The Team House - Mick Mulroy Talks BDA on Iran, War Powers Act, & Gaza Negotiations | EYES ON GEOPOLITICS

Episode Date: June 30, 2025

This episode we talk about  the recent US strikes against Iranian nuclear facilities and the complex battle damage assessment. We dissect the ongoing debate around the War Powers Act and presidential authority in military actions, along with a passionate discussion on the urgent humanitarian crisis in Gaza.Plus, we examine the new ceasefire in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Qatar's growing role in international mediation. You'll also hear an incredibly inspiring story from our "End Child Soldiering" initiative. Stay informed on global affairs and learn how you can support our mission.Support the show on Patreon:⬇️https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouseNew merch, patches, and stickers! ⬇️https://theteamhouse-shop.fourthwall.comFind Mick Mulroy here: Fogbow ⬇️https://fogbow.com/Lobo Institute ⬇️https://www.loboinstitute.org/Twitter ⬇️https://x.com/mickmulroy?s=21&t=-Ze3F_Ix2vlJ18KFvORTCALinkedIn ⬇️https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-patrick-mulroy-31198b52/Bluesky ⬇️https://bsky.app/profile/mickmulroy.bsky.socialMick’s publications ⬇️https://www.loboinstitute.org/publications/publications-of-michael-mick-patrick-mulroy/Find Andy Milburn here: Twitter ⬇️https://twitter.com/i/flow/login?redirect_after_login=%2Fandymilburn8LinkedIn ⬇️https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrewmilburn2023Substack ⬇️https://amilburn.substack.com/Andy’s book ⬇️https://www.amazon.com/When-Tempest-Gathers-Mogadishu-OperationsBluesky ⬇️https://bsky.app/profile/andy-milburn.bsky.socialFind Jason Lyons here: LinkedIn ⬇️https://www.linkedin.com/in/jason-lyons-666873316?utm_source=share&utm_campaign=share_via&utm_content=profile&utm_medium=ios_appBluesky ⬇️https://bsky.app/profile/bgsilverback73.bsky.socialChapters:00:00 Introduction, Technical Issues & Show Overview02:12 Iranian Nuclear Program and US Strike Analysis25:28 The War Powers Act and Presidential Military Authority32:15 The Gaza Conflict and Humanitarian Aid Crisis41:33 DRC Ceasefire, Regional Stability, and Qatar's Role46:20 "End Child Soldiering" Initiative and Show ConclusionBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support.

Hey guys, what's up. It's DeBitri. We had a bit of an issue with our audio and our app that we used to record the video. It was cutting out and stuff like that. So I'm going to try and blend it as good as possible. You will notice in the beginning of the video, my microphone for some reason or another is not working. Things are going great. I'm not at all frustrated and very upset and annoyed. I'm trying to take a page out of Mixbook and be stoic. It's not easy. I'm very angry. I just want stuff to work, right? When you pay for things, a premium level thing, you expect it to work, right? You expect to get your money's worth. And I want to bring you guys the best possible show where it's like the audio's crisp, the video's crisp. That didn't happen today, but it's great because Mick's got some really good insights.

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So thank you guys and enjoy the show. Bye. Hey, everybody. Welcome to another episode of Aizond Geopolitics. I'm here with Mick Mulroy. You guys all know Mick. If you want to check him out, his links are in the description. Fogel logo, all the good stuff he's doing.

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All right I'm done walking You know A lot going on per usual Not as many bombs Dropping and blowing up Except in Ukraine Really You need to like point that out

They've been under like a pretty significant And a steady bombardment from Russia. First thing's first, going back to the battle that damage assessment for the Iranian nuclear facilities we hit last

week, a bit of people on both sides or some people are saying it was amazing and we knocked them out completely for years or indefinitely and some people are saying it's only a few months. Where are you at with that? Like, what are you tracking?

So the first thing I'd say is BDA is a battle damage assessment, like you said, D. It forms over time. So, you know, there's an old adage for sports are usually wrong, which is often the case because it's based on preliminary information that changes over time, right? Sometimes the best information is gained further down the road when people get complacent and start talking about it on, you know, communications devices. Sometimes they're smart enough to know we're listening. right up front so they say disinformation thinking that we'll listen to it obviously in this case if you're looking at overhead imagery you see you know little holes right it's kind of looking at

somebody who's been shot which is you know obviously not something you want to do but the hole going in is kind of small inside and in the back totally different story right so they need to be able to get more information on what happened subsurface i mean these munitions are designed to detonate 200 feet below the surface. So you're not going to see a whole lot at the top. But I would say in general, from my knowledge of the modeling for this, and this was done over 12 years, and there is two people that were in the Defense Threat Reduction Agency that I think General Kane referenced that really deserve a lot of credit, you know, for this operation, which was militarily very successful. And I think we should be impressed with our forces for planning and executing it.

But the concern now, of course, is the infrastructure is largely significantly degraded, right? I mean, just the amount of munitions we put down there. The centrifuges, I don't know the exact numbers, but I heard some people that know, I think, pretty recently saying that Natanz had like 17,000. centrifuges and Fordow had about 3,000, 4,000 and they're very difficult to move apparently and so they're likely

were destroyed as well. Doesn't mean that we destroyed all their centrifuges. And then it comes down to this highly enriched uranium, right? That's what everybody's concerned about. There's a lot of talk about these vehicles that were there before the strikes. I think the White House said they were likely there to reinforce the shafts, you know, the air shafts

that they're shooting right down. I mean, you know, and if you remember the briefing, the Pentagon, five GBU57s went down the same hole, which is just super impressive. I thought before I went to the Pentagon, I was impressed by looking at CIA operations, which are impressive. But when you see a full DOD operation, you're like, oh, I'm glad they're on our side, right? But the question then is, and this isn't a question about anything wrong with the military operation. It's whether all the enriched uranium was there. We don't know. I think there's reporting that the Israeli intelligence believes it was there. There's also reporting that a lot of it was held at Istafon, which I'm sure we did surface strikes on, but I don't think we did

many or any sub-surface because it's really deep. So what I would say is we probably set back the nuclear program as existed before our strike back, I think years. There's no really way to tell because every time they just start building, we could, Israel could strike them again. So you could say indefinitely, right? So, I mean, it's going to take a lot to rebuild it. The question is, do they have this highly enriched uranium?

Can they move it to a secret facility? And can they then get it to either a crude nuclear weapon, but even a crude nuclear weapon could be like Hiroshima and Nagasaki, right, a gravity bomb, which essentially what that was. So I view this as two parts. One, we had an opportunity that only we could fulfill, which was what we did, to grade the nuclear capabilities. And we did. And hats off to the men and woman of the U.S. Air Force, particularly and Navy, who did a lot of the Trident missile strikes, or the Tom Hock missile strikes, I should say. But we also need to have a laser focus from U.S. intelligence community on where this stuff is and what are they doing with it? Because they told us 100 times before they're strike that if we did it, they're going to get a nuclear weapon.

So when your enemy says something like that, you ought to take them. for their word. And we should be laser focused. And if we have to, we restrike. But preferably, this instead ends up going to a negotiated settlement. At one point, when I was researching this, when I was overseas for tucking on ABC, a lot of people didn't know. I didn't know. We actually gave her on a nuclear reactor back in the 60s, right? When we were friends with him, the show. And at the time, we gave him a lot of highly enriched uranium. We just, I guess we're very gullible back then, thinking that people would want it for

a nuclear weapons program. But then in 1979, you had the revolution. And then, of course, we cut all support for them. But it's a cautionary tale that, you know, friends don't always say friends and enemies don't always say enemies. And we need to be careful. the type of what could be potentially lethal technology transfers that we do as a country. Yeah, that is an interesting point that no one really talks about, right?

I'm assuming this, we set them up with the nuclear reactor as like commercial use, right, for power. Yeah, for power, exactly. Yeah, it was like atoms for peace or some initiative. Again, it's a different time. Highside's 2020. We were friends with Iran, Nishon. And we're trying to spread our influence. Yeah.

Yeah. You know, it's more of a cautionary tale than, than, you know, beating herself up something that happened a long time ago and it was a different scenario. But more importantly today is we're going to have to stay on this, right? Yeah. And last point I'd make on this is, look, after action reports, that's our reviews, are done by every military unit and the best military units, are very critical on himself, period.

Right? So I would say, I think this was exceptional. So there's no real criticism, but the idea that people would look at and see how the effectiveness of the military operation or what could have been done better, I mean, that's what makes the U.S. military of the U.S. military, right? Sure. It's not unpatriotic to do that. Hey, guys, it's me again, because we've had those technical issues.

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Hey guys. We're back again. Sorry, we had a little bit of a technical issue. I'm still here with Mick Mulroy. Thank God. Thank you for your patience. my patients is wearing thin, not with you, but with technology in general. But that's another story for another day. I could talk about that with my therapist or something. We were talking about the BDA and how it became a little bit like a little politically divided and stuff. The Trump administration was talking about kind of trying to paint it like, oh, the people that think that the strikes weren't successful in terms of like the amount of time that they pulled back. they've knocked back the Iranian nuclear program is somehow a reflection on the pilots and the crewmen

and everybody who was involved in like doing the strike that's never been done before. And I think that's a little bit of BS because, you know, the facts will bear out what the facts will bear on in terms of the BDA and how badly the Iranians program is set back. No one's taken away, you know, the precision strike that the B2B2s and all the refuelers and all the the fighter jet guys like pilots and stuff did and like the you know incredible feat of like military power that this was i i don't doubt that for a second but at some point we're just going to possibly have to come to terms that like maybe the physics aren't there right it's not taking away anything from the pilots obviously they're fucking badasses and like thank god they're not

russian or chinese right thank god they're united u.s you know u.s pilots so i don't know i don't know But like you said in the beginning of the show, in terms of like the BDA, it takes time, right? Like it takes time to actually get what's going on on the ground. You got to see what the Iranians are doing on the ground. Like they had, I saw some satellite footpicks now that they had some excavators around the site in Fortow. And hopefully, these strikes bring them back to the table. The nuclear negotiation table and we can get some kind of deal that makes sense. I hope so too, and I think everybody should.

Right now, I think the United States feels emboldened, as they believe they set it back significantly. And I don't even know how they're estimating the time. Like, that means it's like the time now, they start rebuilding it, it'll take, you know, three months or three years. Right. That's taken, that's not taken into account that we can stop them from rebuilding. Yeah.

Right. So the IDF and the United States Air Force still owns the sky, right? They have no air and missile defenses. They've taken it all out. There is no Air Force to speak of. There really wasn't to start with, but now it's completely estimated. So if they start rebuilding these facilities, they can be struck again. And they should.

Yeah. Let's point out, there's no reason to have 60% enriched uranium unless you're going to a nuclear weapon. It only takes two to three percent to use it for some. million peaceful energy means, right? So they are telling the world what they're doing. They're likely to pull out of the NPT, the nuclear nonproliferation treaty, and they're likely to discontinue possibly to discontinue cooperation with the IAEA, which is basically standing up and saying, we are going toward a nuclear weapon now. So the criticism of the strike, I think, is as much,

you know, as it relates to the U.S. president being able to take unilateral military action as it was the actual action. I mean, people are certainly capable of disagreeing on this, but that was the opportunity to take, I think, from the U.S. Israel already started the conflict. They had already significantly diminished the air defense capacity, which was the biggest part of the actual operation when we planned it many moons ago. Yeah. Right. So, So this was the time. Was it perfect? No, it's never going to be perfect.

But it did, I think, seriously set them back. Now we just have to stay diligent. And hopefully they will decide that the best course of action for them, them being the Iranians, particularly Iranian people, is to get to a second nuclear agreement of which they get considerable sanctions relief, very beneficial to their struggling economy. and the White House is put out that we might actually come up with a multinational investment fund to help fund their nuclear energy program.

Right. Right. So there's a lot of carrots out there, I think. I know most analysts, and I know a lot, as you would guess, that are very, very knowledgeable on around, say they're never going to agree with no enrichment on their soil. I hope that's not the case because it doesn't look like, especially now the U.S. is going to accept anything less than that. Do you think it sets a bad precedent now, like the toothpaste is kind of out of the tube because it's always been like a threat during the negotiations over the years that we would hit their nuclear facilities? Do you think it gets us past a point of no return or is it like kind of like we're showing like, hey, we're serious.

We'll bomb the shit out of you guys if you don't kind of. to the table. And I mean, latest report, I did see that Iran's not playing ball with the IAEA as of yet. I mean, so they are at least outwardly, and maybe for their domestic audience too, are saying that

yeah, we're not playing ball because we said that we were going to develop more uranium, get it to a point where it's a point of no return. Obviously, it seems like that's like their leverage, or at least the regime's leverage, not the country as a whole. but, you know, as a regular layman person, you see, like, we don't really fuck with North Korea, really.

They have sanctions and stuff like that. But the fact is, they have 50 or so nukes. We really don't fuck with them, you know. Barring, like, different presidents act differently towards North Korea, clearly. But so, like, what would really stop? If they have, if Istfahan is deeper than Fordow and you can't really touch Isfahan, what's to stop them. I know if I'm them, I kind of would be pushing it to the limit.

Also, the other factor that like drips in here is like Israel does what Israel wants to do, clearly. They obviously coordinate with us, but they're not listening to us. And I would argue that like the last two years, Israel has become more belligerent than ever before. I'm sure there have been pockets of time like over the last decade. but you know maybe we are getting close to a deal or something with iran and what's to stop israel from bombing them again because i feel like israel has a legitimate like uh i don't even

know if they have a legitimate concern to be fair because obviously israel's like military is way better than their rounds but um yes saying we we just can't control israel and frankly a ton of people in the in america have of that feeling where like we don't really control Israel, Israel at least politically controls us? Well, I mean... That's the layman interpretation. That gets into a lot of the politics of it. I would see, you know, Israel's going to make the decisions based on Israel's what they think is best for their national security.

Obviously, the United States is not only a most significant partner and ally to Israel, but the one that stands with it no matter what. and we provide a substantial portion of their national defense. I've heard as high as 70%. Check me if I'm wrong about that. Yeah, but it's very much subsidized by the U.S. Yes. Now, is that just total charity?

No, Israel ends up fighting a lot of the enemies of the United States. Not because they're fighting them for us, but they, you know, they chant death to Israel address to the United States, you know. the enemy, well, Israel's a friend. But that is one of the things they do. And they've decimated Hezbollah. They decimated Hamas. They've taken considerable strikes against the Houthis.

And now they have essentially shown Iran for what it is, which is a paper tiger. So the amount of money we spend on Israel also goes to our own defense, which is the same thing for Ukraine. for those you might want to stay consistent across your because the same thing holds true. You know, the money that we pay to Ukraine is in charity. They're fighting our number one adversary or most significant or more dangerous adversary. You can argue about China. But that's not charity either. So when it comes to Israel, they're going to take, and I think you can make a really good point,

what's to keep them from striking again if they don't like the deal? I think they're probably well. And that could rupture the negotiation process. I mean, they smoke the lead negotiator and this last one. Yep, right before. I mean, you remember. The sixth round, right. Yeah.

So I think, but I don't know what is the U.S. right now, my understanding, is asking for no enrichment on Iranian soil. So they get enriched uranium that's only up to the 3% margin, you know, margin, whatever's needed for energy. All the enriched uranium that exceeds that. will be taken out of the country so they have to turn it over. And there's a provision that the U.S. wants to add about the amount of ballistic missiles that they can have. So it's pretty stringent on Iran. No way they go for that. Come on, bro.

Then we're going to have to be super diligent about tracking their efforts to get a nuclear weapon. Because you're absolutely right. Look at Libya. Look at North Korea. Libya gave up its, we talked them out of their nuclear weapons ambitions. in Gaddafi, although nobody's going to shed a tear form, was killed in a ditch, right? Right. And we all see what happened in North Korea.

So they're not stupid. They realize if they get a deliverable nuclear weapon, multiple ones, that their regime's stability increases substantially. So we're going to have to end that. But that's unacceptable. You can't just say that. As every politician and every president of every party has said, it's unacceptable for Iran to have a nuclear weapon, then you have to be willing to do something about it or it's all empty rhetoric. So I think this is going to be, this is going to be, you know, are we going to use aerial denial weapons to keep them out of these facilities?

Not sure why we didn't do that already, you know. But there's going to have to be a major undertaking for tracking and verifying the intelligence because this could be a tick for tack that goes well into the future unless Iran eventually comes off of their pretty hard line. Yeah. have the accruciations. Well, Frank, I mean, like, obviously the ballistic missiles are probably tied to the nuclear weapons because you could strap a nuclear warhead on it and it would reach Israel, right? I get it. But, like, I think the argument can be made that, like, their ballistic missile program is for their general self-defense non-nuclear, right? Like, they have to at least, I know they're bad. I know they're bad guys. But, like, they're going to need some kind of self-defense.

defense forces in their, even if they make a great deal, they become new players in the world economy and their GDP fucking 30-Xs, right? And they become like a shining bright light in Middle East. They're going to want some self-defense weapons and turn, you know. Yep. Yeah, I think every nation has a right to defend itself. Yeah. The problem with Iran is it's the most destabilizing force of the Middle East and it's proven.

It's proven that. So to the extent that you can control it, you want to, but you're right. You're going to have to make concessions to allow them to have a military of self-defense. For sure, for sure. Correct me if I'm wrong. The first JCPOA had the deal where like there was, I mean, whatever was highly enriched got trucked out of and taken to a separate monitor of place, right? I don't know if it was in Iran or somewhere else. But correct me if I'm wrong, because you would know the particulars.

more than I would. So the limit, although they could enrich inside a row. Okay, I got you. It was still limited at to 3.67. So way below nuclear weapons capacity. Yeah. So many people now are saying, well, we probably shouldn't have got out of the first agreement. Because you could, we could have always addressed the proxy issue.

Right. We could have separately because it wasn't in the agreement. So if it's not in the agreement, it doesn't mean the U.S. can't sanction the hell out of them for spots in the terrorist organizations. or, you know, ballistic missile testing that exceeds the, you know, the allowed upon a mount. But, you know, that's water under the bridge. So we can have a theoretical or academic discussion on it. But we are where we are. So I do think the U.S., if we could get all three of those, it would be a, if we'd be in a better position going forward,

and we'd be in a better position because we took this strike. Now, the war powers act aside, we can talk about that next. Yeah. But, you know, I think this was the right move to make. It was the right time to make it. But we have to be fair and say it's not the end-all-be-all. It's not, doesn't mean, you know, like, you'll pull the trigger, so they're never going to get a nuclear weapon now.

This is going to get them to realize that they're conventional deterrence is almost zero. Yeah. Almost zero. It was such an overmatch by the Israelis and obviously by the U.S. that they're going to definitely go for a nuclear weapon. So we just have to accept what they say and make sure it. I mean, listen, they have F-14s from the 70s, right? Like, they're the only, you know, we used to have when we retired them 15 years ago.

And F-4s, I think, too. So, like, their hardware is old as shit. Obviously, it's not going to hang with F-35s and, you know, more advanced cruise missiles and stuff. Yeah, so moving to the War Powers Act, there was a bit of back and forth and a lot of hoopla politically. People are saying that the strikes were unconstitutional. Other people were saying no, it was in the president's right to do that. My understanding is like the argument on one side that said it was unconstitutional was because it didn't pose a clear and, what was the word? a clear, like, obvious, like, threat to the United States that needed to be acting on right away.

Right. Right. Because the fact is they're not exactly a week away from making a nuclear weapon. They were months or a year away from weaponizing their enrichment, getting into 90% and then weaponizing it. Where are you at on that? So it's, it is one of those debates that keeps coming up and probably should keep coming up. It's the most important thing that a government does that decide to go to war. right yeah um that's why it's prominent in article one which is congress is right to declare war

and uh prominent in article two which is the president's role as commander in chief the war powers act was uh passed in 1973 over the veto of then president nixon no president has ever accepted it as constitutional just to be just so everybody's on the same sheet um What it says generally is there's a notification provision within the first, I think, 48 hours, I think could be wrong. But there's a certain amount of hours where the president has to notify Congress of his intent to enter troops into arms away. Hostilities. Right. He didn't do that. Trump this time.

Yeah, there's two parts here. Normally, notification prior to strike, which we did, if you remember the strikes in Syria. Yeah, as a result. They tell the gang of eight, right? That's what they call it. Yep, yep. The gang of eight, which is the majority and minority leader in both the House and the Senate and the key chairmen's and vice chairmen of key committees.

Yeah. Like defense, intelligence, and I imagine foreign policy. They usually get briefed before the strikes as a courtesy. They don't get a vote. They don't get to say that's a bad idea. I mean, they can, but they don't actually, they're not part of the chain of command. that was only done with the Republicans this time. That's going to be a press,

could be a precedent setting, which I don't think is a good thing. I think they probably did it because they didn't want to leak. I think the gang of eight would say that's, they wouldn't leak. But, you know, quite frankly, the first intelligence assessment from my understanding that was leaked was one that was sent to Congress. So we got to come up with a better way to control.

classified material, which means to be like, that's a whole other episode, but not allowing it to be printed, having some kind of stamp and serial numbers on it so we know who actually leaked and all that kind of stuff, we could do better. You could turn it, you could turn the average tech company to come with a better system of protecting our classified material. But that, again, it's another topic. But then, of course, the notification. And then in the War Powers Act, the president is allowed to maintain and keep them in combat for 60 days. Right? So this was way short of that. Yeah.

So this didn't even violate the War Powers Act except for the notification part. But it says within 48 hours, so it might be solid there. And then after 60 days, if Congress doesn't declare war or pass an authorized use of military force, which was the entirety of the G-WA was based on AUMF for the military side, not the agency side, then he has 30 days to withdraw those forces. That's under the War Powers Act. The Supreme Court has never decided it. They've never shown an inclination to step in and decide it.

So it seems to be one of those things that just won't be resolved. Presidents will do what they want and Congress will complain that it violates the War Powers Act. And to me, it seems like the Supreme Court, if they can't decide that, I don't know how you have a Supreme Court. It's the most important thing we do. Yeah. Yeah. It's interesting, too, how you said, like, no president since the war powers, you know, has, yeah, obviously they don't want to give up their fucking. executive power, whoever it is, right?

You could be a fucking peace, peace nick, and also be like a crazy Hulk. You're not going to want to give up your power to do it. Is that why we stopped it in Yemen versus the Houthis in like 55 versus 51, 52 or so days? There could be an, well, I don't know. I don't remember that being the Poor Powers Act. Congress can obviously defund something that continues going. That's the other thing. They have the power of the purse, also constitutional.

They can say, we're not funding this operation anymore, and unless they try to pull it out of their budget for the DOD, which usually doesn't have this kind of money sitting around to maintain an major operation. Yeah, tens of billions of dollars, discretionary, just ready to go. Yeah. Yeah. So there's still ways Congress can exert its authority, which is I'm not funding the war. in Afghanistan, for example.

Yeah. But that was a UMF, authorized use of military force, which from September 11, 2001, and then when they passed the AMF, we're still using that to keep forces in Syria today, today, right? It's still the AUMF that was passed after 9-11 is why we have the ability to, or the legal authority to keep forces in Syria today. Yes. Al-Qaeda, Al-Qaeda, spliced.

in a mini-groups. One of them was ISIS. ISIS spread to Iraq and Syria, or they spread across Iraq and Syria. We have an enduring defeat of ISIS mission in Syria, therefore it's AUMF. That's the, that's the logic. Yeah. I mean, listen, I could see that logic. My personal opinion is I think we should get out of the Middle East outside of like a strong, soft and agency president to beat the tits off of ISIS. That's like, you know what I mean? That's mostly what it is. It's mostly what it is. There's support elements out there.

Sure. Even with the National Guard, God bless them. National Guard's everywhere, by the way. Not just looking after hurricanes, which is significant enough, but you go to any place in the world and there'll be National Guard guys. Or downtown L.A. Or downtown L.A. Sorry.

It's another story. Right. They're everywhere. So I think they do get the credit, but it's always good to point out just how, significant they are to U.S. domestic and national and international security. Yeah. Moving on to, you know, it seems like kind of people forgot about what's going on in Gaza with the Israel Hamas conflict there.

Where do you think we're at with the, I mean, whatever. I'm going to take a little bit of heat for that. I'm not going to take heat for this, but I'm going to be a little bit, like, I'm going to talk to my shit a little. What's going on, the humanitarian aid side? is fucking ridiculous. I mean, the last two weeks, you've seen multiple instances of

Palestinians getting shot to shit by the IDF. And Horett's made, printed something out a few days back, where it's like that was like their order was to shoot people going to get fucking aid. It's fucking disgusting. The aid's not good enough. It hasn't been good enough since the GHF started.

Going to be honest. and I get it You want to smoke Hamas Keep smoking Hamas I don't find The fact that like you've mentioned Many many many times There's upwards of 70,000 kids

That are fucking starving Is a joke And the fact And IDF shooting up It's been like every day People are dying Like citizens are dying At aid stations

At what point Are we like bro We invaded two countries We didn't do We fucked up for sure sure, but we didn't do this. Like, we would never do this. We would be in fucking jail if we did this.

Sorry, I'm going a little hard, Mick. I don't know you don't want to, you know. Yeah, no, I get it. It's full disclosure. Just as a lot of listeners know, I'm involved in humanitarian aid delivery all around the world. We are not involved in Gaza right now or having anything to do with the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation.

But we have talked to the UN, a former UN, very senior humanitarian officials on this. And we already knew this from our time when we were involved there through the maritime corner. It really would take like 400 aid delivery positions to adequately get food to 2.2 million people. And there's like four. That's just not except. I mean, it's just basic math. That needs to change.

As much as Israel has done good, which I would say. defeating or just annihilating Hezbollah taking out everything we just talked about for the first part of the podcast. This isn't acceptable. This shouldn't be done. Aid should not be

restricted to innocent civilians, period. And I think the Israelis would say they're not. I think the world can make their own decision. There's a lot of free and open press that's available on that. But either way, This needs to change.

There needs to be humanitarian assistance brought in, distributed in an orderly manner, so it's not the strongest take it and then try to sell it to the weakest, which is why these humanitarian organizations have very specific rules and procedures and principles that they go by. That doesn't favor that does make sure that the weak get food as well, which is distribution. And part of distributing in a manner that's consistent with that is doing it all over the place, including where people are instead of making them, you know, walk miles to get food and walk back, which obviously defeats the point.

So there's a lot going on here. I hope it ends in a ceasefire negotiation like President Trump is talking about. I think he does want to see a ceasefire, you know, and I think he's going to put pressure on Prime Minister Netanyah would do that. Whether it's enough pressure because he's concerned that he will, his government will collapse because some of the more far right like Smoltrits and Ben Gavir, right? I don't know, but this needs for the good of the hostages who obviously should never have been there in the first place, 28 will come out under the U.S. proposal if it's agreed to.

and over a thousand Palestinians will leave from prison. And humanitarian aid will go up in large numbers. I would hope that it's distributed by NGOs in the UN, which has all the stuff ready to go, right? It's just sitting in warehouses. And then we can get to a place where it's not a threat to Israel, so Israel is indeed long-term occupation. That's going to require Hamas to leave.

I would hope part of the agreement is the leadership, on down to the middle level leave Gaza. They can go to Iran, whatever. They can take them in and then, you know, intelligence services had long memories. Just put it that way. But anything to get the crisis over to answer the mail for Israel's security, which is legitimate, and to get somebody working for the Palestinian people in a leadership

position, not just for their own. own, you know, demonic terrorist agenda. Because we can see where that led the Palestinian people in Gaza. That needs to happen. It's a proposal on the table. Yes. Is there going to be a lot of pressure put on Hamas? I hope so. Let's see what happens. If Hamas can agree to it, hopefully the president can put enough pressure on the Israelis that they'll agree to it as well. I wish I was as optimistic as you are, Mick. I don't know that I'm optimistic. I think there's a lot of pressure getting put on

Netanyahu right now by Israelis. People tend to think there are some kind of monolith over there. Like they agree with everything. Prime Minister Netanyahu, that's not my experience. I spent a lot of time over there. And I know a lot of IDF people, as you would guess. There's a lot that have, it's a democracy, right? They have opposing views of the current prime minister,

even inside the IDF. Yeah, they fucking. hate him. I'll say it. I mean, I spoke to a couple Israelis who live here, who are some former IDF folks. They fucking, I mean, at least these guys anecdotal, right? They do not like Netanyahu whatsoever. And they, you know, the first thing they tell me is about the hostages and stuff like that and about how they need to smoke. But the same people that hate

BB Nanjahu also talk about, and this is anecdotal smoking. And like this is like conversations that we're not talking publicly is like totally wiping out Gaza. And again, anecdotal, right? There are poll numbers out there. You can look at them and see like gauge more of the atmospherics of the entire country. But I think it just needs to stop and stop as soon as possible. Or if it doesn't stop, at least let the fucking aid go in.

And if we need 10,000 American contractors to sit there and make sure it fucking works, fucking do it. Because 70,000 kids starving is a fucking joke. And that's not even a good enough way to say it. It's fucking, it's horrible. It's like the worst thing in the world. We can all admit that starving

kids is bad, right? Yep. Thank you. Okay. I know you think so. And there's plenty of NGOs and international organizations that can go in and distribute. Right. You know, that's anything wrong with American contractors.

But it's, the capacity. Yeah, the capacity to do the distribution is there. It just needs to be done in a way where so much is coming in that people, it will de-escalate, right? If you see, it should be coming in the ground corridor. You know, 500 trucks a day was what was coming in humanitarian aid before the conflict. So they need to get that way up. Yeah. And unfortunately, sometimes the Moss is going to take some of this. But, you know, if you have to, if you have to, if If you have to accept that to feed that chock who's in IPC stage 5, which is the end, you know, if you're asking me, I'm saying it's worth the trade. Right. So flood it so in turn, so it doesn't become a black market where like they grab the food and they can charge out, you know, tons of money for it. Right. Yeah. Agreed. Idra said they're done, but this is going to be needs to be done because we're going to start.

We're going to see mass starvation. It's because even the food that's giving. getting in, if it's just being hoarded, that means the weakest, the sick, the elderly, the children, the people that don't live near where these food stations are, are going to really get hit hard to a point where I'm not sure how they would continue if they can't get food. I mean, it's just basic, just basic knowledge. But the easiest way to get there, of course, would be a ceasefire that both sides can agree to.

Yeah. We'll see. Hopefully it happens. a little bit of some extra stuff. I mean, I know you're, I would say you're as close to an Africa expert is out there, right? I mean, you've spent some time there. I've lived in Africa, particularly East Africa for many, many years. Yeah.

I'll have multiple programs, you know, humanitarian enabling programs, particularly in, we did Sudan, South Sudan. And we have a lot of requests. a lot of big cut in foreign foreign assistance particularly on the humanitarian side so we're getting a lot of requests but yes so i've i've spent a lot of time africa expert i mean i i i don't know that's for other people well you're the africa expert in this zoom call right now i'll take that you're the closest thing to that and um between us so uh the drc ceasefire What are you tracking with that? So if it holds, certainly a good thing. This has been an area, if you remember back to the Rwandan genocide in 1994,

famous book and movie called Hotel Rwanda. We do a lot on ending the use of children as soldiers. So if you remember that, the UN General Delair, Romeo Delair, Canadian, He started a group that deals with ending the use of children of soldiers. They came from that, right? And we support them. But we also had the Congo War, two of them. But dates might be a little off, but in the 90s and mid-90s and late 90s.

And then we've had this conflict where March 23 movement, also known as just M-23, is supported by Rwanda. And they're an insurgent group in the Democratic Republic Republic of the Congo's government is supported by Uganda and some other African countries, M23, Rwanda. They have made significant gains, M23, that is. They've taken cities like Goma. There's a lot of rare earth minerals and highly thought after minerals like gold that is there. So there's also that issue, which brings in external actors, which sometimes, if not all the time, extends the conflict. And of course, when this happens, you have huge humanitarian issues. So that's why we look at it so closely.

This would be a great thing, you know, that the White House announced on Friday if it holds. There's a lot that people who don't believe it, that doesn't mean we shouldn't try. If it stays, that would mean that the Rwanda withdraws support from M23. And potentially, I think as part of the agreement, they get reintegrated so they're not as one group, which is obviously causing the Civil War. But the ones that are redeemable, if you will, get parsed out into the military, the different units. And again, Rwanda stopped supporting them. And for the U.S., what's in it, I think there is priority over U.S. investments in these rare earth minerals and such. So obviously, a big issue with this second Trump administration is access to that.

And DRC has that. And it, you know, from a business perspective, you're not going to be exploited if you're in a middle of a raging civil war. So it benefits everybody, including hopefully this is a benefit to the people of DRC, not just, wealthy foreign countries. But I think if that's the case, it's a win-win all the way around. So we should all be hoping that the Trump and I think Qatar orchestrated ceasefire and DRC holds. Yeah, I hope so.

I mean, Qatar really is a spot that like they are in the middle of fucking everything, huh? Like in terms of like negotiations and stuff like that. Why is that? I think they have the ability to talk to a lot of these groups. They view themselves as part of their foreign policy, is their ability to settle these. They get a lot of grief of that,

but it's really important that we have people that can talk to Iran, right? Or can negotiate with Hamas. Yeah. If we don't have that, it's going to make these negotiations more difficult and the chances of agreement less likely. So, I mean, they can defend themselves,

but, you know, they should get credit when they are, just like the United States, just like Trump administration, when they assist in getting to a ceasefire anywhere. Right. So this is a good thing. Let's see if it holds. It's all hope it holds. And the longer it does, the more likely it will.

Mick, we covered a lot today. It got me red hot. The technical issues got me more red hot than it. Now it wasn't you. It wasn't you. It's never you, but it was just the Zoom not working. I want people to go and check out nchildsoldiering. dot org yes if you hit end child soldiering it's all it's it's a page it's also associated with lobo

institute uh lobo's our company uh and child children is the 501 c3 yeah does that yeah great book as well by mark sullivan yep uh all the glimmering stars incredible story um it's kind of wild it's a our story that should be made into a fucking movie and should be at the oscars going and be completely honest with you because it's like I'm a move up you know I'm a cynical fucker but when I hear things like this it's two child soldiers that ended up meeting got married got out of it and were able to continue their life have children be great people and not you know obviously traumatized through like what they've gone through but it's an incredible human interest story where like we don't have enough of that where like people have persevered in like

like impossible scenario. So true. And now when I first started filming, his name's Anthony O'Pocca, his wife's named Florence O'Pocca, it was mostly for academic purposes. Like I'm a regular warfare, you know, practitioner at the time. But then I realized a human story like you just laid out the end, it's incredible. It's literally, if you think your life is hard and you think about giving up, if you watch this, you will not.

Right. I think you will change your perspective. It's, it's, it's very inspiring. It is not how most stories in for child soldiers. They usually do. I believe it. Right. So it's important to point that out, but this is a very true story that should inspire everyone, not just other child soldiers. But they spent, once they got out, a lot of their effort getting other child soldiers out, rehabilitated with an occupation. That's what we do now within child soldiering. Both Anthony and Florence are part of our organization. They're all, you two young. youngest sons. I've got six kids are my godson's twins, by the way. And they are just incredible people. So I hope this gets made into something bigger. The substantial portion of the book, thanks to Mark Sullivan, goes to our 501c3. And if it's made into a movie, that's the intent, right? Yeah. Help more kids and inspire more people if something gets made into, you know, some kind of film or... Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Check it out. go to the web so I want to put the link in the description. If you want to read about the story,

the link is all. I'll put all the glimmering stars in the description as well. It's a, in a world of absolute shit, like these people are a bright light of, you know, the power of what you could do if you're really like. It's just great.

They're just amazing people. And like they've gone through things where they probably shouldn't be. Right. Like they're an absolute success story and, where it started in a horrible place. So make you do good shit, man. Thank you. I appreciate it.

Appreciate it, man. That's it. Everyone have a great Sunday. We'll see you next time. We're not doing plugs for our shit. Just check out nchildsoldoldoorg.com. Link is in the description down below. Hey, guys, it's Jack.

I just want to talk to you for a moment about how you can support the show. If you've been watching it, enjoying it, but you'd like to get a little bit more involved and help us continue to do this. You can check out our Patreon. It is patreon.com slash the Teamhouse. And for $5 a month, you can get access to all of these episodes of the Team House ad-free. The same goes with our affiliated podcast, Eyes On, with Andy Milburn, Jason Lyons, Mick Mulroy. That one, you will also get all of those episodes ad-free.

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