The Team House - Trump's Bluff Went Nowhere (Iran War Update) | EYES ON GEOPOLITICS

Episode Date: August 3, 2026

As reports of a much larger U.S. military campaign against Iran emerged, the Trump administration abruptly paused the strikes and shifted back toward diplomacy. We break down whether the threat of escalation was a negotiating strategy, why sanctions continue to fail, Iran's asymmetric advantages, dwindling U.S. missile stockpiles, and what happens next in one of the world's most dangerous conflicts.Support the show on Patreon:⬇️https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouseSubscribe to our newsletter!!!!https://teamhousepodcast.kit.com/joinJack's news outlet:⬇️https://thehighside.substack.com/Find Jon Hackett here:⬇️Jon's Twitter:https://x.com/jonathanhackettJon's LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/thejonathanhackettJon's books:https://www.amazon.com/stores/author/B0C5L659N5?ccs_id=e11a2062-f8d3-498e-bfd7-7d2f3869caf6Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thejonathanhackettTwitter: https://x.com/jonathanhackettCheck out Mick's new podcast here:⬇️Apple Podcasts:https://podcasts.apple.com/at/podcast/pub-and-porch-applied-stoicism/id1836955475Spotify:https://open.spotify.com/show/1k3QPmkAMwnGJxMLDwUSSd?si=n6piIu8XRcag1Z0K43A3bQYoutube:https://www.youtube.com/@UCd0Hq6QFk8CoTu5j-VU0Ong Find Mick Mulroy here: Fogbow ⬇️https://fogbow.com/Lobo Institute ⬇️https://www.loboinstitute.org/Twitter ⬇️https://x.com/mickmulroy?s=21&t=-Ze3F_Ix2vlJ18KFvORTCALinkedIn ⬇️https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-patrick-mulroy-31198b52/Whitefish security summit ⬇️https://whitefishsecuritysummit.comFind Marc P here:https://x.com/MpolymerFind Andy Milburn here: Twitter ⬇️https://twitter.com/i/flow/login?redirect_after_login=%2Fandymilburn8LinkedIn ⬇️https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrewmilburn2023Substack ⬇️https://amilburn.substack.com/Andy’s book ⬇️https://www.amazon.com/When-Tempest-Gathers-Mogadishu-Operations"Karl Casey @ White Bat Audio"00:00 – Start02:42 – Why Sanctions Keep Failing Against Iran06:48 – How the IRGC Beats Western Economic Pressure12:22 – Can Diplomacy Ever Work with Tehran Again?16:00 – Was the Massive U.S. Strike Threat a Bluff?18:23 – Saudi Arabia's Push to Stop a Wider War20:59 – The Credibility Problem Facing the Trump Administration23:26 – America's Last Truly Successful War?24:33 – China's Soft Power vs. America's Hard Power27:12 – What Happens if the U.S. Hits Iran's Infrastructure?31:44 – Iran's Asymmetric Strategy Is Working36:49 – Are We Running Out of Patriot Missiles?41:31 – Is the War Being Used to Move Financial Markets?47:50 – Predictions: Where Does This Conflict Go Next?51:07 – Turkey's Rising Influence & Final ThoughtsBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support.

I think inertia is a good word to use to describe what we see happening right now, because if there isn't a change in policy, if it's the same policy just amplified or reduced, it's the inertia of the operation continues moving in the same kind of general direction, which is the hardening of Iran's regime, the weakening of U.S. influence in the region, the growth of Saudi Arabia as a power regionally, the decline of Israel as a power in the region. And one thing on the horizon we haven't talked about is the growth of Turkey also in the region, because Turkey has always had the dream of returning to the Ottoman control over these places between today's Turkey all the way down to Yemen. All right, guys.

Hey, welcome everybody to another episode of Aizond geopolitics. I'm here with Jack Murphy, Jonathan Hackett, and Mick Mulroy. A lot happening, as usual, throughout this past week. We had been striking Iran. That had stopped. And then there was talk more and more about a bigger hit, potentially hitting, like, energy infrastructure. St.

Con Commander General Bradley Cooper briefed President Trump about a bigger campaign that would roughly take about two weeks. I feel like we're living this war two weeks at a time, frankly. Another interesting thing

I saw from Axios that the Trump officials basically were giving, were saying how they were surprised about Iran being so aggressive in terms of like the negotiations which is like I don't know how they can be shocked by that they being pummeled for four months and like they're still around um for and uh as the week was leading on um it was you're hearing more and more about a bigger strike

bigger strike or bigger campaign essentially probably within in conjunction with Israel at least that was the talk um and last night basically it was paused i i don't know if trump put out a statement or a tweet or whatever saying that. Oh yeah, he did. It was like ridiculous. You guys can go ahead and read it. I'm not going to read it for you. It was, you know, one of Trump's regular ridiculous kind of tweets that he writes.

A lot of stuff happening in the background, too, that I was reading about, like Saudi Arabia, NBS called up Trump to like, I guess, you know, to have Trump like a kind of exercise restraint and stuff like that because Iran had, you know, warned and tell everybody supposedly, too, that they hit up like Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Turkey, that if they helped us in any way with this campaign or this bombing, that they would be in line for some sort of retaliation. So ended up last night late, not late even late last night. It's probably like 9 p.m. Eastern. Trump releases that tweet, says it's not going to happen.

And then there's a possible deal on the table. This is shit we've heard before many, many times. I don't know what the fuck's going to happen. You guys tell me it's beyond frustrating to live this over and over and over again. It's like Grandhog's Day. So I'd love to know what you guys are tracking with this. Mick, you go first. So I was, I mean, all week, as in every week, talking about this on ABC,

talking about trying to isolate the regime economically, et cetera, sanctions, secondary sanctions, and then I see brother Jonathan talking to brother Jack about how that shit isn't going to work. I was like, damn it! And maybe, I don't know if you guys, I mean, obviously, those two know what I'm talking about. But maybe it's a good thing that Jonathan kind of does a summary of that again. I'm still going to advocate that we have to do something. So, but I think it's important the points that he had in that of how the regime is kind of figured out. way around that and essentially they still become rich that it only really impacts the people. So I think we need to take that into consideration. But I'll leave that for Jonathan to explain even more. But so what did we see this week? We're in a situation right now where we obviously can't leave it at the current state or we have failed. And I always look at this as we look at it as a partisan thing because I'm not. So I want to figure out a way out of this that is successful. for the United States, which I think also translates assessment for the region and the world,

right? So we can't leave it like this. Iran controls the straight of hormones. That's unacceptable. They are likely going to go for a nuclear weapon now, so we haven't ensured that they will never get a nuclear weapon. We probably have, in part, inspired them to. I think Midnight Hammer did degrade it, but now the people that are in power, and I think could make a very good case that if they would have had the nuclear weapon, which some of them have been advocating for the whole time, they wouldn't be getting attacked right now. And I think even if, you know, you're any American who despises the Iranian regime, you can still put yourself in their position and say, so would I. Right. I would rather be, you know, North Korea than Iran right now. So we have not met that

objective. We have to figure a way to meet that objective. The objectives that we came close to, like degrading their ballistic missile capacity, manufacturing capacity, etc., are going to be replaced. So they are going to be replaced. So within six months, I don't know what the assessment is, but whatever the assessment is,

we will get to a point where they have replaced it, maybe exceeded it, and now definitely aren't going to restrict themselves on amount and range. So we're going to get in a place where even that wasn't a success, at least at the time that they reached. So what are we going to do differently?

I really, and I know this might be difficult for the current administration, but they're going to have to do a little humble pie with the international community. Talk about the fact that even though none of them may have agreed, or very few of them with the U.S. going to war with Iran, this is impacting the world. It's impacted their people. This is a global trade issue. International waterways shouldn't just be the responsibility. responsibility, even if we had a potential cause in it of the United States, whether it's military coalitions. I know we talked about this last time, political coalitions, how to isolate the regime, how to find IRGC commercial infrastructure around the world, seize it, stop it, affect it. I know this

isn't going to be the be-all answer to any of this stuff and it's probably going to take a long time, but something needs to change their perspective. The current situation, other than a major escalation is not going to change their mind and the assessment of at least the CIA and DIA is even the massive escalation isn't going to change their mind. So where do we go from here? I think that is at least part of the answer, but I do think Jonathan's point to Jack earlier in the week, I think, I think it was this week. I don't know. Needs to be addressed as well. Yeah. And the thing that you're mentioning Mick about what Jack and I talked about, we did like an Iran deep dive, like a special episode, like a historical kind of narrow focus talk. I think that was

this past week came out. So listeners, if they missed that, they can check that. I was like off schedule. But basically, we were discussing all kinds of things about Iran, but in particular the sanctions, because that's a big hot topic in the West, not just the United States, but even back when the JCPOA was being negotiated, that was a question of how do we fit sanctions into the JCPOA as part of it as a, as a response to them breaking parts of the JCPOA, plus separate U.S. and separate EU sanctions that could be relied upon to influence behavior because that's the whole point of using the economic instrument of national power is to influence the outcome of another state's behavior in a way that's beneficial or at least neutral, not negative to us. And that big question is, do sanctions do that? And I argue that, no, they don't, if they're alone.

If they're used as a single insular tool to affect a country that's an authoritarian state, no. And the reason is sanctions are designed to harm capitalist countries. For example, in a democracy like America, if another state that was powerful like China, for example, sanctioned America in some way, let's say on car manufacturing parts or Amazon items at their point of origin or crude oil production that produces plastics, which the U.S. relies heavily on, like somehow affecting this massively. So it touched a lot of Americans. Americans would go to the polls and they would vote and change the political representation

in a way that would modify that and that would be something that China would benefit from. That's how a sanction would work in a democracy. Unfortunately, countries like China, North Korea, Iran and others are not democracies at all. And they're actually designed to separate the small kernel of leaders from the rest of the population. And Iran is an excellent example of that where the small kernel of elites are extremely resilient. And they have dense real estate portfolios in London. They have money in banks all over the world. they have Swiss bank accounts with billions of dollars.

That's why there's been all this discussion about unfreezing assets in, let's say, South Korea, for example, there's like $6 billion sitting in a bank account. That doesn't belong to the Iranian people. Well, I mean, it does technically, but it's not accessible by them. Instead, it's the regime alone that has control over this. And that's a big problem with sanctions is that, okay, you sanction an authoritarian state. They're just going to ignore the sanctions. They're going to further oppress the people.

They're going to squeeze every dollar and cent out of those people. They're going to continue working in the black market. And it's important to remember even in the United States where we have capitalist economy that is free. Most of our economy is actually in the private markets. It's not public. There's a whole shadow banking system in the United States. For example, you can't go and open a bank account at J.P. Morgan or at Morgan Stanley. But that's where most of the assets in the country sit is in these non-bank banks.

Iran has non-bank banks too. So does Russia. So does China. That's how all these transactions are happening every day, billions and billions of dollars a day moving between these countries, despite these sanctions. So there is a lot of arguments for sanctions and a lot of arguments against sanctions, but I think it's something that's not debated enough and understood from the perspective of the ones being sanctioned, not from American consumption of voters who say, oh, it's good we did something. It's good to do something, but maybe there's other things to do as well in conjunction with that. Right now we're using a military instrument, which we're using in Iran. We're also using an economic instrument. We're attempting to use a diplomatic instrument, attempting here and there. It's very haphazard compared to the other two instruments. But there needs to be some more unification across these different instruments so that they're all going toward the same objective. Like you mentioned, Mick, there are certain objectives here. They have to be unified.

You can't have three different objectives for each of these instruments going after the different objectives. They have to be the same objective with little components that kind of all lead to this larger grand objective. So we could still go after the IRGC commercial infrastructure sees it to affect them since they are not insulated from their own means of raising. Absolutely. And actually a great example of that is. I mentioned this before, like Audi and Mercedes, for example, they're not allowed to ship completed vehicles to Iran. So what they do is they just separate the pieces by several inches and put styrofoam between them in giant box and crates, bring them into Iran, take the little pieces out, put the vehicles together. Now you've got a complete vehicle because the way the law is written, it cannot be a completed vehicle shipped to Iran, but pieces can be.

Both sides are very smart. Both sides have an economic interest in evading this law, right? Same thing in London. And there's certain rules about how foreigners can own assets in the UK. The IRGC commanders read this. And they're like, oh, I can just avoid this by incorporating a new business in company's house, which is the UK's registry for basically like LLCs in the United States. I can just incorporate this with a different person's name on a different little identifier here. But keep the address the same, same building, same bank account, same postal address. All of it's the same.

But because the way the law is written, I'm allowed to bring my hundreds of millions of dollars in here. And then I can go buy all the real estate down in this very expensive area in Mayfair in London. which they do. They actually just bought a house, Mojtaba from his coma, bought a huge mansion across the street from the Israeli embassy in London a couple of months ago during the war while the war was ongoing. So it's like they see these laws. We wrote these laws. They know how to avoid them. And it's like anyone who's wanting to get something done, they're going to look at it and be like, how do I go over, around, under, or through this obstacle? Just like any survivor would. And I think it would be a mistake for us to think they would look at that and be like, oh, I'm not allowed to do it.

No, of course they're going to find a way to do it. How do you even know that? Is that public? It is public, yeah. Oh, wow. Can we seize it? The laws in the city of London are totally different. Well, you got a ton of Russian money, too, in London, too.

Yeah, London's a great target because they left the European Union. So a lot of the rules in the EU that prevented a lot of this activity do not apply in the UK. Or at least they apply loosely. Hey, guys, I'm Jack Murphy here at the Team House. And today I want to tell you about the sponsor. for tonight's show, Mars Men. This is a natural testosterone support supplement. I take it. I've been taking it for about the last five weeks now, and I'm starting to notice a difference. You take five of these pills each day, and each one of these cans lasts you a month. I think you

need to use them for a couple months to get the full effect of them, but I'm about five weeks in, and I'm starting to notice a difference already, increased energy, better performance, in the gym, all of those things. I've, you know, quite frankly in the past, I had a problem with testosterone, as a lot of military veterans do, as a lot of men who are going into their 40s do. And this is actually something that seems to be helping me get my levels back up even higher. So I'd highly recommend checking them out. It has eight different substances in it that help boost your testosterone count. If you guys will go and check them out, we'd really appreciate it. So would the sponsor.

For a limited time, our listeners get 50% off for life plus free shipping and three free gifts at men go to mars.com. That's men go to mars.com for 50% off and three free gifts when you check out. After you purchase, they will ask you where you heard about them. Please show support for the show and tell them that the team house sent you. Thank you, everyone. Well, they could change the rules. Yeah. Is one of the other problems with sanctions against Iran that, you know, we've had various

levels of sanctions in place against the Iranian since the 1980s. And I mean, I feel like we really tried to isolate Iran from the international economy to the extent that we were able to previously. I mean, that's not what we do with everybody. You know, we've done that with Venezuela, Cuba. Like, everybody except China. like we really like them for some reason. Well, if you follow Mearsheimer's theory of international relations, which I know, D.U.

love Mearsheimer. I used to like Mearsheimer a lot. I think he's lost his fucking mind as of late. He went off the rails. But the concept is basically like, okay, you've got this concert of nations and they all have their own interests. These black boxes interacting with each other all out for their own interests. And if you isolate some of them, even for different reasons, they're going to seek each other

out for support. Because these states need support. They need international trade. They need places to put. their money, take their money, all this stuff. It's not crazy to think that Iran, Venezuela, China, North Korea would become friends in this context. And it is kind of what's happening. Of course. Yeah. I think that's a fact. Yeah. I mean, we're seeing, go ahead, Mike, sorry. So one thing I'm starting to hear more of, do you think Iran would even accept anything close to

the JCPOA again? Like, could we say, okay, okay, I don't either. No, and especially because Hassan Rouhani was the chief negotiator for that, or not the chief negotiator, but he's heavily involved in negotiations for that. He has a nuclear background. He was the president at the time afterward. You know, it's kind of this moment of detente where the Iranian government was kind of opening up a little bit, kind of like glass in the 1980s with the Russians, kind of thinking like, okay, we need to be a little more global now. But as you can see, there's a massive backlash to that in the regime. And they were like, no, that was that was wrong. Look what it did to us. It harmed us. We were never going back. And even now, they, talk about Rahani being a traitor. They talk about Amadiyadh being a traitor, which is crazy because Amad has died in the wall revolutionary Iran. So to hear some of these folks say that, I mean, it just shows how opposed they would be to going back to something like that, which again, they said was heroic flexibility, sacrificing to even accept this deal in the first place. There was a lot of like humiliation and shame within the regime decision making body to accept that in 2015 in the first place and look where it got them, you know, especially after 2017 and 18 when we withdrew from

JCPOA, took them out of Swift again, which was the banking system in the world, forced them into this shadow banking system even deeper, which then hurt us, you know, so they, they see that as like a big mistake. And they won't go back to that. You know that they're like, obviously the IRGC is not a trustworthy organization. Like, I know that. but they're obviously very cunning negotiators and just in general, very crafty. Why would they ever trust anything we have to say at a negotiation table? Because the last one that was like a real negotiation that was, you know, it was going over the weekend and set to start on Monday. We bombed Iran and smoked like, you know, their top tier leadership.

it. Yeah. And we had an MOU that lasted how long, right? Yeah, 48 hours or whatever it was short. It seems like Secretary Rubio is getting more involved. I think that's a good thing. I think he's very experienced. Because whoever did the draft of that MOU, that failed miserably.

It was so vague that it was a waste of time. And it probably, to these point, I think, it's going to make actually solving this more difficult. because now they don't even, they don't, and potentially we don't, believe each other at all, even after written and signatories and signing at, in France and all this other stuff, we're going to have to get the professionals involved in negotiations, and we're going to have to actually stick to our agreement. Or the whole negotiation process is going to be just considered window dressing. Like both sides are doing it because it doesn't commit them to anything.

And the rest of the world is eventually going to figure out it's, it's simply not going to end. So whatever impact it's going to have on the international energy markets or stock markets, it's just going to have because they're going to stop listening to or on the verge of a negotiated settlement or on the verge for mass investment. I mean, they're just going to say that's just like Charlie Brown's teacher talking right now. It's just not, it's just noise because we get to the verge of all these things. And then like I think right now, correct me if I'm wrong, but the last I checked was we were going to do

massive escalation. We heard that he had approved it. And now we're not because there's some framework that's agreed to. Yeah, but we, so I wanted to mention that because like, that's part I missed in the beginning. We introduced that framework last minute. It wasn't Iran being like, you know what? Like, let's talk. So like this whole buildup over the last week about this massive, you know, bombardment or this campaign for two weeks, frankly seemed like a bluff. And like we, it's, it's not like it's the first time. A couple weeks ago was the same thing. Like there was a talk about a bigger escalation and stuff like that and then Trump suddenly stopped it. Like how many times can you do that before it's like shit or get off the pot?

This isn't going to work. And clearly it didn't work this time because it wasn't like Iran was calling up and saying, hey, let's talk about this. Like we gave the Qatari's a deal to give to Iran and then we paused the air strikes. But also seems the Saudis played a big part in this. I mean, we all saw the MBS called Trump, but I think, you know, over the weekend Saturday, in fact, Kuwait was hit by drones. There was a ship that blew up off the coast of Oman. So there's a lot of kinetic activity that's concerning to Gulf countries, to the GCC countries. And I think it's not just MBS. It's other Gulf countries, obviously the Kuwaitis, because they got attacked yesterday. But others calling up the U.S. and saying,

hey, please tone it down or even to Iran as well, if it's Qatar and Oman, asking Iran, please tone it down because you're affecting our situation here locally because there's the regional concern too. It's not just an international conflict, although it is, but for the GCC countries, they're very concerned about the here and now, like what they can see right off their coastline. And that's, that's their lifeblood, the economy that flows out of there. And the longer that there's under attack, the less they can return to the status quo, which if they ever could, I'm not sure. So an interesting point, somebody brought up on the Egypt attack, more tactical, I suppose, but there's a view that it might have been launched from like a maritime platform, right?

Because the Shahed, even like the 136, this person explained the travel from like Western Iran to get there would have taken hours. It would have gone over multiple countries. It would have been launched by the Houthis. Still, same thing. It would have gone like the entire length of Egypt. So where did it come from? And I'm sure the intelligence community is looking for the answer. but it's likely didn't come from either of those two places.

So are they starting to use like clandestine maritime platforms that they can launch and then ski dattle, but get closer to things like Egypt, right? So there's Suez Canals there too, right? Is that going to be challenged? Is this something we should be looking at? Well, you think about the Dow's that they use already. The Houthis use these. You know, part of it's, and Dow's are these small wooden craft, very small boats that are very

to detect that actually make up a lot of their non-standard maritime capability, not only Iran, but also the Houthis and Somalia as well as another concern along the Horn of Africa region, all the way up into the Red Sea, up and down the hundreds of kilometers of coast of Egypt there, it wouldn't be difficult to get a Dow that can hug the coastline, popping along the coastline, keeping it in view, you know, about 10 miles off the coast, just moving all the way up until they get to a point where they can launch that shot head with the head hidden underneath the, you know, the underbelly of the Dow and then skid out a lot of the way or continue on as if they had just been, you know, trading up and down the coast like they have for centuries. It's very

hard to track these, these Dow's. And I think it's a major concern from a nonstandard maritime perspective. Jack, you wanted to say something, I think. I was just going to add that, you know, there's this sort of like, you know, wishy-washy sort of conversation that I don't think a lot of people want to have or hear, but the question of credibility and the question of hard power versus soft power. And I think this administration's approach has been, you know, that soft power doesn't exist. That's not a real thing. Everything is about hard power. It's we have more guns than you do. And there's a certain amount of, you know, that holds true to a certain point. And I think we're seeing that right now that, you know, we need diplomacy, we need diplomatic pressure. We need all

these other things. And just relying on air strikes as a method of hard power to lead into negotiations, I mean, I think we just don't have the credibility. That's what sort of you were saying, Dee, that like we go back and forth and back and forth and at a certain point, people just don't believe what you're saying anymore. Yeah. It's kind of like that old story about Vietnam or the U.S. colonel says, you know, we won every battle. Yeah. And the Vietnamese colonel said that's both true and irrelevant. It's like, we do have the most guns, the biggest guns and the best guns and the best military.

I think even Iran would probably say, yeah, gotcha. And right now it's not that relevant, right? So the issue, I think, is we've got to have better policies, better policy makers make better policies. And I'm not making this partisan. But this has been something that's gone through multiple administrations. out, you know, and Democrat and Republican. And, you know, when's the last time we really came out successful?

Say winning a war is a, it's kind of hard to find, right? Being successful for having gone to war, like for the country. You know, I'm obviously biased, but it's not the military's fault. They're told to do something. They do it the best they can. They're told to expand. They're told to this. And it is the actual.

decision makers, whether they are, both sides of the aisle need to stop relying on the fact that we simply have the best military, that they can do anything they want, even if the policy itself is flawed. They can't necessarily make up for bad policy what is I'm getting. And again, that has been decisions over the last. I mean, when's the last time we had an accessible military endeavor? Operation Anaconda, and then we continued after October 2001. Yeah. I was going to say Grenada. Well, yeah. Well, I mean, I think that like if you look at Desert Storm, right, it was limited in scope.

It had a clear objective and we stopped there. So I know a lot of people, well, what is it in a war? Well, that's the point. That's the point, you know. The point isn't to have a long, drawn-out war where everybody gets, you know, combat action rivets. The point is to win and be successful with our policy. So it might have been a 100-hour ground war, but that's what we want. because it was a clear set objective. The military understood what it was politically, strategically,

and how to accomplish it, the accomplishment, and then there were done. There wasn't no expansion. There was no mission creep. We didn't rebuild the country. Anyway, so that's a bigger issue that I don't know we can solve here on eyes on. But people need, I guess my grand point is just because we have the biggest military doesn't mean we can fix plot policy decisions. And on your soft power note, I mean, look at China, they are maximizing soft power in a way that is globally successful and has been.

And it's not a secret either. They're very vocal about this is our goal. We will set up this stuff around here. We'll publish these documents that say these things about what we're going to do. And then they go do it. And then we're like, oh, my gosh, they're setting up police stations in Solomon Islands. It's like, well, they said they were going to do that. like years earlier

and they're doing it right now. I mean, they have them in New York. They have like these unofficial police stations in Brooklyn. They had one in Texas and the consulate closed because they were doing that. Wait. Explain this.

John will do a way better job of this than me. So they're basically enforcing China's laws inside the United States using these clandestine police stations with actual Chinese domestic police out of the embassies. The embassy, I don't remember for it was Houston.

It was one of the major cities in Texas during the first Trump administration was closed because of this reason. There's one in California. There's one in New York City. The New York City one's huge. And they're actually like going out and enforcing Chinese laws inside the United States. So on Chinese citizens or Chinese Americans or what's the? So they're using that pressure campaign that you know the MSS, the Chinese Ministry of State

Security does as well where they'll say, hey, you're of Chinese origin or you're Taiwanese origin. You're going to either work with us or we're going to do something to your family in which other place they are. and so on, or actual Chinese citizens who are here doing things, dual citizens or even visitors, they enforce laws against them as well. Yeah. That's soft power. Yeah, it doesn't get any, like, yeah, it's pretty incredible. Where do you guys think this goes?

I mean, we're kind of like in this fucking, like, nebulous, like, purgatory area where the, all right, we're not going to bomb them now. It doesn't seem like there's a lot, like, real deal talk. maybe some back-shalleling and stuff like that. But frankly, we all know what the issue is. And, you know, I don't see Iran giving up their stranglehold on the Hormuz. So, right. So where do we go from here?

Is it still more, are we going to do this two-week campaign from Sankham commander Bradley Cooper? Or like, that's going to go where? You know, arguably, it could be, you know, hitting infrastructure could be looked at it as work crimes. I know that some of them are dual use and stuff like that, but like, what does that do? If we start talking about it again, and if we actually go through it, what does that do if like Iran starts retaliating, hitting Israel, hitting our bases continuously? We're still at the same fucking place. And then gas is likely $10 more per barrel. So if not more. Because at some point, you know, China was doing a little bit to like kind of alleviate the global crew price. But

They've since stopped doing that. So at some point, like, someone's going to have to pay for this fucking check. You know what I mean? Yeah. It does sound like we're going to focus on infrastructure targets because I imagine they've assessed that, look, we've hit a lot of military targets and it's not changed their perspective. So I think you're right about the issue of international law and whether this is clear under the law of armed conflict. it has to have a serious nexus to their military capacity, but say for argument's sake it does, you still doesn't negate the fact that they have a vote and they're going to counterattack.

So if we hit the three main energy generation facilities that would have major impacts on the people, as well, of course, as the regime, and they're going to, of course, do the same thing during the Gulf allies. So I imagine the Gulf countries are super concerned. because power desalinization, it would have a bad impact on Iran. It would have a catastrophic impact on Kuwait, Qatar, UAE, Saudi Arabia. I mean, they have a population that can't necessarily exist there if they don't have the capacity to make water. Like, how long could you go without water? What is it three days?

What are you going to do with a population if you run out of water? And I don't know the details of how, but we do know how reliant they are on. and so does Iran. And I'm sure they've made an assessment of how they could actually overwhelm their system. And what's the other issue on escalation? It's the lack of interceptor missiles, right? So it's, you got kind of a perfect storm. So we hit them, they hit our allies because we don't have the adequate enough of protection,

and it causes catastrophic humanitarian issues. Just like for the numbers, like in terms of Patriots, we started off with 2,400 in the region, We're down to 800. Thad missiles, we had 450. We're down to 250. So we have a thousand, a little bit more. We're going to start using SM6s from the Navy, like more $8 million, $6 million interceptors to knock down these $50,000 drones.

Like, how is that cost effective? Forget about the fact that people are fucking dying, obviously. Like, that's the first and foremost. We should think of that. But how does that make sense on our end? Especially, like, we spoke about it last. week or a week before, like, how many Patriots can we actually build a year? We can't resupply what we have. Not in this quicker time frame. So, like, we're going to, this, the ice cream's running out.

Well, what happens when there's no more? Well, the other problem is that Iran is not just a static adversary. They're adapting and learning from how we are employing our air defense systems. And the Hebar Shakan, which, or Shikas, it means like, Hebar destroyer. Khabar is a place that there was some Arab Jews during Muhammad's time. Muhammad ran them out and they've named currently this missile after that episode from the Quran. And this is what they're using to attack Israel, Jordan and some further targets. It's a medium range ballistic missile.

And it's very advanced because it's able to actually adjust itself as it comes down on its lower trajectory. And they've actually noticed how our air defenses work and they've adjusted that adjuster to better work inside of our air defense envelope. So they're able to actually overcome it. And that's actually the weapon they used in Jordan a few weeks ago, not the most recent one now that was intercepted, but before that that actually did strike and kill Americans. I saw some people saying like, oh, you know, these targets have been on the map for many years. It's on Google Maps.

It's like, yeah, but you don't know where the actual people are at that moment. But if you're using SIGINT and you're using AdWare exploitation, which is what they actually used to strike some Americans elsewhere in the Gulf, they're using that to triangulate and figure out the 10-digit grid for where to actually strike and kill Americans. and they're doing it really well, and they're learning each time how to do it better. And it's dangerous for us to view them as a static adversary that's just sitting there launching ballistic missiles, which is part of what they are doing. But they're doing it carefully and thoughtfully each time in a way that they're trying to improve casualties and harm toward Americans. And I think that's something that we shouldn't forget to. Like, isn't this the stuff we study about asymmetric warfare, right? Like, it seems like they're winning in that right now by a lot.

Because if we're spending $4 million for a Patriot missile on a $50,000 jihadron, the cost-benefit analysis isn't there exactly. It doesn't really make sense. I'd love to know if, like, where are we? Obviously, it's probably classified. Like, where are we with a lower cost interceptor system that is actually, actually makes sense in this scenario, or most scenarios? So how's the iron beam work? There's all kinds of counter-UAS systems and things.

that are being developed and all sorts of different technologies. Like it's a huge endeavor, but like this is like the basic problem that the U.S. military has had since 9-11 is that we were built to have these big slug fests with the Russians. And then we end up fighting counterinsurgencies or, you know, another state actor like Iran that's, you know, uses asymmetric tactics. And we have this bespoke military gear that costs billions of dollars that's countering, as you point out, you know, a drone that costs, you know, $10,000. And so the ROI just doesn't really make sense over the long run, you know, in a protracted conflict.

There's like aren't, weren't Patriots designed to shoot down fucking Migs and Sukoy's and. No, Patriots were designed to shoot down like ballistic missiles or other ballistics. Yeah. But at least ballistic missiles are like expensive. So most likely they're going to be like dollar for dollar, at least close to it. That's why the equation used to work. Right. And we have like, so, I mean, folks that follow the show, we have Lobo as a training facility,

training testing facility to Montana. I know that the DOD, because they have a hub at Montana State University and they're working with us, are basically looking for companies that claim they can do this and testing them. Like, this has become like the Manhattan project, I think, of today is what Jack is just talking about. Like, we got to figure this out fast. because this isn't going to work. The current basically dynamic is not acceptable. So I will at least hear about it because we're not a company that does this stuff,

but we're a company that hosts the testing. Hopefully it happens really quick, but I throw it back to you guys. I mean, we know the iron beans in operation now, right? Is it, how's it, if you know, if you don't, sorry for asking. How is it being rolling? out? Is it being successful? Is it the kind of what we hoped that you could use a relatively inexpensive defensive system to shoot down even in, you know, more expensive incoming threats? And are we exploring it? And is there a U.S. version? And what are we doing to maximize it?

The thing with air defenses is if you look at, usually in the military, you'll see a chart that has different air defense intercept points at which, which tool can intercept which air defense item at which altitude and which speed. And the problem with Iron Dome and Iron Beam is that they actually are designed for a very narrow intercept envelope. They're different. Not only that, but it has to be coming

at a specific trajectory. So, for example, if you have a weapon that is too fast, like a hypersonic missile, it won't even detect it. Or if you have a weapon that's too low and slow, it also won't detect it because the radar cross-section doesn't make sense to it as far as what is an adversary item

and what is not. So it can actually target specific, like, kind of pie piece. piece, right? So you need other tools. That's why the THAAD is important. That's why the Patriot is important. And actually Patriot and Iron Dome work well together because they covered very different sections of the air intercept space without getting too technical about it. But if, you know, people can just look it up online. There are these graphs that show you. You need like five minimum different types of air defense systems to actually cover like 80 or 90% of the

sky. That still leaves a 10% gap. And that's not even counting for asymmetric uses of these weapons and new tools that are used in different ways than they were initially expected. For example, the anti-ship missile that the Houthis have, that's a direct fire weapon that's supposed to go from a launch pad on the earth to a ship. That's not designed to be an air weapon coming down, right? But the Houthis are using it as that. So that's something to think about when these tools are designed. They're designed for specific weapons at specific times and altitudes and so on.

So it's a concern that we just can't cover the sky enough. And that's true. I mean, even with a C-RAM, if you've seen video of C-RAM, it's very good at shooting stuff down but doesn't shoot everything down. And you don't have an unlimited supply of munitions there on the ground. Maybe you've got stuff in theater. But if the enemy knows what your actual saturation point is based on their testing of your air defenses, they can figure out that, hey, we can actually oversaturate you.

And Iran did that when they attacked Israel a little while back. They did get weapons inside and hit the ground, hit targets because it was a saturated air defense environment. Jack, you're a journalist. Ask a question. Well, I mean, I'm not to be like unhelpful or unconstructive, but like we've done certain things here in this campaign against Iran that cannot be taken back or undone. And I feel like we have kind of run ourselves down into a cul-de-sac from a policy perspective. And it's an imperfect example, but, you know, Vladimir Putin did the same thing. Ukraine. He ran his country down into this kind of cul-de-sac that he can't return from. And, you know,

as Nick pointed out, you know, maybe we have to take some, eat some humble pie on this one. But, you know, then there are personalities involved in all of this. And this administration doesn't particularly do humble very well. So I have, you know, I wish I had answers. I wish I could, like, give you some sort of prognosis of like where all of this is heading. But, Unfortunately, I suspect it's a stalemate that's probably going to run through the rest of this administration, and the next guy's going to have to figure it out, come to some sort of peace treaty or something. That's probably the case. And I agree, like, this isn't about just throwing mud, right? Like, it's easy to, you know, any war to just throw mud. It's super easy. So it is about, at least I think our discussion always has about how to advance U.S. interest. So it isn't it isn't just poking somebody in the in the eye. But it's really difficult to

see a way out of this that's not just a staleming. Like escalation doesn't seem to be just if you listen to the reporting on the assessment, an option, even though we might do it. So, but we can't accept failure. Like we're not. I don't think. Right. Your point about the straight of Hermuse and the highly enriched uranium is correct. Like, I don't think we can accept that as a country to just, like, leave things as they are. Yeah. And so maybe the other next administration,

be it, you know, Republican or Democrat, gets a new crack at this. But that's a long time to wait in the current circumstances. Yeah. I think it's time for America and whoever is following this to kind of understand, like, kind of come to the, come to the realization that we've broken it kind of beyond repair. And, you know, I would argue, are there some people that would argue?

Because it's arguable for sure that, like, is even being involved in this thing with Iran right now in America's interests? Thankfully, you know, we live here. So our gas prices are higher, but it's not like, it's not to the point of like what you see is going on in Europe and everywhere. and Southeast Asia but you know it does affect our economy in some sort of way

and would it make sense to like disengage I'm not saying completely you know still be around to whenever ISIS pops their head out to fucking chop it off

but but what would that do though like they're still control the straight-ahomboos yeah that's gonna be the new reality on the ground I mean unfortunately

like I hate to admit it but you know, we knew this was going in, like, for 30, 40 years that this is what likely would happen if we attacked Iran. And it's happened pretty much probably to the book. Maybe a little bit more, like people were a little bit more surprised that they were attacking our bases and our allies in the region as much. But we knew Hormuz was on the table. That's why George W. Bush, when he probably had the most political capital ever, when he went into Iraq, that early first six months maybe could have pushed it.

but that's why no other administration ever did that, like attacked Iran because they knew the fallout would be rough. And even I would argue it would have been rougher for them to go in because we weren't so energy independent at that time. But now we pretty much are, even though it's a global market and everything like that. But yeah, I think unfortunately, I mean, I don't want to say like, Iran's going to win this one.

But they probably will go toward a nuclear weapon, right? Of course. I was just going to mention that. Yeah. So we can really can't disengage. Yeah, if you read John's incredible book, Iran's Shadow Weapons, their number one thing. It's not exporting revolution.

It's not any of that. It's regime security. And the ultimate regime security is having, you know, a dozen nukes. No one's going to say shit to you ever again. You see North Korea. The guy's a fucking lunatic. You know, something I would like to ask you guys about that I've read and heard.

But, you know, it's a family. kind of thing to think about and a look at because it's not something that they really, it's not a theory that they teach in college. This idea that the administration is waging this war in a manner to, I guess you could say, game the markets, that they're doing these like weekend bombing campaigns when the stock exchanges shut down and then calling them off. And I mean, that's, do you, do you guys feel that that's true, that that's the approach that they're taking. And if so, I mean, how does that impact our war? I mean, I don't think we've ever fought a war quite like that before. I think one thing to recognize is that even if it, whether it's

true or not that they're doing this consciously to exploit the market, the market is an efficient organism and it's going to adapt in ways that make the most benefit out of the situation. So every time that this occurs, the market as a whole general information collective adapts to the situation and there are new benefits to be created and extracted from that behavior. Like, for example, this weekend, the announcement that this will, that the attacks will happen. And then the de-escalation, if you look at after-hours trading, you can see the market responding to this as an organism, which is many, many people's different decisions, including institutional investors and, you know, quote-unquote dumb money, which is everybody else, retail investors, all reacting

to this situation in a way that creates value for some people to extract the value. So whether it's intentional or not, there are people that are looking at this and saying, how can I make the most out of this situation. And there are a lot of people doing that. Some of them are inside the administration like the teleprompter guy that just got outed for making, you know, insider trades based on things that he saw on the teleprompter that Trump was about to read minutes later. Right. So there are actors out there, whether it's intentional as a policy or not, who are saying, hey, this is my shot to make some money. And that is insider information. And it's very difficult to go after when the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the CFTC are regulatory

capture with the current way of thinking about the economy. John, you're getting me fucking crazy saying these things right now. You said just consume, don't get the don't get the fucking lefty out of me. Because they fucking gutted that fucking agency. Yeah.

So like polymarket and calci can't really be regulated very well because those like CFTC and CFPB and FTC, first of all they can't figure out who's the one that's supposed to regulate insider training on those markets. They're infighting with each other about that. there's also not a lot of political will to answer the question.

I'm not saying anything. You get me. So, and frankly, like a ton of, a dozen states or more have filed fucking season assists lawsuits against Calci and Polly Market, the betting exchanges. Because all, like Draft Kings and a Fandul, they've gone through the state legislator to get approved for, to operate in that state. And Calishian Polly Market just because it's a prediction market, bullshit, is, can do it anywhere federally, right?

So a lot of states file cease and desist or file charges. And the DOJ is actually fighting on the side of Calihani and Polly Market against the states. Like, it's fucking crazy. It makes no sense. John got me triggered. This is John's fault, everybody. And also happens to be a strategic advisor or whatever. Somebody, like, on the board, getting paid from this is Donald Trump Jr.

Like, shocking. Yeah, so, okay, that's it. That's my lib rant for the week. When does it, the statements, whether they're manipulation or not, just simply not work because they're, they're no- On the market? It's a good question. On the market and energy market, right? Yeah.

At least, and I'm not a financial guy, but like, if you're looking for futures on the energy market, you actually need to be accurate, right? Like, you can't just take a false statement that's designed to manipulate you and go with it is my question more than the thing. Well, I think, I think, like, for the insiders, most likely, like, last week there was a short position that was taken up on oil, right? Right before the 13 days of bombing were going on, and we stopped, and, like, somebody knew, obviously, that we were going to stop at a certain time.

They took out a position, and oil went up or dropped, or I think it dropped 7%. So in that 7%, somebody made a fuck ton of money, especially if your bet's big enough. The other thing is these oil futures that you mentioned, typically if you compare oil futures and the bond market, there should be some correlation between how people think about the future for bond returns, because bond returns are based on future U.S. government decisions and futures, which are private decisions, but also react to public choices that the U.S. foreign policy makes, and they're divergent in a way that is unusual right now. And they're actually converging back again. In other words, the market is ignoring what the government is saying to some degree and thinking it's less dangerous than it sounds, which is interesting. It's like you're saying, Mike, it means that the economy largely is basically adapting to this rhetoric and saying it's not as bad as it sounds. So we can just kind of continue on as usual. And if you look at the harmonics of the market of the futures reactions to all the statements that have been said since February 28th, there's a dramatic decline in the reaction

to those statements as time goes on. It's because how many times can you possibly make the statement, right? Like, you know, cry wolf, like, you can only do it so many times before, like, the market really, like, jumps or goes up or down. Right. I mean, it's like Kim Jong-un back in 2006 when they first, or Kim Jong-un, yeah, no, Kim Jong-il, sorry. Kim Jong-il, when he first, in 2006, successfully launched a nuclear weapon test, huge market reaction to that. But as time went on and the Kim family made more and more statements about nukes, there was less and less reaction globally in the markets to those statements. Because we, you realize that, well, they're probably not going to launch nukes at anybody. It's just testing and

its rhetoric and it kind of dramatically declined. Even during Trump 1, when there was a lot of changes in our relationship with North Korea that were being expressed, the market still kind of put less interest in that. And you saw slower reactions to those statements, both positive and negative statements. So what happens next, guys? You guys are the smart guys. Tell me, Jack, you first. Didn't I already say, I can't really predict what's going to have? This is going to I didn't hear that part. It's hard to predict. Predicting the future.

We'd be on Kalti, right? I mean, I don't even know how to get on that thing. Well, it's quite easy now. You could do it anywhere. I think anybody listens to us and then tries to predict on Kelti? I mean, they should listen to John. He's predicted some stuff. I should have bet some stuff John was saying.

I mean, he called it before, like, I think as when maybe we were leading up to it, not before the bomb started dropping them. Like the Mosaic thing's going to happen. IRGC's going to take control. And there's not going to really be much central control over anything, really. It's going to be commanders in the field deciding what to do when they want to do it. You called that, you know, you called it on the fucking button. I don't know how you could have made money on that.

Oh, we did text a little bit while I was going on who was going to be the next whoever. And you called it. And I should have fucking bet it. And I didn't. I was also on an interview with somebody else. And they asked me two days before the conflict started. They're like, what do you think is happening? I said, I think we're going to go to war in two days.

and we did. Hell yeah. We're going to start charging for John's predictions. Yeah. Like and subscribe. Yeah. For your... Found out like one.

Yeah, get rich on Calci and, you know, from our predictions. All right, quick, before we get out of here, are we just going to keep doing this over and over again for the next two years? That's where it's going. To Jack's point, that's where it's going. I mean, there's, I don't think we can accept failure. and if there's a way to come up with a success, I hope we find it, but it's very difficult to see from here. I think inertia is a good word to use to describe what we see happening right now, because if there isn't a change in policy, if it's the same policy just amplified or reduced, it's the inertia of the operation continues moving in the same kind of general direction, which is the hardening of Iran's regime, the weakening of U.S. influence in the region, the growth of Saudi Arabia as a power regionally.

the decline of Israel as a power in the region. And one thing on the horizon we haven't talked about is the growth of Turkey also in the region, because Turkey has always had the dream of returning to the Ottoman control over these places between today's Turkey all the way down to Yemen. They have always wanted that back. Erdogan thinks that he's out of Turk too, and you're going to see that expansion as well, especially vis-a-vis Israel. As Israel loses power in the region, Turkey will fill the vacuum, not Saudi Arabia. It's mostly going to be Turkey. So I think we should look out for that, especially in Syria, Jolani was not put there by accident that was heavily supported by Turkey, right? Yeah. And you're going to see that with the Kurds across North Iraq and also in Syria,

the way the Kurds have shifted position vis-à-vis Turkey. These are things that off, you know, Iran takes our attention, but it's important to have the context of what's around Iran and what comes the day after, whether that's a treaty or whatever it is, but the day after that thing happens, what's next? You know, nobody just like stops moving. It's like, musical chairs, they're going to continue rotating around. And it's important to keep focus on what are the things next. Boys, a pleasure as always. I want everyone to do us a favor, like and subscribe. If you're following us, if you're listening on audio, you can subscribe and like there. Jack Murphy's got a new book out called The Most Dangerous Man. It's an incredible

book. That links in the description. Of course, John's books, The Theory of a Regular War and Iran's Shadow Weapons. Incredible. Those links are in the description. We're waiting for Mix memoir to come out. I'm excited about that. It's not going to happen. The White Fish Security Summit. Yeah, I would love a towel. Fucking inside G.B.

Inside ground range. Make more it tells all. That's fine. The White Fish Security Summit. Check that out. It's happening end of February next year, uh, 2027.

And, uh, his new podcast, the pup in the portrait applied stoicism. All those links are into the and check us out on Patreon. Patreon.com slash the Teamhouse. Guys, love you. Thank you. Thanks, everyone.

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