The Majority Report with Sam Seder - 3692 - Iran War Spirals After Trump Tanks Diplomacy w/ Trita Parsi

Episode Date: July 21, 2026

Welcome back to the program On today's Majority Report: As Congress heads to recess the House GOP's push to get the SAVE Act passed by using out-of-touch rich guy analogies. For example, Steve Scalise says you have to show ID to eat pasta at the Olive Garden so why not at the voting booth? Trita Parsi, executive vice president of the Quincy Institute, joins the show to discuss recent developments in Trump's war on Iran. In the Fun Half: Half of the Israeli government participates in a rally outside the Gaza fence calling for settlements. A daughter of the Koch brothers got hired by the Wall Street Journal to make brain dead conservative propaganda. Brad Lander holds Batya Ungar-Sargon's hand through a simple conversation about the value of a democratic Israel that includes Palestinians as paramount to the safety of Israelis. all that and more. Tell your Senators to block the NDAA until it is stripped of the proposal to integrate U.S. and Israeli militaries. To connect and organize with your local ICE rapid response team visit ICERRT.com The Congress switchboard number is [phone]. You can use this number to connect with either the U.S. Senate or the House of Representatives. Follow us on TikTok here: https://www.tiktok.com/@majorityreportfm Check us out on Twitch here: https://www.twitch.tv/themajorityreport Find our Rumble stream here: https://rumble.com/user/majorityreport Check out our alt YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/majorityreportlive Gift a Majority Report subscription here: https://fans.fm/majority/gift Subscribe to the AM Quickie newsletter here: https://am-quickie.ghost.io/ Join the Majority Report Discord! https://majoritydiscord.com/ Get all your MR merch at our store: https://shop.majorityreportradio.com/ Get the free Majority Report App!: https://majority.fm/app Go to https://JustCoffee.coop and use coupon code majority to get 10% off your purchase Check out today's sponsors: ZOCDOC: Find and book the right doctor https://Zocdoc.com/MAJORITY SMALLS: For a limited time, get 60% off your first order, plus free shipping and free treats for life, when you head to Smalls.com/MAJORITY. SUNSET LAKE CBD: Use coupon code "Left Is Best" (all one word) for 20% off of your entire order at SunsetLakeCBD.com.  Follow the Majority Report crew on Twitter: @SamSeder @EmmaVigeland @MattLech On Instagram: @MrBryanVokey Check out Matt's show, Left Reckoning, on YouTube, and subscribe on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/leftreckoning Check out Matt Binder's YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/mattbinder Subscribe to Brandon's show The Discourse on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/ExpandTheDiscourse Check out Ava Raiza's music here! https://avaraiza.bandcamp.

It is Tuesday, July 21st, 2026. My name is Emma Vigeland in for Sam Cedar, and this is the five-time award-winning majority report. We are broadcasting live steps from the industrially ravaged Gowanus Canal in the heartland of America, downtown Brooklyn, USA. On the program today, Trita Parsi, Executive Vice President of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft will be with us. us to discuss the latest on Trump's war in Iran, war on Iran, rather. Also on the program, the Pentagon has been covering up troop injuries in the Iran war, as U.S. intelligence tells the White House that more bombing isn't going to soften the Iranian position. With a lot more. You consider that?

Israel's far-right finance minister Smotrich, Bradwick, Brad. about how the U.S.'s war on Iran is ideal for them. Because Israel doesn't have to get involved. Thanks for saying that out loud, buddy. Israel has killed at least 10 Palestinians in the past 24 hours as half the Israeli government joins marches at the Gaza border, calling for settlements. This is not a Netanyahu problem.

This was to pressure Netanyahu to do this. Some good news, though, a federal judge has put Paramount Skydance his takeover of Warner Brothers on hold after a lawsuit from 12 state attorneys general. A coalition of billionaires led by Google co-founder Sergei Bryn are launching an $87 million ad campaign against California's wealth tax valid initiative. Trump says he will impose a 50% tariff on Canadian goods because they hate our cars. The DOJ is opening an investigation into Harvard, giving financial aid and accuses DSA of collaborating with them. And Amy Goodman.

You see where this is going, right? Yeah. The Trump administration is killing a swath of federal energy efficiency programs as your electric bills explode. The top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, Jamie Raskin, is launching an investigation into Jeffrey Epstein's intelligence work. for foreign governments. Interesting. And lastly, the Trump administration sought phone records of New York Times reporters and their families

after they investigated the plane that Qatar gifted to him. All this and more on today's majority report. Welcome to the show, everybody. It is Newsday Tuesday. We recorded this conversation

with Trita Parsi earlier this morning. It was super informative about the latest on the Iran War, the endless war that Trump has dragged us into. But let's start here, as I should say, though, Sam is fine.

He will be back. It seems like it's going to be, we can give a timeline, right? This week and next week he's going to be out? Yeah, somewhere around the 31st. Somewhere around there, yeah. So you're stuck with me. You're stuck with me. It'll be a

episode when he does come back though um and i will be taking a vacation after that for a little while what i mean how do you know it's going to be a great episode i guess that's true he could be so rusty well it's good to say that though i mean yes might be horrible news that it could be it could be although the pattern tends to be that horrible news comes when he's out you know it's going to be a great show we've got a lot to cover all that stuff that's just shit you say yes good job promoting the show producer Brian less of a good job on doing that Matt I'm just trying to be real I understand people appreciate our honesty I guess um so uh right now in the house Mike Johnson and Russ vote are trying to get Republicans on board with uh Trump's bag of goodies in the reconciliation package which includes a

95 billion dollar chunk in supplemental funding for the war in Iran and also farm aid caused by that is necessary because Trump raised fertilizer prices and energy prices so much from this war in Iran. So ripping us off, ripping

the taxpayer off further in consolidation of farms. Yep. And the reason that they need this aid is because, as I mentioned, of Trump's own choices. But suffice to say there won't be more small farmers in business right now.

as there will be there will be fewer in the coming days absolutely and they like this kind of consolidation as you say uh their donors would love to buy up farms on the cheap and continue to have you know monopolies across the the country but there is we're not sure ahead of um the august recess if republicans are going to be able to pull this off because trump wants to shoehorn the Save America Act into the reconciliation bill, which, you know, I don't understand how necessarily they're going to do that or because it's not pertaining to the budget, but he wants to either nuke the filibuster or create some sort of budgetary reason for the Save America Act, I believe, to be in these negotiations and in this bill. But regardless, they're attempting

to pass the Save America Act ahead of the recess. And John Thune and the State of the recess, and Senate are not too happy about this. But Trump wants this because it's a mass voter disenfranchisement bill based on essentially a Nazi lie about great replacement theory because they are trying to claim that immigration is an attempt by the Democrats to replace white people and to vote in elections and take away your voice. We know that non-citizen voting in the U.S. is so insanely rare. there have been many analyses of this, and voter fraud in particular, the Heritage Foundation, which is a right-wing think tank, the right-wing think tank, essentially, arguably the most important conservative organization in the country, they looked at voter fraud instances or

instances of non-citizen voting from 2003 to 2022, so almost essentially a 20-year period. You know how many times they found voter fraud or non-citizen voting? this in voting? Twenty-three instances. I'd also just mention the Heritage Foundation is named in Mahmood Khalil's suit against the government on the Klan Act for conspiring with Zionist groups like Canary Mission and Batar to slander people for expressing their free speech and indeed persecute them for their free speech on Palestine. Yeah, good note. So we're not Heritage Foundation fans here, but if any group has an incentive to overplay these instances of voter fraud, instances of voter fraud, it would be the Heritage Foundation.

Now, here is Steve Scalise being asked about these efforts to mandate certain kinds of ID for voting, which would impact 9% of American citizens of voting age who don't have this kind of proof of citizenship that is required. And of course, it's going to impact people of color and marginalized communities and poorer people and rural people as well because of the attack and disabled people because of the attacks on mail-in voting. But that's 9% of Americans would be disenfranchised by this, by the bipartisan policy centers estimates.

That's 21 million people. And that is, I think, a conservative estimate here because that's just like direct. There are, you know, something like 70 million women in this country who change, who don't have on their birth certificate their name that they've changed, their married name, their married. And that that would not suffice in terms of proving their citizenship because you need two different forms of ID based on this. You need a real ID, an updated real ID, a valid U.S. passport, or a military ID also applies. And then you would also need secondary documents like birth certificates to prove your citizenship. It's ridiculous. But Steve Scalese doesn't seem to think so because he says that you use your voter ID all the time,

including at places like the Olive Garden. Show and picture ID to vote. Not a complicated subject. Again, anybody that gets on an airplane has to show a picture ID to vote. Nowadays, if you want to go to Olive Garden and get unlimited pasta, you got to show a picture ID. This isn't complicated stuff. Yet every Democrat is against these basic things. Why?

The only reason you can be against that is if you want voter fraud. Okay, then why hasn't it happened yet, buddy? Why has there been basically no voter fraud? It's amazing. They keep doing this. Trump says you need your ID to enter a grocery store. You're telling on yourselves, you guys, that you're rich as hell and they're so out of touch. We have to answer his question.

Why would anyone want to do this without, if not to allow illegal immigration or legal immigrants to vote? It's because why are they doing it? It's because they want to disenfranchise people that don't have ideas. Exactly. Exactly. And I just love this claim about, yeah, okay, perhaps to subscribe. to unlimited pasta at Olive Garden

you might need to show your ID I guess in theory to be a part of this subscription service and prove that hey I'm the guy that shelled out for the Olive Garden pasta subscription which I got to say I have a little bit of judgment towards you if that's the case

I think you should be put on a government list if you signed for unlimited pasta from Olive Garden exactly what's What's also insane about what he's saying is that that doesn't, even if you're going to use the Olive Garden example, bro, or the airplane example, it doesn't work because you need a secondary form of identification and citizenship. Awesome. So the ID doesn't work.

Olive Garden is also a private business that doesn't need to serve you unlimited pasta, whereas, like, there should be, you should be, your vote should be taken. Right. It's just one of the dumber, I guess, examples that they've given in trying to sell this, you know, incredibly... Showing my ID to TGA Fridays. Yeah. Like, this rollback of people's, you know, franchise, really, and their ability to participate in elections, they can't come up with a better example for what they're trying to do here because it's all based on a conspiracy theory and it's all at the whims of this. Precious and psychotic president who sees the only path he sees to maintaining powers through cheating.

Who tried to steal the 2020 election? Yeah. Yeah. Remember that? That was kind of a big deal. And this comes up here. But now he's concerned about. Yeah.

Election security. For sure. That's what Mike Johnson and Trump really care about. He's asked Mike Johnson here about how, is it helpful that Trump keeps relitigating the 2020 election? and this is relevant for the Save America Act. Here he is answering this question this morning at the House Republican Presser. Thank you, John Speaker.

This is probably the last time we're going to see at the press conference before the House leaves for recess. Members going home to campaign ahead to mention elections, control of the House is up for grabs. Last week, President Trump gave a speech re-litigating the 2020 election and bringing up criminal election fraud.

Can you think of it serve your most vulnerable members, the majority makers, well if President Trump stopped really the year for 2020 election and you were gone from that one day. Well, I didn't hear him in that address say he wasn't relitigating the 2020 election. What he did was I got a couple notes here, but some of the things that he announced 280,000 non-citizens have been found to be on voter rolls in America. I mean, if that doesn't cry for the passage of the Save America Act in the law, I don't know what does. Okay, then pause. Okay, then pause.

Pause. compromised American election debt. Oh, I just want to fact check that really quickly. The 278,000 non-citizens being unlawfully registered is a highly, highly disputed figure. Most election experts say it's wildly overstated. And once again, registration, even if you were to take that claim at face value, doesn't mean that they voted in the election. Why would you, in this context, in this country, when Trump is locking up people and throwing

them into gulags and over 50 people have died in ice custody so far during his second term. Why the hell would you risk it to vote in your local municipal election by showing up at a polling place? Yeah, if there's that many on the voting rolls, you should be easily

able to find out how many of them actually voted and prosecute them. Like that happens when people vote that aren't supposed to vote. They get severe consequences. Yes. Unless you're like a Republican and you do it. Which happens more often than what they're talking. Exactly. In the law, I don't know what does. He announced that foreign adversaries have compromised American election data on that our election system is vulnerable to threats. I mean, that should concern every American citizen.

Okay, I'm sorry. We have to just take this piece by piece. That is not what was claimed. In that insane screed in his prime time address that no one cared about, Trump essentially said that the evidence showed that Venezuela has the capability to change the voting results. in their own elections, but there was no evidence in the documents that he released that Venezuela could do that to the United States. And the thing that was alleged in the text of the like so-called intelligence that he's presenting was that China considered doing an influence campaign in the United States got and sought to publicly, to access publicly available voter information, as does the Democratic Party and the Republican Party in the U.S.,

and probably, the Israeli government and other foreign governments because this information is available and they do they do intelligence that was all that was alleged and they didn't even think that it was worth it to to fund this kind of campaign so every accusation is a confession it's the same thing with like saying that china wanted joe biden or whatever like i'm sorry on balance if you're going to say which country wanted which president more you'd say russia wanted trump in 2016 more than China wanted Biden, just relatively speaking. I mean, frankly, like, Biden is maybe a bigger China hawk than Trump.

Like, if we're actually thinking about it in those terms, Biden wanted to pivot to Asia. The whole August thing was an attempt to curb China's influence in their region of the world. Trump is not as committed to that. He's back in the Middle East, baby. All right, keep going. In certain, every American citizen, this isn't about relitigating in 2020. This is about making sure that people have faith. in our election system. If you do not have a free and fair election, it's very difficult to maintain

a cost to show public, government of buying for the people. I mean, this is basic stuff. The president was highlighting that. Some of the findings are alarming. I mean, a lot of Democrats who ran around breathlessly for years saying that Russia was intervening in our elections, you would think they'd be the first to step up and say, yeah, let's go investigate this and clean up voter rolls. I mean, that is part of our message on the campaign trails. We want to make sure that... Wait, so China has people on the voter rolls? Is that what he's trying to imply? He says that as I, they have publicly available voter role information that they access. That's because they wanted to do like polling to see who was, which way the election was going to go.

That's all the intelligence has ever alleged like at most they would want to do with that information. It's not to like change the vote totals. Yes. And it is, but it is funny to see him, you know, attempt to try to fit Trump's pet fixation on the 2020 election into some sort of grand electoral strategy. There's another clip. We don't even have it on the sound sheet. But he said at one point in this press conference that he was optimistic about the midterm elections and then corrected himself to say enthusiastic.

So I think that was a bit of an admission that they're not necessarily sure how this is going to go for them. I do think it's a grand strategy, though, because he's just trying to do exact opposite. He's trying to take the faith out of elections. He's trying to make everybody senator calls so that they're not. so that they can set up some kind of corrupted midterm. Right, right. States, all the states, including blue states,

are doing their dead level best to ensure that federal law is complied with. What is federal law? To vote in a U.S. election, you have to be an American citizen. That's a simple thing. It's not being enforced in some of these states, and that's why Save America Act is so important. And we want to make sure that we don't have deceased persons on the voter rule. We want to make sure that in states where they're doing ballot harvesting,

They're not just... Who gives a goddamn... About the voter rolls if they don't vote. This is the sleight of hand that he's doing here. He's pretending that the voter rolls are the same thing. They just repeat voter rolls over and over again. It's like some sort of magic incantation that scares conservatives. Yes.

Founding these things up haphazardly, that the exact number of ballots that are printed go to the exact number of voters who are registered in these districts and not extra persons. This is what makes people doubt the veracity of our lives. No, you are. Because the extent that those ballots are going to a dead person's mailbox, they're not being turned in. And if they're being turned in, then you have the case. Yes. Come to me then.

Right. I mean, and like there have been, I remember those instances where there were examples. It was disproportionately Republicans doing it. And they're found out. Yes. Yes. It's insane. And I still can't get over how they're attempting to sell this, that when Trump was in power,

the election was stolen from him. When Biden was in power, Trump won easily. And it was a landslide, apparently, that he didn't reach 50% of the popular vote when he defeated Kamala Harris. So I don't understand, like, he's also claiming, as a part of Trump was,

in this press conference, this China interference thing, that the intelligence that he was provided by members of his team, including the current John Radclan, of the current CIA head, who was DNI at the time and was responsible for giving him in this information, that they withheld all of this from him, this shoddy intelligence about China that didn't really allege anything. And so it's, you just have to believe so many

different layers of bullshit to get to where Trump is, which is just, it's an ego-stroking exercise that he's brought the entire country along, uh, in this. with him. So let's just hope that the Save America Act is not included in this and even some of the provisions aren't inserted. I know that Tim Birch is unhappy with it being piecemeal, but this could be really bad. And I think there are a lot of Republicans that understand that this could impact them too, specifically in rural districts. In a moment, you're going to be hearing my conversation from earlier this morning with friend of the show, Treata Parsi. But first, a word from our sponsors here.

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That's ZOCDOC.com slash majority. ZocdoC.com slash majority. We will put a link to that down below in the video and episode descriptions and at majority. com. Quick break. And when we come back, you'll hear my conversation with Trita Parsi of the Quincy Institute. We are back and we are joined now. now by friend of the show, Trita Parsi, Executive Vice President at the Quincy Institute and

publisher of the self-titled Substack Newsletter, here with us to talk about the escalating war in Iran and the latest developments. Tita, welcome back to the show. Thanks so much for having me. Thank you so much for coming on. We really value your perspective and expertise as this war on Iran continues to drag on. I want to – I did not mean to rhyme that. I wanted to start with the developments from yesterday, which is a significant escalation,

the Houthis announcing a naval blockade on Saudi Arabia in the Babel Mandeb Strait in the Red Sea. Now, basically since Trump, you know, started this war and the Strait of Hormuz has been, in large part, closed due to Iran exerting their leverage, Saudi crude has been reliant on the Red Sea. But by enlisting the Houthis here, this is an escalation by Iran to block off that alternative, essentially trade route. And this has been a consideration for them for many months, but to me it seems like another escalatory measure

that is just going to drag this war on and on. It's a very negative development. I mean, the restarting of the war is. And with that comes all of these different consequences. You're right. The Saudis have been using that pipeline that takes about five to six million barrels of oil to the Red Sea. And then from the Red Sea goes through the Gulf of Aden and then on to the Asian markets. That is nevertheless more expensive than if it had gone through the Persian Gulf itself.

It adds cost. It's also a smaller volume. the Red Sea has about 12% of the global oil flow, the Persian Gulf has 20%. You put the two of them together, you will get a much, much worse economic crunch than we saw during the first phase of this war. And even if the Saudis can ship their oil northwards and through the Suez Canal, mindful of the fact that the oil is going to Asia, it means that it has to go all around Africa before he gets there. So the cost, even if the flow resumes to certain extent, it will be much, much more expensive. These are some of the nightmare scenarios, frankly, that were avoided in the first phase,

or the first attempt at war that Trump started. Now he started a second one without what appears to be some sort of a plan, because what we have seen for the last 10 days or so is a lot of bombings, but nothing that is particularly strategically decisive. Yes, there's been a targeting of bridges, civilian infrastructure, that arguably would constitute war crimes. But many of these bridges are actually seasonal in the sense that the riverbanks under them are dry for most of the year, except for a couple of moments a year because of flooding. So it's not as if it's really impacting things as tremendously as I think perhaps the Trump administration of thought.

And now we also have revelation that the intelligence community has been saying to the administration that this is not going to change Iran's position in the negotiations. What is really baffling to me is that 10 days have passed, and we've seen absolutely nothing from the administration that suggests that they had some sort of a plan of what the war was going to be. Now, there's a lot of buzz that there may be a major escalation this week, and perhaps we will see then whatever that plan is. But I would still suspect that it's not going to make that much of a difference, if anything, it's going to harden the Iranian position.

It's going to make it even more difficult to get back to the negotiating table. And then once at the negotiating table, it's going to be even more difficult to actually get to a view. The hardening of the Iranian position feels inevitable at this point, given the fact that this is another instance of the administration using the ruse of diplomacy to restock or to regain their fore. footing and then continuing to bomb Iran. And Iran's retaliation has been largely hitting the Gulf states. And you've got to wonder at a certain point, are the Gulf states going to revolt and say you can no longer use our bases because our civilian infrastructure is getting decimated?

You mentioned the attacks on civilian infrastructure that the U.S. engaging with Iran. Iran responded and did the same. And desalination plants have been targeted. This is critical. because this area is obviously very arid, and these desalination plants are key for the water supply for so many thousands of people. Absolutely. And reality is also that the Iranians are far less dependent on their desalination plants than what the GCC states are. They have no other water resources. Iran has rivers and other sources. So this will be hitting them much harder. Now, many of them are very upset in Iran, of course, because at the end of the day, they say that their territory is not being used by the United States. We're seeing increasingly evidence that it is. We're seeing High Mars being shot from Kuwaiti territory filmed by American soldiers themselves and put on the Internet.

We've had analysis by international networks, France 24, for instance, as I showed already, in the first war, there was a lot of attacks coming from Kuwaiti territory. the Kuwait is completely deny that. But at the same time, we're also seeing another trend. Whether these countries want the U.S. to leave or not, the U.S. is leaving. Because it's moving more and more of its assets to Jordan and other places that are a little bit further away from Iran. Because having them in Bahrain and in Kuwait, it's just too close to the Iranians and too easy of targets.

So the very idea that these bases provided security for these states have just become a laughable proposition at this time. But we're also seeing that the Iranians can very effectively hit Jordan as well. And they can hit them with, you know, bases that are actually very well fortified. So again, what is the point of all of this? If you didn't have a plan that would fundamentally change things in a very short period of time, then you're just restarting a debacle. And now this time around, you do have the benefit of hindsight, because you were here just a couple of months ago. And then you chose to go back to it. At least the first time you could say,

well, they didn't think this is going to end up happening the way it did. What did they think this time? I mean, it's because the terms of the Memorandum of Understanding indicated that Iran won the war. And Trump sees that as intolerable for him, as to the Israelis, by the way. And we'll talk about their role here in just a second. And the only thing that the United States feels and his administration feels they can rely on is our military dominance, which, yes,

is the case, but Iran has all of these other points of leverage, including, you know, the depth of its coastline where it can hide some of the, the, you know, mobile launchers. They can move them around. It's very difficult to find. It's a country with a lot of, you know, geographic advantages, including over the Strait of Ormuz. And the fact that it did reach this Jordanian base and killed their attacks, I should say, or I think it was a missile strike, if I remember reading correctly, in Jordan where two soldiers were killed. That speaks to what you're saying. They can reach Jordan. And it also appears like Iran is moving from striking just military infrastructure to striking the housing of U.S. personnel. And that might be why those two soldiers were killed.

Yeah. And that followed by the way that the U.S. side bombed barracks inside of Iran and killed a lot of soldiers that were asleep at the time. So we're seeing a tit for tat. So far, I've not seen the Iranians do anything that is going beyond responding to what the U.S. has done. So, for instance, we're not seeing what they said earlier on. Early on, prior to the collapse of the MOU, at one point the Iranians said that if there's any more attacks by the U.S. Iran is going to respond with a level of 1.5. In many ways, they responded with a level of 5.0, actually. But that's not what they're doing now. We're saying now. They're saying they're just doing Tithfahs. And so is the U.S. by and large, one statement from Trump. But there's something else about the Jordanian attack that I think may have

been missed by the mainstream media, which is, this appears to have been somewhat different. We knew that the Iranians could reach Jordan because they can reach Israel. We knew that they could go through all of Israel's air defense systems, and they certainly can do that with the Jordanians as well. But this was apparently movement that had happened at that base, and almost immediately the Iranians found out and they struck and took the US by significant surprise. The reason why this is important is because in the past, it appears the Iranians were buying commercial satellite pictures from such Chinese companies, got much better accuracy, but those images may have been five days, eight days, ten days old.

This intelligence that the Iranians had about that base appears to have been more or less real time. that may either mean that they have informants on the ground. It may mean that they're actually getting much better live intelligence, real-life, real-time intelligence from the Chinese or Russians or others, but something has changed it. And I think this is probably something that is causing a lot of pause in the U.S. military right now. That's fascinating because the fact that they would have this intelligence is important to, you know, I guess understanding, too, what the, what forces are happening, I guess,

behind the scenes that have their own agendas because we talk a lot about Israel's role here. And maybe that's a good place to turn just because this morning, another development as well, was Smotrich, their far-right finance minister, had this quote this morning. And he basically controls the West Bank at this point. He had this quote talking about how Israel has no interest in joining the war, but the current situation is the best for us, essentially saying that the U.S. engaging in this war without Israel is perfect. They get to destabilize Iran. They get to destabilize the whole region, and that's better for Israeli expansionist aims and their attempt to dominate the region. But this is incredibly arrogant, in my view, because Iran has already demonstrated the capability of striking Israel. Certainly, but by Israel not being a participant in this war, the Iranians are currently not striking Israel. So what you have is a scenario in which the United States,

and its infinite wisdom, has dragged itself into another endless war in which there isn't any military solution, but there is also an increasingly narrow path towards diplomatic de-escalation because we keep on blowing up those exit ramps. And this, so Smotritch is honest. I mean, this is one of the benefits with having people like Ben-Givir and Smotritch, et cetera, in the Israeli government. They've always pursued more or less the same policy,

but they haven't had people that were so honest and frank about spelling it out in such clear language. Instead, there were all these different statements that made it look as if their preferences were somewhere else. But he's making it very clear. This is perfect. The United States and Iran is involved in some sort of endless war that has no exit. We in Israel love it. That is their perspective. And Smallridge is being very honest about it.

And from their standpoint, it means that Iran will be consumed in this war with the United States. There will be no quick exit out of it. These Israelis don't have to worry about a diplomatic off-ramp. And in the meantime, they can keep on pushing the United States to go along with Israel's designs in Gaza, in West Bank, and now increasingly Lebanon, in which the U.S., Israel and the Lebanese government are essentially pushing for a Lebanese civil war. And I remembered actually what I wanted to ask you a follow up on the previous answer, because I think you mentioned China and the other geopolitical actors that have interests here.

It would be significant in terms of an escalatory step for China to be like coordinating with Iran on strikes on U.S. basis. It doesn't seem likely that they're going to be doing that. But if they're engaging in intelligence sharing, that's a way to keep the United States bogged down in the Middle East and prevent the pivot to Asia that Obama and more liberal types had, and some neocons as well, had been trying to get the United States, or East Asia, rather, to do for a while instead of getting bogged down in the Middle East. If China wants to maintain its dominance in its backyard, as you say, then this makes sense for them to be, at least doing some intelligence sharing. Yes, and I think it's important to recognize at the same time, despite the fact that we can, make the argument that the Chinese have some benefits from this.

There's people in China that also would say, look, their economy is suffering. They're far more reliant on Persian Gulf oil than what the United States is. It's impacting their neighbors in the region, in their region, even more so than China. China has far greater reserves, capacity to shift over to green technology and energy, et cetera. But nevertheless, their economy will suffer from the economy of their neighbors suffering as well. So they have a lot of problems, and ultimately they want stability. But despite the fact that one at the same time can make an argument, it doesn't hurt them that the U.S. is shooting itself in the foot.

We've never seen the Chinese ever do anything to actually push the United States in this direction. So yes, they may be happy that's at least of some aspects of this, but they're not doing much. So in that context, do we have clear evidence that the Chinese are providing intelligence? We don't. Do we have suspicions and some basis for it? Yes, but it could also be the Russians, and in some ways the Russians may actually be more capable,

given the territory that we're talking about, of being able to provide that. And the Russians certainly would have far less hesitations about sharing that information. The key conclusion for us is, why are we putting ourselves in these positions over and over again? Ultimately, they couldn't do any of these things, had it not been for the United States,

putting itself once again in this position? I guess that's my question for you then. I'll turn that. I mean, to make sense of such insanity, I, I, you're the one that has a lot more expertise than myself. Why are we doing this except for the reason I said earlier that Trump is swayed by our military dominance and thinks that he can bomb his way out of a humiliation? I think there's a couple of factors and it's not entirely clear to me which one necessarily is the most important one or if it's an exhaustiveness. But I think, for Trump, this was tricky from the outset because he now, once he went to the direction of diplomacy, he had to take a fight with Israelis and with his pro-Israeli donors, which are, of course, extremely important, and particularly, Mary Madelson. For it to be worth it for him, he needed to have this, like, constant assembly line of good news coming from the negotiations. Diplomacy had to constantly produce something he could cling on to justify.

having to take this fight with Israelis and the pro-Israel donors. And reality diplomacy with Iran or with any country that the U.S. has been at odds with for 47 years and who the U.S. just have attacked in the last, twice and last, or actually by now three times in the last year, was never going to be easy. And never is going to be a straight line. And never was going to be a straight assembly line of good news. It was just not going to be the case. But he doesn't seem to have the patience to be able to stick to one line unless he gets that positive feedback all the time. So we've seen him go towards war and then making 180 towards diplomacy,

and now he's outwing another 180 towards war. And at some point, he will probably try to do an 180 towards diplomacy again. So that type of a path dependency that at some point, you know, it's good to have some of it at least. He doesn't have it. And I think he makes these impulsive decisions that doesn't seem to have been particularly well thought through, because if they were, we should have seen something happening right now, we're not. So I think, This is also then having a second effect, which is now the Iranians are increasingly convinced that even if Trump genuinely wants diplomacy down the road, he's just not capable of seeing diplomacy succeed because he doesn't have the discipline or the patience for it.

And they probably also came to that assessment based on that widely reported, I think it was drop site, psychological profile that they had their intelligence officials kind of put together about Trump and they kind of determined that, yeah, he's pretty crazy. Like, you know, it's, he is a real loose cannon. And, you know, another question I have for you is about the negotiating team as well, because the Iranians, I think rightly are suspicious that Jared Kushner is essentially funneling all of this information directly back to Benjamin Netanyahu. And Whitkoff is a real estate buddy who seems to not even understand the fundamentals of like what is even being negotiated as it relates to the Iranian nuclear program. They're incompetent as well. And that feels like

a big part of the story. I think this, I mean, there's certainly a part of the story that when it comes to nuclear expertise, yeah, Wittkoff and Kushner clearly do not have that. There is this rather comical scene in the Geneva negotiations in which at one point, they actually had to go to the head of the IAEA to come into the room and explain some of these, you know, some fundamentals of nuclear physics to Kushner and Whitkoff, who thought the Devonian proposal was some sort of a devious scheme, whereas in reality it was very straightforward if you understood just the fundamentals of nuclear physics and nuclear energy.

So you definitely have that issue, but I think there's a different, real deeper problem here. Yes, I'm sure they have their issues with Kushner, in particular, and I think this is kind of like the front-line story. But the behind-the-scenes story that I think in some ways is more important is that they're looking for someone who can deliver Trump, someone who can negotiate on behalf of Trump, and if he at the negotiating table says yes, Trump will accept this, the Iranians can buy it.

Kushner and Witkoff said to the Iranians in Geneva back in February that they think that Trump is going to be very happy with his proposal. They went back, and it turned out that he had already made up his mind he wanted to go to war. It's part of the reason why the Omani foreign minister, who was mediating this deal, flew to Washington, hoping to see Trump. Trump never saw him instead he had to have a meeting with the vice president. But this was a last-ish desperate effort to try to make sure that this deal would, the deal

that they had negotiated back then would have been accepted. What this did is that the Iranians were no longer trusting, not necessarily that because of Kushner being too close to Netanyahu or anything like that, that may also. be factors. But the most important factor was they can't deliver Trump. Their word at the negotiating table is not authoritative. And by the way, look, the American side has similar question marks, if not problems with some of the Iranian negotiators. It was a negotiation taking place in Muscat right before this war. And in which there was a joint statement that the foreign minister essentially had negotiated, he took it back to Tehran over phone, and he got it next. And it really

surprised the Omanis and the American side and they started to ask themselves, you know, is the Iranian negotiating team sufficiently authoritative or are they going to keep on getting overruled by the IRGC? I mean, it's, it's, uh, it seems like someone needs to get in the room with Trump. Like, I mean, we, this has been a through line with his personality is that people say, if you, the last person who he's in the room with, he, he can agree with him. we saw how Zoran Mamdani charmed him. Like, is it, is it fair to assume that some forces,

perhaps the Israelis, are happy if Trump is not in the room with negotiators and having these go-betweens kind of muck up the negotiation process, essentially? I think the Israelis would be terrified if Trump actually had direct talks with Iranians himself. Or if the Iranians agreed to meet with Trump. I think the track record shows that, yes, you have an easier time actually getting a deal. You can get through a lot of the nonsense by talking directly to Trump. But the question is, is such a deal durable? Because Trump tends to change his mind afterwards as well.

There's an example of how the Brazilian president, Lula, ran into Trump at the UN, gave him a hug. They had a very warm chat. at the time Trump was going to impose all kinds of tariffs on Lula and was very negative towards Lula because of his support for Bolsonaro. But because of that hug, you know, Trump was just, you know, in love at least for 15 minutes. I mean, Lula is an alpha male, so he is drawn to that kind of thing. He went off script at the UN when he gave his address, kept on praising Lula and how awesome their relationship was. And for at least a couple of months, if not a full year, relations between Brazil. and the United States are actually pretty much the opposite of what a lot of people expect it.

Because that one interaction, as you recall, Trump also then invited Lula to come to Washington, which was a shocker, given the tremendous support he's given to Bolsonaro. But now Trump is back to supporting Bolsonaro. So whatever you gain, it's just temporary at the end of the day. And that, again, is raising question marks on the Iranian side, because many of the concessions they would give to get a deal would probably be permanent concessions, are not things that they can just get back once Trump once again changes his mind. I'm also reminded of how, you know, Claudia Scheinbaum, he was talking pretty tough,

and she ended up charming him as well. Something about these leftists. They kind of know what they're doing. Just a question or two more that I wanted to hit on. You mentioned southern Lebanon. Israel is continuing to just steal land in southern Lebanon, and that was a part of the memorandum of understanding, and it was supposed to be folded into the negotiations and Iran was trying to hold on to, you know,

Hezbollah and link arms with them. What is the status of Lebanon as it relates to the diplomacy? The status of Lebanon right now is that in the MOU, there was an agreement that there had to be a region-wide ceasefire and the United States actually started putting real pressure on Israelis to stop attacking. And at a minimum, they had stopped their attacks on Beirut. You also saw a lot of criticism by Trump,

publicly criticizing how the Israelis were conducting it, saying, you know, just because you need to take out an Hezbollah person, you don't have to take down an entire apartment with 500 people in it. You had J.D. Vansko publicly and said the Israelis cannot kill themselves out of every problem. So there was a real offensive against the Israelis to hold up that MOU. But then Marco Rubio goes to the region. He does a thing with the GCC, and then he goes and he negotiates this deal between Israel and the Lebanese government, that really contradicts the MOU.

The MOU says that Israel has to leave Lebanese territory. He doesn't use that exact language. Talk about Lebanon's sovereignty, but it was well understood what it meant. But the MOU then says, no, sorry, the Israeli-Libinese government that Rubio is mediating says, no, Israel will leave once Hezbollah has been disarmed. Disarming Hezbollah will either require a massive war or a civil war. It's just not something that can be achieved that easily. But that also then changes the time frame fundamentally.

We're talking about the years, perhaps, if it is achievable at all, at all. So it completely undermined the MOU, and it's part of the reason why increasingly the MU ended up becoming an empty agreement, because the US kept on doing other things on the side. That was in contradiction to it, including the attempt to kind of fortify a Southern Channel in the Persian Gulf, in the Straits. So now you have a situation in which the Lebanese government is working together with Israel, treating Hezbollah as if it's some sort of a joint Lebanese Israeli problem. And even toying with the idea of bringing in the former head of Al-Qaeda in Syria,

who's now the president of Syria, to join them in fighting Hezbollah, which essentially is what I said earlier on in the program. This is a design to push Lebanon towards a civil war. And it's just absolutely disastrous. So I can understand why Israelis are terribly happy. about it. And it's, it would be devastating for them if the M or you actually had been implemented because it would have pushed Israelis out of Lebanon. And we should also note that Israel's been bombing Gaza essentially every day since the so-called

ceasefire. But it feels like, you know, we're getting reports every day, three children killed, four children killed. I mean, Hamas has been really decimated at this point. And my question to you is how Gaza fits into the negotiations? Gaza really didn't end up fitting into these negotiations, which I assume is because the Iranian simply didn't have the leverage to make demands on Gaza as well, because it was hard enough for the U.S. to push back against Israel in Lebanon, and that ended up not being particularly long-lasting because you have people in the administration who were completely opposed to the idea of putting any pressure on Israel. But the idea of Trump being able to push

the Israelis both on Lebanon and on Iran. Gaza was clearly beyond the reach of the Iranians. If they had the leverage, I'm pretty confident that would at least try. And there were statements coming out of the IRGC that says that Gaza is no different from Lebanon. But at the end of the day, in the real negotiations, there was a huge difference between the two. I think it's also important to understand that for the Iranians, Lebanon and resurrecting what they call their forward defense is their first line of defense against Israel. It is what prevented Israel from attacking Iran in 2006 because Israel didn't managed to defeat as Ebola in 2006. Gaza has never played that role in the Iranian security

outlook. So as a result, despite the ideological arguments the Iranian government would put forward in which Gaza is perhaps even more important than Lebanon, from a secure standpoint, it has never has been. And ultimately, despite the Iranian rhetoric, ideology is not the driving force of their foreign policy. And this has been the case, you know, tragically for the people of Gaza with other countries in the region that should you know their their population is supportive of the Palestinian cause and yet it's not worth it for them to protect these people who are essentially in an open-air concentration camp um well in the case of many of the other Arab governments I think

to be fair they're actually helping these releases right they're paid off yes yes exactly they're paid off to by the by the US um lastly what do we know about Kurdish proxies on the Iraqi border that, you know, it seems like Trump was trying to arm the Kurds and the Israelis were trying to arm the Kurds at the start of this war. Where have we heard this before? What's the status? The status is, I mean, first of all, what happened in January was that there wasn't a template in February for them to actually be the ground troops.

And it didn't work, partly because the Turks intervened, but also because the Iraqi government intervened, the Kurdish government in Iraq. because they knew very well this is going to end up very badly and that Iraqi Kurdistan would pay for it. So they put a stop to it. I'm sure there's still some attempts to make it happen. And if it's not the Kurds, it might be some other ethnic minorities,

the Baluchis or others that would be used. All of these in these type of desperate efforts to try to win some sort of a military victory that clearly is not in the cards. And this is what ultimately can lead to these type of conflicts becoming endless, which is an unattainable objective and zero political will to shift towards something else, towards some sort of exit. Instead, it's just easier to pour more and more resources into trying to achieve something you know is unachievable.

Well, Trita Parsi, appreciate you giving us the rundown here on yet another endless war in the middle. Well, I guess this is adjacent, another endless war that that Trump has dragged us into executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, and you should check out Trita's sub-sac newsletter, Trita Parsi, to follow all of the latest

developments on this war. Thanks so much for your time. Thanks so much, I appreciate it. We are back. Brian just counted out of order. 5-4-2-3. That's not how it goes, buddy. Yes, it says you. I guess.

You didn't go to high school in the Atlanta area. I did not learn special math, which is the special math that caused Trump to lose Georgia in 2020. That's why they didn't count it correctly. Do you trust those guys to count down there? Yeah, exactly. Matt, what is happening in the Matt Luckian media universe? Yeah, Left Reckoning coming up right after the show today on YouTube and Twitch. We talk about this, Jasmine Crockett, James Telf.

Alarico, um, continuing meltdown that's going on that hopefully won't, uh, be a huge problem in trying to beat a Republican in that, uh, seems pretty bad. What is she doing? Um, wrecking. Yeah. I mean, what, uh, for narcissistic reasons because of a Netflix documentary or something. Well, that Netflix documentary also looks a bit. I mean, her district got more blue.

She's, she's lying. She's lying about what happened. Yeah. I mean, just like she's lying about her Israel record, which. was yeah I didn't take APEC money which was true but you did take a trip paid by Apex education arm to go to Israel and pose in front of the Iron Dome and also voted to defund UNRWA. But anyway, Jasmine Crockett hopefully won't spoil that election with, I mean, I think just a campaign of narcissism.

Yes, it's so important. Can you imagine if a leftist, an actual leftist was trying to wreck a key Senate race the way she's trying to wreck a key Senate race based on nothing? One of the demands are like, I should have, I should personally get more respect. But anyway, all that coming up after the show today, we also talk about Bascar Sankara on with the New York Times. Ross has doubt that. New York Times is Ross doubt that. And play old Michael Brooks clip that is linked to both of the stories that we talk about there.

So at patreon.com's this left reckoning coming up right after the show today. Yes. All right. And as we mentioned yesterday, yesterday was the six-year anniversary of Michael Brooks's passing. We're thinking of him a lot yesterday. I'm thinking about him a lot today. So, you know, that was probably really a cool, you know, addition to the Left Reckoning episode. Everybody should check it out.

Definitely influenced David and I's mood in discussing the Texas race. Okay. And that you didn't hold back? Yeah. And certain types of appeals that are cynical and, need to be seen through. Yep. As a reminder, this show relies on your support.

Join the Majority Report.com. Become a member. If you can, it would be helpful. You can IM the show. We sometimes read your IAMs on air. We'll read some IMs in the fun half. Anything else? All right.

See you in the fun half. Okay, Emma, please. Well, I just, I feel that my voice is sorely lacking in the majority report. Wait. Look, Sam is unpopular. I do deserve a vacation at Disney World. So, ladies and gentlemen, it is my pleasure to welcome Emma to the show. It is Thursday.

I think you need to take over for Sam. Yes, please. I'm gonna, I'm gonna pause you right there. Wait, what? You can't encourage Emma to live like this. And I'll tell you why. So it was offered a twerk, sushi, and poker with the boys. Sushi and poker.

Ah, that's what we call bids. Dwerp? Sushi and sushi and... I just think that. And what you did to Tim Poole was mean. Free speech. That's not what we're about here. Look at how sad he's become now.

You shouldn't even talk about it because I think you're responsible. I probably am in a certain way, but let's get to the meltdown here. Twerk? Ugh. Sushi and poker with the boys. Oh my God. Wow. Sushi.

I'm sorry. I'm losing my fucking mind. So it's offered a twirb. Yeah. Sushi and poker with the boys. Logic. Tuhrb. Suci and poker.

Add this debate. Yeah. Yeah. It doesn't understand. So I'm not trying to be a dick right now, but, like, I absolutely think the U.S. should be providing me with a wife and kids. That's not what we're talking about here. It's not a fun job. To work?

That's a real thing. It has, like, the weight of the world on the shoulders. It was so much easier. When the majority report was just you, you were happy. Let's change the subject. Now, shut up. Don't want people saying reckless things on your program. That's one of the most difficult part.

about this show. This is a pro-killing podcast. I'm thinking maybe it's kind of we bury the hatchet. Left is best. Violet twerk. Don't be foolish and don't function. It's a terrible theme song.

I Bumbler. Emma Viglin, absolutely one of my favorite people. Actually, not just in the game, like, period.