The President's Daily Brief - The PDB Situation Report | August 1st, 2026: Annie Jacobsen’s Terrifying Warning About Biological War

Episode Date: August 1, 2026

In this episode of The PDB Situation Report: Investigative journalist Annie Jacobsen joins Mike to discuss her new book, Biological War: A Scenario, and the terrifying possibility that the next weapon of mass destruction could be a deadly engineered pathogen. Cliff May, founder and president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, examines the latest developments in the war between the United States and Iran—and where the conflict may be headed next. To listen to the show ad-free, become a premium member of The President’s Daily Brief by visiting https://PDBPremium.com. Please remember to subscribe if you enjoyed this episode of The President's Daily Brief. YouTube: youtube.com/@presidentsdailybrief Pendulum: Ditch the afternoon crashes and naturally curb your cravings with 20% off the doctor-recommended Pendulum Metabolic Daily at https://pendulumlife.com Cardiff: Get fast business funding without bank delays—apply in minutes with Cardiff and access up to $500,000 in same‑day funding at https://Cardiff.co/PDB Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Welcome to the PDB situation. report. I'm Mike Baker, your eyes and ears on the world stage. All right. Let's get briefed. First up, what would happen if the next weapon of mass destruction wasn't a nuclear bomb, but a deadly engineered pathogen? Now, that's exactly the question that investigative journalist Annie Jacobson explores in her new book, Biological War, A Scenario. She joins me to discuss the frightening realities of biological warfare. Later in the show, we'll examine the latest developments in the war between the U.S. and Iran, and where the conflict may be headed next. Joining me for that conversation is Cliff May, founder and president of the Foundation for

Defense of Democracies. But first, today's situation reports spotlight. Here on the PDB, we spend a lot of time talking about the threat of nuclear weapons, whether it's Vladimir Putin's nuclear saber rattling, North Korea's expanding arsenal, or Iran's race to build a nuclear bomb. Those are the dangers we tend to think of when we talk about weapons of mass destruction. What if the next global catastrophe didn't arrive in the form of a mushroom cloud, but an invisible pathogen? It's a question that's becoming increasingly urgent as advances in biotechnology make it easier

than ever to manipulate dangerous viruses and bacteria. While governments warn that biological weapons programs continue to operate around the world. Well, there's a cheery thought. Investigative journalist Andy Jacobson explores the frightening possibility in her new book, Biological War, scenario using expert interviews and minute-by-minute account to examine how a biological attack or even a catastrophic lab accident could unfold. That sounds somewhat familiar from our recent past, doesn't it? Joining me now is best-selling author Annie Jacobson. And Annie, thank you so much for being here on the Situation Report. Thanks for having me. Talk if you could. Try to set up for the viewers. Tell us just a little bit about, we're here to talk about this new book, but tell me a little bit about

your previous book, if you could. Well, I'm the author of eight books, and I'm guessing you're referring to my book right before this, which is nuclear war a scenario. That was the first time I strayed from history into the future. I wanted to model the nuclear war book and now the bio book after war games that are done at the Pentagon and also with bio pandemic planning games that are done by public health officials. So I guess, I mean, obviously when people see that your book, this new book, Biological Warfare, they're going to, I think their mind's going to go straight to the pandemic, obviously the COVID. Because depending on who you talk to, I guess it's either modern history, recent history or ancient history.

It's really interesting how quickly some people have just put that in the background. But is this in terms of a biological attack? in the present moment. Is it a current concern? Is it something when you started doing these interviews, you started talking to experts, was it something that was top of mind for them, or did they have to sort of dust off their old concerns

and say, well, let's revisit this idea? Not only is it top of mind. I learned it's actually considered at the Defense Department, which I will continue calling. It's the greatest overall threat. nuclear being the most destructive, but bio being the greatest overall threat, because it's the most likely. I mean, look, your COVID reference is very important because we now know that a biological catastrophe is not theoretical. And now on top of that, when you consider that mother nature's pathogens can be genetically modified very easily, very low bar for entry, for human to human transmission,

greater virulence, able to defeat medical countermeasures like vaccines and antibiotics. You throw that all into the mix, as I show the readers in an unfortunately very dramatic fashion. You realize why it's the greatest overall, Fred. Yeah. Right now our listeners, our viewers are they're settling in for what they assume is going to be a very cheery conversation. If you look at the recent headlines, Anthony Fauci was just up on the hill. He took the, he pled the fifth 111 times or so. And setting the side the politics of what happened during COVID,

do you think that there was any lesson learned from COVID that is positive, that could prevent a future problem in this space. That wasn't a very eloquent. I'd ask that question, and hopefully you know what I mean. You have now hit the nail exactly on the head. Unfortunately, the answer is no. So, in other words, COVID could have been something we all learned from because COVID had a 1% case fatality rate. If you ask the CDC, many people say it was far lower than that.

But 1% means one in 100 people who manifested symptoms of COVID died. And in my book, I take readers through a scenario of what is one of the worst, most feared pathogens that could be let loose. By the way, it doesn't have to be an attack. It can be an incident. It can be a lab leak. It can be an accident. And I use the pathogen pneumonic plague for a lot of reasons we can get into. but that has a case fatality rate of 100%, 100% if you don't take antibiotics immediately as in within 24 hours.

And I interviewed Usamrid world experts on plague who had been working on vaccine cures at the Defense Department's lab for Dietrich and others who really drill down on the reality of these kinds of incredible. deadly pathogens that would absolutely not just cause a pandemic, but cause mass death, death, and lead to anarchy and insurrection. Now, I mean, it sounds like in part you're alluding to it, a little bit on the periphery, gain of function, which a lot of people had never heard about until COVID. To what degree from your work, your research, is gain of function research? engaged in around the world, whether it's here in the U.S. or anywhere else, how common is that? And then if you could kind of expand on to what degree you think that played a role.

I don't want to settle into COVID. I want to spend a lot of time talking about COVID because I want to get into the scenario that you outlined. But I'm just curious because, again, you know, Fauci's appearance brought all of this back up to the top of mind. Absolutely. And, you know, here's two things we have in common. I do, no one has any idea what my politics are.

I just write the facts, ma'am with a little bit of hypotheticals from Pentagon Wargaming. But I also stay away from COVID, like heating it on the head in the book and let readers come to their own idea about what they think. Now, gain of function is incredibly important. It is just a fancy word or a different phrase for genetic modification. which is also known as recombinant DNA techniques. So there is one lesson out of the COVID pandemic that we can now all benefit from. And that is a little bit of knowledge about what gain of function is. And hopefully your listeners, all of our fellow Americans and everyone around the world will actually

read some of the longer things written about what Fauci is accused of, what actually happened in the lab, what gain of function is, how scientists work to kind of cover up this idea that gain of function was going on in Wuhan and is going on all around the world. And so hopefully readers will be really interested because this does impact all of us. Because I really believe that a little bit of knowledge goes an extremely long way. I say right in the book, spoiler alert, dystopian ending. I mean, it ends an absolute collapse of civilization because that's how the war games end. But I also say in the very acknowledgments, I say the point is pressure or not panic.

And before you can pressure anyone to do anything, you have to have a little bit of information. So gain of function. Gain of function is precisely like it sounds. You are making a pathogen. Pathogen is a deadly bacteria or virus, and you are making it gain functions so you are making it more transmissible airborne. You're making it have more virulence. You're amping up that case fatality rate from a lower number to a higher number. You are making it defeat vaccines and antibiotics.

And that is something that people should most definitely know. Why is it going on if biological weapons are illegal, which they are, which all countries have signed a treaty in 1972, saying they wouldn't be making biological weapons. Gain a function and it's sort of other, you know, phrases that I took you through are the one carve out of the treaty, provided you're doing it for prophylop. lactic purposes, a fancy word for like trying to find a cure. And that's, of course, an obvious catch-22. Because you can really blur the lines between trying to find a cure and actually making a weapon. Well, it would seem like, yeah, that would seem to be the, and again, you may not be

surprised at this, but I'm not actually a pathogen specialist or even a scientist. And but it seems to me that if you're doing this, you have to, you have to weaponize it before you can understand how to combat it, how to fight it. And I mean, I don't see how else you would do it. Well, you're absolutely right. And there's actually a very, like a long history of all this and a short history. But the short history that's important. And I take readers through it very quickly in these little history lessons in the book where I break up the narrative of, day one, day two, day three, because after six days, we have anarchy. We go from outbreak, to anarchy in six days. But I break up the narrative with the little history lessons to give you an indication of some important facts, one of which, talk about not political, gain of function was put on hold by President Obama. In his early in his administration, because he was warned by scientists, many of whom I interview in the book, this is essentially a euphemism for

weapons engineering. He paused it. Then it went back into effect because there are extraordinary amounts of money involved. As we saw from the Fauci revelations, as we saw many of the scientists who were supporting this idea that the origin of COVID was a wet market, which Fauci himself admits was not true. So this idea, why would a group of scientists conspire, and I do not use that word lightly, conspire means a group of people get together to deceive the public. So why would they do this? Well, because lots and lots and lots of money is involved by way of grants to do gain of function research. So this has gone back and forth through multiple administrative. administrations, people who want the programs to be going on in their labs and around the world,

because there's a lot of money involved, push for it. And people like Andrew Weber, who has advised every president on biological weapons since Reagan, says to me, gain of function is a euphemism for biological weapons engineering. But do you believe it's, it has value, it's necessary? I do not believe I most certainly do not believe after writing biological war scenario. I think it's really hard for anyone to say that the rewards outweigh the risks, although that is a quote that Dr. Fauci himself used back in 2012 in a paper that's on the public record arguing for these programs. It's just simply not worth it. There are too many possibilities of lab accidents. There's more than 3,500 BSL three labs around the world where you can manipulate plague.

3,500 in many countries that have wars going on. The BSL4 labs, which is where you see the guys in spacesuits in movies, those labs now number 110 around the world. 90% of these labs do not have an agreed upon set of safety protocols. And that would include, I assume, Wuhan is a BSL-4 lab. You know what's crazy about Wuhan is, yes, there's a BSL-4 lab there. It's China's biggest BSL-4 lab. Yes, there's a BSL-3 lab. But many subject matter experts believe that the lab leak happened in Wuhan out of a BSL-2 lab.

and that is really shocking because those labs are where you should be like manipulating common flu. Is it fair to say, I'm sorry, Annie for Trinerti, is it fair to say that the possibility of a leak out of that is because perhaps the safety protocols are less? Oh, absolutely. There are pictures that you can see from legitimate scientists who show what it looks like inside one of China's BSL2 lab. in Wuhan where they were manipulating coronaviruses. And, you know, it's like a mess. There's like, I mean, I want to say there's a bag of Doritos lying around as a poetic metaphor. So many, so many questions to ask.

We do have to take a break. But if you'll stick around, I've got page after page here to try to get through in our next segment. Annie, thank you very much. We'll be right back with more from Annie Jacobson, a biological warfare, a scenario. You got to read it. Stick around. Hey, Mike Baker here. Now, many of you know me as the host of the President's Daily Brief podcast, or at least I hope you know me as the host of the PDB. But I'm also a business owner, have been for years,

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Both walk their own paths toward justice, and as their lives start to intertwine, the line between right and wrong begins to blur. New episodes week over week. Watch the Hulu original series Furious, now streaming only on Hulu on Disney Plus. back to the PDB situation report. Joining me once again is the author of the brand new book, Biological War, a scenario. Investigative journalist Annie, thank you very much for sticking around. It would have been super awkward if you hadn't and we came back and you would just laugh. I disappeared into a biological guitar. I had to run with my gas masks. In the previous segment, you mentioned that President Obama had paused gain of function

research and then resumed, in part because of the stakes, the money involved. Was there an element of, from a national security perspective, was there pressure put on the administration from your insight to resume, gain a function because our adversaries are doing it? You know, I don't get really into the specifics of that, because that kind of moves toward political situations. And I also do not really drill down on gain of function other than telling you what it is because you don't need to know a whole lot more. And also, people are free to make their own decision. You know, they can say this is incredibly important that we do this. But I think that the general

consensus certainly of subject matter experts that have been dealing with biological threats ever since the Soviet era Cold War program was revealed to be invioletism. of the treaty, they had an illegal, huge biological weapons program that was only revealed when a Soviet defector told an British intelligence officer about it, who then in turn shared it with CIA officers. I interview the handlers, the CIA handlers of these defectors. And this takes us back to the 1990s. And we learn how the whole biotechnological military industrial complex began. Because there was so much of a concern that these illegal biological weapons, by the way, there were like tons of them. It stored, you know, an actual program that was not disguised as gain of function.

And our diplomats worked with Russia to make sure those arsenals of biological weapons were destroyed and not sold on the black market to terrorists. or nations like Iran who were very interested in getting them. And so these are people who have had a really serious horse in the race since those days. They've been tracking these issues all along. That's who I interview. That's who I look to for great information. Like you, I'm not a scientist. I'm not an epidemiologist.

I'm a narrative storyteller and a national security reporter who has become really increasingly clear. with these two recent books, that global catastrophic risks, coupled with the incredible speed at which technology is transforming our world, must begin to be looked at in a new framework where you can't apply the same terms, like, oh, should we be doing this because they might. It really has to be much more of a global effort, kind of like the way, we had to reduce our nuclear arsenals from 70,000 nuclear weapons during the Cold War to the 12,300 that exist on the planet today. Because the threats are too great. The numbers are too big. There's too many bad actors. There has to be agreements between nations. All right. Well, here's where my cynical nature is going to come out. Annie, do you think that that's actually a world that we live in today where the U.S. and China, for example,

can in good faith negotiate an agreement that says, you know, we're going to work together to ensure we don't have this problem in the future. Sure, I believe it has to because look at what happened with the pandemic. We can no longer say, oh, something let loose in China isn't going to affect us. Just period, full stop fact. The spread of a pathogen, a biological weapon, unlike any other weapon in the defense. Department's arsenal is a living weapon. You can, you know, you know this. You can put a 2,000 pound bomb on a target, and the DOD can tell you exactly how many people it's going to kill. You can put a nuclear weapon on the target. Same thing. Biological weapons, no way of calculating what is going to

happen, only that it's going to be catastrophic if the case fatality rate is high enough and it's airborne. And it's going to end in Mass death, insurrection and anarchy around the globe. Everybody in the business of preventing a biological incident or attack knows that. I guess what I'm getting on, and then I want to dive into the scenario to the degree that I don't want to do a spoiler alert on the new book. You may do a spoiler alert. You may do it.

I say it right away in the author's note. I think people need to see how. it happens because that's what I show you. My area of expertise is being able to get multiple people from multiple organizations to tell me how their individual lane will work. So I show you how it goes down and I show you how the devolution plan, a classified plan, kicks in after the president declares the Insurrection Act. So there's the spoiler alert. But these are things you're going to want to know the details about. Okay, so tell us what the spark is in the book, in biological war scenario.

Tell us what the spark is that sets this whole problem off. I link everything to either an event that has happened in the past or something that the Pentagon worries will happen in the future. So very specifically, the inciting incident of the book is a lab accident at Russia's BSL4 lab called the Vector Institute. It sounds like it should be something in a Marvel movie. It's a real facility, and there was a real explosion there in 2019. In that incident, a pathogen did not get out because the explosion was in a building

that didn't have viruses and germs. In my scenario, this unleashes a genetically modified pneumonic plague weapon that is stored at Vector and it quickly takes off and makes its way to the United States of America. In a similar fashion to what we saw with COVID, just travel, social contact, and to what degree, I mean, again, I keep going back to COVID just because it's a baseline for, I think, a lot of people now. Sure. But another comp, another comp is the bubonic plague, the Black Day.

death of the 14th century, because that actually was plague. And that wiped out a half of Europe. But in those days, the rate of travel by caravan or by ship was one mile a day. Today, you can get across the world in 12 hours. That's what happened in Wuhan. And that's precisely what happens in biological war scenario. For example, a cruise ship, a Diamond Princess cruise ship, People may remember that from the very early days of COVID. One passenger with COVID in his lungs infected 712 other passengers. That passenger was advised to disembark in the port of Hong Kong with its population of 7.5 million people because the doctor had no idea he was dealing with SARS-CoV-2. And so, yes, I use another analogy of someone who had been in Siberia.

I have 10 hunters on a hunting trip, international businessmen, and they come across a scientist. This is the real, I'm giving it away here, but they come across a scientist in the forest, the guy who caused the explosion, who's going to go out to the forest and kill himself with a crisis of conscience. These 10 hunters come across him. One of them is a good Samaritan, gives him mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. And those 10 men quickly get on airplanes and they take it to every continent but Antarctica. And the aggressiveness of this pathogen? Mnemonic plague is called a full.

This is Mother Nature's mnemonic plague. It doesn't even need to be modified. It's called a fulminant disease, which means it strikes like lightning and it kills really quickly. It's about 48 hours to death. once you develop symptoms of pneumonic plague. And so the real genetic modification that has been done in my scenario is something that exists in science because the Soviet weaponaires told the CIA handlers that they had done this.

They were able to engineer plague so that it could defeat, not only could it defeat antibiotics, which would normally kill plague and reduce the fatality rate from 100% death to 15%. not only did they do that, but they put in the most dark, hearted, nefarious component that they actually inserted a gene that when you took the antibiotics, it would trigger encephalitis of the brain. So you would actually die of a brain swelling. You would like turn in circles, collapse, and die. And the reason they did this, they told their CIA handlers, because they hated Americans so much.

They wanted the last thought of these hundreds of millions of dying Americans to be, my government failed me and Western medicine failed me. To what degree from everything that you've seen in research is AI impacting this situation? In ways in which you and I cannot literally comprehend and also, at a rate of speed that by the time we get off this Zoom call, more will have happened. And I say that because I have spoken to DARPA individuals who run the bioscience office there, who are seriously, it's their top concern, AI-enabled bio. And the problem is that, you know, the CEOs of the six largest AI-a-I companies don't know

what they don't know. I'm not quoting Rumsfeld there. I'm literally saying that, literally, because I myself did an interview with Sam Altman, the details of which are in the book, because I was able to make ChatGPT do something, not create a biological weapon, which everybody talks about. But I was actually able to make ChatchipT tell me the location, a classified location of a strategic national stockpile close to Los Angeles, because I know from reading all of these documents and injuring subject matter experts, that the real fear is the anarchy. Why does the anarchy happen? Because when people realize that everyone is dying and they find out that there are these strategic national stockpiles pre-placed around the United

States and America is a country of 500 million guns, people are just going to go out and try and get anything they can for themselves and their family. And the shit is going to hit the fan. And I talked to Sam about how I was able to do that. That has since changed. But that's why I say that CEOs of the AI companies don't know what they don't know. Yeah. Well, having seen or been through a handful of blackouts and, you know,

weather crises, it doesn't take much for just even, you know, sort of general behavior to start to shift and head south in the face of sort of adversity. Oh, my God, it's, you know, it's seven days. We have no power, right? And you think, okay, well, it could be a lot worse. Are you, as a result of all the work that you put into this book, are you, this is, again, you're going to see where I have a question in my head, getting it out into actual words, sometimes as entertaining. But are you an optimistic or a pessimistic person when talking about the ability for the human race to avoid a global disaster of this nature? I am an eternal optimist. I mean, I write about the most dystopian things to become more

knowledgeable. You know, man-made problem. Man-made. made solution. This is not an asteroid coming at the United States, or the world, rather, like the one that wiped out the dinosaurs and led to a near, or rather an extinction level event, certainly for a lot of animals. But what it is is going to be a near extinction level event. That's what it's called at FEMA at HHS at the Pentagon. It's called a maximum of maximums event, a biological incident that airborne with a pathogen that's airborne and that has a high case fatality rate. And so why are people you know quibbling, I just look at all this. The optimist in me looks at this stuff and says, why are people quibbling about really spending so much time about trivial things,

arguing about tribal politics when there is so much that can be done with our scientific advances to make sure that a near extinction level doesn't happen that's manmade. And that involves nuclear and bio. Okay. Well, I applaud the optimism, but we also talked, and I guess this is where I'm so cynical, is that I agree with you 100% when you said earlier that we had an opportunity to learn important, valuable critical lessons from COVID, but that we didn't. And part of that is,

and here's where this is not political statement, this is just an operational statement from somebody who spent a long time and working overseas. We really got no transparency out of, out of the Chinese Communist Party as to what happened in Wuhan. And I think that's an indication of the nature of humans, right? I don't think the, the, the, the, bottom line nature of humans is to come together and work for the good of all, right? And so I'm, I would say that your scenario is, and the book is amazing. But where you're an eternal optimist, you know, someone like me looks at it and thinks, yeah, you know, this is coming down the pike. I would love to say one last thought on that because of course, I mean, we call them our enemies and

adversaries for a reason. It's not kumbayao with the Chinese. You're absolutely right. They did not give us critical information about COVID, certainly, and they never have. But they played completely into the hand of American politics, completely into the hand. And that is going on today. I have people in my book on both sides of the aisle, 100%. And now that the Fauci revelations have come to bear, what they agree on, both of those seriously high-ranking officials, a number of whom are sort of in the periphery of a lot of the memos, they agree that, well, the issue, when I say why it's a system, Dr. Fauci was basically kind of like a self-appointed leader. He was not the director of HHS. He did not have a mandate to be in control. He could have been taken out of power. Any number of people that knew what was going on. on, that we were being misled, that 10 of the 12 scientists in that paper knew that the lab leak was far more plausible than not. That's not like just, I do not buy the fact that that's just a tiny inside baseball group and no one else had any idea. I just don't buy it. Where is the

secondary circle to that and the tertiary and so on? And why didn't those people say it is a really bad form to create a conspiracy to mislead the American people. It's unwise. And the reason that they go back to saying it is because, well, we didn't want one group of people will say we didn't want President Trump to think it was a Chinese weapon because we knew it wasn't a weapon. I mean, sorry, we didn't want him to think it was intentional, which pretty much everyone is agreeing it wasn't. But that doesn't excuse the fact that, you know, you would misrepresent the fact that it was a lab leak because that is the most dangerous threat because it's the most likely to happen.

Annie, I got to tell you, this has been absolutely riveting and fascinating. And I am very appreciative of the fact that you took the time to join us here on the situation report. I encourage everybody to go out and make sure you pick up a copy of biological war, a scenario. You can find it on Amazon Barnes & Noble, wherever you buy books. Hopefully you're still buying books out there. Everybody should. But thank you so much for your parents. I hope that the next time we call, you'll agree to come back on because there's a lot more to discuss here.

I know our viewers would be fascinated. Thank you so much for having me. It was a pleasure. Absolutely. Annie, thank you. Great discussion. Annie Jacobson's new book, Biological War, A Scenario Out Now, again on Amazon, Bar. Barnes & Noble, wherever you get your books, go out and get a copy.

Fascinating stuff. All right, coming up next, we'll be joined by Cliff May, founder and president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. We're talking all things Iran. Stay put. Hey, Mike Baker here with a pro tip for feeling your best. Now, let me ask you a question. Have you ever finished breakfast or lunch or dinner, but then find yourself reaching for a snack an hour later? Right?

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Once again, pendulumlife.com and get 20% off today. Welcome back to the PDB situation report. The conflict between the U.S. and Iran, perhaps you've heard of it, has entered another volatile chapter. Iran's missile attack on an American base in Jordan shattered a brief, very brief, period of relative calm, and drew an immediate military response from Washington. With both sides continuing to now trade blows, there are growing questions about what each hopes to achieve and how this war ultimately ends, if it ends, not to be a downer. For more on this, I want to bring in Cliff May, founder and president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

Cliff, thank you very much for joining us here on the Situation Report. Hey, it's good to be with you, Mike. Well, let's see. What shall we talk about? It doesn't it seems like everything's kind of going pretty well around the world, not a lot of crises. Where are we with the Iran conflict at this point? I know that's a very open-ended question, but let's start there. I'll let me start with this point. The president has been very clear that this regime, in Iran, Islamic revolutionaries, as they declare themselves, or jihadis.

It's the same thing. It's one is, Islamic revolutionary sounds more left wing. Jihadi sounds more theological. He does not want them to have nuclear weapons. Every other president has said that. None of them have done anything serious about it. I don't think this has been as clear as he should be about why this regime must not have nuclear weapons. So I'm going to say it very bluntly because they would use them.

Because this is a jihadi regime, you have to understand they mean it when they say death to America. This is a long war. This is a war that started 1,400 years ago. the supreme leader of Iran, theologically, is meant to be the supreme leader of all the Muslims in the world. And Islam is meant to dominate and be supreme, as it was for more than a thousand years. So most people going to elite colleges now probably don't know their history.

And there's no such thing, or I shouldn't say, the Ayatollah Ruala Khomeini, who began this revolution and founded the Islamic Republic of Iran, he was very clear that patriotism is paganism, a form of idolatry. So our general view, which worked with the Soviets, oh, they won't hit us with a nuclear weapon because what we would do to them, just imagine we would strike back massively. That doesn't bother him at all. He has made clear that if it is necessary for Iran to burn,

in order for Islam to become dominant in the world again, then let it burn. That's okay. So it's hard for a lot of Americans to get to kind of believe that they take this theology seriously. But I'm telling you they do. I'm telling you as somebody who is, as you know, I was in Iran for the revolution in 1979. I've kind of studied it all this time. They take it seriously.

So that's the first thing to understand. And even if they didn't use the nuclear weapon, they could threaten to use the nuclear weapon in order to get whatever concessions they want it. They could say, look, the American imperialist soldiers must leave the Middle East. American capitalists must leave the Middle East. We think that Muslims in America should have the right to be governed under Sharia law. If you don't want to lose a city, then this is what you have to do is you're going to have to capitulate to us. You can see how firm they are. after all the bombing we've done and the economic strangulation that we've begun, they don't want to compromise.

They don't want a deal. They don't want a diplomatic solution. They want to win, and they believe that is what they are obligated to do by their religion. I think it's a very interesting point because I get asked this a lot by, oftentimes libertarians, right, who really don't want to engage in anything. And they'll say, well, what evidence do you have that the Iranian regime would use a nuclear weapon? And they're approaching it from the mindset of Western values and Western logic and the way that we process information, which is entirely different from a jihadist, right, or a fundamentalist.

And so that's, I take your point. I guess at this stage, and also not to disappear down a speculation rabbit hole, but there have been some recent intel reports that said that Moshab al-Hamini, the new supreme leader, whether he's alive, whether he's out of the country, whether he's in hiding inside Iran, but a couple of interesting intel reports saying that he actually is more inclined to pursue a nuclear weapon than his father was. That's an interesting piece of intelligence. And then to your point about where they are right now in the negotiations,

I think that's a really important issue because from a Western perspective, you know, and you see this from the White House. The White House is, well, we've obliterated their military. We've decimated them. They have no cards. And yet they're the, they're being aggressive in this negotiation. And they're acting as if they've, they've kind of got the upper hand and that they've won so far through this conflict.

And I think that's hard for people to understand or to process. If they're sitting out here with Western Value saying, well, look, of course we can defeat them. Well, a couple of things. One is, I think we can defeat them, but we have to be determined. What do they believe? Keep in mind that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the architect of the 9-11 attacks, when he was in Gitmo and Guantanamo and it was being interrogated by the CIA, he was talking about why they would win. He meant jihadis.

He meant Muslim revolutionaries. And he was a non-state actor. And his interrogator said, how can you believe that? I mean, you don't have the weapons. You don't even have a state. You don't have it. He said, we will win because we know you will always quit. And we will not.

That's very important. Also, Ruala Khomeini, again, the founder of the revolution, back in 79, when he took our hot, when he took our diplomats hostage for foreign. 44 days. His comment was, the Americans cannot do a damn thing to us. He kind of saw the Americans were not doing a damn thing to us. He eventually did release the hostages. He was apparently afraid that Reagan was going to do something very serious that would endanger the revolution, endanger his power, and that's important. One other to your point about Western, it's not even just Western. I also, the other place I've spent a lot of time years ago was in the Soviet Union.

I was an exchange student there. I was a journalist there. The Russians are not exactly Western. Not quite. But I would say you could deter them and you could have something like mutually assured destruction because they were, after Oz, communists, they didn't believe in 72 black-eyed virgins in heaven. They were evil, but they were very rational. And they had lost so many people in World War II.

And for many years after that, you would see people in the streets, men, you know, with hobbling on crutches. They didn't want to go through that again. That was clear. Didn't make them good. Didn't make them, but they were different from the jihadis. But there's also this year, that way they take into account. And this week particularly, FD has a book coming out.

It just came out, 300 pages. I'm going to show it you. It's called the Axis of Aggressers. Countering the cooperation of China, Russia, Iran, North Korea. And this was two years in the works, and I wrote a column about this PISA theory three years ago. with a guy by the have a Warren, Newell, who is an academic expert on tyrannies throughout history. Basically, what we're saying is, and this shows the unbelievable, really, extent to which Beijing, Moscow, Tehran, and Pyongyang are cooperating militarily, diplomatically, economically, and in

many other ways. So you have Shahid drones going to Moscow so that Putin can use them against the Ukrainians. We believe we have missiles coming from China to Tehran to use against American planes. These would be shoulder-fired missiles. We have tunnels in Lebanon built by, for Hezbollah, built by North Korean engineers. We have probably another 30,000 North Korean soldiers are going to be deployed to Russia to fight against the Ukrainians. Those who survived, not a lot, but those who survive are combat hardened. And in exchange for what the North Koreans are giving, Putin is giving technology for submarines and satellites and other things

to Kim Jong on of that dynasty. And he's getting more threatening towards South Korea, towards Japan, the American territory of Guam. We need to understand that there is this axis of aggressors. They are very different ideologically, but they have one common that they want to diminish American power, replace America as a world leader, make America a marginal power, a former power, the way that Britain and France and Spain are former powers, not to be taken seriously anymore. They have,

they just don't project power in the world. Yeah, you're touching on, I think, a really critical point here as this conflict continues, which is, it's not, you know, contained in a bubble in any way between the U.S. and Iran, to what degree are you concerned at this stage? Because, you know, aside from the influence and the interdependence and the relationships between China, Russia, North Korea, and Iran, you're starting to see, obviously, Jordan is dealing with more attacks from Iran. You have the Khutis now, you know, disrupting at the Iranians' behest, the Bab al-Land-Deb straight, You've got the Saudis participating in direct strikes on Iranian proxies in Iraq. Yeah, vessels, you know, being hit in the Mediterranean.

It seems as if this thing is starting to expand around the region. To what degree are you worried that that's the case that's happening? It's going to get worse. Do you believe that there's some strategy in place at the White House to contain this? Well, there are two points there. One is it's not, yes, it's expanding, but there is a, it's all coming from one place. It's all coming from Tehran. The Houthis in Yemen, a desperately poor country, have missiles and drones because Iran supplies them. The drone that hit the ship in Egypt was from Tehran. Taran is the root cause of all this. If you can collapse, cripple, or to replace the regime in Tehran, then all this goes away. The Houthis, where would the Houthis get their weapons of how would they do this? Yes, Iran, this regime in Iran, because I always say it that way, because I think most

Iranians oppose this regime. There's no question. They've hit maybe a dozen of their neighbors so far, and they're hitting neighbors who have attempted to be neutral. Part of what they're saying is you have to understand the Americans we're going to push out, and then we will be the ruler of the Middle East, of Muslims around the world everywhere. You will be our vassals. You want to side with the Americans?

It's at your risk. Be very careful about that. That's what they're attempting to say. If America is strong, then the Saudis and the Emirates and others will say, okay, we want to be part of the American architecture. It's an interesting thing that the regime has not, in a long time, hit the Israelis. And you have to ask, why not? Why wouldn't they want to hit the Israelis? I think because the Israelis are sort of chomping at the bit to do something that the Trump administration is not eager to do.

And that is continue the decapitation exercise, figure out exactly, which I think the most sought often knows, what bunkers these guys are in. Are they going home to their villas? can we knock them out and get down to a level of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, not Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, get down to, I don't know, the event planning stage where you might find some agnostics and Charlottians who do want to make some kind of a deal. I think there's a debate in the White House over how to proceed. I think the best way is what people like General Jack Keene has been talking about,

Admiral Mark Montgomery, who works with me at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, absolutely continue to strangulation economically. That means a total blockade. No oil gets sold whatsoever. No money, no salaries for the guys who get in the fast boats and come out to shoot at ships. Nothing whatsoever. It takes a little time, but you can strangle this regime economically. They're not selling TVs and computers or selling oil.

Don't let them do that. But then also, yes, continue to hit. military headquarters, but also banks. The spokesman for the foreign ministry should be standing on rubble, not on a nice carpet inside a beautiful building. You can do communications media really cripple this regime to the point where it really has no power whatsoever. That will give at least a chance to the people of Iran to say, okay, let's get some baseball bats and go after these guys. It's not easy, but it will take time, but that's possible too. Yeah.

A couple more pages of questions to throw you away, Cliff, but we've got to take a quick break. So if you'll stay right where you are, we'll be back with more from Cliff May, Foundation for the Defense of Democracies. And just a moment, so stick around. Welcome back to the PDB Situation Report. Joining me once again is Cliff May. He's the founder and president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Cliff, thanks very much for sticking. around. We just finished the previous segment talking about strategy, about what can be done.

How do we reach a logical conclusion here in this conflict? The economic pressure is, I think, is key. I think you're exactly correct on that. What are you seeing over there at the foundation? what are your sources saying about the current state of the economy inside Iran in terms of its impact on the population, on the people, and how are they processing all this, how are they dealing with it, level of frustration, whatever it may be? From what we can tell, the economy is in dreadful shape, hyperinflation, very hard to put food on a table.

It's very hard on the general population. if you are part of the Islamist elite, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the BASI, their sort of black shirts on the streets, you know, hitting protesters in the head or killing them, you probably have a little more, but they're going to still run out. So it's very hard. I would say, however, our belief is that the vast majority of the population, not everybody, the vast majority says we need to get, we need to go through this. and we need to come out the other side.

This regime has oppressed us for 47 years, and we want something new, and we're willing to suffer for it, but don't let up the pressure. And this is an important point, too, that I've argued, and I've made this case, supervisors at the White House, there are those particularly on the left who say, you know, war is what happens when diplomacy fails. No, Klosowitz and others would tell you, I think, that diplomacy is war by other means. So you can negotiate, but that doesn't mean you let up the pressure while you do. You say at any point, you want the bombing to stop, you want the conflict to stop, there are concessions you have to make. That's what we're doing here. We're not settling your grievances.

So you want diplomacy with adversaries and enemies to always be coercive, which is you're means you don't separate between diplomacy and hard power. You combine the two. George Schultz talked about this very clearly. He said, unless the shadow of force hangs over the negotiating table, you will capitulate. Frederick the Great understood this. He said that negotiations without arms is like music without instruments. This is a basic thing, but I've heard very...

prominent people, people like Jack, John Kerry, for example, who don't understand this basic fact. It's one thing if you're negotiating with a friend over, you know, how much you're going to tax or tariff imports of wood. That's not what this is about. This is an enemy. You're in a conflict. Your diplomacy must be coercive. It's simply not true that these guys are looking for a diplomatic solution. something fair for both sides.

That's not where that's not who these people are if you understand them. It is, it is remarkable that after all this time, after all these years, um, and all the evidence as to how the regime negotiates and their ability, you know, they're really quite on one level.

They're really quite sophisticated and understanding how to, how to work the American mindset and how to game this, this process. Um, and you do, but you, And John Kerry was a good example, right? He played into that, right?

I mean, I don't want to get political, but just from a pragmatic or operational perspective, right? That mindset, you know, is you're basically a useful idiot for the Iranian regime. And because you're buying into this idea. And maybe it's because we tend to mirror our values and the way that we think and process information. We tend to mirror them out of the cultures. That just doesn't work and hasn't worked. and there's no evidence that they are changing their stripes. Where do you stand on the situation with Mostaba, the new supreme leader?

Have you seen anything that pushes you in one direction or the other as to, is he alive, is he in the country, is he out of the country, is he actually making decisions if he's alive, or is there a different type of leadership structure now as a result of this conflict? We don't really have sufficient evidence to know. I would say it's unlikely he is out of the country. How badly wounded he is. I don't know. I think it's likely, but we don't really know that he is alive,

that he's probably talking a lot with General Ahmed Bahidi, who's the head of the IRGC, the Islamic GERGGGGGG, the Salm Ghiard Corps, about others. He's probably, if he's that badly wounded, he's probably angry. His father was killed. He's probably angry. Of course, his father was supplying IEDs to kill Americans in Iraq. His father was sending assassins into America more successfully, in many cases, to Europe. His father had dispatched Qasem Soleimani, who President Trump also correctly decided to eliminate since he was the leading, probably leading terrorist master in the entire world. But nonetheless, that doesn't mean he's not pretty angry. about what's happened. And more than that, we don't really know how, how many, you know, is he awake all day? Is he how rational is he? We just don't know. He would never have this job if his father hadn't been killed,

or I don't think he would have. Part of the theology is you're not supposed to have dynasties. You're supposed to have, it's supposed to be those who best understand Sharia law, those who best understand the Khorrae, those who best understand the Khoram. and the Hadiths of the sayings of Muhammad, that's who's supposed to be in charge. That's who is supposed to guide the nation. But the way it worked out, they just, they put the kid in charge. He's not, he was not known as a great scholar of Islam.

Do you think he was put in charge because the IRC can manipulate him? I think he was put in charge because it was convenient and you wouldn't, and you didn't want to have a big fight over who would take over. and yes, it's also possible that the IRGC and particularly General Bahidi thought, he and I sit down together, I'll get the authority to do what I want to do. I think that's a credible assessment. So you mentioned earlier in previous segment about the Gulf Allies, about our partners in the region,

and the attacks they've been dealing with from the Iranian regime. And I mean, it's interesting that the Saudis recently participated directly in strikes on Orion proxies in Iraq, which I think is a very interesting development. There's been sort of this narrative coming out, I think, of the White House that, well, we're in this. Why are we in this on our own? Why aren't our partners joining us? How come we have to do all the work? And I would push back a little bit on that.

I think the Gulf allies have been working on our behalf off the radar screen. They don't necessarily want to publicize it for their own obvious reasons out there. But do you suspect that where this is going is that we will get continued more involvement, direct involvement from our regional partners out there, partners, allies, however we want to refer to them, the Gulf states? Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Look, a part of the problem is that they haven't prepared for this properly. They don't have a lot of capabilities.

The Saudis have a – they buy a lot of weapons, but they don't necessarily, you know, train pilots how to use that – you use and fly those planes properly. The Saudis, if you remember, about 10 years ago, they were fighting the Houthis. And the international community, as we like to call it, and not least in the United States, got very angry. Oh, you're bombing indiscriminately. It's a humanitarian crisis. You must stop, and they were essentially called off from fighting the Houthis. And so the Houthis rose again.

And this is an important point just of what I want to make. If the Islamic Republic of Iran gets to control the Strait of Ramos, no reason why the Houthis can't control the Babamandeb, which is another usually important chokepoint from the Red Sea and the Suez Canal. And then, you know, the Malaysians may want the strait of Malamaka. And, of course, the Chinese Communist Party will want the Taiwan Strait. I mean, this is, you know, and that's the end of fundamental international law, nothing more fundamental than freedom of navigation, which goes back hundreds of years, to freedom of the seas and the global commons. So all that is true. But the Houthis, again, if they're cut off from their patron, then they, that's the end of them, just as Hesbola, if they're cut off from their patron, although Hesbola is much weakened now because the Israelis are still in the process of weakening them.

Hamas is less than it was. You have Shia militias that obey Tehran in Iraq, which has kept Iraq from being as independent as it should be because the leaders there are afraid of these Shia militias. The Islamic Republic of Iran is very much an imperialist state. It's imperialist Islam, but again, as I said to you, it's the supreme leader who is meant to control or guide or lead or rule over all Muslims, Sunni and, and Shia as well. The Saudis understand that very well. Saudis are Sunnis, the Saudis are Arabs, the Islamic Republic of Iran is Shia and predominantly Persian. Their view of the Saudi royal family is that they're interlopers, usurpers, how dare they be in control of the holy cities of Mecca and Medina? They do understand that that's a threat. So what we could see and what we'd like to see is a

New War, it is, look, is a regime change in Iran, if not a severely crippled regime with an architecture of Arab states, the United States, and Israel, the most militarily capable state in the Middle East, keeping this crippled regime in a weakened state. You want your enemies to be weakened. You don't want to do what we have done for 47 years. Allow the regime in Iran as a chance death to America every Friday night to continue to get closer and closer to having nuclear weapons. They were probably within weeks of it before the 12-day war. They're now at least a couple of years away, we believe, and a shield of missiles and drones that would put them in what Marco Rubo has called a zone of immunity. By the way, just another

interesting fact is we were insufficiently prepared for what drones and unmanned weaponry means in modern-day warfare. We've learned to catch up, considering we've had a four-year case study, Cliff, and Ukraine to understand. Exactly so. You know, that's important. And they wanted to teach us, and we said, we don't need to learn from you for a long time. Now, we've changed our tune now, because they're the more most advanced in drone encounter

drone warfare right now. What they've done, what they've done is really, really remarkable. Do you think it's a, do you think it's a mistake? an error in judgment, a strategic messaging problem, that maybe the White House should have said, the objective here is the regime's got to go, because nothing will change unless the regime is gone. But I know nobody in Washington, D.C. likes to say the words,

regime change. But it strikes me as they keep dancing around from that and saying, well, that's not our objective. We're just trying to, you know, degrade their missile capabilities. We're just trying to make them not attack their names. neighbors. We're just, you know, at some point, you know, early on in this, do you think we'd be staring in a different conflict situation if they had just come out and said, honestly, for the stability of the region and the world, honestly for the benemate of the Iranian people,

this regime has to go? Well, I think it's putting, is giving yourself the very high bar. I think we've been clear. I think the president has been clear that he would like to see regime change, but that's not his goal because if he doesn't reach it, All his enemies will say, you see, you failed. I think regime crippling should be the goal because that is absolutely doable. Yes, another problem we've had, something we didn't understand. We've had two, we've made two few interceptors, right? But one of the things that should be clear is you don't need an interceptor to stop a missile that hasn't been launched.

So you want to hit the missiles before they are. launched. Now we all hear something else we didn't understand. Again, the North Koreans help with these tunnels. So a lot of their missiles have been stored in what they call missile cities. These are subterranean fortresses. We hit these missile cities from above and the missiles are just fine underneath. So what do we do? We hit the entrance. That's good. And then people say, yeah, but they clear the entrances. Yes, they do, but that's a couple guys and a couple bulldozers. we can hit them too and over and over again, and we can use cheap munitions to keep these missile cities closed as long as we have total dominance of the skies. The Israelis in the 12-day

war established dominance in the skies, which is why President Trump knew that the B-2 stealth bombers would face no problem, not that they aren't good and couldn't handle it anyway, would face no problem being able to drop their massive ordinance penetrators on Fordo Natanz and Isfahan. So we keep control of the skies and keep bombing the missiles where they are with cheap munitions. So we don't need to use interceptors. In the meantime, we build up our interceptors because we do have a problem. Our defense industrial base is not where it should be for wars that last longer than a few weeks. And wars, if a war with this regime is going to last a few weeks, think how long a war.

over Taiwan could last. Well, Cliffelah, push back on this a little bit. I mean, I think we've dropped a lot of munitions, right, so far in this conflict. And, you know, early days, you know, again, you can argue about the messaging. I think the messaging is always a little bit haphazard, you know, coming out of the White House, you know, talking about decimating, we've destroyed, they have no cards up, they can't do it. They're functionally, you know, unable to, okay, all of that setting. aside. Clearly we haven't because we've been striking hundreds and hundreds of target packages,

you know, in this kind of second phase of however you want to describe this. So we didn't decimated anything in the first go around. We certainly degraded, right? We definitely degrade it. But I'm just saying maybe parse the words a little bit more carefully. But here's the thing. To your point about you can't change the regime because that's setting a high bar. if you're saying that you want to cripple the regime, you're still out of the regime. And to your earlier point about you're dealing with jihadists who aren't going to give up, you know,

the frustrating part here is we're basically kicking the can down the road. If we come up with an agreement, a ceasefire, a negotiated settlement, we're kicking the can down the road for yet another administration. And I think, you know, there's a general feeling that given the fact that previous administration, since 79 never dealt with this problem in this same fashion, that future administrations probably won't either. I think we've got an outlier here with the current administration.

So I guess there's not a question necessarily other than just saying, I worry that what we're doing is we're just getting to a point where we think, okay, that's good enough. We've delayed some of this, let somebody else deal with it down the road. No, I do agree with you. But let me just point out. What does decimate mean? It means the same as degrade. So if we say, we have knocked out. I think the false people when they hear that, and I think the White House was intending that,

I think they were implying that they have no capabilities left. And that's wrong because that's not what decimate means. It's not what degrade means. And if the White House says, let's say properly, we have destroyed 70% of their ballistic missiles, that means 30% remain. If they started with 10,000, well, they still have 3,000. What if they saw it with 100,000? I think for sure we misunderstood how many missiles they had built up and how quickly they're building up.

And drones, even more so because drones you can make so cheaply and so plentifully so that we didn't understand. So when I say cripple, I think that means way more than degrade, way more than decimate, way more than saying, we got 70% good enough for government work. No, it can't be that. It's got to go way beyond that. And if at a certain point you want to get to an agreement, that agreement has to be clear. This regime does not control an international waterway. This regime does not have any ability to support its proxies and other parts of the world, such as the Houthis. And this regime cannot project power at all.

If you get to that point, I do think you will end up with regime change, but it will take a few years. If we want to look historically, you know, after the fall of the Ottoman Empire, it took a few years before the Turkish Republic emerged. It was after the – it took a few years after the fall of the Russian Empire for the Bolsheviks to emerge on top. And that's the other point to make. Very often when you have regime change, I'm sorry to say it ends up more like the French Revolution than the American Revolution. Why? Because the guys most willing to kill their opponents usually end up on. On top, the guys who say, what I want is a free nation in which we have democracy, those guys get their heads taken off.

And I mean that quite literally. Yeah. No, it's a very good point clip. Listen, I've got, let's see, one, two. I've got three more pages of questions to throw your way. But we, unfortunately, are out of time, which means you have to come back when we call you, right? You can't say no. Happy to do so.

Always good to talk to you. Thank you. Thank you so much, Cliff. Cliff May of the Foundation for Defensive Democracies. Man, yeah, there's a lot to unpack. Now, well, that is all the time we have for this week's PDB situation report. If you have any questions or comments, please reach out to me at PDB at thefirsttb.com. You know what I'm about to say, the highlight of every week is when the mailman, that's Carl. He drops off his sack of cards and faxes and emails and comments and.

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