Pod Save the World - How Bad Is Trump’s Iran Deal?

Episode Date: June 17, 2026

Tommy and Ben are back with a week of bad deals, high-stakes elections, and World Cup joy.The US and Iran have agreed to a deal to end the war, but the Trump administration has refused to release the text to anyone — so the guys parse through what we think we know. The short version: it's a pretty good deal for Iran that meets almost none of the goals Trump set out before the war started, and the nuclear issue hasn’t even been touched yet. Then the guys question if Netanyahu will do something to torpedo the whole thing with his continued war against Lebanon. In England, a special election could reshape British politics and set up a direct challenge to Prime Minister Keir Starmer. Meanwhile, a spate of developments across England, Italy, France, and Switzerland signal increasing growth for far-right movements in Europe. In Trump world, there’s both good and very bad news: Trump backed down on installing Bill Pulte as Director of National Intelligence after bipartisan pushback, and the dismantling of USAID continues to have devastating real-world consequences. And finally, with the World Cup in full swing, Tommy and Ben take a moment to enjoy the fans, from Scots drinking their way across, to Mexican and Korean fans bonding over tequila, and Nigerian fans flying all the way to Mexico just to root against South Africa. At the end of the show, Tommy speaks to CNN’s Senior International Correspondent Frederik Pleitgen, about what he saw and heard on his latest reporting trip on the ground in Iran.Buy Ben’s book All We Say: The Battle for American Identity: A History in 15 Speeches  and subscribe to his Substack here.For a closed-captioned version of this episode, click here. For a transcript of this episode, please email [e-mail] and include the name of the podcast, episode title, and episode date.

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Foundation to get us back to a better brand of politics. Join the movement for change. Donate to the Obama Foundation at Obama.org slash pod. That's Obama.org slash pod. Welcome back to Pod Save the World. I'm Tommy Vitor. I'm Ben Rhodes. Ben, are you still hungover from celebrating your Knicks and their incredible NBA championship run? You look like OG and Ninobe on Good Morning America. I am actually still hungover because in addition to the game, now I can drink while watching Nick's content, which has been a deep reservoir, including OG's.

He's – Yeah, Ben was just telling us that he's been gooning to Nick's content. That will make Elijah very happy to hear. Oh, yes. We should get Mikhail Bridges to do some IG Lives for Crooked Media Universe. If people didn't see that, go check it out. Where do you think Jalen Brunton now ranks in terms of, like, greatest New York athletes of all time? It's got to be like Jeter, like Mickey Mantle, Bruntz.

Like, he's got to be up in that kind of pantheon, right? He's up there, and like, he's in the argument for number one because the Yankees have won so much. like he delivered the Knicks from, from like, purgatory, you know? And he did it in the most insane way, 45 points in a close-out game. Guys barely six feet tall, like everything about him is perfect. It's crazy. 33rd overall pick. I mean, so many guys went before him.

Yeah, yeah. And all these guys, I mean, like, and a guy who took $100 million less money, not just to win a championship, but to basically be able to play with his friends. His best buddies, yeah. He's like a group of friends, you know. Yeah. Just like watching a group of friends fucking around. It's awesome.

Oh, that's so cool. Well, congratulations. We're very happy for you. Also, Ben's still on the road for his book tour. If you have not picked up a copy yet of All We Say, please do so. It's a New York Times bestseller. What do you have against Ben that you haven't bought it? By the way, remarkable Father's Day gift.

You know, if your dad likes to take a tour through America. That's history. Dad's love history. So if you're looking for that last minute of Father's Day gift, this is it. And if you're in any of these cities, I will be in Houston tonight, Wednesday night. at the World Affairs Council there. I will be at Chicago at the University Club on Thursday night. And I will be in St. Louis at the St. Louis Public County Library on Saturday night.

Getting jacked up for St. Louis, huh? Those are good cities? Ben's doing his Midwest tour. Are you doing like a soft float for a presidential run right now? That's what it feels like. I'm just testing the waters, Tommy. Yeah. You and Gavin Newsome.

We've a book event in Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, maybe Nevada. Yeah, it's a good way to see some people, take the temperature out there in the country. No, it's a lot of fun. Listening tour. It's good to get out of the road to a listening tour. Remember when Mark Zuckerberg did a listening tour? He thought he's going to run for president? No, it's like, oh, wait, everyone despises you.

Yes, now he's just at the UFC event on the South Lawn. Yeah, hopefully getting punched. Consensually. All right, we have a great show for you guys today. We're going to cover what we think is in Donald Trump's deal with Iran. They won't release the deal text. It really speaks to them in confidence in whatever it says. But we'll tell you what we know, what is leaked, what we assume is in.

the deal. We'll try to assess whether it's a good deal or a bad deal. We'll talk about where things go from here in particular the ways that Israeli Prime Minister Bibiananyahu could try to blow this whole thing up. So one to watch there. We're also going to talk about how we think Democrats should talk about the deal and just diplomacy generally because there's some there's some great Democrats who are very short-footed on these things and then some who are clearly waiting for a poll to come out and we want to speak to them as well. We'll tell you about a huge election coming up in the UK and how the future of the country could be decided by about 75,000 voters total. We'll also touch on some interesting developments in the growth of the far-right, far-right political parties in Europe.

We have some good news for you about Trump's selection to be the Director of National Intelligence. We have some terrible news about the catastrophic impact of the destruction of USAID and what it's meant for U.S. food assistance programs. And then finally, we're just going to talk about the joy that is World Cup soccer. I've been just inhaling it here, Ben. It's on at the office all day long. I think the guys are getting sick of me. They want the news back on, but I'm not going to do it. I just want to watch Senegal and France.

I will be at the Portugal DRC game tomorrow. I can see Rinaldo's abs in person. So I'm looking forward to that. You lucky guy. Apparently, you can see them from space. And then finally, you're going to hear my interview with Fred Plikin from CNN. He just completed a reporting trip to Iran. I think he said he's been to Iran 40 times total in his life, like reporting trips mostly.

we talked about what he heard from kind of average Iranians about their views on the war, their views on the government, the economic impact. He went to an IRGC event. Imagine going to, speaking of Iowa events, Ben, just like an IRGC rally. I bet that's a good time. Yeah. I bet those guys are feeling pretty good right now. Fired up and ready to go.

Fired up, meaning Kalishnikovs. We talked about how you had the process for setting up a reporting trip to Iran. So just honestly, fascinating guy. I can't wait to listen to that. And good for CNN and him for still doing that report. We need more foreign correspondence in this world. Yeah, we really do. Speaking of independent media, if you want to support progressive independent media, if you like

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Cricket.com slash friends, and it's the best way you could help us build this, whatever this thing is, Cricket Media. All right, Ben, let's turn to Iran because, like we said, there's a deal, but we don't know what's in it.

Apparently, Trump won't even share the text with BB Ninyao. Did you see that? Yeah, BB Ninya in Congress. It's a... It's kind of perfect. Didn't have a copy of the deal text either to BB Ninehue.

So, again, sure seems to suggest he's thrilled with the deal he negotiated. But never fear. We have painstakingly crawled through all the news reports to find what is leaked and we'll talk you through what we know. So here's the gist. There's a 60-day ceasefire. It's a real one this time, not a ceasefire name only where they just shoot at each other and bomb shit all the time and call it a ceasefire. This ceasefire will also include fighting between Israel and Hezbollah and Lebanon, which the Israelis are not happy about. But also Israel says they will not withdraw troops from Lebanon, which will complicate things. The Strait of Hormuz should open up starting on Friday. It's going to takes some time to get all the mines out of the Strait of Hormuz, maybe up to a month and a half. That will slow down the traffic, but the U.S. is also going to end its blockade of the strait. It sounds like going forward, Iran will charge ships to transit the strait. Trump, you know, he's been trying to claim that the straight will be permanently toll-free,

but J.D. Vance basically said it was up to negotiations. And Iran said they will be charging for, quote, navigation services, environmental protections, and ship insurance sure sounds like it told me. The Wall Street Journal reported that Iran will immediately be allowed to sell oil and that the agreement will waive the relevant sanctions to facilitate those payments. So that should net Iran a lot of revenue very fast. And by the way, conveniently helps Trump with gas prices to get the price of oil down. The U.S. is going to withdraw troops from the region. I assume that means just like assets brought in for the conflict to not dismantle all the bases.

But again, who knows? The U.S. and its partners in the region will fund up to 300 billion. million dollars for Iran's reconstruction. I think Reuters reported that half of that money's already been committed. And then on the nuclear front, the most important front, Iran says it won't produce a nuclear weapon, but all the hard details about how you ensure that actually happens are TBD, because that will be negotiated over the next 60 days. So that includes the fate of Iran's highly enriched uranium stockpile, the rules around its enrichment activities. That's all got to be dealt with now. So again, they have 60 days to negotiate. I think you've got to extend it.

another 30. I'm sure they'll just extend it a bunch of times because this is complicated. And then the U.S. is going to facilitate the release of frozen Iranian funds. So then just to be clear, I genuinely believe that the best deal available to Donald Trump was the one that happened the soonest because we were on the cusp of a global famine if the Strait of Homoos remained closed for much longer. But objectively speaking, like it does feel like Iran got a lot here and Trump got very little of what he had set out to accomplish. That's right. I mean, Iran made no real concessions as of yet, right? Because opening the Strait of Hormuz is not really a concession given that it was open before the war. And so you're looking at what did this war achieve? And it achieved precisely nothing

because he could have gotten a nuclear deal before the war without launching the war. Iran was negotiating to a nuclear deal. So we reopen a body of water, those already open. Then if you look at the revenue, There's all kinds of different revenue sources reported for Iran because there's the potential to toll the straight. There's this $300 billion fund, which must include, I would assume, frozen Iranian assets to get that number of that high. I don't know if it does. I think it might be private funds and then like Gulf countries kicking into. Yeah, some pot sweeteners from the Gulf. They all got fucking hit with ballistic missiles by Iran.

Now they pay to rebuild it. That's a hell of a deal for Qatar. And then also, like, they're selling oil and they're getting revenue from that. They're going to get on frozen assets. I mean, I say this time, you know, because I've seen this kind of anxiety. We should not attack the terms of the deal because we don't want to seem like we're against diplomacy. No, let's focus on the fact, here's how I'd do it. Trump tore up the JCPOA.

So let's compare these terms to what the JCPOA said. Because the revenue envisioned under this deal dwarfs what was in the JCPOA. The pallets of cash that Trump always talks about was $1.7 billion. And then the unfrozen assets that Iran was able to retrieve as part of the sanctions relief in front of the JCPOA, which involved them only getting that money after they'd ship their stockpile out, after they'd destroyed the core of the plutonium reactor, after they've ripped out most of their centrifuges, and after they'd accepted all these intrusive inspections. Then and only then did they get on order. I think we estimated it about $55 billion.

So we're talking like the $300 billion fund alone, is like almost 6x what they got under the JCPOA. And then they're getting all this other revenue that we hear about from either sanctions really for tolling the straight. And so you're just like pouring an infusion of tremendous amounts of money to the Iranians. And we don't even know in the nuclear terms, if they get there, seem like they'll basically be shipping out the stockpile and having limits on enrichment, which is, again, a version of the JCPOA.

So the point is like this war was absolutely the biggest self-destructive stupid. costly, pointless self-own that, you know, for America, that's saying a lot, given our recent track record. Yeah, we got a lot of those. And I think we have to drive home to the point that, like, this is what happens when you launch dumb wars. And this is what happens when you get led around by Benjamin Netanyahu. And this is what happens when you, like, ignore the law, which would have required Congress

to vote and Congress wouldn't have voted for this war. Like, this is what happens when autocrats launch dumb wars. you get bad terms. And that's, you know, those may be the best we can get, which means rather the war end than to continue, full stop. But it doesn't mean we shouldn't point out that these are like laughably, absurdly bad terms. If anything near what is leaked out, turns out to be the case. Yeah, like, I think the people on the left who are saying, let's not attack Donald Trump until this deal is done. Let's not attack him from the right and sound more hawkish than him. They're saying that from a good place, right? Because they don't want Trump.

to in any way be baited back into a war and to resume the conflict because of the catastrophic humanitarian consequences. But I think like I don't think Donald Trump gives a shit what we think. And I think we should not hesitate to be honest about what happened here and to criticize it. Because we're not just trying to message this deal. We are trying to kill forever this insane, hawkish, neocon, FDD-driven worldview that the United States can bomb its way to peace. And that's what happened here, right? Like somehow Donald Trump got talked back into doing another insane Middle East war, regime-changed war, and it was a catastrophic disaster.

And so I think we have to say, yes, this is the best available outcome to Donald Trump, but he lost the war. Iran now knows it can control the straight and can charge fees and will make a ton of revenue. Trump achieves none of his core objectives. Iran still possesses its highly enriched uranium, most of its ballistic missiles, its drone arsenal. they will almost certainly continue to support the proxy groups that they were supposed to stop supporting. The regime change strikes were a disaster for the Iranian people, first and foremost. They now have a younger, more hard-lined Supreme Leader in place, and they have a more powerful IRGC that's cemented control.

And then, like you said, the reports about the unfreezing of these assets, the $300 billion fund, all of this money, Iran will have access to far more money that it ever got under the JCPOA to fund its military. And I firmly think that if we could go back in time and it was 2018 and Donald Trump had just tried to renegotiate a strengthened JCPOA and called it the Trump nuclear agreement, he could have had that. You could have had it in a heartbeat. But instead we went down this insane regime change war path. We did enormous damage to our standing in the world. We devastated, you know, economies in Asia. Sudan could have an even worse famine because of what we did. We don't know the scope of the damage to U.S. military bases.

in the Gulf area. Like, we should be skeptical to every single claim that the Trump administration make about what they accomplished here. But based on what we know, it is an unmiticated disaster, and I think we have to say as much.

That's right. And you did the cost well. The only cost I'd add, you know, which we've talked about, but how many Iranian civilians died, how many Iranian girls died in that school? How many Lebanese have died because Netanyahu had to make this a two-front war.

I will say on the messaging point to, like, build on something you said, the idea that we're going to like jihitsu and flatter Trump on social media into like doing this deal, that's the wrong way of thinking about this. Trump needs to be so thoroughly humiliated and the FDD Lindsey Graham faction of Americans' national security establishment needs to be so thoroughly discredited that we just don't do stupid wars again. These are people that have told us for well over a decade that it would be easy to deal with the Iranian news. nuclear program and to remove the Iranian regime with some kind of military operation. We've tested the proposition of a diplomatic deal under the JCPOA that Iran complied with.

Now we've tested their way of doing it. And their way of doing it was a catastrophic failure with huge economic and human costs. And this is the moment for Democrats to be the actual anti-war party and say this was a dumb and pointless war from the beginning. And we don't have to throat clear forever about how bad the Iranian regime is, which makes it sound like you're actually for the war. This was dumb, illegal, and pointless, and destructive and costly, and we lost. And what this deal looks like are the terms that are dictated to the losing party of a war.

And absolutely, we want the war to end because we want the straight of Hormuz open and we don't want bombs to fall on people anymore. But that doesn't mean that we have to gaslight everybody and be like, oh, this is a good deal. Like, no. I mean, like, and by the way, like, to your point, the nuclear deal is not reached yet. there's a quite likely scenario in which there's never a nuclear deal in which Iran gets some revenue. They open up the straight and it's kind of a frozen conflict. And I guess the question for the Iranians, because they seem to be in the driver's seat is, do they want to make a bunch of nuclear concessions, which frankly they may cheat on anyway because we'll see what the inspections regime is in exchange

for essentially getting more revenue and more sanctuously? I actually, I hope they do. But because the other thing that Tommy, I was thinking, is the 60-day clock, like, takes you into the fall, essentially. There's zero percent chance Donald Trump is going to start a war with Iran again right before an election. And the Iranians know that. Yeah. So they're either going to, like, drag the negotiation out or maybe they'll decide to do a deal. But, like, this is just not how you do foreign policy. And we shouldn't give participation trophies for someone accepting that they lost a war and they need to open a body of what

that was open before it. And Democrats shouldn't be afraid to make that case. And the narrative, like, and we can't wait to try to message this because the narrative gets set now. And the Trump, the White House is out there. They're trying to spin this as a victory. And again, just to just to reiterate what Trump's own goals were. Remember, they wouldn't, he wouldn't do like a live speech before the war he put out a video. But this is what he specifically said where the goals were. He said, quote, we're going to destroy their missiles and raise their missile industry to the ground. We're going to annihilate their navy. We're going to ensure that the region's terrorist proxies can no longer destabilize the region or the world and attack our forces. And we'll ensure that Iran does

not obtain a nuclear weapon. So I put him maybe at one for four there because it does sound like they sank a lot of Navy boats. They're still able to close a straight over moves. But I guess they did that. But even if we wanted to be extra generous and like kind of judge him on what was realistic or feasible, like you said, we just have no idea if it was a good deal or not because all the nuclear stuff was punted going forward. I agree with you, Ben. Trump has been hinting that he's just going to let this go away. Like he keeps, you know, Rubio and Scott Bessent will be like, we must get the nuclear dust out of Iran.

This is a core objective. And Trump's like, I don't know. We got satellites watching it. And it's kind of obliterated under a mountain. And so who gives a fuck? Right. He's sort of like messaging that he's ready to move on and not actually worry about getting the highly enriched uranium stockpile out of Iran.

So, I know, I think that's the most likely outcome is the Iranians just as he would say, tap him along and play for time. Maybe they do cut a deal that's some sort of like JCPOA adjacent deal. But Vance and Trump, they're out trying to spin this thing. We just want to play you a couple examples of J.D. Vance and Trump's arguments. And then how it is being received among some of the most hawkish neocons who were like the cheerleaders for this war when it started. Let's watch. We're dealing with people that I think are very rational people.

We're dealing with a death cult that has seized control of Iran and is more blood on its hands than we can measure. They're not radicalized. It's different people, but it's the same fanatic regime. The coolest thing about the progress we've made over the last few weeks is that you see people within the Iranian system, senior leadership, even IRGC officials say, you know what, we may have some animosity, we may have some mistrust, but we recognize the way that we've done business with the United States for 47 years is a mistake. Let's try something else.

Why do you trust the IRC? You are the one negotiating with the IRGC. What makes you think they are going to keep their word? were nice to deal with. They were strong people, smart people. Once you have invested in the lie that a bunch of millinarian psychotics who believe that they are going to take over the world on behalf of Shia Islam are a rational negotiating partner, you are already operating in the wrong frame of mind.

So Ben seems happy there. Okay. Ben Shapiro, that is. Ben, J.D. Vance's comment that the process was cool because of the Iranian friends we made along the way is one of the most naive fucking moronic things I've ever heard in my life. Like I get, you know, J.D. Trump, they could have had some meetings with the Iranians like they did with the North Koreans instead of, you know, bombing their country to shit. Bombing them, yeah. I'm just like, I'm trying to imagine if you had made a comment like that

about how the, you know, the best part of the Cuba reprochement was all the cool relationships you built up with the Castro family. Like, you would have been drawn and quartered on Fox News. But anyway, I'm glad you had a good time, J.D. Vance. Yeah, I have a couple of reactions to this. The first is, and as again, listeners know, we are more than willing to be self-critical of Obama. So this is less the point about Obama and more a point about kind of Democrats or people who are anti-war or people who are sick of American foreign policy of domination. The reason to point out how full shit they are in terms of saying like, wow, we actually have talks to these people. Is it like, we did that. We did that in the Obama administration. We did have negotiations. We did have negotiations. We did have negotiations. negotiations with the Iranians, and we reached a deal with them. And so the fact that J.D. Vance is now just discovering, because he has to spin this deal, that it's better to talk to people instead of bombing them. No, like, the point is that, like, that was, this is entirely a preventable war because there was a negotiated deal that was made by Democratic president, a deal that said in paper, because

the other thing Trump always says is, they're finally committing to not build a nuclear weapon. Well, the preamble to the JCPO always said, Iran reaffirms it under no circumstances. Will Iran ever seek develop or acquire any nuclear weapons. And they weren't even, like, aware of the terms of the JCPOA because they demagogued it so hard and lied about it so much. And frankly, I had a media that was compliant in repeating their lies without fact-checking them. So the first point is, like, these people should not get away with suddenly discovering diplomacy

after this without being held accountable for the insanity of both pulling out of that deal and launching this war. The other thing that I think is interesting about the juxtaposition of the clips is, look, I don't, you know, the way Trump talks about the Iranian regime is kind of strange, like all of a sudden he likes them and they're strong and all the rest of it. But the way that, because, look, let's be clear, he's talking about a regime that brutalizes its own people, right? So you don't necessarily need to, like, glaze them that hard. But the other side of this coin is what Mark Levin and Ben Shapir are saying is actually part of the problem because, just because

they're a brutal regime, doesn't mean that they are, you know, intent on taking over the world on behalf of Shia Islam or they're, like, you know, fanatics. I think what we've just learned is even though they're murderous, they're quite sophisticated. They were very smart in how they dealt with this. They attacked our allies. They paralyzed the global economy. They made Lego movies. Yeah, they made Lego memes, you know, like, so let, can we not like just go around telling

everybody that just because we don't like these people, that they want to conquer the entire world or they're complete psychotic. Because no, like, they're sophisticated people that you need to deal with with a mixture of strength and diplomacy. But part of what's happened is there's been this like demagoguery about Iran for like decades in this country that helped plow the ground for this war because essentially you're dehumanizing the entire country of Iran. You're casting their leadership as no different from like suicide bomber terrorists. And that's just kind of not. the reality. We need a foreign policy that is rooted in facts and reality. And somewhere in between Trump and J.D. Vance's spin and Ben Shapiro's apocalyptic view is like the actual

truth here. And that's where we need to center our policy going forward. Yeah. Look, I agree with you on the media point. I would also add Congress in there because Congress is willing to assert itself and pass a law the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act of 2015. It makes it harder to cut an agreement or do a diplomatic deal with Iran. And they never assert themselves when it comes to, I don't know, starting wars. They've sort of given up on that whole part of the job of being a member of Congress. So, yes, it would be great if everyone was a little less critical of diplomatic agreements, which we know we're going to be imperfect and are going to require some give and take on both sides. And were a lot more critical and did more to prevent presidents from starting wars, which have ended in disaster.

And by the way, an agreement that was co-authored by Ben Cardin from Maryland, the senator at the time. time the senior Democrat on the Farm Relations Committee, who coincidentally had a lot of support from APEC and ended up not supporting the Iran nuclear deal. So like this is this is the stuff the Democratic Party needs to leave in the past. Yep. And it passed 98 to 1. Only Tom Cotton voted against it for some reason. I'm not even sure why. Pots of the World is brought to you by Quince in the summer. I don't want to overthink what I'm wearing. I want light, breathable pieces that are easy to throw on but still look put together. Not a lot to ask. You know what? Your pieces have looked really breathable lately. Thank you for a... That's why I keep coming back to Quince. They focus on high

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find support and therapy. Sign up and get 10% off at betterhelp.com slash crooked world. That's betterhelp.com slash crooked world. So, Ben, the big X factor here in whether this deal can hold, I think, is the front of the war in Lebanon and the fighting between Hezbollah and Israel and the ways that that could kind of blow everything up. So the Israeli defense forces are currently occupying a strip of territory into southern Lebanon that reaches at least six miles over the border. As we've discussed before, like Hezbollah was formed to resist Israeli occupation. And there's no reason to believe that they will stop now that the Israelis have taken more territory. Of course, we fully concede, like Hezbollah is firing rockets and drones into northern Israel.

It is terrorized innocent people in northern Israel and all parts of Israel. It is, they've terrorized large swaths of Lebanon. They've helped Assad butcher, peaceful protesters in Syria. So, like, Hezbollah is a terrorist organization. They absolutely fucking suck. But they're there and they will be, you know, part of the problem you are going forward. Netanyahu has used, but also Netanyahu has used this conflict. as an opportunity to just grab more and more territory.

And an Israeli air strike in Beirut almost blew up this diplomatic agreement that Trump just forged at the last minute. So Trump got asked about Israel and Hezbollah at the G7 in France on Tuesday. Let's listen. Can this deal survive? Israel at times 11. It can. And, you know, I consider that the minor war, Iran's a big one, but we have that a little pinprick out there that constantly rears its head and that's Hezbollah.

Are you frustrated with that Yalu said? No, we had a great relationship. I didn't like that he did an attack based on a, you know, there was a very minor little thing with some drones that were released and he ends up doing a very, I saw that attack, I saw where that bomb went. Did you see what happened? That was not, that was a vicious, that was too much.

You know, you can do too much also. You don't have to knock down an apartment every time you're looking for somebody. Because there are a lot of people in those apartment houses, and they're not all Hezbollah, that I can tell you. B.B has to be more responsible with respect to Lebanon. I would say of all countries they've been treated the worst. They should have been able to do the Japh faster.

It just goes on forever. And when that happens, it throws a negative light on the big deal, and that's the deal with Iran. I suggested to Israel to let Syria take care of Hezbollah. Hasbollah. Because to be honest, sweetie, I think they'd do a better job of doing it. If Israel can't do the job without killing everyone else, he'll do the job. Syria will do the job.

If it weren't for the United States of America, with me, because Obama was the opposite, Israel would not exist right now. Israel would have been blown off the face of the earth, 100%. Okay. So, I'm glad to hear Trump's having some belated concern about civilian casualties. It's better late than never. Though I have to imagine that those comments about Hezbollah being the minor war and that Hezbollah is just a little pinprick out there that constantly rears its head is going to go over

pretty poorly in Israel. As is the suggestion that the Syrians should deal with Hezbo? I don't even really understand what on earth he's talking about there. But it felt like designed in a lab to create a massive political problem for Bibunayay. It did. And I do want to say something about Hezbollah. All the things you said are true. These are people that are willing to take innocent civilian life.

And not only have they proven that in Israel, but even more so in scale in Syria. At the same time, I think Hezbollah would abide by terms of a ceasefire. They have in the past. They function as a terrorist organization, but also as a political actor. And frankly, this latest round of fighting took place after Israel talked Donald Trump into launching a massive war against Iran and then just started bombarding Lebanon, right? So Israel is the one that has created this crisis inside of Lebanon. And I truly believe that if Israel stopped bombing Lebanon, Hezbollah would stop firing rockets.

They tend to do what the Iranians tell them to do. And the Iranians are clearly invested in a ceasefire that has as part of its terms an end to the war in Lebanon. That's the first thing. The second thing is it's offensive to Israelis to describe it as a pin brick. But how do you like to be in Beirut? Right. And he's calling this like a minor conflict. It's crazy.

And meanwhile, the Israelis have been leveling, as Trump himself acknowledges, apartment blocks in Beirut. A million people are displaced. A million people. And yeah, a million people are displaced. That's not a minor war. And look, I'm glad that he's like calling this out. But to your point, they've been doing this the entirety of the Trump presidency between

Gaza and Lebanon. And so clearly, I don't think this is some genuine interest in civilian casualties. This is frustration with Bibi Nanyahu, potentially perpetuating a war that Trump. Trump very much wants to be over because it's been terrible for him politically. And he's undercutting BB politically inside of Israel. And he probably knows he's doing that. I think it's more a manifestation of two things. One, growing public opinion in both the Republican and Democratic Party against Netanyahu and Israel and their foreign policy, particularly when their foreign policy involves war. And two, Trump having massive buyer's remorse over letting Bibi Nanyahu talk him into this war in the

situation room. And frankly, if I was in Israeli, and I disagreed with like the majority of the Israeli population about most things politically in recent years, Netanyahu, by being the dog that caught the car with this Iran war, has just left Israel incredibly vulnerable. Because the United States is politically done with this relationship of subsidizing endless Israeli wars. This Iran war, which everybody knows, Netanyahu, like, has his fingerprints all over, has been an absolute catastrophe. And at a certain point, like,

Israeli voters need to hold Netanyahu accountable. Like, I'm not going to sit here and say, this is all on Bebe Nanyahu. He's been elected the fucking prime minister of the country for like almost every year, except for about one, I think, since 2009. Okay? So if you want a different kind of relationship

with the United States, then you have to elect a different kind of prime minister. And I think that should be the message. Yeah, this doesn't start with the war in Gaza, it doesn't start with the war. The run. Like Netanyahu has led the Israeli public into a political crisis starting back in what, 2009,

2015, where do you want to start it, when he decided to go all in with the Republican Party, attack Barack Obama, attack the JCPOA, go to Congress without telling the administration, launch a major speech, like a broad side against a popular Democratic president,

and then go all in, push all his chips in with Donald Trump, and just, you know, align himself with the, Republican Party. And now Democrats have moved away from supporting Israel. Oh, they detest Netanyahu. And Netanyahu has no backs up. He has nowhere else to turn. By the way, Ben, I don't know if you saw this polling of Trump's approval in Israel. There was a polling firm called Cantor. They did it for a news

outlook. Trump's approval is now 38 approve, 54 disapprove. His approval went down 20 points since May 25th. And also, I don't know if you saw these like Netanyahu aligned pundits are just ripping Trump to shreds, which I understand why they're mad in the moment, but it's so self-defeating. I mean, one guy on Channel 14 said that Trump was a loser. He called Jared Kushner and Steve Whitkoff, quote, Jew boys who were bought by Qatar and sold out their brothers in Israel. And he called J.D. Vance a scumbag. Umit. He was a right-wing pundit, said Trump had completely surrendered to Iran. He quoted Kissinger saying it may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal.

There was another pundit on Channel 14 News who said Trump and Vance are becoming the modern Neville Chamberlain. So, I mean, this is, I don't know if Netanyahu is kind of like blessing this kind of commentary or thinks it's going to be effective with Trump. But it feels like a very dangerous game they're playing. It just feels like a shrinking island because it's basically people like that in the Israeli right. Mark Levin, Ben Shapiro. Like, there's no political constituency for this anywhere in the world, except, like, Israel, like, elements of the American right. And I don't know, like, that's maybe some of the extreme Hindu nationalist in India who don't like Muslims. Like, this is, there's just, I don't know who they, they constantly act like it's permanently 2015, right, when they're trying to undermine the JCPOA.

because we've tried it their way for a decade under Trump and frankly under Biden with Gaza and then under Trump again, like the world is sick of this shit. You know, they're sick of the bloodthirsty rhetoric. They're sick of everything being compared to Munich. They're sick of the idea that we had to like fight wars in seven Middle Eastern countries at once. Like this is not working. Like there needs to be a different paradigm for creating a peaceful framework for life in the Middle East.

Now, to get to the core issue, we'll see. I don't think Netanyahu can afford to lose Trump because he has nowhere to go. No, he can't afford to. The Democratic Party's gun. Yeah. Not politically or also strategically, right? Because when you look at kind of when you total up the actual missile defense expenditure or who was shooting down the missiles and drones flying at Israel, it was often

the United States, like direct action by the United States to protect Israel. Like Netanyahu can't lose that. He also can't lose Trump's political support. Yeah. So I think what we'll see is like they won't probably leave southern Lebanon. and they'll probably try the Gaza thing where they say it's a ceasefire and then like periodically like they bomb something. But I don't know. Like that's a dangerous game for them to play. I think it's more likely they try to, you know, act tough and talk tough, but like tuck their

tail between their legs and hold on to southern Lebanon, which is already something that's illegal under international law. And it's more likely that this thing does just kind of limp along as a kind of frozen conflict while this nuclear stuff gets negotiated. Yeah. I just hope these really decide as time to genesis Netanyahu because there could be a better relationship that is just like on firmer footing that is not all the things we've detested about it going forward. But you just got to vote the right way, guys. All right, Ben, speaking of elections, there's a big election this week in the United Kingdom that could change the course of history for the UK. But interestingly, this is not some like major national election. We were talking about

one by election, which is in the U.S. we called a special election for just one seat in the 650 seat House of Commons in a place called Makerfield. But the reason this maker field, but the reason this make or feel by election matters so much is because the Labor Party candidate, Andy Burnham, if he wins, he will almost certainly then challenge Prime Minister Kier Starmor to be the leader of the Labor Party. And if he wins that, he will become Prime Minister. So Burnham is a well-known figure in British politics. He once served as a cabinet minister. He was like one of the more senior members of the Labor Party until he decided to quit Parliament and I think 2015 or 2016, move back home to Manchester and then run for mayor, which is sort of a seemed as a shocking

decision at the time to move from kind of national politics to more parochial politics. But it seems to have suited him quite well stylistically and for a lot of other reasons. He's like good at the kind of back-slapping day-to-day work of politics. You know, you hear journalists talk about when you go out with Andy Burnham or you talk to people in Manchester, like a lot of them have an experience with him. He's gone to their event. He got funding for their thing, you know, their community center, whatever. He also got credit for kind of pushing back on and questioning COVID-era lockdown restrictions. He just seems like more charismatic and likable than Kirstarmer,

which I know is not the highest bar, but, you know, it's something. So again, like winning the seat, though, will still be tough. Like a lot of Europe, the far right is ascendant in the UK. We have talked many times about Nigel Farage, kind of like cigarette come to life, and his far-right anti-immigrant Reform UK Party. Now there is an even further right alternative to reform UK, called Restore, which launched like four months ago, but already has about 130,000 members,

so they say. It was founded by an MP named Rupert Lowe. Restore is called for the mass deportation of immigrants. They talk about the great replacement theory. They have embraced these far-right violent activists, like this guy, Tommy Robinson, who's basically a soccer hooligan turned political activists, who even Nigel Farage has held at arm's length. And by the way, of course, Elon Musk is now a big fan of Restore. He tweeted the other day, only Restore can save Britain. So back to the Makerfield race, Ben. The irony here is that Andy Burnham could win and benefit if Restore does well and peels off enough votes from the reform candidate, which would help him win. But Ben, regardless, it's pretty crazy that there's an election happening this week where only 75,000 people will get to vote and they could have such an enormous impact on the UK's history, global events, all of it.

But I guess, you know, here we are. I guess it's similar to like, you know, precincts in Iowa or New Hampshire. voting for presidential nominees or something. Yeah, I think that what it tells you is that the Labor Party probably very much wants to move on from Kier-Starmor, but that nobody in Westminster, nobody currently in the parliament was able to muster the coalition to do it. And so they cast around. Andy Burnham has a reputation, as you said, as a charismatic politician.

He's to the left of Starmor, and that gives him more of a base of support. than Starmor has in this kind of squishy center. And so it makes sense why they might want Andy Burnham and not having found someone else kind of in the House of Commons or the House of Lords, for that matter. But yeah, it speaks to the dysfunction in British politics that we had, I don't know, four or five Tory prime ministers in about five years.

And we may be, you know, this may be like the six or six, or I've lost track. I mean, that just tells you, you know, there needs to be some stabilizing. I see why, and I argued the case for why they need to move on from Starmer. But if they do, the goal should be, like, stability through the next general election here. But it gives them a chance, and we'll see what happens. It's, I mean, you know, boy, I don't know what the big board is going to say in the by-election, but it's, it is pretty wild that, you know, people are going to be voting that kind of

probably tactically. Like, maybe I want to vote for Burnham because I want Starmor out, even though I might not normally vote there. It'll be interesting to see what the kind of exit polls in the British version look like. I actually think it's probably benefiting Starmor that the Tories were such a basket case and had so much turnover because I think there's an argument within labor that's like, come on, guys, we can't be like them. You know, we can't be constantly like replacing our leaders. But again, Starmer had a tough week. I mean, John Healy, his defense minister, quit last week. They had a dispute over defense spending. Starmer promised to do spend 3% of GDP by 2030 on defense, but all the planning has sort of fallen short. And it's a real problem, I think, for the UK. I mean, the BBC did a comparison of British defense capabilities now compared to 1990, the numbers are not good for them. In 1990, they had 153,000 soldiers. That's been cut in half. In 1990, they had like 48 major combat ships, that's down to 13. So they are really limited if there were to be some sort of, you know, conflict that was Europe-wide with Russia, for example. Starmer is, you know, still doing his thing. He's trying to introduce a

social media ban for kids under 16. That would apply to like Snapchat, TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, them, everything. It's worth noting that we covered the Australia social media ban a couple months back. That is not going very well. It seems kids are just finding ways around it, like using their parents' IDs, using different accounts, fake IDs to get on. I think the Wall Street Journal found that seven out of 10 kids under 16 have social media accounts anyway and maybe, you know, this generation won't benefit, but the next generation will. Yeah. But, you know, sort of an interesting backdrop to kind of like the way is storm but things starmer is focused on um to try to convince the public that he is doing his job yeah well i mean the stories do connect in a way because the social media ban is not something

that requires money um and i mean i i think first of all the australia thing is going to be probably the first in a series of experiments on this uh front and we've already seen some democrats running for president or probably running for president kind of proposing this and i do think it's probably more the next generation coming up that you got the impact i will see on the defense side the couple things that jumped out to me. Or one, like, Starmer is an impossible position here because they just don't have a lot of money. And they've been making cuts to popular things. And they've kind of, you know, raising taxes is never popular. Sometimes you just don't have enough to pay for all the things you promise. But there's a bigger story, Tommy, if you talk to people across Europe, too, Trump likes to tout,

and this isn't me swerving to pick on Trump, but this is me pointing out facts related to defense spending. There are all these wild pledges, you know, 3% to 5%. No. Nobody is really hitting these targets. It's all made up. These are just people get together at NATO summit and they all pledge to do something. And then Trump brags about it. But like, I mean, yes, they are spending more, but they're just, these targets are kind of fantastical. And it'd be better, I think, to talk about investing in capabilities and specific capabilities,

rather than just kind of throwing arbitrary numbers out there because you end up in situations like this. When you set some arbitrary target that you know you can't hit in your budget, well, this ends up happening. And Starmer's bigger problem is the economy is just stuck. and he has not been able to get it going into years. And government spending can help with that. But by the way, government spending on defense is not going to help at all there. Because what's going to happen is the Brits will go and buy a bunch of U.S. weapons systems and punt money into Raytheon's pocket and not help anybody in the U.K.

One last thing, Ben, just on this far right sort of political movement issue, this is something we've been tracking periodically. And it's just interesting to see, like, the far right splitting in the U.K. That is also happening in Italy. There's a new party there called National Future. They don't think that Georgia Maloney is, you know, far enough right for them. There's, they have announced this new party. In France, the National Rally Party is still the main event, but there's this kind of growing leadership struggle between Marine Le Pen and her protege, Jordan Bardella, who's doing, like,

big interviews with Politico this week for some reason. I don't know if you caught that one. And then also one last thing that we noticed was Switzerland had a vote on capping the population of the country at 10 million by 2050. Now, this was rejected. It was 55 to 45. was brought forward by this right-wing party called the Swiss People's Party. But that's a lot of people voting to cap the population of the country.

And I think it just shows you the power of anti-immigrant messaging in Europe in particular. You know, I think now one in three people in Switzerland are foreign-born that has led to a backlash. There's been huge protests and riots in Belfast because of, you know, a migrant tried to stab somebody or almost ahead. them. But it's just like a very important political undertone and driver of the vote that we're watching. Yeah, I mean, there's obviously the ugly undertone of extreme anti-immigrant politics. I mean, you could debate border policy. I think the one thing I'd say that is that you pointed out, as these far right parties kind of smell actual power, you are likely to have more fracturing among the far right. Because all the sudden, we're not just like some fringe movement that has to all back

the same leader because we're just trying to get attention or we're trying to get over a threshold just to get into the parliament. It actually gets a little harder when you get closer to the actual thing. And we could start to see this kind of fracturing in country after country like we're, you know, like we are beginning to see in the UK. It takes a politician like Maloney who kind of managed to kind of tame her rivals and I'm an incredibly skilled politician. But it's no guarantee that that will be the case in these other countries. We'll see the French election will be a huge test of it next year. Obviously, the next British election will be a test of Farage. So a lot to watch here, but including whether, as in the U.S., where you have these kind of fractures in

MAGA, where MAGA is starting to be like, well, you know, Trump's not far right enough for me. I'm going to go off and listen to this podcast. Well, you're seeing that in European politics, too. Yeah, for sure. POTS of the world is brought to you by Haya. We're only being to understand the impact ultra-processed foods have on our health, especially on the health of our kids. That's exactly why Haya exists to give parents a real. solution in a market flooded with kids vitamins that prioritize candy like a peel over actual nutrition. Some children's vitamins on the market today contain up to seven grams of sugar per serving and are stuffed with artificial additives and petroleum-based dyes.

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Okay, a quick update and some rare good news for you guys. A few weeks ago, we sounded the alarm about Trump's attempt to install this guy named Bill Pulte as director of national intelligence. Bill Pulte is a fucking moron who's currently in charge of the federal housing agency. He was using that position to pull confidential mortgage enemies, try to manipulate it, send it over to DOJ to manufacture prosecutions of Trump's enemies. The good news is that Trump faced bipartisan and very intense pushback on the Pulte nomination. He ultimately caved and withdrew Pulte, although he's still trying to install him on an acting basis for a short period of time. The new nominee to be the Director of National Intelligence is Jay Clayton, who is the U.S.

attorney for the Southern District of New York, which sees a lot of counterterrorism work. He's a former SEC chairman. So this guy might be a MAGA hack. I don't really know that much about him, but at least, he has a lot of relevant experience to bring to the job unlike Bill Pulte, who was like a couple weeks ago, we played a clip from him on a podcast about HVAC systems. So, you know, there was also him at a conference where the guy got slapped in the face of the dildo because he was pumping.

Yeah, I'd like to think that that segment that we did is probably what killed the Pulte nomination. Yeah, I think I heard it got played in the Oval Office. Maggie Harriman, Jonathan Swan, of four sources. So rare good news. Also, interestingly, like, so there's sort of two debates around the DNI that have now been kicked up. The one is whether Democrats should vote to reauthorize Section 702 of FISA, which allows the intelligence community to get without a warrant intercepted communications of foreign persons outside of the United States from American social media and tech companies. I over, you know, in the past, I think

I've defended 702 is the most defensible, even though there were abuses. Now I feel pretty firmly in the camp that if I were in Congress, I would not reauthorize any intelligence collection program because if Trump thinks it's such, this is such a game that he can install Bill Pulte as the DNI, then we shouldn't give him any more authorities. But also it's kicked up this conversation about whether the DNI position should be eliminated entirely. It sounds like that might be where Trump is. Some members of Congress are. I don't know if you had to take on that, Ben, or if you've been tracking that debate because I know, you know, you were part of like kind of the post-9-11 work that led to the creation of the DNI. But that was sort of a new one to me.

So first of all, I think the killing the Pulte nomination, you have to think that what happened is some Republicans called Trump and said, you just can't do that. You know, it's a sign that there might be some healthier pushback than, say, a year ago from Republicans. And maybe they tied it to 702. Then the other two things I'd say, on seven. The Intel people create this binary where it's like you either reauthorize this or the sky's going to fall. But the point is that even if you're in a better governing situation than Trump, I think you don't reauthorize it and you kind of have to recreate all these Patriot Act authorities and narrow them in scope and put in more safeguards. That's the conversation we should

be having about reform. And the DNI itself, the reason I continue to believe you should have one. I mean, Trump hasn't really used the office in the way it should be used. I mean, Tulsi Gabbard, was in there doing raids down in Fulton County, like Rick Grinnell was in the first term doing God knows what. The only reason I still think it's worth having is what is the alternative? Like someone has to run this kind of sprawling apparatus in terms of someone has to help set intelligence priorities. Someone has to help kind of prepare the information flow to the President of the United States, like the presidential daily brief. And in the past, before there was a DNI, the director of the CIA did that. And it just kind of created this like turbocharged

empowered figure who was both operational running all these CIA operations and overseeing the budgets of all these other agencies. I don't know. I still think that like if anyone was actually interested in like the intelligence community functioning properly, it would help to have someone in that role. It's just that oftentimes you've had presence who didn't take that seriously and, you know, prefer to turn to their CIA director or their NSA director and kind of undercut their DNI. The person doesn't have to be like all-powerful controlling everything, but literally just someone helping mine the store set priorities. Yeah, exactly. I mean, it's a good government position. And so one example of how the DNI can work is Avril Haynes, when she was the DNI, was the person who drove the entire strategy to declassify intelligence about Russia invading Ukraine, which helps get everybody on board and get prepared for when that happened. I don't think that

that kind of thing could have taken place without Avril Haynes doing that. And so, So I think Ariel is a good example of what you can do when you have a competent person in a role like that. So two more things. So we wanted to flag a report about just the ongoing humanitarian disaster that has resulted from Donald Trump and Elon Musk. Congrats on being a trillioner, by the way, sir. Destroying USAID. So this comes from someone named Sam Vickerski at the Council on Foreign Relations. A great report.

The report details the Trump administration's complete mismanagement of food for peace, which is a program that was transferred from USAID. to the Department of Agriculture after USAID was gutted, despite the fact that the Agriculture Department has zero expertise in disaster response or like administering global humanitarian aid, which just didn't make any sense to put it over there. So even more problematic, Ben, is that food for peace is currently distributing American grain to seven countries, two of which Rwanda and El Salvador don't meet any sort of emergency standard.

So clearly this is just a favor to countries that did something that Trump liked, specifically on immigration for El Salvador. And then other countries in severe crisis are just not getting anything. So the biggest one, the biggest red flag on this list is Sudan, which has the world's worst hunger crisis. And then there's a bunch of other countries with Muslim populations like Afghanistan, Lebanon, and Yemen. But again, the scale of the crisis in Sudan is, I think, hard to overstate. The World Health Organization reported at the beginning of this year that over 20 million people required health assistance at 21 million desperately needed food. 13.6 million people have been displaced and 40% of Sudan's community kitchens have closed since the beginning of the year, presumably because they don't have anything to give out because USAID is gone. So Ben, it's just one of those

examples like where you read about the impact of the USAID getting gutted. It's hard to keep it on the front pages. It's hard to sort of like help people understand the impact without specific examples. But I honestly just don't know how any other word to describe what they did here other than evil. There's just like millions of kids. are going to starve, period. I think the Elon comparison is apt here, Tommy. I just say, like, at these events I've been doing, I've had, like, over, I think, 15 or 20 people who were Doge from USAID. And you see the loss in terms of the funding to places like Sudan, the people that want to have a channel for doing something good in the world. I think the split screen of Elon must be becoming a trillionaire at the same time that we see

these kind of shortages in places like Sudan, says something pretty profound about the world and its priorities. And we just have to keep beating this drum. I honestly, Tommy, like, this may not, this may be far too punitive. I don't know, like a special tax on that trillion dollars to create the next international development agency might be. Like, if you're looking for it, it's such a fraction. The USCID budget is such a fraction of just this one human being's wealth. And it says something about our priorities that like we exalt Elon Musk for being a trillionaire while we don't pay a rounding era of his wealth to help save hundreds of thousands of lives around the world. I do think that Democrats cannot forget that there's a responsibility on the back end to build a better development agency,

frankly, that's more fit for the purpose of the 2020s than USAID necessarily was. It did great work, but obviously could have been reformed. And yeah, maybe that is like a one piece of the kind of wealth tax that needs to be put in place. All for the wealth tax. I can't believe that Elon becoming a trillionaire is not like kind of the moment when the pitchforks come out and the populist outrage is like bubbles over to a new place. But here we are. Finally, Ben, we're just kind of some fun. So the FIFA World Cup is happening as we speak.

I don't know about you. I spent the morning watching France versus Senegal is an incredible game. And Boppe is unbelievable. He's just like went off in the second half. Last week we covered a lot of the issues with the World Cup, some of the terrible things that the Trump administration is doing around the games. Today we're just going to have some fun. How many games have you caught? I know you've been on the road.

I've caught part of like three or four games. Yeah. I think I've had it on all day, every day at the office. And then I'm like laying in bed at night streaming it on my phone as I go to sleep. So I've been pretty obsessed. I also went to USA-K-Kargo. Yeah, you were doing next stuff. I can't get in the middle of all my NICs podcast.

We also have the UFC fight on the South Long. on. Dude, I went to the USA Paraguay game on Friday in L.A. It was, shout out Ben and Vicki, my buddy from college for getting us tickets. It was one of the most fun sports experiences I've ever been to because it was like everyone was just hyped to be there, like people dressed up, super patriotic, fun, people chanting, just like psyched on the way in. And then, you know, in typical American fashion, you just beat the breaks off of some country

of less than 7 million people in celebrated. but everyone's cool about it. It was like, it was a great thing to like see the team, um, playing that well and these young stars. And, and one thing I just want to say to listeners, like in the Discord community and stuff, you get a lot of people being like, how can you root for team USA when Trump is president and in this moment? And it's like, I just want to say, don't let them take this from you. You know, like this is all of our country. Be patriotic. Like, root for your teams. Be psyched at the diversity on that team. And the fact that like a guy who scored two goals would be described by the Ben Shapiro's of the world as an anchor baby.

You know what I mean? Like immigration has made us a better team, right? Like there's a lot to love about this team, a lot to celebrate about these players. Like, I don't know. I just, I hate when liberals or progressive like let Republicans take patriotism and cheering for your country away from us. Because I like, first of all, it sucks. And also I think like people want to be part of a political movement that celebrates their country, loves their country despite its flaws. Yeah, I'd add to that in two ways. The first is the same

progressive impulse that I like, which is like, why are we punishing the Iranian team? Why are we not letting them stay in the United States? I agree with all that. I don't think we, I think the Iranian team should be treated like everybody else. I think he should be able to stay where the fuck they want. Their coach should be able to come, all those things. Well, that applies to our players too. Like, just like I don't include, you know, hold the Iranian soccer players responsible for the conduct of their government. Why should we hold our players accountable for what Donald Trump said? I mean, that kind of plays into the idea that Donald Trump is America. And like, you know, every one of these players is playing for Donald Trump. And then the second thing is we should call out and we have called out

and we'll call out any, like, ridiculous xenophobia and racism in terms of like not letting certain people into this country and all these other things. But actually, once the games start, I'm not seeing that that's how American fans are acting. No. Like, it seems like people are pretty, I was down on Venice Beach the other day, and there was a huge fucking Argentina show of strength. They had all the flags out. They had like beach tents and the Argentina flag.

And people were loving it. They were like dancing to the music. And it's fun to have people from all over the world here. And Americans, most Americans, not all Americans, obviously, we like to trump twice, but like most Americans are kind of psyched to have the rest of the world here. Like, let's let ourselves, you know, even if you're not like the most rah-rah patriotic person fine, but like, let's let ourselves, like, feel good about the players. Because I just don't, I just don't agree with, like, punishing athletes for the conduct of

their government. It's stupid. And also, I agree with you. Like, I think it's been really fun seeing all these clips on social media of foreign visitors to the United States, experiencing, like, waffle house for the first time and, like, losing their minds, right? And you kind of feel like you're experiencing your country all over again through the eyes of someone else.

And it makes you, it reminds you of all the things you love about it. and why it's great. And like, yes, you see these cultures converging in host cities. You see like Korean fans getting shit-faced with Mexican fans and like going to the club and making out. This is so great. Like, there's just so much of joy. And so what we did is actually we brought you guys a super cut of some of our favorite moments

of these clips. Again, this is a reason why you need to subscribe to POTSafe the World on YouTube because you can see these clips because there's not a lot of dialogue in this. It's just like lots of fun stuff. But we'll play it. And then I'll tell you. what we just watched. Where are you from?

We're Nigerian, man. Nigeria. All up in Mexico. Yeah, yeah. We're Mexican. We're Mexican today, man. Let's go Nigeria. All right, so we played a lot of stuff there because I just couldn't get enough of it.

So I think we had some, the fans from Norway just kept like pretending they were rowing things. There's videos of them on an escalator. The Scottish fans took Boston by store. There were dudes playing bagpipes at 6.30 in the morning. The entire Scottish fan base apparently, they must have all just bought tickets to go see a Red Sox game at Fenway Park. Then they took the place over. They were literally hanging from the rafters. They were singing songs.

Like people who went said it was the most fun Red Sox game. They had been to in years in part because the team sucks right now, but we won't talk about that. You had Mexican fans doing dancing gangnam style with South Korean fans. You had the ESPN in Mexico posted this video of the Mexican fans sharing their tequila bottle with the Koreans. actually knows the Koreans sharing it with the Mexicans because they brought a bottle of tequila, didn't realize they couldn't bring it to the stadium, and then just decided to take shots with all their counterparts.

My favorite people in the entire video, Ben, were the Nigerian dudes who were such haters of the South African team that they traveled all the way to Mexico to watch them lose. Love those dudes. He had Senegal fans in Times Square. Then you had Ecuador and Ivory Coast plans playing flip cup against each other

outside of a game in Philly. Apparently, Philly is the only place where you're really allowed to tailgate hard. So I don't know, I mean, like, how do you not love this? Yeah, and I love, like,

they are sampling our culture, we're sampling their culture, it's blending together. I also love, like, I love rooting for the USA. I love also, like, finding these teams that I kind of fall in love with

along the way, you know? And sometimes you fall in love with the teams because of their fans. Like, how can you not root for the Koreans? You know, like, they love their teams so much, they're just, like, getting, you know, wasted on tequila shots.

I mean, it's just, it's great. And like Spain versus Cape Verde, like somehow improbably like played them to a tie. There have been a lot of great, like gutsy. Yeah, Cape Verde. Yeah, I was rooting for Cape Verde there. I like the underdogs. I like the underdogs too. Buddy mine went to the Iran game in L.A. the other night.

It said it was packed. I watched that game too. People are rooting for Iran. Anyway, lots of great stuff happening. Watch the World Cup games if you are not. It will bring you great joy. Okay. Ben and I are going to take a break.

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Terms and conditions may apply. Joining me today is Fred Plutkin. He is the senior international correspondent at CNN. He's based in Berlin. But until last Friday, he was on the ground reporting from Iran. Fred, thanks so much for making the time. Yeah, thank you for having me. So I want to start with the news and get more into the experience of being in Iran.

The U.S. and Iran have reportedly cut a deal to end the war. We don't know what's in the deal because they won't tell us. They won't release the text. The gist seems to be reopening the Strait of Hermuz and the two sides tried to negotiate some sort of follow on about Iran's nuclear program. I know you were in, you know, you left Iran before this was finalized, I believe, but were you able to talk with people you met in Iran about the gist of this sort of of agreement and get a sense of how they felt about it?

Yeah, certainly. I mean, I spoke with Iranian officials and sort of everyday people on the streets as well. And I think especially, you know, if you spoke to like, you know, local shop owners, folks on the street and stuff, there were a lot of them who were saying that they really wanted the conflict to end and they were really hoping for some sanctions relief. One of the things about the past couple of months, especially, but really the past years in Iran is that they have had some economic problems. And, you know, if you look at the time since since the war story.

started, the internet was shut down for an extended period of time. And they are really, you know, very linked up society. They do a lot of online business and that made it very difficult for them. So a lot of folks were saying, you know, they were persevering. But, you know, they were kind of happy to hopefully get a break. And if you look at the Iranian officials that we spoke to, we actually spoke to a lot of officials, including two advisors to Iran's supreme leader. One of the things that was very important for them was getting some of their frozen assets. And that's what they kept talking to us about. They said, look, there's about, you know, they were talking about 24 billion roundabout. They said they considered a goodwill gesture by the U.S. if the U.S.

were to give that back. How and what sort of mechanism there could be for that was unclear, but that was something that was really key for them. And then obviously lifting the blockade was the other thing that was key for them as well. But I think that this whole thing, the idea of that what you were just talking about, of making this a two-step process where on the one hand, they stop the hostilities. The Iranians open the straight of Hormuz, the U.S. lifts the naval blockade. The Iranians can start exporting some of the oil that's obviously caught up there in that area. I think that that's something that they are latching onto as well. They always said they wanted to keep the discussions about their nuclear program out of the first memorandum of understanding and then

move that into a later stage. Yeah, I can totally understand the kind of basic Naslo hierarchy of needs, like ending the conflict would be number one for everyone. But I also wonder if there are people who feel like Donald Trump is just, look, he is just cutting a deal to get gas prices down in the U.S. And all this talk early on of like riding to the rescue of protesters who were killed seems to be gone. And he seems to be just happy leaving in place this new regime, which looks a lot like the old regime. But Trump now describes them as pragmatic. So I can imagine it cutting both ways, but it sounds like people just wanted it over. You know what? I think. I think one of the things, it's a really, really interesting question. And I was actually, I was in Iran also in February of this year before the war started, but also after the demonstrations that took place there, that, you know, obviously ended very, very violently. And I have to say that when I was on the ground back then, I was speaking to people and a lot of people back then were asking me, is the U.S. going to bomb us? Is there going to be war? And I said at that point, you know, I think about 80% yes, 70 to 80% yes. And

There were actually some people who then gave me a thumbs up because they were so angry at the government. But then I was also in Iran after the bombing started. And a lot of those same people were like, we could not imagine how bad this was going to be. And having been there when that happened at the height of the bombing campaign, it was definitely one of the toughest experience I have to admit that I've ever had. Because the thing is that there, you know, there's no real place to seek shelter. Yeah. There's no bomb shelters. There's a subway, but, you know, there's not that many subway stations also.

And, you know, when a military uses 2,000-pound bombs in an urban area, it just, you know, there's going to be what people call collateral damage. There's going to be civilians who are harmed. And I think a lot of people were just downright shocked at what was going on, you know, and I can tell you from us being there, there really wasn't an extended period of time that we went anywhere, that there wasn't a bombing. nearby. So I think for a lot of people having experienced that, you know, they're like, we really want to go to something different. You know, we would like to have a chance economically.

And I do think that right now the leadership is definitely, you know, very emboldened and feels very entrenched as well. Yeah, I wouldn't imagine. So again, you're one of the very few Western reporters who's managed to get into Iran since the war started. Can you just tell us, like, where you went, what you saw and what the general impact was on the average Iranian person. Well, the impact was huge. I mean, so the way that it worked this time, normally you fly into Iran, right? There's international airlines that fly into Tehran airport. Obviously, that wasn't going on this time.

And I have to say, I've been traveling Iran for a long time. I think I've been there like 45, 46 times. I've been to a lot of Iranian cities. But this time, it was Tehran in the greater Tehran area while the war was going on. And what we did because we'd heard that a lot of the border crossings were closed as we flew into Armenia and then we had to drive for nine hours to the border with Iran. You know, they were very, the security guys there were nervous to let us in. And then they did. But we had, so we had like a 14 hour drive then to Tehran.

And we were already, as we were driving in, this is in the really early stages, like I think three or four days after the war started. We were already going past industrial areas that had been bombed. You know, we saw plumes of smoke. And then we actually, we stopped shortly before Tehran because there was bombing going on in the west of the city that we would have had to drive through. So we didn't do that. But while we were, you know, going down for the night, they bombed an area close to us as well. And I woke up in the morning. There were jets overhead.

So it was, I mean, the impact was felt by everybody, you know. It was a big, big bombing campaign that was going on. And, you know, for a long time, I think in the cities, it was mostly the Israelis doing the bombing. So Israeli, but also American jets were almost flying at will and just taking out a lot of places. And it was difficult for a lot of people, you know. And they were afraid to go to work, to go about their lives because a lot of security installations were hit, you know, military. bases, police stations, government buildings. And, you know, if your business is close to that, then, you know, there's a, there's a, there's a good chance that you could be hurt.

There was one place that we went to where they took out, I think it was a police station and the local folks there were telling us that got taken out. But the bakery across the street, pretty far away got, you know, got badly damaged as well. And their local baker got killed. So, yeah, I mean, it was, it was a huge impact. And on top of that, of course, you know, a lot of people lost their work. A lot of business. were destroyed. Like, for instance, almost the entire steel industry.

You know, if you recall that, there were big strikes against the steel industry. So it's a big economic hit. And I think it was, the, the bombing was pretty shocking for a lot of people on the ground, I think. Well, so, you know, you talked about how

before the war started, you know, there was this massive protest movement followed by a massive crackdown on the protesters. Were you able to get any sense of support for the Iranian regime after that protest movement was crushed and then the bombing raid started. I think that it took a big hit, but I think that it was still, there was still a degree there.

And, you know, one of the things that I said after we got out in February, and this was again, this was before the war, but after the crackdown that happened, is I felt that, you know, the support for the government was pretty weak before that already, you know. It was, you know, the economy wasn't doing very well. there was a reason why the protests had happened. And I think that that, you know, obviously took another hit again. But I said when I came out that I didn't think that there was going to be an uprising against the government if the U.S. starts bombing simply because there were so many security forces on the ground at that point. You know, everywhere you went, there was a checkpoint everywhere.

And these are, these are, you know, local militias that are very much entrenched also in the community. You know, there were dudes with their sons at the checkpoints and stuff like that. It's more a siege than like military. It's very, yeah, it was a lot of. besiege, but also on top of that, like, local militias that, you know, I couldn't define. But anyway, there were a lot of guys out with guns on the streets, patrolling the streets, motorcycle groups patrolling the streets.

So I said it would be very difficult even if people wanted to do that. And on the other hand, also, they're really, I didn't really see very much as of an organized movement, you know, because obviously the opposition wasn't really organized to begin with. they came out and there were demonstrations for the government. And I think the government support certainly increased as the bombing went on because a lot of people didn't want intervention from the outside. But of course, that discontent was definitely in February was very much there. One last question on the protests. I mean, the estimates for how many people were killed in the protests seemed to range from like 5,000 to 40,000.

Is there any fidelity on that? I think it's from like 3,000 to like 40,000. It's super difficult to ascertain. Also because we obviously have very little, even when you're on the ground, you know, I don't purport to know what every Iranian thinks, you know, or what the public opinion there is. So it is quite difficult. I think the government has some figure of like 3,000 something. I would assume it's higher, you know, maybe considerably higher than that. I was actually, when I was there in February, one of the things that we did do is we went to the big, the main cemetery. of Tehran. It's called Beheshtizara. It's in the south of the city near the Imam Khomeini shrine. And there were a lot of fresh graves. There were a lot of fresh graves and there were a lot of families crying there. And then we wrote an article about it. There were a lot of people who were like, please don't put me on camera. But yeah, I mean, you know, it's, there's differing

differing accounts, but you could, there was the sense something very, very terrible that happened and a lot of people had seen very terrible things happen. Yeah, I bet. Yeah, you also managed to go to an IRGC event. Can you tell us about the event? What's the vibe at a IRGC event? I went to a couple of IRGC events, actually. Yeah, so I was at one, I think it was, I don't know, this Friday or this, then it was Thursday, I think.

So basically, it's also the one year anniversary of the Israeli attacks in last June. And so they were basically, you know, where a lot of senior IRGC leaders were killed in the early stages of that. So they basically had the morning ceremony for one year on for that. And, you know, the IRGC right now, I think, from what I gleaned, feels as though it's much more in control and in command and stronger than it was maybe even a year ago. I think one of the things that they sort of pride themselves on is that they got hit by two of the most powerful air, if not the two most powerful air forces in the world. They stood. They reconstituted themselves. they struck back. They managed to project power into the Gulf region, into the Strait of Hormuz,

and that obviously gave them a big internal boost. So from what I saw, their morale was pretty high. I mean, we were at an event, you know, where they were screaming death to America and death to Israel, the kind of things that you very often hear. But you could tell that their whole vibe seemed to be, I would say, you know, a lot more confident and a lot more nimble than maybe you would have seen before. It's one of the interesting things that, you know, with so many senior also Revolutionary Guard leaders who were killed in the early stages of the U.S. Israeli campaign or the Israeli campaign, that it's actually kind of rejuvenated the military leadership to a certain extent. And I think that you also, you saw that also as the war went on. I mean, one of the things that was really a standout moment for me as I, you know, observed the war was there was an instance when the Israelis well into the war hits the Natanz nuclear facility. And it took the Iranians only a couple hours to go back and strike at Dimona at the Israeli nuclear facility. And that to me made very clear that, first of all, their command and control structure was still very much in place. And that also they're able to point their missiles in very

different directions maybe than before and still project power even all the way into Israel. And I think that's something that really, for them, I don't know if it was surprising, but certainly something that to them showed that their sort of strategy of asymmetric warfare to an extent, at least, was working. Yeah, I think it definitely worked. I mean, you got to my next question, which is Trump keeps describing the new leadership in Iran as more pragmatic, more willing to make a deal. There's this question of whether Moshtaba Hamenei is sick or injured or really calling the shots. What's your sense of the leadership structure these days? So I think to a certain extent, they are definitely, I would also say, they're still, they're quite pragmatic, actually.

I mean, I do have to say that, you know, the fact that they were in this war, which they defined as a war of survival, but at the same time, they also, first of all, managed to reconstitute pretty much all of their, it's not the state institutions, but it's the system. You know what I mean? It's a, the thing about Iran is that you can, you can kill a lot of guys, but the system survives, you know? It's, it's, it's, it's almost like a blob that just keeps coming back. And they did that very quickly. I mean, if you think about it, Ayatollah Ali, Hamene, who was killed in the early hours, he'd been the Supreme Leader, I think, for 37 years. So that was a very, very long time. And it looked like that, that rain, you know, was going on forever. It took them three days to get a new Supreme Leader going, you know, and that, that in itself shows that the system was working. Then their Supreme National Security Council, the military, obviously, leadership, a lot of guys were killed as well. And then they managed to put that system back together. And then also that led to new sort of emphases in many of these places. You know, the military obviously had that very important role for them, that Supreme National Security

Council had a lot of guys who were taking on more prominent roles. But to get to the question, I'm sorry for beating around the bush, I know that the American intel assessment is that much Taba Hamine is getting more and more involved, is calling the shots that he might have been severely injured. My take that is that it really doesn't matter, to what extent he's fit or not fit because you see that the Iranian leadership is able to make decisions. They're able to make strategic decisions. They were able to cut a deal appears with the United States. They were able to put together a strategy for the Strait of Hormuz. They just put together this new Strait of Hormuz authority that they want to establish with the Omanis. So clearly, this is a functioning state

that, you know, where the state institutions still work. And that is also able to define, you know, what their new strategy is. And I think in many ways, you know, they have, I don't know if you call it pragmatic or nimble, but you know, if you look at the military now,

they're making Lego movies. They're sort of messaging is very different than it was before. It addresses younger people. So, yeah, I mean, it's by all accounts, you know, in the ways that they need to function,

they are functioning. And the presidency is functioning as well. You know, it's like the state institutions are all working. But are, do you think the elected officials have any power, you know, the foreign minister, like, or they just kind of fig leaves, you know, the IRGC calls the shots?

Well, I don't know. I don't think that they're fig leaves. It's a really interesting question because I think a lot of that also, you know, a lot of that's changed over the time this conflict has gone on. I mean, obviously, right now, the military is a lot more powerful than it was before, you know, because they, they, from what I can see, they've been given the authority or have taken the authority that, you know, with if the U.S. for instance, if the U. strikes anywhere in Iran or if Israel strikes Beirut, the response is up to them. Right. And no one is going to stop them. You know, they can ask them to stop them, but they're going to do whatever they want to do, right? And at the same time, the Supreme Leader's Office obviously is always very important as well. But if you look at especially the foreign minister, you know, he was by this system, I think,

defined as the guy who's going to talk to the Americans. So he's the entry point into that system for them because he speaks the language. of the Americans, and he can speak, then translate into their system. So, I mean, I think he's got a very important function actually, but they all, nobody is, you know, one of the things that we kept hearing from the Trump administration was they kept talking about fractures in the leadership. And I think that that's because, maybe because they'd had this experience with Venezuela where they got Delci Rodriguez. You know, remember how they were talking about how the, the parliament, the president of Iranian parliament could be the next del C.

Right. That's not how Iran works. And so I think that for them, they were always looking for that guy to talk to, the guy where they're like, this is what we want from you. But it's a system, you know, I think any guy that you talk to, he's going to tell him the military needs to sign off, the Supreme Leader's Office needs to sign off, Supreme National Security Council needs to sign off. The presidency needs to be informed.

The president there is more like a domestic guy. But it's not one guy that you talk to. And I think that, you know, the fact that they in the end got an agreement. going is because the U.S. probably realized that, you know, and there's one thing, if I can say it, I don't know if I'm going overboard here. But I think one of the really interesting things that I sort of observed in this conflict is that, you know, the Islamic Republic on paper has the supreme leader who is the final authority on everything. But if you look at the sort of way that the U.S. and Iran dealt with each other, the U.S. seemed to be much more the country that had an

absolute leader rather than Iran, whereas the U.S. is like, Trump's going to make the decision, he says this or that, whereas the Iranian is saying, this has to go through all of our institutions and all of our institutions have to sign off. That was one of the things I thought was really interesting to see that they really have this very continuous process, which takes forever now also, because of all the security mechanisms that they put in place after so many of their leaders were killed. Yeah, it's always funny to hear Trump bitching about the delays and hearing back. It's like, well, you did try to kill almost all of these people that you're trying to email now. So, you know, I can understand why I might take them a minute to get back.

Yeah, it takes a long time. And it took them, I think, two weeks sometimes to answer to some of these things. Yeah, that's crazy. Last question. Just like, can you tell us about the process for setting up a visit to Iran? I mean, like, do you have a minder while you're there? Like, I'm good friends with Jason Rizayan, who is taken prisoner by the Iranian regime. Is that in the back of your head?

Not really. That's not really in the back of my head. I mean, sometimes it is, yeah. but not normally. We don't have a minder. We have a sort of translator with us who we've been working with forever. We hire him freelance. The way that you set it up, there's basically there's several government bodies that have to sign off on it, right? So you apply for a visa. There's a website, eVs Iran. Anybody can go on it. For journalist visas, the foreign ministry needs to sign off. So you basically apply at your local embassy from it's Berlin.

And then that goes to the Ford ministry. They then deal with it. And the other ministry as well as to the culture ministry because they are responsible for media affairs. And then they all have at some point they meet, they discuss everything and they say whether or not they give you a visa. But there's actually that that's for American media because America doesn't have diplomatic relations with Iran. But for instance, there's a lot of, you know, German media, French media that actually have permanent correspondence in Tehran. That is something that's possible. But, you know, sometimes when I, when I, when I,

spoke in the past to officials and I was like, you know, don't, you know, you want to grant us better access and stuff. They're like, we'll do that when we can have a correspondent in Washington. Hey, bring them over. Do you feel like people are willing to speak honestly with you? I mean, I'd be terrified. I think some of that it's an interesting question. I mean, obviously, there's a lot of people who don't. And I don't, I don't, you know, pretend that I really understand all of Iranian society. I try to learn from them. And I, you know, I, you know, every time you'd be taken something new. The way that we do it at our network is that I do my part.

I talk to the people that I can talk to there on the ground. But we also have other people who anonymously speak to folks who are on the ground there, who contact people and then try to get the different perspectives. But I think all of us, every network, we're sort of trying to put together the puzzle of what public opinion might be like there. But it's a big country. It's a big country. And it's a very diverse country also, you know,

with a lot of different cultures, a lot of different types of folks, you know, and, you know, they have big Armenian Christian community. They have a, they have this, I think, the second biggest Jewish community in the Middle East after Israel. So it's a, it's a very, you know, it's not a monolithic country at all. No, of course. Yeah, it's silly for an Americans. I mean, imagine if you're a foreign correspondent, you go to New York City or you go to Dallas, right, it's going to be a different vibe or some rural area. It's going to be different vibe, exactly. And the things that people underestimate also how big Iran is, you know, it is absolutely massive.

I mean, we drove from the border to Tehran in like 13, 14 hours. And if you look at it on the map, it's not that much. You know, there's a lot of stuff south of that. And you go down to Gohm, you're going to get a very different experience of like that. Exactly. Well, listen, I think what the reporting you do is like essential and fascinating. I wish there was a bunch of Iranian correspondents coming over to Washington and like some, a little more connectivity.

Hopefully the new administration policy will maybe get us back to having embassies. and diplomatic relations and something less insane. It could be. I mean, I was in the U.S. embassy there a couple of times, the old U.S. embassy that got stormed, which is now a museum, actually. Who knows if they'll ever get that back?

I mean, you know. Yeah, they might be holding on to that one. I don't know if anybody wants that one back. Well, Fred, thank you so much for doing the show. This is absolutely fascinating. I really appreciate your time. Thank you very much. Thanks again to Fred Pliken for joining the show.

And Ben, good luck on the world tour. and we'll see you guys next week. See you in Chicago, actually. Yeah, man, I'll see you soon. Pots of the World is a crooked media production. Our show is produced by Alona Mankovsky, Michael Goldsmith, and Anisha Bonnergy. Our team includes Matt DeGrope, Ben Hethkoat,

Jordan Cantor, Kenny Moffat, David Tolls, and Ryan Young. Our staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America East.