The Team House - The CIA Has Been Arming Kurds in Iran | EYES ON GEOPOLITICS

Episode Date: March 4, 2026

We break down the escalating conflict between the United States, Israel, and Iran, including recent strikes, Iranian retaliation, and the risk of a wider regional war. Jonathan Hackett, Jack Murphy, and Jason Lyons analyze the military options, geopolitical stakes, and what the next phase of escalation could look like in the Middle East.Jon Hackett's Book:⬇️https://a.co/d/082z28uYThe High Side :⬇️https://thehighside.substack.com/Support the show on Patreon:⬇️https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouseSubscribe to our new newsletter!!!!https://teamhousepodcast.kit.com/joinWhitefish Security Summit ⬇️https://whitefishsecuritysummit.com/New merch, patches, and stickers! ⬇️https://theteamhouse-shop.fourthwall.comCheck out Mick's new podcast here:⬇️Apple Podcasts:https://podcasts.apple.com/at/podcast/pub-and-porch-applied-stoicism/id1836955475Spotify:https://open.spotify.com/show/1k3QPmkAMwnGJxMLDwUSSd?si=n6piIu8XRcag1Z0K43A3bQYoutube:https://www.youtube.com/@UCd0Hq6QFk8CoTu5j-VU0Ong Find Mick Mulroy here: Fogbow ⬇️https://fogbow.com/Lobo Institute ⬇️https://www.loboinstitute.org/Twitter ⬇️https://x.com/mickmulroy?s=21&t=-Ze3F_Ix2vlJ18KFvORTCALinkedIn ⬇️https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-patrick-mulroy-31198b52/Bluesky ⬇️https://bsky.app/profile/mickmulroy.bsky.socialMick’s publications ⬇️https://www.loboinstitute.org/publications/publications-of-michael-mick-patrick-mulroy/Find Marc P here:https://x.com/MpolymerFind Andy Milburn here: Twitter ⬇️https://twitter.com/i/flow/login?redirect_after_login=%2Fandymilburn8LinkedIn ⬇️https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrewmilburn2023Substack ⬇️https://amilburn.substack.com/Andy’s book ⬇️https://www.amazon.com/When-Tempest-Gathers-Mogadishu-OperationsBluesky ⬇️https://bsky.app/profile/andy-milburn.bsky.socialFind Jason Lyons here: LinkedIn ⬇️https://www.linkedin.com/in/jason-lyons-666873316?uBluesky ⬇️https://bsky.app/profile/bgsilverback73.bsky.social"Karl Casey @ White Bat Audio"00:00 Iran War Update & Leadership Crisis02:33 Did the U.S. Know Israel Would Strike Iran?05:00 Why There’s No Anti-War Movement in the U.S.12:20 Iran Attacks U.S. Bases & Gulf Targets21:10 Arming Iranian Kurds for a Possible Ground War34:40 How Iran Could Escalate Across the Middle East49:30 Risks to U.S. Troops, Bases & Civilians1:05:10 Where the Iran War Goes NextBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support.

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Thanks a bunch. Hey, everybody. Welcome to another episode of Aizond Geopolitics. I'm joined today with Jack Murphy, Jason Lines, Jonathan Hackett. I believe the muscles from Brussels is coming. Andy will be here shortly. Yeah, a lot going on. We're doing a double whammy this week of Aizons because, you know,

obviously the war continues against Iran. a lot has happened I don't even know where I'm going to start I'm literally having decided yet but let's start with let's start with the fact that they picked a new Supreme Leader which is

Kameni's son his second son but they don't know if he's if people are alive because they bombed the council what is it called council of experts Assembly of experts yeah they bombed that when that was going on so it really seems like we really want

negotiate with whoever comes out on top of this. A lot's been happening. There's like so many things. I think six service members have died and I think 20 plus have been wounded on the American side. Iran keeps continuing to hit all the Gulf states around them. Targeting, mostly targeting, they are targeting civilian stuff like infrastructure and stuff like that, but they're targeting a lot of military stuff.

Like you see some satellite images of our bases in and around the area. they don't look like they're doing super great. Word is, there's like another big wave coming from us, from on our side on Iran, and I'm sure it's been happening all day. Another big part of news was there's an article that came out like literally like maybe an hour ago, two hours ago talking about that the U.S. has been supplying arms to the Iranian Kurds since last year. And with it supposedly like a ground thing is supposed to start within the next,

couple days they asked Israel and the US if they would provide a you know fire support there's no word on whether that we agreed to that so yeah a lot's happening and I'm sure I missed that I mean you all I'm sure you guys all saw like Rubio and Pete Hexseth's press conference I mean Marco Rubio just basically let the cat out of the bag saying that we knew Israel's going to hit them so and we knew that they were going to attack our base so we just hit them too it's like i don't i'm not a conspiracy theorist but israel runs our shit let's be honest okay guys what do you have well i'll say that today when they were meeting with marts trump you know he fixed that he mentioned that uh he had a feeling that iran would attack the u.s and that's why it wasn't

because of Israel telling rubio anything he had a feeling like what he read the like the tea leaves he went to a psychic or if they was if there was real intel about that happening, they would be fucking leaking it from a week before. The, I mean, the thing is, like, the lies they're telling us aren't really meant to be believed. And it's just this interesting sort of separation with reality that 20 years ago, they had to lie to us about WMDs, about, you know, fighting for freedom, all these sorts of things. And today, they don't have to do that anymore. They just have to produce social media content.

And enough of Congress and enough of the population of the United States. I mean, even though this has very low approval, there's no real anti-war movement in this country. There hasn't been since like maybe the 70s. So, I mean, it's interesting that like they don't really have to make the case. And Congress, you know, some of them have said belatedly, you have to make the case. But he doesn't really have to. If he doesn't want to, it doesn't seem. So I'm not really sure what we're doing here.

But I mean, it's scary times in that regard. It feels like a lot of the safeguards are off. I'm concerned about the Americans that are in the Middle East, like civilians, because a lot of this kind of scattershot announcement over social media, the State Department's been doing that too, and they haven't been doing a very good job coordinating evacuations of people. And actually, Rubio just pleaded this afternoon with media organizations to help amplify the State Department's messaging about evacuation plans

because it seems like the State Department no longer has the ability on its own like you used to, to communicate to people in country, because it must have been dismantled, I assume. One of the, I'm sorry, Dee, was he posted? One of the embassies put out something that said, hey, don't come here, we can't help you. Yeah, in Jerusalem, I think. No, in Jerusalem.

Yeah, that doesn't invoke much confidence. Instead, like, we're not going to help anybody get out. Like, if you want, jump on a bus and head to fucking Egypt. Like, that's what we said. to people, which is fucking insane. Yeah. Remember in 2008 out in Lebanon, we had the conflict there. And we were doing a Neo with civilian votes.

Yep. What's Neo? Sorry. Non-combatant evacuation. Yeah. I mean, I don't know where you guys want to take this. I mean, the messaging is absolutely, absolutely piss poor. I think Trump came out or since you sent me this Jonathan, right?

Where Trump sent something over to like Congress in terms of like, you know, what what the aims are. And number one on the list is ballistic missiles, which outside of our bases that are in the area have no threat to the United States, continental United States, and Alaska, they definitely can't hit. And the second, I think the fourth on the list was a nuclear weapon, which by all accounts, they were not continuing their progress on building a nuclear weapon. rumor is that the negotiations were at the point where Iran was offering to give up all their 60% uranium to the United States.

To bring it to us, let us like refine it back down. And they would only refine up to 1.5. No sunset clauses either that were in the JCPOA number one. And we still fucking bombed them. Over the weekend as well, Netanyahu was chirping everywhere on Israeli media saying how the negotiations were essentially a ruse. to get our, you know, get the one aircraft carrier in the Mediterranean and stuff like that, and get things in position and move whatever that we had to move. So it's like, were we down for the negotiations?

Was it ever a fucking thing for the, like to try and denuclearize Iran? Like, they're just fucking playing us. And that's a fact. I'll jump in there on the missiles, actually. So I was talking to somebody about this today. So before the conflict started, there was an estimation of between 15, to 3,000 ballistic missiles of any range whatsoever, including short range, medium range, long range, and they're firing about a rate of 25 per hour. If you do the math on that,

if it's a sustained rate 25 per hour since Saturday morning, that's five days of missiles in their entire arsenal of every range. Some of those are going to fail. Some of those are not in good condition. Some of those are not operationally ready. They have 80,000 drones. They can produce up to 300 drones per month if we haven't destroyed their drone production facilities, which is kind of a concern more, I think, than the ballistic missiles, especially it's a lot easier to destroy a transporter, a rector launcher or a missile, a fixed missile site than it is to destroy, you know, drones that are very tiny, that it can actually penetrate through airspace. But if that's the number one reason that this conflict is going on, that's a very finite

military objective that could easily be communicated to the world about, hey, we're going to destroy these facilities, this number of facilities. And it doesn't really reveal anything. I remember during the Hegsef speech, he was, you know, very cagey about saying anything at all and even shot down, I think it was an NBC reporter that asked him, you know, what's the military objective? And he kind of got upset at her for asking that question. He said there was like a legacy media ploy to ask this type of question to, like, inform the American public about the objectives.

I'm surprised Hegsef didn't say that having strategic goals is gay and woke. Right. Yeah. Well, he did say that there's no need for rules of engagement anymore. Yeah. Yeah, stupid rules of engagement and politically correct wars. He also called the last 20 years of conflict dumb wars, which to me, I mean, that kind of offends the nearly 4,000 service members that died fighting in those wars. Wasn't he, didn't he serve in those wars too?

Yeah. Yeah. Like, in a lot of this, I mean, part of it, like to put a thumb on the veteran community, you know, those of us who did serve in the war on terror years. And I know there's a huge diversity of views out there amongst veterans. It's not monolithic. But I do notice a lot of them supporting this campaign as sort of not a pragmatic policy decision, but as a catharsis for what they experienced throughout the war. Part of it is that the Iranians legitimately were targeting American soldiers during the war. That happened.

And then part of it, I think, in my opinion, is that the war has failed. And there's an attempt to regain some dignity and some honor. in the aftermath of two failed conflicts. But I'm not sure that that is enough in of itself to legitimize or justify fighting a new war because the last one was dumb. I need a little bit more to go on than that. I mean, in the alternative, we could do something kind of like Kosovo and Bosnia, where we captured and arrested the top level folks. I mean, that's Delta Force did a lot of that capturing in the 90s, bring them to justice internationally,

not just for the United States, but internationally, because there were a lot of NATO allies and Iraqi partners that were killed and maimed from those explosively form penetrators. And instead of bringing them to justice, we're just dropping bombs. And yeah, on that, too, you know, the whole concept, if you're going to do an assassination, right, if you're going to take out the leadership, we're calling it a decapitation strike, you know, that makes sense if, for instance, you know the Minister of Foreign Affairs, he's number three in line. I don't know that in Iran. I'm just making an example. And you've compromised him. He works for the CIA. He works for Assad, whatever, that it makes total sense to take out number one and number two because you're going to move your guy up into the number one

position. But from what our own government has been telling us, they're blowing away the entire succession plan that they had in mind. They're killing all of these people. Okay. I mean, is it killing for the sake of killing? We're on the record saying we're not doing nation building. We're not doing these long wars. We're not doing forever wars. Well, actually, Trump did say we can fight forever today. But it's ostensibly a break with the past, with the past conflicts. But I just don't see any like cohesive plan. And I think that's because there is no cohesive plan that all of this is just being done off the cuff. It feels like there's a tension between General Kane on the military planning side and then the policy side,

where General Kane seems to have a very deliberate military, at least at the operational level, maybe not strategic, but at the operational level, it clearly seems to be well-formed as well-formed as it can be. But there's no connection to that in strategic end-states, and it seems like there is no desire to have a strategic end-state attached to this operational activity. And to get into the ground game,

because I do want to get to the Kurds a little bit, since we're on this topic. But again, when you're going to launch some sort of an air campaign like this, and by the way, I don't think we've ever transitioned to country or regime to a democracy with an air campaign alone. I don't think that's happened since, you know, the last 80 years, if ever. But when you do something like that, you know, it should work in tandem with an unconventional warfare strategy that you have a shadow government in waiting that you have built up. And at least from the people I've spoken to over the years, we have no shadow government in Iran. Like that doesn't exist. There has been operational preparation of the environment.

A lot of that has to do with non-assisted recovery routes that hopefully we never have to use. But as far as the ground game, I mean, yeah, the news that came out today about the Kurds in Western Iran, it's the P.A.K. And then there's one other group over there, too, one Kurdish group, the last I knew. It's been a while since I've looked at this, so forgive me if I'm a little off. It's the PJ. PJ. Yeah, yeah. Thank you.

And the Kurds have, I mean, this whole notion of greater Kurdistan, right? So I was in a gunrunner's office for the PKK about 10 years ago. And this dude had a map up on the wall. And that map showed how they perceive Kurdistan. And the boundaries of Kurdistan for them went from. the Persian Gulf on the Persian side in Western Iran, up the side of the Persian Gulf into the area of northern Iraq that is currently Kurdistan, which is currently Kurdish held, into northeast Syria, the area that became called Rajava, and up into Turkey, southern Turkey,

connecting to the Mediterranean. Now, that is a huge swath of land connecting the Persian Gulf and Mediterranean that they perceive as, you know, their homeland, that they would like to turn into a nation, or at least some factions would like to turn that into a cohesive, Kurdish country, even though even Abdullah Ojalon has kind of backed away from that in so many ways and looked at other alternative forms of government rather than creating a Kurdish nation state. But, and I don't know what you guys have been heard or may have read about. I do know that the CIA and Mossad have both been playing over there, I mean, all the way back to the 1980s. So it's not really a surprise that these guys have gotten weapons shipments.

But how, you know, John or Jason, I mean, how would you assess their fighting capability on the ground? I mean, can they constitute a credible threat to the Iranian regime? So this goes back to 1946 when Mahabad, which is the provincial area where a lot of these Pijak guys are coming from. Lake Ormia, which is the major water feature there. They had a separatist revolt against the Shah at that time. They survived for two years as an independent state under that conflict in 1946. It's a very interesting thing to read about. I encourage listeners to read about it. It's something that helps you understand the Kurds a lot more. The Kurds that fought that rebellion back then were the Barzani family and one other family. They were the end of their two-year conflict in Iran

where they had independence ended when the Brits helped raise a Shah push them. west out of the country into northern Iraq, and that's where the current Barzani family came from. And that family has been obviously our close contact for many conflicts, as you mentioned. And those are the combat-tested Hashmirah that everybody knows. The ones inside Iran never got that combat exposure, and they haven't had an opportunity to get real good tactical training that they would need to actually work together in a coordinated way. And the other problem is Pijack, that the section of the Kurds, that's in Western Iran, a large.

There's a couple of different Kurdish groups like Congregel, for example, and some others. But this one, Pijack, which would be leading the charge, is an arch enemy of Turkey. And Iran has actually allowed Turkey to do air strikes inside of Iran back in 2016-17 to push back Pijack fighters away from Turkey's border. So it would be very hard to imagine that a NATO ally Turkey would allow Pijack to have any power in Iran. And I don't know if you've seen the media. but Netanyahu has already said that Turkey is a potential enemy of Israel soon. So that might even be another problem, like another movement on the chess board of,

okay, where does the threat move around now that the Kurds are coming into the picture? Turkey is getting upset. What does that mean for Israel pushing north? And they just occupied southern Lebanon. They're probably going to occupy southwest Syria. So I'm looking like bigger picture at the region of what does this mean if Pijak gets these weapons? It sounds so simple that give these Kurds these weapons. But there are major ramifications regional.

especially for Turkey if the Pijak gets these weapons. And I don't think, we talked about this in previous episode, I don't think in the National Security Council that there is this level of understanding of which Kurds are which. And what happens if you get this group of Kurds something, and there's another group of Kurds that has total opposite political view. Like in Rojava, there's even two different ways of looking at government in Rojaba.

One of them is a completely decentralized, almost like socialist system. And the other is kind of like a federalized state system, even in Rajaba, which is in Syria. And the Pijak are not the leading Kurds, or not the only Kurds in Western Iran. You know, there are Sunni Kurds, the Shia Kurds. There are other Kurds or animists. You know, and the religion is very important for them

because especially with the way terrain works, when you're isolated in a certain area, your religion and your culture and your language become your identity. And you can't just say that all these guys are Kurds and here's some weapons because they might, instead of going against the far enemy in Tehran, there's a closer enemy across the mountain, you know. How does the relationship between the United States and Turkey hash out in a time where, you know,

ostensibly if we're going to supply weapons and, you know, war material to Pijack, when the United States seems that our policy right now is that we don't really care about NATO anymore. That's a great point, actually. Today, Trump said in response to Spain, so Spain doesn't want the U.S. using Qadis or Rota. And so Trump said, well, we can just land our aircraft there anyway and nobody can stop us, which is a very concerning thing to hear from about Spain. Also threatening to cut off trade with Spain. And the EU quickly shot back and said, Spain doesn't own trade outside of the EU. The EU determines trade for the EU, et cetera.

So that will be an interesting development. And that's not even a far away NATO partner. That's a very close NATO and EU partner, right? Yeah, I'm sorry, Jack, go ahead. Oh, it's just going to point out, like in 2003, we had this real big problem with the Turks and getting 10th Special Forces Group across the border. They ended up having a lot of them through Romania. And a few guys got across the border with like some of their gear. But I mean, the Turks really made it difficult on the SF guys to do that for the same reason that they didn't want us working with the Kurds.

They didn't want us supporting the Kurds. Yeah, that happened in 2016. part of my team was in northern Syria and they got photographed wearing YPG patches. And that was kind of a little bit after the time we were saying there was no forces in Syria and all that. So not only are they seeing forces in Syria, they're also seeing the YPG patch on the guy's shoulder, which is, you know, Turkey would say it's a Peacaca. Yeah, there was really weird stuff that happened back in those days. Like when the Turks had their talk, you know, in Turkey and you'd have like American special forces and Turkish special forces. And like we're working with Turkey to attack ISIS in Syria, but we're also working with the Kurds to attack ISIS in Syria.

But we don't want the Turks to know that we're working with the Kurds and we all kind of have to pretend that we don't know what's going on here. Like war makes for strange bedfellows, as you know all of you guys know. I have a question. What happens if Israel were to attack Turkey, a NATO country? What happens? What does the United States do? What does NATO do? Well, Israel is a major non-NATal ally, so they're pretty close.

They have nuclear weapons. Turkey has our nuclear weapons, but that doesn't mean Turkey can use them. And I think that that would kind of answer your question right there. That's how much Turkey could do. That's good. I mean, you know who this, I feel like this benefits, specifically like you see the EU gas prices have gotten up pretty high. Straight of Hormuz is essentially de facto shut down. It's like out of crawl, if that.

So the Europeans are going to get their gas from somewhere and it's going to be Russia. So that money goes into Putin's pocket. The weapons we're using to bomb Iran currently are not going to be weapons that the EU could buy from us to give to Ukraine to fight Putin. Yeah, I don't know if there's a fucking grown up in that room at all. I think the winner here is China. I'm just going to ask about what your thoughts on. China's rolling. Yeah, I mean, first of all, we've moved carrier strike groups that aren't typically in the region at the same time to that region away from where they could respond to China.

And if China's looking at this is a great opportunity to do something in the straits of Taiwan, because the U.S. is willpower to respond to that. It's very low already. The U.S. has already signaled very little tolerance for helping Taiwan gain any sort of independence or even pushing back and anything Xi is saying about Taiwan. And she has messaged that within the next three to six years, he intends to incorporate Taiwan into the mainland. like 100%, and we haven't pushed back on that from a policy perspective. This would be a fantastic time if I was a Chinese person to push into Taiwan. Do they have the capacity to do that, like actual sea power to do that yet? So it's hard to project power.

Obviously, it's like 100 miles or so. Yeah. But they could without U.S. interference. Yeah, make it to the beach. The hard part is about the ground landing of forces. This is what the big problem with taking a point. The big problem with the taking of Taiwan is the ground forces on the western side of the island because the terrain goes up almost a 90-degree angle. But if they're going to use a lot of missiles, especially their hypersonic missiles that they've been claiming that they have, that could be a game changer.

They could also, without U.S. denial of the sea lanes, they could actually move around the other side of the island and start doing things on that side because, you know, Taiwan doesn't have a Navy to compare to China. The Navy that Taiwan relies on is the U.S. Navy. if the U.S. Navy refuses to help. I had, I mean, this is not totally a propos, but I mean, just reality versus perception. I had a conversation with someone who, your retired intelligence community guy, smart guy, you know, that I respect. But he told me that, you know, he's like, you know, all of this is really about fighting China. Like Venezuela, Iran, it's all playing into this like 4D chess strat. to cut China's, you know, source of energy off and energy trade.

And I'm like, I'm sorry, man, but this feels like it's a coping mechanism for failed policy. I don't know how you can look at it. Plus, China's been developing its own self-sustainment for energy for years now. And they're going to achieve that eventually where they don't need to rely on the rest of the world for their energy. And that's going to be a real problem for the U.S. Because that's what we've been squeezing them with is the sanctions on Iranian oil, making it extremely expensive to purchase that oil, which they still purchase. It's just more expensive. But once that's removed, they can kind of go off on their own and become, first,

a regional power, which they're already kind of become, especially in the Pacific and all the way down to Australia. And after that, they're going to look like the big boy in the room because Russia's doing all kinds of things in Ukraine, the U.S. is doing all kinds of things in Middle East, and China can say, I'm not doing anything anywhere. Right. Yeah. Also, like, it doesn't look great, too, that there's talk about moving Patriot batteries from Korea over to the bases in the Middle East. Like doesn't really, you know, if I'm Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, the Philippines, I'm not exactly, like, amped about that. Do we, I'm sure, like, the exact numbers are classified, but do we have any inkling of, like, magazine depth on both sides, America versus Iran? Like, who's going to run out of

ammo first. So Iran will run out first for sure. And a lot of that has to do with the maritime prepositioning forces that the U.S. has that previously somewhere in Diego Garcia, others are in other places now because the British government is having a problem with the Chagos Islands, which was part of Mauritius and part of Britain before that. They're not letting us use Diego Garcia for that reason. But there are other places that have these prepositioning forces that can push sustainment up and replenish magazine depth. And also, I think the defense industrial base, not only the United States, but if NATO decides to invoke Article 5 because of the strike on Cyprus, that'll dramatically increase the U.S. access to munitions, which perhaps they won't

openly declare Article 5. They may threaten to without declaring it, or they may just begin pushing munitions to the U.S. to help, you know, ostensibly to protect against the eastern Mediterranean, which the British are moving a ship over there right now. France is moving a nuclear vessel there right now. So it's possible that without an actual, like, vocal agreement to the world, they may begin adding magazine depths to the U.S. themselves. Interesting. Also, Qatar did, just a bit of news from today, Qatar did send over like three, I think it was three missiles and like 20 drones and hit Iran back.

So yeah, just chaos everywhere. Where do we go from here? So like, are the Kurds a real, we mentioned it a little bit, are they a real option? in terms of right can they destabilize the iranian regime can they open up um a front that would you know if they can't do it themselves at least open up that front for political change yeah without defection at a like specific level from the current government you're not going to be able to use a single faction in the western part of a 90 million person country yeah it's um i'm sure the kurds you know they get they get you know antsy in their

fancy whenever this kind of stuff happens. And I have to believe the Iranian Kurds see this as Rajava point two. Like, this is our big moment to carve out a swap of this country for ourselves. You know, and I'm sympathetic to the Kurds in many ways. But I mean, even the political project in Rajava, unfortunately, is under enormous strain right now. Well, it's the thing with the Kurds, you know, it's not a monolith just like Iran. I mean, there are many different Kurds, many different. And even their language. language, some of them are not even intelligible with each other. Oh, yeah.

They speak Sarani and Kumaji and yeah. Yeah. And in the western part of the country, you don't just have the Kurds. You also have the Aziris. And the Aziris were the ones that actually had the first uprising in 1945 with Soviet help and declared an independent state and actually kept their independent state until the Russians agreed with the Iranian government to tell the Aziris to stop being independent and join back to the country. So the Aziris have also been itching for an independent state. That doesn't mean an Iranian state led by Aziris.

That means a separate country in the northwest of Iran. And I think the Kurds want the same thing. They don't want to rule Iran. They want to rule Kurdistan. And Kurdistan to them is very closely tied to the land that they live on, to the territory they hold, which is just the west of Iran. So, Jonathan, how about what Dee was saying about the strokes in Qatar? I was listening to a unnamed YouTube. He's kind of an influencer, and he was saying that anyone who feels like this could become,

even have a chance of becoming a regional conflict, doesn't know what they're talking about. What are your thoughts on it? It seems like it is a regional conflict. That's what I said. There's like 12 countries involved. Yeah. I mean, it's even perhaps even like a pre-war. World War I scenario where you have like this Eastern European problem, this web of alliances that are,

you know, everybody thinks that they're very well intact until something squeezes somebody somewhere and they all turn in a different way that you didn't expect. I'm not saying there's World War III happening. I'm just saying that the tangled web of alliances absolutely indicates a regional conflict has already begun. It hasn't just already begun. It's been ongoing. I mean, think about when the Saudis and the Emirates invaded Yemen. Is that, is that not a regional conflict beginning, you know. I mean, the interesting thing, and I had this conversation with some people when Gaza first happened, that there were fears in the Pentagon that the conflict in Gaza could, in a

sense, merge with a conflict in Ukraine, not like literally merge, like, you know, you're not going to see Israeli tanks rolling across into Kursk. Like, that's obvious. But from a standpoint of alliances, right, like how we're all choosing sides, that it becomes one large conflict. You think there's a possibility for that to happen here? Well, even in Ukraine, we had North Korean soldiers fighting in Ukraine. So, I mean, that's even right there.

I mean, the link between Russia and North Korea right there in Ukraine. And even in Armenia and Azerbaijan in 2000, it was 2020, September 2020 and August 2020. And if you remember this, there was a fight in Nagorno-Karabakh. And the Russians went in and defended the Muslims and the Iranians went in and defended the Christians and the Turks went in and defended the Sunnis. very interesting conflict because of who was supporting whom. The Russians and the Turks brought in Syrians from Syria, battalions of Syrians,

from the same operational units, the National Defense Forces, which Iran created, by the way, brought them in to fight against each other in Nagorno-Karabakh. So it's just a very interesting way that the region speaks to the world in a way that I think Westerners don't understand. Yeah. Dude, that's so insane. Also, the funny, I don't know if you guys saw any of Lindsey Graham's clips over the last couple days. But he's talking about like saving Sunni Muslims and stuff like that from the Shias. It's like, haven't we been fucking smoking Sunnis for like since 2001? He keeps talking about the Iran trying to export the revolution, which that was true in like

1979 through 81. And when Saddam invaded Iran, that ended. And literally it actually ended inside the regime. They actually made a decision to stop doing that. And that's actually why Chomani became the Ayatollah and not a different person, because the other person, Monteziri was like a very export the revolution guy. And the previous, the first Ayatollah said, we can't have that. We can't be doing that anymore. So he can't be it.

He actually got disqualified for that. That's a major reason he was disqualified. And Lindsay Graham remembers that because, you know, your formative years, you just like keep it with you, what you heard back then. And like, that's what he heard back then. That's what he's continuing to believe. But you want to talk about exporting something? Look at jihad. I mean, Sunni, Salafi jihadism.

That has literally been exported around the entire planet. I remember in June 2014, June 10th, 2014, when ISIS declared Caliphate in Mosul, and the same day, there were Indonesians in Bali declaring Bayat to Baghdadi. I mean, that is a globalized problem. And I think the concept of exporting the revolution, it's like a fantasy now that was true back then, has not been true for years. It's like the Cubans trying to export the revolution to, you know, West Africa. or Central America or something.

Angola, exactly. And the Cubans did fight in Angola. They sent a couple thousand troops to Angola. I don't know. So let's talk about the successor. They picked Kamani's son. I don't remember his first name. Jonathan, of course you know it.

Thank you. But the 88, you know, the assembly of experts got bombs. So I don't know if the guy made it out or not. I don't know if there's any word on whether he made it out or not. So what do you think happens now? heard that he has he made it out or has there been any word about it? I haven't seen if he is alive or not. The issue is if he is alive, there's another gentleman named Ali Reza Arafi. And Arafi, you remember on the last episode we were talking about there's a group of three

people that sits down, like makes the short list and then sends the short list to the assembly of experts. So Arafi was the third guy on that because there was Pasechki and the president. Then there has to be a cleric, which is Arafi. The third guy got killed in the bombing of Khomeini, right? So, Arafi believes that he should actually be the new Supreme Leader himself. And there may be a power struggle between Arafi and Mochstabha, especially because Chahmani said he didn't want his son to succeed under him, because he didn't want to create a hereditary government. And it could be that Mochstabah was selected because Lari Johnny and

Ghalibov, the two IRGC guys that I've been mentioning that are the core of the regime wanted Mojdaba because he's an easy choice and Arafi might feel slighted and there might be some other dynamics that we're not aware of obviously because it I mean imagine if you're over there right now people are freaking out and they're making decisions on a very short notice without really thinking things through I'm curious to see that if they're not dead what might happen in that power struggle between the clerical class and the IRGC who actually wants to run the country I got a question about like I guess even just in Tehran like just the city you know we saw a ton protesting happened like five, six weeks ago.

Tens of like 10, I don't know how many, 30,000-ish people were killed by the regime. Obviously, they're not going to come out and protest right now because their cities currently get, and their country's currently getting bombed. But in terms, I don't know if you heard anything in terms of chatter or something like that, is there some kind of effort being built up for when the bombing does slow down in terms of the people getting out there and protesting or doing something. I kind of want to know the pulse. Yeah.

They were protesting the day before the strikes happened. Some of them went inside, but then once Khomeini was killed, they were out in the streets dancing. They're literally dancing and celebrating. And they have this little thing that looks like a mouse that they put up on a stick. Because in Iran, there's this cultural reference to Khomeini because they think he's like this squirrely, mousy guy that's always hiding. So they hang this mouse on a stick, and they're all out there with a mouse and a stick just cheering that this guy's dead.

He's like hanging, like hung with a noose, cheering that he's dead. And that's amidst the bombing that they're doing this. Because a lot of Iranians, they've had enough. I mean, if you talk to an Iranian who lives in Iran, everyone you talk to know somebody that was killed. It is a widespread murder in January. And everybody knows somebody.

And they're fed up with it. And I've spoken to a few Iranians who say, you know, we've always been, concerned about Israel getting involved in Iran and all this and like the U.S. doing things in Iran like with Mohammed Mosaddegh in 1953 and then other things as well. And they said even that, we want Israel and the U.S. to come in and help now. We need help. And we don't care who it is. We need this guy gone. We need this regime gone. And the concern now, I mean, in January when Trump said help was on the way and they didn't help and then people went outside and were executed because they thought the U.S. was coming, like they

wouldn't all come out as much as they did if the U.S. didn't say that. And now again, the U.S. originally said this is about regime change, even Netanyahu said that. And if that's true, certain conditions need to occur, certain things need to happen to allow those people to feel safe enough to go out and continue with what they're doing. But then Trump has in the past few days said it's not about regime change. It's about fissile material and missiles. And now the people are probably wondering, well, maybe we shouldn't go out and protest anymore because we already learned the hard way in January not to trust the United States when they say we're going to help you. And I don't want to lose my entire family because I trust the United States, right? So I think there's a decision crossroad right now

where the people are watching, what is the U.S. actually doing? Because there's a lot of messaging, obviously, and cross messages that don't make sense with each other. I think the people are trying to see what actually is going to happen, what's actually going on, before they make that risk a second time and risk losing their families completely this time. So in between the people on the streets and the upper echelons of the IRGC and the councils, is there any sense of what the average military or intelligence or security personnel, what they're thinking is? I know they're just probably trying to keep their heads down, but do you think that there's something that could spur them to turn on their masters? Yes, there's two classes of people in the

IRGC and in the Artish. There's one class of like professional folks that are, you know, that's their job for many years. There's this thing called the Sarbazi, which is a conscript. And the IRGC and the Artesh both have conscript classes. These are the ones that make up the majority actually of the forces. They're basically like privates that get a rifle and get a few weeks of training and they're part of the military for a year. And these are the ones that probably won't go, get called up and go. They're probably going to, many of them will stay home. And many of them are staying home. In fact, there's problems right now where, especially in the provinces outside Tehran, a lot of the Artesh, which is the army conventional forces,

Sarbazi conscripts, are not showing up where they're being called to go because they're concerned about what's going to happen next. And a lot of them don't believe in the government, but they're forced. I mean, it's a requirement. It's not voluntary. They get called up and forced into this and they don't want to do it. And that's a big reason the regime actually brings in Iraqi Shia militia groups or Hashiabi groups into Iran to patrol the streets. And actually in January, when the massacres were going on, there were a lot of Iraqi, Lebanese, and Pakistani forces marching up and down the streets,

conducting their regime's activities for them. Because there are not enough Iranian conscripts that will respond to the call to murder their own people. Yeah. But there are plenty of Pakistani, Lebanese, Afghan, and Syrian and Iraqi groups that the regime is cultivated over a long period of time called Liwas. And a Liwa is like a battalion of foreign forces.

You know, you have Liwa Fatemeun, which in Lita Liyah Hadairayune, which comes from Pakistan, that are like ideologically brainwashed to come in and fight for the regime. And that's who's patrolling the streets with that's wild. I didn't know that. I didn't know that. I don't know that. I remember you mentioned this last time you were on when the protests were first popping off.

It's incredible, right? I mean, I'm assuming, but I'm going to ask like, is the U.S. or Israel or the CIA or intelligence looking at like what, like, are they bringing in Iraqi Shia militias into like Tehran or something like because if they can't get contact with their conventional forces they're going to need somebody to backstop it right like especially if the Kurds start shooting stuff up or even just to quell protests. You remember we talked about the mosaic doctrine which is the regime's way of decentralizing command and control they activated the mosaic doctrine a few days ago and that means that you don't

need directions from Tehran anymore you just need directions from Sanandage which is the Kurdish area near the border of Iraq, or you just need Mashad or Horasan, the provincial headquarters there. And there's basically a colonel or a brigadier general who's in charge of that space. And that's the highest level of command that you need to care about in this mosaic doctrine. And so those Iraqi forces that are being activated inside of Iraq and coming into Iran are being activated by the provinces on the border region that lead into Iraq. And this has been a huge problem for Iran and a huge problem for the U.S., but it's actually a primary avenue that Mossad is able to enter Iran without being detected and a reason that the U.S.

is able to push Kurds into Iran because that border area between Iraq and Iran is very porous. It's not as porous as Afghanistan, Pakistan, which if you've been there, you know what I'm talking about. There's, you don't know which country you're standing in at any given point sometimes. But in the western part, those mountains are so unforgiving. They actually have these people called Colbars, which are these kind of like Sherpas, that help you navigate through the mountains to get to the other side.

There are no border guards there. There's no border, right? So, I mean, there are some down in the south, especially near Basra. But as you get further up north in that border, it is completely wide open. And if those guys get the call to come help, they're going to just move across the border. You know, and unless you're watching them closely with Humint, you're going to have a very hard time to notice even the troop strength moving across if they're moving across at all. Where are we in a week from now? Who wants to take a stab at that?

Let's speculate. Mud wrestle. Whoever wants to go first. Jack, you go first. picking now. Oh, I mean, I don't know. I think probably over the next week we're going to probably see more of the same kind of like volleys and countervallies of fire going back and forth across the Persian Gulf. And the Iranians, I think it's pretty clear they're trying to drag as many different players into the conflict as they can. So who knows who they're going to bomb next?

I mean, I guess that's part of the deal. They're going to run out of bombs. That's their problem. they're going to run out of missiles. And then the question is, what do they do after that, just straight up guerrilla warfare? And, I mean, looking back to 1980 through 1988, that did start happening. They started running out of, like, big munitions and started just sending human beings across the field,

and they would see guys dying in front of them, and they just walk over the bodies and keep going. And these ideologically brainwashed guys I was talking about earlier, those are the ones that will do that. Like, they will listen to that call, you know? There's something else. that may or may not become relevant, a numbers station popped up in Iran right after the leadership cell got taken out in the airstrike. And for people who don't know, numbers stations are

basically called out over shortwave radio, ham radio, and it's just somebody reciting off a series of numbers. And this is thought that it's how intelligence agencies communicate with recruited assets that are, you know, so-called behind enemy lines. So like if the Russians had sleeper cells in America, they could communicate with them this way. Using a one-time pad, it's pretty much uncrackable. You wouldn't have any idea what they're signaling to the cells. And like something like a dozen different countries around the world operate numbers stations, but the Iranians haven't until just this week.

So the question is, what does that mean? Does it mean that the Iranians are just running a psychological operation on us to get our counterintelligence people all spun up and keep them busy? Or are they signaling to sleeper cells, hey, it's time to hit the cache site locations, pull out the demo and start conducting, you know, they would probably think of it as a regular warfare. We would probably call it terrorism. And I don't know. I don't know what the answer to that is, but I think it's going to be interesting to find out. You would think that after we dropped on Soleimani,

that they would have activated some of these cells if they had them. But nothing happened. And now we are, let's see, we're about five days into this. Yeah. So if there are sleeper cells and you do have to contact them clandestinely, and then for them to get all of their shit together and then launch an attack,

Maybe they have to plan it if they haven't pre-planned it. Yeah, that could take a couple weeks. But yeah, then again, I mean, it's quite possible that those sleeper cells simply don't exist. They've been using a lot of psychological warfare, actually, especially in social media, sending out a lot of imagery that's been AI enhanced, which is completely false or from previous campaigns. Interestingly, if you look on with a VPN, if you go on Iran's news website, Tasinim, or Iran, IRIB, which is their broadcasting website, the propaganda that they're putting on there to their own people is fascinating to look at because they're claiming they're killing like a thousand Americans a day. And like, there's just like wild claims that. But if you have the internet and

you can go on there to see that, you can also see other websites that show you that that is clearly not true. It's just kind of interesting to think about like how like mentally they're approaching this situation. I have a friend who grew up in Iran their whole life. And when we were talking about the conflict in Syria, they were like, oh, yeah, Iran won that conflict in Syria. And I was like, no, the U.S. won that conflict. It was just kind of this interesting, like, understanding where they came from as far as what they were told, especially without access to alternative narratives. They believe that's just true, you know. Yeah, it's like the people in Egypt believed for so long that they won the Arab-Israeli war because of the propaganda. And like, I think it wasn't until, like,

the 90s, until the truth started to come out and people were shocked. Yeah, information. domain is extremely important. And in this campaign, I hope the U.S. is using it also. What would that look like with the U.S. using it? Well, I think they would need to send broadcast messages inside of Iran using cell towers, sending out like the equivalent of a night letter, basically, to Iranian cell phones, especially those affiliated with the regime, especially because the Internet right now, it's like 95% off and the 5% that's on are regime-connected families. Well, that's perfect. Now you have a perfect target deck that's not going to infect anyone

that shouldn't be receiving it. And you can just blast it to them all the time. So in Afghanistan, we used to have this thing called a dead baby book when we were doing interrogations until a period of time when Congress told us to stop doing that. But before that, we would actually take these books when we got our detainees. And I wouldn't even speak to them. I just showed them the pictures of these dead bodies. And they're like from all kinds of other conflicts. But to this guy seeing this, that's from there, you know. And we would use it to psychologically, like, scare the shit out of them, basically.

And you can be doing that all the time. And if you have anyone's been to Sears school, you know, like, you can be exposed to an idea. at first and be like, no, that's not true. But once it's like put into your brain like a worm, you're like, wait a minute. And then it's like, wait, this is true. You know, so that there's a really powerful tool, not just psychological operations, but like the persistence of information into the space and that person has only access to that information. And you can control the way they think about things. Do you think that things like the dismantling of USAID and voice of America has hampered our ability in the information war.

As far as this thing, it's pretty clear. Yes, for sure. Yeah. Also, it seems like what we said before in terms of like how State Department's really not helping people get out of the places that it was kind of gutted, at least the resources were gutted for that. Man, I don't know. If you're an American around there, it cannot be,

even if you're in Israel where it's relatively safe I mean technically it's not they're getting pounded too I mean they're knocking most of the stuff out but they're still getting hit pretty hard I know a guy that's there he went down 33 times into his bunker

in 24 hours wow I mean it's just like super disruptive the thing is you don't know when the next one's coming so like you get out of the bunker you're like okay that was it number 12 then you like try to go to bed and like boom wakes you up again you know

and probably people are stuck in Dubai and you've seen some disruption too, like in terms of like everyday stuff, like, uh, F-1s, I think killing their Saudi Arabia race and their Bahrain race, you know? And the cutter one is, I think is down the line. So I think there's still time for that. But like right now, like they're looking at like canceling races. Yeah, huge economic impact.

I mean, not just on the energy, but like you're mentioning, the tourism sector and Emirates airlines and Qatar Airways, I mean, the Dubai airport itself was the busiest airport. in the world, I believe, and that's turned off. You know, huge amount of economic value that these countries are losing just by doing, just by turning these things up, not even with the damage. There's a ton of, like, differing reports, right? Like, everyone's trying to get their information out there. They're saying that, like, there was a bunch of, like, satellite images of, like,

before the strikes and after in terms of, like, American bases in the region. And there's a lot of American bases that have been pretty heavily damaged. How do we still operate in terms of like, you know, where are we sending out like our F-15s for sorters, right? In Kuwait, is it still on that base and we're just like whoever's essential is there and we try and hope like our Patriots take stuff down? I think it's a lot to do with redundancy that, you know, we're not going to have one golf ball antenna in Bahrain. That's it. You know, the aircraft carriers, the big decks, the LHDs, they all have the same redundancy systems. There are plenty of places to land besides Qatar and Bahrain that,

are close by, for example, Moffawak, Salty, the Air Base, and Jordan, and some other places, that are, and they're pretty easy to land on if you need to in the last-minute situation. Like I was mentioning earlier, the Link 15 NATO communication system that the F-15s have. Most of the F-15s have this, at least all of ours do, and they're able to coordinate what they need to coordinate regardless of which specific piece of equipment's been knocked out. And there's also the low-Earth orbit satellite communication system that's up there, which is like a mesh network, which is a pretty fascinating concept, that even, even

if some of the ground communication systems are gone, it's absolutely redundant to the point where that pilot doesn't even realize that they've switched over to a different air system instead of the ground system. Quick question, because I was talking about it with Jack yesterday. Obviously, for like ballistic missiles, we're using Patriots to knock them out, right? For Shahid drones, are they just using C-RAM? So, like, they have to get close for us to knock them out, or I guess fighters, too? Well, they've got some counter-UAS systems on the ground that are able to work with jamming

and some other things as well. the other important component that not a lot of people have spoken about, but in the space domain, there's a lot of anti-satellite things we can do to interfere with the GPS that those drones use. Some of those drones have pre-programmed coordinates in it, which makes it unnecessary to use the GPS part of it. But there are also some technologies we can use to actually take the drones over and use them. The question is, does the US want to use those technologies? Because if we do, we're going to reveal to them how they work. So there's that threshold of do we need to do this yet.

and I think some of those more advanced cyber and offensive capabilities have not been used yet because they're probably not necessary. You can use a C-RAM for a while. You can use some integrated air defense for a while. Then when things get a little bit hairy, if they even do, you could perhaps use a smaller offensive tool, maybe a larger offensive tool if necessary. The Russians were doing this quite a bit in Syria where they were actually using satellite jamming to jam a lot of our communication equipment in southeast Syria.

They didn't ever talk about it and we didn't ever talk about it either. but it was pretty effective to the point where we couldn't even communicate with troops over the horizon. Also, I did see where the Lucas, like the low cost, you know, it's like a Shaheed clone essentially. It's like we can't make our own. We have to clone a Shahid drone. Like, are they that good, I guess? I mean, I mean, I guess at this point they're ubiquitous. Like, you find them everywhere.

So, yeah, incredible stuff, scary stuff, frankly. And if you guys, if the listeners or viewers don't know, I'm completely against it. Anything else? Hit me with it. Let's go. Jack, what do you got? I know you're working on something. What's up?

No, I'm not on Iran. No, I don't know that I have much more that people haven't heard already. I just, you know, I guess add that, you know, we are living in different times. We're not in Kansas anymore. The geopolitical arena is changing. The domestic political arena is changing. It's actually changing so fast that I haven't heard anyone, and I'm not holding myself up that I do this, I haven't heard anyone who can articulate or grasp exactly how quickly and how profoundly things have changed,

both in the United States and abroad. But you are seeing a sort of recalibration of global order taking place before our eyes. And I think we're at the beginning of that process rather than the end. And actually, Jack, that's a really good point because this world order that we know was created by the United States because we won World War II. So, like, we set up this entire system that is perfectly beneficial to just the United States. And in the past year and a half, we've been dismantling it rapidly brick by brick on a daily basis, which is crazy because it's like this system is the most ideal system for the United States. any other alternative is a lose situation for the U.S. just for the economy.

Forget defense and everything else. We're dismantling it ourselves. Right. Yeah. Tell me how that makes sense. 4D chess being played. It's just incredible stuff. Smartest guys in the room.

Somebody with a very good brain knows how to fix it. Another interesting thing, just to cap off, like there's a Chinese ship in the Gulf. that's just been there for like months, right? And I guess it's like, it's monitoring everything and stuff like that. So I'm sure like they're probably, you know, soaking in every type of information, every information they can probably get their hands on.

Also, there were some rumors talking about China. There were some rumors that like a couple dozen cargo planes from China headed into Iran. And as they were heading into Iran, they turned their transponders off. What could that, is that like replenishment of like, of munitions or like what could that possibly be if it's true which probably is it could be the y series missiles that they were promised that iran purchased from china could be those are the

hypersonic they're claimed to be hypersonic right we haven't yet to see them actually be hypersonic do you think there at any point at any juncture in all of this that you could see foresee russia or china trying to intervene in iran the way that uh russia did in syria you? I think with the current conditions, no. Yeah. But I think if there was an economic button, perhaps, especially on the China side, if there was a real squeeze on oil, which I don't think there is in the foreseeable month that this is supposed to last, I don't think China would. But if there was that situation where they were out of necessity trying to force something, I think they'd probably try a diplomatic push much more strongly than a physical push. You said it all. Anything else?

What do we need to look at over the next few days like that? It's really going to, like, make your spider senses go off. John, you go first. And then I want Jay and I want Jack. I would listen to what Netanyahu's saying. Because I think the most realistic understanding of how this conflict is shaping up is Netanyahu's plan. And I think what the U.S. government is saying is not as reliable.

He may not be saying the truth, but I think it's probably closer to what will actually go on than what the West outside of Israel is saying. Jay? Yeah. I was actually going to say that we need to take, I think we here in the U.S. need to take what is said by Netanyahu and juxtapose that against what our own government is saying. Somewhere in the middle is the truth. And I also believe, you know, believe what your eyes are showing you and not necessarily what you're, you know, what you're hearing, especially if you have that bias.

because, you know, it's already been proven, like Jack was saying, you know, they're, we're being lied to or told certain things when your actual brain tells you that's not true, but your heart, you know, because of bias is telling you, well, if they're saying it's got to be true, because it's my side. So, you know, believe what your eyes are telling you. Yeah, I'll say, too, like, if you read Al Jazeera, then you should read Fox News. And if you read Fox News, you should read Al Jazeera and, like, force yourself into the other bucket that you, like, will not ever read. You don't have to believe what you see, but it's helpful to understand, like, the bigger world of what's being said. What's the narrative here?

That was what a mentor of mine at the agency said. He said, if you see breaking news on CNN, turn on Fox News and listen to what they're saying about the exact same thing, then go to BBC, then everybody else, and then form your opinion from there. Jackalope? I mean, what I'm watching for, quite frankly, since there hasn't been any sort of defined strategic goal for this operation, there isn't any clear achievable end state that we're fighting for. What I'm looking for is, you know, the president gets bored with this conflict. He could pull out of it right now and claim victory because he killed the Ayatollah.

He can say, I did all of these great things. look how great I am and then pull out before his administration gets dragged into a prolonged quagmire, which is something that they've clearly said they want to avoid. So I'm just kind of waiting for the president to just get bored with this thing and want to go back to building his ballroom. Yeah, but you didn't see that press conference he did? No, it wasn't a press conference. It was a Medal of Honor ceremony.

He said he won't get bored. He won't get bored and then literally like started talking about drinks. Yeah. He saw Bumblebee and got distracted. Yeah, yeah I hope you're right Because honestly he could have done that Right like the where the negotiations were before the strikes

He could have been like This is a better planned by a million Against the JCPOA I beat Barack Hussein Obama You know what I mean? Like I've done it I've done it better than he would ever have done it And he would have been right

Right if he got that deal You know there's just I hope you're right He gets bored and like I don't know invades Cuba or something. I think the problem with that is, though, the Iranian people are going to pay for this no matter what. We can say we're

bored, we're taking our bone, we're going to, and then whatever government is left is going to come down on the Iranian people, because they're not, they can't hit us, so they're going to smack the Iranian people. That's my thing. If you make a promise that you're going to help somebody, you've got to help them.

Maybe it wasn't good to do the war in the first place, but if you made that promise, now you can't go back on it. You have to continue forward. That's why I think it's immoral and unethical to launch an air campaign without having a, you know, some sort of unconventional warfare program that's active on the ground to actually affect political change. Yeah, I agree. A lot of people who are probably going to say in the comments, well, we do have it. We just don't talk about it. We can't talk about it. Well, it doesn't matter if we don't talk about it if we keep saying publicly, we're not going to put troops on the ground.

This is not about regime saying because, again, the Iranian people are listening. And whatever we're doing behind the scenes doesn't mean shit to them if they think we're not going to help because when we're ready for them to rise up, they're not going to be. And it's going to go to hell. Also, like question, like, let's say we did try and do what we did in Afghanistan. And I guess early 2003 with Iraq with the Kurds and stuff like that, with, CIA and SF, you know, the by with and through stuff, how do they, how do they fight the IRGC, which is, you know, established fighting force in a relatively modern army without our,

like, our close air support or, you know, our fire support, or how they even think to survive that? Yeah, especially with the amount of drones that the regime has, they can divert some of those drones to use against those rebellious forces. Yeah, it's going to be a crazy few weeks. I wish there was something good to fucking report on guys. Honestly, I'm fucking done with this. You know what I mean?

Never. We never fucking do it. That's the thing. It's like, I never feel like, oh, you know what? This is actually going in the right direction at the end of a show like this. Jack Murphy, the high side, incredible outlet with Sean Naylor, who literally wrote the book on Jay Sock. book is coming out in June the most dangerous man that link is in the description to

pre-order it Jason lines his links are down in the description Jonathan Hackett Iran shadow weapons and the theory of a regular war both books are down in the description we were John you were supposed to come you were supposed to talk about how the IRGC lawn there's money right like that's what yes what I thought we're talking about yeah that was the original plan but then we got when there was this little war that started yeah we got a decades worth of news in a fuck in three days and you can go to Patreon.com slash the team house and help support the show. You get both team house episodes and eyes on episodes.

If you're interested in Jonathan and Jason's story, we have episodes with them on the team house. So check those out. And yeah, what else do you get? You get free, ad free episodes and you get them early as well. So, and you help support the show. Guys, a pleasure as always. Anything else? You guys, you guys want to say anything?

A great of a host I am. No? You don't want to do that? Do you have lunch with AOC yet? I wish. I wish she hasn't returned my calls. All right, guys. Thank you.

All right. Take care of guys. Good talking to you. Take care of juts. I want to tell all of you today about a new newsletter that we're launching that encompasses both the Team House podcast, the Eyes on podcast, and the high side news outlet, which I run with Sean Naler. The newsletter is going to be once a week. It's going to come into your inbox.

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

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