Emergency Podcast: Iran, Israel, & Imminent Destruction | The Tim Dillon Show #486

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Tim Dillon Show. We have two great reporters here that I'm really excited to have on. We have Ryan Grimm, who's returning from DropSite News, and Jeremy Scahill, who's the author of Dirty Wars, also a great documentary. Jeremy, first to you, you've looked at a lot of different conflicts that the United States has been involved in.

What makes this unique as a challenge, forget the morality of being there. We're going to get to that in a moment, but do you think we're winning this war? And if not, why not? And why didn't George W. Bush do this? I mean, why has no other president do this? I mean, why has no other president done this?

I mean, this is a seemingly a unique set of challenges. I think generals told Trump that before we went in, yet he went in anyway. In your estimation, why is this so incredibly difficult?

Yeah, I mean, first of all, Tim, like you mentioned the Bush era, and I think one of the factors here that is kind of extraordinary is that Dick Cheney and the Bush team, they also were sort of lawless gangsters when it came to like respect for the Constitution and basic civil liberties and congressional procedures regarding war. But they look like, you know, sort of constitutional law scholars compared to what the Trump administration is doing on issues of war powers, et cetera.

One factor here that I think really has to be emphasized is that the leadership of the Democratic Party, they completely sat on their hands in the whole buildup to this. Trump was telegraphing that it was going to happen. They didn't have any kind of a public debate on it. The Gang of Eight gets briefed by Marco Rubio. All of these guys know that this thing is imminent and they delay a vote on the War

Powers Act. Now, it wouldn't have passed anyway. The Democrats, enough of them are in full support of this that it wouldn't have actually made a huge difference to him. The point of it is that that's where an actual debate happens, where members of Congress have to go on the record. The Democrats cynically exploited this, because a lot of them actually want regime change in Iran and support the agenda, but they also hope that Trump screws it up and it becomes bad for him electorally. On a tactical level, the US is

approaching, this answers your question, the US administration is approaching this like it's going to be Venezuela, that they're going to be able to just lop off the leadership in Iran, cut a deal with the number, whatever they're on now, number 10 ranking guy, and then Trump's going to own the oil and go in there. Or they're talking about it like Libya, where you take out Muammar Gaddafi, then you have ground forces that are working with you.

They've completely misread this. Iran has been building horizontal institutions since 1979. It is not just a dictatorship of one and you kill the supreme leader and all of a sudden the state collapses. This is a multi-decade project with cross sections of society running security, the economy.

There's also a religious dedication on the part of some of their largest security forces that is not wed to one individual. And so I think what we're seeing is that Trump's people are talking about this like a sporting event. Certainly, the US has overwhelming firepower. Pete Hegseth, who's sort of drinking buddy as defense secretary, is really braggadocious and arrogant

in the way he's talking about it. The Iranians are, we were told that they were basically wiped out. Trump's saying 60%, 64%. Last night, after Pete Hegseth held a press conference saying the Iranian attacks are abating, the Iranians launched some of their most ferocious attacks at US targets throughout the Middle East.

They did heavy bombing of Israel. What's clear is that the Iranians actually have succeeded in targeting a number of high end US radar systems that are their early detection. You're starting to see more Iranian hits on bases. I think that the US death toll quite probably could rise, but the idea that you're just going to overthrow this government is a massive miscalculation.

If they want to do that, they're going to have to send in 100,000 plus American troops, and then it's going to be an utter bloodbath. What does that mean? It means at the end of the day, the only winner here is the agenda of Israel. I don't think Netanyahu so much cares who comes into power in Iran as much as he wants that state shattered. He wants to convert it into a failed state. He wants the US to bomb their conventional military. He wants to

ensure that there is no nation-state with a real military capable of serving as a deterrent against Israel's agenda.

Ryan, what do you think, Donald Trump is there, a lot of what Jeremy said is sort of, has had to be known to generals, the military is telling Donald Trump this, they're telling him it's going to be difficult, I mean that was even leaking out, they were saying things like this is not a cakewalk. Why does he pull the trigger and decide to go in? I mean, from your reporting, why do they take out the spiritual leader

of a Muslim country during Ramadan and expect that then the entire regime is gonna unravel and then they're going to win popular support? What pushes him into this in the 11th hour?

I think Trump has been told so many times that you can't do a certain thing. And then he has done that thing and then it has gone fantastically for him. And I think the latest one to Jeremy's point was Venezuela. Everything you can't just go into the country

and grab the president and his wife and take them back out and not lose a single American service member and then just say that you run the country. You can't do that. It's not how things are done. Yet he did that.

And from his perspective, it worked out phenomenally for him. And he has said, like, I'm on a roll. Like, let's hit Cuba. Like I'm feeling good. Like it's 3 a.m. in Vegas and like, he's feeling great. And he's also like been under enormous amounts of pressure from Israel.

And then you have the Secretary of State saying, well, we were definitely gonna do it at some point, no question about it. But the reason we did it now is because we heard that Israel was gonna do it. We knew we would be attacked in response if Israel did that.

So we just decided we're gonna go along with Israel and start this war now. Not considering the other option of saying, hey, those are our weapons you're using. How about you don't do that?

Yeah, it seems to me that this whole thing seems backwards, you know, in the sense that we're arming Israel and we're providing them the money to do this. So how did we get to a point, and maybe Jeremy could jump in, how did we get to the point where the President of Israel is sitting in the Oval Office, and this is according to the Secretary of State, it's not a conspiracy theory, telling the President of the United States we're going to do this with your money and weapons, whether you like it

or not. And suggesting that this is the Secretary of State didn't say this, but there has been reporting and the credibility of it, you know, I think it's relatively credible that they had discussed potentially using unconventional or nuclear weapons at a certain point or a certain stage in the conflict. How do we get to this point where the president of Israel is telling the president of the United States,

we're doing this with your money anyway, and you better get on board to minimize the damage? Because if you don't get on board, perhaps we'll have to use nuclear weapons.

You know, sources we also talked to that had some degree of access to the decision making process leading up to this war were saying that, you know, since the Venezuela Operation, Tim, Trump started to like walk around opining, including in like intelligence briefings, that he wants to

go down in history as the president that forever changed Iran, that sort of avenged the 1979 revolution and the taking of the embassy. And I think that he really got fluffed up by a lot of people that you're gonna like experience greatness here

and that we're gonna run the deck. Trump won when he was first in the White House in after that 2016 election. Remember how the disdain he had for John Bolton and the neocons and the deliberations that went into that one strike that Trump authorized at the Baghdad airport where they killed General Qasem Soleimani, the head of the IRGC, the most elite force in Iran.

But Trump came out of Bolton's era as his national security advisor, denouncing him and saying if it was up to John Bolton, era as his national security advisor, denouncing him and saying, if it was up to John Bolton, we'd be in World War III. Well, you fast forward to Trump 2.0, and what I would call the neocon Netanyahu wing of the MAGA movement, which they're the most dangerous figures in the American political scene that they took over this entire portfolio.

Part of it is that Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, is up to his neck in Gulf money. He's very invested in Israel on an ideological and religious level. You have Miriam Adelson, who Trump basically has said is calling shots and he called her the most influential and powerful Israeli in the world when he went to announce that he was ending the Gaza War when he spoke at the Knesset, and you have these people, they completely captured Trump on this level.

I don't think Trump is an ideological guy. I think that he got fluffed up. He has a lot of business going on. He's simultaneously the president and he's looking out for his business, his family business, his cronies business. And I think these guys just convinced him, you're going to do something great that it's

like building the Coliseum on a foreign policy level. And the reality is, they are engaged in action right now that is going to make the world less safe for a long time to come. It's totally, no matter what your politics are, this is totally contrary to American interest, to the basic safety of Americans in the world, to our perception as a nation state. He twice used the false veneer of negotiating with another country

to then launch military strikes. They did it in June of last year. They said, oh, we have another negotiation coming up. Days later, they do 12 days of massive bombing of Iran. They do the same thing this time. It's a huge scandal, Tim, because what the Iranians put on the table went far beyond what Obama was able to get in 2015 from them. It was a massive, massive series of concessions from the Iranians on that nuclear issue. The Iranians were talking about also having negotiations on conventional weapons,

including talking about range of ballistic missiles. That's what I was told by Iranian officials, that they actually were willing to discuss that if the nuclear arrangement was reached. So Trump could have called it a huge win. He could have said, I did what Obama couldn't do. I did what Biden couldn't do. And he could have made an actual deal that every expert on nuclear weapons and Iran would have said that is an extraordinary Achievement to get to the Iranians to that point. It's just proof that none of this was actually about actual security

It wasn't about nuclear weapons and in terms of the generals I'm sure that that Trump was sitting in briefings where these guys were laying out for him How strong some of Iran's missile capabilities are and the potential damage to American troops. Now there's six confirmed American military deaths thus far.

We've got some indications that the number of injuries. Do you think the number of casualties is being accurately reported? And I'll just send that to both of you as a question.

Yeah.

It's a tough question. Having spent a lot of time around military guys Can I send that to both of you as a question? Yeah.

You know, it's a tough question. Having spent a lot of time around military guys and military communities, it's not that difficult to cover up some deaths of special operations forces. And you can later say, well, there was a training exercise. And the families of special operations forces go through briefings where they understand

that if their loved one gets killed on a covert operation, that there's going to be a degree of public concealment of the conditions under which they died. It's much harder to do when you're talking about rank and file soldiers because military families talk and they know when someone's family member is missing or is dead. So I tend to think that there isn't a large scale coverup of deaths. There may be some coverups,

there may be some covert actions that took place and more people died. What I think is almost certainly being covered up because we have witnesses telling us this, is I think a lot more American troops have been injured, some of them seriously,

than the Pentagon has been willing to acknowledge at this point. I think the Iranians have been far more successful at hitting American targets than anyone is willing to talk about. I think also they've been far more successful at hitting infrastructure inside of Israel. The Israelis have imposed sweeping censorship on what targets have been hit. We have the Qatari oil minister coming out today and basically saying,

if this thing goes on for weeks, it's gonna crash the entire global economy, that prices are gonna skyrocket, that oil and gas prices are gonna skyrocket. It's already happening. So what Trump is doing right now is lighting a massive fire. And I think if it does go on, we're gonna see the US death toll tick up

and we're gonna start to see actual American interests set on fire by this policy.

Ryan, when you have all these Gulf States- Tim, I think that- Go on, sorry. No, go ahead. I was gonna say of all these Gulf States, we have our embassies there.

Iran has targeted these embassies incredibly successfully. We have diplomats and US citizens stranded in that part of the world and cannot get out. Dubai, which is either the busiest or one of the busiest international airports, you know, has been closed.

What does this do to our relationship to those Gulf states? Do they rebuild those embassies? We haven't seemingly protected our interests in those countries. And those countries have been made vulnerable by this, and they're gonna lose a lot of money with tourism.

Why wouldn't those countries just say, we wanna deal with China or someone else? We don't wanna deal with the United States when they're gonna unilaterally launch a war with Israel that destabilizes the entire region?

Yeah, they are expressing a lot of outrage about this. One of the most powerful and influential businessmen in the UAE, who was a former business partner of Trump himself, put out this long statement saying, you know, Mr. President, your excellency, who gave you the right to do this? Who authorized you to set this region on fire?

They're also frustrated by the fact that Israel gets most of the treatment when it comes to missile defense, despite the fact that, you know, we mostly pay for those, whereas the Gulf countries that pay the United States buy the weapons are getting the short end of the stick.

The way you're starting to see this play out, though, is going to be probably very detrimental for Trump and a lot of his friends, because what he doesn't seem to have thought through is that the US right now is basically, the economy is propped up by an AI bubble slash Ponzi scheme, which is mostly supported by financing from the Gulf. You're already seeing, and I say this with regret because I know that Barry Weiss is a friend of the show

and a previous guest host here.

The closest. Her attempt to take over CNN and Warner Brothers and the rest of these is backed by billions of dollars from the Gulf they are now saying that they might not have the money or frankly the interest in going forward with that a

Takeover so this

Deal it was the Ellison family that owns tick-tock CNN, that is Paramount, CBS, are now buying Warner Brothers, which the Trump administration kind of got involved in that deal because Netflix was going to buy them. Now the Ellison family and they're, you know Larry Ellison is no secret is I think the largest donor to the IDF. He's incredibly ideologically driven, not just profit driven.

Who the hell wants to own CBS News? Really? You know, it's not exactly, that's not the future of news, CBS News, but it's ideologically driven. And you're saying the fine, some of the financing for this deal to buy Warner Brothers, which would give, you know, also him control of CNN is from the Gulf like

sovereign wealth funds and investment funds in the Gulf.

A decisive portion.

Yeah. And they're not interested anymore.

A decisive portion of the financing.

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the connection between a country like Qatar in America or the Gulf States. Does Israel see that as a positive? I know that a lot of people that promote ultra Zionist ideas in this country are constantly accusing Qatar of running the country.

The Free Press wrote an article about all the money that Qatar has put into things like higher education. I'm sure Qatar puts money into things, but the idea that Qatar is now incredibly skeptical of things the United States says and may not be able to trust us, is that something that Israel's excited about?

Is that a good thing? And is that part of the calculation here?

Yeah, I mean, one of- Go ahead, Jeremy. Just Ryan, to mention one concrete thing, because we seldom hear kind of the Iranian government perspective these days. It's really just the Trump show. Because there's been this multi-decade campaign about Iran, it's very hard to actually on just a basic factual level say, well, what is their actual position?

What Iran has been saying, Tim, about some of the retaliatory strikes that it's done over the past week is that they didn't do them. They're saying, for instance, that they have not attacked Saudi Aramco's oil refinery. They're saying that they did not strike the British military base in Cyprus. In fact, the British government is saying they don't believe that the drone that hit

that base and destroyed a base where American spy planes come from, that it came from Iran. They're saying it may have come from the direction of Lebanon, which is an interesting thing. The Iranians are saying that some of the hotels and other buildings they hit in Bahrain or in the United Arab Emirates were housing Israeli spies or American personnel. But why am I bringing this up? I'm bringing it up because what the Iranians are saying, and take it at face value, it

should be fact checked, we should look into it. What they're saying is that they believe Israel has engaged in some false flag attacks in some of these Arab countries or potentially in Azerbaijan in an attempt to try to draw those nations into the war as actual combatants in it. Netanyahu is gleefully talking about this. Trump's people are saying, oh, and even the Arabs are now going to start fighting against the Iranians. Certainly, Netanyahu loves to be the merchant of chaos when it comes to disrupting

US relationships with other countries. Certainly, he wants to see Qatar weakened. He wants to see the economies, the economic power of the United Arab Emirates and Qatar, the closeness of these countries to US institutions and particularly to Trump thrown into turmoil. He knows that the populations in those countries don't like what's going on right now. Yes, the attacks, especially when they hit hotels or they hit infrastructure, it's enraging

the populations of the Arab Gulf. But on a much broader level, this is a war in service of Israel. And the populations of those countries, the anger is simmering. They understand what's happening. It's destroying their entire project was based on this idea, Tim, that the United States puts military bases in all these

Emirates, in all these kingdoms, and they have an American security guarantee. I don't think that in their wildest dreams, they thought that the United States was going to allow Iran to pummel them the way that they have while pouring billions of dollars into the quote-unquote defense of Israel. So on one strategic level, and this cuts to your question Tim, I do

think that Netanyahu views opportunity in this. He wants to be the merchant of chaos to try to utterly destroy that relationship between the US and these other countries because he views it as a threat. Trump is unpredictable. Trump is merging family business with the business of government.

This causes some consternation for Netanyahu in his broader sort of project in Israel.

Ryan, do you think that Iran hit the Saudi Aramco facility?

They say they didn't, and they say it, and their argument is this, and Jeremy interviewed the Deputy Foreign Minister on Wednesday and asked him directly about this. And paraphrasing him, he said, that would be insane because our entire economy is also based on the oil industry.

Like you think we want to start a tit for tat where people are bombing oil fields? I frankly find that a fairly persuasive argument at this stage. I could imagine if this war continues to descend into chaos and it continues to climb up the escalatory ladder

that Iran may eventually strike an oil field, and we may strike all of their oil fields. Do you think Lebanon struck the Saudi Aramco facility? I don't think Lebanon did it. I mean, I think their claim that Israel hit this oil facility

needs to be taken seriously.

So it's very possible.

And one thing just for the record.

Yeah, go on, Jeremy.

Just to put a factual thing on the record, what I was told by the Iranians is not that they are against hitting oil facilities. What they're saying is, we will only do that if the United States and Israel start to attack our oil infrastructure. We're going to strike back at their oil infrastructure because we don't view it as simply the sovereign property of these Arab countries. We view it as facilitating and linked to the American project.

But they're saying as of now that they never intentionally did it.

I'm just trying to get this straight. Our ally, our closest ally who was told us that they were launching a war, a regime change war in Iran with our weapons and our money, also very potentially has attacked the oil Saudi Aramco processing facility in another one of our allies, Saudi Arabia, and also kind of one of their allies. Israel and Saudi Arabia have like sort of an understanding, right?

So this is what the Iranians are suggesting. And I'm not saying I fully believe it. You know, it could be that they accidentally hit some of these things. It could be that they did do it and they're trying to cover it up. Although Iran, you know, I think that wouldn't really be to their advantage. It's possible that they did it, but the Saudis claim that it was debris from a drone that they shot down.

But let's say for, we should just take this seriously and investigate it because if it is the case and evidence emerges, then you're looking at Israel doing false flags.

Yeah. The Saudis are saying it's debris from a drone they shot down.

That was the initial statement by the Saudi. First it was Iran bombed Saudi Aramco. Then a Saudi defense official came out and said this was actually debris that fell from a drone that we had intercepted. And the Saudis and the Iranians have had an interesting diplomatic back and forth on this. The Saudis are not as aggressive right now in going after the Iranians as, for instance,

the Azerbaijani government is. And really sort of saying that Iran did this. Iranians are denying that as well. So all of which is just to say we should never just take at face value the proclamations of the Iranian government. But if you think about it on a common sense level, it doesn't benefit Iran to further

enrage the populations of these countries because they already are very nervous about what's happening. So who benefits from this, Tim? Who benefits is Israel from the idea that Iran is this kind of madman, this mad dog loose and they're just biting everyone. They're biting all their neighbors.

They're biting the people who they've been in this rapprochement with for two years. It doesn't make sense. So that's why you have to pursue it and say, is there any legitimacy to what the Iranians are alleging?

So now a friend of mine who is kind of deeply connected in that part of the world, Sheikh Carlson has reported on his show, Sheikh Tucker has reported on his show that in the UAE, two Mossad agents were arrested for potentially trying to start false flag attacks. I don't know if you guys saw that, but it was, it did go pretty big in terms of news. I don't know if you've looked into, but it was, it did go pretty big in terms of news. I don't know if you've looked into that.

He said it was in Qatar and Saudi Arabia.

Right. So is there anything that you guys can add to that? Is that verifiable in any way? I mean, he is, here's what I will say about Tucker. He's deeply connected in those parts of the world. I think that, you know, that's quite obvious. And he's, goes there and talks to a lot of people there.

And I don't think he would come out and make that up.

So what I can add to that is they both, Qatar and KSA of Saudi Arabia have denied that this has happened. Okay. We had a drop site had a source with Saudi Arabia that denied to us that it happened. Qatari sources have been a little cagier when it comes to confirming or denying that off the record. On the record, they're denying it. Also, it's the kind of thing that you wouldn't, you wouldn't necessarily like talk about if it did happen.

But it could also have been made up by somebody

who told it to Tucker. Sure. Like they're trying to sow, like it may have been a very credible source that told it to Tucker, but that credible source was just trying to sow

misinformation, disinformation, chaos. Moments like this, 90% of what you hear turns out to be proven incorrect a year later. So we're in the heat of that moment where there's gonna be a lot flying around. So I don't know, that's about what I can add to that.

What are the, now that Jeremy had said- It's another thing that needs to continue to be investigated.

Saudi Arabia is not, you know, if, if for example, if Saudi Arabia genuinely believed that Saudi Aramco was targeted by Iran, I would imagine there'd be a massive retaliation from Saudi Arabia. Have you seen that? I think that's an important. You haven't seen that, right?

No, I think that's an, yeah. Yeah, and I think that's an important insight that does go to what Saudi Arabia believes. So I think you're right. If Saudi Arabia genuinely believed that Iran had hit it, they would be reacting in a different way.

Well, 100%.

I mean, also on the Tucker Carlson issue, Tim, like, you know, I know that I was in Doha for the Doha Forum when Tucker Carlson, you know, appeared there and it was like, you know, it was like Michael Jackson appearing at the height of his fame somewhere, you know,

like he is a massive figure there. He's purchased property there, you know, like he is a massive figure there. He's purchased property there. You know, and Tucker Carlson, he is globally famous right now and deeply connected. He meets with the epicenters of power in the Gulf right now.

There's no question about that. So I don't believe Tucker Carlson just made this up. It's possible what Ryan said, somebody mentioned something to him. Maybe it was sort of like floating something. But let's remember that Israel has a decades long history of engaging in all sorts of covert operations, in false flag operations, in assassinations,

in bombings that they then try to blame on other groups. There's a long history of Israel doing false flag bombings in Lebanon and elsewhere. So again, it's in the category of, we need to pursue it, we need to look into it. But the idea that there's Mossad agents running around these countries is like not at all a shocker or a surprise. It would be surprising if they weren't doing these things.

The question is, were there agents arrested and it's being covered up, or was this floated to Tucker because they wanted to achieve some purpose that we don't quite understand right now? I don't know, but Israel has a long history of doing this stuff.

Ryan, yeah, Ryan. And also, if they did arrest agents, they would not, like, imagine what it would take for them to say that publicly. Like, for allies of the United States, Saudi Arabia and Qatar to say publicly, yes, this is true, we arrested these Mossad agents.

Like that would be a significant diplomatic kind of breach. Like, so the diplomatic thing to do is to deny it. So the denials are worth reporting, but it doesn't necessarily tell you a whole lot.

When you look at the time-

Tim, can I tell you one brief- Yes, please. Oh, go ahead. tell you a whole lot. When you look at the time- Tim, can I tell you one brief-

Oh, go ahead.

Yes, no, go, go, tell me.

No, I just wanted to tell you one story about Israel. You know, in the 1990s, the head of Hamas was a guy named Khaled Mashal. And he was based in Jordan at the time. And he comes out, he's driving his kids to work and then to school, and he gets out of the

car with his bodyguards. These two guys posing as tourists come up and they spray something in his ear. It was a poison and it sends Khalid Mishal into a coma. Then there was a pursuit and his bodyguards and Jordanian police end up tackling and getting the guys. It turns out that they were Mossad agents. The King of Jordan then, and this is a public story, people can read about this, there's

been documentaries made about it. The King of Jordan then says, we're going to cancel our treaty with Israel and we're going to execute these agents. If Netanyahu, he was prime minister at the time in the 90s. If Netanyahu doesn't give us the antidote to resurrect Khaled Moshal, the head of Mossad gets on a plane from Israel, flies to Jordan to deliver the antidote to save Khaled Moshal's life.

Khaled Moshal is still alive to this day. I just interviewed him a couple of months ago. The nature of what Israel is able to do, that's one of the most sort of famous known episodes. Israel has deep penetration throughout the Arab world and there are many cases where they conduct operations and they get caught where the world never

actually hears about it. But not here in America. No penetration here and that's what I'm proud of. You know, these other countries fell for it, but us, we didn't. And how easy would it have been for us to fall for it? So many men in our country are suffering with erectile dysfunction, and here's the way to fix that, HIMS. Through HIMS, you can access personalized treatment for ED if prescribed. HIMS offers ED treatment options, raising from personalized products to trusted generics

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Prescription required. See website for details, restrictions, and important safety information. Actual price will depend on product and subscription plan. you what role in your estimation and maybe maybe it's no role or maybe it's some role or maybe it's I don't know what percentage of a role it is is controlling politicians through things like blackmail or coercion of some

degree obviously Apex spends a lot of money. But then we have these files come out that show that Jeffrey Epstein is in contact with a lot of very highly placed people in governments all over the world. But the ex-prime minister of Israel's living at his house.

It comes out that an Israeli, that I believe the Israeli government this was reported put a security system in Jeffrey Epstein's New York townhouse. This is true. This is not a conspiracy. That townhouse is being frequented by some of the wealthiest most powerful and most influential people in our society. As well the man has an island and a ranch

in the middle of nowhere in New Mexico. This man is a pedophile, is a human trafficker. He's clearly, when you look at these documents, arranging these parties and events where very powerful people are going. From your reporting, in a very sober-minded

way, does that type of control system, is that something you think Israel has employed or is employing in any way to sort of get certain results from certain politicians? I mean, the Israelis have a history of doing that sort of thing, for sure. The link to Epstein in this case, to me, may be the way that it influenced Trump to try to change the subject.

Right. You know, he tried the... I think the Venezuelan operation, it wasn't an attempt to kind of turn the page on that and get it off, but it, you know, that lasted like 12 hours and the public was back to,

okay, that's interesting. Let's look through some more of these Epstein files. So I do wonder, absent the Epstein scandal itself, whether Trump has the kind of motivation to carry through with this. It has its own logic and motivation to it.

Netanyahu said the other day that this is something he's been yearning for for 40 years. And they have been working towards pressuring the United States into it since then. And so like that alone, has an enormous kind of gravitational pull to it.

And I think Trump's gonna be sorely disappointed because I think when the war ends, if the war ends with us still alive on this planet, we're going right back to those files, guy. Like we haven't forgotten about this.

Jeremy, can you speak to that? And then Jeremy, also adding to that, from your understanding of someone like Jeffrey Epstein, now I'm not accusing Jared Kushner of being a human trafficker, obviously, but when you look at what Jeffrey Epstein was doing and you look at what Jared Kushner was doing, sort of being a, you know, whatever you want to call it,

right? Like a rainmaker, putting all these people at the table, trying to arrange scenarios to get certain results, working sort of with government, but also outside of government. Would it be completely crazy to say that Jared Kushner is working in an Epstein like fashion to, to maintain certain relationships and to build other relationships and to increase the likelihood that certain outcomes happen on a global chessboard?

Do you see Kushter as a figure like that or am I overstating it?

You know, I think one of the, you know, one of the biggest scandals is what's hidden in plain sight. I think that, you know, a story like the Epstein files and Jeffrey Epstein's relationships with all of these ultra powerful people, and Ryan has done more reporting than anyone on the Israel connection on this, it captures the imagination. But part of why it's so damning is that it's indicative of something that isn't even a

secret conspiracy, that what's hidden in plain sight is that the reason that we're at war against Iran right now is because of the way that the US political system is arranged. It's because of the sameness of policy that exists among the elites of the Democratic Party and the most vicious elements of the Republican Party. This is an enormous indicator of the influence that Israel has over an issue as sensitive of the decision

of a state to go to war, where you have, as you mentioned earlier, the Secretary of State mistakenly saying the quiet part out loud that we did in fact go to war for Israel, and then he has to walk it back later. And then Trump has to concoct this ridiculous statement about how the US has been in a state of needing to preempt Iran for 47 years.

But what's hidden in plain sight is in a way more damning than the Epstein files. It's that we have a system that produces the kinds of characters that are in power right now. That in the open, you have Merriam-Adelson being able to purchase American foreign policy and get it done. That you can have a Jared Kushner, and I think you're nailing it there.

He is the fixer extraordinaire right now for the US government as a whole, because Trump is the president. And the nexus of corporate power and government, the relationships with the Gulf countries, the relationships with Israel, the political interference around the world, and then the way that they have sort of conducted a coup d'etat in plain sight against the American Constitution. It's like beyond Dick Cheney's

wildest dreams. Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld spent their entire lives playing by the wrong set of rules. They wanted to do this, but they made the huge mistake of actually believing they needed to follow the rules. Trump has shattered that illusion. And you don't have to read an Epstein file to see it.

It's hidden. It's hidden nowhere anymore. It's just out in the open. And what do we have as an opposition? Hakeem Jeffries? Chuck Schumer?

What are they doing? Trump laughs at them. Trump's running the deck on these people.

Is Chuck Schumer or Hakeem Jeffries principally opposed to regime change in Iran? It doesn't feel like that.

No, no, no, no, no, no. Bingo. Right. No. Chuck Schumer, his whole life has wanted to see, his whole political career has wanted to see this happen.

I mean, Ryan and I did a report recently. I mean, Ryan should speak to this, but we did a report that was showing that even last June, Schumer and other Democrats saw opportunity in the possibility that Trump would try to go all in in a regime change war. And I mean, Ryan can pick it up because it's kind of an amazing story.

Schumer did the whole Taco Trump thing, trying to taunt Trump into the war. And so a bunch of anti-war groups sent Schumer a letter saying, hey man, like we get it, like it's fun to score points against Trump, but let's not kind of goad him into World War III.

Let's relax on that one.

This is one of the most powerful, just to restate for people, this is one of the most powerful Democratic senators from New York, Chuck Schumer, kind of taunting Trump like you always chicken out, you're not gonna follow through on regime change in Iran.

Yeah, and so that letter that these groups sent to Schumer leads to a phone call between a top foreign policy aide for Schumer and one of the leaders of one of these anti-war groups. And she says to him, look, what you have to understand is that he's under a lot of pressure from the caucus too,

because there are a ton of Democrats in the Senate who really want to see a regime change war. They hate Iran. They want the military to take out Iran, but they also know that the American people are done with these wars.

And so it would be extremely damaging, but it will also then therefore be extremely damaging to Trump. So their two worst enemies, the Ayatollah and Trump, both take a hit. So they're like, so we're actually...

And she said, well, Schumer, he doesn't believe that, but he's under a lot of pressure from Democrats, unnamed Democrats who believe that. But from our reporting, like that basically captures a lot of the democratic lawmakers position on this. Right.

That they want this war and they want Trump to be the one

that wages it and takes the hit for it.

And loses politically for it. I have heard that Stephen Miller was a huge proponent of this war. I don't know if you've heard that, that Stephen Miller behind the scenes.

Who what?

Stephen Miller.

Oh, interesting.

Behind the scenes was a big proponent of this war. It's been reported that J.D. Vance, who was kind of marketed as an isolationist, who came on my show and said, you know, we've made a lot of mistakes by, you know, going into these countries like Iraq and Afghanistan and having regime change wars. It was reported that he said, if you're going to do this, go big and go fast, I believe was the quote, or hit hard and go fast. Does any of your reporting suggest any internal conflicts in the White House? Obviously somebody

like Tulsi Gabbard, which I don't think anyone listens to, again said she's, you know, was more of an isolationist. J.D. marketed and he marketed himself as someone who, and I, and I do believe JD Vance, a lot of what he said, um, has been somewhat consistent about, and he said it on my show, he came on my show and he said, we shouldn't be doing this and And yet they're doing it.

So, and I mean, listen, I know there's a lot of people out there that'll say that these people are politicians and especially JD Vance doesn't believe in anything and that's very possible. But what is your reporting about the dynamics in the White House?

Yeah.

You know, I, the other day I was talking to Daniel Davis, who's a, who's a career military, and he was supposed to be one of Tulsi Gabbard's deputies in this administration. And then Republicans and the Israel lobby went ballistic because he had been a critic of the Gaza War and had said critical things about Israel. And there's a career decorated military officer, and he was going to be put in the position

of presenting the presidential daily brief to Donald Trump. This just happened right at the beginning of this Trump administration. Then they withdrew his nomination. Daniel Davis would have been a real voice of objectivity and independent thought, but also a longtime military thinker. He was saying that he still maintains contact with some people.

This was just recently I spoke to him, that he maintains contact with some people. He said there's only a handful of sane people left in the inner circle when it comes to anything having to do with national security or specifically with this Iran, and that there's a vibe that anybody who speaks up, it's not welcome to sort of be giving contrary views. It's that you're going to be viewed as disloyal.

It's like you're in a kind of authoritarian dictatorship, and you're like afraid that Honecker from the Democratic German Republic is going to like oust you if you say the wrong thing. That's totally sort of counter to the idea that when it comes to sensitive issues like waging war, especially this kind of war based on nonsense, that you don't want critical voices. Tulsi Gabbard is the embodiment of what happened to the isolationist wing of the MAGA movement

when it came to power and Trump in this second administration. These guys are completely sidelined. As you said, it's like a joke. The other day, you had another guy who falls into that isolationist category, Eldridge Colby, who is an assistant secretary of defense.

What happened to him?

Yeah, so Bridge. So Bridge, I mean, I also, I mean, you know, when I was at the Intercept, he came on my left-munchy podcast. So Bridge, I mean, I also, I mean, you know, we, when I was- We tried to get him on the show and he wouldn't come on the show. So I interviewed him years ago. He and I had a debate.

This was before he was in the Trump administration, but we also agreed on a bunch of things. Bridge Colby was against all this nonsense in the Middle East.

He's a China hawk.

He comes into the Pentagon. The other day, yeah, he's a China hawk and that's where he and I were arguing about this stuff, but he's known as a China hawk, but he's a very realistic sort of isolationist when it comes to these forever wars and Middle East policy. He sits in front of a congressional hearing the other day and he is explicitly on record for years of being against a regime change war in Iran, and he gets asked about his previous comments and he just fumbled around. He couldn't even answer it. You could play clip after clip of Tulsi Gabbard explaining very articulately what's wrong with these kinds of wars, and they put her in charge. She's the director of national intelligence. She has nothing

to do with this stuff. And if she's allowed to speak publicly, oh, boy, she needs to tow the party line. That's the reality of this administration. The MAGA movement needs to understand the whole thing was an epic sham. There is no isolationist wing of this administration. There is no America first. This is Israel first right now, and it's Trump family business first.

So what's interesting about Briggs Colby is this is a guy who last summer, they are running hit pieces in the Politico on him because he is opposed to the continuing of funding of the Ukraine war. And he was sort of outspoken about that. Now I know for a fact that serious people, billionaires, media people, were calling Trump going, fire this guy. We don't want him.

Like genuine, you know, and I know that not for a fact, for a fact, like I wasn't in the room, but like people saying like this guy was a thorn in the side of more of the neoconservative ideologically driven people on that end of the spectrum. They were going this guy's got to go and and now he's sitting there and

he's he's completely changed his opinion.

Yeah.

Yeah, and the only opposition that really came internally came from the military and particularly, General Dan Cain, Trump loves to call Raisin Cain, who, because they had material concerns about the war, because if you're reading Dropsite or like listening to anything that Iran was saying in the months leading up

to the war, they were saying, if you come for us, we're gonna turn this into a regional war. And we have learned the lesson of the previous conflicts that we need to hit much harder than we hit before. Like they were saying it out loud in English for anybody who wanted to listen to it.

And so Cain was internally sharing these assessments. Like this is what they're gonna do. We got, hey man, we got a billion dollar radar installation right here. It's radar, we can't put it underground. They could hit it.

We got these Patriot missile batteries. They can hit those. Like we have all of these bases that are within range of their ballistic missiles. They can hit those. We've spent decades, you know, building up this elaborate military infrastructure

to basically control the Middle East and to control global commerce. And we're putting all that at risk over this war when the Iranians are offering you basically everything you're asking for at the negotiating table. So the only opposition was coming from people who were like, let me just tell you what the reality of this situation is.

But everyone else was like, no, man, they're gonna surrender, you push them over, you'll be a historic figure, it's gonna be incredible. And he went with the, it's going to be beautiful.

I mean, Israel's recently signaled that outside of Iran, they feel that Turkey is their biggest threat. Turkey is a NATO country. This is psychotic. I mean, you know, at what point does the United States of America divest from this Israeli foreign policy of attacking any and all countries they feel might be a current or potential threat. I mean this is straight-up Bush doctrine, preemptive war, the biggest foreign policy failures of my lifetime that I witnessed growing up in the early 2000s, Israel seems to have that foreign policy

position about Iran and now about Turkey. When you hear, and I forget who said it you guys know more than me, but someone came out and said, and I don't know if it was Yair Lapid, I forget who said it, but basically somebody said, outside of Iran, we're looking at Turkey as the biggest potential existential threat to our existence. Why would they come out and say that at this point? Conor, do you know who said that?

Can you look that up? Because that definitely was said recently.

Benny Gantz?

It might've been Benny Gantz. I'm trying to, my producer's looking at it. What exactly would they mean by that? Why telegraph that publicly in the middle of a war with Iran or soon before? I don't understand that.

You know, one thing, and it cuts to this issue of Turkey, et cetera, you know, one thing that I think we're witnessing here, I think we're on the verge of this being drilled into the heads of an entire generation of young people across the Middle East, that in fact, it is a religious war.

You know, there's been great pains taken to sort of say, this isn't about religion. But the message that's being sent, especially when the US ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, who might as well be the foreign minister of Israel, the way that he talks,

is endorsing the idea of a greater Israel that goes from the Mediterranean all the way to the Tigris and Euphrates rivers and starts defending it in kind of some bizarre theological ground. But what we're witnessing right now is that you have all of these Gulf monarchies that are propped up and defended by the presence of American military sites in their countries,

by their interwoven, interconnected relationship to the global economy, specifically to the American economy. There isn't any semblance of democracy in any of those countries. And their populations are bribed and bought off to sort of be quiet.

And maybe it's effective, maybe the propaganda or what Iran is doing right now, maybe it's damaging certain aspects or making people feel like, well, we should be aggressive toward Iran. But at the end of the day, in a bigger picture, the genocide in Gaza, the absolute obliteration

of Gaza, the attempts to further annex the West Bank, now they just issued forced evacuation orders, displacement orders in Lebanon, clearing out hundreds of thousands of people from the south suburbs of Beirut. The Israelis doing massive bombing there. They've set the entire region on fire. It will take a generation, but there's going to be blowback, Tim. It's like the lesson of 9-11, the lesson of the so-called war on terror. It's like we step on the rake in the same place in the yard every few cycles. I think that it may seem like Israel is

quote unquote winning right now, but a series of events are being kicked into motion that we don't know what's gonna happen. But what is certain is that a lot of people, millions of people are being told, this actually is a religious war against you.

And that's gonna come back and bite the United States in a major way.

Ryan, the opposition leader in Israel came out and said, this is all of our war, This is our entire country's war. So I know that Netanyahu very rightly gets a ton of criticism and to say criticism, let's, I mean, to put it mildly, how much of this in your estimation is just Netanyahu, like, you know, the great man of history theory where it's like without Netanyahu,

how much of this is happening and how much of this is just the preferred policy of the entire Israeli government and without Netanyahu, you know, if Netanyahu died tomorrow, are we looking at a major course correction in Israel or not?

I mean, you know, when it was looking like there might be some sort of election for prime minister again, most of the candidates closest to Netanyahu were to his right. So of the top four or so, he was like the most kind of left-wing candidate. And I think what you're seeing from the population there

is the natural product of the relationship that the US has set up with Israel, which is, at the beginning, you had a left or a center left within Israel that would say, we should do coexistence with the Palestinians.

We should do two states. We're all here. We're all gonna be here. Let's hammer this out. And then you had a right wing that was saying, why would we give anything away to these subhuman people?

Let's just keep using the American military weapons and support that is flowing in to just continue to lock down control of more and more territory. It's free money. Right. It's free real estate. Let's use it.

And so they kept being able to win that argument because one side of the political calculation is arguing for some level of compromise in order to get a sustainable coexistence. The other is saying, how about we don't compromise and actually get more stuff.

And only by taking away the American kind of military and financial support, would you have forced the political conversation

to be held on reasonable grounds?

What is the religious element? You know, when Jeremy says this is a religious war and people are now going to internalize this in the Middle East as a religious war. Tucker got a lot of criticism recently for talking about Chabad and talking about the Third Temple and playing a video of Pete Hegseth saying that the Third Temple could be rebuilt in our lifetime.

And I know this is sort of end times mythology that Christians and Jews actually share to a certain degree, which is why there's so much Christians, Zionism in America. I've always thought of this maybe, and maybe it's just because I'm uneducated. I thought of it more of a secular financial motive of like trying to build a Miami in Gaza,

trying to build an AI smart city on this mass grave and trying to have regional hegemony in the Middle East. Is there an element of this that is mystical, spiritual, whatever you want to call it, where you do have really influential clerics pushing certain ideas because they believe

that there is some spiritual element to this fight?

Oh, I actually think, you know, if you go back and you look at how the Republican Revolution was organized in the 1990s, when Newt Gingrich and the Contract with America came to power, or you look at Reagan's electoral campaign in the 1980 election, at the core of it was the Republican strategists mobilizing the evangelical vote, including getting large numbers of evangelicals who were not voters at all

to start voting and supporting Republican candidates. And very cynically, there were the Karl Roves of the world who viewed that section of Americans as kind of the crazies, the loonies. And so we need to constantly be throwing red meat to the loonies to keep them on our side.

And I think that those dynamics still exist and they certainly exist in this. Netanyahu is not a particularly religious guy at all, but he'll talk about Amalek and the need to wipe them out and cite the Torah and all of that. And he'll do it when it's convenient. But I think you're nailing it when you talk about the sort of big real estate project. And what I'm referring to is this, that when you have Kushner and you have Netanyahu, although Netanyahu is also political, it's Zionism, it's expansionism, it's all of those things,

but this is big business. That's why you can have the United Arab Emirates normalizing relations with Israel and posting pictures where they're celebrating together. And you have all, it's all business in a way. But what I'm saying is they're erecting their condominiums and their business projects on a mountain of corpses of Muslims who've been killed in all of these wars.

And what I'm saying is you can't do that and expect that it's not going to circle back around to you. So a day may come where some of these Gulf monarchies, they're toppled or they're brought down. And part of the story is gonna be what we're all witnessing right at this very moment, because the message has been sent that Israel,

it was an Israeli supremacist war that was waged by the United States with the support tacitly and otherwise of these monarchies.

And when these Gulf monarchies are toppled, you mean by progressive, secular pluralists, right? You're like, well, obviously it's good. But this is what I mean, right? You're gonna get Syria, right? You're gonna get somebody who was in ISIS,

who's now going to take, so you're gonna take a country potentially that's somewhat modernizing, a Qatar, Oman, Jordan, whatever, and some of these Gulf monarchies would be toppled and you would get, they'd probably be toppled by religious fanatics.

But well, let me answer that in a little bit of a nuanced way. We have an example, a living example of this. When the Egyptian revolution happened in 2011, when the so-called Arab Spring uprisings were happening, the US-backed dictatorship of Hosni Mubarak was toppled, and there was a popular revolt. And then Egypt for the first time in decades had free and fair elections. And the candidate who won those elections with the wide support not just of religious

Egyptians, but also secularists and young people, was Dr. Mohamed Morsi, who came out of the Muslim Brotherhood Movement. And he won a democratic election, even though a lot of the people that voted for him were not members or supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood, but he won a sort of consensus of the population.

And within like a year or so, the US was backing a coup where General Abdel Fattah el-Sisi took power and Egypt's gone back to the moment of we're not gonna have any real democracy anymore. And I think that the question then becomes, you know, Mohamed Morsi in Egypt was an interesting guy

because he was modern, he was extremely well-educated, he was a political realist. And I don't think it was given a chance to even see what does it look like to have a country that has democratic elections, has a distinctly religious sort of identity to it, but also respects a basic secularism that's

never really been allowed to function in the modern era because the United States doesn't want that. The United States isn't actually interested in having democracy in any of these countries. Trump was asked by Dana Bash from CNN this morning, what about if a religious figure takes power in Iran? Because Trump's saying, I have to be involved with the picking of it.

Iran needs to pass a national voter ID law real quick to get Trump out of it. But Trump's saying, I have no problem with religious leaders. And he's basically saying, it doesn't have to be a democracy.

I'm fine.

They don't care. They don't really care. They want malleable states that in one way or the other are going to do the bidding of the United States and they couldn't really care less what they do to their own people unless it's convenient to the narrative. How generic were the, I mean I'm not generic, how when we're looking at footage of Iranian protests and I'm sure I live in California for part of the year and I know a lot of people that you know are from Iran and I know that a lot of them were genuinely excited when the Ayatollah fell because they had experienced oppression and they have pointed out that women in Iran to some degree You know, how genuine and widespread were those Iranian protests that we saw like small

videos of? Were some of them engineered by outside forces, potentially Mossad? Were they kind of egged on and stoked by that? How much of the country does that represent? in terms of determining the future course of Iran, are we talking 10% of people, 30% of people? I mean, the country has 90 million people.

How many of them are we talking about only young people? Are they only in Tehran? What do you think about those Iran protests

and how organic they were?

There were some huge protests. Like there were enormous numbers of people that were in the streets. It was started in a market where shop owners started protesting about exchange rates. And the US has been clear,

Besant himself, the Treasury Secretary, said publicly, we deliberately engineered a currency crisis in Iran in order to spark a protest. Like, that's almost a direct quote from our Treasury Secretary. What he did is manipulated through sanctions

and through some new sanctions policy, what people's savings were worth and what you could buy with Iranian money. And all of a sudden the merchants were just, who depend on some stable monetary system in order to be able to buy imports

and then sell them on the streets. They started protesting against this, which is precisely what the US wanted. The US also said that we shipped like what, 50,000 of Elon Musk's little satellite devices into the country and otherwise have been fomenting uprisings.

But there's no question talking to Iranians, like there's a lot of anger. Like the country is, I mean, even setting aside your opposition to the regime, if you have it, or to the Iranian government, the economics crisis over the last months and years

is, it makes daily life very difficult. Now, ironically, most of the opposition to the government would be like you said, in Tehran. And that is the place that we are now, bombing into the seventh century. Right.

Seems like indiscriminate bombing around one of the oldest and biggest cities in the world. So we're hitting the people that would be most likely to be supportive of,

to have been out in the streets protesting.

Right.

To add to that, Tim, because you're also asking about sort of the broader picture there, what ended up happening, and we also spoke to people who witnessed this themselves, is that you had these huge popular protests

and there was almost no response from the state whatsoever. In fact, the Supreme leader of Iran, who of course was assassinated in the opening stages of this war, had even publicly said that the protesters need to be listened to.

And there were no significant reports of any violence until around January 8th. So like they started in late December, they go to January 8th. And what we know for a fact happened was that small cells of people

that were embedded within larger peaceful demonstrations started attacking police stations or attacking police officers. And in some cases they started attacking mosques. And so I mean like one Iranian that I talked to who witnessed some of this said that it's like

watching agitators at like a big anti-war demonstration in the US where you've got like the people that wanna break off and the revolution's gonna happen now and let's try to set a cop car on fire. So you start having people do this. And so, and what the Iranian government has said,

and again, this is a nation states narrative, but what the Iranian government has said is that there were cells of people that they believe were being supported by Mossad, and in some cases provided with smuggled in weapons that were coordinating attacks against the government, attacks against mosques, attacks against security personnel. And what it sounds like happened is that there were then these gun battles that start.

I think thousands of Iranians got gunned down. I don't think we know the extent of the death toll, but what I think is clear is that the narrative that it was simply the Iranian government decided to open fire on peaceful protests is not true. The question is how overwhelming was the force? How many Iranians did the government kill

in the process of trying to put down what they characterized as terrorist rebellions? How excessive was it? How many corpses were there? We don't know that and it needs to be investigated, but we have to be intellectually honest about this.

The Iranian government has said that 3,100 people died. That includes everyone, including security forces. International human rights organizations are saying those numbers are much, much higher. Some of the numbers also come from human rights organizations that are connected to the National Endowment for Democracy and have received US government funding. But even the big ones, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, they all have characterized it

as most of the deaths were caused by the Iranian government opening fire on peaceful protesters. I think that we, because these narratives have been weaponized into broader public support initially for some kind of quote unquote action against Iran, there needs to be an actual investigation

of the events that took place in Iran in January. But it is not even part of the narrative anymore from the White House. This isn't about we're saving the Iranian people. Trump is, they're not even talking nuclear anymore. Now it's, we're going to get rid of their ballistic missile capacity. What they're actually saying, I want people to understand this, what they're actually

saying is Iran shouldn't have any defensive capacity. It shouldn't have any ability, which any nation state worth anything has, to deter other nations from attacking it. The position right now is Iran should be like Syria, where after Assad fell, Israel came in, they bombed the entire conventional military capacity of Syria to make sure that whoever comes next, whatever Arab ruler takes power, won't have a real military. In a way, that's kind of the minimum

that Netanyahu wants of this game. Ryan, we spoke- Let's make it so they can't ever be a real nation state again.

Yeah, Ryan, we spoke earlier about the role that AI is playing in actually helping these military coordinate attacks. Can you speak a little bit to that? This is one of the, you know, obviously the Gaza genocide is another, I think, example of this, but this is one of the first theaters of war that we've seen AI

have such a prominent role. Yes, yeah, it was reported that Israel in the early stages of the bombing of Gaza was using AI to pick targets and there would be one low level person at the very end who would just press confirm, confirm, confirm on all of those. But it does appear like the US is using AI and it's targeting here.

The most absurd example, this is the one you and I were talking about, they bombed in Tehran a place called Police Park. And first of all, it shows you that, and it has nothing to do with police, it's just called Police Park.

It shows you that they are doing what Iran says they're doing, which is bombing a lot of civilian infrastructure. Police are, you know, they are part of the civilian infrastructure. You're trying to like keep order.

They want disorder. And so in their list of, that whoever produced, Claude or somebody else, of police targets, they added police park. And so we dropped a 10 or $20 million missile to blow up a park bench surrounded by a couple of trees.

And there's a real open question of whether the 180 plus people killed in the school in Manab in Southern Iran came about because it was an AI chosen target because it had previously been part of an IRGC base, but since then it was broken off and there's a wall.

If you went on Google Earth last month and looked and people can look this up, it was labeled as a school, literally on Google Earth. Right. So if they did use AI, why is the AI not checking Google Earth

before bombing the school? And if they didn't use AI, what are we doing? Right. Like, how are we doing? Right.

Like, how are we, like, who's checking this?

Jeremy, a lot of people are saying munitions are running out. A lot of people have been talking about that. A lot of people have been saying that because we've given the Ukraine a lot of weaponry. We've provided Israel with a lot of weaponry

that we have overextended ourselves. We've depleted our munition stockpiles, and that the idea that we could, you know, with these missile interceptors, that we could defend Israel, the Gulf states, that we could, you know, that we could continue to have the ability to attack Iran at the level that we need to. Is there any credence to that claim? Do you think that

we are kind of running a little bit low on certain munitions? And to piggyback on that, as Israel runs low on munitions, do they consider using alternative weapons, nuclear weapons, if they feel like they are losing this war? Which right now it seems to be that they are. And I don't know if that's true or not, and that could be reversed, but it does seem to be that they are taking heavy losses, big hits. As you said, it's censored over there.

It's hard to tell, but do we have the munitions to keep fighting this war? Can we defend some of our allies and partners?

And if not, what happens next? I mean, this is such an important question that you're asking, and it's one I'm also talking to military experts on, and I'm also interviewing Iranian officials, which is somewhat unusual in the context of American media.

And here's what I would say. I think the next couple of days are gonna be very telling. What the Iranians are claiming, and this is coming also from the IRGC, their most powerful military entity, they're claiming that the munitions they've used up until this moment that I'm speaking to you, Tim, have largely been missiles manufactured between 2010 and 2014, and that they haven't utilized some of their most modern, longer range, powerful

missile systems, and that they're going to begin deploying those systems. We're going to see if that's true. We're going to see how powerful they are, how effective they are, because I think the Iranians are reaching a trigger point where they're going to start doing that. I think we also are going to see the extent to which the THAAD battery systems, the defense systems that the US put in place throughout these countries, the radar systems that the

Iranians have attacked that coordinate the Patriot and THAAD missile defense systems, the early warning detection systems seem to be failing in some countries. We have colleagues in different Gulf countries that are saying that sirens aren't going off now and things are just hitting. There's a lot of censorship happening. So I think the US certainly has enough bombs.

They've destroyed enough of Iran's air defenses to bring in aircraft flying at lower altitude, dropping different kinds of munitions. I don't think there's much question that the US and Israel can keep bombing. They're going to start putting planes at risk. They have not decimated the air defenses in the way that Hegseth and others are bragging. I mean, I think it's pretty clear the Iranians

have been preparing for a long time for this. They have mobile units. It's a mountainous terrain. It's an enormous country. So I think that the rubber is going to hit the road on what narratives have been true and which haven't over the next couple of days, we could see a scenario where it becomes really clear,

really fast, that a lot of those Gulf Arab countries are extremely vulnerable and that the anti-missile technologies have been severely degraded to a point where the Iranians start striking in a much heavier capacity. And then you're going to have enormous pressure.

Already on the oil issue, they're going nuts right now. Because we're messing with the family businesses all through the Middle East. But on a tactical level, the Iranians have said from the beginning, it's gonna look like we're getting waxed.

It's gonna look like we're being destroyed here. But you haven't seen our most powerful systems and we know what we're doing. We are causing them to expend all of their energy in the opening week of this war. And then you're gonna see how vulnerable they are.

And they're talking about-

We're gonna see which narrative is true and which is false. Oh, they're talking about hypersonic missiles specifically?

We're talking about hypersonic missiles.

Yep. Can you talk about the difference

between a regular and a hypersonic missile missile in terms of capabilities and damage that can be done? I mean, one thing, just first to say, you know, there's been a lot of outrage being expressed by Israel over Iran using cluster munitions. First of all, it should be stated that neither Israel nor Iran are party to the convention banning cluster bombs. And the United States itself has used cluster munitions, including under Barack Obama. They used cluster bombs in Yemen and shredded 36 people in a strike that they said was aimed at al-Qaeda, but they shredded a bunch of villagers in Yemen with them.

But why are the Iranians using cluster bombs? Personally, I'm completely against them. I've seen the effect of cluster bombs. I think it's a heinous weapon system. But the Iranians are using it as a way to try to trigger the Iron Dome and other air defense systems so that the larger missile itself is able to penetrate or other missiles are able to penetrate. And they're ugly, ugly munitions. No one should ever defend the use of them.

Iran though is using sort of, you know, they're using guided munitions. They are quite precise. But with the hypersonic missiles, it's much easier for them to penetrate through the existing US and Israeli defense systems. It doesn't mean that they work perfectly. They're a much faster missile.

In fact, the Yemenis at times have used them on Israel as well, in some cases actually hitting targets. What you're talking about is a much stronger blast. You're talking about a missile that has a much greater capacity to defeat the technology that the US and Israel have deployed. And if some of the higher end technology

has already been used up and they have to get replenishments in terms of combating the ballistic missiles, you could start to see much heavier damage take place inside of Israel. But again, I wanna emphasize the Iranians have claimed this for a long time,

and we're going to start to see if what they promised is true. We're going to start to see that very, very soon. Last night, very heavy bombing from the Iranians after the US had claimed that they were sort of pausing or it was abating a bit,

the Iranians responded by just utterly bombing

throughout the region and hitting Israel very hard. It's unbelievable Jeremy We know you need to get out of here Ryan Could you stay for another five minutes just a few more questions? I want to talk to you about this ship incident Jeremy Thank you. You were the best All right, Tim. Appreciate you. I appreciate you Ryan. I want you to talk briefly about this incident. That was very disturbing that I read about regarding an Iranian ship that got torpedoed by the US because it does just talk about how there

is I think a misunderstanding from certain people as to the brutality of war in the sense of how truly evil things that happened during the war are and how this is going to be seared into the minds of people. And it's so important for people in the US to stand up and go, yeah, this is not something that we co-sign. Could you just talk about that?

Yeah, this is a dark one. And India is actually roiled by this right now because it implicates them. So the Indians, they love to project that they have hegemony in the kind of Indian Ocean. They're the ones that are gonna,

their Navy is gonna keep the Indian Ocean safe. And so toward that end, they host this biannual kind of a little festival of ships. I think 70 countries, including Iran and the United States sent ships to these two separate but related events

and they did a live fire drill.

And when did they do this?

They did it from, I think, February 17th to the 26th. Gotcha. So it wrapped up 48 hours before, maybe 36 hours before the war started.

Right.

They paraded on land. The US pulled out of one of the two of these little festivals, but did participate in the other one with the Iranians. So like, we're there, like with them. As part of the kind of peace protocol for these events,

you're only supposed to bring enough ammunition to like fire off during your little events. You're not supposed to come all kitted up in a way that could cause serious problems. There's also, you're out there doing these complex coordinated drills, you don't want something to go wrong.

Right. And so they try to keep it as safe as possible. And so then it starts to head back to Iran. And this is where we need more investigation. It appears that it was then held at a port for something like 11 hours near Sri Lanka,

or Sri Lankan port, which now people are suspicious was allowing kind of this nuclear sub to catch up to it. There's also the question of like, how did they find the exact location? There's some, in India, they are speculating

that the US exploited its kind of joint intelligence network that it has built with India to get into the Indian system. And then, cause the Indians and the Iranians were, they invited the Iranian ship and then they said goodbye to the Iranian ships. They knew exactly where it was.

So then the nuclear sub finds a ship and torpedoes it. And the laws of war, the Geneva Convention say that if it doesn't put your own ship at risk, you are obligated under international law to try to save drowning sailors. But you have to do the bare minimum.

Also under the kind of common sense of humanity. Like you see somebody drowning, it's like a meme. You see somebody drowning, like throw him a rope. Like that's what we do. We prosecuted a Nazi at Nuremberg for not doing that. But often the Nazis did do it,

which is like we're below them at this point. So Sri Lanka's Navy had to come out and get there as fast as they could. And they managed to save, I think, 32 people from drowning, more than 80 Iranians died in the attack. And we posted the video as a,

with the caption, something like, "'This Iranian ship thought it was safe. Suckers, you're not.'" And so now the Indian, so this is interesting too, the Indian government is under enormous pressure because this is a slap in the face to them.

If you noticed yesterday, Trump lifted sanctions on Russia when it came to selling oil to India. Remember a few months ago, the biggest thing that Trump was worked up about was that India was buying oil from Russia.

And he's like, I'm gonna do 25% sanctions and tariffs, I'm gonna do 50% tariffs. You stop buying oil from Russia. Now it's all fine. India can buy oil from Russia and we're lifting the sanctions on Russian oil.

That to me feels like a kind of blowback from this. Like that Modi is like, I need something here. You're killing me at home.

You gotta give me something.

You made this look like home.

How do you just-

So Putin will get billions out of this.

What do you think China and Russia, what is the lens through which they're viewing the current Iran conflict?

You know, there was this really interesting argument being made by a guy for Barry Weiss's news outlet, Havi Rettiger. He's like one of the smartest Israeli analysts out there. And so they sent their brightest light out there to make the best possible case they could that the war on Iran that the US is waging is not actually for Israel, it's actually about China.

And he lays out this case that there's oil that China gets from Iran.

You can go read his case.

Yeah.

But it falls apart extremely quickly because yes, it's true that Iran exports something like 80 to 90% of its oil to China. So you're like, oh, you see that number, you're like, wow, that really involves China a lot. That makes up something like five to 15% of Chinese imports.

They have plenty of oil that they can get from elsewhere. And also think about it. If we replace this government, if we manage to do a regime change and we put in a new government that Donald Trump says is wonderful, like finds his Delci Rodriguez,

why would that country not sell oil to China?

To China.

Like that- It would make no sense. Of course, yeah, they'll sell it to everybody. Like Iran will still be a country. Right. It will still produce oil.

Yeah, it would still have an economy and it wanted to drive in-

Still gonna have an economy. Unless, unless Haviv is saying that what Trump really wants to do is blockade China from

buying oil from anybody around the world.

Like is that- And I'm sure China would have something to say about that.

I think they might.

You think they might? What do you think about the chances of boots on the ground?

Coming not coming? I think special, I think the chances of special forces are getting pretty high.

Reportedly, we sent Kurdish troops in already with special forces.

Yes, and then as we reported actually,

you guys, yeah.

Immediately, it wasn't true. Okay.

So that was fascinating. That was leaked by the Israelis, it seems, that the invasion, not the invasion is going to happen,

because you can get that wrong. Sure. Or, you know, and then it doesn't end up happening. They said thousands of Kurdish fighters have invaded Iran and are currently fighting inside Iran. Right.

That was the reporting from a bunch of outlets and it clearly seemed to be sourced from Israel. We talked to all of these different Kurdish sources and all of them are like, no, it's not happening. Like not casting judgment on whether it should, but it literally is not happening.

And then this Kurdish, this Iranian Kurdish base inside Iraq was bombed, which maybe it was from Iran who thought that the reports were true. Maybe it was from Israel who's like trying to rile them up and say, you need to go in there.

We don't know, but it's not happening. So the invasion is not happening. So the US is putting enormous pressure on them to go in. The problem is in 1991, we told the Kurds to rise up in Northern Iraq.

They rose up and then Saddam massacred them.

It's always the Kurds. Yeah, we then supported them in Syria to go against ISIS. And a couple of months ago, we sold them out. So the Kurds have been saying publicly, God, like, all right, 1991, that's one thing. And also all of the betrayals going back hundreds of years.

But like, 91 is one thing.

You sold us out like two months ago.

Right, right.

You know, that's insane. Yeah, it's unbelievable.

So you think we're like, but they're still calculating, like, you know, cause they're under a lot of pressure to do it. And, you know, Bush and Obama were actually pretty decent for Northern Iraq, the Kurdish region. So they're kind of, but they're comfortable too.

They're like, we've got our autonomy. We're happy.

Like, we're good. Yeah, why get involved? What do you think, you know, I'm hearing the Qatar is basically saying we want to pull our money out of the American economy. Saudi Arabia is saying similar things. People are really upset out there. This could be a massive collapse financially here. What is Jared Kushner doing right now?

Is he calling these people on the phone going, hey, relax?

Yeah, he's got to because so much of his business relies on the Gulf economy continuing to produce oil and gas and dollars and then funneling those dollars into the grifts that the Trump organization, the Kushner organization are operating, you know, set aside the entire AI grift that is the US economy at this point. Also, this should be obvious to people, but that stuff is the backbone of everything else. If the oil and gas stop coming out,

we stop making aluminum, we stop making chlorine.

Right.

We stop making the copper, the basics of our economy, and then we can't make semiconductors. And then like, and that happens as, it's almost as if people forget like March, 2020, like, you remember how quickly, like the entire world fell apart from supply chain shocks?

Yeah. Wasn't that long ago. It's like, so that is kind of a wrong strategy, I think is to say like, they cannot withstand, like they are already driven to absolute poverty and desperation by our sanctions.

So they're already there.

So they can weather this.

Final question.

But the thinking is Dubai cannot.

Dubai cannot, right. Final question for you, How does this play out? What is your prediction from what you know, from what you've seen? Obviously, so many things could change. I mean, you know, what do you think happens here? Does Trump say, hey, we won, even though we didn't, and just get the hell out of there?

Or does this, you know, I've seen reports that the Pentagon is asking for money and some true commitments in terms until September, right? Like, what is this? Are we talking about this on July 4th?

I think the most hopeful outcome at this point would be Trump stares into the abyss or the actuality of a global financial crisis that he sparked and declares victory and just stops bombing. Right.

And says, here's the list of things I wanted to accomplish. I obliterated their ballistic missile program, I obliterated their nuclear weapons, I killed the Ayatollah, maybe I'll kill his son before the end of the day is over. So we won and everyone tells me

that it's the most incredible war victory that anybody has ever seen.

But the Revolutionary Guard still controls the country.

And you're right, exactly.

Will Israel allow that to happen?

That is an interesting question. Now, if Israel feels that they have been sufficiently militarily degraded, that they don't have many ballistic missiles left, their Tehran looks like Gaza, that they can then continue to do

routine operations like this. Like, you know, with Gaza, as you know, they call it mowing the lawn. Yeah, yeah, yeah. that they can then continue to do routine operations like this.

With Gaza, as you know, they call it mowing the lawn.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And in the 90s in Iraq, this was kind of what the West would do to Iraq. They put them under sanctions, impoverished it, and then every six months go bomb it and then weaken it. So when 2003 came along and you just kind of pushed it over, then of course it became a gigantic catastrophe

through the occupation and everything else. But that was their vision. Like Iraq was too strong in the 80s to take out, that you take a decade of just pummeling it relentlessly, you tweak it.

So maybe Israel's okay with pausing.

Yeah.

And then six months later, they go in and bomb them again. And then six months after, they go in and bomb them again. And then six months after that, and on and on.

Well, Ryan Grimm, DropSite News, thank you so much. We're very grateful that you and Jeremy came on, and everybody should go and read your stuff. You guys are great. And this, I think, helped a lot of people understand the mess that we're in.

But I don't know how much hope it's given us but that's never been the point of this show my career or anything I've been

involved in Ryan Grimm drop set news thank you very much now you got it if anybody knows Trump just tell him it's a beautiful win just take the win we did

it we won very good one all right Ryan this will be out in a few hours thank it we won very good one all right Ryan this will be out in a few hours thank

you you're the best thank you sir appreciate it