The Team House - Iran War Update & Is Cuba Really Next? | EYES ON GEOPOLITICS

Episode Date: August 10, 2026

This episode breaks down the latest developments in the Iran conflict, including the Strait of Hormuz, U.S. munitions shortages, covert action, and growing unrest inside Iran. The group also discusses the CIA’s new Cuba task force, the strengths of European intelligence services, and why Ukraine may be in a stronger position than the headlines suggest.Support the show on Patreon:⬇️https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouseSubscribe to our newsletter!!!!https://teamhousepodcast.kit.com/joinJack's news outlet:⬇️https://thehighside.substack.com/Find Jon Hackett here:⬇️Jon's Twitter:https://x.com/jonathanhackettJon's LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/thejonathanhackettJon's books:https://www.amazon.com/stores/author/B0C5L659N5?ccs_id=e11a2062-f8d3-498e-bfd7-7d2f3869caf6Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thejonathanhackettTwitter: https://x.com/jonathanhackettCheck out Mick's new podcast here:⬇️Apple Podcasts:https://podcasts.apple.com/at/podcast/pub-and-porch-applied-stoicism/id1836955475Spotify:https://open.spotify.com/show/1k3QPmkAMwnGJxMLDwUSSd?si=n6piIu8XRcag1Z0K43A3bQYoutube:https://www.youtube.com/@UCd0Hq6QFk8CoTu5j-VU0Ong Find 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/Whitefish security summit ⬇️https://whitefishsecuritysummit.comFind Marc P here:https://x.com/MpolymerFind 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-Operations"Karl Casey @ White Bat Audio"00:00 - Start01:23 - Iran Negotiations and the End of the Ceasefire06:19 - Iran’s Control of the Strait of Hormuz08:04 - America’s Munitions Shortage and War Planning13:03 - Iran Is Becoming More Emboldened17:45 - Can the U.S. Still Fight Two Wars at Once?19:46 - Armed Resistance and Insurgent Groups Inside Iran25:22 - CIA Covert Action and Arming Iran’s Opposition26:22 - How the CIA and Special Forces Used Kurdish Militias in Iraq30:49 - Mossad Leadership Purge After the Iran War33:18 - Ranking Europe’s Best Intelligence Services34:12 - British and French Intelligence Operations40:00 - CIA Creates a New Cuba Task Force44:25 - Cuba’s Intelligence Service vs. the CIA48:38 - Ukraine Is Stopping the Russian Advance51:25 - Final ThoughtsBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support.

Hey, everyone. Welcome to IZON geopolitical podcast. I'm Jack Murphy. And today, Dimitri is out because he got something eating at the buffet. So he's sitting upon the throne, holding on for dear life as we speak. But we got a great cast of characters here today, joined by Mick Mulroy, Mark Palmeropoulos, and John Hackett. Really happy to have all of you guys back on the show. Thanks for coming on a Sunday afternoon. Good a beer. Yeah, great to be here. Poor Dee. What the heck. I hope he got a nice bidet. He needs a bidet. It wasn't a Greek food, was it? It wasn't a Greek food buffet.

He needs a little bidet with a little hot water splashing and, you know, it won't get irritated. A little slap and tickle. He'll be fine. All right. So on the agenda today, unless, you know, any of you guys have things you'd like to add. I got Iran. The ceasefire is ending, I think, in a lot. a week. Talk about foreign intel services, who's better than who, and the story that came out this

week about the CIA starting up some sort of Cuba task force. So, I don't know, do we want to start at the top with Iran? All right. So any thoughts on what's going on with that as far as the negotiations? I mean, it's seesawed back and forth so much that honestly, I'm not keeping track of it. So what's interesting today, just to frame this and then because, you know, others are smarter than I on this. But, you know, everyone beats up on Axios all the time. But they are kind of a reflection of what the administration is thinking. And Barack Ravid, and Axios, they reviewed at a conversation with Trump today. He basically said he's doing nothing. He said there's nothing's going to happen. He's going to keep the status quo and essentially try to squeeze the Iranians economically. Clearly, he does not want to go back to. any kind of military confrontation. I think we've certainly talked a lot about a lack of military

options. And, you know, there's reports that Chairman and Joint Chiefs Kane and Admiral Cooper basically told him or warned him about essentially that a lot of these are not going to work. So this is where we are now. But I think the key thing, and maybe Jonathan, you can jump in on this because everyone is going to be, okay, so this is going to be the U.S. policy, what is Iran going to do? And I think that with the old adage of the enemy gets a vote, I don't think the Iranians are going to sit around. Isn't there an opportunity for them to increase hybrid attacks, to increase the use of the proxies, and to continue striking ships in the Strait of Hormuz? It's not like the Iranians are going to sit around. They're going to inflict some pain because they seem to have a bit of leverage

and they think they have the upper hand. What are your thoughts on that? Yeah, you're absolutely right. I think they're already doing that because we see in Yemen just yesterday, the Houthis launched what they called a retaliation attack against the Saudis because the Saudis had launched something. They actually put a drone into Yemeni airspace, but the Houthis, I think, are kind of testing the perimeter to see how much they can actually do in a future movement to see what kind of air defenses are up right now, what kind of counter-UAS platforms are available, how would the Saudis respond? It looks like a little bit of perimeter testing, kind of like touching around the edges there that they're doing.

And we also see the Iraqi side. There's some Iraqi Shia militia groups that are doing some preparations and some kind of early stage movements that are outside their baseline. I wouldn't be surprised if these were kind of being, organized to possibly be used, but maybe not necessarily be used. But it's kind of how we think about positioning forces. We want to have guys there in case we need them. And I think that's what we see moving right now is that Iran is looking at, well, what happens if Trump decides to do something before the election or right after the election? We need to have forces ready already there that could

be activated quickly without much assembly required. But then on the domestic front, you've got cracks in the regime. So you have people in the regime that really want this war to continue. You have people in the regime that want to do domestic oppression as the number one priority. And you also have this kind of what could be relatively described as doveish folks in the regime, which to the rest of the world, they are not doves, but compared to the hardliners like Peschke and the president, clashing with the Supreme National Security Council, which is the strategy setting body that's directly subordinate to the Ayatollah, they don't agree on how this is supposed to be going. Peschkians, folks, the people that are actually like Ghalibov going to these negotiations,

are trying to get a diplomatic outcome. We've seen General Kane also on the U.S. side recommending a diplomatic off-ramp as probably the best way out. So both sides have this kind of diplomatic off-ramp option that they're floating on their own respective sides with different conditions for what that means. But then also there are hawks as well on both sides who are saying, no, we're not going to be doing diplomatic activity. We're going to be doing military activity or something else that's not diplomatic. Perhaps economic is the other, you know, major option. So it's important to watch inside Iran what's going on with the regime. regime because that's what's going to help us understand what are the actual potential outcomes

here. I was on another news channel recently and I was asked that question, you know, like, what, what about this thing that Dan Cain said? He said that there should be a diplomatic off ramp. And, you know, really, that's our chairman of the Joint Chiefs making a military advisor's recommendation to a policymaker, which is the executive. Whereas, you know, Kane can't set military policy. He can recommend what to do. And the president listens. And it's very similar structure in Iran, not the same titles, but similar with the Supreme National Security Council, you've got this policy setting body. Then you have others who are saying, no, we should do X, we should do Y, we should do Z, and the policymaking body is ignoring that. Or members within the party are doing their own

kind of side quests in the Red Sea, for example, with the Houthis. And there's some untanglement going on there where we in the West look at it as a monolith, and it's not. It's actually different actors with different objectives. Some of them are domestic objectives. They have nothing to do with foreign policy, that they think they need to do the Houthi activation versus a hash-de-shabi, which is a popular mobilization force reaction, or nothing, and just open the straits up. One thing they all have in common is that they understand the straits are now the most important thing in this negotiation. They will not let go of it. I was going to say, John, I mean, when we talk about the status quo today, it's different than the status quo a year ago

or even six months ago, and it seems that the Iranians are pretty dead set on militarizing and controlling the Straits of Hermuz, which gives them military control over the Persian Gulf. I mean, are we going to stop that? They want to monetize it. So before it was about control, especially in the early days of the war, when they're like, we just need to get this under control. This is part of our sovereign territory. If you look at maps when Abbas Aragh, the foreign minister, is speaking on his podium,

behind him is a map of Iran. And you can see it's not just the land that's the map of Iran. It's also the Caspian Sea and the Persian Gulf are part of the map. This is a new development. This was not this way. So this is just something to kind of think about symbolically. How are they viewing this situation? Well, they've already changed their maps in a way that is not good for us.

It's not good for the status quo before the war, status quo ante. So they seem to be coming to this with the idea that there is more to be gained than what they've already gained. They're going toward a monetization, which I've seen estimates of up to 7 percent of the value of cargo passing through. They've also floated the idea of inbound traffic being handled by one of Oman or Iran while outbound traffic is handled by the other country. They've set up these kind of zones. And they're kind of like creating a situation where it's going to be a fait accompli where it's already happening and has been happening and cannot be dismantled. And it seems that they're stalling some of them in the negotiations to allow these structures to be built up

so that when months from now, the U.S. finally comes to a decision that, oh, actually we're going to open the straits again. Well, it's going to be a lot tougher then than it is now, and then it was obviously two months before. Hey, can ask Mick a question here because I can think of, Mick, I'm serious. I know you've been traveling about, but I've been thinking about you because I am now, even though I am the Greek, you're kind of the Greek, you kind of wants to be a Greek a little bit. You've got your Greek, but you've gotten me into this. Well, the stoicism right now, one holiday, but I've been obsessing over this.

I've been reading it relentlessly. And so here's what I wanted to ask you. And it does pertain to the current situation now because, again, you wonder, and this has to do with how the U.S. military is poised right now and all the notion of shortages of precision weapons. You know, it's something that we did at CIA. We actually practice a lot of the stoic traits in a simple operational meeting. You plan for the worst and you work backwards.

I mean, that's the, you know, what is the post-mortem, then it's the premortem. I mean, that's an element of stoicism. See, I'm getting into all this stuff. That's good. Good job, Mark. And so that's what we did all the time because when you plan for an ops meeting, okay, what can go wrong? That's what you do all the time.

What are the scenarios? So for the U.S. military with Iran, I still don't understand, and your previous job as a senior civilian official at DOD is perfect, how did we not do that? How did we not look at scenarios? Okay, because the scenario would be a long drawn-out conflict, period. And then we plan from that. Yet, yet we have a shortage of precision weapons.

It's something that I just, I'm scratching my head, and I do. I've gone back to the theme before we've talked about, and I will never denigrate the men and women in the U.S. military. But the leadership at the Pentagon, I am kind of, even the uniform leadership, how did Dan Cain and Admiral Cooper and others, not conduct this type of stoic planning in the sense of not planning for the worst and then working backwards? What are your thoughts on that? I've been excited all week to ask you this question. All right. So I just got back from D.C. literally an hour and a half ago I landed, right?

So I was there in part to have discussions on this. Were you part of that group that was asked to chat? CNN reported that there's a whole bunch of military analysts who were asked for their opinion. Maybe you were in D.C. asked. I was in D.C. and I had many discussions on this very topic. by the way, so the obstacle is away. It comes from a quote by Aurelius, which is what stands in the way

is the way. And that kind of became the ethos for how to train Western militaries. To be frank, that's why I love you stuff. I just saw the Odyssey twice. There's a lot of Stoic principles. Oh, yeah. We could have a whole podcast on the Odyssey for sure. I've been shaking his head right now. Where's this gone?

Sorry, sorry, go ahead. That's my next podcast. I'll be talking about that. But for this, and I'll get to your question, I mean, this isn't just an issue of this administration, right? So we've been, we've been, think about this. This is a regional conflict with a mediocre military, and we're almost out of schlitz. So that's not, they're talking about the deputy sect affluent now, like it's his fault. Right.

That would have been the case no matter what, because we don't always get to pick when we go to war. We could have just gone to war. So this isn't a partisan issue. This could have been Biden. This could have been Trump. This could have been a while. It would have been, right? So it would have been everybody.

So I think, you know, let's dispense of the fingerpoint when it comes to political, but finger point when it comes to USA, this is not sustainable. And now, in addition to the ability to keep up with like defensive interceptors, PAC threes, thads, etc. And I think we've used about 80% of the thads. I don't know that specifically. But that's what's being reported, not from my conversation. We need to adjust quickly.

And at the same time, we have a massive evolution in modern warfare, which is a low-cost, extraordinarily lethal alternatives to these really expensive, very lethal conventional weapons that we've always had. So this is an issue we have to address. It's actually not the uniformed military's fault, to be frank. I mean, I'm biased, but this is policy, man. This is policy. It's not like you're asking general. is do you do not want more weapons? Do you not want low-cost alternatives?

This is policies. Political people decide where and how they're going to make these weapons systems. It becomes ingrained in the actual political system. So it's a much broader conversation, but we got to have it because we got to change it. That's my take. It's simply everybody should see this. I think Mark is either meditating or what's going on there. I know.

Somebody turned him off. Oh, there. He's back. He's back. Okay. Yeah. So some of the stuff I could throw out there that might be a good discussion points, you've already touched on some of it. Iran's completely emboldened, right? Their demands are going up.

Okay? They're not going down. They're going up. I mean, every time they don't believe the United States is willing to use, you know, the force necessary to open the straits and then keep it open, right? Because one thing to force it open, next thing, keep it open, right? They don't believe we want to escalate, in part because of the lack of precision munitions and defensive interceptors and the political fallout of an unpopular war being less popular. So every time you hear the negotiators talk about their new requirements, it goes up, right? So complete reconstruction, 7%, like Jonathan Thitt.

So somebody told me 7%, just energy alone would be about $50 billion. a year that they would get from the normal flow. If you added everything into it, which is all the, you know, stuff that goes into food production and all that stuff, it gets close to $100 billion in revenue for the regime. Think about that. 100 billion.

And who's paying it? Everybody. It's not the United States. Everybody around the world. So it's not a tax on the world. That, I think, should wake the world up to say, hey, wait, that's unacceptable to us. Because my people are going to pay more. Now I push it a lot, but we got to get an international coalition here because this is something

that the world should find unacceptable because right now that's the way it's going. Unless something deviates from that, they own the street. I know we don't like to say that, but I mean, clearly, you know, it's normal like 110 ships that go through a day, but it'll be at four, six, which it means it's close. So we've got to do something to change that. And then you have what looks like somewhat of a, not that it was always unified, but the GCC seems, GCC seems to be falling apart, right? You got Saudi going with Turkey and Pakistan. You've got the Emirates, the Bahrainis, kind of like, let's go ahead and finish the job.

And you've got what, what, who's left, Qataris and other countries that are kind of like, holy crap, this is, and Omanis, right? or kind of like, holy crap, right in the middle of this stuff. We need to get this result. So we have a splintering of our allies and partners who, I think, are now really concerned about their security going forward and whether we're willing to defend them. Because we are, I think, pulling forces out of a lot of those countries and putting them further away, like in Jordan and Israel. Makes sense from a force protection perspective.

But, you know, why did these countries host our military before? wasn't so when the war started that we would leave, right? So these are all challenges. So you got the GCC question. Then you've got, and I'd throw on your list, Jack. Netanyahu just came out and rejected the Board of Peace's 15-point blank. He just said, no. And he said, sometimes you've got to tell your best friends, essentially, Ella.

Right? So the announcement we made about Hamas, disarming. And the IDF withdrawing, it's not going to happen. IDF doesn't think they're going to disarm. They probably have no way to actually tell if they've disarmed. And so they just came out, you know, they have elections. I know you guys know in October. And so that issue, which we didn't have resolved,

but at least it was going in the right direction we thought, is not. Right? And that's all tied together, right? These are all proxies. So how do we get out of it? I mean, I guess I throw it back to everybody else, but we're in a situation where the United States, I don't think, can accept a closed trade. It has to go back to the original. We can't pay for it.

Maybe we can agree to in the naval blockade. That's fair. But we can't be paying $300 billion for reconstructing a country that we attacked. The country that pays the reconstruction lost. Just saying. Like, that can't be the case. So, and we got to do something in the nuclear program. not interested in a new nuclear agreement, which they were.

So we're going to have to plan on a continuous mitigation of the threat, which is the best way I can put it, which means we're going to have to keep striking facilities that we think are active. So the war is not going to end, right, if you think of it that way. So we're in a situation that's into your point. I mean, did we plan this out? Doesn't look like it. But we are where we are.

So going forward, how does America, how does the United States come out, as a strategic success, it's going to take a lot of effort. Don't you think there's an afteraction piece of this too in which, you know, I mean, aren't we supposed to fight two wars at once? Wasn't that the DoD strategy? Yes. Yes. And we can't fight one war, which is like against a second-rate military and sustain it. I mean, I still am just mystified that there wasn't more planning involved,

or at least if U.S. military officials were, not stronger with the president saying this is not sustainable. We can't do. I mean, there's, you know, if you look back, I remember, you know, when I was in government talking to the Israelis. And there was, there was some Israeli Mossad chief, Meyer Deghan, one of them, who would tell the Israeli prime minister, we cannot attack Iran. We, we should not do this, period, end of story. And I don't see that from U.S. officials. I just, the people around Trump don't have that ability like a Jim Mattis had on the first term saying, no, we can't do this. I don't see that. I don't see Kane strong enough doing that, certainly not Hegsef.

And so maybe that's why we're in kind of the pickle we're in. Yeah, I mean, that's like a larger political question about, you know, what happens when a president installs a bunch of sycophants around him and your, you know, your advisors, the people that are supposed to, you know, help you make good decisions or actually just telling you what you want to hear. And I think we're pretty clearly in that situation right now. But I wanted to ask you guys also about this article in the Jerusalem Post. And we start talking about insurgents in Iran and foreign groups.

And, you know, we've talked about arming the Kurds in the past. And John, you've also expanded on some of the different rebel groups in Iran. This article is claiming besiege singer abducted and tortured to death as group Astara Zero Day claims responsibility. Have you guys seen this article? What's your thought about who this group could be? Do they have a daddy? And is it us? So this group is actually an interesting one to look at from an open source intelligence

perspective, like using like analytical tools. Their Instagram became active in December 2025. They made a few posts up through January and then stopped. Remember the war started February 28th? There were no more posts until April. And the posts in April were different than the posts in January. They were still in the same category of material, which was anti-regime posts saying, you know, like the besiege had been murdering us, which is true, the busseege were out there shooting and killing and slaughtering people. But there was no communication from January to April.

In April, when they came back, they started focusing on doxing specific besiege people saying, you know, this guy lives at this house. He was there at the protest and killed these people. we will pay you using cryptocurrency on a telegram channel if you kill them and send us a video of you killing them. As soon as we receive the video, we'll pay you. And this is all from Farsi posts. So what I'm saying to you does not exist in English right now. I've read the Farsi side of it. And it's very interesting to see that shift in narrative. Of course, these things are all inferential. We don't have the full knowledge of what's going on. So this is just an inference. But it seems that there was a shift in control or shift in narrative that occurred probably in March that

pushed whatever this group was, if it is a group or single individual, toward something more targeted, more violent, more real in the real world, rather than just reporting past events. They're now focusing on future activity. And they are, I believe, another one of these groups that is supporting Reza Palavi, if I read correctly. So based on the Farstey side of this, you know, I actually, kind of looked at this to question that as well. I don't see really clear indications that this group is a monarchist group or supporting the monarchy. It seems that they're more anti-regime. And from

previous discussions we've had, you know, there are a lot of groups that have the same thing in mind, and that is they want the regime gone, but they don't agree on what should come the day after. And actually, zero day in the name of the organization, you know, when I first see that, I used to work at NSA. When I hear zero day, that means an exploit that needs to be fixed right now or else there's going to be a problem in the system. But actually, Zero Day in Farsi has been used throughout this conflict to refer to what happens the day after the regime is gone. Interesting. So I think Westerners might not pick that up and they'll see Zero Day and think like, oh, this is, you know, some cyber thing. No, it's actually very much domestic, for domestic Iranian

consumption is not designed for Western consumption. That's another key point to pull out here. The media that's around this is not in English at all. And it's written in a way that is common within the Tehrani, Farsi-speaking youth, like let's say up to age 30 maximum kind of way of writing. So there's clearly a target audience and clearly a specific, you know, way of talking this is going toward. And in fact, the article here that's discussing this, the group actually didn't claim responsibility for killing this Basi. There's a pretty gruesome video of somebody knifing this dude to death, like in a horrific, slow burning way. And he was accused of killing some protesters and that's why they killed him, but the video was sent to this group and then the money was sent to these people who

made the video. And so there's a lot of interesting stuff. Another questionable, interesting thing is a lot of what we know about the murder in particular of that BASI is not from the group. It's from regime linked media sources like FARS and some other IRGC controlled media. So there's something going on here domestically within Iran about this group that's definitely got alarm bells going off. And interestingly, another Tasneem news, which is an IRC. controlled media organ in Iran, they published an article about this Basigi getting murdered to how terrible it was. And then within hours, they took the story down. So this is just very fascinating to kind of watch this all play out in Farsi, by the way. This is not for Western

consumption again. So there's something going on here. And it's hard to say, is it actually happening? Is it real? Is it the way they're describing it? Who is doing this? This could be Mossad. It could be the United States. It could even be the regime doing something to justify something else, for example, because they killed four that they hung, four of the people that they accused of being involved with this. So the question could be, were they just looking for a justification to execute these people that they already might have had captured? So there's a lot of questions here, but there's certainly something interesting going on in here that was meant for a very specific audience and that we are now seeing. You know, we've always wondered about the possibilities of covert action.

I mean, we saw that kind of the botched Israeli plan and there's been really extensive reporting on that in the Israeli press. It's really remarkable. This is the covert action plan using the Kurds using the, you know, the recruitment of former President Ahmadinejad. But there's got to be other stuff going on. It's not, the Mossad didn't just take a knee. And I would imagine the agency has something cooked up as well. And so who knows? You know, one of the things that's really interesting from, you know, after serving at the CIA for a long time and then kind of then getting upset when all the covert action plans that we ran always leaked, you don't see as much leaks on this kind of stuff now. Jack, I know you dig like crazy when you and Sean do all your deep dives on stuff. But I

I don't, I mean, you know, the major covert action plans of, at least Mick, when you and I were in, whether it's in Afghanistan or the Syria program, all that stuff came out in the press. I don't see a lot of that now. It's kind of. I don't think there's as much happening as there was. Maybe that could be it as well. But I think covert action, you know, probably should play a big role now since the military option is really not as much on the table. But I would imagine they're considering these things. Mick, what do you think?

So I don't know, obviously, or if I did, I wouldn't say anything about it. But, I mean, my view is coeraction should be continuous. You don't just start coeraction because you start a war, right? I mean, it's a little late. I'm not saying that's what we did. Don't know. But like, that's when it leaked, you know, the Israeli plan. It's like, hey, let's arm the curt.

I mean, now. And then to talk about it, of course, puts a giant bullseye on these guys. My understanding was we could put, they could muster around. of 4,000, right? Can you imagine going against the entire RGC, the besieged in the Iranian military, 4,000 people that just got armed yesterday? That's not going to work. So, again, I don't know it wouldn't be talking about it, but I think we should have a longstanding, very broad. I think Jonathan brought up before, can't just be the courage, that's not going to work. There's plenty other groups. What they need is coordination, and that's where I think we could come in to coordinate,

to plan, to train the leadership, to organize, that stuff, and then obviously to equip. We should point out, Mick, I mean, you have direct experience in this kind of activity in this part of the world. You know, you were one of those teams in northern Iraq. Actually, the other team was Sam Fattis, who recently passed away. But, I mean, I think both of those teams did some pretty incredible work as far as like sabotage behind enemy lines and our team did a little bit better than the other team did. Me and Mark are on the same team.

I mean, a lot of that's been out. So, I mean, it's an example of what you could do, their Kurds, right, what you could do with motivated, malicious, right? And we saw it also in the fall of Taliban and Afghanistan, but that was the same thing in northern Iraq, the team that me and Mark were on.

As you said, Sam was the overall leader. We were on a separate team, but he was a, I think, I think, you know, I'm biased. But that took on Ansar Islam and Operation Viking Hammer, us with 10th group, a handful Americans. I was there. Like, you'd be surprised how few Americans. It was like 6,000 Kurds and maybe 120 Americans. And then we became the Northern Front, right? Because the Turks wouldn't let the 4th Infantry Division in, and we had to go to the Kurds

and say, congratulations, it's just you and us, right? I remember when we had to say that, it was a little rough. But, I mean, that shows how highly motivated and trained groups like the Kurds can do, and they were going against, you know, the Holy Guard. This is a conventional army. They had tanks, armor personnel cares, artillery. The Kurds had, you know, high luxes with, you know, Dishkas and PKKs on the back. They did have our air support, right?

But we also, that's, and I did an academic paper, actually, with General Tovo. That was good. That was good. It was Lieutenant Colonel Tovoh. We retired as Lieutenant General, Coveau. To talk about how the U.S. military and the agency needs to maintain the capability to work together to do things like that. Like, that should be part of, you know, special operations officers, be they in the agency or in the military. career progression when it comes to their skill sets, right?

Because whenever we go to war, we kind of figure it out, and then we kind of separate and go our separate ways. But anyway, I'm digressing a bit. But to your point, Jack, this can be done. There is examples of how it's been done well, but it has to be organized, coordinated, maintained. It needs to be a long-term strategy. And I think a lot of CIA people,

I think Mark would agree with me. What the CIA doesn't want to see is this isn't working. We can't figure it out. Diplomacy's failed. We don't want to use the military. Here you go, dudes. And then we're like, oh, crap. Because, I mean, talk about, I mean, you don't want to get it handed to you when it's already, you know, a dumpster fire.

So it needs to be coordinated in line with diplomatic efforts, economic efforts, military efforts. But in my view, it should be continuous. I just want to point out this book real quick. This is another good one, Mark Gertavik, who I believe he was Colonel Tovost's S3 during the campus. Yeah, this one's very good. And, geez, Sam Fattis wrote one also that was pretty good. Let me see if I'm pulling up here. Here it is.

The CIA War in Kurdistan. That one's worth reading also. Where can people find that academic paper you mentioned, Mick? I was Middle East Institute. It was me, General Tovo, and Uncle Andy, who went by Uncle Andy. He still does. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That was really good.

It was also cleared by the agency, which is actually really helpful for the rest of us, because I've cited that about a billion times not to get pregnant. Oh, thanks, man. And I totally agree because, you know, with the end of the GWAT, you know, everyone grew up together with our military counterparts and then just naturally with the great power competition. everyone drifts apart and that's not good. It should be institutionalized. But one quick thing, Jonathan, I don't know if you saw this. And it does go to the notion of covert action and kind of narratives. But the new Mossad chief, Roman Guffman, basically fired his deputy, also fired

the head of the Iran operations division and their head of analysis. Pretty remarkable. That seems to me to be an indictment of something in this campaign. I mean, And of course, you don't see any of that on the U.S. side. But for the new Mossad director to come in and can, the chief of Iran is pretty extraordinary. And the chief analyst. What do you think of that? The challenge, too, is, you know, it seems that the war plan that the Israelis had that they presented to the U.S. was really contingent on the U.S. persisting and actually, like, continuing to follow through.

And it's possible that the plans that those individuals put together fell apart inside of Iran. which we don't see because they're all happening behind the scenes, but things probably fell apart because that contingent requirement of U.S. participation following through wasn't there. And so there probably wasn't this alternative COA built into it because when you're selling a sales pitch, you don't want to say like, well, in case this fails, we're also going to do this because you don't want to just suggest that there's going to be failure possible when you're selling it to the United States because you want the U.S.,

especially the people that heard it in that room of eight people, they need to hear success, success, success. And I think that failure probably was minimized and de-emphasized. And now those gentlemen are probably seeing the effects of that minimization in their own, you know, behind the scenes, politics in the organization. But of course, there's nothing on the U.S. side. There's no accountability on our side. I mean, it's a pretty stark contrast. And then the former Mossad folks that I know are all pissed because they think they're getting blamed for this when it's, you know, Netanyahu's the one who, of course, signed off on everything and was really pushing a lot of these plans as well.

We saw the same thing in Gaza, too. I mean, right after, after 2023 October, there was a lot of blame finger-pointing, and none of it was at Netanyahu, at least, you know, publicly. Shendbeth she resigned. Right. Ron and Barr. So, guys, here's a mixed paper that I wrote with Ken Tovo, who is the commander of 10th Special Forces Group when this happened.

A regular warfare, a case study in CIA and U.S. Army Special Forces operations in northern in Iraq, 2002 to 2003, definitely worth going to find that one. So to switch topics, Mark, you wanted to get into, and I have not read this article, but you wanted to get into that there was a rating of intelligence services across Europe. It was just great fun. This is in, I think, I mean, it's all over the place. It was the telegraph. I don't know, but then The Guardian published it at the Times in the UK.

So basically, it was a peer study amongst all European services and ranking the times. intelligence services in Europe and MI6 came out on top. France was number two. I think Germany was three, which is ridiculous. But, but there, and all, of course, everyone, you know, the Brits and, and I know a lot of former and current British officers and they're, you know, they're absolutely out of their mind with glee and happiness now, even if you remind them of the Cambridge Five and, you know, all the other things that happen, it doesn't matter. But, but ultimately, it's, it's pretty interesting. And a lot of it has, the reason why I wanted to raise it was, a comment that in the article that Ralph Goff, who's a very well-known, very respected agency officer,

you know him well, where he made talking about how good the Brits have been in Ukraine. And I think there's this undertone that we all have in the Brits never talk about it. But the British security services and British Special Forces have been very, very well there and been way forward-leaning. And so that's interesting too. And then the other part that I thought that was fascinating was, and again, based on my experiences in the end of my career, which was all nearest in CT until the end, which was Europe, was dealing with the French and how the French, and I found them to be really incredible

partners on CT in Africa to the point of where they do not have the same kind of rules that we have. And in fact, in this article that I was reading in the British press, they said, yeah, a British intelligence officer said, yeah, that, you know, the French are savages. They basically, there was a list of 40 or 50, you know, ISIS and Al-Qaeda targets that just went and killed them all, assassinated them all. So it's just interesting to kind of look at the, you know, our allies across the pond. And there's, I mean, this didn't get a lot of play in the U.S., but it's certainly within the intelligence world, this kind of ranking, which was peer ranked. It's not a newspaper, a journalist doing. It's, they really did, you know, they somehow did some kind of poll of intel officers.

The other part of it, just one quick thing is it didn't tell, you know, I think that there are really good services like the polls. We've got incredible, just ground crazy shit for us over the years. Anyhow, so these are the allies, by the way, Mick, that you want to have help us, of course, I want to as well. So does Jonathan. So does Jack in Iran. They're really good if they're on our side. That's the kind of big part of us. Yes.

The DGSE is much more aggressive than people realize, I think. I mean, so is the French Special Forces. I actually heard they have done something like 25 military free fall insertions into West Africa over the last like five or six years doing ops. And during the whole ISIS years, you know, the French Special Forces guys in Iraq and I believe in Syria too, part of TF Hydra, they were deployed there with the express mission of assassinating French citizens that had joined ISIS. like do not let these guys come back home. That is not to happen. Isn't it DGSESA? Isn't that the moniker?

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I've worked with them. They're kind of like special activities center. Yeah, they're good. I mean, I think one thing that is positive is the intelligence services tend to work together, regardless of, you know, what the overall relationship is between the countries. You know, that politically goes up and down and the intelligence services kind of just ignore

And SBR, there are some limits on how well you guys will play. Yes, yes. No, I meant like among allies. Like we could have issues with France and Spain. Yeah, yeah. But, yeah, we, I mean, I don't know that it got out there, but we helped DGSA with one of their issues. And I think after that, it was to recover somebody who was kidnapped,

the relationship just got really tight. Oh, you're talking about Walton got kidnapped. Yeah, you know, I don't even know. Yeah, the French helped us out a lot with that. Oh, no, I'm talking, we helped them with one of their guys. But with one of the French citizens? Yeah. That makes sense too.

French guys, French DGSE. And it just got really, really tight after that. I think they were always doing good stuff, but then we just started hearing more about it after that. And the Brits, I mean, I mean, just like you, Jack, I'm an Irish American, so I can't go too far on this. But I've worked with them many times in there. I actually had one come over my house and said, so you've got an Irish pub and a boxing gym? Because you're just a freaking walking stereotype, aren't you?

I'm like, yeah, what do you expect? He came to my pub all the time, but they are good. They can do good things when they want to. And I think we shouldn't take our relationship with all these countries for granted. You know, as Mark points out, the Polish Agency Avavadu, I believe, is the name of the AW, their intelligence service, does some incredible stuff.

And then another one is the Belgians, AVID. That's another one of those... I think you're talking to Dutch. Are they the Dutch? Yeah, thank you. They're outstanding. They're outstanding. They punch above their weight class. Yeah.

I bet, John, did you have any partners that you worked with that you were particularly impressed by? As far as direct action, it was Densis Lapan Lapan Detachment 88 in Indonesia. They did some of these highly orchestrated assassinations inside Indonesia. One of them, they killed this guy named Dolmatine, who you can look up, he was a bad guy in Jamai, but they basically fixed him in place using his webcam while he was in a internet cafe. And then from like behind the buildings, a couple up behind a couple streets back, they like shot through and shot him in the back of the head right over in front of the camera and like use that as the fine, the fix and finish component of the operation. It was like really well done.

This is a long time ago too. Like before F3AAD was so popularized, highly good at it. I would just say. did one of those ops where was it like a guy that was a J.I. guy that was in prison for killing one of their dudes and they went and raided the prison and like shot the guy through the bars in the cell. Yeah. Yeah. They would do stuff like that all the time. And they did it in a Sulawesi. Yeah, I mean, they killed the leader of MIT, which is another splinter group of J, uh, Jama Islamia by like going through a village and just like shooting and shooting people on their way to him like without discriminating and just going toward until they finally got him. And, you know, yeah, he's dead. But so are like 25 other people in the village.

Jesus. Mark, before I know you've got to get going in like maybe 10 minutes, I want to make sure that we touch on this report that the CIA has opened some sort of Cuba task force. So this is a big deal, just in terms of priorities. I mean, I think that's the way you've got to look at it. Now, Adam Entous wrote this for the New York Times. Entus is extremely well-sourced within the agency and is written on Cuba for years. So I would tend to believe it. And then the Miami Herald picked it up as well.

And then there, of course, are well sourced on Cuba, just from their proximity in the Cuban-American community in South Florida. But I think it's important just in the sense of, you know, this is something that obviously Secretary of State slash National Security Advisor Rubio is of paramount importance to him personally. And when you set up a task force, you do so to increase, obviously, collection, both human intelligence, signals intelligence, you know, imagery, open source. But that means you're pulling resources from somewhere else. You know, the agency has a finite number of people and money and resources. I would imagine there probably will be similar efforts in other places in the U.S. national security kind of ecosystem. And that's done either to support future military operations and slash or, covert action, which also could be covert influence. So it's not necessarily a coup, but it's influence operations. But you don't do this if this is something is not afoot in some fashion. I mean, didn't this already kind of exist under like the, what is it called the Western Hemisphere Mission Center? Yeah, not that not a task force of this of this nature. So yeah, I mean, there's the Cuba ops group, but not an actual task force where you bring in this, this now

becomes all source. It becomes there's analysts who are brought in. I mean, it's a, it's a thing. they're going to pull people from it. They're also going to pull people from Mix Old World. I mean, you know, this just doesn't happen because, and at least that's what the article said. And, you know, one can wonder, is the administration really going to jump into another foreign adventure? But, you know, it's certainly that's something that is, you know, it's raised in priority. And in the article, it well, it said that this has been raised in what the national security world is called the NIPIF, the National Intelligence Priorities Framework.

This is on the first tier. that matters. Again, that's where money and resources go. Final piece on this is in all of my contacts, and Jack, you know, you and I have talked Cuba before because of the whole Havana syndrome issue. I have a ton of contacts in the Cuban American community, including some great, wonderful kind of the Cuban exile groups. They will not settle for a Venezuela type operation. They want full regime. They are, they said, they consider the Venezuela thing to be a failure. And they're very skeptical, or not so skeptical, but they're going to hold Rubio to task on this. So the idea of doing a Venezuela, you know,

some kind of like light type operation, I don't know. So it just gives you a kind of, you know, you think about signal versus noise. This is signal. This is not noise. A task force is a task force. I would add, I mean, I don't know if the story's accurate, but it sounds like it is.

I would add that this is actually consistent with our national security strategy and defense strategy. Remember we used to talk about, you know, we were going to shift to the Western Hem. I'm not saying I agree. with it, but it is what it is. You're supposed to, I mean, you make strategy for a reason. And then, of course, went to war in the Middle East, but if you look at it as consistency and what we said we were going to do and put our resources toward, it has some validity there,

put it that way. And I agree with Mark. I think a lot of people that are focused on this region, the Western Hemisphere, don't want to just see a repeat of Venezuela, essentially just remove the head and as you guys know that the problem still exist. It could go back, you know, depending on the interest or lack of interest by the United States. But I don't know what that necessarily means for Cuba. Something interesting I saw was some satellite imagery today. There's four different locations inside of Cuba that had, they're just farmland and now they have a bunch of Chinese solar panels that have been installed. And of course, obviously there's rolling blackouts and consistent blackouts in Cuba right now, a lot of energy constraints. And it seems that,

you know, I don't know who in China is providing this stuff, but a lot of things from China don't usually happen without Chinese permission, government permission. So it's just kind of interesting to see this showing up behind a blockade inside of a completely sanctioned country that now you have these brand new solar panel farms built. Yeah. I mean, how do you guys, I mean, I guess I don't know, I mean, how much you came across it, Mark, but I mean, how would you assess the CIA's penetration of Cuba, because my impression is that all the sources that we have on the books are double agents, that DGI has kind of ran circles around us for many years. Well, the record ain't good. I mean, it's incredible. I mean, you know, Cuba has been a country

that has had astounding success against us. There's very senior former U.S. intelligence officers who were Cuban agents. An ambassador. Ambassador who is a Cuban agent. I mean, it's pretty stunning. Cube, obviously, it's a denied area. If you're serving with the U.S. Embassy in Havana, the CIA station was closed for a while. It then reopened.

Now, of course, one of the, and so there is that notion of, you know, are the, are the Cuban still that formidable an adversary? Now, some argue that because of the economic kind of deterioration is that actually the Cuban intelligence services have really suffered because of that. So that's certainly possible. One thing that was wild is that, you know, you had not only John Racklep, other CIA officials actually visited Cuban in recent opening for discussions with their Cuban counterparts. So there's this, there's kind of this interesting game being played. But Jack, I think that, you know, it's a very good question because when you talk about increasing collection, the past collection, at least on the human side, was very suspect now because there were so many doubles.

Now, you know, has that change? I'm not entirely sure. And I think that more than likely there's some validity to the notion of that the Cuba's been so battered economically that, you know, and again, their patrons have been. Yeah, exactly. Also the Russians, too. And so, you know, are they as formidable an adversary? But we shall see.

Let's see what we end up doing. I don't think we should shirk from that just because there's been so much, you know, failure in the past in terms of on on on the human side but um you also can't you know there can't be any hubris we have to have some humility and that we are dealing with the competent service yeah i mean we've kind of fucked that one a few times in the past already yeah i mean when you talk about the ambassador the national intelligence officer for cuba like there was serious major the dia's top analyst on cuba was a spy for cuba that's astounding yeah we'd be proud of that if it was reversed, especially against the super power. The interesting thing about DGI, as I understand it,

is that they get ideological recruitments, which we very rarely get, as I understand it, like CIA doesn't get a lot of ideological recruitments in that side. Like during the Cold War. Yeah, you think that's like a Cold War dynamic, Mick? Yeah, I think during a Cold War, at least at least from what I wasn't around then, but least from what I know, that a lot of it was, you know, the opposition to the Soviet Union and the desire to ensure that there wasn't, you know, Third World War. I would call that ideological. I think there's a chance that Jonathan and Mick and Jack and D.

all of us are going to be talking Cuba in the next month or two. Now, is it going to be before the elections, midterms or not? I don't know. And it's crazy, by the way. I mean, Venezuela, Iran, like, are we really going to do another little foray? But I think there's very, I mean, the one thing with this administration, this is not ideological or political. You'll be shocked. I'll say something neutral.

Is that you should never say never. I think that's a fair statement. Things that you thought couldn't happen certainly can happen. And so I think we'll be talking Cuba soon. Yeah, I've been told that some of these talks that are happening up at Camp David, they're kind of being advertised as being about Iran. But actually, Cuba is one of the, it's the main topic of some of those talks. One other thing on this for Jonathan and Mick, like, why the hell did we do all our TDIs and PCS is in the sandbox?

Like, I'm sorry. Cuba is a little bit more fun. Well, not if you're a CIA station down there. I think with the sandbox. I got to go to some Latin American stuff and far east, Philippines, etc. But yeah. I don't know. The other thing that people are talking about, but I tried to, somewhat unsuccessfully this week, is Ukraine.

Yeah. Like, Ukraine right now. is stopped the Russians. Like, they're not advancing. They're getting slaughtered. They are striking facilities way beyond where we thought they would. And they are getting almost no U.S. support. Like, it is really little support. And even that, you know, the idea that they were going to be able to manufacture, like the Pack 3s and stuff, because right now they're literally, I think they're almost out entirely, right? That's why they're getting hit so hard. I don't even know if that's going to happen.

So I would just, I will beat the drum, even if it's not what the news is talking about. Not only is it the right thing to do, right? We are the leader of the free world, but we have an opportunity if we have to play this card to help them win, which means we'd win, right? So I'm just saying we need to win, right? So like if we went in, not that we need to, I mean, I'm not advocating we run around claiming victory for the Ukrainians who did 100,000. percent of the work. But if we want to get behind a winning cause, not only is it the righteous cause, but these guys are already proved they could win by themselves. Can you imagine if we gave them full throttle support? So I'm just going to... By the way, the Russians just tried to blow up

several Ukrainian airplanes in Germany. I saw that. This is a terrorist state. This is insane. Yeah. They just target apartment buildings, kill women, children, the old people. They don't even hide it. I'm with you. And they don't know. ever went that way. All it does is make the Ukrainians less likely to ever concede. It's not even a winning strategy. It's just murder. It's interesting to see the targeting of wild berries, like the Russian Amazon, because that's purely an economic target. You'd have a hard time saying that that's a military target or it's a dual-use facility. But it is having a psychological impact on the Russians says they can't get their deliveries.

Well, apparently there's so little support for the troops and the front lines that families buy stuff from Wildberry descent to them. They buy helmets. I mean, all this stuff that's not lethal. But, like, I don't have a body armor. I mean, these guys have like a one-week life expectancy. If it's your kid, you're buying it. Apparently, it comes, they ship a lot of this food, body armor, helmets, you know, all the

stuff that you need, but isn't the lethal stuff. Anything else, guys, before we wrap up here today? John is the author of Iran's Shadow Weapons. You can go and find that book right now. Nick Mulroy with the Lobo Institute. Where can people find the Lobo Institute, Mick? I've got a website, loboinstit.loboinstit.org. And, of course, we're out here in Whitefish.

If you're interested in the Whitefish Security Summit, there's a link to it. We're going to get all of you guys out here for that. he is going to get right there yeah and mr polymeropolis you have a book out too don't you it's a been out for a couple years clarity and crisis um uh and uh and if anyone wants to see me yapping away i'm on tv a lot in the morning i'll be on 5 a m tomorrow suffering better you than me bro yeah six a yeah six a six well thank you guys for joining us today and uh we'll see all of you next time thanks guys take care Hello, everyone.

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