Trump's Iran War Disaster

This takes us to the Iran question.A lot of controversy about how much damage the United States has taken.The Trump administration plays it down and says there's some lucky shots.The question, how extensive is the damage?And then there's a lot of debate about how much damage has been inflicted on the Iranians in turn.What is your assessment of how much harm each has done to the other?

Well, I mean, I'm just going on the reports based on the pictures and the books, the reports based on the pictures of U .S.military facilities in the region say most were hit.or and they've been hit regularly.And if these are satellite shots that are readily available, both The Washington Post and The New York Times have done these investigations of them.And they've gone through and said, actually, these these hits look more extensive than we realize or than the administration has been saying.

So it certainly seems to me that these bases were not as well protected as we think.We won't know the exact.It's also the problem is the Trump administration lies and doesn't tell the amount.So they're refusing to say what's going on.costs are going to be.They just want to say, oh, they're not as bad as you think.

So the Trump administration is setting this up.When it comes to what has happened in Iran, in some ways we are dealing with deep speculation.They clearly were able to hit the Iranian government at the start of the war and kill the Supreme Leader and kill a number of other senior political figures.Since then, we don't really know what has been going on.There does seem to be a new Iranian leadership, which is being very hardline.So they're not acting.

like they've been devastated.Now, this might be bluff, might be the Iranians are trying to bluff Trump down, but they're not acting like they have been devastated or they feel that their control over the country is being threatened.And there's entirely different narratives about the state of the Iranian military.There were the leaked intelligence reports that said 70, 75 percent of Iranian missile technology is still there, but they can dig it out and fire again.I know U .S.

senior commanders are saying, no, no, it's much worse than that.InIn some ways, we won't know till long after this thing.However, what we see from the U .S.is an inability to get the Iranian regime to give Trump the kind of peace deal terms that he needs.

And because he can't get that, he is stuck.And people are saying he might go back to bombing now because he doesn't know what else to do.And if he's forced to go back into bombing, then we have to assume that, by the way, the Iranians haven't been as damaged as he says they are.

Well, as best I can tell, the Trump theory of the war seems to have been based on what happened in Venezuela, which was you had a leader at the top who believed some ideology, who's a direct heir of the regime founded by Hugo Chavez.He hands it off to Nicolas Maduro.Maduro has some degree of belief in whatever Chavez, whatever he thought Chavez was doing.But below Maduro, it's all gangsters and crooks.So if you can get rid of the top guy who believes in the old ideology, then you bring to the fore gangsters and crooks.And the Trump people look at that and say, we love gangsters and crooks.

We recognize gangers as those are our people.We can do business with the gangsters and crooks and, and, and they'll, they'll do what we say in exchange for some kind of financial consideration.And it does look like that's sort of what happened in Venezuela.And they seem to have made a similar assumption about Iran that the next level down to the level below that those are also gangsters and crooks.So kill the top, what 40, however many people they killed.and bring to the surface the gangsters and crooks, and you can do business with that.

I mean, another thing is Maduro wasn't an ideologist either.Maduro was a gangster and crook extraordinaire.And from what we see in Venezuela, it's simply the Maduro regime without Maduro.Still his vice president is now president, and his very, very nasty minister of justice is some say the power behind the throne.So the Maduro regime endures.It's even perhaps more hard line than before.

When it comes to Iran, I don't know what they thought.I mean, I think you were exactly right.He thought I could get rid of theleadership and a new leadership will come up.They won't be nice, but they'll do what I care.He doesn't care if they're radical.

He doesn't care if they believe in freedom.He doesn't care what they are as long as they do what he wants.He wants leaders that will defer to him and kowtow to him.And the Venezuelans have done that to a certain degree.The Iranian regime is utterly different.And it's a far more extreme regime, I would argue.

And he simply didn't understand what he was dealing with.And they didn't have any real plan in place to get rid of them.They assumed it would be much easier than it is.And now they're left with what most people are saying is a more hardline regime than the one they killed at the beginning of the bombing.So they probably made the Iranian regime more extreme.They certainly don't seem to have candidates to take over on the ground in Iran.

You don't hear that there is a new leadership waiting in the wings of the US to activate.So it's just been a colossal miscalculation.They assumed it would be easy.They acted very much like Putin did in 2022.That's the most close analogy I can think of.Really, they thought a few days of military action will show their power, the Iranians will fold and they'll get a new leadership.

And that's what Putin thought in 2022.We'll march into Ukraine.The Ukrainians will fold.They really won't want to fight.They love us.We'll have a new pro -Russian government, and we'll all move on from there.

And it just doesn't work out like that.

Well, U .S.-Iran is now turning into a true O 'Brien -style war of mutual economic punishment.The intensity of violence has stepped down greatly, but Iran is blockading the flow of oil from the Persian Gulf to the rest of the world.The United States is counter -blockading.President Trump seemed at first to dismiss the significance of the blockade because not very much of the oil comes to the United States.

I don't think he really observed that.the idea that even if 80 % of the oil flows from the Persian Gulf to Asia, there's still only one price in the world.If the price goes up, it goes up everywhere.He doesn't seem to have grasped that, at least at the beginning.He surely grasps it now.So the Iranians are inflicting significant economic damage on the rest of the world, but the United States is inflicting economic damage on Iran.

They can't sell their oil, which they need to do.

There's actually two deadlines here.We don't know which one will be reached first.I think the American deadline is quite clear, as in what the Iranians are thinking is Trump has to settle this in time to run the midterm elections.He can't go into the midterm elections in the fall with this war ongoing.you know, fighting going on, bombing of Iran, a very unpopular war, which will not help him with anybody.So the Iranians are calculating he's got to settle it in time to run the midterm elections.

I think what Trump is calculating about the Iranians is at some point, the enormous economic pressure I'm putting on them by not letting them trade will force them to cut a deal that I want.And really, he has at this point almost minimal demands.I think really, Trump would take almost anything if it makes it look particularly when it comes to nuclear weapons, that he's got a concession.This is the one thing he sort of has to have.So he's gambling that his economic pressure will force the Iranians down before the Iranian political pressure forces him down.I think the problem that he faces is that he's dealing with a pretty tough and nasty group, and they are willing to suffer pain, and they're willing to put their own people under pain.

to hold out for longer.The Iranians have calculated they have a much higher pain tolerance threshold than Trump has, which is why more and more you hear, I mean, I can't believe there'd be strategic rationale behind it, that the U .S.is thinking going back to bombing.That is, that they're seriously contemplatingit. You

You know, one of the things that the people around Trump say so often is he never bluffs.And I think if you've been president now for two terms and you never bluff, you don't need a lot of people to say you never bluff.You only need people to say it when, in fact, everyone would say you bluff all the time.And the Iranians have figured that out, that Trump, the idea that Trump would escalate Um, given his, his poll numbers, given the price of gas, um, if he escalates and the Iranians can hit the opposite shore and all of its energy resources too.Um, and the price of oil goes up and the price of gas goes up and Americans who didn't support the war in the first place, didn't understand the war, weren't invited to give an opinion about the war.Congress never voted on the war.

Um, gas, gas goes higher.And Trump's in even more trouble.

The issue he faces is I think he can't wait as long as the Iranians do.I mean, if you had to look at who's going to crack first time -wise, the problem he faces is his deadline is there.The election is November.This has got to be over by the summer.

If the war ends with some kind of armistice where Trump gets some piece of paper with the word nuclear on it, Iran has effective control over the Strait of Hormuz, which I suppose it had before, but now it's really proven that it can do it.and a lot of damage to Iran's nuclear program and Iran's missile program, some damage in turn to the American forces.Who's the winner of that war?

China.I mean, the winner of that war is China.Explain.Bill, because basically the Chinese will come out of this as a far more influential force in the region.The United States will come out looking much weakened with a degraded military, an inability to get what it wants through military force.and looking capricious and in some ways unable to assert itself over Iran.

The Iranian regime will not come out of it in great shape.It's damaged.It has been damaged militarily.Certainly the Iranian people will be the losers because they will suffer a great deal of oppression, one assumes, coming out of that.But the Iranians would have survived and the other regimes in the area are going to have to cut some kind of deals.But the Chinese are just sitting there.

They are going to be seeing a bastion of stability.They'll get a huge amount of reconstruction contracts.Their ally in Iran will still be there.And one assumes that a lot of the other powers in the region will want good relations with China going forward.So that the big winner in the long term is probably China.The big term winner in the short term right now is Putin, because the price of oil is up and it's going to stay up.

So the Russian economy has at least been thrown a lifeline by Trump.in this war by having Putin, Russian oil revenues are up spectacularly from before this all started.So short -term victory Putin, long -term victory Chinese.The Americans are probably the biggest loser of it.I think their regional position would be undermined.And the Iranians won't be big winners, but they will have survived.

And that will have given them some kind of leverage going forward.

The figure for Russia that I heard from a politician in the area was that the war has added a billion dollars a day to Russian revenues.

And even though they can't export it, I mean, it's crazy, even though they can't export as much because the Ukrainians have done a good job of degrading some of their systems.The fact that one, everyone's buying Russian oil now because of the sanctions before that, that people were buying Russian oil at a discount, that discounts gone and everyone's buying oil wherever they can.Yeah.So the Russians are just, you know, whatever they're selling, they're selling at more than twice the price of what they were selling before this.And they're selling whatever they can ship out.So the Russians are doing very well out of it.

I mean, from the point of view of immediate benefit, what Trump has done could not have been better for