The Team House - India\Pakistan Ceasefire Reached | Eyes On Geopolitics

Episode Date: May 12, 2025

Todag we talk abojt the ceasefire reaxhd begwee India and Pakistan, Putin’s weord middle of the migh address about negotiations for oace with Ukraine, and the Iran nuke deal. Support the show on Patreon:⬇️https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouseNew merch, patches, and stickers! ⬇️https://theteamhouse-shop.fourthwall.comFind Mick Mulroy here: Fogbow ⬇️https://fogbow.com/Lobo Institute ⬇️https://www.loboinstitute.org/Twitter ⬇️https://x.com/mickmulroy?s=21&t=-Ze3F_Ix2vlJ18KFvORTCALinkedIn ⬇️https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-patrick-mulroy-31198b52/Bluesky ⬇️https://bsky.app/profile/mickmulroy.bsky.socialMick’s publications ⬇️https://www.loboinstitute.org/publications/publications-of-michael-mick-patrick-mulroy/Find Andy Milburn here: Twitter ⬇️https://twitter.com/i/flow/login?redirect_after_login=%2Fandymilburn8LinkedIn ⬇️https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrewmilburn2023Substack ⬇️https://amilburn.substack.com/Andy’s book ⬇️https://www.amazon.com/When-Tempest-Gathers-Mogadishu-OperationsBluesky ⬇️https://bsky.app/profile/andy-milburn.bsky.socialFind Jason Lyons here: LinkedIn ⬇️https://www.linkedin.com/in/jason-lyons-666873316?utm_source=share&utm_campaign=share_via&utm_content=profile&utm_medium=ios_appBluesky ⬇️https://bsky.app/profile/bgsilverback73.bsky.sociBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support.

Hey, everybody. Welcome to another episode of Aizond Geopolitics. I'm here today with McMulroy and Jason Lyons. I'm Dimitra Kontakos. Thanks for joining us. Do us a favor. Like and subscribe if you're listening to us on audio. Click five stars.

Tell your friend about it. You know what I mean? Do what you can. What's up, guys? Happy Mother's Day to everybody. Same. Same to you. I'm sure you call your mom.

Call your mom. Yeah. Definitely. Don't, don't waste a minute. Do it right now. Pause this right now and call your mom. Absolutely. So a lot happening, as usual.

First and foremost, the back and forth with Indian Pakistan. It was announced yesterday that there was a ceasefire. And then a couple hours later, there was a bit of exchange of fire between Indian Pakistan. But let's kick off with a ceasefire and what it looks like. Mick, what do you track in with that? Well, obviously, the ceasefire is a good thing for everybody, right? You've got two major powers, both nuclear equipped. Everybody should want to see this de-escalate, not escalate, to state the obvious.

The fact that the U.S. played a role, I think, is great. You know, I mean, it was a little mixed messages. You know, this wasn't U.S. concern, and then there's ceasefire. Now we're kind of taking credit for the ceasefire. It's like, okay, I guess it was a concern. But, you know, other than that, I think it's a good thing. The U.S. has relationships with both India and Pakistan. So a lot of countries had good relationships with one or the other, but not both.

So that's why I think the U.S. was critical in this. Hats off to Secretary Rubio and his team for the role they played in getting this. But I do think both sides were looking for an off-rap, right? Because it's like I'm sure everybody's, you know, general staff is sitting around going, And how does this end if it's not an immediate ceasefire? Because if it's tick for attack until ground forces are involved, there's an issue. You know, I think sometimes we talk too much about doctrine like it can't be changed. But the Indian doctrine is a no first use.

So they won't use it first. The Pakistani doctrine doesn't have that. So they can use it first. And they've already decided that. And they don't consider like Russia, they don't consider tactile nukes to be nukes. really. But most countries would if you had a tactical nuke lobbed at you. So under their doctrine, Pakistan, if their armies loses a key position, they can use a tactical nuclear weapon. So that could have been the triggering for an escalation to a full, you know, strategic level

nuclear war. So that was the biggest concern, I think, for everybody. And, you know, we were just talking about before we came on air. Jay should fill us in on this, that there still has been stuff. But ultimately, if it holds a long-term, good thing, perhaps this would be a time to transition into long-term negotiations with the U.S. leading because they still haven't, you know, the Indus River treaty is still on old. There's still no diplomatic presence in each country. I think airspace is still, there's still stuff that needs to be done other than there's not shooting at each other. Yeah, I agree. That's the key is, you know, great, we got this short-term ceasefire,

but we need to now start working on the long term. I think it would be a mistake for our administration to say, okay, we got the ceasefire. Now we can let you guys handle it all. Not that they're not capable, but it's like when kids are fighting, when everybody's hot-headed, nobody wants to, you know, talk it out. until somebody steps in a neutral party and is able to, um,

calmer heads prevail. So I'm hoping that we will stay in for the long run. It's, uh, there's some pretty significant events that happen in the short, this short conflict, um, one of which, if the rumors are true about the, uh,

aircraft that were shot down and things like that. Um, this would be the largest, uh, air battle between two countries in, since I believe it was Vietnam. So the rumors are that, you know, I think it was eight Indian aircraft were shot down and a couple of Pakistani ones. The big thing being that a Chinese made, I think it's a J20, I believe, if that's correct.

No, J10. J10 shot down a Rafael, a French made Rafael on the Indian side, which was pretty significant because that's the first, I believe, combat loss of a Rafael, if it's all true. I know that there's been a lot of misinformation, disinformation. Some of the videos that were being shown in the initial stages of the conflict were actually videos from Gaza from a year or two ago, things like that. And then wreckage that was shown was purported to be from a different conflict. So we don't know exactly what's what. I don't believe. And Mick, maybe you can refute or say that this is true.

There's not a big Western media presence in that area to report on this stuff. So we're basically going by whatever side is talking first. I think that's fair. I've seen very few Western media reporting some CNN, but it seems like they're out in Kashmir, but right now Kashmir is essentially a no-go zone for anybody. So I think you're right. I think we're having to rely on a lot of reports that could be seriously biased based on where they're coming from. Absolutely.

And I'm sure that U.S. and other Western intelligence, if they're not in the region already, which I'm sure they are trying to get into the region. But that's still stuff still has to be vetted, whatever information comes out, and then scrubbed if it's going to get leaked to the press, you know, about what is known. And so I think for now we're just going to have to rely on, you know, both sides. And to be honest, we'd probably the most truthful reporting would be from the average citizen tweeting on X. Hey, I'm here and this is what I'm seeing kind of stuff. So. Yeah. You can validate where the person was when they shot it.

Yep. Absolutely. And the, that the ceasefire supposed violations, there was an explosion. There were explosions reported in Srinagar, the Srinagar region, but nobody's been allowed to report from there. So we can't verify that. So, yeah. Okay. Well, let's hope it holds.

Yeah. Definitely. A little bit more on the aviation side. If it's true that they did down, Rafael, it's the first time the PL-15 air-to-air missile, that's a Chinese missile, has been used. in combat and it's shot down and it's the export variant too so it's not even the variant that like China actually has on their

fighters and stuff like that so medium to long range air to air missile that out that for all intensive purposes does outrange our aim 120s I mean we're still waiting for the aim 260 that's supposed to like you know beat everybody but that's been in development

for like the last few years and we still haven't seen it on a picture like under a plane or anything so and it should sucks. Oh, go ahead. I think the French validated that it was shot down, right? I believe so. I think the Rafael, yeah, but they mentioned that they said that they shot down way more

of them, and they said they also shot down a Sue Sukkoy 30, and I think it'd make 29 as well. Yeah. Yeah. But the refile, I've seen pictures of like the tail number and stuff like that. I've seen some pictures of the actual PL 15, supposedly,

but I would, the thing that I'm questioning about that, wouldn't the PL 15 explode like that they had one almost completely intact yeah they have fragmentation warhead so yeah would probably yeah it would there was also a picture of like the pl 15's like uh acer radar and stuff like that their own like little seeker and stuff that was like relatively intact and i would think like isn't that going headlong like into a plane that's exploding like i don't know how not most of the time their proximity so is it when it gets to a certain range within the aircraft

it'll go off. Maybe, you know, maybe parts may have survived it, but So aviation, like the aviation world is like up, like spinning up because of this now. I'm sure Alex Hollings is locked in a room somewhere right now. Oh yeah.

And what's crazy is, I mean, it sucks because it's loss of life, but this is a good, quote unquote, good battlefield laboratory for us and for the Chinese and for the Russian. because we're letting someone else take the heat and while we sit back and, you know, hey, that worked, you know, and the Chinese are like, okay, that works. So it's a benefit, but it's not necessarily a great one.

But, yeah. Well, that's a good point, Jay, because there's a lot of conflicts going on in the world right now. I think we're trying to end them the best we can. But we need to get the lessons learned from them because the other way to get those lessons is to be involved in conflict. So you might as well take the. the opportunity to learn from others. That's where the real smarts come in.

Absolutely. I wonder, is the U.S. taking serious, like, the level of drone warfare that's been going on, like, especially in Ukraine and stuff like that, like where we're going to, like, develop our own, whether it's be defensive or offensive drones to, like, like, yeah, I think we're heavily involved in those for, one, to support. for example, for the Ukrainians, but also because we're smart enough to say this is the future warfare. It's happening right in front of us. It's not just happening. It's involving right in front of us right there right now. And the, you know, warfare is the mother of all necessity. And necessity is a

mother of all invention, right? So I think we need to be taken all of this. And maybe that's part of the things we get out of supporting Ukraine. It's not just, you know, these raw earth materials. It's we want to have all of the intellectual property that comes out of what you're doing with drone warfare. And because we don't want it just to be out there for everybody because this is, they've proven to take very inexpensive, oftentimes commercial off the shelf of material and lethalize it to a point of it. It's just staggering. And that can be spread quickly to our adversaries. So we need to control it. Yeah.

I believe Raytheon. It might be Raytheon. One of the primes was testing out an anti-drone kind of, I don't want to call it artillery because I don't think they shoot actual projectiles. I think it's more like electromagnetic, but they've been testing it and they've started production on it, like for us. And I'm assuming probably Ukraine as well. But that's defensive.

We also had a great former guest on Team House and I's on, Chad McCoy, former 24th STS operator, who is the CTO and founder of Firestorm Labs, which is a drone company. I think they just signed a big deal with the DoD and stuff to develop like drone stuff for them. Yeah, it's pretty interesting how it's involved because it's artillery and it's also drones.

It's like old school and like new stuff. Yeah. All mixed in one area. Like it's pretty interesting to like see play out. And I think something that we would be smart to do if we're not already doing it, and I would think we would be to have a mini operation paperclip type thing where we take some of the battlefield tested drone operators and designers from Ukraine, bring them here and say what works, what doesn't help us with this. And I'm sure that in some way we're doing that already. I mean, we have, you know, we bought some of their fighter pilots over here to train them, you know, fly the F-16, things like that. It wouldn't take much to get some of them over here to help us with our development.

Yeah. There's actually, they call it Tech Rodeo. It's down in Sheridan, Montana, this place called Granite Creek. It's a giant ranch. We went, me and Eric, Olerick, my business. part I went, I think it was like five years ago and it was maybe 35, 40 people. Apparently now it's way bigger and they are, it is a drone counter drone, air, ground ground drone dogs going into mine shafts. I mean, apparently it's insane now. It's just, it is just exploded and they use

it as it. It's so far out there that there's no concern when it comes to like, the clearances for the drones to fly and out of sight and all this other stuff. So that's why it's there. But we plan on going back this year. And we're here. It's just packed. And it's to be able to test your drone against counter drone technology and all that stuff. So it's a competition.

It's a lot of fun, I suppose. So we're heading down there. It should be something interesting to see. Nice. Oh, yeah. I just wanted to, there was a report, I believe, by C. CNN. I can't remember. Don't call me. But the reason why the Trump administration got involved with India, Pakistan,

is because on Friday night, they got alarming intelligence that kind of made them, like, put the foot on the gas and start talking with India and Pakistan and engaging, at least moving them towards a ceasefire. The funny thing was, like, Secretary Rubio posted something about it, where like they've agreed to do further talks. And the Indian, the Indian, I believe foreign minister said, yeah, no, we haven't agreed to talks. The ceasefire is yes, but the talks we have not agreed to yet.

Right. And that's needed to actually resolve the circumstance situation, right? Yeah. Yeah, that's how intelligence plays a big part. What do you think they heard? Like they're putting nukes in command and control, like on command of control into like generals or colonels, whatever? like strapping nuke

to like artillery because that's scared I mean it's just speculation but something to be that concerned about would be repositioning nuclear vice even tactical ones yeah right

I mean a tactile one they say it obviously has less yield so that's how they distinguish the two but people hear nuclear they just shot on nuclear anything at somebody else it's you know standby

yeah right escalations going to happen pretty quickly. I don't know. I assume India has tactical nuclear weapons. If they don't, then they're only going to respond with what they have, which is strategic level, like high yield. And then there you go.

I mean, you got to assume India's got tactical nukes, right? If they know Pakistan does, right? Yeah. They actually have a new, the whole nuclear triad. They have sea land, obviously, an air launched. So they're way more sophisticated nuclear. and their military than Pakistan. Yeah, I mean, we did a study.

I had to do, me and Eric did a talk on it. So we looked at all the stuff on a limited exchange between India and Pakistan on a nuclear front. It's like catastrophic around the world. Yeah. I mean, it's like way more impactful than you think. Yeah. You know, it's like the global temperature drops three degrees Celsius.

It doesn't sound like too much, but it is and like crop productions plummets people start starving the old economy melts down and it's it's it sounds hyperbolic but every everywhere we looked and then validated uh people are like no yeah that's what's going to happen i mean it's just is so it's not just going to be wow it sucks to be over in india pakistan it's going to be or here it comes it's just going to be a wave you know it's going to get dark, dim, cold. Produce goes way down. Yeah, Lewis Rita mentioned that

when we had them on me and Jack on eyes on that they did like models that if Indian Pakistan used 25% of their arsenal against each other, these things would happen and it would affect the United States in terms of crops. Millions of people, like millions

of people die in the United States, right? Because we think, oh, Indian Pakistan, it's, you know, 10,000 miles away or whatever. Like we don't even think about it. Like, oh, nothing will affect us. But it most obviously certainly would. Yeah, hopefully they do bring them both back from the brink

and cooler heads prevail. And we can start worrying about, you know, other stuff. All right. Hey, guys, it's Jack. I just want to talk to you for a moment about how you can support the show if you've been watching it, enjoying it. But you'd like to get a little bit more involved and help us continue to do this.

You can check out our Patreon. It is patreon.com slash the Teamhouse. And for $5 a month, you can get access to all of these episodes of the Team House ad-free. The same goes with our affiliated podcast, Eyes On, with Andy Milburn, Jason Lyons, Mick Mulroy. That one, you will also get all of those episodes ad-free. And you support the channel and the show,

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So if you guys want to go and get some Team House merchandise, we got stickers and we also have patches and I should mention if you sign up for Patreon at $10 a month we will mail you this patch as well so we really appreciate that but they're also for sale on the merch shop and additionally they got t-shirts up there water bottles a tote bag coffee mugs all that good stuff so please go and check them out and support the show we really appreciate it guys. Thank you. Interesting what happened last night. 1 a.m. local time in Moscow.

President Putin had an address to the country. And the basic measlescent of the address was that he wants to ceasefire, is open to talking to the Ukrainians more bilaterally rather than with the U.S. Or I guess having the U.S. there. but, you know, more face-to-face with the Ukrainians instead of having, like, the mediator that runs in from one room to the other, like we've been seeing with the Iran talks. I just being the cynical person that I am is going to say, I feel like that's bullshit and like anything that Putin said. I mean, I'm sure he wants a ceasefire because his army is in a meat grinder, but, you know, I can't, you can't, I don't know if you can really trust exactly what Putin says. You cannot.

You're right. Yeah. not trust what Putin says. I think it's, and if looking at it's positive, it shows you just getting pressure, right? He sees now it's not just the U.S. who seems to have shifted their position on this whole thing, particularly after the signing of the investment fund agreement. And now it looks like, and we've turned back on military aid, and potentially we might increase it, which we should absolutely 100%. And now they have this coalition of the willing in Europe, Germany, France, UK, and Poland, essentially saying, time's up, agree to a ceasefire without any conditions.

Or they're going to impose additional sanctions. So that's what Putin understands strength, right? He does, yeah, you can kiss up to him and say all these great things about them and thanks for the lovely painting and all that stuff. None of that stuff matters to him. It's just a way to manipulate people. but when he secures oh man so secondary sanctions would cut off potentially indian china for buying my oil that's going to hurt right oh the 325 billion dollars worth of uh your russian funding that's certain in brussels uh they're going to start giving away 30 billion dollars at a time to ukraine that's

going to hurt this is what needs to happen not threatened i mean yeah he he either like they should have a deadline we i think uh president selensky just said like monday monday So like you agree by Monday to a 30 day unconditional or these things need to happen. That's the only consequence he gets. That's why he got up at one in the morning. He wanted to throw something out there. Oh, okay, maybe he really wants to do this. And then two weeks later, it would be like, oh, it never happened.

Or he'll declare a unilateral ceasefire than violate it. It's got to be, you know, it doesn't have to be 30 days, but I think 30 days is what we should require. that's when negotiations start. It's really hard to negotiate when you're fighting because anything can happen that will just completely rupture the discussion. So I think the U.S. and Europe are coming together, which is a positive, but we need to actually do what we say we're going to do if you want to get this into meaningful negotiations.

Yeah, agreed. It's long past time. and everybody, at least on one side, wants to see it stop. And I'm sure that the Russian people want to see it stop. But I think there has to be, like you said, there has to be consequences. Again, I hate using the child metaphor, but if that's what you're dealing with, like with a child, you can say all you want. If you don't stop, you're going to go to your room, you're not eating dinner or whatever.

But until you actually do it, it's not going to mean anything. And just like a child, Putin will push his limit. as far as they can go as long as you allow it until you don't allow it anymore you know and if that means we have to lose a little face well and i by we i say the administration has to lose a little face after we big up tim all these years months whatever um and do a 180 and say you know smack the hand well then that's what we have to do because there's lives at stake here yeah well said hopefully something does happen i mean i i don't believe a fucking word no from any russian And like, and like the trippiest one is Medvedev.

He's a fucking lunatic. He just tweets out crazy shit. And it was so funny during the Obama administration when Medvedev was the president. And Putin was taking, you know, the president, but the actually prime minister. Like there was like, oh, there's a reset. There's like a kind of like, yeah. And this guy's actual cuckabird. He's out of his fucking mind.

Yeah. Yeah. Which like Andy, I remember before when I've mentioned, it said like, he was probably full of shit the whole time. You know what I mean? He was probably just playing the fucking role the whole entire time and, you know,

this is who he really is. Like an absolute savage warmonger. I don't know why they haven't done the 325 bill yet. I mean, you know, at least like trickle it out. Like drip it out. But like, yo, this is going to happen. And the clock's ticking.

And the money's going directly to Ukraine for arms. And they're going to keep killing your soldiers. making you look like the paper tag you look like for the last three years you know it's like he like whoever said Russia is literally an oil field with nuclear weapons or a gas station

with nuclear weapons is not wrong like that's the exact perfect way John McCain shout out rest of peace I mean it's not that there's you can't even describe it better than that so anyway last bit of news I ran in the United States

just wrapped up their fourth meeting in Oman today. No apparent breakthrough in a public standoff over enrichment, but both sides confirming plans for future negotiations. I think it's a good thing that we keep negotiating for sure.

What do you guys got on that? Well, I agree with you. Negotiations are always good. I mean, it doesn't mean that you can't take action if they fall. part, but if you're not negotiating, then there's really new diplomatic path for. So I think the U.S. the issue of the U.S. faces, and there's a lot of internal disagreement on this, is are we willing to accept something that is essentially 2015 JCPOA?

That there was problems with that agreement. The biggest problem was it didn't address proxy force support by the Iranians, Esbalah, Hamas, boothies and now we can see you know what those groups have been up to causing complete chaos in the Middle East it didn't address ballistic missiles which obviously if you they keep working on ballistic missiles

where they can deliver a warhead right and there was some question on whether we actually knew what they were doing completely but that's the negative the positive is it did keep them at 3.67%

enrichment right so that's far away from a nuclear weapon they're at 60% now so you can do the math on how much more that is and you only need to get to 90 and apparently you go from 60 to 90 it's very quick like a weeks or two weeks so the question now is are we going to be complete hardliners of which the Iranians won't agree to any kind of new agreement and we will essentially go back to the track where we'll likely take a military strike. President Trump said that numerous times, unless he's bluffing. That's a potential action. It really needs us to be successful. Israel might do it themselves. The issues that are going to be sticking points, of course, or in addition to proxies and ballistic missiles,

are they allowed to enrich their own uranium, even for what they're calling civilian nuclear power? Secretary Rubio has made it clear now, though there was an issue or confusion before, that they won't be allowed to do that. They'll have to import it from Russia, I suppose, or some other country, and then use it for energy. If they're not unwilling, and we'll find out soon, because I think the deadline is still, the two-month deadline is still ticking. So if there's not an agreement or at least something that's going ironclad toward an agreement, then we'll start looking at military options.

And I think once this trip that we talked about earlier is complete, and if there's no solid progression, then we should all be looking at whether this is going to end up with a military strike on Natanz and Fort Now and all these key places that we know are instrumental and nuclear weapons productions. Oh, geez. I mean, we have to concede some stuff like they do Because I feel like no enrichment in in country

Proxy forces, ballistic missiles Like they're not going for that I mean, who would go for that really? Even if you want to make a deal like you I know that they see Israel as a not you know Their threat the threat and stuff like that I mean if you can get Jukpoa with proxy forces I feel like that's a win.

At least overt stuff. They're always going to be covert. We know that. You were in the business, Mick, like, let's be fucking real. But if you can get some kind of like that where like the, at least the, what's the, the, the UAIA, like the, whatever. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Go in and there's like actual stringent protocols where, like, they could tell what's what and monitoring is legit.

I feel like that's a win, man. I feel like. Because game it out, right? Let's say we bomb them and we use our big boy bunker busters and we set them back three to six months. They're not going to dig deeper and like get one done. I know if I'm them, I would. Yeah. And the other thing is to play up the advantages for them.

Like if they do this, I mean, sanctions, all the sanctions that they've been under for years and years come off, they're a very advanced modern sophisticated population country yeah i think they would do really well on the global economic stage like if you just get them to understand and it's the regime right so it's not like a Iranian people it's like so it's really that much worth it to fund groups like Hezbollah that cause war rather than you know dramatically increase the standard of living for every Iranian that's really worth it You know, maybe the Iranian people started to start putting pressure on these folks. Because how the hell is that in the interest of the Iranian people to stay completely muzzled economically

just so they can fund some assholes that, you know, whole purpose in life is to attack Israel until they piss them off on us. And then Israel comes and stomps them into the ground like happened, you know, against Hezbollah, for example. Like that's that I hope, and I have no idea I would bring it up, I hope there is a concerted influence campaign. inside Iran to really point to the Iranian people. Like, now is the chance that the Iranian regime, your regime, your government could do great by the Iranian people and agree with many of the things that are very reasonable in the United States. And, I mean, there isn't talk about if they agree that the U.S. is going to have some kind of

trade agreement with Iran, which could be hugely beneficial to them. So anyway. Yeah, I think. I hope they'll talk more about that. Sorry, Jay. Yeah. No, no. I agree with everything you just said.

And I think this is President Trump's chance to be, he likes to take credit for the things, you know, the positive things, which is fine, whatever. You know, it can be petty, but it's fine. But this is, I believe, is opportunity to take real credit for something positive by being the, by appealing to the people. Because the regime knows, I mean, the thought of a revolution is right here in their ear. It's always in the back of their mind.

So if they allow it to get to the point where, whether it's us or Israel or us and Israel, that hit them, the devastation that could be brought by that, that could be enough to spark another revolution. And I think if President Trump appeals to them, the positives that you said, Mick, you know, possible trade, clean energy, you know, a boosted economy, if he can appeal to those things, I think that might be enough pressure along with the thought of, hey, these people might rise up against us, might be enough to get this thing done. Going with what Dee said, I don't, I also don't believe that we're going to get everything that we want. I don't believe our ballistic missiles will be off the table.

I don't believe, I do believe proxies would be off the table, but temporarily. I think they'll be like, yeah, yeah, yeah, put it in their back pocket to use later on. And I also don't believe that they will, I think the biggest thing will be that they shut down their program completely, like nuclear power completely or nuclear energy, I should say completely. So I think if we can lock down, even temporarily taking proxies off the board and limiting their production to civilian use as well as monitoring, strict monitoring, I think. think that's a big win. So, you know, I think this is the president's chance to, uh, to shine if he does it right. Absolutely. The first agreement was the monitoring pretty stringent and like on the level. As far as you know, Mick? As far as I know, yes. I mean, you don't know what you don't know. So sure you see the courts of secret facilities, but certainly it'd have to be, you know, the international

atomic energy agency needs to have full access. I mean, these are things that I think the technical experts would know how we can be competent that they're not going toward a nuclear weapon. And then, you know, if they're seemingly, if they're integrated with the international economy again, why were they on? Yeah. And I mean, like, they're, I know like a lot of these regimes, they like the Houthis themselves, right, they exist to hate another country.

right and that's with the you know the ayatola and the whole movement um it just seems like it would get pretty damn old to have a revolution the last three four decades and they don't focus at all on the plight of the people you know yeah so i think we should publicly i think that the administration should be talking about the benefits the Iranian people not necessarily have like regime change but it's called you know basically the people that live there influence and the people that supposedly govern them to like, why wouldn't we agree to this? Why is it in Iran's interest to go around being the pariah of the world

and causing all these groups that do nothing but fight, kill people and their terrorist organization? How is that the benefit of the Iranian people? It is not. It's not. So I think just not manipulate them, but just state the facts and explain the positive consequences, I would hope, that that's part of our plan to get them to an agreement.

I mean, do you think the regime just doesn't give a shit about, you know, making more money, making the country more prosperous and? Well, I mean, the funny thing about, you know, every country you go to that has a major conflict or has these huge sanctions because they're priors, the people that govern are still rich. Right. And it's like, you know. Yeah. So do they personally care?

Apparently not because that's where we are. We are. But I do think there's been a lot of pressure recently put on the regime, real, legitimate, internal, organic, you know, just total dissatisfaction with the regime. And that's what they know now. But if the Trump administration, and quite frankly, the Europeans and everybody else that's involved in this,

because remember the JCPOA was also included, well, included Russia, Germany, France, right? The United States. It's P5 plus one. So Germany, I think, maybe. Somebody can correct me up or wrong on that. But everybody should be talking about, like,

this is the benefit to the Iranian people of this. Yeah. Your standard of living, could you even show a projected trajectory on that? Your educational system, they go up, of course. And that's what's happened when your economic system goes into positive direction. So I think they should be talking a lot about that. And most of what we see is just,

the internal debate on what they can and can't have. I think that's valid those debates, but we should be talking about the positive much more. Yeah. I also think a positive of at least getting monitors in there would be it might give Israel pause about military action, because now you're talking about possibly killing, you know, international monitors. So I think, you know, we have to at least get one of those things in there solidified in lockdown. And I think the monitor and the agreement that it would be, you know, for civilian use only are two of the big things. I'm very cynical. I was going to say something.

And I mean, it doesn't seem like that Israel really cares about smoking international workers of any kind. Yeah. Going to be honest. but that's for another day. I hope they do make a deal. Because it makes sense. I mean, I'm sure there's smart people gaming it out at DOD and CIA. Like what happens if we do make a deal, but Israel still fucking hits them?

The deal's gone. Yeah. I don't know. It sounds like a nightmare, and I'm glad I don't have that job. Podcasting is enough. Yeah. just talking about it. It's stressful enough for me.

One more thing, Trump's doing a Middle Eastern tour this week, heading towards making all the itinerary. I think it's Riyadh first, then Abu Dhabi and the Emirates. So Saudi Arabia, the Emirates, and then Qatar or Doha is what I'm hearing. Interesting things apart.

Well, it's important for people to know, we have a lot of military assets in these regions and they're there at the, you know, posted by these countries. So Alludeid, for example, in Qatar is our Ford command post for central command. And it has a major air component to it. And Bahrain, for example, is the headquarters of the fifth fleet. So the U.S. Navy for the Middle East and Central Command. There's, plenty in Saudi Arabia and the UA. So it's important for us to get out on a national security front. Economically, of course, everybody expects major deals, for lack of a better term, to be agreed to on trade, et cetera, investment primarily as these countries, Saudi Arabia especially have a huge

amount of capital that they confess. So we expect to see that. I'm sure they're going to play a part and the discussions on how Gaza is going to end, how the nuclear negotiation with Iran is going to go forward, all of that. They're very key. The Houthis, too, right? The Houthis, of course. And remember the Saudi-led coalition,

primarily Saudi and UAE, fought the Houthis for years and years and years for the same reason. So this idea that they're only doing this because of Gaza, they were doing all this stuff way before Gaza was, you know, before October 7th. So a lot of things to discuss economically, security-wise, diplomatically, very important trip, I believe, and we'll have to see what comes from it. But I think, I think what, and then the potential as a side note, I'm hearing that

Ahmed al-Shara, the president of Syria, will meet with President Trump on the sides of discussions in Riyadh. At least that's the rumor. I don't, you know, don't take it as fact. It's just a, but it's a one that's coming from multiple different journalists, friends of mine who were talking to officials. So that would be a big, big deal. And they apparently are floating the idea of a cooperative deal with the United States on natural resources, plus potentially joining the Abraham Accords. So they, these folks know how to sing President Trump's tune. right now. So if that's the case, and we'll see if there's a meeting, but that could also be pretty interesting. Yeah, and Alshara's been doing the kind of world tour thing. He met Macarona

and stuff last week. I mean, I guess legitimizing his rule, I guess, is a dictator that we like, so it's good. Hopefully, it won't stay a dictator. Sure, yeah, of course. That's part of the list we gave him. it's got to have real elections, man. Just because you were the strongest, you know, goon on the block does it mean you get to ultimately be the, you know, president forever?

I'm not saying he's a goon because apparently everybody that I know has met him said he's really, really smart. But he needs to do what he said he's going to do, which is incorporate all aspects of the country and have a legitimate election so that the people of Syria can choose the leader. And if he's it, great. Or maybe not great, but that so be it. right right and also keep smoking ices for us please yeah help out let the s df continue smoking

is who is the best yeah um yeah so it's a busy week we'll see what goes down i'm sure we'll have a lot to talk about next week i'd love to get an iran specialist here like a former analyst or something like that because i'd be very interested in like just hearing about like the demographics or what goes on in there because I know like I've heard that it's a relatively younger country and I just love to know what you know like kind of like the atmospherics on the ground are there because there's no way people are happy with how this regime's doing with things right like everybody wants to have a little bit of a better life I want to do a little bit better for their family and stuff like that and it's clearly hamstringing them all the sanctions

right. So I'm sure there's got to be some kind of like economic frustration in that country. Yeah. Anything else guys? Oh, Mick, is there any truth of the rumors going to be the next national security advisor? Cut the feet. Nope. Nope. I don't think so. I think some of my friends were sending that rumor out to screw with me. No, I haven't been asked. I'm super happy doing. I would be an honor, of course, to be asked, but I'm super happy doing what I'm doing, which is, as some though, these humanitarian enablement around the world. And we're, we keep getting more and more requests. So our, our dance card, unfortunately, is filling up because of just the level of continuous conflicts around the world.

The precipitous cut in foreign aid, not just from the United States, but from many other countries happening at around the same time. Didn't the UK cut some aid, too? Just about everybody. Yeah. And I was looking this morning, and, you know, obviously you can tell I think we should continue our foreign aid. But the one thing I would say that's a legitimate point of discussion is the United States is one of 195 countries in the world. We contribute 40% of all international foreign aid. I think we should be proud of that.

I don't think we should admit we should reduce our amount of aid. but I think we should see our percentage reduced. And what that means is other countries stepping up. So I looked up as long as this information is accurate. The United States is about $10 billion a year, maybe less, maybe $1.5.9.5 in foreign aid. China, for example, is according to this, and I chat GPT it, if you want to say where I got it, 20 million. Really? 20 million.

Like, that's pathetic. And Russia's right around there and India's right around there. So yes, you can say, well, we got a bigger economy. Yeah, we have about one and a half times the economy of China. Yet we spend more than 10 times what they contribute to international direct critical food aid. Where we don't really expect anything back. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Because like somebody can argue the Belt and Road stuff, but the Belt and Road stuff is like, yeah. That's all in their financial. Right. Right. Right. It's predatory in nature. Yeah.

And it ends up sucking out every bit of, you know, natural resources from, especially in places across Africa, countries across Africa. So anyway, I'm just, I mean, I know that I know we're talking about that. But I think there's a time maybe. It's interesting. Yeah. Quartz gets to the U.N. You can say, okay, like, we're proud of the. contributions U.S. makes to global humanitarian crisis.

Where is everybody else at? Right? So it would be good to see that countries started committing to a certain percentage of their GDP. And I'm not talking like these kind of one-off programs that we hear. I don't know true. The USAID was funding. I'm talking about direct. Like there's a stage.

There's a catastrophic hunger going on in Sudan. Like who's contributing to that? They were talking babies dying. So, you know, I'm not to be too hyperbolic, but like, who can't get behind saving a baby? Yeah. I mean, if you can't, you might want to rethink your, you know, a whole lot of life. I don't even think that's hyperbolic, bro. Yeah, it should be real simple.

Yeah. So the United States should be proud of what we do, but we should also say, like, where's everybody else? I mean, how is, how is, like, you can look at the contributions. And I only know. Who's number two? I'd have to go back to find it. But if you Google, like highest contributing by, you know, dollars, it'll tell you the list. And as you'd expect, it's a lot of the Western folks.

Right. But you're looking close to the bottom. I don't know where they were on the list, but 30 plus plus. I mean, some of the biggest countries in the world, to include India. I mean, India is the biggest country in the world. And they're talking like 15 million. And yeah, I get to have a lot of poor folks, but you can still have a lot of poor folks and contribute.

I mean, you're spending money on a aircraft carrier. Yeah, right. So anyway, and I'm all about spending money on defense. But anyway, you get my point. I think that they could get more in line with their economy. And if it's, the U.S. is 10 times more on humanitarian, but only 1.5 times more on the economy, that's something these countries should have to answer for.

Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Right on. All right. Guys, no, that was great. Guys, do us a favor, would you? Like and subscribe. Check out everybody's links in the description.

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