The Team House - Is the U.S. Starting Another Illegal War? | EYES ON GEOPOLITICS

Episode Date: February 23, 2026

We break down the rising tensions with Iran, from the U.S. military buildup to the real strike options on the table and what escalation could look like. With Mick Mulroy, Marc Polymeropoulos, Andy Milburn, and Iran expert Jonathan Hackett, we examine the strategic, legal, and regional implications—and what it means for U.S. policy and the Iranian people.Jon Hackett's Book:https://a.co/d/082z28uYMontana Security Conference ⬇️https://mi1.suitsandspooks.com/Support the show on Patreon:⬇️https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouseSubscribe to our new newsletter!!!!https://teamhousepodcast.kit.com/joinNew merch, patches, and stickers! ⬇️https://theteamhouse-shop.fourthwall.comCheck 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/Find 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 Audio"0:00 — Start01:00 — U.S. Military Buildup04:30 — How Iran Thinks10:00 — Geneva Talks & Regime Odds12:20 — U.S. Strike Options17:30 — Are Decapitation Strikes Legal?23:00 — Iran’s Asymmetric Response35:30 — Carrier Readiness & Limits49:00 — Regime Change vs Deal01:02:30 — What Comes NextBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support.

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Thanks a bunch. Hey, everybody. Welcome to another episode of Eyes on Geopolitics. I'm here with Mick Mulroy, Mark Polymeropolis, and Jonathan Hackett. I think Andy Milburn will be joining us soon. A lot happening. US just beat Canada in the gold medal game in the Olympics. And overtime, incredible game.

Yep. He is a communist. He was rooting a government. I wasn't rooting against America. I was more apathetic to the whole thing. That's that best I'll give it to you. I mean, I gave a little, I didn't really fist pump when Jackie scored. But anyway, it was a really good game.

Go down to the street, go see AOC and have your little latte with her. I would love to, to be honest. I'm happy to buy her a latte. A lot happening, as usual. We brought John on, of course, because John is like our resident expert in Iran. and things seem to be heating up. We have a ton of assets in and around the area. That's John.

That's beautiful, Mick. That's beautiful. Yeah. Yeah. Check out John's book. I read it. I didn't just pull it out from them. Iran's shadow weapons, covert action, intelligence operations,

and unconventional warfare. It's out now. That link is into description. Yeah. So a lot of happening. We have a ton of assets in the Gulf in and around the area, in and around Iran. as much as we've had in 20 years outside of the ground forces.

So we really are showing the stick. I don't know. There is a meeting planned on Thursday with Iranian foreign minister and Whitkoff and Jared Kushner. I don't know if that's like for a new hotel or anything or actually this Iran deal. But yeah, that's pretty much what's happening. Obviously everything else in the world is exploding as well. but that's what's, you know, dominating the headlines. So guys, welcome.

And you guys can mutter wrestle for who wants to go first. Well, I got to jump early, unfortunately. So, well, where to start? I think you were right. We have probably as much airpower arrayed for this as we did and maybe even surpassed the 2003 invasion of Iraq. which me and Barker were intimately involved with, not the air power. And a considerable amount of naval force, right?

So this looks like it's headed either to force or on into an agreement, although it seems unlikely if we maintain the maximal position of having to zero enrichment, including significant restrictions on the ballistic missile program, maybe even proxy force support. If they do not accept that, and they haven't accept that, And according to some, they haven't even acknowledged the red lines that we have, even though, as Mark just pointed out, the meeting is on Thursday. That might be to hear if they have come along to our side and want to avoid what looks like to be a fairly significant military confrontation between the U.S. and Iran. If they do not, I do not see the U.S. just simply turning tail and going home.

I just don't see that happening. So unless they agree with, it has to be way better than the JCPOA politically for President Trump to accept it, it's going to be significant. Now, the question is going to be, is it going to be focused just on the nuclear sites? There's some indication that they've started rebuilding

and reinforcing those sites and the ballistic missile launch sites and manufacturing centers, or is it also going to include direct targeting of the regime? And there's a lot. I don't know. It's hard to keep up with the stuff that's accurate, not accurate, but there's a lot of information, I should say, that they have started basically continuity of regime planning, meaning that they've started dispersing their leadership. They've started having every key leader pick four successive leaders. So it's clear that Iran, that indicates to me that they think it's going to happen, which means they know they're not going to go on a Thursday and agree to what the United States. States is. So I will stop there thinking that potentially I'd like to see, as I hope everybody would, a diplomatic resolution of this, but it doesn't look like it's headed. Hey, John, can I ask you a question? It's actually great to have Iran experts here because, you know, Mick and I play them on TV. And we're actually not really Iran experts.

And one of the things, I think we have to have a little bit of humility on this. But the key question that I'm kind of really grappling with, and then perhaps you can set some light, has to do with not U.S. decision making, but Iranian decision making. And I think it's just the notion, but that does kind of reflect back to how does the U.S. kind of grapple with the notion of if the Supreme Leader, if the Iranian leadership actually has made the calculation that, you know, a military, a strike on them is actually worth it for regime survival. How can there actually be an agreement at that point? And, you know, I've been kind of mulling this and kind of contemplating this to see, you know, is there really a diplomatic opening here? because if you go with that line of thinking that I was reading some former Israeli intelligence officials saying that that's the case, then how do you get out of this right now? Or is this a conflict just inevitable?

If the Iranians really say like, hey, we're not going to back down to pressure. This is too much pride for us. And the U.S. kind of holds that maximalist line. You know, where do we go from here now other than in a week or so ago in the future, when these things are kind of go round and around again, we have this enormous force package ready to go. What are your thoughts, John? Yeah, so I'm thinking back to, I think it was 2006 when the Mossad director of Merid Dagan said that Mahmoud Amadiyadh, Amadiyadh, is not our rational, but he's rational. Like, within his own worldview, the things he's doing make sense

to him. And I think this is the best way to think about how the regime is calculating what it's doing. There's two precedents for what's happening right now. The first is 1988 when the Iran-Iraq war was negotiated to end. And the previous Ayatollah said that this is a poison chalice that they have to drink from to end the war after a million people had just died on both sides. But that meant that they had to get to the point where a million people had died on both sides before drinking from that poison chalice, according to them. And then, of course, the other was the 2015 JCPOA, which was an imperfect agreement, but to them was a necessary agreement to get what they wanted after a very long time of pressure to reach that point, including the Stuxnet attack on their

nuclear facilities and other things that really crippled the regime, not as publicly as people have seen, but did have effects on the regime. The point there is that they don't get there until it seems like everything else has been exhausted, and there's no other choice for survival. And right now, they may not be calculating that they're at that point. True, they see all these forces arrayed against them, but there has been restraint, I guess, you could call it, shown against Venezuela, for example, and also back in June. June last year where the U.S. didn't push beyond a certain strategic endpoint. Similar to 1991, when George Bush Sr. decided not to push into Baghdad after Desert Storm,

Desert Shield, there was a decision made to stop. I think the regime may be looking at those historic precedents and hoping within their own worldview that there's more to be squeezed out of this. And if we look at the JCPOA, you know, it was imperfect for one reason. That was because proxies were not included in that agreement to the West. And perhaps the West, with the West, like that now, but I feel like the proxies are so weakened and so destroyed that it's almost a throwaway that could be added to it that wouldn't really have a true effect in reality because Hezbollah is so crippled, Qathezbollah has crippled, the Iraqi other PMF groups are so crippled. So you have to wonder, is it just two tracks? Is it nuclear and ICBM or

MRBM missile limitations that are going to be built into this agreement? Or is it not even an agreement at all that the regime is looking for? Perhaps they're looking for a safe exit out of Iran into maybe Moscow or some country where they could be safe. And this is a facade where they're just looking like they're negotiating these things that are familiar to everyone. But instead, it could be actually they're trying to negotiate for their own survival, whatever that survival might look like. Do you think the United States, though, understands this?

I mean, one of the worries, and I think, you know, we've talked about this on the show before is, you know, there has been a hollowing out of Iran expertise in the U.S. government. You know, the National Security Council staff, I don't think operates as it did in the past. And we have seen both at CIA and the State Department kind of a lot of exodus of really smart folks. Do you think there are people around, you know, Kushner and Whitkoff and the administration who know what they're doing on this? I don't know the answer to that. I'm curious if you have confidence that they are being given this kind of analysis and advice that you just kind of put forward. I think they're not.

And I think it's not necessarily because they don't want that. I think it's because it's not organic right now. Like, if you look back at 2015 in the years leading up to the JCPOA, you had kind of a concert of things happening together that it was organic. For example, John Kerry and Jawad Zarif walking together in Geneva, having private conversations. You had other people like Robert Malley. And in college in 1979, new members of the future regime as college students in the United States. They had these relationships that had been built over decades. And it just doesn't organically exist in the current group of four.

folks who are in Switzerland doing these negotiations. Andy, greetings. Good to see you guys. Any comments on the kind of current status of where we are? There was just an announcement on social media that Thursday might be a day in which Krishna and Witkoff meet the Iranian Foreign Minister in Geneva. But it looks like there's kind of one last gasp effort to avoid conflict. Yeah, I mean, have we started a bet on this?

I think we should It's a 75% bet that by December 31st will be a new regime in Iran Really? Well, I mean, isn't the guy, isn't that the chances a guy's just going to die?

Isn't he like 84? Right. Yeah. So there'll be a new regime. I don't know why you take that bit. And you know somebody in the NSC probably fucking put some money on it. That's a big issue now.

Andy, what are you going to know? So almost for a moment I've said a loss for words because, Mark, you know, if you're asking me what my prediction is, I just, I don't have one anymore. And here's why I'm not sure. I, if you were to ask senior members of the administration right now, this isn't necessarily a criticism. What is going to happen? I don't think anyone knows.

I think it's, I think this could go, this could act out on a whim right up to the last minute. You know, we talked about the fact that this is, you know, we hate to use the term unprecedented. In fact, we try and avoid using that term on this show. But this is a buildup in the Middle East that I think I'm correct in saying hasn't occurred since the earliest part of, you know, this century, right? I mean, not the early part of this century around the beginning of the Iraq War. So to back down now or to find a compromise and then have to reposition all of these assets could definitely be seen as a credibility below. You know, whether it's painted that way or not, you know, you and I, and probably, I think a lot of people who listen to the show know how things work in the Middle East. And regardless how it is painted, it does appear, you know, we've been saying banging the drum, we're going to do this, we're going to do this, we're going to

to do this, we're going to strike, yeah. And then we don't. What are the repercussions from that? Mick, I want to get before you, I know, Mick, you got to go, but there's something that's been bugging me. I sent you a note the other day in our chat on this, too. And that's the idea of, it seems like the administration, you know, keeps leaking their potential strike options.

And then, John, I want your taking this too. But, Mick, the strike options, it's like, it's like, you know, go to a New Jersey diner. And, you know, you want to go, you know, order some, some, you know, fried eggs or or a burger. And one of them has to do with, we're going to assassinate the leadership. And, you know, and to me that, first of all, there's a little humility there involved. I don't know if the United States has that level of granularity in terms of intelligence collection to do so. We're not the Israelis. But number two, and Mick, this goes to

things you and I did in the past. You know, there are, there is international law on this. I don't know, you know, we are not at armed conflict with Iran. Under LOWAC, we're not supposed to be able to do this until we are at conflict with them. And then there's the executive order, one, two, three, three, three, which bans the assassination of foreign leaders. And I see nothing in the press about this. But for you and I, and Andy, I'll throw you in there too for, you know, for and Jonathan, I mean, everybody, Dee, we're going to throw you in as well. You're coming on the covert action. Like, this kind of stuff is what, how we don't go to jail. Like, there is, I mean, you know, so it's not like a bunch of CIA and Marines are like, hey, let's go waxing people. Like,

there actually are rules behind this. There are lawyers attached to your hip everywhere. And so, Mick, your thoughts that there's no debate on this. I mean, to me, I mean, you sat in that job as the, as the nasty, I believe, you know, I mean, you don't just go assassinate. And, you know, you remember when when Trump said, hey, I want to go kill Bashar al-Azad? It was written about in Bob Woodward's book. And I think the national security world was like, yeah, we really can't do that. Anyway, your thoughts on that menu option with the lack of any kind of legal underpinning. And of course, I will throw out that Mick also went to law school, so this matters to you. There is that.

So there's not a lot of debate on any of it, right? That's kind of surprising. I mean, normally you'd think that there'd be a lot of discussion, the president, talking about it with the American people, or why this is important. Because it's, you know, the enemy gets a vote on this. This might not just be surgical strikes and then it's over. This could be, you know, aircraft carriers that are struck by a missile. It could be, you know, soldiers, U.S. soldiers that are killed sitting at a base somewhere. It could be clandestine ops against our, you know, soft targets and diplomats, right?

It could be all the above. And, you know, Jonathan should talk about all their capabilities that they have that he lays out in this book. So there should be a discussion before we even have, I think, a direct confrontation. And folks that watch the show know that I supported this strikes against the nuclear facilities. So I'm not dovish on this. But there needs to be buying because this might not go as smoothly as Venezuela. Right? This could go sideways. We could have, you know, in addition to everything I just referenced, we could have pilot shot down, etc. Is a decapitation strike on leadership? Is that legal? What is your view on that? As a foreign agency, depending on official and lawyer.

Yeah. So it is not legal to take out a leader of a country that we're not at war. Right. Once we're at war, which would be the same with us, right? So they would be essentially legal to take, try to take out our commander-in-chief. But we're not at war with them. We're doing this because, you know, at least what I think is we're trying to mitigate the threat of them acquiring nuclear weapon, which we, through multiple administrations, said is unacceptable. But to go after the leadership, even as despotic as it is, is another step, right? So we have no authority. We, you know, the executive branch and the DOD, to go to war with Iran. And we're taking that one step further, or at least in the press, with debating whether we're going to take out the leadership. So there's a legal issue with it, but there's also a practical.

Like, okay, so say we do take out the leadership. Who's going to take over? Is it going to be more amenable to joining an agreement with the United States? Potentially not. The IRGC has historically been even more hawkish when it comes to acquire a nuclear weapon than the Supreme Leader. So there is the legality, and then there's the actual practical effect of taking out the leadership, which might not be putting the United States in a better position. And certainly, it could destabilize the entire region, which is why I think so many countries

are really concerned about what happens next. I would only add one more thing and then toss it to you guys. President Trump keeps saying limited. The way I'm reading that, and it could be wrong, is normally as everybody in the military knows, you present a low, medium, and high threshold. Same thing in the agency, right? If you're saying limited, it's, it's not. It's a little. least it indicates to me he's talking on the low end. And I don't think taking out the Supreme leader would be considered the low end. So I don't know if it's legitimate that they're talking about this as one of the courses of action they're considering or not because, you know, I just wouldn't see that as a limited course of action.

Jonathan, what do you think about that, that kind of a disaster? When you're, you know, a regime decapitation strike as an opening sale, is that legal as an as an smart as well? Is it smart. Yeah, I mean, I'm thinking back to the Kossum Soleimani assassination back in 2020, January 8th, and they're up before January 8th. And there's what is legal and what's possible. And with the assassination of Soleimani, they use the authorization for use of military force that was approved for war in Iraq. Like back to that 2003 buildup, we were just talking about, that's what that was for. Nowhere in there doesn't mention Iran. You know, there's lots of obviously debate about and discussion about how that was like patently unlawful. according to international law, and according to our own law, because of who that person was and what he represented, as far as a political figure and a military figure from a sovereign country. But does that matter in terms of U.S. decision making? Because like the Mealian dialogue from Thucydides, you know, the strong do what they can and the weak do what they must. And if the U.S. is the major power, what relevance does the law have to that power? And that's like a moral ethical question. but when you have a National Security Council who's making decisions based on a single individual's direction, sometimes moral and ethical decision making is not put into there.

And so thinking about the attorneys they have, making these things, I don't know if remember John Yu put out the torture memo back in the early 2000s for Rumsfeld. I mean, the attorneys that are there are making opinions that have been kind of predetermined by the policy setter. They say, we want a legal opinion that justifies this action, and that legal opinion will justify that action, even if it's a very flimsy or tenuous connection to the moral, ethical and legal things behind it. And I wouldn't be surprised if a memo was being drafted in the past few weeks or memos, very similar in structure where they basically just say, here are A, B, and C, reasons why this is lawful. And if an outside observer analyzes that, they would say, that's clearly not right. But the president's not interested in that analysis. He's looking for a legal justification, because that's how Internet. law works, there isn't, you know, a common law of international law. There's this thing that we agree to and that we uphold, and that's why we respond to the pressures of international

outcry and hide behind our memos, regardless of how lawful they look. With Venezuela, you know, we used, we had a thin justification for that. We've had thin justifications for invading Iraq. I remember holding up the photograph at the UN Security Council showing the refrigerator trucks of chemical weapons and all that, despite those things not being true. And I think that's what the U.S. will produce in this case, no matter what the option is, whether it's just striking nuclear facilities again, or if it's decapitating the regime, they will again be some small, thin justification made to hide behind in the international community, despite the U.S. doing it no matter what.

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All right. Let's just switch to one topic that I think, again, has not been covered a lot. Jonathan's going to really help out with this. But I want to go to Andy just for his thoughts on it. And that has to do with potential kind of asymmetric or any kind of Iranian response. again, I think we've gotten so enamored with the power and the might of the U.S. military, particularly with successful operations and the Maduro op being one. You know, it always, I think in essence we've gotten lucky in some points that it hasn't ended in U.S. casualties.

But I don't think we're talking enough about in the cost-benefit of this is what the potential Iranian response. So Andy, and we'll go to Jonathan in a sec because I think he's written a book and is an expert on this. But Andy, I want to get your sense on this as well as someone who's a veteran of, decades of being in the Middle East and frankly going up against the Iranians and their proxies. And so I think those of us who have done that do have a, you know, there's no hubris. There's a sense of humility that this is not an adversary that might just fold and we might take some hits on this. And let me just let me close this by a conversation.

Jonathan mentioned Mir de Gan. When I work with the Israelis in the past, particularly in the early 2000s, when they would be considering operations like this, they would do a cost-benefit analysis and say, And I remember Dagan saying this to us personally saying, you know, if we take this course of action, we might lose an embassy. Okay, got it. And everyone's kind of shocked. And they said, but we're willing to take that risk. And that certainly to me is not being done in the United States now.

So, Andy, what are your thoughts on that in terms of potential Iranian response? And are we not talking about this enough in terms of what the American people might, you know, be seeing in the next couple of days or weeks? Yeah. And I'm glad you brought this up because I think I think I'm. It's fair to say that pretty much everyone in our august group of co-hosts for this show now has been involved with this particular problem set in the past. You know, enough said, but my point is that we've all been focused on Iran's malign influence in the region, right? And I think, again, I can't speak for you guys, but if we could go back, you know,

the Tujikpoha offered a couple of positive things. It offered access. It offered some level of transparency. I said some level, not total transparency, but it offered a better level than we have now, right? We went from scrapping a jick-poa to a penis. But the big problem with the jig-poa was that it didn't even address proxies. And I think what we're going to look at, again, I said I wouldn't predict, but I think what we're going to look at again is a default to the easy button,

which is a focus on nuclear enrichment and kind of a hand wave towards proxies. And I think one of the problems here that we've all wrestled with is the problem of monitoring. So if Iran said, okay, hey, we're out of proxy business, okay, we would know, hey, that Iran's lying because just like ballistic missiles, they're not going to de-invest. But secondly, how is that monitored, you know, and how do we do we, do we, do we? We do this by conducting meos and taking ships over and trying to prove the smoking gun connected with Iran. I mean, it's not an easy, you can't just say, hey, Iran's not going to suddenly say, hey,

I'm going to open up all shipments from Iranian ports to inspections so you can ensure we're not transporting lethal aid to our proxies. We know that's not going to happen. But what measures short of that, can that problem even be monitored? That is, I think that, from purely from my point of view, that's one of the biggest problems with the discussions now. You either make it relatively uncomplexed and you focus on nuclear enrichment or you get to what is really the issue for the US, really is the issue, not an issue that appears existential

because Israel convinced us that it is, but that problem of destabilizing the region, which is, I would say the primary reason, and ballistic missiles, but to a lesser extent. I don't see this conversation going now. The last thing I'll say, you know, we've been talking about what will the strikes, you know, what sort of strikes they will be? And of course, we begin with, well, what are they intended to accomplish? I would say one of two things. One is a mowing the grass type return to nuclear facilities that perhaps sets the program

back six months to a year. And the other is retribution, right? I said I was going to do this, so I'm going to do it. At least 7,000 people have died, you know, at least, probably many, many more in the in the Iranian latest Iranian revolution. The president did say that if the killing went on, he was going to intervene. The killing did go on after he said that. So we may be facing a, hey, I've got to do this.

And that, if we're following that rationale, that leads me to say only under the those conditions, I think, would we go after leaders of the besiege or the IOC and say, hey, this was justice for what they did in terms of meeting out punishment to the protesters? Very last thing I'll say is, I don't think anyone, I would hope no one harbors any real thought that by taking leaders out of any organization within Iran, we are really enabling a Democrat takeover by any opposition group because we're not. That's a huge gap, as we all know. Jonathan, what's the Iranian response likely to be in your mind? And I think go in terms of, you know, high, medium, or low confidence on this. You know, so, you know, and also throw in the

notion, I think in the past, there's been some kind of tacit understandings in order to avoid escalation between the U.S. and Iran. But the asymmetric capabilities and what Iran could do in terms of damage to U.S. interests, U.S. facilities overseas, just to Americans. What are your thoughts on that? Because, again, I don't think that's really been discussed enough, particularly in the U.S. national security media from Congress or the American people. Everyone thinks this is so antiseptic, but it might not be. So what are your thoughts on Iranian capabilities to inflict some harm on us? So a lot of the responses we've seen over the past 25 years from Iran against the West are not the full response option that the regime has. And I think that that has kind of

convince some observers that perhaps the regime is so weak that it can't actually respond. But if you look at Farsi language discussions from the regime to their own audience, they use this term heroic restraint all the time when they're talking about what they've done. Like when Kossam Soleimani was assassinated, that was like huge groundbreaking moment where, like, this guy was untouchable. And like the thought was if he dies, the whole thing is going to be like the massive war going to happen. And there wasn't. And the Ayatollah himself said that they're exercising heroically.

restraint. Like, what does that mean, right? And if you look at what their actual military doctrine is, it's called the Mosaic doctrine, where they have this very high emphasis on dispersal of not just forces, but also decision-making, which is part of the reason why the airline was shot down in January after Soleimani was killed, because decision-making was so decentralized that people that should have been looking at these missile systems were not looking at them because of their way that they're doing their command and control, it's designed so that if leaders get taken out, the war still happens, right? And that's actually from the German military and World War II called Offstrog tactic, which is mission command, which the U.S. also uses, but Iran has really

pushed it down to the ground force level. And why I'm saying that, when we think about the negotiations and including proxies into those negotiations to remove Iran's connection to proxies, this is an unrealistic request that I hope that negotiators understand why. When we look at, for example, the Marine Corps, we have the Marine Air Ground Task Force concept where the air and the ground component work together and they're both necessary components of the success of those operating forces. The proxies are also like this within the mosaic doctrine. If you remove the proxies, the doctrine falls apart because part of that rapidly decentralized command and control is the fact that the proxies can operate on their own without regime coordination in the moment. And this is a

huge difference between Arab militaries and Iranians military, not just the Artaish, which is their regular conventional forces, but also the IRGC. They're designed to operate independently if they must. They're designed to operate without any connection back to some C2 node somewhere else. And I think that when we're thinking about how do they actually respond without heroic restraint, this is the real scenario we should be looking at, rather than looking at the past 25 years and saying, well, how do they react when we did X, Y, and Z? Because that's likely not what they're going to do this time, because I think they understand this is an existential threat for real. And you can see that not in their rhetoric, but in their actions. For example, on

January 31st, the IRGC dispersed a bunch of ground force units to all of their intercontinental ballistic missile sites and their medium range ballistic missile sites, which they've never done before. And they did this to protect those sites from ground force incursions, which means they expect there could be boots in the ground that might attack those facilities. They've never done that before since 1988, right? Another example is sending out no-tams for live fire over the Persian Gulf, warning mariners to stay away, and actually firing live munitions across the water, which they haven't done in a long time. Additionally, They have Russia there with them doing those maritime exercises, which is obviously a deterrent effect, which changes the U.S. decision calculus about what type of attacks they might take because they don't want to hit Russian forces.

Or maybe if they do, they have to change how they think about that. 80% of their oil goes to China. That means China has to be part of this decision-making calculus as well, and Iran knows that. So they're probably thinking about how do we use those assets we have, which are foreign assets, Chinese and Russian assets, and how do we disperse decision-making as far down as possible so that even if the U.S. does strike us, will be able to be able to. able to do things to not just them, but to Israel, to UAE, to Bahrain, to Saudi Arabia. I mean, these are the things that are in their minds as they're thinking about what they do. And I would imagine that these decisions have already been made long ago, right? So it's not like they're deciding it now and they're disseminating the information now about

what to do. Instead, this is part of their doctrine. It's been built in since 2002 when the Mosaic doctrine was made part of their military doctrine at their basically equivalent of their war college. all of the officers who have been trained in the IRGC since 2002 have been trained on this doctrine. Just like the Marine Air Ground Task Force concept we have in the Marine Corps, very similar. You know, at every echelon of rank, they're exposed to a higher level of this concept. And that is their doctrine, that we've just never seen it before used 100%.

And that's what I would be concerned about. Do you think the administration has this level of granularity, again, that you're describing, whether it's NSC staff or input from the state or the agency or from DIA? I mean, because I would think that this is actually important. Again, in a normal working administration, you have a course of action, there'd be national security council meetings, it's staffed up and down, and there would be, you know, and you do go through this cost-benefit calculation. But do you think anyone's actually, you know, in an Oval Office meeting with the president

saying, hey, this is what could happen and this is why, exactly this scenario you laid out? And then, of course, it affects the negotiators, because if we're putting proxies on the table, but you're saying this is non-negotiable, then, you know, what are we doing? And I think you're right that probably there is not the level of granularity that you would hope. And it's not that it doesn't exist. It does. For example, the DIA puts out an unclassified report every year called Iran's military power. And it's like a 150 page document that anyone can download and read.

And it has a lot of this information about how their order of battle looks and how they disperse forces and etc. Is that information making it to the Oval Office? Probably not. And I remember even during my time when I was the Middle East most recently at the embassy over there, we had the President's Daily Brief getting put together all the time, and it wasn't getting read. So even if the President's Daily Brief is not getting read, and that is the most important piece of material that we produce as an intelligence community, if that's not getting read, then that other reports definitely not getting read. Right. And that means it's not just not getting read by the president. It's not being absorbed by the decision makers that are there that could go tell the president that this is perhaps, you know, option A might be preferable to option B because of this granularity that we have. And I don't think that that exists right now.

Andy, quick question for you. There's been reports. The Wall Street Journal wrote an article, and I find it interesting because, you know, we've all been out there for extended periods of times and get cranky, but that there is some issues with, I think it was the Ford, the carrier, the carrier, the carrier that's being extended now. And the deployment, I think it's going to be the longest deployment of a carrier since Vietnam. And, you know, sailors, you know, pilots or whatever are getting cranky.

There's problems with the toilet. I mean, it sounds, you know, it sounds a little bit kind of into the weeds, but do you think any of that matters? And it's not necessarily for morale, but also, you know, shit starts breaking. You and you and Jonathan certainly know that. But, Andy, what are your thoughts on kind of this extended deployment? And does that cause you any concern? You see a lot on social media. People are saying suck it up.

I'm not sure that's really the right response. Of course, Commander Chief calls you to do something, you do it. But, you know, should we be concerned about this extended deployment? and then, you know, and what, really an immense amount of firepower with that carrier battle group, what they can bring. Yeah, so a couple of things. I think that's a really good point. And, you know, the Marine in me is, you know, shut the fuck up. What are you talking about?

But on the other hand, look, it's a, we keep saying this, and it's progressively true and true. It's a, it's an all-volunteer force and the all-volunteer force. the demographics within that all volunteer force change repeatedly. So, you know, you can't, and I would argue that social media access makes it even worse, right? People think that, oh, hey, people can communicate better with their families. Well, they can to a point, but it also heightens that sense of proximity and the proximity of all their concerns at home. Where I'm heading on this is, yeah, I think you're definitely seeing cracks. Navy is notoriously closed-mouthed. I think John will agree with that when it comes to releasing

information about morale or about leadership. And when they relieve people, it's always, you know, loss of trust and confidence. And Rakel's not much better. My point is, there's always kind of this opaque thing. But if you look between the lines, you've got, you know, you've got a lot of churn and social media about reduced readiness of these carrier groups. That's a pragmatic reason. It's not that we're giving in to feeling overly compassionate to whatever generation this is. You've got a record of mishaps on the, it was on the Roosevelt, right, recently. I forget how many aircraft they lost overboard.

They shot one of their own aircraft down. Some of these mistakes were when you, when you watch them on video, it's just incomprehensible. How does a train crew do those things? I don't know what the investigations have revealed. The Navy haven't released those investigations, but I would maybe fatigue as part of it, right? Either way, something's going wrong. And we saw this in the Pacific and the Seventh Fleet. I remember back in, you know, about 10, 15 years ago, culminating in a couple of fatal

collisions. Jonathan, what are your thoughts on that too? And think about it from a leadership perspective, if you want to address it that way, because I think the idea of the suck it up is not going to work if you're the captain of the carrier. I mean, you do care about your crew. Yeah. And so, and of course, then there's the notion, too, of readiness and being able to carry out critical tasks in combat in which people are going to be asked to put in 20-hour days. Yeah, you've got a real dilemma because of the way our fleets are designed.

you can't just send another aircraft carrier that hasn't been spun up yet. You know, it takes so many months to get ready to go. So your only option is to chop a ship from 7th Fleet to 5th Fleet, for example, and extend its deployment. And now you're asking for every person participating on that thing to extend their life. And mentioning social media, actually, I've seen posts on Facebook and other places where spouses are complaining about how much time their husbands are out there, which is a problem from an OPSEC perspective,

because we're not the only ones looking at that. And when morale gets affected like that, there are leaks like this that can then be used to exploit the, not just the information environment, but also the actual combat effectiveness of those individuals because it helps the other side understand things. And I also mention actually the regime is taking advantage of exactly what you're talking about right now. I just saw, I'm at Yale Law School right now, and we have a veterans community. And there was a veterans community message put out requesting a petition to be signed by combat veterans to protest against. against the US going to war against Iran. I looked into where that thing came from, and it came from the Quincy Institute,

which is a regime-connected think tank, because they want veterans to basically stay the statement, and then the regime can say, look, American veterans don't support this war. So we cannot forget that information environment that is attached to an integral to these combat deployments of actual ships sitting out there at sea at the same time, because it's the same world, right?

We can't just think about the naval dimension or the air dimension. They're all connected together. And I'll also mention, too, that the UK just disallowed the U.S. from using Diego Garcia, which is a massive difference from the past. And it's extremely important because last year in April, when we were also doing a lot of deterrent buildup with our lancers, we use Diego Garcia to preposition those lancers because we need a certain area and distance to put those aircraft for them to be effective, not just to be used once, but to use over and over in combat.

And Diego Garcia is kind of that special place to do that where we have access basing and over. flight. Well, the UK just disallowed us from doing that not only in Diego Garcia, but also in mainland UK. So that changes the calculus and it pushes a lot of pressure onto the Navy, because that means the Navy is now the go-to place to launch from sea rather than launching from land. And of course, there are a couple of places we can use, like Jordan, for example, and Qatar to launch air assets, but those are so close and inside the engagement zone that kind of puts them at risk in a way where we still need further out rings of aircraft. And the only way to do that now, because the UK is prohibiting us from using those locations, is aircraft carriers, which again

puts further pressure on those forces that are going to be deployed there. Because if we launch a strike and it lasts for more than a day, those aircraft carriers have to remain even longer than they have remained now. Right. And what does that mean? Do we bring another aircraft carrier from another fleet, and if we do that, we lose our force projection in those areas where we've removed those carriers. So these are all things I'm thinking about when I'm seeing what's going on, especially with the Mediterranean deployment and then the fifth fleet deployment's ramping up. I would just add that, you know, there's been obviously a lot of controversy over the UK denial of Diego Garcia, but, you know, this is what happens when we treat allies like shit. It was in the UK when the kind of

explosion of anger about President Trump's statements about NATO forces and their performance in Afghanistan, the whole Greenland issue, and the anger in the UK, and this is not just the general public, but also with current and former, at least intelligence officials that I know, was something I'd never seen before. And so this is the result. I mean, Kier Storm or the prime minister, who would never, I mean, no British prime minister would do this except if he had the support of the public, and he does. There's no, the political controversy in the UK is not, has a lot to do with the Epstein files. It has very little to do with Starmer's move here, because I think it's popular because of we've treated our allies like crap. Let me just flip something to D. I'm going to put you

on the spot here. Great. I was, no, I was joking before about your love of AOC, and I'm totally kidding on this. This is a political podcast, usually. But I think, but AOC did make the news because she started, you know, standing out on social media, you know, no war in Iran. And And I guess the question I would have for you is, you know, what is a smart strategy from the Democrats? Presumably they're the ones or select Republicans as well who are not in favor of military action. And would it be just kind of a statement like that, which in some ways I think is not helpful or would it be better to say, hey, you know, what we do need is congressional authorization. We need another AUMF authorized use of military force. We need at least a president to address the American people.

congressional hearings. I mean, these are things that are supposed to happen. So if you're coming from the Democrat side, you know, is it effective just with these little slogans, no war in Iran, or would it be smarter to actually be a little more nuanced? Hey, make, hey, President Trump, make the case.

Let Congress vote if you go through the war powers resolution and things like that, or even just tell us what the end state, what the goals are. I think it depends what your goal is, right? Is your goal messaging, right? Because messaging a 10-word statement goes viral a lot more than, you know, we should really have a sit-down congressional meeting

and hearing about this and, like, lay out your plan and give us the taxes and those. Also, I think the seal's kind of been broken with Venezuela and the drug votes in terms of international law and, like, where Congress sits, does Congress have any authority? Do they have authority, but do they want to use their authority?

Also, the other problem is, most Democrats are kind of for this right they they we've hated Iran for a long time we call even Democrats it's not just a republic thing cozy up with Israel and APEC I mean if you want to talk

nuts and bolts I think that's why AOC goes that way where it's like put it on a fucking poster or a t-shirt because it's like easy for people to understand like the majority of American public doesn't give a fuck about Iran well doesn't want want us spending more and more money on a foreign war, even if it's a three-week engagement

where we're just blowing the shit out of them. And frankly, there is no plan, right? Like I saw a couple people tweet who are like experts or national security analysts saying that the move is, oh, it's good because we don't have a huge ground force there. It's just a buildup of Navy and Air Force assets. We'll have a two, three, week, four-week aerial bombardment and we'll negotiate with the remnants. It's like that's the fucking plan here. Like to me as the layman, that makes absolutely no fucking sense whatsoever because we've talked about it before that more than likely

Iran's not going to come out of this and bring the shoy on a fucking white horse driving, you know, heading down Main Street to take control or they're not going to become some liberal democracy that's ready for AI and modernization and being part of the global economy. Like an IRGC faction is going to take over and probably be even more brutal than the Ayatollah is. And that's who we're going to negotiate with. Like I think it's just wishful thinking, frankly. And I always heard from other CIA folks that like wishful thinking is the worst thing to have. And I just, and I'm just still reeling from the fact that more than likely there isn't

somebody with a granular kind of look at what's going on in the Oval Office advising the president and his advisors or the cabinet or Pete Hickset or whoever, to me, that's like a complete dereliction of duty. You don't have some smart guy in there. I got one on a fucking podcast today on Sunday. What are we talking about? You can't get one in the fucking Oval Office? Like, to me, that's a fucking joke.

I'm done. Thank you, Mark. Well, we'll get Jonathan to walk down to 1600, Pennsylvania. Please, let them in, guys. But for Jonathan and Andy, I want to throw something on a personal level. And so I struggle with this sometimes. I'm not a fan of this administration. It's not a surprise on this podcast.

And D gets a lot of hate mail. But where I agree with kind of the overall premise is, you know, and you know, if you've been at the tip of the spear, which we have, you know, we have friends who've been killed by the Iranians, in essence, the EFPs in Iraq, the Iranian support to Shia groups there. I mean, in my entire adult life of 26 years at CIA, you know, a lot of it was folks on Iran or her proxies. And none of it was just a struggle for influence. It was kinetic. It was down and dirty.

I do not like this regime. And I would love to see regime change. We also seem to forget that the Iranians were trying to kill, you know, President Trump and John Bolton and Mike Pompeo and others. And so there's a side of me on just the personal side is, yeah, you know, if we could, if we could. you know, get this regime out of there. I'm all for it. Sometimes, though, I struggle just with the mechanics of it and what I think is an administration that doesn't have the competence to do this right. So with that all in mind, I think just from a personal standpoint, you know, both former Marines, you both have been, you know, actively in the fight against the Iranians. What does your gut

tell you on this? I mean, is there something that gnaws on you? So right now we're doing, we're saying a lot of things the administration is not doing right on this. But again, I sometimes I'd sit back and I say, you know what, but I'm actually for the notion of regime change. And in particular, I am absolutely for supporting the Iranian people who rose up. Maybe that's 10,000 or 30,000 killed, it was a debacle. And so, Jonathan, let's start with you. From your gut, what's your way on this, your personal, you know, your personal experiences. You know, my thought being involved in this stuff over these, you know, past 25 years, I'm the first one to say, like, war is not good. And, like, we should try to do everything we can to avoid violence. And I think we have done almost everything we could

to avoid violence in this case, I mean, over years and years. And the other thing that I think about is there's our strategic end states, but there's also the strategic end states of the Iranian people that are suffering under this regime. And that's 90% of the country, maybe more than that, that want this regime gone and have wanted this regime gone more and more over the past 47 years, right and especially in the past two months January 8th and 9th if you do the math on it they were on the low end they were killing five human beings per minute every minute for 48 hours on the high end you're talking in excess of 20 to 30 people per minute for 48 hours that's insane and that's and all the complaints we had about the war in Gaza that was over two years and Israel killed

almost the same amount of people in two years that the regime killed in two to three days where is the outcry from the West against that? That's how I'm looking at that. And especially because you're talking about a country of almost 90 million people suffering not just violence and death and rape and destruction, which it's beyond what most people understand. If you see the videos and what's going on there, it's utterly disgusting that there are these animals doing this

to people who just want to be free. And with that in mind, regime change is not great, but what if that could be freedom for people at some point. And it won't be freedom tomorrow. And that's the thing to think about. There's a cost. If there is regime change, just like the French Revolution and even the American Revolution, when there's regime change, there's a moment of absolute, like, violence. And it doesn't matter if the Shah comes in on a white horse. Well, he's got to get there first. And while he's getting there, there is lawlessness, there is violence. I mean, we remember in Baghdad when we came in there,

there was absolute unrest because there's no government. There's no sovereignty. There's no police. There's no trash, there's no sewer, like the things that keep society together for a moment, it just evaporates. And that is going to be a really tragic moment. I've spoken to Iranians who are in Iran right now. They want that. They're willing to pay that cost, and they're even willing to die for that right now. And that's something to remember that when our interests align and the interests of those people align, that's the moment to act. And I think that moment is now. So, you know, I was in Europe recently, and I just, I was lucky to be involved. of the group who received a briefing from one of the, you know, the Shahs or the Crown Prince's

senior advisors. And it wasn't a rah-rah speech of this has to be done, but it was much more of kind of the state of where the Iranian people are. And it was pretty compelling argument that, you know, the regime is on its last dying days at some point. That could that mean might mean one year or five years. But I do think that what I come back to as well is, again, is I hope we do this right, but it's the Iranian people and the idea of a new future. And, you know, I mean, I'm going to say this, I live in the D.C. area, so we have a zillion Iranian friends who are all mesmerized by this and certainly want to see change. Andy, what are your thoughts on that? Again, as someone who is kind of up against the Iranians for some time. And, you know, perhaps a critic as I am of, you know, the mechanics of how the Trump administration is doing this.

But does this gnaw at you as well? Like, you know, hold on a second. Like the right side of history is going to be regime change. Yeah, I absolutely agree. And yes, we can, you know, quite rightfully we talked about where you can't rush into, you can't force regime change from the air, etc., etc. But there are, as everyone here knows, things that could be taking place right now that are focused on practical long-term goals. And so one of which is kind of the messaging to the U.S. domestic public that, you know, there's been very little of that, right? I mean, this would be a good opportunity for the administration to give the case for intervention in Iran based on, based on what the Iranian regime has done. You know, make absolutely open the cruelty, the scale of death on, you know, that has occurred and all these other things, myriad things that they're doing, you know, blinding, using munitions deliberately to blind people in the crowd. I mean, all of these things.

That, that as far as do I, in the long term, do I think American popular opinion plays a big role in foreign policy? No, absolutely not. But it's certainly something the administration, you know, if they're looking for re-election and building a case domestically, they start on that. And then the second part, as everyone here knows, we wouldn't be reading about or seeing about which are developing covert options, which I'm sure are happening. And it's again, I mean, those of us who work with resistance groups in Mosul, for instance, no, it's easier said than done. But I'm sure there's two parts of that, right? There is the assessment piece up front, which are the legitimate groups, which ones are likely to be able to bear a burden, and which ones do we want to bear a burden in an insurgency,

whether it be long term or short term. How do we enable them? Should we enable them? You know, all these are complex questions that takes a while on the ground to be able to understand. I would imagine that we're looking at those things, as well as other non-kinetic options, focused as kind of foreign movement in consonants with our support for an insurgent group within Iran. In other words, planning a campaign that's focused on perhaps covert operations to parallel what is happening out in the open. And the last piece, you know, I would say, yeah, I think strikes are going to happen. I think they're going to be a little bit of a mowing the grass option.

Unless we start seeing domestically this case for intervention to support the insurgency, unless we see that openly, I think that the follow on, the strikes are going to be going off the nuclear facilities, which, as we know, is an imperfect, short-term solution. But that is all. Yeah, I would I mean, I would absolutely think that there are COVID steps taking place now. As long as we don't undermine

those covert steps by announcing, hey, we have just taken these covert steps, right? Wait, yeah. Probably the Israelis, you know, the Israelis have done a pretty remarkable job in terms of you know, recruiting assets and principal agent networks amongst the kind of the ethnic minorities in Iran. So I would imagine there's some of that going on. Before we close, I want to kind of throw out a subject. This just came to me. And it's something

that you guys actually, Andy and Jonathan, you are perfect for this. One of the things that I found really interesting over the last couple years as I kind of make the rounds and give some guest lectures at universities is teaching about ethics and morality in conflict. And, you know, I've given this talk. I went down to the Citadel. I did it. I did it at a Catholic university. And, you know, this was groups that actually think about this stuff. And so this is what's, what I think is gnawing at me a little bit. And I want to get your take on that. If there was to be an agreement that avoids war, it's going to be an agreement around the nuclear program. But in essence, what that does is it allows the regime to survive. And then we go back to the ethics and morality of President Trump several weeks ago that

help was on the way. And again, the conversation we just had was what appeals to me, maybe to us, is that, you know, that's something that actually matters, you know, that the Iranian people actually stayed out in the streets because they thought the U.S. was coming. And so on that ethics piece of it, the morality piece of it, actually an agreement, a nuclear agreement that would avoid war has a unethical component to that, which means the regime survives. And that's what's, it's actually keeping me, it's keeping me up at night. It's driving me crazy a little bit. So, Jonathan, what are your what are your thoughts on that? Because look, I mean, the one thing, and I, you know, I know Mick is certainly me much better than Andy than I do you. We've known each other for a couple of years. Jonathan,

we just met. But, you know, Mick, who, you know, U.S. military, Marine Corps, lawyer, is one of the most ethical people I've ever met. And I think that's not based on his training at CIA. It's based on his training with the Marine Corps. And again, so, Jonathan, off to you on that ethics piece of this, an agreement to stave off war in some ways is unethical because of our promises made. Yeah, I completely agree. I mean, being a world leader has the word leader in it. That means you have to lead and leading is not easy, right? And if you're going to say, if you're the president, you're going to say the help is on the way, it has to be on the way. You know, and I'm thinking about like the Berlin airlift when we went and saved all those people in Berlin. That was at a great risk

to us and a great risk to the people in Berlin. And we did it because we said we're going to do it. Right. Even things like the Lend lease program and all these other things in World War II, where we like huge risk to do and there was a lot of repercussions that could come from it, but we didn't negotiate with the other, with the enemy to stay back and allow things to continue. And the status quo in Iran has not worked for anybody, not even for the regime, I mean, for anybody since 1979. And if we continue to put it on life support, what are we accomplishing? Just to say that we had an agreement, there's really nothing out that comes to this, because everybody knows that if the regime comes to this agreement, they're going to get some concessions for themselves, too, that are positive

for the regime beyond the agreement itself. Do we really want to be, again, keeping them on life support just so that this will happen again? I mean, even today and yesterday, this was 40 days since the actual protests killings, the major day, eight and nine happened, people were out there protesting at Sharif University, beating up Basijis. That's, again, a perfect opportunity to do something. And coming to this agreement betrays those people who even today are out there protesting because they believe that this world power who said they're going to help will come to help. You know, and there's a, we could have chosen to say nothing.

That's different, but we didn't say nothing. We said something and now we need to do something. You know, this reminds me, Andy, of, and you've talked about it before, and this is not a new subject that I've raised, but, you know, in my career working with the Iraqi Kurds, the Syrian opposition, running one of our bases in Afghanistan with our Afghan indige, you know, we don't have a great track record of keeping our promises. And so that's the, you know, that's what kind of gnaws at me about this idea of war avoidance might mean regime survival and then we betray the actual protesters on the streets. What do you think of that? Yeah, 100% in fact, after we withdrew or announced we were going to withdraw, the reality wasn't quite the same on the ground from Syria. Do you remember that? It was in 2019, right? Trump did it after a call with the Turkish.

Yeah, that's right. Yeah. And I'm a favorite leader. And so I did an interview with MSNBC, what it was called then, Ken Delaneyan. and, you know, it's just basically not saying anything controversial except that, hey, this is, you know, explaining what the SDF had done for us, explaining the fact that when we just kind of throw our allies to the wolves after they have done things where our interest in line is not a good precedent because there are pragmatic reasons, right? But even so, I was beaten up for my emotional

argument. So I think there's a, there's just a lack of understanding about this, that the solid pragmatic reason that we all understand as former soft or icy practitioners is that you can't, you can't betray people and then expect other people to trust you. It's number one. And number two, when we're just using the intelligence community and we're just using soft, our record of using proxies is actually really, really good. You know, I mean, whether it be the SDF or looking back in things like Plan Colombia or in Al Salvador, when we're not putting massive amounts of troops on the ground, when we're just using proxies, we have a pretty good success rate. So we don't want to violate that, right? We don't want to betray that trust. That's a good,

you know, that's a good enough reason. I think all of us that goes far deeper than that. And I don't thing we have to feel apologetic about talking about American values and what those really are. And all of us understand, I think, I mean, the reason why we served our country in different forms wasn't because we thought that our country set, made the best deals possible, right? It was because our country represented certain values that went beyond transactional negotiations. And those values were persistent, right? And those were things regardless of administration. that we were willing to risk our lives for. So that is important for all of us who want the uniform.

Agreed. And so let's see what happens. Again, the irony is that if there's a deal that avoids war, it's going to give the Iranian regime life to fight another day. That's going to be hard for some of us to stomach. Dee, I'm going to throw it back to you. I'm going to give you one more opportunity, Dee, to acknowledge you're happy the U.S. won the gold medal.

I am happy the U.S. won the gold medal. You're a hockey. You're a hockey fan. I am. I am a hockey fan. J.T. Miller, Trocheck. Come on. Gold medals. This is a big deal.

I'm a Ranger fan. The Ranger stink. So I'm a little bit angry about that. But yeah, no, I am. I mean, I'm fine with it, honestly. Gotta be honest. You guys can call me a commie all you want. I don't know, blow me.

That's for the audience. We just had an incredible nuance conversation about the Iraq, possibly Iranian war. Now it's like devolved into hockey talk, and I'm telling everybody to blow me. Sorry. I'm leaving it in, too. it was a great game obviously and I enjoyed watching it and I am happy I am happy the

US one all right so are you happy now uh I'm I'm playing there okay a little bit a little bit a little suaged by your non-communist leanings at this point but you can go back to give you a little coffee shop in Brooklyn thank you okay when did uh when did Russia when did the Soviet Union annexed the uh Czech Sevarcia for I mean really annexed It's 1968, right? So Hungary was 56, and I think Czechoslovakia was 68. And there was a Winter Olympics, I want to say, the next Winter Olympics, Czechoslovakia played the Soviet Union and ice hockey,

and you can still find copies of that match, but it was blood-laden, as you can imagine. They pretty much ignored the puck throughout. I'm not comparing that to the United States versus Canada. It was a pretty rough game. It was pretty rough, and the only problem with it was also, like, you can't fight. They can't have fights or the kicked out of the game during the Olympics, which isn't the same as regular NHL.

So there weren't any, like, real, you know, fist fights. They were just some scrums. Awesome game. Incredible game. Guys. Gotcha, thanks. I want everyone to do me a favor. I want everyone to check out.

John's book I can't remember Iran's Shadow Weapons It's on Amazon right now The link is in the description down below Andy Milburn's got a great book When The Tempest Gathers Check that out Mark as well

All the links are down in the description And we have the Whitefish Security Summit coming in April April 2nd to the 4th Check that out The links are down in the description The keynote speaker is General Stanley McChrystal

So it should be a good one. And Mick's going to be there. Maybe Aizan will be there. We're trying to figure that out. I have a phone call with the organizer later. We'll see if they meet our price. Yeah. And by the way, business class travel only.

I mean, that's the only way to go. That's the only way to go, dude. Check that out. That link is in the description as well. And of course, if you want to help support the show, patreon.com slash the team house. You get both Teamhouse and Izon episodes, ad-free early. And you can ask us questions, do all that. It's a little bit more access to us.

And if you have any questions for the guys on Eyes On, hit, send them over on Patreon, and I'll make sure everyone gets them. Jonathan, as always, a pleasure. We've got to have you on more and more because I feel like you're the smartest guy in the room. And I'm still freaking out about the fact that it's 50-50 that there is a person in,

not in the Oval Office talking about these things while they're drawing up a plant. the street. That's crazy. That freaks me the fuck out. Because if I can get a guy for a podcast, they could definitely get somebody in the Oval Office to brief the president or the NSA or whoever they need to brief. It's a choice. It's a war on the expertise. So. All right, guys. That's it. I love you. Thank you. Thanks, guys. Thanks, guys. I want to tell all of you today about a new newsletter that we're launching that encompasses both the Team House podcast, the Eyes On podcast and the high side news outlet, which I run with Sean Naylor.

The newsletter is going to be once a week. It's going to come into your inbox and you're going to get the most current podcasts on Aizon and the Team House and whatever's topical or current on the high side. So it's another way for us to get the information out to you as social media algorithms are pretty iffy and you never really know what you're going to get. So this is a once a week email. It'll slide into your inbox and it will have, you know, the greatest hits of that week. It's really good, man.

Checking it out. The website for it is teamhousepodcast.com slash join. Teamhousepodcast.com slash join. You go there and you enter into your email list or you enter your email into the little thing on the website and you're good to go. And that'll be it. So we really appreciate your support and hope you'll consider signing up. Where's the link? The link will also be down in the description if you're looking for it there.

And that's teamhousepodcast.com.