Iran Expects WAR TO RESUME In 48 Hours

Good morning, everybody.Happy Monday.Have an amazing show for everybody today.We have Crystal.

Indeed we do.Trump making new threats against Iran.Also, we've got a look at the economic fallout.Time to start hoarding motor oil, apparently, because there's a dire situation developing there, shortages imminent.Thomas Massey facing the fight of his life, an onslaught.It's now the most expensive congressional race in history as the Israel lobby pours cash into that race to try to defeat him.

We will preview that.We're also taking a look at new bogus intel that's being laundered on Cuba to try to create a pretext for an invasion.Trump made thousands of trades as president, like more than 3 ,000 stock trades, including for companies like, oh, I don't know, PayPal.talented Cash Patel with a VIP snorkeling trip at Pearl Harbor, of all places.So just incredible things happening there.

these types of things make me so hot, but I think every American should be disgusted by this irreverence, the display of what they decide to do, not only with our tax dollars, but in which they treat everyone.So there you go.Thank you to everybody.If you are watching this on YouTube, please hit subscribe to our YouTube channel.And if you're listening to this as a podcast, please share an episode with a friend.It really helps other people find the show.

But as Crystal said, we're gonna go ahead and start with the war with Iran.Let's put A1 up there on the screen.Donald Trump's latest truth social post.Iran.The clock is ticking.They better get moving fast or there won't be anything left of them.

Time is of the essence.This is paired actually with some new analysis from Trita Parsi.Let's go ahead and put this up here on the screen, which he released late last night.He said the Middle East is once again teetering on the brink as Trump appears to reignite war with Iran.While Trump's threats of war may be theater designed to face Tehran into submission, Tehran expects the U .S.

to attack it within the next 48 hours.We should recognize that restarting the war amounts to an admission that the previous escalatory gambit has failed.That in turn was in itself admission that the war had failed, which was an admission that the threats of war in January had already failed.As I argued before, this relentless search for an escalatory silver bullet capable of bringing Iran to its knees is not unique to Trump and has become a defining pathology of American Iran policy for decades.I think it's incredibly well said, succinct, summarizes everything, but the top line news there from Trita Parsi is that his sources in Tehran believe that the war will restart within the next 48 hours.It does seem to fit with all of this clock is ticking, some of these exchanges of negotiations, all of which have failed, and we'll get into some of the details, but it does seem basically inevitable at this point, the ceasefire.

has now been longer than the actual war itself.Nothing has been accomplished.The amount of oil remains at a trickle.Iran still retains control of the Strait of Hormuz.The global oil markets remain disastrous.And you know, we here in the United States today, I actually think this weekend will be the weekend where a lot of Americans wake up.

It's Memorial Day weekend.It's probably the first time they're going to be on the road for several hours.People are really going to be interacting with those gas prices.probably more so than normal.And then the sticker shock of just.$4 .50 a gallon nationally, or if you live in California, well over $6.

I think that's gonna hit home.And also, as people, I've been seeing already tweets, a lot of viral ones, people who are booking flights for summer travel.We're like, oh.Right.They're like not doing that again anytime soon.So you couple those two things together.

I actually think this weekend could be a turning point.

I think you could be right about that.And for many millions of Americans, it's really already hit home where, you know, they were already struggling.And now just to fill up a tank of gas, be able to get to work is becoming an impossibility.We're already seeing the way that people at the lower end of the income scale have had to cut back.Of course, the wealthy will be unaffected because to them, the increase in gas prices is really like, you know, it's a barely a blip on the radar.And those are the people that Trump is talking to, and those are the people that Trump is thinking about.

More on that in the economics section.But I fear that you're correct about this, because the current situation with the Strait of Hormuz closed really is an unsustainable situation for the U .S.and truly for the globe.That economic noose is only going to continue to tighten.And then you've got the Israelis and the neocons here in the U .

S.who are certainly pushing for a return to hostilities.shows yesterday.This is a three.

Let's take a listen to his push for renewed airstrikes.My analysis is there's nothing to suggest that the people in charge now are any different in terms of the regime's goal to terrorize the world, destroy Israel, come after us.So what do you do next?You weaken them further.What President Trump has done has been amazing militarily, but there's still more targets to be had.And there's things we can do to hurt their energy infrastructure.

is their soft underbelly.If you go back to the fight, I'd put energy on top of the list.

I want to couple that with a seven if we can put this up on the screen, which is that Trump and BB had a call yesterday and there was also a security meeting inside of Israel.And if you think about the timing on all of this saga, of course, Trump just back from this trip to China.It would make sense that he wanted to sort of pause a return to hostilities until he got through that particular trip.If there were ongoing hot hostilities during his trip to China, that could be a little bit awkward, a little uncomfortable, may undermine some of the very minimal deals that he was able to do there.I mean, he really returned with basically nothing anyway.But you can imagine why this timing would make some sense and why also the reality is setting in.

You know, he was fed a bunch of bullshit that he chose to believe from the from FBI.and other sources of, oh, if we just blockade their blockade, then within days, this is what they were truly selling, within days, Iran's whole economy will collapse and their oil wells are going to explode.Remember when Trump said that?It has to be setting in now, okay, that plan is not going to work out, not that Iran isn't suffering and that there isn't economic damage, but they are able to withstand that a lot longer, frankly, than we can because their paid tolerance is much, much higher.So the logic, is very likely within the administration to be that that was offered by Lindsey Graham or that that Emily and I covered last week was offered by Eric Erickson.He said the only way out is through.

We can't stay in this position.So we have to just go back one more bombing campaign.Maybe we have to do that ground invasion.Those are the sorts of things that are being contemplated right now.

Look, it's unfortunately there is a relative inevitability to this thing.He either surrenders or he escalates all the way.He doesn't want to do either.And so he's going to continue.This is where Robert Pape's analysis of the escalation trap is so important.And remember, we always

say this, is that we always think of history in terms of a linear fashion.No, it takes a long—if you go and you read the history of the Second World War, like it took two two years before the United States was even involved.Like there's a lot of stuff that happened.There were multi -month periods where literally nothing happened.But we don't think about that in retrospect.We were in a short pause.

Actually, even in the long sweep of history, 30 -something days, it's really nothing.But the inevitability of where things must end up, it really It was decided on the very day that the war itself was launched.Can we put A4 up here on the screen?This is from the latest military action that took place.And this is very interesting, by the way.Drone strikes near UAE nuclear power plant.

As US and Iran signal, they are prepared to resume the war.But here's kind of what's interesting.A drone strike sparked a fire on the edge of the sole nuclear power plant in the UAE on Sunday in what the authorities called an unprovoked terrorist attack.No one was blamed, but it highlighted the risk of renewed war.Now, the UAE had previously said that the strikes came from the West.So they're like, oh, Okay, well, let's take a look at a map.

There's a lot of countries to the west of the UAE.Who could they be?And I mean, the crazy thing is, is it could be a variety of different countries.It could be Saudi Arabia, because they're currently in some sort of a, you know, a dust up could be Israel potentially, you know, wanting to, wanting to like restart the war or to pressure them.It could also, I guess, theoretically, it could be Iran from some sleeper drone, you know, platform or something, or maybe it flew in a different direction, but it just highlights like the 40th order chaos that has come now as a result of the war.The UAE has left OPEC.

Oh my God, I was just reading it yesterday.The effect on the Qatari economy from the war hasn't been nearly as publicized because we've all been focused on oil.from the world.continues for the Qatari economy.Like you may literally see the, just like with the first world war, like you may go into a war, which you expect to be 70 days, a nice little war, which is what they originally thought it would be.And you may literally watch the destruction of all of these different houses and monarchies.

And what we're basically watching in all of this is the US and even Iran, to a certain extent, who are in a level of limbo where they both overestimate their relative strength.We've talked a little bit about this, and this is not to say that Iran is not in a very, very strong position, but they can still be eliminated if the full force of the military is there.This is part of what tightens the escalation trap.Let's put the next one up there on the screen just to highlight how strong their demands are and why any American, where if they were, or sorry, how strong Washington's demands are and why Iran, while it has any fight left in it whatsoever, Iran.a release of all assets, a compensation for war demands, and U .S.

recognition of Iran's sovereignty over the Strait of Hormuz.There is just no, there's no universe in which this even can come together.And that's despite all of the rhetoric.So even though both, you know, Iran is stronger, in a strategic position, but it did definitely take some of a pounding, not nearly as much as we were originally told.The U .S.

has expended, God only knows, tens of billions, probably.I would say what the real cost of the war is, without even fuel and the amount that we've all paid, probably closer to 60 to 70 billion, even at this point, considering all the carrier strike groups, all the munitions, that doesn't even mention all of the lost production timeline, et cetera.But when I see, though, that for them, Trump, because of his you know, his image and really of the blow that this has already given to the global empire, everything just seems to be pointing in that direction, where they want to restart.

Yeah, absolutely.And I think the situation with the UAE and, you know, this drone strike, which the drones came over the UAE's border with Saudi Arabia.That's where they came from.Now, Saudis say, oh, it wasn't us.But the UAE already thought that the Saudis were behind some strikes on their infrastructure, particularly at Fujairah.The Saudis think the UAE has been behind some strikes on their territory.

territory with regard to their critical oil energy infrastructure.And the fact that you have them messing around, you got Israel doing God knows what and trying to foam out God knows what, makes the whole thing even more volatile because you have so many more players with other agendas involved than just the U .S.and Israel and Iran.So that's part of what makes this situation so incredibly dangerous.But I mean, just to to

and But, you know, the logic of this thing seems to only go in one direction because the saga is just putting up there the demands from the Iranians and the demands from the U .S.The U .S.demands are just, frankly, delusional.You know, we lost this war.

We lost it strategically, not to say we couldn't go back in and, you know, pound the hell out of the Iranians again if we want to.But in terms of accomplishing our strategic objectives, we totally and completely failed.They emerge with some, you know, some cards, to use the Trumpian terminology, that they did not have in the past, that we are not going to be able to take away.And so the fact that you have provisions in there that are more aggressive than what was being contemplated before this war, it's just delusional.It's insane.They're going to ship their enriched uranium to the U .

S.That's one of the supposed provisions that we're pushing here.We're saying absolutely no sanctions relief.We're not going to unfreeze your assets.That's going to be a hard no from the Iranians.So as much as there's been, you know, some kind of dialogue and back and forth and potential negotiations, you can see from the U .

S.positions that Trump is not willing to take the ego hit and humiliation and go out and try to sell this thing that would be required.I thought he made a very revealing comment last week to Sean Hannity when he said, like, well, you know, maybe I don't care.I'm paraphrasing.Obviously, I don't care actually that much about the nuclear dust, but I kind of promise this thing, the fake news media is going to be all over me if I don't get it.So I guess I'm committed to it.

There's a lot of truth to that.He has backed himself into a corner now where even though he is, you know, the bullshitartist in chief, he doesn't even think he could sell what he could get at the negotiating table right now as a win.The current situation, the economic news tightening, the status quo, that is not sustainable.That was something that, you know, some people had hoped.I think Joe Kent kind of hoped, like, maybe we can just kind of muddle through and not come to an official deal, but hope that we can ride this thing out.

That is not looking like it's sustainable.And you've got all these neocons in Azir and the Israelis pushing like, let's go back in one more bombing campaign, one more ground invasion.Let's do something so you can establish a win.And I fear, I fear that that logic is going to be compelling to him.

It's very LBJ -esque.LBJ, I'm not going to be the first president to ever lose a damn war.You would say it over and over again in the Situation Room.And the thing that's always comforting about bombs and escalation is that there's a theoretical payoff, whereas you know what the actual actual outcome will be.That's why it takes genuine courage to say, this is madness.We can't keep doing this anymore.

Like that's heroism.What's cowardly is what every president did in Afghanistan.Like, oh, this time we're gonna get them.This time we'll do this surge.This time we'll continue to go forward.Say, you know, first you go from 3 ,000 advisors to 6 ,000.

That didn't do the jobs.Now you need 10 ,000, you need 100 ,000.Oh, if we escalate the bombing and then this, you know, Operation Rolling Thunder, that will break the back of the Vietnamese.You can see how easy that is. is to fall for, because these generals, you know, they got their uniforms, you got this vast array of empire at your disposal.That's the easy option to always go down.Yeah.

The check on that is supposed to be politics.

Well, and Trump loves dropping those bombs.He loves the visuals of it.He feels powerful.He feels like a man.He wants Pete Hegset to put together a highlight reel for him, a two minute highlight reel for him to consume, to feel like he's big, strong, tough, powerful guy.He's sort of addicted to that stuff as the other dangerous thing here.

You know, and I don't think he's the for his president to be that way, but I do think he takes it, obviously, to heart.

level.He takes it to the nth degree.There's an element of ego, there's an egomaniacal element of this, which is inherent to like all of them.And I also think as his polls drop, what is the, you know, not only did his polls drop, Do they even have a bill?Like, if the Republicans were gonna win the midterms, what are they going to do?They don't even bother telling you.

Like, they literally don't even tell you, here's what we're gonna do with the presidency and the House and the Senate.It's not even about vision.There's no plan whatsoever.It's basically just like, we will continue to be Trump's slaves, like here in the House.You're like, okay, well, you know, it doesn't seem all that different from right now, and that doesn't seem to be going well.But they have the control of the global empire, which is, they have total authority, especially with Congress having given up even its checks on war and peace, I mean, this is as close to a king as you will ever see, right?

And let's put A7 up there, up there on the screen.Here is Netanyahu apparently speaking with Trump amid reports that Israel and the US are preparing Iran strike.Remember this, you know, the Israeli media reports this like every week about preparing for Iran strikes, but you know, you definitely do need to treat it seriously.The PM will convene a limited security cabinet, the drone strikes on the UAE nuclear station, and Iranian media saying that the U .S.has offered no concrete concessions and demands a shutdown of all but one nuclear facility.

So there have been talks back and forth, phone calls with Prime Minister Netanyahu and with Trump.When I talked about that convenience element and how easy they will sell you a vision, that's what Netanyahu is doing right now.He's all up in his ear.He's like, hey, we can do this.All we got to do is restart.All we got to do is take out these nuclear power plants, or all we got to do is take out this energy infrastructure, and that one will finally drive them to the negotiating table.

So I don't know.In terms of what's breaking right now, I saw a little bit of news.Tasmin had reported that maybe the US would waive oil tariffs.little bit civilization before he eventually blanks.So we don't know what is going to happen.It is noteworthy at the very least to me that they are saying right now they expect the war to continue in the next 48 hours, even though there's some, you know, oh, the U .

S.has floated this viewing sanctions, temporary lifting of sanctions on Iranian oil, which they actually did beforehand as well.So they could go back in some sort of a reversal as well.I really don't know.

Well, and it's also Monday morning, which means Trump may be itching to manipulate the markets.Right now, you know, stock futures are down.Oil is up.The U .S.bond rates have been going up as well, which is certainly something that he pays a lot of attention to.

So don't be surprised if you get some new Axios report or whatever.Well, they're close to a deal.I did just see a report on Haaretz that Iran submitted some response to the U .S.proposal.But we just showed you how far apart they are.

So even if the Iranians are continuing to submit their responses, it hasn't changed from their position of we have won and we plan to consolidate our gains on the battlefield in terms of whatever this negotiation is and it just doesn't seem like we're anywhere close to actually coming to terms on a deal.

Yep, well said.All right, let's move over to econ.