The Chaser Report - Elon Musk Solves Iran

Episode Date: March 29, 2026

After he joined a talk (unrequested) between India and the US, Dom and Charles suspect that Elon Musk could actually be the hero the Iran war needs. Or is it Jared Kushner? Plus, Charles recounts when The Chaser was officially designated a terrorist organisation.---Listen AD FREE: https://thechaserreport.supercast.com/ Follow us on Instagram: @chaserwarSpam Dom's socials: @dom_knightSend Charles voicemails: @charlesfirthEmail us: [e-mail] CEO’s Super-yacht upgrade Fund: https://chaser.com.au/support/ Send complaints to: [e-mail] Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Chaser Report is recorded on Gatigal Land. Striving for mediocrity in a world of excellence, this is The Chaser Report. Hello and welcome to The Chaser Report with Dom and Charles. Charles, something very, very confronting and upsetting has happened in the war. And we'll try and, what else can we talk about? We've got to talk about a few things that are war-related. But I think the most upsetting thing will begin with after these ads. Responses, really, who didn't even know what they were getting into.

Oh, goodness. Okay, it sounds serious. Donald Trump had a high-level meeting with Indian Prime Minister Narindra Modi. Yes. And they were talking about the Iran War. And just having a negotiation, trying to figure out what was going on. Can India be involved in the war, which I think the answer was no. But he tried to make the case.

But this is the upsetting part, Charles. Imagine you're on a call with Donald Trump, your Narendra Modi. You're trying to talk about high-level affairs. when who joins the call un-asked for, but Elon Musk. Oh, no. Oh, what a downer. The one thing this conflict didn't need was Elon Musk's involvement. He hasn't ever been in the news for a very long time.

The New York Times is not aware about why. He was part of it. It might be that he wants more business in India or something, SpaceX or what, who knows? It would have been the most... The way to analyse Elon Musk is to go, what would an immature 13-year-old boy do. And that is usually the reason why. So he would have been because he had a joke that he needed to tell Modi or that he got

the number and he had hacked in. Like he got the Zoom link. He was probably trying to type in Porn Hub and he typed in Zoom by accident. Zoom. Yeah. Or he had some lame pun did it with Modi. Yes, it would have been, we've got to change the Modi of operations or something. Or we need to unlock Beast Modi or something.

It would have been so embarrassing. So Elon Musk, the one thing could make it worse. It would have been one of those things where Modi would have been going, God, I've got to talk to Trump. This is a bit awkward. God, I hate. And then somebody even worse than Trump hits on the call. You know what?

And it's like, walks. The one good outcome in this could be. Do you think Modi, Moody was sort of just off screen completely, you know, clicking, doing advisors, asking them to get him to, you know, like, oh, sorry, I've got a really important appointment that I forgot. Yeah. Oh, Pakistan's just a tag. No, it's not on your radar. It's only on hours. Or is it, you know, to his wife saying, can you, can you just ring me with an emergency about her kids? Morty doesn't have a wife or kids. Well, they had a, whether Modi has a wife. There's a whole podcast about that, which, um, Arvany Dias from the ABC made, which is really good.

Oh, let's just say she had to leave India in a hurry after she published that podcast. Okay. Oh, my only thought is Charles, the one positive involvement for Elon Musk in this, in his whole affair, one thing he could do that would be helpful, talking about opening up the Straits of Hormuz. If he got that miniature sub that he wanted to use in Thailand and just went down there looking for mines, I think that could have a very satisfactory outcome. Which actually brings me to the idea that don't you think that it really is a huge loss for humanity that that Titan sub guy is now dead? Oh, this was his moment.

This was his moment to shine running subs through the Hormuz. straight. Yeah. Anything? Like, he could have... I mean, not to any help just for more tours for billionaires who want to see a mine up close. That could have been very interesting.

It could have achieved a similar result, Charles, to the Titanic mission. So wait a minute. If Elon Musk, because remember how terrible doge was? Yes. And it didn't achieve any of its aims. That's very similar to America's involvement in the Iran war, right? But how would you, like, because I've always thought, well, they can't, you know, Trump can't stuff it up more than they're stuffing it up.

Like, it's literally like, you know, Their playbook is literally out of, you know, how to lose a war, how to start a war and lose it immediately, right? But with Musk involved, it will become much worse, weren't it? Like, how could it go more wrong than it's currently going wrong for America? Well, what they could do, Charles, is they could offer Elon Musk up. Because the Iranian government's lost a lot of personnel recently. They've had to do a lot of restructuring. That's a situation where Elon could come in and do an Iranian doge.

Iranian Doge, yes. So far, they haven't managed to achieve regime change. They cut the head off the snake and, you know, the junior fanatics and the Republican Guard are just shuffling up the leadership chain. That's where you need an Elon to come in and basically sack everybody, his essential to the whole thing falls over. What he did with, like, the nuclear regulatory body in the US, just sack everyone essential. He could completely, he could finish off the Republican Guard. No one else can do it. Yeah, right.

Okay. Yeah. Those could do it. What you're saying is, you know, the headline, and you heard it here first, is Musk saves the day. Yes, he might well. Well, let's catch up on some other news from the war, Charles, as best as we can understand it. Recording on Sunday, kind of in the middle of the day. Yeah.

Marco Rubio said that the war will go for weeks, not months. But when you think carefully about it, Charles, given that he wants to run for president, you can count any time in weeks or months. So there's no way he's going to be proven wrong. and how they've got on his face. I know, it's such a wonderfully vague amount of time. And also it harkens back to, you know, it'll be done by Christmas. Yes.

You know, they said in the First World War or what was the... Which Christmas is the question? George W. Bush had a similar thing, wasn't it? George H.W. Bush had it. Oh, yes. First Iraq war. The first Iraq war was that it would all be over by Christmas. I mean, he didn't even change the line.

He just said that line and then dragged on for the death. You never specify which Christmas it will be. It will be, that's the key. Yeah, that's right. It'll always be over by some Christmas. Yes, it just as it'll always be over by some amount of weeks. Or months. So there's Mark Arrubio's involvement. What's just happened is that? Well, I mean, the 100 years war was over in weeks. It was just a lot of weeks. Well, 5,000. 5,000 or so, yeah. Yeah. So, Charles, look, this has gotten very real for me lately, though, because there's been a bombing of universities.

The University of Science and Technology in Tehran has been attacked. And as a university student myself at the moment, this is the line in the sand. Yes, right. This regime cannot continue. We've got to take them out. So they can bomb primary schools and hospitals, but as soon as they touch your university's Dom, suddenly, you know, you feel it's bad. It's bad enough to complain.

When you put it like that, it makes me sound a little bit self-interested and inconsistent. I don't know that I've ever endorsed the bombing of schools and hospitals, but it finally enables me to put myself in the picture and achieve that base level of human empathy that alludes so many of us in this situation. To what do you strategically get out of bombing universities? Because aren't universities the hotbed of the most annoying people for a regime ever? Like, it wasn't the universities the sort of the locus inside of all the organizers who were, protesting against the Iranian regime?

Yes, that's right. That's right. So, in fact, they were helping the efforts of the regime. The Americans and Israelis by bombing the university, so whichever them at one of them, I'm not sure. They're actually helping the regime to suppress students. And even more, Charles, it's not just people who actually lead dissent. It's the far more, far large number of really annoying people who think that they're fermenting change when they're actually just being self-righteous.

Yes, exactly. You're your student days, Charles. Oh, fuck off. Remember when you all those, when you broke into the Senate meeting and all that? Oh, yeah, that was fun. And to stop VSU? Did you stop VSU? Just remind me?

Yeah. You stopped a window from... No, we stopped them voting on it. We stopped it for like, you know, a couple of months. Yeah, that's true. Weeks. That's true. Oh, dear.

What else is going on in the walls? What's in your eye? The other thing is the Houthis have started bombing Israel. They have. This is the militia in Yemeni. The Yemenis are involved. And the interesting thing is, the Houthis is. about the Houthis becoming involved is they are tough motherfuckers.

Saudi Arabia's been trying to sort of bomb them out of existence. Yeah, they're the ones that disrupt the shipping all the time. Yeah, and it's just not, well, yeah, because there's another strike, there's another choke point stuff that travels past. And Yemen is geographically the most extraordinary place. One of our directors of Chaser has been there. He used to go there on work. And then Chaser, this is in the mid-Norties, got flagged as a terrorist organization.

internationally, because one of the key founders of the chaser was going to Yemen. He was visiting Yemen. Right. So the chaser was flagged as a terrorist organization, not through our own. And we had civil distress. Yeah, I know. Exactly. We went through, we had to show the past, but we had to, like, Assyc got involved and the money laundering.

Oh, is that while we had all that stuff? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. I thought that's just because we were trading while bankrupt. It wasn't that. No, that's just de rigour in Australia. That's just called entrepreneurialism. That's how you get ahead in Australia.

No, no. So that's, but Yemen, so they've got sort of people who live on the coast, right? And then apparently, literally, you visit Yemen and it's just this steep, steep hill. Like, it just literally, there's like a little bit of coast and then it just goes right up, very, very steep. and the Houthis hang out not on the coast but actually up. Top of the hill. On the top of the hill. Very sensible.

And it's sort of impossible to, well, as Saudi Arabia proved, it's sort of impossible to bomb them out of existence. So, yeah, the fact that they've now entered the war with Iran is, well, I mean, are we willing to call it yet, Dom? Are we calling it World War III yet? Well, have you seen enough? The one, like the epitney green of the war. The Chaser report, less news, less often.

The thing about it is, though, Charles, the rest of the world has been pretty unified. The most unifying force in the world right now, I think, Charles, actually, is the desire of countries who are notionally friendly with America not to be involved in this at any way. Yes. And Donald Trump, as we've noted before, is simultaneously saying, we don't need you. We're awesomely strong. and going, you really should be helping us. We don't want to do this. So I don't think it's a world war yet. I think it's a major, it's a regional war. I think the rest of the world's just

going, you broke it, you fix it. Yeah, right. You broke it, you fix it, but at the same time, you fucked it for everyone. Yeah. I mean, the extent to which this one conflict is ruining everything is quite significant. But Charles, in a moment like this, we want to look for a silver lining that life goes on and that things are challenging. Can I take you briefly to Dubai? Oh, okay. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. It's been very tough in Dubai as we're. you know, there have been lots of facilities attacked. Saturday morning Dubai time, phones, and this is from the New York Times. A few hours before we're recording now, phones were peeing with incoming missile threat alerts.

People should seek immediate safety, and so there was a lot of concern. But at the same time, another kind of alert came out from the organizers of the Dubai World Cup horse race, who told attendees that they would not be permitted, permitted to wear ripped jeans or torn clothing, even if it was designer. And also that ladies should wear hats. So I'm not sure if that was because of the missile threat or just for fashion policing reasons. But the Dubai World Cup, it went ahead. Right. So, I mean, the Dubai book fair and Art Dubai and so on have been cancelled.

But gambling, gambling continues, thank goodness, in the air. And so I don't understand what the World Cup is. It's a race. It's a Melbourne Cup of Dubai. Right, okay, sorry. Yeah, that made-on race cost. I can't believe you're not familiar with the in-national racing calendar, Charles. $30 million of prize money, US.

It's so boring, isn't it? It's horse racing, I just don't. I think that's why you've got a gamble on it, because otherwise it's incredibly, because it's incredibly tedious. And the fashion, too. This is where, I think this is why, you know, how a few years ago there's all these, you know,

anti-animal, you know, anti-cruity, bad, cruelty campaigners. They've done quite a good job. But I think it's partly because it was, pushing on an easy sort of thing. Like it gave everyone an excuse to give up bothering with the Melbourne Cup. Because you sort of went,

oh yeah, yeah, it's because I'm anti-cruly. But the cruelty that you're describing is being forced to sort of participate in. We used to watch it in school. Remember? No, no, yeah, yeah. Exactly. But now it's timed after school. But it used to be actually school would stop to watch the Melbourne Cup.

Yeah, the nation would stop. It's the race that stopped. They should use that. That's a good line, actually. Yeah, I like that. So maybe that's what we need in Iran, in the Gulf, and frankly for Yemen as well, is more horse races. Can I predict the end of horse racing? Oh, not of the world.

Worldwide. No, the end of horse racing. Okay. Yes. It'll happen in weeks. Not months. Well, and also months. So just to summarize what's happened, in the war, if you turn to us for your war update,

there been lots of really concerning things. Attacks on universities. Iranian media is. reporting an airstrike on a water reservoir, 10,000 cubic meter water reservoir, which, if true, is completely a war crime. Very concerning things keep happening. There's no end in sight. Trump says he's negotiating that the Iranians say they're not negotiating.

If Jared Kushner's involved, it could take millennia to put an end to this conflict, really. I must say, my favorite videos at the moment are online. You can get this ship tracking. Oh, yeah. You can go to ship tracking websites and you can watch oil tankers trying to get through the Strait of Hormoutes. And what happens is they're all being directed right up the top of the Strait for some reason. I'm just having a look. Yeah.

And you can see them. And they're like even sort of Chinese tankers and things are bad. And they go right up the top and then they just do a Ui and go back down. This is amazing, this website. Yeah, it's really fun. And you can see why the Strait is so important. There's real slapstick too. it. Apparently, Iran has the military capability to sort of force everyone to go really far north.

And what that basically, the theory is that over the long term, what this is actually going to end up doing is there's going to be a toll booth. It's going to literally be Iran just going, okay, you want to come through, set up a deal. You actually have to have a bilateral relationship with Iran and you pay X million dollars a year to Iran for the safe passage of your country. oil. I'm just seeing there's heaps of them just parked basically off Saudi Arabia and Bahrain and Kuwait, like right up in the north. There's a huge crisis unfolding amongst seafarers. I don't know whether you're across this time, but it's an extraordinary. The ABC and the BBC have been covering it quite a lot, which is there's a whole lot of just really quite poor workers who are seafarers. They're often from the subcontinent. And they spend months and months on boats,

but then they go home, right? And, you know, they're paid quite well compared to sort of other jobs in their home countries. Yeah. But because they're stuck, on some boats, you know, they're running out of supplies. They're running out of food and water because they didn't expect to just be stuck in the Strait of Hormuz for like months on end. Well, Charles, perhaps we can solve things right now. I think it's gone. I think I've seen enough.

All that needs to happen. Okay. All that needs to happen. You've seen enough. I've seen enough. We just need, Jared Kushner is the man to organise this, because he's very good. Despite being Jewish, he has a great track record of negotiating across the Middle East. He's very close with the Saudis in the Qataris.

Yeah, yeah, very close. He needs to have the same sort of relationship. We need to get Iran off its theocratic path and onto property development. This is the thing that's the, it's the lingua franca in the Middle East. It's a thing that can unite anybody is glitzy property developments where everyone gets a cut. And if you just deal the, just deal the Ayatollah. the other Highland, the Republican Guard. Think more skyscrapers for everybody across Iran.

I'm sure Tehran hasn't got as many skyscrapers. Tehran, you know, Iran could be the new Dubai. Why not? Why not? You know, a reclaimed beautiful island in the shape of the world. Think of all the properties they could be building there. I love it. I love it.

Yes, that's totally the way to do it. And Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu have cleared a lot of land as a building site, haven't they? I mean, there's a lot of places now. Tehran where you could green fields. Yes, the university in particular. Yes, that's right. Yeah.

That's right. There's a lot of places. You can build, you don't need universities. Trump Tower. Trump University. Trump University. You can have a Trump University. Trump University can actually have a Trump University of Taiwan.

Because you shut down the last one because of fraud concerns. But no, a real campus. Trump University in Iran. I think that's a very, as long as everyone's making money, we can all be friends. I think that's a very farsi-sighted idea. I'm just pleased that because. got through this whole podcast with our Elon Musk joining it. Oh wait, hang on.

There's an incoming call. Oh shit. We're going to go. We're part of the Ocona Class Network. See ya. Go away, Elon. Great. Thanks for having me.