The Team House - Attack on Tower 22: How Does the US Respond? | EYES ON | Ep. 1

Episode Date: January 31, 2024

Introducing a new podcast called Eyes On with Andy Milburn & Jason Lyons, where we talk about geopolitics and international news.Today we're talking about the drone attack on the US military base on the border of Syria in Jordan that resulted in 3 US servicemembers deaths. We talk about how the US can respond without escalating the situation into a regional war.To help support the show and for all bonus content including:-AD FREE AUDIO-AD FREE VIDEO-Access to ALL bonus segments with our guestsSubscribe to our Patreon! ⬇️https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouse#tower22 #geopolitics #iranBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support.

Well, everyone, today's a big day because Jason and I, who are former Team House groupies, have now been elevated to running our own podcast. We're still on the, so at the little table, you know, 40 minutes. But in all seriousness, this podcast is meant to complement its big and more sophisticated brother, the team house. I know that you're probably not used to hearing the term the team house and sophisticated rolled up in the same sentence. but it's all relative.

So in a moment we're going to introduce ourselves. I'm going to talk a little bit, very briefly about what this podcast is about. Okay. And there's a lot of things it's not. It's not a partisan echo chamber. It's two guys who are reasonably well informed from their background, the experience. But most importantly, I hope have enough emotional intelligence between us, not to let this just become a, you know,

again, an echo chamber or a slagging match. So for me, I'm Andy. As I said, long-time team house groupie and former Marine, former founder of the Mozart Group, now watched up doing podcasts for D-Tockers. Actually, I'm very thrilled to be doing so. Jason over you. Thanks, Andy.

Jason, I'm also a longtime team house fan. Jack and I go back to our days when I worked for him writing for soft rep. And we've stayed friends ever since. Met Dave at the team house as well. And, you know, I've been a guest a few times on there, co-hosted once. And I have a background for Marine 10 years, worked in nuclear security, and then did eight years at CIA or Central Intelligence Agency. And I'm happy to be here and see where we go with this. right and then for our women listeners in particular d i'm demetri

not just the ladies yeah hi yeah that's why i'm here for the sex appeal i'm demetri i'm the producer of the team house and i think uh this is going to be a fun show i was a huge fan of when you guys were on the show i think you guys did a great job guest hosting the show and uh you know we were sitting around like what would make sense in terms of a vertical for the team house because we really try to showcase our guests would be something that's more topical, more current events driven, you know, in terms of geopolitics, less so domestic current events. And I think you two guys would make like a perfect team.

The two Marine thing, I did not, that's like a happy accident, I guess you can call it. It wasn't on purpose, you know. Hopefully you guys don't blow it too bad. well yeah i mean at least our you bring our collective IQ up at least to room temperature so uh you know we've already blown for you a few minutes here they typically episodes are going to be about 40 45 minutes so uh about about the length of the commute or a pt session and today to jump right into it of course the elephant in the room is the uh are the the much expected and assumed to be imminent retaliation strikes that the that the president of the

administration have been talking about delivering against Iran and or proxies and retaliation all the head by a drone on Tower 22. Jason, what do you do you are you familiar with Tower 22? I am not. I can actually say that I'm the broad area. I have a little bit of knowledge of but Tower 22, I have been trying to catch up on. Okay, cool. All right. I planted that question on Jason so that we can talk a little bit about Tower 22 without appearing to be too much of a diversion for the more cognizantia among our guests.

Okay. So Tower 22 is a, it's an extremely small. If I use the term base, then, you know, I make it sound much granted that it is. It is a combat outposts essentially just within the Jordanian border, kind of in a tri-border area between Iraq, Syria, and Jordan. It's only about six miles, for instance, from the Iraqi border and around the same, actually, to the Syrian border. Now, it's a bit of a shithole, and you may have, this hasn't been news coverage of it yet from the, of the drone strike. But what we are hearing is that it hit a, you know, accommodation quarters.

Now that, that makes it sound too grand. I will tell you that accommodation quarters, not only last time I was there, which was, you know, three years ago, but, but I'm told even up until now was nothing like one might expect. But it was heavily sandbagged. And, you know, there was, there were bunkers available. and all of the above. It's very easy after an occasion like this

to talk about all the things that went wrong. So typically there's about 350 guys there, 300 to 350. That hasn't changed much since we, the United States started using Tower 22 and late 2014. And the reason why we use it, the reason why we have a garrison there is simply to supply another combat outpost

called Outtenth, is 20 kilometers, 12 miles into Syria, on almost directly north, actually a little bit northwest. Now, our 10th is extremely important to the United States. It's manned by a very small garrison, typically in soft terms, an AOB, a company of Army SF guys, plus a collection of indigenous soldiers and indigenous force, Syrians and Andy what does Aob mean?

Yeah, A. That's why you're here. Yeah. It was company level headports. You know what? Oh, you know what? The Army SF community is going to just kill me. Bravo, something operating base Bravo, right?

AobB. What does EA stand for? Um, Alpha. No. God, you know what? Okay, I'm going to be an ambassador to our listeners. You're talking about two, two Marines, but I'll remember what AOB stands for. But essentially, it is an Army SF company. Is it an advanced operating base? Yeah. No, no. Is it? Uh, I looked up an acronym. Main operations base or forward operating base. You know what? We've already going to have like 5,000 emails from. Yeah. It's okay. Right in the, right in the comments. What you think is. If we get taken off the air, let me continue. Anyway, Altam, all right? You know, altogether, and numbers there vary, but it's seldom above 200 dudes. And El Tenth has been manned around the same time since 2015. The reason why Al Tamp is important, and the reason why we have a small garrison of Special

Operations troops there, which is a great example, by the way, of self-achieving strategic effect, is because of its location, all right? not just near the tri-border region, but it lies astride, the old Baghdad Damascus Highway, which is now a weapons running route. And, you know, you've heard this term used many times. Part of the land bridge, right? That Iran has pretty much de facto established between, you know, all the way to the sea across Iraq and Syria. So Al Tamp is important.

It's a, it's a, it's a, it's a thorn in the side of our, of the Syrian regime. It's a foreign on the side, obviously, of Iranians and the Russians there too. But it's a great importance to, to the U.S. And because of that, Tower 22 is important. And why are they all there? Well, they're there. Partly, of course, I mean, presence in Syria, which is pretty the most volatile. We thought the most volatile place.

to Israel talk about Christ recently. But more importantly, you know, keep an eye on the Islamic State, but also keep an eye on our, on, you know, the other bad, I rather adversarial actors in Syria, mainly Russia and Iran, all right. And, you know, again, when we're talking about light footprint, heavy footprint, I think our 10th is exactly, you know, what it's kind of the, what we, we are seeing across the world and we will continue to see increasingly as far as U.S. presence, It's a very light footprint, not a, not in the typical way. Jason, back to you.

Any, you know, anything to add or ask it deep before I go on to. I can talk a little bit about the attack itself and what happened afterwards. As far, so I, you know, when I look at things from an intelligence perspective and where would, what would I be thinking? not necessarily from the president on down, but at least from the ambassador from that regional, you know, command area on down.

And for me, as soon as I got the word that this was happening as a, as an intelligence agency, I would want to spool up my assets and want to know, we have an idea. You know, the media is saying it's Iran. We pretty much know it is. But I would want to know solid concrete.

evidence that it's Iran, so I'd be spool up my assets. Who did it? What was that the actual target? What was the end game here? You know, try to get those kind of things answered so that when the president and joint chiefs and everyone else are briefed that they have all the information. And the reason why this show is called eyes on is because we have, you know, you have eyes on the target. We have eyes on who we think it is. But until we have solid intel, that's all it is. that's the kind of stuff that I would want to be pushing. Yeah, I mean, that's a great, that's a really good point. I'm glad to hear it, Jason.

And I love, I'll bring in one of Jack's favorite terms that, you know, when you have a gallery of people howling for, you know, howling for blood and willing to expend the last drop of other people's blood on the American side to defer the cause, you know, all of us get a get a little concerned, you know, without being snowflakes, right?

But I think, well, I do know, you know, what you say is exactly right. I mean, it's corroboration and it's removal of plausible deniability from Iran.

That's right. In order to a strike into Iran and or even, you know, Iranian targets, Goose Force, which we've already done. Yeah. Many times Iran's certain,

but to do it again, then certainly we need that kind of that smoking gun. KH, not not, I mean, it's interesting, Pentagon spokesman said this had the hallmarks of KH. KAH is why? Ketaksh, very good, yeah. Katab Hezbollah. Nothing to do with Big Daddy Hezbollah.

In Lebanon, Katab Hisbola is a pro-Iranian militia. because you've seen, you know, you've seen a group that no one's ever heard of before, right? The, I forget what it was, the Islamic resistance, whatever it was, a army, claiming responsibility. But, you know, if you got a Pentagon spokesman mentioning KH and saying it has the hallmarks of, you can bet that there's some intelligence.

Sure. You know, that wasn't a throwaway line. Absolutely. You know, I mean, and I just want to talk a little bit about aftermath of the attack because I'm not sure this was in the media. So about an hour after the attack on Tower 22, and you can imagine, you know, the absolute pandemonium there. I mean, these guys were not, I mean, their Army Reservists, certainly not. It's not the same as if a drone had hit out Taff. let me put it that way, you know, it's, it must have been very confusing.

Well, another attack, another drone, similar type suspected Iranian made, not quite a loitering munition, not that sophisticated, but it was a, you know, it was a one-way suicide drone, came into attack Altaf and was destroyed, all right, by one of the anti-drone systems they had there. I think it's a coyote. It's a rathian system. Apparently it's pretty, I've heard it's pretty effective, but if anyone out there has heard differently, please, you know, please pile in, which is kind of a good news story. But my point being, this was obviously was, was a very, you know, it was a planned attack and it was, you know, it wasn't just a lucky shot from some dude. The attack came from within Iraq. We know that much. So it is conceivable.

certainly that it was KH. And when people talk about the hallmarks of KH, you know, it would be not just the type of drone, which was sort of a uranium manufacturer, but it would be various other things, even down perhaps to the operators who used it. So to be interesting to see now, Jason, you know, in answer to when you were talking about,

yeah, right on target. That's, it's very easy in kind of the silence after the strike, you know, that stunned silence for people to be howling in that vacuum. So we need to do this or that. It's much more difficult to be in a leadership position, remembering that you're at the helm of the United States that has to be seen to act in a way that is in consult with U.S. law. Yes, I know if that seldom happens.

But that, you know, that is what's going on. And the challenge, of course, is the smoking gun is intent, right? did the Iranians intend for this to happen? That's what the Iranians would like to assume. But the smoking gun is the fact that Iran has supplied, has made these organizations capable of these attacks in the first place, right? Intent is icing on the cake. Coot's force could have foreseen that their prodigets would want to exercise control

of their weapons. by themselves sooner or later. Absolutely. And I think something else to think about, too, is the tangible benefits to Iran of this attacks like this. I mean, yes, you get the, you know, you have the deaths and wounding of U.S. service personnel. You have the United States looking at its vulnerability in the area.

You have them now, you know, people within the U.S. government and otherwise questioning, administration, and response, all those stuff. but they also have the benefit of turning the world's attention away from their own internal Iran's internal issues, the terrorism, that they're, you know, all of that stuff. So something to think about. Yeah, Jason, a really good point. So, you know, when we're talking about striking back and, again, you know, there's the,

the would-be warriors who say, yeah, we should strike white into Iran itself. Okay. And there's, I'm not, you know, I wouldn't, I wouldn't say a blanket no to that, but I would say there's some, you've got to bear in mind some things. One thing is, you know, the Persian mentality, very proud people. They, they do have a history, to include recent history of dissent. But if you strike Iran, you're going to watch everyone unite behind the regime, which is exactly. Same exact thing that we would do. Yeah. So we've got to, you know, it's, I'm not, I'm not saying, obviously, hey, that's too high a price, but we've got to understand that that is the price, right? Just as in the same way as when we hit Soleimani, we knew likely that U.S. servicemen would die in retaliation, right? It's got to be a deliberate decision. Absolutely. And that, yeah.

And so, you know, there are, I mean, I think it's such a tri-clicious saying we have a range of options. But there are a range of options, but they have to be imaginative. We can't do more of the same, right? What is more of the same? We have conducted, I think, eight strikes. I'm not counting Yemen. I'm just talking Iran and Iraq and Syria since October the 7th, right? To include two in which we specifically targeted IRGC personnel, both in Syria on, I believe it was 8 and 12th of November.

So there are precedents, right? we've already killed Iranians in Iraq and Syria. We have not killed Iranians in Iran itself. In fact, the last time we killed Iranians that were not in Iraq or Syria was 1988 as part of an operation called Prang Mantis. And so my point is simply this. This is a big precedent. It's not simply, okay, hey, let's doing this.

And you know why we haven't done that? Because there is kind of an unspoken understanding between the Iran. Iranians and the U.S. on this. What are the real red lines? Okay. And the U.S. and striking Iranian homeland is one of those red lines. And that is why the United States has been a conciliatory, have had a conciliatory effect on Israel, whenever Israel goes on the war path, demanding war with Iran. So we'll see.

But when I say range of options, you know, it's got to be, it's got to be. it's got to escalate beyond what we've done so far. So what could that be? Well, it could be a comprehensive strike, right? Iraq, Syria, but also the Persian Gulf. Iranian naval assets, who knows, maybe infrastructure in the Persian Gulf, right? Which would also, you know, have an economic impact on Iran. When I say strikes, I mean, if there is a smoking, grind, connecting the drone

with IRGC as I'm sure there is, then removing IRGC capability or severely diminishing, not just lacking one or two dudes, but I mean going after kingpins and facilities and infrastructure in such a manner that we prevent the IRGC from being able to operate effectively over a period of time. Okay, that's a reasonable expectation.

And it hurts Iran and it gives us a sense plausible done. What were they doing there anyway? You say, you know, and it keeps us on the moral high ground. And there's, you know, as you guys know, there's a whole wealth of other stuff we do in the cyber realm that doesn't even get noticed or talked about. The dumb thing to do would be to, you know, to go all hands out and saying. tens of thousands of troops out to the Middle East, where they provide just a greater effective target for the Iranians. The other dumb thing to do would be to withdraw troops from the Middle East, right? We, you know, as I said, the pattern that we should maintain there is, you know,

light footprint bases similar to our time for Tower 22, obviously well fortified, secure, armed with mostly, I mean, man, most of the soft guys, but not mostly a soft guy, as everyone knows, soft needs, soft needs conventional forces in order to operate and survive. So conventional forces, there is support with soft doing the operations. You have minimal risk there, and you have pretty this potential for strategic effect. Of course, the Iraqis are going to probably decide what our footprint is pretty soon within Iraq. You guys said, we're... Yeah, that was my...

was one of the questions I wanted to ask was what happens with that like tentative deal of us getting out of Iraq that they announced kind of does that you know uh throw a wrench in that are we going to stay in Iraq in terms of like soft or whatever it's something makes it more difficult for us right and as far as containment containing Iranian influence but we weren't doing that pretty tall but doing that anyway I mean we weren't containing Iranian influence by having military guys there. So I, you know, yeah, obviously I'm not, I'm not dismissing our dismissal from Iraq as being unimportant.

What I am saying, of course, you know, is that we can accomplish the mission from other places where we know we can gain. So quick, I got a question, like a layman question. What does it look like? Does it just look like more air strikes more often? Is it, is it sending like, you know, 200 Rangers and a, Delta Squadron to go smoke, you know, command and control guys? Like, what does it look like in terms of a response from the hit on Tower 22?

I mean, I'm sorry, Jason, go ahead. What do you? No, I mean, I mean, you're a little bit closer to the strategic military response than I am. But I would think that for right now, what you don't really, you don't fix what's not broken. The airstrikes are working and we're hitting the targets that we want to hit. killing the people we want to kill for lack of a better term. And it's all going to depend on we hit. What does Iran do?

We hit. What does Iran do? It's just, I think it's going to depend on that. But I think all that other stuff you mentioned, the soft teams, the ranger, battalions, all that stuff, that's all brewing underneath and they're ready to go. I'm sure staged and ready to go, or at least the word has come down, be ready to go. But I think because we've set the precedent, and this is my opinion, set the precedent already, between the Houthis and the strikes that we've done in Iraq and all,

I think we might keep that up for a little bit and wait and see what Iran is the government's going to do. And something else to piggyback on what you're saying, Andy, it made me think about another benefit, quote unquote, for Iran is the entity that would be willing to go into Iran and has proven that they would do it, which is Israel, they've got their own stuff going on. So we can't necessarily call on them, not saying that we won't, not saying that they can't, but it would appear that right now they're tied up, you know, with what's going on in, uh, in Gaza. So, you know, that's another thing that not necessarily we take off the table, but it's something we may have to say, okay, we'll have to keep that to the side, you know, until the Israelis,

you know, give us the green light that they can do it. The, D, and off in, you know, just to piggyback on what Jason said, and, and, and, and I, and I agree, yeah, the strikes are largely, I mean, when I say working, they're certainly hurting that Iran, I would imagine. But when I talk about a difference, an escalation, I mean, synchronizing strikes to remove their capability. I mean, think about what we've been doing before is, you know, something is done against us and we retaliate. But it's a proportional retaliation, right? and then we de-escalate. You know, we kind of say, okay, that was it.

You know, don't fuck around again or we'll do it. You don't need to be worse next time, right? This time, we need to ramp. You know, we really need to hurt Iran's capability, all right? Its ability to control those proxies, to have an effect on those proxies. We're hitting right at the point that hurt us, right? we're not, you know, we're not going through some esoteric route, sanctions and all of that.

I mean, yes, we do. We continue to do that. But that, okay, it's not about just strikes. It's about what are those strikes doing, how they're coordinated and timed. That could have a different effect. When you talk about, and again, I invite, you know, people chime in on this today, disagree. But when we're going against a state actor, the roles that solve.

play obviously change right so it's i mean it's very little door kicking and grabbing people the door kicking is normally involved in kinetic strikes uh where you use soft normally involved in taking out key infrastructure where there is fear of collateral damage if we go in with strikes or for some other reason okay um if you think through a little bit you can think of the types of infrastructure that might involved, right? And, you know, doubtless, again, I don't have any, I don't have any, no one's sledding me into on the intel on this. I promise you guys. I wouldn't, I wouldn't be talking about it. So this is all speculation. So can I, like another question. So I'm a smorgance board. Yeah. So that's I was going to say, like they have to be, I'm assuming their CIA and covert stuff is going to be a big

factor in this, right? Because I'm assuming, so you want to hurt their capabilities. You want to want to hurt like how they supply their proxies with equipment, whether it's drones or ammo or money or whatever. So I'm assuming the CIA is going to have a hand in like hitting them there, which I'm sure they already do anyway. Yeah. Yeah, I think people just want right now because like they're, especially the Twitter people,

they want things to be blowing up again. We want to see some skyline shots of things blowing up. And it's, if that's exactly the right way of doing it. One thing, it won't be for sure. I hope not will be, you know, a series of strikes simply against Qatar, Pizbollah. I mean, because the problem is more fundamental

and endemic than that. We know that. And it's part of the same problem that's resulted in strikes on 40 cargo ships on the Red Sea in the last, what, three months. and not a single one of those was bound for Israel, right? You know, I mean, there was all kinds of weird stories invented to attack these ships, but that is, that's significant too. I mean, 12% of the world shipping passes through the Baobal and Deb,

the ban, as you probably heard. So, yeah, it's, it is time to take action. But it's got to be imaginative, right? I mean, it really does. It's not, we're beyond the era of carpet bombing countries and thinking that it's taught them anything. And as we talk about, it's just simply going to drive Iran. It's going to unite Iran.

Yeah. I have one more question. Yeah. Ever since October 7th and, like, Israel. Israel's been hitting back on Gaza and Hamas. Have these incidences spiked up with Iranian proxies? Whether, obviously the Houthis, yes. It's spiked up.

But like I'm talking like in Syria hits on us. Yeah, 160 attacks on U.S. troops bases since 7 October. That is a meaningless number, unless you compare it to before. I'll give you exact numbers. many times, many times the numbers of the tax over the previous, the number of taxes three months. So would part of the strategy of retaliating against us getting hit in Iranian proxies is trying to rein back Israel a little bit in Gaza?

Yes, certainly. So I would imagine. And, you know, whatever, again, I mean, we'll talk more about this. I think Jason and my stance is probably going to be on this. Hey, look, we're bipartisan or apolitical. But we do criticize dumb policy and we see dumb policy regardless, right? Otherwise, this becomes an anodyne Pavlum show. But my point here is that it's not easy, yes, to chart a course here

because Netanyahu is whacked, right? And yet we are hitched to his wagon. And for all kinds of reasons that you guys understand, very politically hitched to his wagon, regardless of the administration. But we have this guy who's leading us, right? He's leading us into a bad place. and we're watching, we're facing, I mean, we used to not being a popular, not being popular

and parts of the country, but we're being heavily criticized even by our allies. And that should cause us to pause and think, right? Regardless, that's, that's, that's good policy to do that. But, but yes, and not to your question, Dee, I, at the same time behind the scenes, I'm sure that I know there's a good deal of pressure taking place and mill to mill too about trying to cut down on casualties. And I'll make a controversial. Actually, I won't make a controversial statement at all, at all because I'm still awaiting for permission to visit. To visit Gaza for my book. More to follow on that.

And at the end of the day, Iran's going to Iran. So they've proven historically that they don't necessarily operate in a vacuum. They want some sort of a conflict or some sort of an issue where they can operate. Now they can insert themselves, whether that was in the goal or in Iraq when we went into Iraq. And now look at the issues that are happening. It's always conflict, some sort of issue where they insert themselves. So whatever Netanyahu does, Iran has already taken full advantage of what's going on now. So I think that that's going to continue for the foreseeable future.

So I think we say if I'm if I'm the president, which nobody wants, if I'm the president, you got to let all that external noise go and say, okay, we'll talk to you in a minute. We got to handle what's going on now. Our three people are dead. We have to respond to it. So I think that it can be done. People are very black or white, you know, either you're all in or you're not in at all. And I don't think that that's how we should govern, how we should, our military should respond.

Like, you know, Andy's been talking about, we have, there's layers to it. You know, we don't have to go all in, you know, glass parking lot. We also don't have to, like you said, pull everybody out and say, okay, it's yours. You know, we can layer our responses up to a point where we think that we're pushing too far and we're going to cross a line that's going to result in an all-out regional war. And then we can, we don't have to necessarily step back. We just stop, you know, like we didn't first go for. We stopped, you know, short of, you know, running into Iraq and just, you know, running

in Ripshod in there. And we just stopped. And we have that capability. We just have to, you know, the administration and for future administration, because this is, I don't believe that this is going to stop once, you know, whether Biden's reelected or not. I believe that whoever is in charge needs to just cut out the external noise and all the crap on social media and, you know, all that stuff and just lead, you know, listen to your military leaders and, you know, move forward that way. On a, yeah, I mean, I'll have 100% Jason. I couldn't agree more at the, you know, the strategic level. And then, you know, way down at the tactical level, it makes me think about.

of vulnerabilities, you know, within the soft community. I mean, think about, you know, there have been six very high-profile U.S. deaths overseas since 2017. Okay, I mean, that's not, but I mean, well, two incidents, right. Three in Niger, 2017, and then the three here, where U.S. soft support personnel, or personnel, no, I mean, personnel supporting U.S. soft were targeted and killed. And I think that's something we've got to be wary of in the future. You know, I mean, there's a reason why Tower 22 was targeted.

And there's probably a reason why the drone got through at Tower 22 and didn't get through, you know, in Tower 10th. Our Tenth was on combat footing and it was mined with soft personnel. Tower 22 was part of Jordan Hill. I mean, you know, an hour or so way you can get a beer and have a good time. it didn't feel like a war footing. These guys were, you know, reservists and they were engineers, not combat engineers. So, you know, my point is that, yeah, we've got gaping vulnerabilities out there across the Middle East, even with a light footprint. And it isn't our soft guys who are going to be taking the brunt of these attacks.

And we need to be, we need to harden ourselves and really, really, look at that soft part of our footprint going ahead. I got a question about Tower 22. Did you guys see like some of the Twitter, like it was on Twitter mostly like the reports saying that it got hit because they tailed a friendly drone into there and they got in under that? I feel like is that, did you hear, is that true? I can't say conclusively it's true.

That came, I guess, from, I don't know where it came from. I, you know, supposedly from guys on the base. The Pentagon didn't deny that, but there's an investigation going on, obviously. I mean, think about it. I'm not denying it at all, but that, but here's what I think happened, because I've seen this many times Jason probably has too. You know, people put, people see things happening. Probably a US, you know, a drone did return and then shortly after the attack occurred and people

put two and two together. But it's actually very difficult to locate and find. follow a drone, right? And it doesn't really make, I mean, it isn't, you know, it isn't that easy. And it's hard to imagine them having done that and slipped through air defenses that way. But they did get through air defenses. So they did, you know, they managed it somehow. And that's, that's what the investigation should try and uncover. Why, why did the, you know, what, what succeeded in Tower 20, I mean, Alta. that failed in Tower 22.

Yeah. Yeah, I agree. I don't. I can't. I'm not a drone guy, so I can't say that, you know, they were able to follow the track of the returning U.S. drone. Anything is possible. It just doesn't, at this point, doesn't seem likely. But like Andy said, you know, I think the key is what worked it, you know, at the soft base that didn't work here, you know, and vice versa.

You know, so that's, I think. that's we won't know the full story if we know the full story for probably months you know to come and in the interim as they're finding things out i'm sure that that intel is getting out to other bases you know as and he spoke on to harden you know their defenses so because it's gonna it's going to keep happening they're going to keep testing these waters until it doesn't work and then they'll try something else all right yeah that that's that that sums it up beautifully Jason. So, you know, at this point, I mean, we don't, we don't want these to overrun. So we'll bring this to a graceful close. So if you were a betting man, when would you expect the strikes to go in, Jason? Would you expect to see?

I, me personally, I'm thinking probably by this coming weekend. I don't, I mean, we had the assets in place to do it. So what they are, Exactly. I don't know. But I think we have the capability to launch them is probably before this weekend. But I would say we will start hearing about it probably by this coming weekend. Do you thoughts? Yeah, next three to four days probably, right? I mean, we have to respond. To show response. And I mean, I would put money on. Okay. So I would put money on this. Okay. Multiple IRGC directed stream. strikes simultaneous Iraq, Syria, but also Iranian naval assets in the Gulf. Yeah. Iranian naval assets in the Gulf. Potentially, too, if they locate this factory, which isn't going to be difficult to do.

If there was a strike into Iran itself, I would guess that it would be going after that factory. Because that's very, you know, obviously that's relevant, but it's also very easy. to compartmentalize in terms of escalation. Absolutely. I would bet that they don't hit Iran, like Iran's mainland. I could see them blowing up a container ship or two

that's heading to like Yemen or wherever. 20 bucks? Yeah, I'm in. I'll bet that. No inside of Iran, but I could see them blowing up a ship because that is something we've never seen before. Bring cash with you on the 27th.

No problem. I'll have it. I'll hold the money. Yeah. All right, guys. Any closing comments? Dean, what are you, you've got an email address for us, right? For eyes on?

No, not yet, but we will have an email address for that. I mean, I'm assuming so, like, if anyone has, like, questions and stuff like that, they can, they can email the Teamhouse podcast at gmail.com. You know, you can also write in the comments. And the comments might get lost in the sauce. but um comments like get those clowns off the air

no yeah they'll be they'll be okay and especially like you know don't tell you know we gotta tell people to like subscribe uh check out the Patreon

check out tell your friends about this whether you listen to it on Spotify or Apple rated five stars and review it on Apple that helps too so getting get engaged yeah

yeah all of the above so and I mean on the on the email part of this what we really want to do is spend I don't know five minutes 10 minutes maybe at the end of every episode going through

just a handful of input from from the listeners watchers audience and notice I said you know not just questions you're free to make comments we will comment on your comments yeah I agree

so please do and yeah great Thank you.