The Team House - Iran’s Trump Card: Hormuz | EYES ON GEOPOLITICS

Episode Date: June 22, 2026

We break down the Iran MOU, the fight over the Strait of Hormuz, Lebanon’s role in the deal, and why the panel sees the agreement as a major strategic win for Tehran and a serious problem for Washington.We also dig into Iran’s nuclear program, Hezbollah, U.S. military messaging, bad battle-damage assessments, and whether the United States still has any real leverage left in the next 60 days of negotiations.GhostBed ⬇️https://www.ghostbed.com/teamFOR 10% off! Support the show on Patreon:⬇️https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouseMarc's new article:https://engelsbergideas.com/author/sam-worby-marc-polymeropoulos/Subscribe 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/Bluesky ⬇️https://bsky.app/profile/mickmulroy.bsky.socialMick’s publications ⬇️https://www.loboinstitute.org/publications/publications-of-michael-mick-patrick-mulroy/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-OperationsBluesky ⬇️https://bsky.app/profile/andy-milburn.bsky.socialFind Jason Lyons here: LinkedIn ⬇️https://www.linkedin.com/in/jason-lyons-666873316?uBluesky ⬇️https://bsky.app/profile/bgsilverback73.bsky.social"Karl Casey @ White Bat Audio00:00 — Start03:26 — Iran’s Strategy After the MOU09:16 — Iran’s Resistance Economy and Regime Survival14:42 — The Art of a Bad Deal19:56 — The Missing NSC Process24:49 — Proxies, Ballistic Missiles, and the JCPOA Problem31:42 — Verification, HEU, and the Lebanon Fuse36:42 — Pentagon “Happy Math” and Bad BDA48:12 — A Possible Clandestine Nuclear Program54:50 — Iranian Leadership Splits and the Search for Moderates01:01:11 — Can the Strait of Hormuz Be Reopened by Force?01:07:23 — CENTCOM, Military Advice, and Strategic FailureBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support.

The intersport Elvri's summer sale is here with up to 50% of your favourite sports brands. Kid the whole family for less in our huge summer sale. Fresh gear for running, the gym, football and more. Now on, in store and online. Feel the energy of the flaw. From the second to the 9th of August, Belfast welcomes the cultist Flaq Jolna Heron, the world's biggest celebration of Irish music and culture. Enjoy lively pub sessions, street performances and all Ireland.

competitions on Belfast's historic streets and word class stages. Whether you're a devoted trap follower or a wide-eyed first-timer, be part of celebrating together. Plan your trip at flak hul. I.E. Organized by Cultus and Belfast City Council. All right. Hey, everybody. Welcome to another episode of Eyes on Geopolis. We've got a full crew today, Andy Milburn, Mark Polymeropolis, Jonathan Hackett, Mick Mulroy.

The boys are all here. Too many Marines, but we'll figure that out at some point, I hope. All right, we've had a dizzying week with the memorandum of understanding. I'm going to do a little bit of context for people just because, like, if you're following on Twitter and stuff and reading, like, article here and there, it's like it changes every 12 hours, essentially, of what's going on. We signed a deal basically over, like, you know, remotely with Iran for the 60-day season. ceasefire where they were going to talk about the larger issue of the nuclear issue and the enriched uranium.

In that 14 point plan, these are just some of the basic points. You guys can correct me and add a little bit more context on top of that. There would have been straight of Hermuz opening to normal. The U.S. blockade lifted. Some talk about opening up and giving some money to Iran, like they're, their frozen assets. And then there was also talk of a $300 billion, I guess, sovereign wealth fund or reconstruction fund

that was supposedly going to be paid out by the majority of the GCC countries or the Gulf countries. At least 150 billion of that was supposedly secured for that. The other 150 billion, I don't know where it's coming from. Some say U.S.

You know, the U.S. is denying that, obviously. And the big caveat, the big boy, the big issue that looks like what will could kill this ceasefire is Lebanon and what's going on with israel and hesbola who have been training back and forth clearly out of Israel uh i would say nett njahou's been playing it kind of down the line trying to like weasel his way like he's good at because he's a politician at the end of the day but the ultra right homies like gavir have been freaking out about this you know saying that we're not going to stop the war no matter what they're not no no deal is

going to stop us unless we're involved um that's just like basically like the top little layer of it it's been dizzying because i've been trying to keep track of this shit for the last week and it's been i was just i was just fed up i was like you know who knows what it'll happen vance was supposed to go to switzerland he delayed it he eventually showed up today they're meeting now um and steve wickoff and jare kushner are there of course so everything will be great. I'm sure of it. Vance did bite back at specifically Gavir. He kind of, he kind of kept Netanyahu out of it and gave Netanyahu a little bit of credit while going at Gavir and the far right of the war cabinet. Pretty harsh words too. You know, there was, I think,

a quote saying there's a country of nine million people and you can't just kill your way out of your problems. And I'm going to be honest for the first time probably ever. I'm agreeing with J.D. Vance. So you guys, give us some context. Let us know, you know, what you guys are thinking, what you guys are tracking. I'm going to start with, let's start with Milburn today. Well, you know, I'm going to be fairly short because I know Mark wrote an excellent essay on what a tremendous success for the United States, the MOU is. So I think we should be to sum that up. But why do you make me, you know, just open a lot of?

with what just happened. So just three days after signing, Iran shut the straight again over Lebanon, right? Because that was part of Iran's stipulation that Lebanon become part of the deal. So even the U.S. and Iran's own government can't agree if it was actually closed. Syncom apparently saying traffic's flowing. But, you know, this brings up an interesting point. And, you know, I mentioned Mark's article. And of course, I think it really, there's the fact that the U.S. failed in our strategy. We really didn't have a strategy. We had a list of targets. It was kind of vague. There was no defined end state. Yes, that is a story in itself. But I think, And this is where John's expertise, I think, will come in.

I think it's fair to say Iran did have a strategy, and it's one they've been preparing for years. You know, a lot of people talk about the mosaic doctrine, which is a decentralized command. It's kind of mission command, which is our own doctrine, but it really worked. I mean, they anticipated that they would lose a lot of guys at the top of the pyramid, and they designed a system that could still continue to function.

So that worked, number one. And again, I'll keep this brief. Number two, they built an economy that was some extent resistant to sanctions. I mean, John's already talked about the fact that the IRGC didn't suffer too terribly from the pounding that the Iranian economy took for all the reasons that we've given on this show. But also, the fact that, you know, through deals with China and elsewhere, Iran has, again, designed its economy. So that sanctions are no longer such a, such a weapon as they used to be. And the last thing I'll say on that, on their strategy, which I think is really important, it's what they went after.

You know, all these firing of missiles and drones, and they had, yeah, they had an extensive inventory, but it wasn't random. You know, they went after key targets. They've identified when U.S. employees air power, what really makes that work. And it is what high density or high demand, low density items, it depends on. And that is command and control nodes, right, especially AWACS aircraft. Our tanker fleet, which actually is quite limited and it's aging. and it went after both of those on the ground, for instance in Saudi Arabia and PSAB,

and caused extensive damage and also ground-based command and control, as well as air defense, our radars, ability to sense. All of these things were on Iran's target list. It wasn't simply, hey, we're going to just fire shit and show they were not beaten. They were very careful,

about what they hit. They understood clearly the imbalance between, you know, the cost ineffectiveness between interceptors and drones and missiles, especially drones. And that isn't just about, you know, that cliche, we always hear about that, you know, a Patriot intercept it costs X million dollars and a Shahad missile costs $20,000 to $30,000.

It's not just about, that it's about death on the bench how many interceptors we actually have all right how many we need globally in order to to sustain our our commitments and they understood all that and they and they kind of bled us dry and the last thing was that targeting of Gulf countries was very carefully deliberately done and instead of yes it did piss off the Gulf countries but it But it also had the effect of driving a wedge between the U.S. and our partners here because Iran could show that we could not protect them. We had not gone to the effort to build a coalition.

And then when it really mattered, you saw UAE and Saudi Arabia saying at key parts of this conflict, no, we're not going to support. And I think it was Kuwait, right? I said, no, we're not going to allow our bases to be used for further strikes on Iran. So again, you know, this MOU is kind of, I think, a natural follow-on. They sustained a beating, but all they had to do was survive. They did that. They sent a message of resilience. We've all seen these Lego videos that were masterfully made.

And now they've controlled the negotiations. Do I like that? No, of course I don't like that. And I'm just commenting on how they've triumphed and they've really understood the clout-switching thing about warbing politics by another means. Who wants it? Hack it. You go.

I'm going to take it. I'm taking charge here. Yeah, I'll branch off of what Andy mentioned about the economy and sanctions and all this. You know, the regime has been framing their economy as a resistance economy since the 1990s. And in Farsi, they actually call it this a resistance economy. And what that means is a resilient economy. that can survive external impacts, whether those are sanctions or reductions in capacity or just actual logistical challenges of getting things to end out of the country due to geopolitics.

They've designed their economy to survive this way. And it's very clear that their structuring of that was successful. And that doesn't mean it was successful for the Iranian people. It means it was successful for the regime elites, the small minority of people in and outside of Iran who are able to maintain their safety, security, and their grip on power throughout this really high-intensity conflict against their country. You know, the U.S. is very good at overwhelming fire superiority. This is something that we're very good at. We're very precise at that. We can put a lot of ordinance on targets very rapidly in a very large geographic dispersion,

which we saw was true, especially in Western Iran during the war. Despite that, Iran was able to use, as Andy mentioned, very precise, careful, deliberate strikes on allies and partners in the region for non-military purposes. And that's a contrast to what it's seemed the U.S. strategy was, was a purely operational or campaign level strategy of striking a certain series of targets or a target deck to affect a military outcome, whereas the Iranian regime, the IRGC, was thinking beyond the military objective. They were thinking about political outcomes and impacts of their military actions, which again is just like Andy mentioned, a Klaus Witsian concept, where military is a policy instrument. It is not an end. And it seemed that Iran was using that

and understood that, that if they hit Qatar or they hit Kuwait, there will be political ramifications that, true, there is some sacrifice on their side that are negative impacts for Iran, but they will also negatively impact the United States. So they're kind of using that concept of the Samson option that Israel actually uses for its own nuclear policy, where they understand that once they unleash this weapon, it will harm them, but it will also harm their enemy in a way that's beneficial to them, unleashing this strike. And Golibov, the Speaker of Parliament, who's now in Switzerland sitting across the table from J.D. Vance negotiating a very uneven settlement right now in favor of Iran and against the favor of the United States. Yesterday, Ghalibov before he got on an airplane

said that he is a post-war economic commander, which again underscores this understanding of economics for Iran, for the elite in Iran, that it's about the money. It's not about protecting their people. It's not about political institutions. It's not about these esoteric philosophical concepts that we appreciate in the West. It's about survival. and enriching themselves and surviving to enjoy that enrichment. And a lot of their money, almost all of it, is not in Iran. It's in Europe. It's in Hong Kong.

It's around the world. It's in Canada. Billions of dollars. And they've designed these systems to protect those dollars and protect themselves. And if you see, for example, Ghalibov's son has hundreds of millions of dollars in Iran and outside of Iran. He posts on Instagram. Other IRGC commanders, their children have yachts in the Mediterranean that on

Instagram. These are not secrets. And there's even a website called, I think, like the children of the regime or something like this, where you can go see their daily lives documented, them spending just untold amounts of money. None of this money from work they ever did. This is from either oil sales or other illicit activity. Right now, Iran has a special program where if you own a vehicle in Europe, you can import

it into Iran and just pay a small tax on it, and now you can bring it into Iran. So you can buy it in Germany, for example, and then bring it to Iran. there's sanctions that are supposed to stop this from happening, but it's happening. It's just totally allowed, right? And even I think we've talked about it before, companies like Audi, for example, or BMW, they know about these sanctions. So what they do is they take the vehicle slightly apart and they'll put little pieces in between the doors and windows and things, and it arrives in a box so it's not technically assembled in Europe. And they'll bring it to Iran, take the little pieces out, reattach everything, and now it's a vehicle that should not have been there in the first place. And it's not the average person doing this. it's the elites. And the reason I'm kind of pushing this elites button is because these are the people in Switzerland right now negotiating with the United States on a $300 billion cash infusion. Again, money is their objective. We are about to give them more of it. They use this money for very specific reasons, like we mentioned, corruption and things like this, but also to fund Hezbollah. After we exited the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action in 2018, the Hezbollah funding levels went up from about $250 million

dollars a year to a billion dollars a year until last December. We don't have 2026 numbers yet. But there's going to be more of it. And we can see that this connection to Hezbollah remains relevant because that's why the negotiations were threatened this past seven days in the first place is because Israel and Hezbollah were fighting war in Lebanon. And Iran said, that's point number one on our 14 point plan. You've got to stop fighting in Lebanon, Israel, or else we're not going to negotiate. So they're telling us that this is important to them. Financially, for security reasons and many other things in between, and they're not going to give up on this point. So I think focusing on Lebanon and economics of this conflict are probably the two most important things if the U.S.

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So, Jonathan, you gave, I think you raised a really good point. I don't want to reiterate all the great things you guys said, but I think that, and it's an article I did write in Engelsberg Ideas, which you guys were referring to. I think the title was The Art of a Bad Deal. I co-wrote it with Sam Warby. But it's the idea of putting a carrot forward deal. And it's exactly what you're talking about, Jonathan.

So I guess, first of all, the wisdom of that is kind of beyond me. We're actually putting carrots for it. J.D. Vance in a press interview basically came out and said, we're not doing that. And I think he's lying. I mean, of course, the press never challenges him on anything. Because everything I talked to, all the oil analysts, everything, they said that Iran is going to get between the ability to sell oil, which is the waivers, as well as some relief of some type of assets, you could be $6 to $20 billion right off the bat. J.D. Vance is saying it's not going to happen. So, you know, first of all, where's the truth on that?

It looks like it actually is going to happen. But again, the idea of putting carrots forward first just doesn't make any sense, and it shows how desperate the United States is. And I think that is certainly problematic. The other piece I would add, and, you know, I'm there, you know, well, maybe Mick is too. And who knows, kind of the resident Israel whisperer. But it's the notion. of, look, I don't care with you if you like Bibi Netanyahu or not, but the idea of linking this to Lebanon, the U.S. allowing this is insane. You know, I live in Northern Virginia. Right across the way is D.C. If, you know, if I, you know, I live in Vienna if, I don't know, if McLean was getting pounded and was evacuated because someone's firing from D.C., that would be

a problem. And yet we have managed to link this. So the Israelis do need to have kind of freedom move action. You know, you can debate whether or not they should have gone into southern Lebanon with ground forces. I think that's just unwise. But the idea of, you know, removing that ability to strike back his bullet, the U.S. did Israel a terrible favor. And in fact, let's not forget, his bullet is a terrorist entity that killed more Americans up until 9-11 than al-Qaeda. And so I think that was an awful mistake. Overall, it's the notion of, I think, Jonathan, you're right, Israel survived. Andy, I think you said this. I mean, it's not Israel. Iran survived. I think both Jonathan and Andy said that. They control, they demonstrate they have to control the Strait of Hormuz.

That's what we're, the MOU is just to reopen the strait because Trump panicked about the economy. Period. That's it. It's a cash, it's a transaction of funds for reopening the, the straight. So they demonstrated that, again, linking, the linkage to Lebanon was a terrible diplomatic error by the United States. And then this inclusion of some type of financial relief, which as Jonathan says, is so paramount to the regime. The Iranian regime, finally, you know, it's something I stupidly have done every day on Twitter. I'm having fun doing it. I post how many days it's been each day since January 13th. And it's 159 days right now since President Trump said help was on its way.

And, you know, and a lot of us were exercised about things like the botched Afghan withdrawal for good reason. We criticized the Biden administration. I certainly did. Though I work for a network, MS now, which is super pro kind of Democrat and supports Biden, I was on there every day howling about it. I just was, period. This is going to be seen as a betrayal of the Iranian people. Again, help is on its way. As protesters were on the street, they stayed out there, they got slaughtered. And we are doing nothing to help that. And in fact, if you talk to anybody, the infusion of whatever it is, $6 billion, $12 billion, God forbid the $300 billion. That allows the regime to further survive. Bottom line is, I think we have done a great harm to the ability for people like all of us.

We don't do this anymore. Maybe some of you guys do clandestinely. I certainly don't. I sit on my ass in Northern Virginia. But the idea of going out into the field and working with indigenous groups and making promises, we don't look so good right now. And I think that's a, you know, And if you, I was just at a conference in Sweden. There was a whole bunch of really, really famous Iranian academics there, anti-regime. But to a T, they said that in the beginning, Iranian people welcomed the U.S. and Israeli strikes. They do not do so anymore now. And there is an incredible feeling of betrayal right now.

Again, you're going to have this scene at some point, I hope not, maybe it's politically suicidal for J.D. Vance of him shaking the hands of Valiboff. from the Iranian side. And Mick, I thought of you today. And of course, I freaked out. This is my not-promising stoicism. But when J.D. Vance at the beginning of the talks said, to the cameras, I love Pakistan. There's nobody on the planet who served in Afghanistan who says those words. I love Pakistan.

And so I just saw that and I thought of all of us, Andy and Jonathan, you too. A little cringe. One more thing, Dee. I got something for you. Look at this. A little I love freeze thing. Hell yeah. Love that. That's my two cents.

Well, I'm going to start with something. I agree with all you guys. These stuff I can remember you said. I'm going to start with a positive, right? And the positive had nothing to do with the MOU. Major James Capers finally received the Medal of Honor. Way overdue. Most Marines, certainly.

but people from the special operations military community have been waiting for this for a long time. He actually came and spoke to us at mentioned. I mean, it was such a memorable speech that like it all came back when I was seeing him get the Melo Bonner. So let's start on a positive note. Now, one thing I would start advocating for, I haven't stopped advocating for, is to get the NSC back up and running in full splendor. Like, get the careers back in there, get people that can talk about, like, well, are we really going to change the regime if we do airstrikes?

Are we really going to, are they not going to close the trade? These are all things that would have been discussed. All the potential, like, okay, if we do this, they'll do that. What are we going to do? Are we willing to adhere to and take the economic pain? And what is the economic pain? There's experts at every one of these areas that could have informed up the chan of command all the way to the, you know, the actual principles. I think Secretary Ubiot is a very capable person, but he can't be both.

He can't be the Secretary of State and National Security. He was somebody. Where is he? He's hiding. He's hiding. Because he probably doesn't agree with any of this. Let's face it. We all know that.

Like, everybody knows that. Everybody knows that. Right. about the process and process matters, right? Because I don't think we'd be in this position if that was something that was actually done before the decision. Get somebody like Jack Keen, you know, General Keen or somebody that has the gravitas and has the... Anyway, so if we had done that, I don't think we'd be in the situation we're in. So to go down the list of strategic objectives we had before watching this.

regime change. I know now they're saying they didn't plan on that. They did. They said it over and over again. Helps on the way, Marky just said it. They said we actually did have regime change before it was clearly we didn't. And then the, so that was an objective. We're not going to meet it. The intelligence community said that wasn't going to happen. You're not going to do an air war where people just quit. It's never going to happen. Yes, we did strike and do the decapitation strikes. And, you know, I'm somebody that if you kill servicemen and women in the United States or CIA officers, you should always be on the list. So there's zero love loss and a decapitation strikes. But strategically, all it did is give us a younger, more pissed off version of the regime. Right. So we went from an 86-year-old Ayatollah Khomeini to a 56-year-old Ayatollah Khomeini, right? And we now have Bahidi as the IRGC commander. These are, and he is, I'm sure, and correct me up I'm wrong, Jonathan, one that has always been advocating for Iran to have a nuclear weapon. Like, it's been the guy that's always been like, hey, you're wrong.

No fault was on not having nuclear weapons. Let's get a nuclear weapon, right? So strategically, we did not change the regime. We now emboldened them. And with these financial benefits, it's going to put them in place probably in perpetuity. If they actually realize the unfreezing of assets, I think there's around 100 billion total if you look at restricted frozen assets, but immediately like 20 billion. If you can sell your oil, sanctions are gone.

That's around 80 billion a year. This $300 billion reconstruction fund with really baffles me because what are you reconstructing? We struck military targets. Are we going to ask the Gulf countries to pay to reconstruct the military targets that we use to attack them and cause them damage? I don't see him doing it. And the logic behind it is just, it escapes me. So we didn't change the regime. So what did we do that's positive?

We did destroy their Navy. We did destroy their convention Navy, the Air Force. But we then are giving them all this financial incentive. What do you think they're going to do with it? They're going to replace the ballistic missiles that we did degrade, that we talked about so much as a plus, which I talked about as a plus. The concern with the ballistic missiles that is we're going to protect their nuclear program. So we had to degrade it. Now we're getting them money. What do you think they're

going to do? They're going to rebuild their ballistic missiles. And now the White House is defending their ability to have missiles. Why? Why? I mean, that was the biggest criticism, or one of the bigger criticisms of the JCPOA, didn't address ballistic missiles, didn't address proxies. So that's not even on our list of objectives, and it's still not being discussed in the MOU or in Switzerland right now. Proxies and ballistic missiles. We're now defending their ability to have ballistic missiles and their proxy forces obviously are we're not even talking about them doing that. So that's not helpful at all.

Now, so we haven't met necessary objectives. The other one, of course, the biggest one, the priority one, is no nuclear weapons. And although the White House was saying that they agreed to give up their highly enriched uranium, they did not. It's right in the agreement. You can look at the MOU. It's not a secret. They did not. They did not.

They haven't agreed to do anything on their nuclear front. In fact, Poseskian, President Poseskian just came out and said, they're never going to agree to not enrich uranium. He just came out and said that. So if that's the case, almost the best we can do, and I don't like this, I'm just pointing out what I think is a fact, is to get back in something that looks exactly like the JCPOA. Right?

We're giving them billions of dollars. They're going to enrich uranium. What are we going to try to keep them to 3.67 maybe? That's what it was. And I know that it was going to expire, but we could have simply made it better rather than tear it up. So I think I've hit every major point. We should probably go on some of the nuances. But I would like to see the next 60 days turn us around, right?

I want to see the United States come out strategically ahead. We are not headed there right now. We are not. Everybody knows it. It doesn't matter what party you're in, you know, right, left, center. people can see that this is not happening. The Strait of Hormuz, I'll stop on this, Strait of Hormuz is not actually open. The Iranians have not agreed to give up their control of the strait, only to bring it to pre-war levels, and then in the future, they're going to charge fees.

We all know it's coming. In fact, they already closed it again, but so it's even, that wasn't a war objective because it was open before, and we haven't gotten that back to where we wanted. So what's the alternative? I had a friend tell me, you know, he picked the best of all the terrible alternatives. I don't agree with that. I think we actually had them on the road economically. I think we, and if we didn't want to take the economic pressure, we shouldn't have done this in the first place. We shouldn't have done it in the first place. Because the worst case is you do it, you then cave, and this is going to change the power dynamics in the Middle East and around the world. They now know that they have a economic nuclear weapon. And we have confirmed it. So I think we have to take the heat a bit on the economic side of this, but continue on. And if they rupture the agreement, we should view that as, thank goodness. And then we can go back and start negotiation this again. I know there's no easy

answer to this. I'm not saying that. But I want America to come out ahead. I want Iran, the regime, not the running people, to come out way in the rear, you know, in other words, negatively. So we're not headed there right now. It's super concerning. And I'd like to see, you know, the smart folks come together and come up with a plan for the U.S. to turn this around. Starting from a difficult position. Mick, one quick thing on that, there are no smart folks. The NSC doesn't work.

Trump doesn't listen to anybody. So I agree with you, you know, this is a hope. but there's nothing I see on the horizon that shows any indication of anything positive happening. Jared Kushner and Steve Whitkoff and J.D. Vance are the ones who are in Switzerland. That's a recipe for disaster. You know, so the idea, there is no one. There's no one coming to the rescue. There's no smart people involved.

And, you know, so I just, I don't see how that is ever going to occur. I don't know, you know, Marco Rubio is fleeing from this because of 2020. He wants to be president. And this is a disaster. He knows it. You know, and I'd go back to, you know, the court of the state department's gone. At least most of my friends in the agency are long past or long gone. You know, I mean, I was asking even one of my former, you know, counterparts in Mossad.

You know, and he basically said, how can everyone have made so many mistakes on Iran? Like, we all collectively used to actually be pretty good on this. But there's nothing I see on the horizon that is optimistic. that we're going to do anything positive here. In fact, Trump is bored. Rubio wants to go off to Cuba, and everyone's focusing in the midterms. I mean, I think, Mick, you might have said this, that this is the worst-case scenario that we start something and don't finish it.

We've kind of poked the bear. But if you want to poke the bear, you better kill it, and we didn't. And there's, I mean, if anybody thinks we're going to resume military confrontation in any serious manner, they're on crack. Trump wants nothing to do with it. I didn't think CENTCOM or the Pentagon do as well. because of, you know, depletion in stocks. And plus, there's a question of, can it actually work?

What more can we do without putting in ground forces? I mean, those are all good points. I mean, I'm really pessimistic on this. I don't know. And so, but here's, Mick, here's my question to you. This is actually important because we all can sit here and criticize, and I'm great at that. Okay, so what do we do? And, you know, or what could we do?

I mean, knowing that there's, we have incompetent people in charge. That's the thing that drives me nuts. I don't see anyone's, you know, I like, I don't like watching Fox News. I like watching General Keene because he's up there and he laid into Sean Hannity the other day, as he should. Thank God someone in that crazy network is saying something normal. And so, you know, I don't see, I'm not, I don't have room for optimism. I don't know. Well, I get your idea, what you're saying is it's unlikely that they're going to pull these people in. I, that's probably fair. But I think there are people out there that could be very valuable in an NSC,

I mean, they're careerists, right? The military didn't empty of experts. The Department of Energy didn't empty of experts. The CIA didn't. The State Department, yes, I know a lot of. There's still people there. There's still people there. A lot of people left.

I think there are a lot of people who are gone. And you can bring them back. I mean, they could be retired. You can still bring them back to the NSC. I know maybe I'm, you know, Tiltona windmills here. I think, like, it's not going to be an easy task. But if it doesn't happen, then we already know what the outcome is here. We're seeing it. We're seeing it. And I don't want that for the U.S.

I don't care about who's president, whose party benefits and stuff. I just want to see this not end up the way it's headed for the U.S. and the region, all our allies in the region. I actually make the last point is a really key point. We've certainly lost credibility in the region. And to your point, Mark, I mean, and yours too, Mick, actually. You know, I know it sounds like we're hand-wringing, but it's difficult not to wring your hands at this point because, look, when you look at the details, let's take the whole framework deal,

what it says about enriched uranium, right? I mean, that potentially, potentially that gives the greatest cause for optimism in this whole sorry mess, okay? But when you look closely at that, because the framework deal has Iran agreeing to downblend its enriched uranium, basically dilute it, so it's no longer weapons grade under IAEA supervision. So, you know, on the surface that looks like real progress. But then you look at the actual language in the agreement. And that's kind of the minimum methodology. And the material itself never leaves Iran. It stays on Iranian soil while the real terms get negotiated over the next 60 days.

And they're not agreeing to stop enrichment, right? That's right. Yeah, exactly. You've got a commitment to a process, not a commitment to an outcome. And nobody's actually verified anything yet, you know, to your point about I mean, it's like just a dreadful divorce settlement, right? We made all these things are flowing in Iran's favor before they even have to do anything. And the IAEA's, what's his name, Grocy?

I mean, he was in Switzerland this past weekend, still working out what this even looks like in practice. It's not a, there's no inspection happening. the inspections being negotiated. So it's really, it's hard to be optimistic. But I think, and you know, the same thing about Hezbollah. You know, and I think this is an interesting point, not because I'm about to bring it up, but I think we have to be, you know,

you have to approach this from a point if you were real politic. Is Hezbollah, okay, bear with me, is Hezbollah a real threat to the United States? I get it. They've killed Americans in the past, but I'm not swayed by that, nor should anyone, I don't think, not. Because, I mean, otherwise we would have never, we would never have made peace with Germany, for Christ's sake. 60, 70,000 Israelis moved out of the neighborhood. I get it, but that doesn't affect us. However, Hezbollah is absolutely disruptive to the region. So it is in our interest, it is in our interest to pursue them. But you're not going to bomb them into oblivion.

I mean, that's so firmly entrenched, right, in Lebanese society. I mean, you can read anything about this by people who understand Hezbollah, that you have to approach it from, by, you know, bringing influence on Lebanon, supporting Lebanon to do what it needs to do in order to enforce the, you know, UN resolution. 1701, all of those things. The bombing has done very little. You know, we are here, though, and this is the really pessimistic point, we are here because we just didn't anticipate, I don't know how we didn't anticipate, that Hormuz would turn

out to be Iran's Trump card, no pun intended, right? And that wasn't improvised. You know, Iran built its entire war strategy around Hormuz back in. in 0506. And I just don't understand why he didn't understand that, because the U.S. military flagged almost. We all know this, right? It's not, it's open source.

The U.S. military flagged almost is a single biggest risk of a war with Iran for decades. And it was in all the briefings. The Joint Chiefs warned about it before the strikes even started. The assumption was going in was that Iran would either back down or the Navy could just reopen the straight by force. But, you know, who even gave that advice? I mean, and now you can't undo that through negotiations.

So Ron knows the power that it has. It's been proven. And that is what no amount of negotiation in this next 60 days can undo. And Iran knows that. You offended Mickey. He ran away. No, I'm joking. No, I'm joking.

He picked. He was going to pick on him, too, because I want to talk about Happy Man. from the Pentagon. Because, you know, we had talked about on the show so many times before, got the briefings from Hegsef and to Dan Cain. And I challenged everybody here that, you know, that my thought was, you know, the military has lied to us before and I think they're lying to us again. And I know that's hard for folks.

I did not serve. You all did. I think we have to question all those briefings, including from Dan Cain. I really do. And so, you know, I think history, Hegseth is a fool. but history might not be as kind because, you know, all the programs that seem to have been obliterated other than the Iranian Navy, which is at the bottom of the sea, but not really because of all the fast attack ships and everything, all the drone, whatever they have. I don't know. I'm not so sure that we didn't go through a whole other exercise of the military not being truthful, or maybe the BDA was bad at the time, but they said it. And if you had believed that, then the war was essentially over, and it's not.

So to provoke Andy and Jonathan, Jonathan, what do you think on that? I think back to Vietnam when we had the whole body count problem where we had these Wiz kids who were extremely intelligent engineers that Sector F. McNamara surrounded himself with to try to get ahead of the Vietnam problem that they inherited in the 50s. And so from France in particular because France basically gave us their problem and told us to handle it. And that's what we did in Vietnam in the early years. And in order to get ahead of it, we thought of how can we, how can we, how can we, how can

we rationalize what we're doing there and they decided to start doing this body count thing, well, what that did was it incentivized people on the ground to, first of all, claim KIAs that did not happen. And second of all, to kill civilians to increase the number. And this is especially on the Vietnamese partner force side, because that would increase the amount of resources they could get, the higher the body counts were, whether they're real fabricated or other people that were killed that were not the enemy. That was all designed so that these numbers could come in. Because that's what the whole thing was focused on was how many died, how much damage was done. Numbers, numbers.

And that's exactly what you're talking about, Mark, where in the modern world, we don't actually have that exact incentivized problem. But we do have a very similar issue where the Department of Defense, because that's what it's called by law, not Department of War, the Department of Defense is trying to advertise successes that don't exist. And they're doing that with numbers because it feels like it's harder to argue numbers, because you see these things. Oh, I see the imagery.

I see the bomb striking the target. That must have been a destruction, a destruction of an enemy target. Well, let's go on the ground and actually evaluate. Was that an enemy target? Was that a transporter or erector launcher? Was that a point of origin site? Was there a mortar there? We will never know because we on the U.S. side are not actually going on the ground to do battle damage assessment.

We had this problem in Iraq. Even if we were in the same area, if we couldn't actually get to the target to evaluate if it was struck or not, we couldn't be totally certain that that was the right target, the right time, with the impact that we're saying that it was. And you know, the same thing with drone warfare. If you don't have someone on the ground, a human source to validate or signals intelligence to validate that that was actually destroyed, you can't be totally certain that that was destroyed. And if we're on the order of 30,000, 50,000 strikes in a week or in a month, every one of those strikes needs to be validated. And the law of large numbers kind of indicates that if you're not validating small numbers

of targets, you're also not validating large numbers of targets. So there's this kind of runaway problem where you don't really know, it's almost like shooting in the dark. You know you're shooting. You're definitely expending rounds, but you're not really sure, like, where are those rounds hitting? And are they actually causing more problems than, than there were before you fired that round? So there's a lot of challenge here without us actually being on the ground to evaluate. And you could be on the ground a lot of capacities. Like I said, it could be recruited sources, human sources. It could be, it could be really exquisite signals intelligence that's used in a particular way. It could be other things besides ground troops, but ground troops really help because that's us.

And so you could trust us. Didn't the Pentagon know better? I mean, I hear you. But again, so they're doing these briefings and they're going to Trump and showing him all this stuff and he's getting mesmerized. So Trump was a doofus. Thanks for winning. But so it's not the same problem.

Trump won. We got the same problem against ISIS because, and I remember this because I was in Syria and Iraq during this time in Jordan as well where we would, you know, deliver up our strike battle damage assessments and things like that. They would get restructured and repackaged before, like they would leave us, our teams. And on their way up to the president, they would change. And this was that time when Trump's name had to be inserted dozens of times into his president's daily brief in order for him to even pay attention, not even to absorb, but to just

pay attention. And I remember we got our National Intelligence Priorities framework design and set down to us for collection. It was not approved until Trump got to put his digital, you know, that really weird signature he has in like size 48 font on the actual matrix for our collection matrix. That was, that had to happen or else it couldn't get approved. So this is the person that's the person that's, listening to this stuff, he will only consume what he likes to consume. So what's happening is these hangers on, these palace hangers on around him are changing the material and changing the information in a way that he'll actually digest, which means they have to alter its actual subject matter and fundamental truth. That's my belief. And I saw it during Trump 1, where they would actually

modify things that we said on their way to the president's daily brief so that he would actually keep his eyes open on the page that's being dictated to him because he's not reading it. It's being dictated to him and he has to hear his own name. So this is that same person. Now 10 years later, eight years later, 80 years old, just turned 80, barely can stay awake. And so now think about how much of a challenge is to even hold his attention long enough. He doesn't care about what's happening in Iran. He cares about his image, his legacy, these things. And so the people around him are trying to feed him information that makes him believe that his legacy is positive. And you can see in what he's saying on social media, he believes the things he's saying. I don't think he disbelieves what

he's saying. And I think the information, if he saw what was actually true, he might not have such a positive attitude toward what's going on with Iran and related issues. Yeah, and John, you know, also there's the fact, and I'm not defending the military here, Mark, look, there's an explanation that should have taken place whether or not Trump wanted to listen to it or not. And I don't know if that explanation occurred. But, you know, BDA, as John pointed out, is really tough unless you have boots on the ground. And it's complex. I mean, there's three parts to it, right?

I mean, you've got the physical damage assessment, and that alone is quite difficult if you're doing it just from the air. All right. What is you? And you're comparing free and post-strike pictures, right, which is difficult of assets that are dispersed and moving. You're doing it. you've got a functional damage assessment, which asks the harder question, you know, if something was hit, can it still do its job? So give an example, I mean, we're going after missile launches. A missile launcher with a created support building can still do its job. It's completely

operational, right? But it looks as though it's destroyed, and it's easy to explain as such. And then you've got the really harder part, which is a system assessment, which zooms out further. And if individual nodes are destroyed, can the broader system still function, reconstitute? And so, you know, understanding all that, and the analysts understand that, getting operational commanders to understand all that in itself is quite difficult, to be honest with you. I think John will agree. And then when you're packaging it for a president who has quite a short attention span, let's, you know, I'm under stating that, then it becomes near impossible.

So even without intentional duplicity, the whole BDA thing was found to go wrong. And when you're talking about a system assessment, let's take the Navy as an example. Someone somewhere along the line should have told them the conventional Iranian Navy was never a threat. The threat was always, always small boats, mines and drones and missiles, of course, in that order. missiles can be fired from anywhere and hit the straight anywhere in Iran. Iran's a big country. It's easy to disperse missiles. The Iranians use decoys.

Very easy to hide missile launches there. I mean, all these factors play in. What is absolutely unjustifiable is the extreme confidence shown by guys in uniform when they briefed. I agree with you. because they should understand what I have just explained, because I'm not an Intel analyst. I'm an operational guy, but I at least understand that. And so there was a sense of misleading the American public. I do agree on that from people who should have known better.

Or maybe they didn't. Maybe truly they have reached four-star rank, being quite ignorant about what BDA involves. Or you get to senior levels and you realize that you're there. and if you'd say anything against the grain, you will not be there any longer. But I could be it too. The conventional wisdom, and I'm just throwing this out there.

And just for whatever, you know, you guys know this. But like, this is nothing to do with the, you know, an F-35 pilot or someone on a U.S. ship somewhere, a U.S. Marine. Like, you know, the people on the ground, this is not them. I'm talking about the leadership who have to brief the President of the United States on how the conduct of the war is going. And Dan Cain, the chairman, has been given a pass.

because Pete Higginseth is such a complete and utter fool. Kane has been given a pass, but Kane also was involved in these briefings. And I don't think President Trump gets his rosy picture without Dan Kane providing that rosy picture. And I think it's fair to go back and say, because right now, I mean, some people, I think some people, especially on the right in the United States,

are like, hold on a second, I thought we were winning. We're kicking their ass every day. All we saw in Fox News was death and destruction from above. And wait a second. Now the narrative, of course, on the right is shifted that we kind of screwed the pooch on this. But, you know, there is something to be said, oh, Mick came back. Mick, I was talking about something that you had,

we had talked about before perhaps disagreed a little bit previously, just has to do with kind of the military briefings that were provided over the last several months. And, you know, we had all given kind of Dan Kane a pass. But I think we do have to go back. And because with the happy math and all the things, and then Andy and Jonathan talked about the difficulties in BDA, But I do think we can go back and say, well, hold on a second. You know, the president has been briefed nonstop that we're winning.

The military and these Pentagon briefings, even though Heggseth is kind of a fool, Dan Kane has been sitting there and saying kind of a lot of soberly, but saying the same things. And it turns around, turns out now that we'll hold on a second. So I do think that's fair to at least kind of question that, going back to things such as Andy said, you know, military briefings at Vietnam with body counts. And, you know, there is, you know, I look back to times in Iraq and Afghanistan, military briefings turned out really not to be correct. I think it's fair to just raise that now as we're sitting in a place where it looks like we're not coming out.

I don't think we're losing this war at all, but we certainly are, you know, we didn't win. Not yet. I mean, this should be something that's reviewed by basically the armed services committees. They need to review like, because the intelligence assessment is going to come out, right? and then they can look at what was briefed and what was the case. And they can, you know, sometimes they're just mistakes because they adjust their assessment. But it needs to happen because history needs to be correct and we need to make sure that the presidents getting the right information and obviously the American people. Because at the end of the day, we pay for her.

Right? I did right before I had to jump on a, yeah, to another media outlet. I did have a question for you guys because I heard somebody talking. She was on the House Intelligence Committee. Now, she was trumpeting the idea that Iran signed this thing and said they wouldn't have a nuclear weapon as a big positive. I would say, well, like they've agreed to not have a nuclear weapon. I don't know how many different times. And then she said, and you can look it up, they, she had seen Intel, which is kind of an odd thing to say, that they have a clandestine nuclear program, which kind of countered her own position. You know, it's like, so what does it matter if they're signing a document to the great Satan that they're not going to have a nuclear weapon?

And then she's, and then it was like, wait a minute, what? Because I mean, I don't have access to information anymore. but she said that yesterday, as if she had read it recently. So if they have a clandestine nuclear program. Sorry, repeat that a little bit. You broke up a little. So she was saying as a member of the permanent select committee on intelligence, that she had seen intelligence,

that they have a current clandestine nuclear weapons program. I don't know if that's true. I haven't, you know, I don't have access and nor what I want it, because I talk about this stuff too much. So if that's the case, and we know it, what is it we're trying to negotiate? And what do we care if they're writing things that they clearly aren't intending to do?

You know what I mean? Like, do you think that's accurate? I guess it's a question for the group. And then the other part is, how far advanced are we? Because we're only talking about the parts of the nuclear program that we think we know. You see what I mean? Is there one that's utilizing these fortresses

that are impregnatureable right now? I don't know. Because that throws a big monkey wrench in the whole, I think, scenario going full. Well, when Khomeini sent the delegation, he said that there had to be a certain number of the Supreme National Security Council members that would approve of the negotiations. There's 12 of them. It required nine yes votes. All 12, of course, voted yes because it's an authoritarian regime. But in that statement saying that all of them agreed, they said they're going to approach these talks with total distrust. That's a quote, total distrust. So as you mentioned, Mick, they're going to go sign this piece of paper with the Great Satan with total distrust. I would lean more toward the clandestine nuclear program being

true than them agreeing to give up nuclear weapons verbally or on a piece of paper in Switzerland. And I think that's very important to understand, you know, actions versus words. You know, there's a lot of words being thrown around right now because there's a financial incentive for them to look like they're doing what they say they're doing until they get their hands on that cash. And they're going to put something that's going to get diverted and that was the big uh you know dispute with the jCPOA was that if we give them a credit facility or some kind of special purpose vehicle with money for humanitarian supplies and things that that would divert cash for them to use somewhere else in a negative way you know for purchasing dual use weapon systems or actuators and other and rocket systems right

and again 300 billion is a lot more than what was with the jCPOA so even if that was used in a very strict humanitarian vehicle and they claim there will be no weapons and no nuclear, you know, equipment being produced. That's what they say. They approached this with total distrust. They said that. I would take them at their word. They don't trust the West. They have never trusted America. That has been death to America, death to Israel since 1979. And remains so. And that's actually what Ansar Allah or the Houthis in Yemen. That's their slogan is death to America, death to Israel. It's on their flag. And that's an Iranian proxy force. So I think we would be kind of diluting ourselves with idealism and hope, just wishing and hoping that the regime is being honest,

they're telling us that they don't trust us. I feel like how can you look at that and just ignore that and say, no, they're going to sign the document and they're going to follow it. I have a philosophical-ish question, and I know the Iranian regime is shit and terrible, but can you blame them? For trying to get a condescending? No, not being able to trust us going into these negotiations. Twice person.

looking at it, yeah, absolutely. But looking at the history, can you blame them? Especially if their one goal is regime security, which John's incredible book, Iran Shadow Weapons, points out. Yeah, I mean, I guess from their perspective, they don't trust us, we don't trust them. The question is, like, wouldn't you be trying to get a nuclear weapon? I mean, I know it's all popular to say,

but for pragmatic reasons, like if it, like, what would you be doing if you were in their shoes right now? What would you be advocating for with the Supreme later? Seriously. Look at North Korea. You guys aren't. Yeah. On this issue, I think it was a couple things.

One is you have to see which member of Hipsy said this. You know, which member of the committee, some of them are complete idiots. And so, who knows? If she said this, she probably shouldn't have. And number two, there has been some reporting that suggested when the Israelis came to President Trump and kind of convinced him for the nuclear. for the strike on the nuclear facilities that had to do with something new

that they had uncovered. So there might be something murky out there and it's probably less, you know, a conclusive that there is a clandestine nuclear weapons program. By the way, just that ended up itself, if it was real, that leaks.

Sorry, it does. It ain't our collection. So that would leak in a second. It did. But I think there's probably some nuance there on that. One thing I wanted to raise with you guys, which, you know, so it's interesting. So CNN reported, essentially there's some side agreements on the MOU.

And then insinuated that there are leadership splits within Iran. I mean, I was going back and forth with some CNN commentators and they said, okay, that might be true because you really have the political types who are in Switzerland now. But the idea that somehow there's leadership splits and that, you know, first of all, the political folks could come out on top, but that not that the IRGC is still controlling everything. I wonder if it even matters. And you see this theme with, especially with Vance and Trump, who, you know, they say things, I don't even, you know, because they've been briefed, but, you know, there's reasonable people we're dealing with or there are, you know. So I guess the

question is, do you see any leadership splits? And if there are, does it even matter considering the IRGC or the ones with the guns? So the only thing I've heard on the leadership splits is these, these folks that we obviously consider hardliners, the hardliners don't. And they basically told them, don't come back if you concede anything that we told you not to concede. Like they're not actually, like Ghalibov and Harachi and all. Like they're, I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, but most of what I've heard is they have been told, like even if you want to concede something, if we told you not to, don't do it. So it doesn't matter.

Yeah. Right. Yeah. But, you know, there's always this search for moderates. I mean, Jonathan, you have a pretty good sense of history of U.S. Iranian relations. I mean, from Bud McFarlane's key in a birthday cake or whatever the fuck we did then, I mean, we always have this incredible desire to find a moderate to speak to in Iran, and it never works.

And we end up looking like naive idiots. Yeah, and actually for the listeners, what Mark's referring to is the Iran-Contra affair, where when we secretly went to go agree in Iran to delivering weapons for drugs and so on and all that scandal, there was a cake also delivered off the aircraft with a key in the cake, which is kind of a fascinating part of our history. I recommend people go read about it if they haven't read about that. But it's interesting. You got to explain that one.

Like, why will we put it again? It was like a trust exchange. Yeah. I mean, yeah. And it was actually organized by an Israeli businessman, and that's the one who recommended putting the cake or putting the key in the cake. It's a whole interesting. It's embarrassing, though.

It's a humiliating story. But again, it was the key bugged? No. Now, it is done. But if you're looking at today right now in Iran, the question about, is there a split? The answer is yes. And the way I can confirm that. So, you know, the regime pays a lot of people to go out in the streets and do these pro-regime protests to make it look like there are people in Iran, like widely supporting what's going on.

Now, these have actually gotten a little bit out of hand because the people that are supporting the negotiations in Switzerland on the pro-regime side are actually telling these protesters to please stop protesting. And they're not. because they're being controlled by IRGC elements who are telling them to continue protesting. And you can actually see this played out on different Iran-controlled media outlets. You know, there's the Islamic Republic of Iran broadcasting, which is the IRGC-controlled media. Then there's a Ministry of Intelligence-controlled broadcasting station also. And there are different narratives on both of these, even though they're both pro-regime. On the Ministry of Intelligence side and the foreign ministry-supported media, they're saying that these protests are going down and people are leaving the streets.

and on the IRGC side, they're actually amplifying it and saying more people are coming out to the streets to protest the U.S. negotiations with Iran. So there is certainly. I love this. It's interesting and we geek out on this stuff. The big question for you then doesn't matter. Does it is there, I mean, so, you know, we're seized on this. You see an intelligence report. There's splits. Okay.

Does it actually matter with the final Iranian position? How can the U.S. taking advantage of this argument? And maybe I'm totally wrong is it doesn't matter because the heartline is going to work out anyway. It does matter because the. the way that we are defining moderate and hardliner is shifting. They are all hardliners, in my opinion. If we say moderate, we're joking to ourselves, we're just talking in relative terms, but there's one person that's on the delegation in Switzerland that tells me that this matters, and that's Ghalibov. I actually saw yesterday, I think it was on CNN. He was described as a

moderate, and I had to reread that sentence because I was like, how are you calling this guy a moderate? He is a deep-seated hardlining member of the old IRGC crew that should have been whacked on day one. the U.S. asked Israel not to kill him, him and Vahidi, both. Because we wanted to negotiate with them because we didn't really understand who these people were. And now we see who they are. And he's there in Switzerland. So if he is there in Switzerland, then whatever he decides is going to be the law of the land, which is a very important point. It's not that they sent Aragchi this time or Pazeshkin. There's a reason Possackian is not on the delegation, because Possachian has zero control over what happens. He can say a lot,

and he does say a lot on social media, but it's the IRGC who's in charge. Ghalibov has held almost every important position in the IRGC that exists. And now he is the parliament speaker. So he controls the moduli also, which is their, like their Senate. He controls that now. And he's the one that's leading the delegation. It's him, Araghi, the foreign minister. It's represented from the Supreme National Security Council.

It's the central bank director of Iran, who's a sanctioned individual, but has a black diplomatic passport and travels to the United States to D.C. And oil representatives. So it's the Ministry of Oil. This is the delegation. To your point, Mick, this, yeah, exactly. This is about the Straits of Hormuz and the movement of oil. This is not about resolution of conflict. It's about a specific economic outcome, as you mentioned, Mark,

that Trump got flustered with what's going on economically and is trying to find a way out. That's why those people are at that meeting so that there can be a way out for the U.S. government to somehow get out of this with something. It seems like we're getting our asses handed. I mean, the Iranians are really good negotiators. I mean, but just, you know, I mean, this is, I mean, I hate this. say this, Mick, I'm like, I'm with you on this, but I want us to win, but you have this select team versus Whitkoff and Jared and J.D. Vance. I just, how do we win in this?

Well, plus, these negotiators on the Iran side have been negotiating the same people, the same named people have been negotiating for 40 years. They're super experienced. Yeah, they've met every American delegation and they've seen them come and go. It's kind of like us going to Afghanistan every year. And we meet the guys for the first time. They've been there the whole time, you know? And it's very similar to that. So, I mean, like, we're trying to come up with ideas,

and maybe I'll throw this to Andy. In fact, I will throw it to Andy. One of the biggest issues of getting ships of the Strait of Hormuz is getting ships to accept that it's safe enough even with U.S. military escort. You think there's a way that we could basically ensure all these ships and even put our people on it to try to get the free flow? because if we took that away from it, this becomes a different discussion.

Like, I'm throwing that out there. I don't have any basis to know whether that's a potential. But I think we need to start thinking out of the box right now because if we're headed down to an Iranian successful outcome of this. Like, is that a potential with the military escort and the military umbrella that would be over that we could start getting a free force? I think in answer to your question, I mean, and I hate to say this, but there's, The military side, there's no clean military fix. The military side could be used to enable a negotiated agreement about Straits for Moose. That's a tough part about this.

I mean, keeping it open by force is what the blockade already tried. It just turned the strait into contested space. You know, it didn't really solve anything. So a long-term military commitment to hold a 21-mile wide waterway against mines, fast boats and drones is not a... strategy you know i mean it's a it's a liability right um so the the real fix and it's a it's not a good answer i mean it's the only answer it's just not a satisfactory one is it's a slow structural approach right reduce dependence on the strait itself Saudi and uae pipelines uh already

bypass uh you know they're already working on a by part bypassing the straits uh with exporting their oil. But that's a long-term approach. Find ways to make the cost of closing it, land on Iran's own economy specifically, not just spike prices for the whole world. Right now the threat works precisely because the pain is global and diffuse.

It's not concentrated on Tehran, so we can find a way to do that. I mean, Hormuz isn't a problem, you can solve. And it's a fact of geography and Iran will always be able to lean on it. The real progress is making that leverage work less by finding, you know, ways around it and also directing some of that pain back on to Tehran. So it's, it can't be solved by the military, which, of course, paints me to say. And, you know, while I'm here and I know D's about to shut us down, he's got to go on to more important things. No, I'm loving this. But, but, you know, Mark and Mick both kind of said,

it brought up the point that we need guys who really know what the goals are and how to negotiate. And we talked about, what we should talk about, you know, what if they do? So very briefly, I think they need to handle Lebanon first, right, because it's a live fuse. Iran has explicitly tied almost access to Lebanon ceasefire holding. And we just watched it. You. You know, use that exact justification to shut the straight down three days after signing the MOU. So Israel isn't a party to this deal. Washington's having to manage a partner, it doesn't control. You know, it doesn't control the clock.

And that's going to mean real pressure on it. They're going to have to bring real pressure on on Israel, not just public statements asking for restraint because restraint hasn't worked. And until that is solved, And I mean real pressure. I mean, whatever leverage we have with Israel is the time to use it, because our interests as nations have diverged. And again, I don't always agree with J.D. Vance,

but he's right in that point. And Lebanon can make the whole thing blow up on our face unless we clamp it down right now. And the way to do that is bring pressure on Israel. That's number one. Number two is get the nuclear mechanism verified, not just promise, right? So 60 days isn't going to solve the problem,

but it's enough time to convert the vague language into a binding kind of verified agreement, similar to the Jigpoha, right? With real inspection access, a real timeline, something that costs Iran, a real price of it walks away. And then the other way, the third, The third thing is we've got to stop spending leverage before Iran has moved on anything. The blockade's gone.

The frozen assets are already moving. That was round one and it went before anything was verified. So whatever's left, the reconstruction fund, future sanctions relief has to stay strictly conditional this time tied to confirmed verifiable steps, not have to have. handed over on good faith alone. So, you know, I mean, the honest bottom line is nobody seriously expects 60 days to resolve the missile program or the proxies or the stockpile. The real test is narrower and that is what we can salvage out of the language from this

MAU. I think taking the steps we've already taken. At the same time, when it comes to Hormuz looking for a longer-term solution where we are not so dependent on HUMU's because this. whole talk of us keeping it open militarily is absolutely impractical and it plays right into Iran's hands. So we want to figure out a way to remove that Trump conk from Iran. It just makes you wonder like when they talked about the straight closing and we knew it was going to be closed, what was the plan? What was the plan to either keep it open or prevent it

from closing or, I mean, that's what you talk about in the policy coordination process. I mean, it's Yeah, this is Absolutely. Just this is where I have a problem with Centcom, you know, and I think

I suspect that Mark is right on this that, I mean, I don't know what advice was offered, but I feel that if you offer advice, if you're at that nexus, right, between policy and strategy

and you have four stars on your collar, you should be willing to throw your career away for the sake of the nation. If you are offering advice, And you know that not following that. The intersport Elvri's summer sale is here with up to 50% of your favorite sports brands. Kit the whole family for less in our huge summer sale. Fresh gear for running, the gym, football and more.

Now on, in-store and online. It's going to be disastrous to your country's interest. Then it's time to resign. And we didn't see that. I don't know what happened. I don't know why sitcom wasn't banging the table harder on that piece. but it does make me suspicious and very disappointed, of course, not that anyone's really losing sleep over my disappointment.

I don't know that they didn't say that, you know, here's your options and they all are not good. I don't know, but... Yeah, I mean, I... Yeah, absolutely. I'm saying in order for... But there needs to be some bite to that, right? Here's your options.

But if the boss follows down a path that you know is going to be disastrous, then what do you do? Just troll along. say, okay, well, he didn't take my advice. No, as a four-star general, you owe your country a little more than that. That's just my belief. You get treated like a pro-consul, like a viceroy, people jenniflupped in front of you. I mean, those of you wearing uniform, no, I'm not exaggerating. It's unbelievable the way we treat four stars, as though they're gods. When the time comes, with that, you know, the whole Spider-Man thing, right? With great power comes great responsibility.

And that includes being willing to say, okay, I'm going to walk away from this because what you're going to do, what you're about to do by not following my advice is going to seriously hurt our interests. I know that all the counter arguments to this, blah, blah, blah, you are, you know, I'm not challenging civilian control of the military. far from it i'm saying that the military has a very key role in in uh in in in the long run helping political leadership not do things that are disastrous i mean look the southcom commander or chief member he resigned he retired you want to know parties i just you know so there there is that option so i just i think it's yeah and it does happen and it does happen Occasionally, very occasionally in the U.S. military, too occasionally. I mean, Greg Neubal was probably the last time a three-star or four-star resigned over a question of principle,

and that was at the outset of the Iraq War. And, Andy, the reason why I think it's fair to ask these questions is that the possibilities, and I hope it doesn't get that way, for a complete strategic disaster right now for the United States is real. I mean, that's how bad it could be. No, I agree with you. 100% I mean this is a dozy

you know that's why I'm saying it's not okay to now hey you didn't take my advice so I'm still going to draw my pay and be genufacted

to no it doesn't work that way in my mind of course I never God damn above colonel maybe that's why but

man oh man okay what a show So we'll see what happens, obviously, this week, and we're going to, once we get off here, we'll probably be looking on our Twitter to see about any kind of updates and stuff like that with the talks in Switzerland right now. Yeah, I don't know what else to say. We're doing plugs.

John Hackett, Great Book. Iran Shadow Weapons, the theory of a regular war. Those links are in the description. Mick Mulroy, the Whitefish Security Summit. Link is in the description coming up in February of next year. Mark, I'm going to put the link to the article you wrote recently down to, in the description as well that we mentioned, so check that out. Of course, Andy Milburn, when the Tampas gathers, great autobiography.

That link is in the description as well. Do us a favor. If you like the show, hit like, hit subscribe, rated five stars, and check out our Patreon. Patreon.com slash the team house for free episodes, early episodes, and helping support the show. Guys, a pleasure as always. Oh, and happy Father's Day. Yes, indeed. guys. Happy Father's Day to John

to be. Yeah. That's right. Very cool. Really? You find a pop. Wow. Makes always looking for beers. Always. He is. The miracles of modern medical science. It doesn't matter what age you are now. You can still procreate.

Get on you, John. Thanks. Thanks, guys. Hey, guys, I want to take a moment to tell you about the Team House podcast newsletter. If you go and subscribe, it's It's totally free. And what it will do is aggregate all of our data, all of our content that we put out, the things that are on the team house, on our geopolitics podcast, eyes on, things that I write journalistically with Sean Naylor on the high side, anything else that we have going on. Books we recommend, upcoming guests that we have coming on the show.

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