These scientists' houses. The article states, the effects of open pit mining and mineral processing plants on the environment include land degradation,

noise, dust, poisonous gases, pollution of water, etc. If there is no impermeable layer below the deposit, the infiltration of meteoric precipitation through deposit can transfer pollutants via groundwater flow. the extraction process itself or could itself modify the water flow and accelerate this transfer uh and then it also says the above activities may change the topography and vegetation

as well water pollution is another aspect of mine operations greatly impacting the environment if a springhead is situated in the mine area, the pollution endangers springs which exist in the area. Similarly, the contaminated water in the mining operation has vital impacts on the rivers, agriculture, fresh drinking waters, and ecosystems. Because of abundance of heavy minerals, suspended solid particles, and decreasing levels of pH. Decreasing water level in the mines due to drainage not only causes undesirable changes

in the nearby lakes, but it can also be a threat to aquatics. Yeah, and we should put this in specifics because, you know, we talked about Bolivia. So he makes his first big score in Bolivia. His company, Apex Silver Mines Ltd., which just happens to be incorporated in the Cayman Islands, so not a tax haven. But so in 1993, they found this thing. According to a Forbes profile in 2000, they found this in 1993.

He says, Thomas Kaplan says in an interview that he started it with $10,000 of his own money. You take his word for it or don't, it doesn't really matter. But he convinces George Soros to give him $10,000 of his own money. You take his word for it or don't, it doesn't really matter. But he convinces George Soros to give him $10 million because he says, you know, silver is going to spike. So they go around looking for different silver properties, and according to this Forbes profile,

Kaplan hires a geologist named Larry Buchanan to go look for silver properties. And then one evening in January 1995, while heating coffee over a campfire in the Andes Mountains, 350 miles south of La Paz, Buchanan noticed a golden glow in the distance. The setting sun was glancing off the hills about a mile away with a color and intensity suggested big outcroppings of silver-bearing rocks. The next day after a hike in the area, Buchanan telephoned Kaplan, buy up the land he advised. Kaplan eventually did, suspending $10 million on options to acquire the properties. So in 1995, he gets this geologist to go out to Bolivia

and spend $10 million of George Soros' money to buy up this silver mine. And again, it just should be noted, something we've talked about and many of our listeners might be aware is that every government in Bolivia up to Evo Morales and proceeding after Evo Morales was extremely corrupt. operators in 2004 or no sorry in 2009 apex silver mining was served with what's called a wells notice by the u.s securities and exchange commission which is a notice that they are going to recommend bringing an enforcement action against that company and again the only details are about this is that the sec says that in 2006 the sec began an investigation into the potential payments to government officials made by certain senior employees of one of the company's South American subsidiaries in 2003 and 2004 in connection with an early stage exploration project. So why I'm bringing that up is there is an SEC allegation unproven that they were engaged in bribery in South America,ica very possibly bolivia in order to get these mining properties um and they get they end up getting with this 10 million dollars um a mining site

that was that is that they would sell in 2010 but i believe is today the um sixth largest zinc mine in the world the third largest silver mine in the world um and of course as andy just mentioned all of the open air mining is environmentally devastating there's a um he he tried to make lightning strike twice um with this uh strategy in romania and um turned out it kind of backfired he uh there he heavily invested. He has a conglomerate called Electrum Group. And they heavily invested in a company called Gabriel Resources, which is a mining company that has never operated a mine. But they tried to start a mine in Romania. And they made the deal, it looks like, originally in a somewhat shady circumstance, not too long after the fall of the communist regime there. It's an echo of our IKEA episode, if you've listened to that, where essentially Romania has very corrupt politicians and they're very easy to bribe and they got the permits to build a mine in Romania.

And then the people of Romania, to their credit, seem to have gotten a less corrupt government in place. They also started having massive protests around 2010 when they were, or before 2010 when they were starting to actually plan out the mine, and they successfully blocked Gabriel Resources from ever building a mine. And so then Gabriel Resources, again, a company that's never had a mine, tried and is still trying to sue the government of Romania for $4.4 billion in, quote, lost revenue because they wouldn't let them build an economically devastating mine that would have stripped four mountains. And again, it was another open pit mine, so it would have had all the effects that I read off earlier. You don't know how much time we've hypothetically put

into this non-existent mine. Yeah, $4.4 billion worth of thought went into this this non-existent mind yeah 4.4 billion dollars worth of thought went into this thing 4.4 billion dollars worth of lies to investors went into this mine uh and so that i mean that's that's clearly a number that just came off of a powerpoint you know while pitching people on this thing. Um, fortunately the, they, they tried to sue them this, this lawsuit, uh, they tried to carry it out through the world bank. And then there was a court decision that said that this company couldn't, uh, do that or that, um, uh, certain kind of arbitration. I don't, it's, it's confusing, but apparently they got

struck a pretty devastating blow a couple of years ago that has made it a lot harder for them to actually successfully sue the government of Romania for blocking this mine. Right. archaeological site because this was actually a mining uh this was actually a mine since roman times um which now makes it an archaeological site in the that archaeological site would have been buried under a pool of cyanide uh if the mine were created and the the quote that he that is appropriate for roman times though yeah uh the. The quote given by Thomas Kaplan is, Those who say a scarred landscape should be preserved at the expense of a truly exciting economic future for a poor community are being unjust. This is telling the local people to bootstrap their way to progress when they don't have the means to procure boots and uh as the local people uh they have been fiercely protesting the construction of this mine uh that he's trying to force on them um for about

a decade now well i mean and that's the great irony like that bloomberg article andy's quoting from is the only place i found where he actually reckons with this where every single profile or almost every profile you find of thomas caplan opens with his philanthropy it's like you know the only place I found where he actually reckons with this, where every single profile, or almost every profile you find of Thomas Kaplan opens with his philanthropy. It's like, you know, this great billionaire is saving the big cats. He's saving the leopards and the jaguars. And, you know, I even found, I'm paraphrasing a quote to the effect of like, thank God this man made this money because he's done so much to save the big cats. And if he hadn't made this money, all these big cats would be extinct now. And of course, the irony here, and this is the only profile I've seen where he actually attempts to grapple with this, is he made about $2.5 billion in hydrocarbons. multiples higher than any fucking philanthropy that he's done uh for the big cats and then of

course here he also has on his wikipedia page very prominently a bunch of cultural heritage site conservation philanthropy is going and yet he's totally willing to just dump cyanide all over roman cultural heritage sites because he doesn't give a shit well he doesn't give a shit about the romans he studied modern history in ox, which begins when they left Britain. Well, he actually has a very interesting quote about this that I've got queued up here. I love gold! But yeah, and I think he says something in that Bloomberg article to the effect of like, I tell my people, if it's a choice between business and conservation, conservation always wins out.

But of course, he's just ignoring local Romanian environmental activists. I love gold! But I guess we should just mention, according to... I'm surprised it took us two years to get Austin Powers drops. We should just mention, according to Forbes, as of 2017, they put Thomas Kaplan's net worth at about $1 billion. Though I saw other sources that say that his gold investments alone are worth $2 billion. And it should be noted, from 2010 to the present, he's been a major gold advocate. Yeah, his companies collectively own $2 billion in gold.

Gold assets. Okay, so yeah, so his actual net worth is probably in the range of about $1 billion or just over, but you can assume that if there's a gold spike, which there very much might be if there's regional tension or a war with Iran, his net worth will go up. But I just wanted to mention the hydrocarbon here very briefly. So he makes his first fortune on the San Cristobal mine in Bolivia, we mentioned. He sells it in 2010. Then he takes that money and—

Where he dug up copper and silver shortly after digging up people. They relocated a cemetery. Yeah, it was a little weird. I couldn't find a source for this, but on the Wikipedia it says that that uh workers there would be doing 12 hour days seven days a week the actual people doing the mining so yeah two weeks on one week off right so you can only imagine the actual labor conditions which again uh every bolivian government before avil morales just wouldn't give a shit about it all as long as you paid off the right people. Yeah, my summer job before college was doing 12-hour shifts in a bottle factory, and it destroys you.

It was three days on, four days off, or four days on, three days off, but it alternated every week, but it was awful. I'm not going to quote from it, but maybe we'll link it. There's a New York Times puff piece with him where it's, what's your Sunday routine?

So he writes out his Sunday routine and he describes like Sunday is the day my wife sleeps in so I make scrambled eggs for my kids and then my wife and I go to a local brunch place and we get what's called the pancake orgy. It's a bunch of pancakes

with like chocolate syrup and shit and it's just like the most like banality of evil shit you're ever going to read in your life uh but you know you just imagine like the devastation that his mining operations have brought to all sorts of uh people suffering under the aegis of a corrupt government that just doesn't give a shit about them yeah one of his uh so his mind i'm just gonna mention this really quickly he has a mine in idaho that i mentioned uh the sunshine mine uh he got it out of bankruptcy in 2010 and i think part

of the reason it uh went into bankruptcy is that in 1972 it had a fire that killed 91 miners was pretty much the worst uh it looks like the worst mining incident in american history uh if you if you look it up on google it has one review which is a one star review there's reviews for mines yeah yeah the sunshine mine has one star it says one of the worst mining disasters in united states history 91 miners died when there was a fire in 1972 may they rest in peace let us never forget you know what grizzly country uh the person who submitted that uh thank you for your contribution and then of course it'd be nice if there was like a two-star review that was like 79 miners died but you know the servers were nice so i'm giving them two stars for having nice employees and it looks

like it's still in operation but in 2012 there was another fire and uh no one no one died but they did lay off 24 miners while they were extinguishing it what i wanted to mention about that is according to a different uh 2010 forbes profile i found when they bought up this um what's it called the sunshine mine in idaho when they bought this up he bought it up through, he had the team that bought it up, the Sunshine Transition Team, headed by Mark Wallace, president of his Tigris Financial Group. He has a bunch of different companies, but Tigris Financial Group was running it. And the point is, Mark Wallace is also the CEO of United Against a Nuclear Iran. So his financial operations are also being run by the guy

who's running this probably Mossad CIA operation front, both of whom, it was clear, stand to make money if the commodities prices spike. So, and you know, if we have time, we'll go through, but there's just a bunch of weird connections between his actual

financial companies and United against a nuclear Iran, where there's people working for both. Let do that now okay well uh one other thing i want to mention before we get there is just in 2003 uh so he makes his first killing on this uh san cristobal mine and silver mine in bolivia then in 2003 he gets his nephew his uh sister's son uh Guama Aguiar, who was apparently born in Brazil but was an Israeli citizen as well. In 2003, he dispatches him to Houston, Texas. And then he dispatches him? Yes. He sends him to Houston, Texas with an eye for buying up oil or hydrocarbon exploration properties because he's predicting there's going to be a spike there.

I'm sure unrelated to the Iraq War. But so he dispatches him to Houston, Texas, and they found the Lior Exploration and Production LLC. And according to a write-up of this in a different Forbes article, Aguilar went out there when he was 26 years old. He met a geologist, and they they uh they found this this field uh according that this geologist recommended geologists are important yeah that's basically what i've learned about commodities billionaires it's basically you meet the right geologist it's like and then you make

the fortune but you have to satisfy big geology first i've i've come to respect geologists who just work at a university because they are setting aside massive amounts of money but so uh they his nephew meets a geologist in texas who recommends this field of natural gas they buy it up and they find 2.4 trillion cubic feet of natural gas and then they sell it to a canadian company in 2007 they sell it up for 2.55 billion dollars so this is his second major uh fortune and according to this forbes article uh his nephew aguiar guma aguiar uh he he says that he received 200 million dollars of this 2.55 billion dollar sale so he sues his uncle, and then his uncle countersues him.

And apparently, according to Forbes, at this point, Thomas Kaplan takes his nephew's mother off of the trust that is going to distribute their $200 million share of it because he thinks his sister is siding with her son in their dispute. So he steals money from them. And then, of course, his sister sues him.

So it's this big family fallout over giving your nephew $200 million when he just made you $2.55 billion. But how it ends is they're trading these lawsuits. And then, according to Financial Times, in June 2012, while these lawsuits are still ongoing, Aguiar is, he disappears while boating off the coast of Florida. His body's never found. He was declared legally dead in 2015. They later found his boat with apparently his wallet, his phone, his keys

in the boat. But it is just like, and you know, according to all these press accounts, he was having bipolar disorder or something if you're having negative thoughts uh reach out um you know if if you're uh in the way of a powerful figure with uh covert state connections don't keep that to yourself yeah um you know there are there are lines, hotlines you can call. But yeah, so his fucking nephew dies under mysterious circumstances that most people have ruled a suicide, but it is just kind of suspicious and weird that this happens in the middle of a legal battle with him.

But I guess with the time we should have left here, we should talk about United Against a Nuclear Iran. I mean, people with Mossad connections just, you know, they just fall out of boats sometimes. The Robert Maxwell special. Yeah, you know, that's not at all a calling card of this organization when it carries out assassinations, disappearing off boats under circumstances that are later ruled to be suicide it's like sometimes uh people who uh work in biological weapons for the cia fall out of hotel room windows it's just a thing that happens um but with with the time we have left uh united against a nuclear iran is very fascinating organization uh And I'm just going to quote a bit from militarist-monitor.org. United Against a Nuclear Iran was founded in 2008. John Bolton helped found it. He was on its board up until he joined the Trump administration. Kind of an interesting thing that Militarist Monitor lays out is that Russia, apparently apparently united against nuclear iran does

these pressure campaigns against different companies to um you know pressure them to disinvest from iran it did it against some iranian companies and then he was doing this while he was doing balance ball gags on fox and friends uh so united against nuclear iran tries to do an attack on some russian companies for doing business with iran and actually the uh russian i believe the foreign ministry points out that well uh uh ua and i united against nuclear iran is a non-governmental org its leadership consists of influential figures in the in the u.s foreign policy community including former ambassadors and members of congress the fact that such letters are sent by the ngos and signed by the people who call themselves ambassador only to only degrade the state of the american diplomacy and you know

that's actually uh it's they only show the inability of washington to comply with its international obligations and that's you know a fair point where united against a nuclear iran has all of these former congress and senators joe lieberman is a co-chair and uh co is a chairman of united against a nuclear iran notorious neoconservative hawk um where they have all he was a democrat for a minute but i guess what was weird about this military people say al gore wouldn't have taken us into iraq it's like well remember his running mate but what is interesting about this is united uh militarist monitor points out the trump administration's state department sent a tweet

responding to these russian allegations saying strong sanctions and economic pressure are working to isolate iran's regime businesses worldwide should take note the russian government's attempt to intimidate uh uani and the ceo ambassador Wallace, are misguided and will not succeed. And I guess why this is significant is, you know, why is the State Department getting involved with this? Well, I'm sure it has nothing to do with the fact that John Bolton joined the Trump administration after being a founding board member of this. And according to Militarist Monitor, John Bolton was paid by a connected group, the

Counter Extremism Project, at least $165,000 from September 2015 until he took his post as National Security Advisor in April 2018. And also the connections to Republican donor Sheldon Adelson, who's one of the major funders of UANI. So I guess what I'm saying here is... The deep state is an anti-Semitic trope. You know, you have this organization where official government resources are clearly being used to protect it, as we'll go through here in just one second. But in July 2015, we've found out that in 2013, United Against a Nuclear Iran reported a $1.2 million budget.

More than three quarters of that was given by Sheldon Adelson and Thomas Kaplan. In 2015, they had a $3.4 million budget. More than three quarters of that was given by Sheldon Adelson and Thomas Kaplan. In 2015, they had a $3.4 million budget. They upped their budget in order to oppose Obama's 2015 Iran nuclear deal, which you would assume United Against a Nuclear Iran would support, but you would be naive to think their goal was to stop Iran from having a nuclear weapon. I guess to just kind of go through the connections here a little bit in um september 2017 uh united against a nuclear iran has these annual summits that they usually uh i guess the 2018 one they held a few blocks from the united nations where the annual general assembly was in progress at the time. So they kind of like, you know, when Iran comes to the UN General Assembly, apparently they lobbied various hotels to not let the Iranian president stay there

and just these kinds of like petty things. But in the 2017 annual meeting of United Against Nuclear Iran, Thomas Kaplan actually gives another speech. If they had things their way, there probably would have been a drone strike right outside the UN. In the 2017 meeting, Thomas Kaplan gives another speech to it

where he talks about the principle of takiyah or religiously sanctioned deception, which is the idea that Muslims can deceive non-Muslims in order to advance their own goals. And I'll just quote this thing he says here. The principle of takia, or religiously sanctioned deception, is nothing if not exquisitely functional. Thus, if there is a reward to come from being the guardians of Shia minorities, Iran positions itself as a protector of the Shia. Even with exotic variations on the theme, like the Houthis and the Alawites, it pays to play the nationalist card to, quote, plant flags in Arab capitals as they are wont to boast. Then they do with the gusto of a Shoshanian

Shoshansha. Damn it. It is not just in places like Bahrain, which is an unusual hybrid, but in Iraq, in which they are absorbing the parts of the country that they want in plain sight, like the reticulated python digests a ghost, digests a goat, or Syria, where this subordinated Sorry.

Or Syria, where they have subordinated a uniquely cannibalistic regime, or Yemen, where they seek to install Hezbollah on the,bollah in order to be able to control access to the Red Sea. So what they're saying is that it's okay to call a religious group deceptive and relate them to vermin. Tell them, say, imply that because of certain doctrines of their religion that they're willing to deceive outsiders. And that makes it okay to take extreme actions against people who are in that group. Is that what this guy is saying? Yes. Basically that, yes.

But so, you know, and it is something... Implying Mossad connections is anti-Semitic. So, the... I mean, they're just... I mean, to state it explicitly, he's using the language of anti-Semitism against the enemies of israel like that is exactly what he's doing is he he's you they're they're just yeah using the the same

far-right rhetoric that it has was you know in the 20th century used against the jews he's just using it against the iranians and it's shamelessly and that these are the type of people who are driving the current foreign policy yeah apparently at this uh september 2018 meeting this is the year after he gave the speech john bolton u.s secretary of state mike pompeo were uh uani's keynote speakers other speakers include the foreign minister of Saudi Arabia, ambassadors from the UAE and Bahrain, the State Department's Iran point man, Brian Hook,

Joseph Lieberman, apparently also in attendance was the director of Israel's Mossad spy agency, as well as the foreign minister of Saudi Arabia, the ambassador of UAE. All three of them called for regime change in Iran at this September 2018 meeting, again, just blocks from and occurring concurrently with the UN General Assembly. And so, you know, we've talked about, we won't go too far into it, all these different campaigns that UAE and I launches to get businesses to divest from Iran, the opposition to the Iranian nuclear deal,

they said, quote, they would launch, they did. They called it, quote, a multi-million dollar ad campaign against the Iran nuclear deal in 2015, which is, you know, again, the irony of the Obama Justice Department intervening to protect this organization from having to disclose any of its donors or internal documents

while it's attacking their very diplomacy that they're trying to carry out shows you the extent of the deep state in modern existence today. I mean, Obama was nothing if not excellent at shooting his own policy in the foot. The board's membership, again, according to Militarist Monitor, the board's membership has included a to militarist monitor the board's membership has included a host of neoconservatives and right-wing nationalists including joe lieberman um uh james wool uh wolseley a former cia director and high-profile neoconservative activist roger noriega a former u.s rep to the u.s ministry of the organization of american states um henry

sokolowski a hawkish strategic weapons expert, Mike Gerson, a torture advocate and former spokesman for President Bush, Mark Logan, a former State Department official who later served as an aide to Jean Kirkpatrick at the American Enterprise Institute, and Otto Reich, a controversial Reagan-era figure implicated in the Iran-Contra scandal

who maintains close ties to right-wing factions in Latin America. I love gold! But so, I guess what I'm getting at here is, you know, and also former CIA director David Petraeus was invited to the conference either in 2017 or 2018, and, you know, we mentioned this intelligence program that Ka caplan and david petraeus run together david petraeus has apparently also been on the boards of his various non-profits um but i i guess what i'm that's the guy who tried to hide his affair using techniques that he

learned from al-qaeda um but you know i guess what i'm trying to get at here is that uani has a ton of fucking former or current massad and CIA and State Department and Iran-Contra freaks either on the board or advising it or being keynote speakers at its conferences. And for some reason, the U.S. Department of Justice feels the need to shield its records under state secrecy demands when private actors sue it. So I guess we can just kind of close out here by telling, in brief, the story of what exactly happened here, because it is fascinating to me, and it will leave you with a ton of questions. But so the story, in brief, of what happened here is a Greek shipping magnate named Victor Restis was put on this list by United Against Nuclear Iran, accused of being a front for Iranian companies.

He says he lost millions of dollars worth of business of this. And he even accused United Against Nuclear Iran of being a shakedown organization, which will accuse various businesses of doing business with Iran and then demanding donations and cessation of contact in order to go away. But just from, this is the write-up in Militarist Monitor, Mr. Restis said that the group told him they based their accusations on, quote, valid research, credible documents, distinguished relationships, and preeminent sourcing. In court, Mr. Restis sued them for defamation and demanded the group disclose these documents and distinguished relationships, and preeminent sourcing. In court, Mr. Restis sued them for defamation and demanded the group disclose these documents and its relationships.

Soon after that, Mr. Restis said he was approached by an Israeli businessman, Rami Ungar, with no direct connection to United Against a Nuclear Iran. According to court documents filed by Mr. Restis' lawyer, Mr. Ungar knew details about the case and said he was, quote, authorized to try and resolve the issues on behalf of the group's supporters. This is from the New York Times write-up, actually. So an unrelated Israeli businessman approaches him and attempts to resolve this issue with no apparent connection to United Against Nuclear Iran. Again, not at all a Mossad front. And then he said, Mr. Restis' lawyers said in a letter to the judge in April 2014 that they had uncovered information that United Against Nuclear Iran, quote,

is being funded by foreign interests, unquote. They did not specify what that is. They tried in discovery to get donor records and other basic information from United Against Nuclear Iran. The Obama Department of Justice said this is a state secret even though it's not supposed to be a U.S. government contractor and then this lawsuit was dismissed on state secrecy grounds the most transparent administration in American history but it is just like oh he was also as part of this lawsuit he was attempting to uh subpoena the testimony of that Israeli businessman who approached him, as well as Mayor Doggin, the former chief of Mossad who serves as an advisor to United Against a Nuclear Rant. So you, of course— Wait, is one of the members a cartoon mayor?

Meir? Meir Doggin? Here in Smile Town, why? We like to be greeted by the friendly mayor dog and he's a dog. My ear dog and the former Mossad chief and advisor United Against Nuclear Iran. But, you know, of course, you just can't have these people giving depositions as part of a lawsuit. So the Department of Justice was able to assert state secrecy. And that's the end of all questions folks you know mike pompeo gives a speech to this group in 2018 and then pressures donald trump and to assassinate the second most powerful person in iran probably setting off in

a series of events that will result in a war with iran which this group and its funder thomas kaplan advocates for heavily and which means you should what buy gold i love gold i gotta say caplan is probably the worst literal grub staker we've covered yes yeah we forgot to say that yes i guess last thing i want to mention i know we've gone a little long here but uh there is an intercept article uh by mirtaza hussein oh i I want to mention, I know we've gone a little long here, but there is an Intercept article by Murtaza Hussain. I also want to shout out the journalist Eli Clifton. I'm just going to have to do a super cut of all the times you say, now I know I've gone a little long here, but I've got one more thing. Don't apologize for going long.

This is how long the episodes are. Yeah. the episodes are yeah uh i also want to shout out the journalist eli clifton who did a lot of work and was the person who originally published the document showing that uh thomas caplan the schedule b that united against a nuclear ran filed with the irs showing that thomas caplan and sheldon adelson provided three quarters of their funding um but mirtaza hussein also has a recent piece in the intercept which talks about um uh as part of his charity, Thomas Kaplan has this Panthera organization, which works for wildcat preservations. One of Panthera's many local NGO partners is based in Iran, the Small Persian Wildlife Heritage Foundation. So he gives a donation to the Persian Wildlife Heritage Foundation, and then in 2017, he gives that speech talking about takia or whatever muslim deception and how they have to go destroy iran and so the people at this charity had no

idea that he was like a psychopathic iran hawk when they took that money from him uh they sent some frantic emails being like what the fuck is going on why is the person at the who leads the org that gave us this money why is is he advocating regime change in Iran? And then within a few months, nine of them are arrested as spies by the Iranian authorities. One of them dies in custody under mysterious circumstances. The others have been given sentences of between six and ten years. So you love science and cats, and you want to make a living off of it. And someone from another country says, hey, here's some money.

And you're like, sure, okay. And then also the country that you live in is understandably terrified of being overthrown by America because it's already happened yeah uh and so take some kind of uh extreme measures not humane not entirely justified but understandable considering the context and you get caught in the middle of that right and you know according to this intercept article and national geographic wrote about this as well it seems like these were just conservationists who just put some cameras to observe some cheetahs in their natural habitat in order to hopefully, you know, conserve their numbers. They're an endangered species. And Iran accused them of putting out these video cameras to, you know, spy on missile

sites or whatever it is. And, you know, where would they get this idea? Well, United Against a Nuclear Iran has bragged publicly that they insert spies into Iran. There was like a puff piece in the Free Beacon as a conservative rag where they talked about, you know, United Against a Nuclear Iran has infiltrator. They got like a friendly source from United Against a Nuclear Iran to talk about, yeah, we have undercover spies that go to Iranian business conferences and observe businesses doing, you know, business with the regime so that we can build evidence against them. So it is something where if you're going to be, you know, Thomas Kaplan has this charity that because his other, you know, Mossad front arm is bragging about they insert spies into Iran, anything his charity funds is going to immediately be under a serious gun of suspicion by Iranian authorities. And understandably, and it's unfortunate, these, you know, innocent conservationists are paying the price because they took money that they thought was charitable giving without knowing that the fucking guy who gave it to them was a fucking psychopath. And the guy doesn't give a shit. I mean, he probably spent the last three days celebrating.

He probably doesn't even think about these people. Oh, yeah, absolutely. If anything, this benefits him because he can say the Iranian regime is detaining these innocent scientists. It gives him an even better cost his belly for war, you know, just putting these innocent people in harm's way. running for president who is uh spoke out unequivocally against escalating tensions with iran and uh against the assassination was bernie sanders uh and i'm just gonna do a little call to action the iowa primary is just in a few weeks uh volunteer however you can i just volunteered um it was not fun people who who say, oh, go volunteer. It's going to be fun. Maybe it is for them.

But I was mostly cold and awkward asking people to sign things. But it's not supposed to be fun. It's what you're supposed to do if you want to see things change. I mean, if you do have fun, that doesn't invalidate what you work. Yeah, yeah. No. Go have fun if you do have fun, that doesn't invalidate what you work. Yeah, yeah. No, go have fun if you can. But I'm not going to lie to you and say that it's always fun. It's not always fun, but it's something you should do.

No, absolutely. Hopefully, give money, volunteer for Bernie Sanders. I hope we are able to stop this war with Iran. But by the time it comes out, this comes out, it might already be on. We just have to hope that, you know, cooler heads will prevail and that we can get this fucking maniac and his psychopathic advisors out of the White House as soon as possible. Yeah. And I guess, you know, just last thing on Thomas Kaplan. I'll put in the notes for this episode.

Eli Clifton and some other journalists have gone through all of the links between his various charities and officials from United Against a Nuclear Iran. I'll put some of those sources in the episode, but I just want to say he meets with the crown prince of United Arab Emirates, who we've again linked to slavery, probably according to our BCCI allegations, child sex trafficking, rape. He met with Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in 2018, several months after Jamal Khashoggi was beheaded. They were photographed in the Crown Prince's royal box at an automobile race in Saudi Arabia. about human rights or you know a tyranny in iran or wherever he's full of shit because he loves these fucking uae and saudi despots and uh it is just something where he is one of those people who has steered u.s foreign policy in the middle east in a way that just benefits israel uae and saudi arabia that has absolutely no benefit for the average american citizen makes us poor gets countless innocence people innocent people killed and i'm fucking sick of it being done in our name, and I hope we can

try to start to do something to undo all the damage that has been done so far. In conclusion... I love gold! All right, this has been Grubstakers. Thank you for listening. I'm Andy Palmer. Steve Jeffers. I'm Sean P. McCarthy.

Again, Happy New Year. Hopefully we'll be back with a more peachy episode on the Patreon. Thanks for listening. Bye. Bye.