TRASHFUTURE - I Identify As the Straits of Hormuz Being Open feat. Séamus Malekafzali

Episode Date: March 31, 2026

Friend of the show and returning guest Séamus Malekafzali joins us to discuss Events in West Asia, specifically as regards Israel’s ground invasion of southern Lebanon, and Trump’s seeming gestures towards escalating a war with Iran that is already going very badly.   Get more of Séamus’ writing here!   Get the whole episode on Patreon here!   Get more TF episodes each week by subscribing to our Patreon here!   TF Merch is still available here!   *MILO ALERT* Check out Milo’s tour dates here: https://www.miloedwards.co.uk/liveshows Trashfuture are: Riley (@raaleh), Milo (@Milo_Edwards), Hussein (@HKesvani), Nate (@inthesedeserts), and November (@postoctobrist)

I like to think that if I was ever the target of like a state hacking group, that they wouldn't publish photos of me that indicated I had the most classic stupid person interests of all time. I would like it if they published any photos that I'd taken of myself with other people instead of just like having a great time with my friends who are out of shots. Like, if they published all of the saddest, like, R-slash-Solo Travel photos of my vacation, because, like, I think they could be really rewarding, but, like, obviously that's a sort of, like, maneuver in the information battle space to show us Cash Patel in Cuba, just kind of hanging out, you know?

Getting into cigars in the way that only the monumentally stupid are able to get into cigars. Yeah, I'm kind of a cigar guy because I went to Cuba, you know? Cool, man. You know what? I have unique insight into this, right? Because me and Cash Patel and Zoran all hung out together. But like we're all sort of like these kind of nerdy Gujarati kids who grew up in the West. And like we were all sort of probably more influenced by kind of West Coast hip-hop music than we would like to admit. And we like all bought into that gangster shit, right?

And, you know, if I wasn't American, I didn't really have access to cigars. And so, you know, when we were like pretending that we like me and my my other two buddies like, you know, pretending that we were into rap music, like we would like. try to smoke those like shitty cheap cheats cigars that you can get from like news agents. I can't remember what they're called. Oh no. Yeah, like they tasted horrible, but we thought...

Like the cigarillos? Like him, the good, the bad and the ugly? Yeah, we had, we had like the fucking cigarilla. I can't remember what the brand was on. It tasted disgusting. But yeah, did we think that we were sort of gangster hanging out in like suburban Kent doing that? Absolutely.

And when I saw Cash Patel with his like cigars that he also probably doesn't really like very much, like acting the way does. I was just like, I recognize a fellow brother. I recognize someone who like, you know, is under like the immense pressure of kind of being from not a particularly cool

diaspora group that desperately wants to be and probably was influenced by Harold and Kumar go to White Castle a lot more than they should have been at that time. I wasn't expecting the Skellison Key to understand a great deal of international

politics to be the Gujarati diaspora's kids. Look, just like, just very nerdy and very, like, insecure about it. And, you know, of all the people that sort of, like, wanted to sort of really aspire to a particular form of, like, cool whiteness, like, very much, very much that type. And, like, I've always seen it in Cashmaton when I saw what was in his Google Drive. Like, I recognize a brother. That's what I'm going to say. I did especially like the photo of him, like, in the chair going back.

with a cigar in his mouth. That is especially like, I'm smoking a cigar. It probably tastes really bad. I think what you're saying is probably true. It's probably not a great cigar, but he knows that he looks fucking awesome. Like a lot of these photos remind me

of those photos of Anjim Chowdhury before he like, what full cell office? Like, okay, this man's going to do some evil in some, very, very, very soon. Yeah. I think you're all sleeping on the number one

cash Patel photo. which is, of course, him just taking a picture of the fancy alcohol, like it's a celebrity. I think the other counterforce strike here being two-pronged. One, we're going to blow up one of the radar aircraft. You've only got like a dozen of in the world. And then we're going to leak the kind of faintly depressing photos of the director of the FBI. And we consider these to be kind of operationally of equal value is just another. beautiful week in the development

of Operation Reddit Fury. Yeah, I mean, here's what I'd like to see, Cash Patel's, dorm room posters and how long did he have them? Did he have the Scarface poster, and when did he take it down, if at all? It's still up there. It's in the office of the J-Hover building.

Yeah, the Blu-Tac is still fresh. You know that when he's like holding his, like, the $600 bottle of rum or whatever, and he's got the cigar, you know, he's like, damn, I'm like if Scarface was in the FBI. Yes. 100% he has tried to do the Al Pacino

Cuban accent in that office for sure. The $600 room go be feeling like a Gujarassi Al Pacino. That's right. Welcome to TF everybody. We got Seamus back in the hot seat

today. We're going to be talking a little bit more about the developments of as you call it Nova Operation Reddit Fury colon two weeks into the four-day special military operation to de Hunts a fire. Good. How is it going about monitoring the situation?

Seamus, you've been monitoring the situation. How's your situation monitoring then? The situation seems really bad. But thankfully, it seems really bad for the Americans this time, which is a nice change of pace from the past, got two years of this shit. Yeah, like, I'm having a sort of, well, there's your problem thing. By the time this comes out, the economy may just be detonated forever, and we edit overnight. Yeah. How about this? this. Whoever's got the final review of this before it goes out,

oil is currently priced at a barrel. What you mean to do is drop in the 100 gecks, $1 million there. That's right. Okay, so we also have, and this is an idea, I'm going to shamelessly steal from Nova

because I want to bring it out earlier in the show. We have America also seemingly learning the lesson that you can do Hostomel Airport, again, if you just feed 8,000 troops into the meat grinder on Ark Island. It's like, this is the headline for me is America is Russia now. It's crazy how

it's Russia now. And it didn't have to be because there was already a Russia and it was called Russia and it made all of these mistakes for what we naively at the time imagined to be Russian reasons. But now it turns out they were just kind of like global power reasons. And so now America's like, oh shit, these guys

were sort of like cheap drones and missiles can blow up our really high value planes on the tarmac. And, you know, maybe it's a good idea to feed a bunch of special forces into a meat grinder for no reason on the basis that like, these people won't resist us and they'll change their government when they, you know, CS. So it's, it's Russia now. Russia gate, one of the kind of like orthogonally correct things when they were like Trump is just

a Russian asset. It's like in a sort of deeper, more spiritual way, maybe. Yeah, it's like, you can even go bigger and it's like, it's declining empire shit, but where the U.S. is trying to do Starmerism to represent. Russia's plans in Ukraine, where they're like, no, we're going to do the same plans, but better because it's us. We're going to do a better job. Oh, yeah, the whole thing was that the past wars were crack bars because we had stupid presidents. That's what J.D. Vance said. Like, really, they truly do believe this. Yeah, they didn't have the showbiz guy who's going to add a little bit of razzle-dazzle. So, yeah, as we get into sort of, oh, Jesus Christ, like week two of the special military

operation. The goal, as I understand it now, right? Because there's not a plan. There's just a goal. And I understand the goal to be make the situation what it was before we started the war, which is also Russia. Yeah. Like right now, I mean, Marco Rubio did go on television today and said that there was apparently clear goals, which are goals that were now different than the clear goals of the headline at the very beginning, one of which was to destroy Iranian factories. with no parameters on them, just the factories. Yeah. And the central goal is now, yeah, to open the Strait of Hormuz and to restore a stable place of oil,

which was absolutely not an issue before this. And now the Iranians are demanding full sovereignty over the Strait of Ormuz in any peace negotiation. But before we get into Iran, there's one type of segment. I like to save for Shamus if I can. Look, we all know that the second most important story in the Middle East is currently what's going on in Iran. Yeah, yeah. That's sort of like page two on. the fold, right?

Like, after the, like, page and a half of coverage of this. Most important is, and I need everybody to, like, unbook your tickets, put down your skis, and accept that Trojina is now officially never happening. The neon ski hill. Breaking a ski over my leg. I'm never going to be able to ski Saudi Arabia. I can't believe that MBS's secret plan, which is to have a ski race for the rights to control the Straits of Hormuz with whoever the Ayatoll is at that time is no longer going to be able to go ahead. Saudi Arabia, we all know the line got canceled.

It's going to be a data center now, apparently. I don't even know if you're kidding. Oh, I'm not. Nope, not kidding. It's going to be a big long data center. We're going to have a stadium to do the World Cup in, though, in the, am I crazy? Yeah, on top of the dice sensor. I think it's a good idea.

Very warm underfoot. Yeah. Yeah. Well, it's hot up top and it's hot down below, so it cancels out. Yeah. You know, this is for the Wall Street Journal. Unlike other parts of the Neon master plan that were scaled back last year before much physical building took place, Trojina was years into construction.

Giant steel structures meant to hold hotels and a massive set of elevated ski runs have risen and was meant to be a ski village. They've created the, like, we always talk about, like, you can see things that look feel like environmental storytelling. I've never seen anyone create a like call of duty 12 level. Yeah. The abandoned Saudi ski slope.

Yeah. But also like what I really not enjoyed because it's clearly like a structural deficiency. Like the idea of having like a water dam that goes outward in the design. That's that's fucking, that's crazy. They really thought that this was going to be like

the thing. The thing. The dam. Let me tell you that. Can I just hit you with the next. paragraph just quickly. Engineers already blew up a big part of a large part of the mountain to make room

for a hotel carved into the blasted stone walls, the dam, which was 30% complete. They actually meaningfully changed global concrete prices to do this shit. And they got 30% of the way through. Decreing, decreing 30%

of my stately pleasure time. Well, they cleared out all of the, I mean, I saw this when I went to the Neum exhibition in Venice three years ago. They had cleared out all the land for the full extent of the line. They hadn't laid the foundation yet, but they had cleared out all of the things. Like so many

fucking trucks doing this, and then they just don't do it. So do anything, they don't have plans, nothing. Absolutely nothing. Yeah. Their plans are, ah, it's too hard. Oh yeah, turns out this was impossible. To be fair, I did say at the time that building a ski resort and the line seemed pretty hard. Yeah. You know what? Should have

listened to me, you know? Yeah. You know, scour. Natch another one up on our belt of, to be fair, that was like the tutorial island of predictions. That was so easy to predict. Yeah, guess who just made $5 on Polly Market? So, the dam, which is

30% complete, was meant to be an architectural centerpiece, bowing outward, and again, this is some Wall Street Journal wording right here, in defiance of standard engineering, in which dams arc inward. Cost grew repeatedly, with showing the price tag as well to $38 billion, double an estimate from two years earlier.

Just two months ago, Trojanna appeared to be of the few projects at Neom envisioned to hold 9 million people that was proceeding, even as other components of the site were facing cutbacks. Merely two weeks ago, We Build CEO Pietro Salini, sounded a note of cautious optimism when asked about cutbacks, saying, production is progressing well. He said on March 13th, so We Build was the Italian contractor that was building Tregna. We Builds. It's like being drowned out by Shahid Engine.

Like, it's cautiously optimistic. Okay. Can somebody please do a Photoshop of like, you know, the Republican Guard. commander in Iraq, but it's an Italian construction CEO. There may be in the future some slowdown. We can't predict it, but a change in the scope of the project is not foreseen at the moment. Two weeks later, fully canceled. Incredible.

Gone, done. I remembered when they announced Trojina as the host place for the 2029 Asia Winter Games. Like the idea, like doing the World Cup of Saudi Arabia, okay, that's 2034, I think, right? 2020, 2030 something. That gives you enough time to build like a stadium or build like some part of the line. But the fact that they had to take the winter games away from Chogina, like not today, but like several months ago because they fucking knew this was not going to be anywhere complete. And they gave it to fucking Kazakhstan because of course they would. Like, well, can I just can I tell you, you know who's building Neom to?

Kazakhstan. What? Yeah. There's another one? Yeah. There are Neums everywhere for those with eyes to see. Kazakh Neum? We're having Kazakh Niyom, Alatau, has been presented at a joint session of Kazakhstan's parliament.

By the way, before I move on to that, also the Malaysian steel company, when it comes to Niam, the best place to really learn about what's going on is to, like, read about the top level college, original with the FT or the Wall Street Journal, and then read like trade publications in like the steel industry. You're reading like, it's a day in steel. It's where you find the funniest details, like the fact that the more than 60% of next year's order book for the Malaysian company that was providing all the steel for Trojanah is now gone, and that company is likely going to have to close.

Oh, my God. Wow. How could you lose money building a ski resort in Saudi Arabia? I'll be real. I tend to only read those magazines for the cartoons. I'm flipping through this week in Steel to get to the sports section at the end. Personally, I like shouts and girders at the end where it's just like fun stories from the steel industry. So, details about the ambitious plans for Alatau City were presented to a joint session of Kazakhstan's

Parliament on March 20th. Authorities are moving full speed ahead on the project to build a new city that could be home to 2 million people. Will it have skiing? I need to ski. I have my Arcteric's jacket. Please, let me ski. Here's the problem, right?

Is that... Is it that Kazakhstan already has mountains? Well, it's more like that Kazakhstan Neum, elements of it seem to make a small amount of sense. I don't love that. That's always funny to me. Yeah. Hey! get at something.

Looking at this project for the line and being like we've got to get like 5% more plausible you know? Kind of. It's one of these things

where it's like they've decided to build a gleaming new capital just outside the old capital. Oh, another one of those. Okay. Yeah, sure. It would be funny

for Britain to do that. We should like tank our GDP by like putting the entire like move because like we've got to move all the MPs out of parliament anyway because the building's falling down. Why don't we just build like a new planned capital on like a floodplain

and shrop? You know? I think that would be great. Hey, I know we can get a deal on a bunch of cheap steel. It's twice as much steel as was required to build the Empire State Building was going to Tricenna. Weirdly, all of the new buildings and new British capital of like, you know, Church Hillia or whatever do have to be ski jump shaped, but I, you know, we'll work around it.

Well, that's Anglo-Futurism now. Yeah, I cannot wait for our perfect Anglo-Futurist Brasilia. Let's go. Kier-Stama announces ski future. We are going to become an alpine country. We'll become an alpine powerhouse. Now, so it's basically being built along the Belt and Road route. And it says it's going to have four junctions, green, growing, golden, and gate.

The Gate district will be the business and financial area. Good, giving game, etc., etc. Yeah, cool. Gaslight, girl boss. If you're building this along, like, your sort of Belt and Road thing, you are also making an actual country of the capacity to build things responsible for it, which means this may get built. Yeah.

Yeah. It makes slightly more, there seem to be no. glasses guys, as of yet. The glasses guys are probably trying to get in. Like the picnic at Neum is now done and too many of them have been squished. And so now all the glasses guys are going to flock to Kazakhstan to try to build this slightly more

but they all have like Neon brain so they're all going to be like, what if we colorized the moon in the Kazakhs? You're like, fuck off, no. They also have an industrial logistics center, a recreational and tourist area. But like again, unlike the stuff the Saudis do, it's not all recreational and tourist area. It seems to actually.

have a purpose? When are they saying this will be done by and have they done the Saudi thing of being like we are committing to this within like three years because of the Asian games or whatever? 2050 and nothing is planned there. Honestly, that's that's far enough off, you know? This is not entertaining to me. This is like watching an episode of Grand Designs where the couple have their shit together, right? Where it's like, oh, I'm, I'm an architect and my wife as a project manager. So we've basically kind of got this on lock. We've set aside at like a commensurate amount of savings and our goals are modest

and you're watching this like fuck off no that's not what it's about it's like when Oman announced like those big new cities that they were building and then you watch the CJ videos and it's like oh this is like a reasonable like they're imposing height limits like there's really like there's good facilities

it's like oh oh that's nice this is no good for me this is I make my money pay my rent with the hubris yeah it just it shows how novel it is to see a proposal that at first blush makes sense. Look upon my works

you might see and it's like a pretty nice statue and you're like, look upon my works Eighty and say, yeah, okay. It seems like a well-executed projects basically. A corny thing, but you know, coriness is that a sin? Look upon my works ye mighty and say, good job.

Wow, it's still there. Aletow City. I looked upon two two vast and trunkless legs of stone. Then I looked up and I said, oh, there's the trunk. So Alatow City lies along the main road between the cities of Almaty and Konaev, the gambling capital of Kazakhstan. A new place I have to go as soon as possible unlocked. You can't see it, listener, but November has just grabbed her passport and is clearly tabbing to a flight to an airline website.

Good luck flying to Kazakhstan from London. I have no idea what route that would look like right now. It's fine. We're going to be fine. So anyway, that's the Niyom update that I wanted, of course, to shape. save for Seamus. I'm sorry that you're everyone's everyone in the world's ski plans have been cancelled. It's like you don't get to ski in Saudi Arabia, consolation prize. You do get to gamble in Kazakhstan. I want to go back to talking about Iran, our main topic for today. America has now declared victory what like five to eight times.

I think that their hope is that the Iranians will just be like, oh, you, oh, you won? We didn't know. Okay. Well, cool. I guess your demands are the demands. I suppose. That's not what's happened. But before we get into that properly as well, I do want to talk about one of the other belligerents that we actually don't discuss quite as often as we're focused mostly on Iran, the Gulf and the U.S., which is of course Israel, which is taking this moment of chaos to expand its war into southern Lebanon properly and is like bombing Beirut and seems like it intends to just fully permanently occupy southern Lebanon. Yeah, I mean, Netanyahu had announced a couple of days ago that they were going to further expand the security zone. There have been two,

two estimates thrown around in the news media. One is the larger one that goes up to the Latani and another is one that goes right up to the city of Suu. We're commonly known in English as Tyre. In either of these scenarios, we're talking about whole villages being wiped off the map. The explicit model that they're talking about is a yellow line in Gaza where, you know, lots of villages, towns and cities where were depopulated, been demolished. They're suggesting to fully do that in, at the very least, border village. in southern Lebanon, perhaps even the entire city of Tyre, if they go up to the Latani. To my understanding, they have not pushed in terribly far into the country.

So far, they have taken significant parts of Chiam and Maruna Ross. But they have not gone up to the Latani yet. They have not surrounded Tyre yet. They are still bogged down in fighting with Hezbollah. If you want to talk about like sort of one war is going great, so let's open another front. I mean, we're going to sort of ask some of the same questions about other belligerents later, but to what extent is Israel able to accomplish any of its actual goals, given the new politics of the Middle East at large? I mean, it seems to be acting as though it's already won.

No, no, if there's an assumption that, okay, if America is backing us, if America has jointly entered this war against Iran, supplying all this firepower, theoretically sending its troops, thousands of them to die for Israeli objectives, what Israel wants out of this scenario. They're not sending Israeli special ops. They're not sending Israeli ground troops, any potential operation in Khar, or the enriched arena, and Esfahan. And I think that created all of this impunity over decades and years.

Like, that builds up. And I think there was an assumption that, okay, if America is in this, maybe they'll even join in on some sort of bombing in Lebanon. Maybe they'll do all. Maybe they'll do this, me'll do that. And the shock of how this is actually gone is taking the military structure, not by surprise. I'm sure they thought about this, but now they actually have to face it head on. And there is a crisis within that structure.

A. Al-Zemir, the commander of the IDF, talked about how the military might collapse in on itself because of how many resources it is now tied up in. The number that I've been hearing for a round of reservists they're going to call up is 400,000, just for Lebanon. And the number of reserves total in the IDF is less than 500,000. So that's just in Lebanon. If there is a new front potentially in Gaza, which they are talking about potentially doing, they're a pinch talking about it potentially doing this month, several months ago, or in April,

that might get pushed down a few months. But if that erupts, they could be fighting on multiple different fronts there. No, they do not like this particular scenario, wherein Hezbollah is jointly attacking alongside Iran, firing their missiles and rockets at the exact same time. this war was supposed to not take this long, right? When it initially started, it was supposed to be three to four weeks, and now we're just over 30 days in. And now they're talking about it taking another month.

And interceptors are running low inside Israel. Now Iran is able to hit with much more consistency than it did at the beginning of this. And it doesn't seem like America is terribly concerned by that bottleneck. It's basically going to think about itself at the moment. It's also sort of like a victim of it strikes me of like its own success. in both the US and Israel, in a way that, not to be like everywhere is Russia, but if you see the kind of way that Russian opinion shifted after season Crimea, where it was like, oh, okay, we're not going to face like meaningful resistance here.

We've seen the sort of Hezbollah pendulum go from like washed and sort of like it's over all the way back to like, oh, we're having sort of like tanks get like bogged down in ambushes that they set like 15 years ago. functionally. Because finally, finally, you're like walking into the trap that was set for you, you know? It's something like, like what I wrote about in the nation a couple of days ago was this idea that the enemy gets a vote. And America especially is not, it's totally forgotten this lesson from Vietnam in terms of it strategizing.

So the idea that Hezbollah could be capable of reconstituting itself in any way, shape, or form that was left out of Israeli strategic planning seemingly. America convinced was it was totally, I mean, it did also claim that it had obliterated Iran's nuclear program and then it now has to go in to obliterate it again because it was about to reconstitute it or something along those lines. I think it truly believed what Israeli intelligence was telling it that Iran's capabilities have been degraded over the past year from the 12-day war, that it was on the verge of reconstituting it. But, you know, being able to neuter it, being able to destroy it would be a much easier task.

And America especially believe that it could do something like Venezuela, that the Republican conservative conception of Iran as a Venezuela-style republic where one person is at the top and is very powerful, but otherwise it's not an institutionalized state, that it would fall the same way. Obviously, that idea did not prove true. When Ali Khomey was assassinated in the first day of the war, what happened?

They just elected his son. And then it just proceeded as normal. There was no leadership crisis. Doing a DPRK thing where it's like, these guys aren't real communists. You know, it's just a hereditary monarchy. No, it's not like nothing. Like, truly, there is no leadership crisis. Like, even in terms of the ability of the military to fight, when as well as leadership was

decapitated in the last war in 2024, that had a severe effect on its ability to fight. Whereas when that happened in Iran, when the defense minister was killed, when, when lots of military officials were killed, it had no effect at all. The decentralized structure allowed it to fire and fire wildly and fire rapidly and maintain the ladder of escalation. And it has continued being coherent throughout all of this. Like that assumption that Iran would just capitulate immediately, it was going to be wrong. And now it has proven wrong arguably more so than I anticipated before the war broke out. It's a case of overlearning the lesson of the 12th day war, which is we can do anything. overconfidence. And I mean, it's not as if there haven't been serious threats to Iran that made it look

like deeply unstable the last time we spoke, Shamus. We were talking about it. Iran was in that situation of like absolute kind of peril for the regime. And now it's, if anything, the US is sort of like vastly bolstered it. Exactly. I mean, this kind of thing happened during the 12th day war as well, in which there was this rallying around the flag that happened. And now that the both the US is so directly involved in this. Now that has really increased. And I mean, there have been these, these sorts of, I don't know, like the poking in of that protest base every so often. Like, during the Noru's holiday, there were people who had celebrations that they chanted long of the Shah during that. When Mosh Tabah Khomeini was appointed, there were chance inside Tehran

from people's buildings where they said, you know, death the Khomeini. But the whole thing, he's never published a really serious religious opinion. It's not really helpful if both the Mossad on your phone and Donald Trump are being like, yeah, you should probably go out into the streets. We're not going to help you though. You should just get shot ideally. No, no, they absolutely want them to be massacred in the street. And then they can use that as an ideological cudgel.

They don't actually want anything to happen. And I mean, this has been reported to a session in the media. But like something that has really startled me is like, okay, if the Mossad has all these immense capabilities. During the 12-day war, they displayed those immense capabilities, like sabotaging missile launches before they were supposed to happen, infiltrating all of these levels of government, exposing their locations, this and that the other. But their ability to re-energize the protest has been, it just did not happen. Like, I've been, like, the Mossad has an official channel on Telegram and on Twitter. It does not have that for any other language. But what it has been just like posting as of late

has been just completely desperate. I've been posting like Linda Yakarino. Right. I've seen some of these. I mean, like, yeah, like just let's tweeting like, happy no-ros, this time it's different. And then ruthless people eventually die. Like, these are the people who you're owning, like, all of your support to, theoretically, if you're a pro-Israel protester.

Posting images and content on X.com is a great way to blaze your glory. That's right. Well, also, like, people have lower attention spans. And so, you know, you can't, you've got to, like, put some method. Yeah, what have the Masado from a short-form video channel? They do. They post AI generated videos on their channels as well, showing like fake prisons that have been blown open or IRGC people defecting. Like, it's all bullshit. They're desperately trying everything and it's just not fundamentally working. So if the Israeli reaction to, oh shit, we forgot they get a vote as to

whether or not they're defeated, is open up another front in Lebanon and then blast out messages being like, hey, maybe he'll just die. What if he just died? You can take over then. The American response appears to have been declare victory dozens of times. We went all in on Jean-Baudria. The Gulf War didn't happen so this one isn't happening either. Yeah, exactly. Finally for the war against an enemy with enough philosophy, PhDs to make a counter-argument, which is stuff happens in real life.

So it's, what do we say? America is post-modernism versus Iran, which is modernism. Yeah, you could make the argument from the right of, like, like actually it's the, uh, the Islamic Republic that's trad here, you know, Trump is doing standpoint epistemology on them and,

and they're holding resolute on, on the fact that there are some objective facts on the ground. Yeah, look, this, this shahed drone is a brute fact. I actually identify as the straight being open. Iran,

yeah, well, look, America represents luxury beliefs. Um, and Iran, Iran is like steel and, uh,

rational, like, you know, they have a rational philosophy and that's why we should support. Excuse me, oil is my comfort hydrocarbon. So, the Department of Defense has announced that it would raise the Army recruitment age from 34 to 42 and let people with certain drug felony convictions join. All right, so I'm packing in the podcast.

I've got some stuff to do, you know, so you see me on the FPV footage. Just waving. Is that a like a boom? Listen, if I am ever approached by an FPV drone, I will do my level. best to hit the Charlie Kirk before I go. Ripping open the body armor to reveal the Freedom T-shirt.

And I just embrace it, you know? Leaping neck first into the path of the droll. Counting or not counting gang violence. When the Shah Head Drod says something so neckphobic,

you got to hit him with the Charlie Kirk's stare. So, uh, But Caroline Leavitt also said President Trump is keeping all option on the table open when asking about sending ground troops or reinstating conscription. It could have just been a gaffe. I mean, the ground troops that they're mobilizing as well. And this is the thing that's crazy is they have it in them to like take any of these islands. Right.

And like I believe at one point one of the plans was to take these like three small islands in the strait that like they would then give to the Emirates. And the Emirates were like, no. we don't want those. So now it's maybe to take Hark, and I'm like, to do what with? Okay, this is the thing. This is the thing I'm wondering about, because like, okay, on a strategic level,

I understand, okay, 80 to 90% of oil exports go through Hark, the oil terminal Hark. If you want to disrupt that, there is an obvious military incentive to taking Hark, right? But it's also, what Trump seems to understand is that, okay, we can actually seize all the oil on the, island we can take the uranium that way. Even though they don't produce the oil on that island.

It just goes through that island. The oil is produced on the mainland for the most part. So I think Trump has a misunderstanding about what Clark precisely does. And my impression from the descriptions of what a operation to take the uranium in Esfahan would comprise of. Oh my God, a disaster. That's a goal movie. Yeah, like fucking insane.

My, what, like, Lindsay Graham has been saying, it's like, you know, we can do, we did I O Jima, we can do this. Like, I think they think it's an easy step to force the capitulation of Iran, whereas what it will do, I think, is Iran will be obviously affected by it, but they can find other terminals to put their oil from. They have a lot of places to do that from. They have pipelines in order to bypass the street entirely even. But, I mean, thousands of, you know, Iranans are going to be placed under direct military occupation with no civilian administration to eventually transfer them into. It's also that you then tie up a bunch of American troops who are getting bond every day.

Under direct, potentially could be landmined around the island. Yeah. And you have to be there for as long as it takes. And nobody knows how long this is going to fucking take. And Trump even said, like, they wouldn't be able to do a limited raid. They would have to stay there for a while. like all of these factors are running the gambit from just straight up evil in the amount of damage they would do to the Iranians living on that island or just outright suicidal in terms of what the Americans would have to have to deal with. At least, at least Lindsey Graham is having a good time.

You know, it's nice to know that one closeted gay guy with a stupid fucking accent can get on TV and he's thrilled. You know, like, okay, a lot of American troops may die, but faghorn, leghorn, he's having a great time. I can say it I can say it I just heard it it was like yes I called him fag corn leg corn

yes thank you I am shaking my head to show you I disagree now I'm just a simple but here's the thing are we ready

for the episode title that finally gets his pants I can't think of a better one oh my god well yeah so Lindsay Graham Lindsay Graham gets to get to bouch up a little bit

He does. He does. We did Iwo Jima. But again, like, Iwojima, smaller island. Uh-huh. They hadn't invented FPV drones yet. They hadn't done that yet. Well, they did. They were guys.

That's true, yeah. Yeah. But like, that's way more expensive and difficult. Flying a kamikaze plane onto the bridge of an aircraft carrier and the captain hits the Charlie Kirk, exactly. Wait. What would he? He did like the father cockling, I guess.

I guess. Yeah. So the day we control the island The regime has been weakened and will die on the vine Why though? Why? I've never, like there's not A and then therefore C Like it's it's January 6th thinking

It's January 6 thinking of just like Well we just got to get to the place Where the level ends And that's where they keep That's where they keep the regime is in the oil And so if we take the oil Capital T capital O Then the regime is ours

And then we get to do what we want It is January 6th thinking they're just going to go there and mill around. I would ask if Trump had ever looked at a map of Iran, but I know that his daily briefing is they like cut together the footage of stuff they're blowing up and like show him a super cut. So no, maybe he hasn't. Maybe he doesn't realize it's got like a hinterland. On Monday, Trump rifted out some new ideas for ending the war saying,

you know, no bad ideas in brainstorming. But the Strait of Hormuz could be controlled jointly by the Ayatollah and me. personally. That's going to be, that's going to be an awkward meeting, you know. Someone watched he had rivalry this weekend. There was also,

yeah, Lindsay Graham, there was also, there was also, there was also, I believe, a proposal to have Pakistan mediate between them,

but as far as I can tell, that's entirely aspirational at this point. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, Mostapua did put out a statement, like thanking Pakistan in particular a couple days ago

for its friendship, and I guess they're relying on, like, okay, this state is friendly with both of these countries. Pakistan is on the board of peace. But no, it doesn't seem like it's an entirely one-way process these peace negotiations. As best I understand it, the American demands, right, for any peace negotiation are open the straight the way it was before the war, abide by the JCPOA, and also we can go back on this and kill you any time we want, including maybe while you're negotiating this.

I mean, also also eliminating its missile capabilities, I think five years. Five years they want no missiles, but also that's kind of a JCPOA thing, right? Like the, but it expanded out to conventional weapons. And then we'd be talking about like breakout times and all of this bullshit and then we'd be back in the exact same way started. Like they'd still want the capitulation, but they're also still like, because the oil price to have this book, they're still like moving in different ways. Like there was an access report about how they were thinking about like in terms of

the reparations that Iran wants, that maybe they could unfreeze the sanctioned assets that Iran has abroad, which they have never done, basically, since the JCPOA. And they already unsanctioned Iranian oil on the water and claimed that it was jujitsuing the Iranians. That's from the Treasury Secretary Scott Besson. That's the exact word he used. Like, what exact hold was, what joint lock is that? I'm doing a classic neck lock, you know, right? I get my neck around his arm and I just like, It's the Jiu-Jitzib move that my teacher taught me one time when I was doing it, which hurts you more than it hurts your opponent. But you still do it anyway.

Which shows that you're willing to take more pain. Meanwhile, on the Iranian side, there is no plausible way that they can stop doing this until they've restored something that looks like deterrents. And now the Americans have made them exercise the kind of veto over what goes through the straight. You have to keep it. You can't back down from that and go, actually, you know what? It's fine. We don't take an interest in that anymore, unless I don't know what, you know?

Yeah, and also you can't really, even if you were to sort of say it, even if you were to sort of make these demands, like I feel like it's sort of difficult when you have your fucking secretary of war, like, basically declaring a crusade every time his press conference. And it's very much just like, yeah, we are, we are fighting a holy war against these like demonic peoples. I mean, smart money is that Hegg says gets Christie known sooner or later, right? Like when the sort of failure gets too much. Like, even then, like, even any kind of, like, post-war settlement for this, explain to me how everything that goes through Hormuz doesn't now have an Iran tax on it forever. Well, I mean, right, I was on Chinese TV a couple days ago.

What I said, well, the anchor, like, asked me, like, about that Ayatollah and me sharing thing. And I had to, like, conjure up an answer because I don't think even he has thought about it. Like, Trump himself, like, maybe something with the Board of Peace. it could be laundered through that, like what they came up with, like how they laundered Trump's statement that he was going to own Gaza, they eventually found some sort of internationally, uh,

a compliant way of doing that. Maybe they could do something where Trump gets to say, ostensibly that he controls the straight of Ormuz or the straight of Trump as he started calling it. Like, like, it's this thing of like, okay, you've got two forms of hubris right now.

One is Iran trying to control the state of Hormuz in perpetuity. what I assume is entirely control it, even though Oman has territorial waters there. That, I don't think, is going to be able to happen in the way that Iran wants it. I don't think any of the Gulf states are going to try to accept that. But Trump is so maximalist about this kind of stuff and also does not give a shit about what the Gulf states say or do or want from him, that, yeah, I think Iran's probably going to have the upper hand in this. Maybe not a two million dollar tax, like the kind that's being issued right now.

but I cannot, at least at this juncture, imagine a scenario in which America is going to get what it wants out of this. Not to just do homophobia for an hour and a half, but it is kind of crazy that Trump went. The new Ayatollah is gay. I want to meet him. Maybe if we had a project together. Inviting the new Supreme Leader to like come help design the ballroom. Oh, it's enemies. They're doing enemies to love. As I said, it's heated rivalry, baby.

Renovating the Trump Kennedy Center together. Yeah. Well, look, and Trump's going to call Mushtaba and just be like, you know, tell me how you're feeling if you can't express it in English. Like, and then Mujtaba will reply to him in like perfectly beautiful Persian poetry, which is a scene from heated rivalry, by the way. Hussein, are you pitching an A. A.03 story?

Yeah, well, yeah, I'm pitching an A. A.O3 story. And I'm sure that it's probably been done because it's actually probably not that original. So I want to go back to this, though, right? Which is something November raised, which is is Iran, if they're not going to be able to apply an Iran tax to the Straits of Hormuz forever, what clearly I think could be applied

is an uncertainty tax, everything going through the Straits of Hormuz because the stable deterrence. An uncertainty tax, otherwise known as ADHD. Yeah, well, that is now the stable deterrence that was established is no longer

there. Because like Iran's whole thing. They held the gun and a deterrence is a gun you can fire once. Just don't do anything or I'll do this. And for a long time as well, like the Iran was deterred and was only able to act through proxies and it was stable in as much as it shifted slowly. Yeah. And this is part of how we got here is blasting through the guardrails of destroying all of

those proxies. Yeah. Well, I mean, I mean, and I imagine also just being like the guy that was the most cautious person you could sort of think of. And the one who sort of like is partly like, you know, lots of people. blaming him for kind of the situation that Iran is in. But the fact that you killed him and you then replaced him with someone who seemingly is far less cautious about defending the country is probably.

That probably also is a bit of a boo-boo, right? Yeah. But the chaos is now a permanent, even if it's not an Iran tax where you pay $2 million in yuan, denominated in yuan, by the way, which is super important. Which is crazy for the global economy. That is like the Petro-Renmanbee didn't get invented. is at China's feet like, hey, do you want these? Do you want these? Do you want these?

I'm going to wait until the pile gets bigger. Trying to drown China and money. What kind of martial arts move is that? Yeah, I love Jiu-Jitsu. But like that uncertainty tax seems to benefit China, partly because it's paid in Renminbi. And like, this conflict didn't invent the Petro-Renminbi. That's been around since like 2015.

Yeah, the Saudis were kind of poking at it. You know what I was like. Slowly growing in importance in settling selling oil transactions in Renminbi. This seems to create a structural reason to do that a lot more. And also, I'd like to point out in terms of dying empire speed runs, that the U.S. is another kind of dying empire, which is, imagine you were a globe-bestriding imperial colossus, and you were militarily pretty omnipotent for a while.

Your currency was the thing that everything else happened in, right? But then you have a large, complicated state to maintain, and you have relatively high standards of living that you got from your imperial super profits, right? But the only thing that allows that is that everyone else transacts in your currency, which means borrowing in your currency to fund stuff is really cheap. Oh, there's some historical parallels here, aren't there? There's a little bit of Britain. There's a little bit of Britain creeping into Russified America.

Oh. I'm not saying, oh, it's all the Russian to be like that. No, it's just decaying empire stuff. Yeah, the Romans are doing a lot of shit. Yeah, absolutely. They're further. The Russians are just further along than the Americans. But that's also British.

that means that America has become a bit more British. The less the petro dollar is dominant in the world, the less the Americans just have the entire global economy propping up deficit spending. They're becoming British. I just want to add on that you're very correct in this because there was an editorial in the Wall Street Journal, I think several days ago where they talked about if America, I want to say if America did not open the street of Hormuz that it would be like the Suez crisis.

Yeah, genuinely. And that's pretty as a negative. But it's like, that sounds awesome for America that happens. Suez Crisis that it just cannot wrestle its way back from. It's crazy how Israel was in both of them. Yeah. Back to back Suez Crisis, sort of opposite of champs. They're zero and two.

I also want to talk about Iran's end game here because a lot of their losses seem to be unforced errors by their opponents. Right? They had a certain kind of force and they had a certain kind of deterrence. They shot their deterrence gun. Their forces were degraded, but then they got reconstituted. Yeah, I mean, we've kind of seen a long history of like Iranian fumbles, right? And like some of those, admittedly, you don't expect the guys to eat the chess pieces.

But like, others, not so much, you know? In this case, the guy eating the chess pieces seems finally to have choked on a chess piece. Eventually it's going to happen. Yeah. And so what I'm interested in, really, is like, we talked about what the American end game looks like for this, which is seemingly a humiliating defeat, the Israeli end game. which is kind of the same thing, but a lot more violently lashing out at its neighbors

and it's like subject population. What's the Iranian end game, I wonder? Because in a sense, you could say they kind of got everything they wanted, sort of by accident. The Gulf security architecture is utterly fragmented and like all of their neighbors are no longer able to offer stability as a service,

like Bahrain and the UAE and Qatar. You're not filming a fast and furious movie there anymore. Yeah, if you put Tom Cruise in the side of the Burjala Arab, the Shahad's going to come give him the Charlie Kirk. And, you know, but you can't do stability that was their whole post-oil offering was, what if we offer political repression as a service? That's gone. The Petra Dollar has now been challenged like it never has.

I'm not going to say it's dead, but it's been challenged like it never has before. It's nearby Arab neighbors themselves are completely reeling, understanding that the U.S. security umbrella was actually, like the umbrella, if you look at it, was a target, basically. And they're in control of the strait for the foreseeable future. And they still get to use that for deterrence because they can promise to let select ships through. And here's my favorite quote that sums up the whole thing before I'll hand back to you to talk about their end game.

Atlantic Council's Josh Lipsky said, of course it's possible Iran could turn the straight into a toll booth just from an operational and technical level if countries are willing to pay. But I have a hard time believing the United States would abide that. Okay, abide it or not. It seems to be that from an operational and technical level, it's possible. Excuse me, I don't abide that. Isn't there someone you forgot to ask? And so because it's now true and obviously true that what the U.S. abides and what the U.S. can affect,

are two different things. What happens in a Middle Eastern politics where Iran actually is a regional hegemon? And can it consolidate? Is there a state that can consolidate that power? This is a really good question. And I wish that I had like a more satisfying answer to it. Because we're talking about like strategy, the ability to strategize. I think the only faction that has properly strategize at every stage has been the Houthi movement in Yemen.

Like every single move they have done throughout this one. has been, I think, the correct one. And it's paid off for them. They are undeniably much stronger now than they were before this war. More coherent, much more influential, much more regionally powerful just on every single parameter, every single sector, despite losses within its military structure. I think the issue that Hezbollah ran into, if we can use that as an example, when it attempted to become a more conventional military formation, when it started extending its forces outside of its borders, the intervention in Syria, when it attempted to become an extraordinarily strong deterrent force in Lebanon. I think that worked against it when Israel eventually came knocking

in the way that it did. And now it's functioning, I think, much better this time around, because it is functioning much more like an insurgency, one that Israel is clearly having a lot less success against than it did in the early opening of the invasion of 2024. This is a thing about Iran and wanting more things for itself in order to create, recreate the deterrence that it lost in 2025 and 2024 to some extent. Could it theoretically impose a total regime in the Strait of Ormuz? Yes. It has a military capability and it's not terribly difficult to do that. But so much of this is this trajectory is reliant on its relationship with the Gulf States that, you know, just as the Gulf States are stuck with Iran, Iran is stuck with those neighbors. And it's,

this open question is what are the Gulf states going to possibly do about this? Because they keep inching toward like, you know, we're ready to go in. Like, this is the zero hour. We need to take out Iran's ballistic visibility. Like the UAE in particular, talking about getting rid of their ballistic missiles, talking about maybe putting their Navy into play, which is like 3,000 people and a couple of ships, but it's still something. 10,000 belts.

Yeah. Like, the UAE has no warrior spirit. can't just like hire people from the subcontinent to be your Navy. Because this is the thing. This is the thing. Like if we were talking about countries, I'm going to limit, I promise this is not coming out of a position of Iranian chauvinism. I know that it's easy to see that, but just bear with me here.

A lot of these Gulf states, to varying degrees, do not have the level of nationalism, nationalistic coherence that Iran has. I think that's reasonable to say. And these power brokers, like, the UAE especially, have found it, I think, quite hard to rally their citizenry in the way that Iran has. And I also don't think that any of these countries, like I think Matthew Petty, another for reason magazine put it this way, I'm paraphrasing, like, if you look at the Gulf States conduct over the years, like, why would you assume that they would not be willing to just

roll over and be humiliated if they needed to? Something that I thought was very, like, illustrative of this was the foreign minister of the UAE retweeted an op-ed in an Emirati newspaper about how this British woman, I think she's British, talked about how like she finally feels Emirati, like this is my country now that there's a war happening. Like the idea that the vast majority of your population were non-emirati, 90-something percent, would finally now think that this is your country once you've had a war basically thrown upon you. When they're all, are billboards now saying that this is your country, when you have to insist on that fact. I think that means countering Iran as a coalition, as a singular nation.

I think that becomes very difficult. And I don't think that it's easily solved unless you want to go whole hog into actually developing a national identity, which the UAE is not going to do because 90% of the population needs to be waste lives for that country to function. I don't think, like, this would be a question that could probably be better answered. a month from now. But for now, whatever hubristic objectives that Iran may have, the people that they're dealing with, like you said, they're choking on chess pieces here. Like, you're dealing with people who don't know what to do. And if you have a semblance of knowing what to do,

then you're higher on that totem pole. It doesn't mean that your strategic geniuses. We can talk, like, like, as Nova said, like, Iran has done a lot of strategic fumbles over the years. strategic patience as a concept, chief among them. But they still have something there. And the Gulf states just didn't want this to happen. And now they have to formulate like, I guess we're part of this international coalition and we have to stand strong. Like, I don't know, I don't know how what the long term strategic outlook of that is.

That I think it's more important to this equation. Yes, it's like ultimately right. Iran is fighting for survival. And everybody else, while Iran is fighting for survival around them, is trying to figure out what they want. figure out what they want, but also like maintain, you're talking about like stability as a service. Like their existential nature is not threatened, but like Iran can take a lot in terms of damage to its

economy. The UAE cannot do that. Qatar cannot do that. Bahrain cannot do that. Saudi Arabia cannot do that. It has a much lower pain tolerance than Iran does. And therefore, like, destroying the idea of Dubai that Fraser keeps getting thrown around, that is something that I don't know if it's achievable necessarily, but I don't think you can deny that the image of the UAE in these countries in the way that we knew them. I think that's been very damaged. And there will always be hooting maniacs coming over from your country to the UAE door to avoid taxes. I'm sure that's going to continue. But to the degree that it did before, I don't think so. And that's going to be something that Dubai, which doesn't rely on oil and is very tourism-based, I think they will have a lot of difficulty dealing with that.

In effect, it sounds like if we want to sort of pull it back to my question, it's that Iran doesn't need to consolidate its victories because in the chaos that it's now being created around them, like the Gulf states are almost consolidating their victories for them by just falling apart. I think that's what it's looking toward. I wouldn't say that's what's going to happen. Slumping onto the chessboard if we can keep the same metaphor going. Yeah, I think I think that's there.

Coughing up ponds. I mean, what Donald was talking about, you know, potentially retaliating and now they They've obviously backed off of that, talking more about diplomacy in the same way that Oman was. The UAE is really the only state publicly gunning for some sort of military confrontation with Iran. Saudi Arabia is doing that in a clandestine way, but the UAE has been really public about it with editorials, interviews to this effect from major officials.

But like, I do need to remind people what the UAE's military adventures have produced, because they did that whole thing in the Yemen Civil War, where they openly backed those Southern separatists against their own allies in Saudi Arabia and pissed them off so much with how much they were acting unilaterally without sense that as soon as Saudi Arabia bombed a singular Emirati weapon shipment, one of them. The UAE completely pulled out and the entire project collapsed with which they invested millions upon millions of dollars in years of their life. Like if they sense any sort of danger, they do not give a shit. The Emirati way is exclusively to fight against people who can't fight back. Exactly. Yeah, or to find the kind of like worst mercenaries in the world to sort of like do a genocide on your behalf,

whether that's in Syria or in Sudan or in Yemen or wherever. And that doesn't really exist in Iran? No, no, no. When you're, when the country you are fighting is very much not beset by civil war and is still capable of having air defenses and ballistic vessels and cruise missiles, that they can fire at you. That kind of eliminates the mercenary killing field scenario that the UAE would want. No, no, no.

I would need to see, look, maybe the UAE can pull something out of a hat here, you know, but I. Very, very expensive hat. Very, very, deeply expensive hat. When you're selling point is still, when you're talking about military capability, that you have a very high-tech Navy, but that you have like six ships, not the actual number, we're just like, Let's be straight here.

That can't. You're talking about escorting all of the tankers. You're going to help out when the US won't even send one in. We need to, let's give it some more time before we. Yeah, when a guy can sort of like step out of a cave in one of the most mountainous regions of the world 200 kilometers away and like hand launch basically or like rail launch a drone that is going to like knock an entire LNG carrier out. It doesn't work. No. I think one of the things that's happened is drones have created a paradigmatic shift in the balance of offense and defense.

Where suddenly like because the aircraft carrier was like the pinnacle of offense, right? Which is we can put an air base, we can park an air base right beside your country and then basically have a U.S. base in your country. Fuck you. But now the like low cost, easy to operate drones. It's Riley. Riley, that's not true. it's not aircraft carrier versus drone. It's aircraft carrier versus its own laundry system.

Thank you. What we're sleeping on for the next great conflict is the role that the washing machines are going to place. It's aircraft carrier versus spin cycle. God damn. Okay, but so what I think we've been grasping out for these segments, what I think is beginning to emerge is this answer the question, what does a post-war regional order look like for everybody involved?

I think for Iran, it looks like a probably more, more bellicose because it's now fired its big deterrent gun and so it can't establish deterrence through threat it has to do things i imagine yeah and it's it's learned the hard way for about you know 15 years at this point that like the strategic patience is like extremely futile and in fact any kind of patience is futile yeah and so they're probably they've learned to be more belicose but also iran's not a monolith like mostabas just like the current guy he's not the i've been i've seen it written that he's sort of the IRC's man. Also, if we want to talk about, like, not just regional order, but world order.

Yeah. If you're a European defense person or intelligence person, you're kind of thinking, Trump is going to get his dick kicked in on Iran and is going to need a sort of flight back to a fantasy of power. That's more danger for Greenland rather than less. Meanwhile, if you're in, like, you know, East Asia at all, you're just, like, envisioning a big Chinese flag over the top of Taipei 101 without even that much of. fight at this point.

Like what I have it written down here is like, what does this mean for the US, which is, well, these guys haven't won a war against anybody serious since 1945. And what this means for China is them saying, hey, those guys haven't won a war against anybody serious since 1945. I think about the La Neng one, the like Chinese intelligence ship that's just kind of sitting in the middle of the straight, not being bothered by anyone, just kind of watching all of this being like, damn, that's crazy. Learning a lot, one has to imagine.

It's the real life. version of what if our enemies just systematically dismantle their own power base out of a combination of spite and idiocy? If you end up in a shooting war with the United States, circumstances will constrain them such that they will end up

parking a bunch of shit that they can't afford to replace, just in the open and you can find it and you can hit it very precisely. And they don't really know what to do about that. That's what it means for like the sort of global balance of power as I think it's pretty, unless something

changes dramatically. It has swung pretty decisively against the U.S. And so in Iran, it's tough to say, because Iran's not a monolith. You don't know who's going to consolidate power as time goes on. Probably the RGC. Probably. What will the Guardian Council do? What will Pezesh Kian do? I mean, Pezschiqqqqqqqqa will probably do nothing. He'll say some things that'll get contradicted right away. Riley, dear, dear friend and co-host of No Gods, no mares, are you aware that Muhammad is a former mayor of Tehran? Shamis, do you want to come on No God's? through mayors. Okay.

All right. I'm going to, I've been on here. I think I've constructed enough goodwill so I can do a call out. Nova. Riley. I was told that I could come on no gods, no mayors when it was first being constructed. And then the offer disappeared. I have ADHD.

I have, I'm neurodivergent. I'm sorry. I was so ready to talk about Ali. There's Zach Annie, the current mayor of Tehran. And this was denied to be. But I can talk about Kalibov. I'll do it. Just because I have such.

affection for the show and the people on. Thank you. Thank you. I appreciate that. When we started no gods, no mayors, the stuff then kicked off. We started it in late 2024. Basically, I would say as much insult as we may have offered to our guests and future guests, we did also kind of maybe cause the world to enter

what I can only describe as a very municipal time. I don't think mayors have mattered as much for a long time. But now they're becoming important. And this is where I can. We're entering a very municipal time in our lives. But so Iran, it's very difficult to say. The wider Middle East, I mean, Israel, like we say, it's like responding by opening more fronts

and calling up what percentage of his population has reservists to continue fighting. But also, it's more, it's important to note that Iran hit Demona. Iran hit the deniable nuclear, civilian nuclear research station and gift shop, basically. Oh, that old thing. They hit Israel's clandestine nuclear research facility. And again, like, the 12-day war was meant to establish the opposite, which is that Israel can target Iran's nuclear infrastructure with impunity, but not vice versa.

And you can also ask, hey, why is Israel defending this civilian research station so, let's say, vigorously? But so what it means for Israel is the deterrence that they had appears to have been completely disestablished. And then, you know, what does it mean for the Gulf? As you were sort of getting more into, Seamus, like the fake military that they made largely as part of petro dollar recycling, like as ways to get those petro dollars back to countries that could then spend them again, right? Was to build these high-tech

militaries that were super integrated with the U.S. or the UK, to a lesser extent, that relied in all these advisors, and that also made defense ministers feel important that made sort of the monarchs feel powerful, right? But that they were all paper tigers because they're not, they're all they're about is fighting Iran. And they were fighting the enemy that you fight with expensive stuff, which at best would be one another, at best. And so, like, there's no Arab NATO. Well, they were going to, they were going to try to construct one years ago under more ideal conditions than it would fucking work. It's always Egypt's idea as well, these kinds of things. It's fucking far from anyone that could reasonably friend them as they

can, possibly can, yes. It's wild. It's always Egypt. And partly that's because all of those militaries that the Gulf has primarily integrate via the United States or Britain. Like they integrate via other military. It's like there's no Saudi-Katarri interoperability. It's not really what we're looking at. It's Saudi interoperability with the states or like Bahraini interoperability with the states and so on and so on. So I don't see them doing anything except having a drastic reduction in their in their imagined strategic importance. And to be frank, budgets, because they're no longer able to operate as though they are unrealistically powerful compared to what they can actually do, right?

No, I think the difficulty in saying what the economic outlook is, like what their governance are going to be like is the big stuff has not quite happened yet. There is huge stuff that has happened, but like if vital, if Chorg is hit and vital infrastructure in the Gulf starts to be hit, nuclear power plants, lots more steel plants, solar plants, the industrial base. Desalination plants. Desalination plants as well.

Which, I mean, there was one that was hit in Kuwait yesterday, which caused a huge stir inside the Omani foreign ministry. Like, when you are no longer able to fund the most basic parts of your industry, when you are going to take years to rebuild it, I don't just see, you know, a military de-emphasis, you know, a drawdown there. I'm just talking about the whole damn thing. Like Iran, I mean, when it's steel factories were bombed, something like 70% of Iran still making capacity, it was bombed by Israel a couple of days ago. That's really significant.

But Iran still has the ability to rebuild a lot of these things over a period of years and the entire national economy will not collapse. Whereas in the Gulf, so many of these industries have not, maybe not singular point of failures, but close to singular point of failures. And can you imagine what the purpose would be of these Gulf states continue existing if they did not have these capabilities? If the data centers were being bombed, if the water that goes into these cities are being bombed, if their petrochemical industry was being severely affected. Like, these investors would try to go elsewhere, at least for the moment. They don't have the ability to quickly rebuild and rebound, especially if the people they have to rely on the United States absolutely hates them. Like, not in the sense, of course, they'll profess allyship, but they do not want to get involved in trying to actually protect them from military assaults for Iran. They showed that.

They absolutely do not give a shit. They would only be interested in something that's going to make America in a gargantuan amount of money. And so whatever terms they would set for that kind of rebuilding, they would be extraordinarily favorable to the Americans and much less favorable to the Gulf. I don't see good scenarios. Like, regardless of if I can't think of a specific scenario for the Gulf, I see very few good ones. Like, undeniably, this is going to go very badly for them. Like, the entire wider world of American influence is learning that they are and always

have been disposable vassals. Except for one. Except for one. And they're also thinking about, like, I think there was an author on the table. I forget the source of this where Israel was talking about maybe bringing the American bases that are going to inevitably leave the Gulf into Israel. Israel and just shove everything into there and make the gold stays even less relevant to America's security strategy. Sure, let's just put more big targets. Sure. Why not? In like a country again that's

like five miles wide. Yeah, great. Cool. Smart. I think this is, this is as good of a look ahead as we can really get because we are trying to predict the path of a storm from inside a thunder cloud. But as ever, Seamus, thank you very much for coming and helping us do that. Of course, always a pleasure. And, of course, Shamis, if people like your voice, where can they hear more of that? They can go to turbulencepod.substack.com and I write at shamis hyphen mattercastlea. Turbulence? Come on. Name three sources. When I, when we first started that, I did tell Dylan like straight on like, I think this is a terrible day. I think people are just going to think it's about air travel. I am very thankful to have been wrong on that.

On all fronts. Yeah, catch Seamus on turbulence. Catch him writing as well. We all. always link to his substack in the episode description. And we will see you, the listener, in a few short days on the bonus. So thanks everybody. And we'll see you soon. Bye.