The Ricochet Podcast - Deal or No Deal?

Episode Date: May 29, 2026

Lots and lots of burning questions dominate the news. Do we need a $250 bill, and what or who should be on it? Mamdani flexes his communist urges in NYC, so what could possibly go wrong? And can a state tax a "slush fund" at 100%? James and Charles have thoughts.But the question we really want an answer to is, "Do we have a deal with Iran or not?" To answer that, we welcome back our old friend Richard Goldberg, a senior advisor at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and the former director for countering Iranian weapons of mass destruction for the White House National Security Council during the first Trump administration.It's an episode to get your Spidey senses tingling.

Iran is very much intent. They want very much to make a deal. So far, they haven't gotten there. We're not satisfied with it. But we will be. We will be either that or we'll have to just finish the job. They're negotiating on fumes. It's the Rickochet podcast with Charles C.W. Cook and myself, James Lillix.

Today we talk to Richard Goldberg, who knows what's going on in Iran. Really? So let's have ourselves a podcast. Right now, I think it looks like they want to just make a deal. they want to, they have, I don't think they have a choice. They're just going back to the internet because they're getting clobbered, their economies in freefall. They thought they were going to outweigh me, you know, we'll outweigh him. He's got the midterms.

I don't care about the midterms. Welcome, everybody. This is the R ricochet podcast. Oh, it's only number 791. How many other shows have been on that long? Not many, and we've earned it by gum because we're part of the Rikershey Audio Network, but also we've been here for a long time talking. interesting people and today we've got a great guest. But in the meantime, I don't want to suggest he's

late than less than great, but we have Charles C.W. Cook, one of our co-hosts in sunny, humid, torpid Florida. I presume it's torpid. It's sunny. It's a little humid. I don't know if it's torpid. Well, same here. It's hot in Adina, and I'm

watching the sun mercilessly beat off the roof of the computer disc drive factory across the street. I can imagine that they've got the chiller's going full blast. But beyond that canopy of trees and a bright blue guy in a beautiful place in America, despite everything you hear about Minnesota. It's a great, great place. It's a great world with a couple of exceptions we're going to be talking about in just a bit, but Charles scouring the news here, taking a look at what is up. It's apt these days that most

stories seem to be Trump says he's going to do this. It doesn't, and no, I don't want to phrase that. Trump is going to do this, but it's not happening. And you have to read into the story, and it's always an offhand comment made in jest or something, or it's some proposal. that somebody else scubbles. It's very confusing. One day, we're going to have a $250 bill with his face on it, and six hours later, no, we're not. What do you make of the currency issue?

I'm not in favor of a $250 bill. I'm really not, and I don't think you ought to put living, sitting people on them. What's your take? Well, I have very level of views on this stuff. It's not just that I don't think we need a $250 bill. And it's not just that, that I think we should avoid putting people who are still living on our bills.

I don't particularly like putting politicians on things per se. I would make an exception for George Washington, and I would make an exception for Abraham Lincoln, because without those two men, the country wouldn't exist, at least not in its present form. But as a rule, I would like to celebrate other people, people who did things in civil society. society. All right, like Ben Franklin. Well, yeah, people think he was president, of course. I know.

But I like Ben on because he looks like he's vaguely disapproving of you spending this bill instead of saving it. That's right. That's right. But I think with this one, it's just a bad look for Trump. I mean, fine. I'm sure there's an overreaction and fine. It's probably been blown out of proportion.

But the correct response to the suggestion that your face as the incumbent president might be put on the money, is to say, no, no, no, we don't do that. This is America. But Scott Besant yesterday, while acknowledging that there's a law from 1866 that prevents it, did say, well, but we've got some guys in the house

who are working on it. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Don't work on it. Yeah, no, I'm, you know, I agree with you. I collect a lot of money. I have a vast collection of worthless money from other countries. And some of the most beautiful stuff is from Brazil, which would put up artists and sculptors and authors and the rest as an author, of course.

I highly recommend that. And the front would be the picture. And the back would be the house in 1875 where they wrote. Now, inevitably, all of this money is stamped with Nuevo because it had to be devalued a couple of times. But it's lovely, lovely money. And the number of times that countries actually go back and redo their currency, there's always, I mean, in England, I know there's always a blowback about this because they're taking somebody off and putting somebody else on. And I think they recently said, no, instead of having Margaret Thatcher, we're going to have a hedgehog, something like that.

I don't want to go to anodyne animals that everybody likes it are cute and fuzzy and collectible, but you're right. We should have individuals from civil society on the money. Who would you propose? Well, I think Frederick Douglass would look great on the money. with a glowering expression. I agree. As you suggested Benjamin Franklin, who's already on the money, I will take him. I think that we could put some of the titans of industry throughout American history.

Andrew Carnegie, for example. Sure. A man who built, who scattered the country with these wonderful little jewel box libraries everywhere, which have now, you know, vast majority of which I think actually remained. And they stand and, you know, somewhere in the city is this little testament, little embassy of Greek and Roman culture with their portico and their columns and the rest of it. A marvelous thing that we no longer have that sense of civic responsibility. It seems our modern-day plutocrats and billionaires and the rest of them don't seem to be interested in monuments like that.

More interested in building bunkers. I think Zuckerberg has got an entire island. in Hawaii somewhere. I was reading the other day about this spat that's broken out in a survivalist compound for billionaires in South Dakota. Apparently, they're complaining about basic, like, sewage and water lines and property lines and the rest of it. But that spirit seems not abroad in the land anymore. Would you agree? Yes, I'm very pro-billionaire, but this is where I get off the boat, or the luxury yacht, perhaps. I don't think that that is a good development. development for our culture.

I think billionaires are fantastic because billionaires, in almost every case, have created something that people wanted to give them billions of dollars to use, buy, see, or whatever. But the instinct to build underground compounds in case everything goes to hell seems very uncivict-minded. and uncivict-minded from precisely the people who you would presumably need to help if we were facing whatever circumstance it was that they were trying to get away from in the first place. Right. What's interesting here is that I've just made two boomer complaints to the show how drastically out of touch I am with the 21st century. I'm not, but let's just say this.

What have I bemoaned? I bemoaned money, paper money, and physical libraries. And everybody will tell you that neither of these are relevant anymore. Nobody goes to the library when it's all on the internet. Nobody needs money when you can wave your phone or your watch of things. And I understand that. Case could be made that Elon Musk is actually the modern Andrew Carnegie because he built access to every piece of information on the planet through the Starlink system.

You can be sitting in Antarctica and you can unfold this pizza box and you can access the deepest depths of the Gutenberg project. So there's that. I'm not saying that. But there is something about the physical things in the world that have not yet been digitized or replaced by digital elements that I mourn the loss of. But yes, there's billionaires. You're not bothered by billionaires. Mondami is very bothered by billionaires, of course.

Mondami has this new scheme. I don't know if you've been reading about this that's going to affect who exactly controls money. No, not money. Property in New York City. I've been watching this go through for a while. This means by which the city is able to step in when a building changes. Rent is frozen.

They go in and they inspect. There's simply too many. things that have to be done. The building owner can't bring it up to code. The building owner sells. Somebody swoops in, but then the city has the first right to say, no, this nonprofit here wants. The nonprofit takes it. And before you know it, the nonprofits, and by extension, there's supporters in the DSA, they have a trillion dollar portfolio to do with as they please. Some are saying that this is absolutely intentional, but that's what he's trying to do. He's trying to build up a massive real estate potential to bankroll DSA efforts elsewhere.

You agree with that? well i certainly think he's opposed to private property and will move in any direction he can that creates less of it whether or not he really believes that he can make progress so that there is none i use progress in the way he would use it yes i don't know but it's a little bit like the gun control debate he said aware that he always brings it back to this where when Gun control is raised. It doesn't really matter if the proposal has absolutely nothing to do with whatever it was that was being discussed. The people who want gun control just want gun control.

So they will say, well, we need to make sure that you are able to jump through 17 hoops before you get it. And you say, yeah, but that has nothing to do with the thing you're talking about. And they say, yeah, I know, but we don't want you have a gun. And I think in Mamdani's case, the end. Any movement in that direction is good, right? Because if you listen to the way he talks, he doesn't like the fact that rich people exist per se. He doesn't like the fact that landlords exist per se.

So whatever steps he can take to create less of them, he'll take. It's extraordinary. Anybody can go to New York and stand there and stare up at these towers, at these great towering cliffs, and not to realize exactly what was it that built him in the first place. He may believe that they are a result of erosion, you know, like Mount Rushmore. They did some faces out in South Dakota, and the wind over here just happened to carve the stone into these magnificent office building. But how can you not look at those and realize that you are destroying the very spirit, the very element, the mechanism, the machinery that made all of this possible?

Unless, of course, he doesn't care that it just simply is not a method of extraction. And that's what a lot of people can't stand about the current value or a variety of some of the politicians are people who, you know, carpet bag their way into town and immediately start dismantling the very thing that they purport to love and want to rule. And it is much worse because he's an immigrant. This is a right-wing immigrant bashing from me, James, even though I am one. It's not okay to move from somewhere else to the United States and then try to dismantle it. I think it's bad enough if you're born here and you try to dismantle it, but at least you were born here. You can't do much about that.

That's fine. you're American from the start. You can't choose to move somewhere and then try and dismantle it. That is insane and rude behavior. I agree completely. The main thing that I don't like about Elon Omar is her ingratitude. Right. I mean, she was always complaining about what America was like when she first got here.

She didn't like Moorhead, Minnesota. I know Moorhead, Minnesota. That's not, you know, it's not Fargo, but it's, for heaven's sakes. The ingratitude of it. I say if I went to England and became a citizen there and then spent all my time fulminating about the royal, monarchy and showing up at rallies trying to dismantle them, I would be looked at as a profoundly rude man who had come here and done something that was not his culture. So yeah, I believe that.

But of course, he gets a great pass because he's the absolute, as an immigrant, he's a, he's a model of what the progressive left and their cheerleaders in the media want for America. When he came out the other day in this sort of, I don't know what it was, this soccer uniform was kind of a half-dress, it's an Islamic thing or cultural, I have the faintest idea. there was just all of this swooning over this about how it's wonderful and stunning and brave that he's bringing this thing and you always want to ask them and say okay well do you do you regard his whole Islam thing as an expression of religion and what or is this just sort of shorthand for it's another culture and therefore we like it we're oikophobes we we we we you know this is marvelous because it's a different culture and multiculturalism etc i mean if he came if if if if if his wife came out a tired like a nun or somebody from my handmaid's tail, everybody would be talking about what that represents and what that's supposed to be implying.

But, oh, look at that. He's wearing Islamic dress with a soccer thing to it. I mean, it's just, okay, fine, fine. But are you positing that this is a superior version of America that we should be obligated to hasten the arrival of as soon as possible? Or what? What thrills you so about this? About him?

Again, yes, being gratitude. Well, he's not going to be in a $250 bill. Hi, I'm Ben Sass. And I'm Chris Dyerwald. And this is not dead yet. We're all dying, but some of us have been brought face to face with that reality. However long, each of us have to do it, though, we all want to live a good life. One with meaning, love, and joy.

And our guests are here to help us do exactly that. Now available for download and streaming at ricochet.com. RICOCHAY. Join the conversation. We were also discussing this week. There's a, the Carol, the, everybody's always fond of saying of Trump that he's a felon and a rapist and a pedophile. And the rapist part is this trial, which is going to be investigated or not, because it is peculiar. We couldn't even tell when it happened, which, as I was reading the other day, deprives a defendant the right to, you know, the ability to have an alibi.

You know, when did this happen? Well, I don't know. Okay, where were you on the day that she doesn't remember? And the other, it's going to be investigated or not. Is this weaponizing the judicial system against the president's enemies again? I mean, the whole idea that he couldn't even say, I didn't do it, constituted defamation was just another peculiar wrinkle in this. Well, I think there's quite a lot going on here. One is that Trump is abusing the system.

And perhaps there's nothing we can do about it. I am an advocate of the unitary executive, but he is abusing the system. The second is he might not be abusing the system here, in that the prosecutor seems to have said that there isn't an investigation, so I suppose we'll see on that. And the third thing is, and I say this is a certified squish on criminal justice matters, procedurally that is. Once they've been convicted, you can lock them up and throw away the key,

but procedurally, I'm a real squish. the civil trial was a disgrace and we had laws and most states still have laws that are designed to prevent that we have a statute of limitations on sexual assault cases both criminally and within a civil context precisely because it's preposterous to say to somebody 27 years ago this happened oh you don't know where you don't know when. The state of New York rescinded the statute of limitations within this context so she could bring this case. I mean, they pretended that it was a general change, but it wasn't.

It was what you would call, it's not literally this, but a bill of attainder. I mean, they basically applied it to her. And that's a huge problem. And then the fourth thing is, as Trump being Trump, didn't really help himself because he got up there and he made all sorts of comments. about her that then opened the door for her to bring a civil case. Then he refused to speak at the trial. And the problem with that is that in a civil context,

you're not allowed to invoke the full force of the Fifth Amendment, which is to say in a criminal trial, if you invoke the Fifth Amendment, not only do you get excused from speaking, but the court is not allowed, allowed to infer from your silence anything negative, but in a civil trial, that rule doesn't obtain. And so the lawyers who were trying to get Trump used that quite effectively with the jury. They just said, look, he's not saying anything.

That means he's guilty. And then Trump wouldn't speak. And in fact, he did this sort of performative thing where he would talk to his lawyer a lot and roll his eyes and be Trump. So, I mean, there's a whole lot going on here. No one comes out of its smelling of roses. But I really do think that whole affair was grotesque. Speaking of bills of a tanger, the J6 fund, which Gavin Neuven-Nusum has promised to tax 100%.

You've heard of this, of course. I have. And it would seem to me that, again, being in an era when laws are specifically designed to attach themselves to certain people for political reasons, or political actions seems unwise. And it also seems like the sort of petty thing that makes one wonder what he would do on a national scale. Were he president, which he dearly wants to be, and which he possibly could be.

So I've talked to a lot of lawyers about this because this whole area fascinates me. And I've learned a couple of things, one of which I've accepted at face value, the other of which I still have questions about. The first is, apparently, you're not allowed to tax things at 100%. It's unconstitutional.

because 100% it's not a tax. It's just pure confiscation. The second, and I'm a little more skeptical of this, is that that might indeed be a bill of a tinder. There has to be a point of which it's not. I think this was where it would get difficult. For example, the federal government taxes things that people do, and the state's tax federal outlays.

So if you're a federal employee and you live in Minnesota, you're still taxed on your federal salary by the state of Minnesota. If you are given student loan relief, then many states will tax you by treating that loan relief as income. I think that the Congress is theoretically permitted to preempt that using the supremacy clause, but that's apparently never happened in American history. Anyway, the reason I mention this is at some point there's a line, right, where you say, all right, that's no longer a,

general tax, but that is aimed at a particular personal thing. But I don't know why Gavin Newsom wouldn't be able to, for example, say there's now a 70% tax on all settlements of this type. And you make it broad. And then if any money is dispersed to anyone from any federal settlement fund, it's taxed it 70%. So I'm not completely convinced that it's as illegal as others have said, but it is sordid from top to bottom. The funds shouldn't exist. It's not the first time this has happened. Democrats quite like these funds too. This one is egregious because it's absolutely enormous. Trump basically negotiated with himself and now he's trying to give it out to his friends. The Democrats are responding by doing what they always do, which is to say we're going to take away

your money and your money only. Maybe we should elect some better people. It's a thought. It really is. It's a, it's a, keen observation that I will take forward into the future. What are some of the Democrats Democrat examples of this? You said that, you know, creating large funds and giving them away, the Democrats have done it before as well. I'm trying, I'm racking my brain

for one, and I'm sure they're out there, but I just can't think of any. Do you have any? Oh, they do it quite a lot. The most famous one, although it was congressionally approved, at least in part, was the Pigford settlement, which was a big deal when Obama was president. Pigford, too, I think the case was called.

Was that to do with farming? Correct. Yes. Right. There was discrimination in farming, which I'm sure happened in some sense, but was used to create a $100 million slush fund, in effect, that the Democrats handed out to their friends. So they are not opposed to this.

And in fact, the whole process of negotiating with yourself is how public sector labor unions work. Right, right, exactly. They're not opposed to it per se, but I wasn't. This is particularly egregious. I mean, he asked for $10 billion for his taxes being leaked in his first term while he was president. And they got it down to 1.776, which is such a gimmick, which is by absurd orders of magnitude bigger than anything that's been done before. Also in Washington, Pam Bondi testified about going to testify about the Epstein files.

Blame out on somebody else or talk about what they... I'm tired of this actually. And I, you know, everyone will say, well, that's, that's exactly what they want. They want you to be sick of it. They want you to, they want it all to, I know, I don't think that there's any particular plan to any of this. And I'm not sure that there, there. I mean, they want Trump to be in it. That's it.

Period. What they want, you know, Iran was a distraction from the Epstein files, Venezuela was an Epstein, you know, the explosion of the Glenn rocket the other day was a diversion. from the Epstein files. My end result of this is indifference and boredom and weariness with this. Because I'm pretty sure that if Trump was in there, that it would have been leaked an awful long time ago. And I'm not particularly concerned about who was on a plane, didn't do anything or the rest of it.

Or am I wrong? Is this actually part of the whole rotten, pedophilic nature of the overclass that I should be waiting, you know, staying up nights worrying about, worrying about whether or not the adrenachrome vampires are still skulking about the catacombs of comet beat ping pong pizza no you're not wrong i'm fact i'm about to open up a whole new avenue of angry emails i'm sure because i've made this case on the editors podcast and i can make it on this one but i think that this has turned into an absurd moral panic and a liberal one at that i think releasing huge amounts of information that contains the names of people

who weren't involved and didn't do anything wrong is an extremely bad idea, especially in this political climate. I think that the people who are the loudest in their insistence that these files need to be released are not satisfiable. That is to say, whenever new information is released, they say, what about the rest, or what are you hiding, or what has been redacted, or it's fake, because they have started with the conclusion. Jeffrey Epstein, was a truly terrible person and he seems to have committed horrible crimes and some of the government response to it was inadequate but I just do not believe that there is some massive conspiracy and that in a draw somewhere is a list full of names of people who should be sent

to prison forever or executed I think that this has been blown out of all proportion because of a generalized mistrust in our political class which I understand and that the collateral damage that is being done is huge. So again, being a procedural squish, even if there is something there, you still ought to be sensible in the way you go about it. The analogy that I like to draw is, my neighbor isn't, by the way, he's a lovely man, but if my neighbor were a Klansman and his house were full of pictures of Hitler and rude sentiments about African-Americans. That would be a big moral problem.

I think we would all agree. But I still think the government would have to follow the rules to find that out. I still think that we would insist, however bad we thought he were. I think we would have to insist upon the usual rules. We might want the Fourth Amendment to be observed and so forth. And so it is here. I just don't think that the fact that Jeffrey Epstein was a terrible person is a good reason to throw out what we would normally regard as being sensible rules of engagement. So I'm with you.

Well, that's good to hear, but I didn't hear you say anything about the fact that the explosion of the rocket yesterday was a diversion from the Epstein house. I know you're kidding, but the thing is, the people who come up with these conspiracy theories believe the government is so much more competent than it is. I know. They're pulling all these strings to hide. I was on a Reddit the other day, one of the alien UFO subredits. They're very disappointed in the Trump administration for having a website, finally released a website, Aliens.gov. And it turns out it's not about them. It's about illegals.

Very mad about that. There's an animation, as a matter of fact, on the government website that has a UFO coming down, picking up an illegal, and dropping him on the other side of a tall wall, which is clever. And on point with them trolling everybody by saying six years ago in this day, we lost Harambe and having Harambe the gorilla in giving him essentially the same sort of eulogy that they've been given for George.

to the Democrats have been giving to George Floyd just a few days ago. I mean, that is some bleep posting of a trollmaster level. You can debate the wisdom of it if you want. I'm Greg Carumbus. Join Jim Garrity of National Review and me each weekday for the Three Martini Lunch podcast. We'll give you the good, bad, and crazy news of the day and lots of laughs too. Find us right here on the Rikoschet Audio Network at ricochet.com or wherever you get your podcasts. Richard Goldberg.

He's from the foundation. for defense and democracies. Previously served as a senior counselor for the White House National Energy Dominance. I love that. That's what we want. We want energy dominance council. Senior advisor to the Secretary of the Interior,

director for countering Iranian weapons of mass destruction for the White House National Security Council and many, many other things. And, you know, Iran in the news these days, I think, seems to have fallen off, but we've got lots to ask them. So, Richard, welcome to the show. You know, I'm just looking at your expertise here at the FDD page. And it's like there's a show in every single one of them, from Israel to crypto to China. I want to get around to that. But Iran in the news because supposedly there's

a deal. And I've heard this for weeks now. We keep hearing deal, no deal. It's very odd. I've never known a war like this that sort of fell off the front page the way this one did. And just the whole idea of operational tempo that usually were caught up on just stopped happening. And it wound down. it didn't end. There are negotiations. We don't know with whom. And at the end of it, a lot of people are getting the queasy feeling that the Molas will still be in charge, which would seem to be by any evaluation, a defeat, a defeat for

the United States. So what's going on? Tell us about the deal and what constitutes a victory in this scenario. Well, I think we have to sort of reflect on the operation itself. that we came in with and that on top of last year's operation. So we had a 12-day war last year, ended with Operation Midnight Hammer, the B-2 bomber strikes on Iran's deeply underground enrichment facility at Fordo. It's more above-ground at Tons facility, a couple other facilities.

And then this year, on seeing that Iran wasn't giving up, they were trying to dig out, rebuild on the nuclear side, but more importantly, really zooming forward on their ballistic missile program, the manufacturing capacity to be able to basically have a force field around them via conventional means to then protect themselves for the development of the nuclear weapons long term. I think President Trump made the right decision. On top of that, obviously, I think something like this from the Israelis probably was already going to happen this year. But then you saw the protests in January, the mass murder, you know, 30, 60,000, whatever the number is,

of people gunned down the streets in 24 hours, you know, a murder level that we have not seen from a regime since World War II, quite frankly, the massacres in Kiev back in the day. And so saw an opportunity of instability within one of the top adversaries in the U.S. that was zooming forward, both on the nuclear and missile side, an opportunity to take that regime back several years in their threat against the United States and our allies. And maybe if you got lucky, actually destabilized the regime enough to give the people an opportunity to bring it down, though obviously that was long shot odds. And so the campaign itself had a lot of victories for the United States long term. I mean, just laid waste, the industrial base of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

They can't make a missile today. They may not be able to make a drone quite yet, though that's easier to manufacture than a missile. they can enrich uranium today. They wouldn't have a place to do it right now. It's not clear they can even convert natural uranium to enriched uranium, let alone take whatever buried enriched uranium they have and move it to a higher purity level to make fissile material. Their weapon scientists have been killed. Their R&D facilities for the weapon were knocked out inside these universities and elsewhere

from their secret organization called SPNDD. So a lot of good things there. The president talks about, you know, the Navy being. sunk and they have swarms of fastboats still and they can try to sidle up next to a ship and and inhale it and try to attack it in some ways. They obviously still have missiles. We think about half of their missiles were destroyed at least, but they have these deep underground bunkers that we don't seem to be able to penetrate from the air or the sea.

So they get to keep up. We can close the doors and then they open the doors to the bunkers again. Yeah, if they open the doors, they bring them out. But they can't make more once they fire them and we take out the lawn. sure that was that was on there. That that's sort of the genius of the of the military operation here. What happened though is that you got to the point of diminishing returns where everything that's above ground you've laid waste to pretty much. And by the way, that includes several of the upstream industries that feed the missile program like the steel industry, the petrochemical

industry. And that has wide effects on the economy in Iran and the regime's hold on Iran, which you can talk about long term. But you get to the point where if you're not penetrated, these underground facilities, why are you still waste the munitions, and are you going to achieve much more from continued operations in the air and sea? Why not reposition your Navy and your air forces for something else, and that is, A, an economic blockade to start squeezing what remains and further destabilize the regime as the bomb stop dropping, people start coming out, and you have to actually try to manage a government in economy that lays in ruins. And also, potentially prepare for a military reopening of the one ace card, the one card that Iran still

had to play, which was to intimidate international shipping to move through the Strait of Hormuz under threat of missile and drone attack, which we've seen pretty effective in slowing the transit through the Strait of Hormuz to a halt. That's 20% of the world's oil, 20% of the world's gas, other byproducts that the world relies on. We're insulated from a supply perspective, mostly, unless you're in the blue state of California that still relies on foreign imports because, of course, in a deep blue state, you're against American oil and gas, but you're fine importing it from abroad. But in countries like Europe and Asia that has a supply issue,

they're running low on their stocks, and of course, oil global commodity, that's why your gas prices are higher, even though we're not running out of oil here in the United States. And so this has now turned from, from a military battle to an economic battle and the staying power of a blockade, the military potential to reopen this rate of Hormuz for economic global relief versus the regime

holding on as long as they can, while the whole ship of state is falling apart around them, trying to bluff their way to some sort of an accommodation that lifts the blockade without the military reopening the straight first and then at least gives them a lifeline to hang on. The president on his side wants to use the leverage of the blockade and the potential for further military action to get further concessions from this regime on the nuclear front.

A couple of big things that were not accomplished by air and sea. Number one, the enriched uranium trapped below ground that is still there that we think can be collected and destroyed so that they can't in the future ever rebuild centrifuges take what they have already made in the past. plugged them into the centrifuges and then suddenly have fiscal material. And then very deep underground facilities, very deep underground that you can't penetrate from air that could be used in the future for a covert or, frankly, at this point, overt nuclear breakout, that you want to see dismantled again so that there is no way to, without the threat of military force, somehow in the future, reconstitute and break out to a nuclear weapon.

and the president's hoping that some deal can be reached with these terrorists to get him the uranium out of the country to see these sites dismantled in return for lifting the blockade. I'm dubious on that. We can talk about why. But that is the state of play at the moment. We're waiting to see if the president says yes to that deal, which will lift the blockade to some extent in exchange for Iran, allowing traffic out of the Strait of Hormuz, with some sort of promise of negotiations over that, you know,

remaining nuclear concessions. But the question being, if you lift the blockade and relieve the pressure, are they ever actually going to follow through on part two? I know Charles is a question, but I have to just interject. Why would you trust them? to bring up the uranium and hand it over. The only way you can see is zero possibility to trust them. Right.

With this regime, with another regime, with another government, perhaps. But with these guys, no. Anyway, Charles, you're going to say? Well, I was just going to ask whether we tried to do too much at once. That is to say, obviously, the Iranian regime is appalling, and it would be wonderful if it were removed. but we found ourselves in a situation in which we're trying to get rid of that government, liberate the people in Iran, and perhaps most importantly, prevent them from obtaining a nuclear weapon.

And some would say that it was the getting rid of the regime bit that led them to close the Strait of Hormuz, and that's been a big problem domestically, certainly as well as internationally for the president. Should we have said to them, look, we're not coming after you. you get to keep your nasty little regime, but we're not letting you have a nuclear weapon, bomb away, maybe even send in troops. Would that have made a difference, or is that a naive proposal I've heard? My assumption has been, and this is the reason why I think the campaign that went the way it was, is that if you were going to come in a major way for major military operations against their entire military industrial base, you know, part sectors of their economy

me to feed to that industrial base, their missiles, their drones, their launchers, you know, all of this. There's no way that's happening without what you saw at the outset of what they did to the Gulf and then to the Strait of Hormuz. There are a lot of people who think that they sort of accidentally closed the strait. And they sort of woke up to realizing they have closed the strait, which may not be good for them. And they may not have wanted to had they thought about it in advance.

but the doctrine in place from the attack was to respond in the way that they did. And we were postured to defend against what they were doing because we knew they would do it. And otherwise, the casualties and the destruction of what they did in response would have been much, much, much worse. Now, the question of decapitation at the outset and killing Khomeini and all the people around him and then, you know, various other assassinations that went on and a further attack. and decapitating. But this was to me, and I'm not going to rewrite history on my views and advocacy, if a million or two million people can come out into the streets in January and say death

to the dictator, and it happened not just in Tehran, but around the country from every class, from every kind of person, cross-ethnicity, a historic way. I mean, the size of the green revolution that was just Tehran, but across the country, the way we saw in the Masa Amini revolution in 2022, it meant something was happening. Had we been postured to do something immediately, results may have been better. We don't know.

There is definitely people who argue that the crackdown, the bloodshed, the ability to mass murder so many people, and then consolidate the security control for weeks while we were building up our forces, gave them the opportunity to weather inside the country. Had something happened sooner,

maybe something else would be different. I don't know. That's a way. To me, it was, there's a perfect storm happening here. There is going to have to be military operations by Israel or the Israel in the United States this year because of the pace of their missile productions and their reconstitution efforts in the nuclear domain.

If there's already going to be major military operations this year, and you've just seen a historic shaking up of the country and mass murder beyond belief, and you have people say that if you do this, it is possibly people could take the streets. And the people at the top are not going to give you any kind of concessions. And they're still going to order the same kind of military response that you saw as close the Strait of Hormuz.

Then you should go for it. So I don't regret it. I think it was worth taking the shot. I don't think what has happened since from a military perspective would have changed it all. I'll tell you, an interesting bit of information I've gleaned from, sources, U.S. and in the region. The view is that, you know, before the decapitation strike, before this operation, the IRGC was in control, right?

They control most of the economy. They actually called the shots internally with the Supreme Leader. And people like the president, you know, who are, quote, unquote, elected and the foreign minister on it, these are sort of the faces that they put out in public to where suits while the real IRGC people stand in the background calling all the shots, right? What has happened now is there's no more pretending. There's no veneer. The IRGC is in charge. We know they're in charge. They're very far in charge. Except the fracture and the competition with the people who used to be meaningless is actually real. And the Peseshkians of the world,

you know, the president of Iran and the central bank governor and all the different people who actually are responsible for running the government are pushing back on the IRGC positions and saying we're falling apart here. We do need to give concessions. We got to get a deal. We got to do something. And so if we actually have a way out of this that is somewhat acceptable to the United States, it's probably because of that fracture that's occurred ironically. So the answer is we don't know yet. We'll see. We'll see how it goes. I mean, in the end,

the IRGC still calls the shots. I don't think we should be, you know, confused about that. These people have a lot of blood on their hands. These people are terrorists. You know, they put out a piece of paper supposedly

from a Supreme Leader, nobody's seen or heard from, you know, from the beginning of the operation, saying, you know, we will forever be death to America, and this is our doctrine. And, you know,

they announce over the weekend, if they get access to money, they're going to use it for missiles and drones. I mean, the spokesperson of the foreign ministry telling us this. I'm not hiding what they're going to do with money. So we should have no illusions of the nature of the regime that's there. But how much more can they threaten us via nuclear extortion? They can't for a long time. Missile extortion, not from a broader, longer range perspective.

What they have is very capable, short-range. weapons and a lot of them. And they can use it to cause global implications via the Strait of Hormuz in the Gulf. And that is now what we are dealing with here. I would personally order the military through. I like what Project Freedom was. You know, that 24, 36 hours, when we had the Navy transit the Strait of Hormuz and tell international shipping, we got 100 planes in the air, we got destroyals all around. We will provide you, you know, for a sports metaphor, zone defense coverage when they attack you with missiles or drones we will defeat the threat and get you through we will show the regime they have no alternative here we'll have a blockade and military protection

for tankers and it was working for 36 hours we got a few ships out and then it suddenly stopped and i think if it had not stopped certainly like you know one of these who knows what exactly you can argue both ways like oh maybe one day like they get a missile through and a destroyer gets hit and do we want to take that risk possible. All their alternative is they realize it's a checkmate. We're getting oil out to market. Prices are dropping. We're stopping the threat.

The blockades in place and they say, okay, we'll give you more. Don't know. Hindsight's 2020. By the way, if they end up rejecting the deal that's on the table or they can't come to an agreement in Iran or the president rejects it or he offers it and they say no, he may go back to Project Freedom because at that point, you don't really have an alternative. If you can't get the straight open by agreement

and you want the straight open for the global oil market and other byproducts and for the economy, you're going to have to open it. At that point, we would hope that whoever pulled the plug on Project Freedom, maybe Saudi Arabia,

would say we're okay with it now. We understand now you try to get a deal and we're bracing for what comes next because we can't let them own the Strait of Hormuz. So the IRC is, in, they somebody must obviously believe that since the United States or somebody speaking on their behalf or the press saying, speculating whatever saying that the U.S. wants to deal, that we should talk, believes that they can outweigh us, out sit us, just, just, you know,

dig in their heels and eventually they'll be left alone. You mentioned going after them, but it doesn't seem to me that governments like this are dislodged unless there's an armored column in the suburbs. I mean, at Saddam Hussein, when it was a son of a saying, when it into his hiding hole when the you know the convoy's rolled in the Hitler took himself out when the Soviets were in the sub so it seems to me that without that sort of obvious big here we are and you're going that the IRGC will just simply stay so my question to you is are they staying because they're just basically brutes who want money in power and there's no particular religious ideology behind it or is it is it shaded and tainted with a particular you know the old 12th imam

millennialism stuff um that uh seems to be the province of the mullahs what's keeping at the top it's certainly the latter in my opinion if you're in the senior leadership you really believe in this and this and there's a lot of people who are analyzing this saying that you know they they're sort of bolstering this religious ideological feeling that prophecies are coming true because, you know, Mostabha Khomeini, the son of the one who was killed, who's supposedly the Supreme Leader now, but nobody's seen or heard from him, the fact that he survived in this amazing way where he decided to take a walk in the garden and it saved him and Allah saved him and this is the moment we've waited for and the enemies tried to destroy it.

There's some kind of prophecy that's being fulfilled there. So it's giving them even more passion to say, like, bring it on. Like, we'll go back to war with America. You know, God's on our side here. This is real. This is happening for us. Islamic Republic is divinely inspired. So I think that's actually a real feeling at the higher levels of the IRGC.

That could be a real feeling that they tap into throughout the IRGC, why people, you know, would remain on the street and be willing to kill their own people. And then there's definitely a large number of people who are in it for the money or the clout or, the class and et cetera. And by the way, we had reports through January and beyond that there were a lot of people just called in sick, you know, or injured. And there was some number of people who just didn't do it. By the way, most of these people are probably not getting paid right now.

It haven't been getting paid for a while because of the blockade and the after effects of the war. So if there is fraying or stress or fracture, it would be happening now. But to your initial point, I don't disagree with you. If there's a surprise to me, it's how little. was done to have a true preparation for the people to take back the regime. You know, the idea of smuggling weapons in, of strategic communications tools, you know, for people to use secure communications. Even in the heat of the moment, there could have been airdrops.

There could have been drones overhead. There could have been communication with assets on the ground and guiding people and tactical interceptions of threats. I mean, there's a lot you could use your creative imagination to do at a moment where you've driven the regime off the street, you've targeted their command and control, the besiege internal forces have been hit, the Ministry of Intelligence and Security has been hit. You're hitting checkpoints that was going on from the Israelis in the first few weeks. There's a lot you could probably do there outside of Tehran, outside of Mashad, maybe in some of the smaller cities if you had popular support that wanted to do this. but none of that actually came to fruition. So it certainly requires some questions. It is a surprise.

Box is full of cell phones that connect the Starlink with lots of guns. But it didn't happen. Charles, you had another take from a different part of the world. Yeah, I have a question about Cuba. So a few months ago, I started being told by people who know a great deal more than I do that we were going to hit Iran. And I thought we can't possibly be about to hit Iran because we haven't had any debate about it. It didn't go through Congress.

The president hasn't made the case for it. it and then one morning at 3 a.m. we hit Iran. Now I'm beginning to hear people say that we're going to take out the Cuban regime. Certainly here in Florida, I know some people who come from that island, or at least whose parents did, who seem rather excited about this. Are we? I don't know how else to look at it right now, but the trajectory seems baked. I mean, if the CIA director is able to walk to Havana and walk into a government meeting and say, hello, I'm the director of central intelligence. We can do this one of two ways. How would you like this to go? And he was allowed to come in to have this conversation. I mean, that's dramatic. Totally dramatic.

I think that there's obviously for a long time been a very close security relationship between the Cubans and the Venezuelan regime, right? We know a very deep Maduro before him Castro, before him Chavez, guarded by Cuban mercenaries. The reason why back in 2019, one of the reasons why you didn't see the regime fall after the election and the stolen election and the protest movement was the Cuban mercenaries

on the ground effectively, plus some Russian support that Putin, didn't pull. And I think Putin and the Cubans encouraged Majority to say, stay, don't go, don't leave the country because there was a plane ready to take him out. And he decided not to go and they stayed obviously. Once that connectivity starts unraveling, and then you add on like a full blockade and a full enforcement of sanctions that we've never really had. People, you know, Cuba's always been the classic case of saying sanctions don't work. You know, look, we've had sanctions for all these years since the revolution and you never did anything to

Castro, you never done to this government, it's just, it's just total failure. And I always said to people, I said, the sanctions we have on Cuba are nothing like the sanctions we have on Iran. We don't enforce them the same way. If we did, my God, like who would be doing business there? It would be over for them. And if you put a blockade on top of it to stop fuel imports, things like that, yeah, they're done. They're cooked.

it's a matter of just, you know, you know, crying mercy and saying, what can we do for you to stay here? So there has to be something that's coming in Cuba. I'm very positive on it. Is it a Deli type, Deli Rodriguez type situation where we just take effective control or influence over who's in charge and they do what we want towards a transition to an election, which, by the way, we still need to see announced in Venezuela. You know, we shouldn't just, you know, pop the champagne cork just because, you know, a new dictator does what we want. We actually need to see the transition to a democracy in Venezuela. Otherwise, you know, where does this really lead us? And then if that happens in Cuba, all the ambitions of the Chinese and the Russians, and the Iranians, by the way, the IRGC, close with both, IRGC had a presence in Caracas.

Hezbollah had a presence in Caracas. They both, along with the Chinese, with their intelligence base, do a lot with the Cubans. These are the two real springboards into the Western Hemisphere to counter the United States by all of our adversaries. And we take both of them off the chessboard. I mean, this is, the century has changed in our favor in our hemisphere. And then, you know, we have to see how this plays out with Iran, the Strait of Hormuz. This is another big card and grand strategy with the Chinese and the Russians. and then you start looking at actually the theater is closer to them.

And we stop having to play defense closer to home. Got it. I say we topple the Cuban government and exit, turn it into a state, install a Batista as a governor, bring up the main retrofitted and have a due shuttle back and forth between Florida and Havana to rebuild the country. But there's just one man's opinion. You, however, are one man with a lot of knowledge more than opinions.

And we thank Richard Goldberg for coming with us today. I want to have you on for another show to talk just about China, because that's a big one, even though it's sort of been pushed off the page, and people are saying, oh, they're on their back foot with the Iranian situation, the oil situation, and the rest of it. Never take your eyes off that ball. Richard, thanks for joining us, and we'll talk to you again soon, I hope. All right, you bet. Thank you, guys. Bye-bye.

Hi, I'm Ben Sass. And I'm Chris Steyerwalt. And this is not dead yet. We're all dying, but some of us have been brought face-to-face with that reality. However long, each of us have to do it, though, we all want to live a good life. life, one with meaning, love, and joy. And our guests are here to help us do exactly that. Now available for download and streaming at ricochet.com.

Rikoshae. Join the conversation. Yeah, I wanted to get to China because a guy I follow on Twitter, who invented tank, it's tire tread Twitter, pretty much is his invention. He was there at the beginning of the Ukrainian war examining the condition of Russian logistics and explaining why we're good at it. They're bad at it. Ohio's going to hurt them in the long run.

He wasn't right about the speed at which the Russian army would suffer. It hasn't yet to suffer. That conflict's still grinding on. But he's convinced that China is actually going to make their move in 2027. And I don't like that at all. No, sir. I don't. But that's another show, another expert.

Charles, I would like to say I'm disappointed greatly in you. We were going to have a weekly thing here for people who saw the video feed where you would put different albums up and you appear to have covered your albums with pictures of Spider-Man drawn by your child. Am I correct? I am. And in fact, he was hoping you would notice. So you did. Oh, I did. I did indeed.

Yes. So it's Spidey. And is that the one covering up the Beach Boys? Is that Spider-Man as well? Is that a Ninja Turtle? We have. I mean, it's about the size of a half a postage stamp from my vantage point. No, well, we have Spider-Man in the middle.

Yes. We have Spider-Man in an anti-venom suit. Yes. And then we have Venom and Spider-Man half and half. Got it. I figured that's what it was. But yes, good for him. But you see, he gave them to me.

And then he said, will you put them in your office? And I said, sure. And he said, will you put them where people can see them? So I thought, well, if I put them here, then you'll notice. I did. So next week, we're going to do the album challenge again. But after that, yes, we are perfectly happy to rotate art of your off-sping and give them a national platform.

I should also note that the platform you want to go to, if you haven't yet, after listening to us talk about for 790 iterations, is ricochet.com. But exciting new development, Charles, you're about to tell us that there's a new number, about to be affixed to the end of the word ricochet, and that number would be. Five, but we're not quite ready to launch, but we're about to start testing. Well, that's what Bezo said the other day. Yes, and that, yes, I hope it won't explode. but we will be testing with staff

but also certain members will get invitations to become testers and tell us what's wrong with it, frankly, that is the job. Complain, bitch, Cavill, any word you like that is negative. We want to hear everything that's wrong. I want bug reports.

I don't know like this. This is too hard to see. Just throw it our way. So that's coming soon. So remember, folks, If you haven't signed up for ricochet yet, you won't be able to complain about number five unless you get in number four. Because then even if you have one day at number four, you can say, I don't like these new changes. I'm a conservative.

I like the old ways. So you can give it a shot. But what will you find if you haven't been there yet is the sort of community, as I always say, you've been looking for your entire life on the internet. Unlike Facebook, which comes and goes and has all kinds of strange crazy people and stupid ads you don't want, infinite scrolls. and like Twitter, which can be lots of fun. But again, a whole bunch of randos and strange pictures and the rest of it. Rickishay is a community of smart people who can actually write. That's the thing.

And there's a code of conduct that make sure that the conversations are always civil, but never dull. So go there. Throw a few shekels at it and join the member feed. And you will find your daily internet challenges changed. Also give us five stars anywhere you can. We like that because it gets the podcast more stuff. And that means that more people go to the Ricketts. And it's all a self-reinforcing thing because you want us to be here for the next presidential election, don't you?

Jay Vance versus Gavin Newsom. It's going to be great fun. In the meantime, great fun can be had at the comments at Rickashay 4. Whatever, it's going to be soon to be 5. Thanks, Charles. Thank you for listening everybody. And we'll see you next week. Bye-bye.

You can say goodbye too, Charles. Oh, it was such an, it was such an emphatic and authoritative goodbye. I didn't want to get involved. RICOCHAY. Join the conversation.