The Team House - Israel Bombs a Hospital in Gaza, Twice...on Camera | EYES ON GEOPOLITICS

Episode Date: August 27, 2025

This conversation delves into the complexities of covert operations, military tactics, and the geopolitical landscape surrounding Iran and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The discussion highlights the implications of recent military actions in Gaza, the humanitarian crisis, and the historical context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It also explores the challenges of counterinsurgency in Gaza, the situation in the West Bank, and the ongoing developments in Iran's nuclear program. The speakers emphasize the importance of understanding the underlying conditions that contribute to conflict and the need for a nuanced approach to international relations.Jon's bookhttps://www.amazon.com/Irans-Shadow-Weapons-Intelligence-Unconventional/dp/1476696934patreonhttps://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouse00:00 Introduction to Covert Operations and Iran02:24 The Gaza Hospital Bombing and Military Tactics08:34 The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: Historical Context and Current Dynamics12:51 Counterinsurgency Challenges in Gaza16:47 Humanitarian Conditions and Recruitment in Gaza20:19 The West Bank: Settlements and Political Implications24:48 Iran's Nuclear Program and International Relations30:08 Iran's Internal Struggles and Regime Security34:44 Operational Security and Intelligence in Iran49:26 Conclusion and Book OverviewBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support.

Hey, everybody. Welcome to another episode of Eyes on Geopolitics. This is Take 3 because of other program we use, crapped out. I'm a full disclosure guy, Jonathan, okay? We're joined with, we're joined by Jonathan Hackett, former Marsock operator, had an incredible career with Marsok, super unique. We did an interview with him on Teamhouse. Check it out if you have.

And I'll put that link in the description as well. Jonathan's got a new book, super in-depth book about Iran. That link is in the description as well. You want to give me a little quick plug, like what synopsis of what the book's about? Yeah, sure. It's actually extremely relevant right now. And it's growing more relevant than I expected. It's about covert action, intelligence operations and unconventional warfare that Iran does around the world to basically make their regime survive.

It's not for their national security purposes or anything that most states have. It's so that they're a little small group of regime people can survive all these pressures against them. And it's based on a bunch of declassified documents that I got from CIA, NSA. A lot of things translated out of Farsi and out of other languages. Like there's a whole trove of intel documents that Saddam Hussein had before he got toppled because that was their number one enemy. A lot of stuff that was an Arabic translated out of that. So you can see kind of the meetings that the Iranians were having with their sources overseas, is how they were getting, you know, export controlled items like airplane engines from the United

States directly over to Iran. A lot of the actuators that were used on IEDs in Iraq against us were actually American produced actuators that they got shipped over to other countries and then made into IEDs and things. So it's going to be the first time that people can actually read the processes that got these things in place in a book because usually these things are just classified and instead people are just talking about what they see on the news. Yeah, it sounds super. interesting, right? Because you wouldn't think, like, oh, we've sanctioned Iran to like the tits,

you know, to the hill and how are they able to get this stuff. So, yeah, seeing the circumvention of the, you know, the sanctions and how they get stuff when they're not supposed to get stuff is super, super interesting. All right, cool. So check out the book. It's out now. The link is in the description. Jonathan's a good egg.

Good guy. He's been on eyes on before as well. So back to a little bit more top. stuff we saw yesterday the double tap bombing of the hospital in Gaza, 20, at least 20 people dead, including journalists. The IDF came out today just about an hour ago saying that the reason that happened was because they spotted a group of Hamas guys setting up a camera to videotape their observations, why they would double tap a hospital that's already hit a hospital already that's been hit,

escapes me. So Jonathan, what do you track him with this? I've got a lot of questions about it. Of course, I don't have all the data. But as someone who's controlled human triggered strikes before and other kind of air strikes on very precise targets, I would question, how do you know that that's a Hamas group of people? How do you know that that was a camera for that purpose without asking them those questions? I'm an interrogator.

So I would want to actually interrogate those individuals rather than kill them because it would give a lot more impact. I knew the next steps instead of just eliminating that source of information. But kind of zooming out, looking at how they were actually killed or how the building was destroyed and the journalists were killed, those were two unobserved artillery strikes, which is unusual in modern war because the West and other more advanced militaries have learned that unobserved fires are not a good way to actually destroy targets. Instead, they're a better way to scare targets and destroy objects. and we used that in Vietnam in the early years, the late 60s.

We learned that that was actually making the war worse for us. It was generating more enemies because we were harming people that had nothing to do with the conflict. And then that became easier to recruit the ones that survived, at least. So we changed our methods 60 years ago. And so the fact that they're using these non-precise fires to destroy an unconfirmed target should raise a lot of question marks to an observer from the outside. And then also comparing it to other tasks. they've used in Iran, for example, in June.

If you look at the images of the strikes they did against the 11 nuclear scientists and some of the chiefs of staff, we're looking at softball-sized holes in a bedroom on a third floor, very precise, highly accurate, very likely that those were the targets they intended to hit, and they had done a lot of research before that. It's clear in how precise those strikes were. The less precise a strike, to me as an intelligence person, that tells me the less intel you had before you struck it. And using artillery means you knew almost nothing about the target when you chose to strike it, or you had the intention of spreading fear rather than destroying a target. And that's even more confirmed by what happened after the second, the first strike. And there's a very short few minutes.

First strike happens. Aid workers wearing orange vests start running up the stairwells to go rescue these people. And then moments later struck exact same spot a second time. This is very similar to what groups like Jama Islamia did in Indonesia in the early 2000s when they would blow up in Bali, for example, in 2002, the Bali bombing. They blew up a vehicle, an ambulance came. There were many people crowding around trying to help them. And another larger explosion happened specifically to target the people going to rescue those were harmed. And that's kind of what you saw a lot in Iraq during the war after 2003.

A lot of insurgents would have these double-tap type attacks. and you see it in other countries as too where the question though is can we call it terrorism because a state did it or is it only terrorism when an insurgent does it? Because if you look at it from an objective tactical perspective, these are not distinguishable. It's easy to say like, well, let's give them the excuse because of the war and of these many things, but you can't really do that from a tactical perspective. You have to look at the actual tools being used for the purposes they're being used for and then the outcomes that happen. And Hamas only had 30,000 fighters when this war started. I'd be curious if you could survey the people in Gaza to see

how recruitment numbers are right now. I bet they're higher than they've ever been, maybe since 2008. And why is that? It's not because some foreign conditions changed. It's because of things like this that if you were a 15-year-old boy and you saw your family blown up in a hospital, you'd be making some tough decisions that you wouldn't normally make. Frankly, I know I would be fighting. I'm going to be honest. Like if Queens and Manhattan came into Brooklyn, right? And like,

are doing this. And I see my mom, my dad, my sister, my aunts and my uncle's getting smoked. And we can't feed anybody. What am I doing? As a military age male, you know, what are you going to do? You're going to just sit there and take it? I don't know how anybody really can,

right? Outside of maybe trying to save your family, that's somehow some way was lucky enough to avoid getting killed. It's funny you mentioned the recruitment too. I wrote that down because the other day we were talking about Mike, yeah, you know, the prevailing thought is like, you know,

maybe there's 10,000 Hamas guys left from originally from October 7th and stuff. But I was saying like what does that recruitment look like? Because you must be pissing off. Pissing off is not even the right word, right turn. You know. jihadifying, for lack of a better term, a lot of fucking people. You're basically delivering an objective reason for them to pick up a weapon.

Yeah. Yeah. It's pretty unbelievable. And Benjamin Netanyahu just came out, said it was a tragic incident. I don't know what that even means from a guy like that, you know, because they're gearing up to completely occupy or at least occupy 85 and 90% of Gaza now. Yeah. Well, actually, the finance minister, Smotrich, he said, Palestinian state is being erased

from the table, not with slogans, but with actions. He said that in a public statement. That is the policy that you can see happening right in front of you, unrolling right in front of you. Yeah. It's so insane because, like, they're putting that out in the press. Right. And at the same time, they're also like.

especially, I guess, in the Western press trying to tout, like how they are in danger by terrorists. And I'm not saying that's not true. I'm not saying how loss is a great organization. They're not. But the way they're prosecuting this is unbelievable. And to go back to what you mentioned, like when they hit the 11 or so IRGC guys with super, you know, super specific, super like precise attacks. why doesn't it make sense to do that to the Hamas leadership? They're, you know, maybe they're commanders, whatever, you know, the same thing they did

to Hezbollah, right? They've done a really good job. I have my qualms about that, too, obviously what's going on there. But they've done a relatively good job, relatively good job with degrading Hezboa to the part where, like, they don't even want any part of anything, right? They're more interested in survival. Why can't they do that to Hamas in Gaza? Well, not to mention that a reason that Hamas is powerful now is because the Palestinian Authority was purposely degraded through domestic Israeli politics so that the PA would not have strength that it had previously during the intifadas and during the 80s especially.

And it kind of backfired because it empowered Hamas so much, or at least provided them. Like, Hamas didn't get money from Qatar by accident or directly. I mean, those were policies that were approved in the Israeli government. to allow Hamas to get that money that now Israel says Hamas had all this money. Well, how did it get there? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Who was behind it? Yeah. Man, I try it. Like, I'm trying to be even keel and try and look at this from like the IDF in Israeli perspective, right? And I would understand. And I don't want Israel to not exist. I want them to have a state and be safe.

I want the same thing for the Palestinians. But like this is a never ending. It's like a self-licking ice cream. comb, bro. It's never going to end the way it's going right now. And I also saw what's his face? The other lunatic, Ben Gavir, he was visiting a prison and they had like big blown up pictures of destroyed Gaza. It's like, dude, your intentions are beyond clear. And it's far more than like protecting your citizenry from terrorist attacks. Yeah. And other ones, Zvi Sukkot, he's a Nesit member.

he said everyone's gotten used to the fact that we can kill 100 gazons in a single night and the world doesn't care. He said that publicly. I mean, it's like there's no cover on it. Dude, insane. I mean, the world, honestly, it's kind of starting to turn around a little bit. I think at least public opinion. And I'm happy to see like in Israel as well. I mean, maybe more so they want to get their hostages back.

But like they could see like this war maybe doesn't make sense, right? because they definitely, they're going to call up about 60,000 reservists for the occupation that's going to kick off in October 7th, the full occupation. And I feel like that's probably an undersell, right? Like I think that was probably like negotiated because the CEO, the chief of staff of the IDF came out and said we need at least 200,000 to do this. Well, plus these reservists are not trained in counterinsurgency, which this war is. They're trained in daytime attack. That's kind of it.

Very conventional. Yeah, the funny thing about that. you finish because you're the smart one is I said that like to Andy Miliburne I was like I'm not a big I'm not I don't think counterinsurgency really works unless you have generations of being there Israel with Palestine and Gaza I feel like is maybe one of the only places in the world that counter insurgency might actually work and then Andy Milburn came back and said yeah but the IDF doesn't even have that as like they don't even like train that forget having that as a doctrine like of their military. It's like they don't even do that. Right. Yeah, it's actually consciously excluded from their doctrine for, for the for the for the activities in Gaza in particular. Unbelievable. I mean, it's just a I'm not a military expert again, but like it sounds so counterintuitive to what needs to happen there. Right. Yeah. Yeah. I don't even know when people don't have food, water and shelter and and they don't know if they're going to wake up safe tomorrow.

they make different decisions than they would make if they had food, water, and shelter, and if they did have safety. And those are the very basic things, obviously. But when the conditions are the way they are, it's not a surprise that people are picking up weapons and fighting back. Yeah. Yeah. I really can't blame them because, like, think about it. Most of the 2,500 guys that attacked on October 7th are dead, right?

Yeah, for sure. A lot of the Hamas hierarchy are dead. to think that they can get rid of an ideology or an extreme ideology that's been kind of kind of, you know, built and supercharged with what they've been doing. It just absolutely makes no sense. And like people just,

they should really be talking about the fact that Netanyahu wants to stay in power, right? Like, because he's facing corruption charges like that. And the only way he's, does that is by having a wartime footing. Yeah, absolutely. He's doing it at the expense of people at human beings, no matter where they're from. And just like you said, there are a lot of Israelis that object not only to this current conflict. They object to not having the hostages back. They object to having their children called up in reserves and disrupting their entire lives so that they can go fight this conflict that they may not agree with, but they have to because

that's how the society is structured around this volunteer militarism or involuntary militarism. and there are a lot of people that have always thought about a two-state solution in Israel, a lot of Israelis. I know that right now it's the lowest point as far as polling shows for a two-state solution, but there are still people there that want that, and there are people there that wanted that two years ago. You know, there are a lot of people that disagree for many different reasons about what's happening. And in the situation we have, it doesn't matter that they disagree because the power is not

with them. It's with his war cabinet. And also, if you look at where dollars are spent, that tells you where private, priorities are. And you look at how the U.S. spends money on security assistance to Israel. It's not on food, water, shelter issues. It's on military equipment, material, and other military related offensive activity, whether that's the F-35 aircraft or more artillery shells or whatever it is. If you're giving a partner, like from a security cooperation perspective, if you're giving a partner only things that harm others, that's probably the solution they're going to look to because that's the stuff they have, you know? Yeah.

Yeah. And I've said it to Mick, too. I'm like, wouldn't it make sense to like, obviously don't keep your eye off Gaza, but like pull back, let Hamas kind of reconstitute, set up communication, listen in on it, penetrated, and fucking wreck them that way. Because like clearly that's like what they're very good at, right? The precision covert strikes, their intelligence and stuff like that. Like that's what they're, they're not good at like running like massive arms. me, you know, clearly. Well, really, if the idea of wants to succeed at a tactical level, they need to change

your tactics from daytime strike and return activity and move to house-to-house fighting, whether it's like the Battle of Huey City in Vietnam that the Marines encountered or it's Belusia, it's got to be, you have to increase the risk on your own troops if you want that actually to succeed. Yeah. Yeah. And I don't know how good the, you know, the, you know, the popular. list of Israel is going to be if like their casualties go up five X, right? Unfortunately, they would. Yeah.

So I don't know. Like, what's, how do we fix this? How do we fix this? You're in Yale law school. How do we fix this? I always feel you can get more bees with honey. And I'm going to think about why does Hamas have the hole that it has where it has it. And if you can remove those conditions that allow that hold to grip, you might begin moving.

the needle back toward something different than Hamas. And what I mean by that is there's no airport in Gaza because it was just Israel blew it up in 2008. There's there are almost no more hospitals at all. There's no electrical production, really. There's no clean water. There's no food. Okay, those are all conditions that give Hamas some legitimacy to say, hey, we're still here defending you. Right. to Palestinians. But if you can remove that ability of them to say that by providing electricity and airport, clean water, food, all these things in a way that is not piecemeal and conciliatory, but for real, you may begin removing those conditions for Hamas to even exist. And instead, you invite people that would normally lead a city to rise up in any city,

like even in America, to say, hey, vote for me to come, you know, take over this thing here. And I think it sounds crazy talking about it right now that I'm sure some listeners, oh, there's no way that could ever happen in Palestine or in Gaza. I disagree because it's just human beings. It's human beings with certain conditions around them that are forcing them to make decisions that they would make in a different situation. They would make different decisions, you know. And if you can remove those current conditions creatively and positively,

I think your chances of success dramatically increase. Yeah, 100% man, right? Like what are people really want? Just to have a normal life, take care of their kids, maybe do a little bit better than the generation before. I mean, they have a shoreline and they're not even allowed to fish. Yeah, that's not. Fishing is illegal.

I mean, this is the basic things I'm talking about. Like, begin returning some freedom to people. Give like what's called a safety valve, like a little exit valve of pressure so that the pressure doesn't keep building up. And that's what Hamas feeds off of is that pressure. If you can alleviate the pressure, the people begin thinking about the day to day instead of do I survive today. Yeah. I mean, and let's think about it. we saw it a little bit here during 2020 and COVID.

The moment we weren't able to get our DoorDash delivery. Yeah. You know, people started getting really mad. And you saw what happened. Yeah, you saw what happened, you know, the run on all the material, the run on the, the masks. And even like, even the BLM and George Floyd thing, like, why do you think that was so, like, black people get brutalized by the police all the time so it's not like a new thing why do you think people reacted so tough like so aggressively to that it's because we our normal way of life was

kind of hampered not and like that's like a percent a one percent thing of what's going on in Gaza where you can't even get anything you can't get food or medicine for your kids people are starving to death well even look at Baghdad 2003 when we invaded Iraq and it went from a functioning society on a Tuesday to the next day, mass looting. Like everything was getting stolen for left and right. I mean, people were shooting each other just for no reason. Yeah. Because law and order and structure and society had been removed.

And suddenly people, the conditions changed. And those same people that were friends yesterday are now fighting each other. Yeah, complete anarchy, right? Yeah. Yeah. It really comes down to like human beings. I want to talk a little bit about, um, the West Bank.

Yeah. Because we hear about it. It's obviously taking a backseat to what's going on in Gaza. But you see what's going on with like the settlers and stuff like that. They keep spreading and they're cutting up essentially the Palestinian side to where there, even if there was a Palestinian state in 30 years, like how would it even work when there's like little just dots of like Palestinian population? it just seems to me that they're the right wing of Israel because I don't want to give it to everybody in Israel. Yeah, it's not.

Right. Is really trying to fucking push them limit of what they can try and get out of the like international community. United States being part of it because like where they're chief fucking. There's no consequences. Yeah. I mean, look, Kassim Soleimani was killed. Leader of Hezbollah, Nasserila killed. all these Iranian leaders killed.

I mean, those are like the main threats in the Middle East, right? All dead. Nothing happened, really. I mean, 30 Israelis were civilians were killed in Iran's final reaction to all of that stuff for the last five years. I mean, that is a blip of reaction, even from the adversary, not to mention the world. They're acting with impunity and they know it and they see this as an opportunity. I mean, Israel sees this as an opportunity, especially the war cabinet to do what they can right now. And if you look at what's happening in West Bank, not only is settling, increasing, of course, as usual, troops are protecting the settlers as they go through and rampage and even shoot and stab Palestinians who have been living there for generations.

And they're actually separating the northern part of West Bank from the southern part, the Judea-Samaria divide, because that will effectively cut off a physical West Bank from existing as an integral unit. And of course, the goal is to get East Jerusalem completely broken off from the rest of the West Bank because that will then allow Jerusalem to be unified. And it's just this slow movement toward the inevitable. There will be no more West Bank. It will only be Israel. Yeah. Unreal to be on it. It's just I don't get why we're so, you know, okay with this.

I'm talking U.S. government, right? And it kind of goes, it goes left and right. It doesn't matter if there's a right wing guy or a left wing guy in, in power in the U.S. It's like we support Israel 100%. And I'm not saying to not, but let's not fucking kill civilians, take land from people that you've already taken land from. Well, it's interesting because we're saying Russia is the aggressor in Ukraine doing some analogous things in Donetsk and other parts of eastern Ukraine. like land grabs and like issuing passports and all these things to basically create facts on the ground that this is now Russia and look up the international condemnation and in the American condemnation. Why aren't these analogous activities in the West Bank being treated in a similar way?

Yeah. I mean, I think they just see Israel and God and Palestine as just like a monolith, right? Like they can't most people, even politicians can't disseminate. Gaza and the West Bank and the differences between them, right? Well, people say a lot of times, like, colloquially, they say, you know, this has been going on for thousands of years. This was an intractable conflict. That's actually not true if you look at history.

I mean, it's like 1898 is when this really started. It wasn't any earlier than that when the Ottoman Empire was there. These conflicts didn't exist. When the Romans were there, same concept. I mean, you look back, that was actually a relatively stable part of the Mediterranean basin when you look at the other things happening in the world at the time. It wasn't until the last century and a half that this became the fourth. the forefront of conflict in the Mediterranean basin.

Yeah, it's a really unfortunate. It's interesting. Well, I mean, we'll be seeing what's going to happen in the next weeks and months. I mean, October 7th is the date of when they're going to try and pull like the entire, try and occupy the entire area of Gaza. Also, some of their demands, few that I saw where, you know, it's just ridiculous. It's just ridiculous. They want to occupy Gaza.

just say that you know what I mean you don't have to sugarcoat it and stuff like that you know security provided by Israel what's that mean that means IDF in Gaza permanently or indefinitely it also means you have to somehow move 900,000 plus people human beings that are not combatants to Sudan using I don't know what methodologies to do so not to mention the humanitarian aspect of that but the logistical aspect how do you do that and have them survive. Right. You know, I mean, that is, that is an incredible task that I don't, I mean, I'm thinking back

to Dunkirk in World War II, that kind of scale, uh, nothing like this. You know, I just, I just question what, how would, how would that actually look? And I don't think there is a roadmap that the public has been exposed to at least. Yeah. No, it's a herculean task and it's again, displacing an entire population from like a place where they've been for a very long time. You got anything else on this that you want to touch on? I mean, we could talk about it for a very long time.

I know. It's like never ending. What are you tracking with Iran? Because you mentioned to me before we started shooting, they have like the snapback sanctions for the JCPOA talking about Europe. We are already in state, like the U.S. has already reinstated sanctions since then. But what are you tracking with that because it's coming up? Yeah, so basically Britain, France, and Germany are trying to leverage Iran to make a decision about coming back to the table with the United States.

They're basically saying if the U.S. and Iran make moves to come talk to each other, then these three countries will not initiate a snapback sanction process, which is kind of a, it's not the actual legal term for it. But basically what would happen is the two UN resolutions that existed before the 2015 JCPO, way, those would come back into effect. And those are basically on export controls, on oil, on certain manufacturing things, on shipping, on insurance. So like if you have a boat and you're moving stuff, you can't get insurance if you're going to vonder a boss, for example, like things like this that kind of like constricts the regime in some ways.

But side note, you know, democracies favor sanctions as a tool because democracies would suffer from sanctions. Iran is not a democracy. And as we've seen, they've actually grown much stronger from sanctions because if you look at before the sanctions happen, even before like the year 2000 or so at their economy then compared to their economy now and the wealth that the regime has then compared to now, it is exponentially higher, incredibly higher. I mean, $150 billion of personal wealth that the Ayatollah has, not to mention the other wealth that he controls in the economy. I mean, he's like one of the richest people on earth. he wasn't like that before 2015. He wasn't like that before 2017 when we withdrew from the JCPOA.

So, I mean, those are just things to keep in mind when we're analyzing what do these sanctions mean? Because a lot of times in the West, we think about it from like, how would it affect our economy as a capitalist market, free market? Those are not the things we should be asking. We should be asking how does it affect their economy and they're totally different animals? But what's probably going to happen is Iran will probably make a move, let's say, by the end of the week, because that's the deadline that the European, the three countries gave to them to come talk to those three countries. Yeah. But even before this scramble happened, October was the true deadline for when these sanctions were supposed to come back into effect.

This is like in the original JCPOA. If Iran didn't do certain things, and they haven't done those things, of course, they've accelerated their production. So that was decided 10 years ago that this would happen on this date on this October 2025. So it seems to me that what's happening is the European states, these three states are trying to use what little leverage they have in the next six weeks before this thing happens anyway to try to get something moving in a positive way away from weaponization. And I think another concern too is, you know, a chief goal of intelligence collection is to reduce uncertainty. If you, you know, some country push another country to stop talking to you, you've just increased uncertainty because now you don't have. that way to speak openly to them. And we're concerned in the West about the IAEA losing access to their enrichment. We're concerned about Iran leaving the nuclear nonproliferation tree, the MPT, right?

If we cut off communication with them, we don't know what's going on. And these centrifuges that they're supposed to have are the IR1 centrifuge, which are like the very original old 1980s, 1990s era centrifuges that AQ Khan, the Pakistani salesman, sold to them. Well, Iran's been using the IR 7 since 2009. I mean, way advanced from that. You can't expect them to like suddenly be like, hey, me go buy some IR ones off the shelf. I mean, these things are like, they don't make them anymore. So there's a lot of interesting demands in there that almost make it somewhat impossible to,

for any side to succeed in the current construct, which as I'm sure you've talked about with others before, it was kind of doomed from the start. because the JCPOA didn't contain certain mechanisms that would have actually made this thing succeed. And now it's even more kind of going in that direction of just there's no end. There's no success in here, in this process. And the question is, okay, if they leave the NPT, the non-proliferation treaty, what does that actually mean? Because there are only a couple of countries who are not party to the NPT. One of them is North Korea, which has nuclear weapons.

another one is Syria that almost had nuclear weapons, but Israel blew up their nuclear program in 2007. And the other country is Israel that has 90 plus nuclear weapons. And those latter 90 weapons were not developed openly. They were developed in secret. And I wouldn't be surprised if Iran did the same thing, that if they left the MPT, no more IAEA in Iran. Yeah. They would be able to hide it more easily that they're going to actually do this. And why would they not?

I mean, now their backs are against the wall. I mean, looking at it rationally, it doesn't make sense that they would be scared and say, okay, we're done. Hands up. Guys, come check out our uranium deposit. I mean, that's just, that's, that's irrational to think that. Yeah, you could just do the comparison, right? Like North Korea and Kim Jong-un, the family is still around running that place.

And, you know, Gaddafi isn't, right? Right, exactly. Because Gaddafi gave up his program. Right, yeah. Very soon afterward, he's dead. Yeah. So, you know, I'm assuming the Iranian regime, like any regime, is worried about regime security, right? And that's like the ultimate regime security, at least when it comes to outside forces.

What did you make? Did you see the Netanyahu speech or whatever video that he did talking about Iran and, like, the water there? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So the water problem in Iran is very bad right now. I have some sources over there that are experiencing that difficulty. And you see people actually like buying stockpiles of plastic containers of water because you turn on the faucet and water won't come out.

Oh, wow. It's that bad and it's been that way for a little while. Iran has gone back and forth on these issues of supply for either water, gasoline, which is crazy to think that petroleum has been weak there because they have one of the highest proven reserves of petroleum on Earth. And there are a lot of reasons for that, including corruption, was that major. issue there and also aging systems because they can't purchase the infrastructure to fix it because it's sanctioned. And this is true for the water as well. I mean, they can't buy turbines to purify water because those turbines are export controlled. So the regular people suffer, but I bet you if you walk into Amula's house, you turn on his faucet, water comes out. Yeah.

And that's the way it is in Iran, that there's this massive separation between a tiny group of people and then the rest who are suffering worse than, I mean, most people can even imagine. imagine. Yeah, it was so weird. I just saw it real quick and it was never really mentioned again. Like some people took it up. It's like, oh, they're going to hit. They're probably going to hit Iran again, which at this point now, the precedent is kind of set.

So which is scary to think about in and of itself. Let me go back to the water thing too. Please. Because this is the thing with the Taliban. Not many people know this, but Iran almost went to war with the Taliban back in the 90s because the Taliban killed a bunch of Iran. Iranian diplomats and Mazari Shriath. And there was actually a division of Iranian forces on the border, like ready to invade Afghanistan, but then the U.S.

convinced them not to do it because we were working together with Ahmad Shah Masood, which is part of the Northern Alliance. Like that stuff was all happening at that time. And we were actually working not together, but in concert. Again, the Taliban is a problem for Iran. And what they've actually done in the western part of Afghanistan is cut off a dam, supplying water to northeastern Iran to Mashad, which is one of the largest city. in Iran. It's a very important religious city in Iran. There's a lot of universities there. So a lot of people are suffering a double water problem because not only is the infrastructure in Iran messed up and age and not working, but now the actual water they did have coming from

another country is completely cut off. Oh, man. So yeah, they're under the gun there. Yeah. Yeah, it's gnarly. I want to touch on, you know, obviously we hit Iran with the B2s and those big boys and some Tomahaw cruise missiles. The BDA that everyone's talking about. From what you're hearing, what does that look like? Has it been set back? It clearly was not obliterated.

How far set back? Are they back pumping it out again, trying to enrich uranium as much as possible, right? To get to that point because that's what they said they would do if they got hit. where are we at with that? Well, I saw a really interesting statement from a source that I would say is probably credible, which is David Barnia, the Mossad chief. He said that they are no more than maximum two years behind, maximum,

and probably sooner than that. And he said that they could get to a breakout in less than a year. If the Mossad chief is saying that, I mean, that's not someone from CNN saying that, or, you know, one of the press mechanisms that, that the current administration doesn't want to, you know, give credit to. That's concerning. And also the DIA, commanding general was fired this week because his DIA is the one that produced the report that said that actually we don't know for sure how much damage has occurred.

It might be less than we're saying on the media. Maybe we should, you know, calibrate this a little bit. So without actually seeing the intelligence myself, I'm looking at those two things. And I've got a big question mark about actually how much damage was done. I feel that if we wanted to demonstrate how much damage was done, why isn't some of this being declassified and shown to us at least satellite imagery? So we can see it ourselves. We have done that in the past, actually, during the first Trump administration, we struck some targets in Iran or near Iran and released that imagery so that the public could see the extent of the damage, because it actually helped to show that what we said was there was in fact there. And in that case, it was something called a transporter erector launcher, which is a ballistic missile launch.

launcher and Iran said they weren't there and we said they were and we destroyed them and then showed like, look, here are the pieces. So that has like a double purpose where not only does it confirm what we said, but it shows the public, like we're being serious with you guys. Here's, here's the data. Do with it as you like. And also we, you know, before the strikes happened, it wasn't clear that all the uranium was in Fordow. And there was so much messaging going on before that strike that it's very likely or possible at least that the regime kind of got the message that, hey, something's coming, get ready, and they probably moved some stuff around. I would be surprised if they didn't. It would seem strange if they didn't. So I'm not

totally sure, of course, on the data myself, but I'm just looking at those kind of things in the ether and probably not as extensive as it's been advertised to be. What's the fallout looking like ever since, you know, Iran and Israel, like, traded, you know, and Iran was getting smoke pretty well. Like, you know, clearly Israel's got the better military and technology. What's the fallout in terms of, like, pressure on the regime and just like the mood on the ground? So mood on the ground hasn't gone in a positive direction. I think maybe outsiders would expect this to be a moment where the protests die down, the resistance dies down, and people band together and some kind of nationalism,

I think that is nonsense. And I think that displays a misunderstanding of how things work inside of Iran and what the sources of grievance these people have, where those grievances come from. Because it hasn't changed that. It's actually gotten, people are more angry, you know, because the regime is surviving. The regime's goal is to survive,

whether that's against Israel or against its own people. And both of those things have been a problem. for the regime since the early days. And they've arrested like 20,000 people. Who knows how many of those were actually true numbers or people that actually did anything or if that's a show or whatever or trying to intimidate. But that actually looks very similar to the 1980s when Iran arrested a bunch of Mujahideenik people, which is still the biggest resistance force against the regime.

And they executed like 3,000 people in a couple of months. So I wouldn't be surprised if you saw some executions coming up here related to that. even if those people were completely innocent. Right. Because it's not about justice. It's about keeping people locked down and unable to do anything. Just like during the attacks that were going on in June, when Israel was striking Iran, Iran lost internet for something like 48 hours.

It wasn't because Israel took out their internet. It was because the regime turned the internet off so that people in Iran could not communicate with each other and come together because the regime was afraid that people would use that moment to rise up while the regime. was in chaos, that would be a great moment. So they shut the internet off. But they kept it on. There was about 1% of the internet was on. And it was for military related people.

So families of the military, families of the regime were able to get on Instagram, which is blocked in Iran. They were able to get on there, Twitter, all the stuff. So like, things kept going just fine for the regime while everybody else was suffering. Dude, that's so insane. Just like, you know, you're a regular citizen if you're on and like you're in the fucking dark. Literally and figuratively.

And like the elites and the military and the regime are just able to do, you know, to be able to. Interesting. Doesn't that leave like kind of like a fucking big footprint in terms of like, oh yes. If I'm the U.S. or I'm Israel and whoever, let's fucking. If we're not having penetrated it yet, let's focus on the 1% that's,

you know, of the traffic that's going. Yeah. Their op-sec is actually really bad operation security. part of the reason a lot of those folks got assassinated is because of the way they use their cell phones. Some in some ways directly and other ways indirectly based on their pattern of life with their cell phone. But for example, one of them was called up and told to leave.

And when he does that, certain things change in his pattern that you can now start tracking those changes and then start targeting those things that happen in those changes. And same thing with the people that went to the meeting that Israel told them to go to. or they didn't know that it was Israel telling them. They thought it was a message from their own leadership. You know, they all, they use their phones to go to this meeting. And there was a phone in the room that was used as the targeting mechanism to strike that, that point. So, I mean, I actually didn't hear of this.

Yeah, this is like SIGANT 101. Wow. So, you know, can you explain it a little bit more on what happened with that? That's insane. So in order to do something called a signature strike, which is basically striking something that you can't observe, but you have other technical data telling you. that that thing is very likely to be there. You need some kind of sensor in there that's emitting so you can actually fix that

that target point and know that things are going on. If I know that your pattern of life is to wake up in the morning, grab your cell phone, go to the bathroom, and then go to the kitchen, if I can track a similar signature movement, even without your cell phone, let's say it's a different cell phone, I can pretty much guarantee it's you, especially if you walk a certain way, you hold the phone at a certain height in space. Like there's a lot of things I can measure about your pattern of life using your cell phone without ever looking at you.

And this is the kind of way that you. you would use to do a precision strike on a bunker just like happened in Tehran when they were able to bring a bunch of people together and they saw from the behavior and movements of the bodies that this was the right place, the right people to strike at that moment. Dude, that's insane. That's so crazy. You would think if you're like a mid to top level IRGC guy that you'd have a little bit better obsec.

Same thing happened with Soleimani. That's the way that we were able to fix him in space and know that he was going from Damascus to Iraq because of the cell phone. Was it his cell phone or like somebody else's? Him. Bro, what are you doing? And a lot of, if you've ever been over there and you go, you meet some of these higher level guys, I've done this with some of my source operations.

These guys use their phone as kind of a way to show their power. So they won't just have one phone. They'll have like six phones or three phones. The more phone, the more cell phones you have, the more important you are. Sure, sure. Well, that's fantastic for me as a targeter because that means I have six different things that can make a nexus on top of you with. I knew a bookie like that once.

Yeah, exactly. They're off to no good, right? I mean, dude, I mean, you would think a high-level guy like that. They think they're impervious. That's nuts to me, man. Wow. Jesus. Is that easy?

It seemed pretty easy. I mean, this information has been out for decades. I mean, this is how we, in the beginning of the Iraq War, this is how we got to most of our targets. We used a very small device to figure out where the emitter. were coming from and we bust in the room and find the guy with a cell phone and that's the guy. You know, like that was like 25 years ago got like lower level guys, not the CIA, like lower level infantry guys with an Intel guy attached. It's very basic.

It's well known, but people can choose to listen to it or not. It's just incredible to me like high, you know, high ranking guys are doing this. That their offset, not so much the technology, but like technology is obviously incredible, but well think about man look at signal the signal gate yeah yeah yeah i mean that's our secretary defense putting out classified information on signal same offset mindset like a person believing that because the position they're in they're impervious to anything and can do anything and they're mistaken a modified version of signal too by an Israeli modified version which yeah perfect that's so weird you know sometimes i have to admit like uh you've seen a lot of

stories about like former operators and stuff who become criminals when they come here and they do like operator stuff whether it's intimidation or murder and um what i think they don't understand it is um when you're in country in terms like if you're a fucking high speed delta guy or whatever you have isr you have a 160th that'll come pick you up if you get hurt you have a lot of things that are helpful when you're trying to do crime you need to look at look at it a little bit differently where like maybe I shouldn't leave like a Google review. This is like a true story. A Google review about someone's service like their services, which is murder.

This literally happened. I swear to God. And it's like, aren't these guys supposed to be like high speed? I guess I don't teach like criminal stuff in like Ranger School and stuff. You know, in selection. But same thing with these guys. I mean, if I'm running the IRGC, I don't have a cell phone. like at all.

You know, I'm getting my messages out some other way. But actually, that's a good point. That's how bin Laden survived so long because he didn't use a cell phone. He used couriers, which we actually eventually

recruited one of his couriers. But that took a long time to figure that out. Look how much more difficult that was than if he had been running around with a cell phone, which actually Zawahiri, when he killed Zawahiri more recently,

you saw the precision of that strike. It was when he went out on his balcony to use his cell phone. Yeah, yeah. that one, I have my theories on that one. You're right? Like, it's like we haven't found Zaharhiari in 20 years. You know, I'm sure his opposite got a little bit lax.

You know, he's back. You know, Afghanistan's opened up for him and stuff. But I have a feeling that parts of factions of the Taliban, like, set him off. Like, hey, here, here's this guy. We don't really need him. Smoke him if you need to. Yeah, probably. Dude, insane.

I still can't believe, like, what do you need three cell phones for? I know you're cool. And you have like girlfriends and stuff. Or like use a guy. Like, I don't know. There's probably there's got to be technology that's out there that can spoof this stuff. Right. Yeah.

I mean, there's all kinds of things out there. And you have to remember that we, the West, we're a nation state actor. The preeminent nation state actor. It's like US, China, Israel are the top three SIGAN capabilities. So these guys are walking around not thinking that they, they're in danger because their understanding of capabilities may be different than what is reality. Or they think that they're not a target for whatever reason because of their psychology. But think about how Khashoggi was captured.

He was captured because a friend of his had Pegasus on their phone, not on his phone. So this is, we're talking nation state actor level creativity. And even if a person changes their behavior to adapt to a thing that they knew about, chances are we've already thought of something else. And actually when I showed up at NSA 20 years ago and I was getting my orientation, there was a guy walking me around. He's like, imagine the most advanced technology you can think of right now that you can think is like super futuristic. I'm like trying to think, you know, and he's like, whatever it is, we already invented it 20 years ago. And I mean, that is really, I worked there and I'm telling you like the stuff there is so creative and interesting and like carefully thought out how do we get at this target. Yeah.

You could have phones or no phones. you're probably going to get hit if we want to hit you anyway. Yeah. Yeah. Poof. Brother, that's fucking gnarly. What else? I mean, that was, what a way to end it.

I feel like that's the perfect way to end it because that's so insane. I'm still kind of like, you know, I wasn't, I'm not a criminal. I wasn't a criminal. I've never done crime in my life. That's what a criminal would say. Yeah, probably. But you always know, you don't talk on the phone. Like, it's super.

simple, dude. Like, it's not even that's, it's not, oh my God, it's funny too, because like, when I'm on the phone with friends, I'm like, and we're joking, clear, like about stupid shit. We're like, FBI, we're just joking. It's like, you need to have, like, we're dumbbells. And we have some sort of operational security in terms of how we live our lives or lived our lives, whatever, when I wasn't a criminal. But the problem is this kind of tradecraft that requires non, like, low technology or no technology is very cumbersome and burdensome. It takes a lot of resources, a lot of time. And if you're someone that has to make immediate decisions,

there's probably going to be some electronics around you, even if it isn't your phone in your pocket. It's going to be someone coming and running to you saying, like, hey, we need to make a decision right now, especially in the world we live in today. So it's almost like this very quick moving world forces people to have targeting mechanisms all around them all the time. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, we did a really great show on Teamhouse about ubiquitous technical surveillance and stuff. Yeah, UTS. Yeah. And it's it's freaking gnarly. Like you're just being, well, I'm being, I have like 15 things in here right now, right? Like where somebody can co-op and take over and monitor.

And there's sensors all around you. Yeah. Fuck. John, this is awesome, man. Tell me about your book one more time. The link is in the description. Yeah, it's called Iran's shadow weapons, covert action, intel operations and unconventional warfare.

And it looks at the full range of everything they do behind the scenes. Not the things you see in the news, the things that you probably never even knew about, like how they smuggled in a giant cannon into Denmark and almost use it to blow a dude up, but got caught. Things like that that just never ended up public because it was all classified. And now it's declassified and you can see exactly how they did it from like soup to nuts. In fact, like in New York, there was Masi Alinajad. She's a Iranian woman that speaks out against the regime. They tried twice to assassinator.

Actually, once to kidnap her and another time to assassinator, I go through extreme detail and like how exactly they did that. Like where they're going to bring the boats to take her to Venezuela, which is a very stupid plan. If you ask me. From New York? Yeah. Yeah, it's pretty crazy. Wow. It didn't happen, obviously.

But they had, that was their plan. And there's a lot of other things like how they pay their recruits, how they, how they do their human recruitment cycle. And actually how do things go at a source meeting? Because I actually have, I got from the other side some documents about their, after they go to a source meeting, they have to write up their notes about how the meeting went. And I've got those notes. And I've actually been able to put that in the book for the first time.

Wow. That's sick, dude. Do you have anything about it? I remember like this was in the news a bit where they were planning on smoking the Saudi ambassador in D.C. Oh, yeah. Yeah. So our Bob Sear is the guy's name. And there's a whole interesting part in the book about him and how he was recruited and kind of how he was handled. There's also some stuff about the Hells Angels because they've actually paid the Hells Angels several times to do certain things in the United States, which is kind of interesting. And some other things you're just like, what? But I mean, this is what you can do when you're heavily sanctioned and monitored around the world. You've got to do these like, wax. key things. Wow. The book,

the link is in the description. We're going to get more deep into this on the team house in a couple weeks. Jonathan's going to be back on that. So I can't wait for that. Jonathan, this is awesome. All the links, everything you need are down in the description.

Do us a favor. Like and subscribe. If you're listening to us on audio rated five stars and subscribe there too, that helps big time. And the best place to support the show is patreon. com slash the team house. Jonathan, we got to do this again soon.

on Ayes-on. Definitely. Always a pleasure, my man. Yeah, thanks for having me, man. Thank you. Hey, 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 Ais-on podcast, and the high side news outlet, which I run with Sean Naler. The newsletter is going to be once a week.

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