US Allies REJECT Trump BEGGING For Help In Iran

Good morning everybody happy Monday we have an amazing show for everybody today what we have crystal.

Did we do trump really scrambling making a ton of comments yesterday evening he's begging other countries to help secure the straight and for moves he's saying maybe we shouldn't even be in Iran perhaps that's something he should have thought of before you launch this illegal war of choice. So a lot to get to there. We're also keeping the eye on the markets as they open this morning. Oil prices obviously have been spiking, hovering right now around $100 a barrel and huge potential economic fallout looming. Israel is reporting reportedly running low on interceptors. Murtaza Hussein is going to join us to break down the damage to that country. Trump and his FCC are threatening broadcasters who tell the truth about his war. They are demanding patriotic news coverage. Very dystopian thing

there. Tucker Carlson is claiming he's being spied on and may be charged by the Trump administration. And Trump official David Sachs says that he fears Israel may actually use a nuke, which is the first time the US administration has actually acknowledged that Israel is a nuclear power. And obviously the dire warnings he's sounding is pretty remarkable coming from someone who is inside of this administration.

Yeah, that's right. For the first US official ever, I think, to acknowledge Israel's nuclear program. So we do want to thank you, David Sachs, for finally acknowledging it out in the public. Thank you to everybody who's been supporting the show, breakingpoints.com, you can shine up and become a premium subscriber. If you can't afford it, no worries.

Please just go ahead and hit subscribe to our YouTube channel. Crystal, we never actually thought we would hit two million. I mean, theoretically, I knew it would come, but I actually did not ever think it would come this quickly. We're at 1.9 million, so let's get that extra 100K. All right, and then we can just worry about it, we can sail off into the sunset.

So 1.9 million, get us to two million, hit subscribe to our YouTube channel. And if you're listening to this as a podcast, please share an episode with a friend. We really appreciate it, it helps other people find the show. Also bear with us, Crystal's home, tornado warning here. So who the hell knows what's going to happen here in the DMV area. If anything happens tomorrow, there you go. That's the reason why. But yeah, why don't

we go ahead and start with the Straits of Hormuz and the crisis there?

Yeah. So Trump making all kinds of wild comments, posting untrue social, clearly scrambling. And increasingly, one of the goals of the war is clearly to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, which of course was open before we started this war. So really sort of backsliding here in any case, have some remarkable comments from Trump on Air Force One yesterday evening, where he is not only begging other countries to help us out,

threatening them and saying, you know, maybe he'll blow up NATO effectively if they don't join in and helping to solve the problem that he himself created, but also saying, I don't, I'm not sure we should be there in the first place, which is just like,

oh my God, like what is going on here? Let's take a listen to what he had to say.

Some of the countries would be helpful. Remember, it only takes a couple of people to screw up the straight, a couple of terrorists. You don't need their their military is to meet it, but all you need is a few people dropping mines here and there and you know you you louse it up. So we need I really I'm demanding that these countries come in and protect their own territory

because it is their territory. It's the place from which they get their energy. And they should come and they should help us protect it. You could make the case that maybe we shouldn't even be there at all, because we don't need it. We have a lot of oil. We were the number one producer anywhere in the world times two, by double, at least double.

Now I think it's much higher than that. But we do it. It's almost like we do it for habit. But we also do it for some very good allies that we have in the Middle East.

So, Sagar, we broke it, and now he wants the rest of the world to come in and fix it and say, and maybe we shouldn't even be there at all. Yeah, you think?

Yeah.

You think? Maybe so. Maybe we should have rethought of that before you launched this war on behalf of Israel.

This is just the clearest evidence that we have that not only was there no plan, but they really just didn't believe that the Straits of Hormuz would be closed. And I've seen a lot of talk about this. So of course they knew it was probable, or possible,

but the point is that they didn't think it was probable. Remember that during the Gulf War, President H.W. Bush, on the very first day of the Gulf War, announced a strategic petroleum reserve release. That was to calm the markets and to make sure that any sort of disruption would have flow as the war continued. They didn't do it until about 10 days or so. And remember, many, much of that oil is still yet to come online. It's going to take months for it to dribble out. Japan, many others are actually doing releases outside of the United States. The entire global economy is scrambling

and nothing says I had a plan that having to beg other countries to have to come in and to bolster the US Navy. I also think that what that does highlight is a massive humiliation for the United States at a big, like global strategic level.

This is the United States Navy, Blue Water Navy. Entire purpose of a Navy is to ensure commerce and trade on the high seas. And this is effectively a declaration we are not able to accomplish this mission without multiple other countries.

It also is straining US allies to the point where we're having to pit against each other in a way where the top allies of the United States in a matter of what 24 hours are all coming out and be like, yeah, I think you're on your own, man. And what this demonstrates is the chaotic nature, not only of Trump and his so-called like management of alliances,

but it actually really calls into question the entire point of the global empire. And, you know, you really don't want to use these things until not only can they do it, but then if you're going to use it, it better damn work. And so for Iran, this tiny country, which they claim, not tiny, but in terms of their military force compared to the United States, to be able to have this threat, which just so emasculates the global empire, what does that tell you about the emperor and about the empire itself?

It's an absolute humiliation on the world stage.

And that's before you even have the Houthis joining in. And I mean, that's what's crazy to me too, is like, we had a trial run of all this stuff with the Red Sea and the Houthis. Ultimately, you know, Biden infamously said, well, we're going to continue striking them. Do I think it's going to work? No. But we're going to continue doing it. Trump actually, you know, did the same thing for a while, blew a bunch of people up, realized it wasn't going to work

and just sort of quietly walked away. So he should have known because we had a trial run of this. I mean, same thing with the idea of regime change just coming from strategic bombing. We had a trial run of that in Gaza, where we in Israel committed a genocide, blew the whole area to smithereens. And guess what? Hamas didn't fall, which is a much weaker and less well-entrenched organization than ultimately the Iranian regime is. But I think what happens here is Trump really convinced himself and probably had

people like Netanyahu and Lindsey Graham and whoever in his year that this was going to be quick and glorious, that they could take out the Ayatollah. They had this opportunity to do it. That the whole thing, he was reportedly, according to Shreeda Parsi, telling Gulf Arab allies, the whole thing would be over in four days and they would completely capitulate. So even though obviously military planners knew that there was a possibility that the Strait of Hormuz would be impacted because the Iranians have been threatening this for years and years and years. He never thought it would get to that point. And now that we are at that point, the realization has set in that actually, I mean, I can't, I won't say we can't reopen it ourselves, but it would require a ground invasion, seizing

the shoreline, right? You would have, you know, the, the mountainous terrain there makes it very easy for Iranian forces to come in, you know, guerrilla warfare style, kill a bunch of our troops, take out a bunch of our equipment, and then, you know, and then retreat and hide and come back and do the same thing over and over again. If we and our allies do start escorting ships through the Strait of Hormuz, it makes everybody involved, including these, you know, cargo ships that these are just civilian sailors trying to earn a living. They have nothing to do with this conflict, makes them sitting ducks.

So it really is an impossible situation. The only way to solve this is through some sort of a negotiated end to this conflict. And at this point, Iran is not going to just back away without getting

something in return to ensure that they're not going to end up in this place again. So here's the latest Trump move. The Wall Street Journal reporting. This is incredible. The Trump administration, as soon as this week, plans to

announce that multiple countries have agreed to form a coalition. Might call it a coalition of the willing that will escort ships through this corridor, which runs along the Iranian coast. U.S. Officials said, listen to this last sentence, though. They're still discussing whether those operations

will begin before or after hostilities end. Kind of a key point there. And to your point, we've got Germany already taking a pass, next element. They're saying, yeah, we're good here, no thanks. We have the French similarly saying, no thanks,

we're going to pass. We have the Canadians saying, we're good here. We had Japan come out and say, no, we're not getting involved. So I don't know. At this point, there is no country that has raised their hand and said,

yes, please allow our ships to also be sitting ducks in this preposterous quagmire disaster that you've created for yourselves and ultimately for the world.

Yes, especially the Anglosphere. So, you know, there's NATO countries, but then there's who are the top US allies. It's gonna be Australia, it's gonna be the UK, it's gonna be Canada. Well, Canada come out and said, no. UK, Keir Starmer, the Prime Minister, just this morning,

no, we will not be joining into a war with Iran. And Australia also coming out. These are beyond even our closest allies, the so-called part of the Five Eyes, etc. But what that tells you is that when even those people are saying, no, we're not going to be joining you, it leaves you completely out on a limb and makes it so that you only have two options, some sort of escalation, a ground troop option. Currently, the internal reporting is they believe they want to try and cripple the regime

by taking over Karg Island, which is a possibility. Some 90% of Iranian oil is exported via Karg Island. The other, of course, is a negotiated settlement. But to have a negotiated settlement would be, of course, a humiliation also on the world stage, which is why, as Professor Robert Pape always says, the natural way that this goes about is escalation,

and it's why Trump is already inside of the escalation, and it's why Trump is already inside of the escalation trap. Why don't we play a three then of Trump now threatening NATO countries if they don't join in this mission? Let's take a listen.

They want to negotiate badly, as they should, but I don't think they're ready to do what

they have to do.

But I think they will be ready at some point. But we're doing very well with respect to that whole situation in Iran. We are talking to other countries about working with us on the policing of the strait. And I think we're getting good response there. If we do, that's great. And if we don't, that's great, too.

But remember, like, as an example, in many cases, they're NATO countries. We're always there for NATO. We're helping them with Ukraine. As many – it's got an ocean in between us. Doesn't affect us, but we help them. It'd be interesting to see what country wouldn't help us with a very small endeavor,

which is just keeping it straight up. And then my comparison is it's small because Iran has very little firepower left.

Very small endeavor, very little firepower. So little firepower, in fact, that the US Navy needs to beg NATO and all the other world powers to come in and to join us. I have been thinking though, if this war is the downfall of NATO,

maybe it'd be all be worth it, but that's like a big, a bigger picture thing. It is just insane and ironic. Also, it demonstrates how unilateral action will always come back to bite you because when you get into that escalation and now you don't have other countries who are bought into the message, it's not just our popular. If you think America's population, which is 10 times more brainwashed and more rah-rah jingoistic for pro-war propaganda, isn't on board with this war, according to every poll that we have out there, what do you think that the European population

is going to be thinking about this? And don't forget, is that while our gas prices are already high, I think it's like 3.70 or something right now per gallon, go take a look at European and natural gas and petrol prices out on the continent. It's not great. There are also many of the European countries, Crystal, and especially in NATO, are furious because the United States

is currently issuing sanction waivers to India and to any other country that wants to purchase Russian oil, which is already at sea. So they are massively enriching the Kremlin at this very time. The rest of NATO only really cares about Russia and Ukraine.

Okay, well, guess what? This is enriching that country to a huge degree. I mean, we are pumping money into the Russian war machine. Oil is currently trading around 98, $97 a barrel, the highest level in years. The Kremlin is doing backflips.

They want the price to go to some 140, 160 per barrel, which would be around five something dollars a gallon here in the United States. That is the best case scenario for them, which is why they're also giving all this intelligence to the Iranians,

which we're gonna spend a lot of time here talking about some of the strikes and some of the pinpoint Mortaza is gonna break some of that down. There is absolutely no way that's just Iran on its own. And how can you even be mad at Russia? As Trump even said, he's like,

well, it is hard to be upset because it's not like we don't give all this money to Ukraine. The one thing you say about Trump is at least he does occasionally tell the truth.

Yeah, well, I mean, Trump is right that the Europeans are more screwed on a fist than we are because we are a net energy exporter. We have more tools at our disposal. You know, if he wanted to, he could say, OK, we're not exporting any more of our oil. We're keeping it here domestically. That would cause an entire global shit show. I mean, if you think about it for the Europeans, they were very reliant on Russian gas. Obviously, they've largely cut that off. Now you've got the other primary source of their energy,

which obviously the Middle East now is imperiled at best. So they are kind of screwed. And I did see a report this morning, Scott Besant, Treasury Secretary, saying like, well, actually we're letting Iranian oil tankers, we're letting them, okay, transit the Strait of Hormuz

to continue to supply the global oil markets. And that seems to have led to somewhat of a tick down in terms of the oil futures. And I'm talking like a tick down to 96 instead of 98, you know, effectively. But but Trump and his regime are thinking that they can effectively bully our allies and the Europeans in particular into taking on this task after we created this whole entire mess. And they may be right because the Europeans are sort of embarrassingly, you know,

embarrassing at this point and weak and they're kind of screwed, etc. But thus far, they don't seem too willing to want to join in this one. You've got UN ambassador Mike Waltz, who was saying that not only do we request that our allies get involved here, we demand it.

Let's take a listen to that.

Is he hoping that those countries are going to send ships or have they committed to sending ships? And how soon will those naval escorts be ready?

Well, I'll leave those, you know, those conversations to him. The conversations are ongoing. I think there's an important point that's getting, you know, kind of missed in the conversation that 80 percent of the oil coming out of the Gulf heads to Asia. Only about 7-8 percent heads to the Western Hemisphere.

And to your point on escorts, look, back in the 80s, under the tanker wars, then the last time Iran tried to constrain global energy supplies, you had French, United Kingdom, even Soviet Union forces in there escorting their tankers out that were heading to their markets. And I think that's what President Trump is calling upon the world, saying the entire world is affected. Iran can't hold your economies hostage. And we

certainly welcome, encourage and even demand their participation. Welcome, encourage and even demand. And, you know, when you put out some rhetoric like that, to your point about the weakness, and then after those comments are made, the UK comes out and says, sorry, you're on your own for this one. Again, the level of weakness and says, sorry, you're on your own for this one. Again, the level of weakness. And this is really everything for a global empire,

a declining global empire like the US. Everything is about maintaining the facade. Everything is about saving face. And once that image is punctured, and once you're proven to be a paper tiger, and once the rest of the world says,

we've got our own ideas about things, that is the beginning of the end.

Yeah, I think it's really, I mean, yeah, I didn't want to see it. Unfortunately, it's highly predictable. This is like classic empire behavior. Let's put the German one up there on the screen, for example.

Here was Chancellor Merz reacting skeptical about expanding any EU operation in the Straits of Hormuz. What they talked about specifically, sorry, this was the foreign minister, he said he was skeptical about potential widening

of the mission in the Straits of Hormuz. We should be clear, I mean, they might make some token sort of announcement that they will help ensure navigation in the Strait of Hormuz after a cessation of hostilities, or Trump might take it as a victory that they'll say that they'll put their ships somewhere

near the Straits of Hormuz. But at the end of the day, if they're not sailing through, if they're not joining some sort of military action that's happening in the Straits of Hormuz in the way the United States Navy is currently being floated. That is a real screw you. And remember, as Crystal said, I mean, these countries are massively, they have massive more at stake here

than just the United States. Yes, in a drastic situation, we could just do an export ban. 90% of Japan's oil comes from the Straits of Hormuz, comes from, or sorry, comes from the Middle East. 40 something percent of China's oil

comes from the Middle East. The Europeans, it's not just an oil problem they have, it's really natural gas because of Qatar. So Qatar's natural gas, their LNG, has been massively important to their ability to try and wean somewhat off of Russian gas since the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine.

But you put all this together and the bottleneck of everything that's currently happening, and you are already seeing, remember, it's not just oil, it's not even just gas. We're also talking about helium. We're talking about fertilizer.

We're talking about urea. We talked a little bit about that earlier. I was just looking this morning, China has already released a strategic fertilizer reserve. I didn't even know they had such a thing. Smart behavior, by the way, real country behavior. Guess which country, major economy, doesn't have a strategic fertilizer reserve,

or any reserve of any kind? United States, which means our farmers are gonna be massively, massively at stake of the global market. And also, China and the US have an upcoming, Trump and China have an upcoming summit,

which is supposed to take place at the end of the month, and the president is even saying that he may delay any sort of that summit, which is supposed to take place at the end of the month, and the president is even saying that he may delay any sort of that summit or demand Chinese participation in some sort of Hormuz clearing operation if that summit were to continue to go forward. They don't care at all. This is good for them.

You know, there's nothing that they would love more than to have the United States embroiled in a weeks or years long war in Iran, which is they get all their interceptor, they're watching those satellites. I saw pictures come out of the PLA, the People's Liberation Army headquarters, where they're just monitoring the situation with these giant monitors and maps. And they're just sitting there watching these missiles go up, calculating trajectories,

looking at what's working, what's not working, who, by the way, controls the global drone supply parts. Where do you think it all comes from? Comes from China. All of these electronics, they're just sitting there quietly and preparing. Meanwhile, there's increased military activity in the Taiwan Strait.

Just to show you that, you know, they're pushing their proxies as well. Their main proxy is North Korea. North Korea just launched a ballistic missile two days ago over Japan. They're freaking out in East Asia. South Korean press is all over this. President Trump apparently had to hold some therapy session phone call with the president of South Korea, who is furious, obviously, about the removal of that batteries.

The global order itself is very, very shaky already as a result of this war. Shall we get to Kevin Hassett?

Or do you want to say- Yeah, let's go. No, let's go. Well, just one quick thing on that, you know, to your point about sort of like the global order is shaky. And in a lot of ways,

the global order is being determined as we speak, you know, depending on how this war shakes out, how long it is to the empire, what the Gulf countries do after this. And in that way, it truly is a world war. You know, a world war is not necessarily about like the number of people killed

or exactly the number of countries that are involved in hot military action. Right now, if you look around the world, you have a whole lot of countries in these interrelated hot war conflicts. But in any case, what a world war really is about

is about what the world order is going to look like coming out of that. And I think from that definition, we are already in one. Let's go ahead and take a listen to Kevin Hassett here. Very noteworthy, someone else made this point on Twitter that the administration, you know,

this wasn't Marco Rubio coming out. You didn't have the, you know, the military brass. It was largely like the economic guys who were sent out on the Sunday shows to make the case, which tells you a few things. I mean, it tells you maybe the number one thing that they're concerned about is really the markets. And that is an intentional Iranian plan. This is a much as much

about the Iranians waging economic warfare as it is about the military conflict. They see that dimension as being the most crucial because they need to exact that pain on America to force them to accept their terms and make sure that they don't end up in this situation again.

So Kevin Hassett, who's the chief economic advisor for Trump gets asked about, so hey, if this goes on for months, like what is this gonna mean for the economy? Let's go ahead and take a listen to how he responds. If this disruption on for months, like, what is this gonna mean for the economy? Let's go ahead and take a listen to how he responds.

If this disruption lasts for months, can the U.S. economy absorb the shock without a

recession?

First of all, it's not going to last for months. President Trump's team has briefed us that it's going to be four to six weeks, beginning two weeks ago, and that we're ahead of schedule- and so. Second if it

did last for a long time. It wouldn't really do a lot of harm to the U. S. economy now certainly if there be pocket but this book issues that we have to address. But the bottom

line is that the U. S. produces so much oil. That you can't really get GDP to go negative with an oil shock the way you could in the seventies. So we're in a very strong position. But it's really heightened the strength by the fact that we've got a productivity boom from artificial intelligence. We've got a capital spending boom because

of the big beautiful bill. And we've got incomes growing the fastest we've seen since back around twenty eighteen. And so all the fundamentals of our economy are really really strong. If Iran thinks that they're going to get President Trump to back down because they're gonna make our economy weak, then they just don't understand economics.

Mm.

So Zaghari basically just dodges there, like, well, it's not gonna last that long. They promised this is not gonna last that long. Oh, really? So how's it gonna end?

Because no one can say that. our GDP won't be affected. And he's not wrong. Yes, Exxon is gonna do great, okay? Midland, my home state of Texas, Houston, it's gonna be a fun time, all right, to be a club owner in the city of Houston. It's gonna be super fun to own a Ford dealer out in West Texas or in the Panhandle

or in Lubbock or any of these places. That doesn't mean that it's gonna be good for the rest of us. Already gas is 3.70 about a gallon nationally. Let's think about the scenarios where it's like 4.50, $5 a gallon. Let's say even average.

I would say one of the worst case scenarios is around $5 a gallon average. That would be probably $6.50, $7 a gallon in California. That is a disaster, I think, for normal American pocketbooks. That also translates into demand destruction. That's what our friend Rory has talked about,

where when gas starts to tick up that high, people are like, all right, I'm just not going anywhere. You know, I'm not driving to my uncle's house or something like that. But don't forget, we got the July 4th holiday in a few months, are people gonna be driving?

Right, so these are times usually when people are always traveling who are either driving, not to mention jet fuel. Jet fuel prices in Asia, I think in Singapore, jet fuel's going for $200 per barrel right now because there's something about the specific, I'm not an expert, but the experts that I have been reading have been warning that this is going to directly translate

into air traffic. Also, there's been just the war, the actual disruption. So while we were all sleeping last night, a bunch of flights which were on route to Dubai had to turn around in the middle of the air and actually go back to where they came from because of a huge fire that broke out.

Remember, Dubai is one of the busiest airport, maybe the busiest airport in the entire world. They handle tens of thousands of passengers per day, even on a limited schedule. So already they had to cancel flights for a prolonged period. They're warning people do not come to the airport.

They have immense censorship in the UAE. So I haven't even seen any real videos that have been coming out as a result. But just think about the danger to air traffic in one of the more busiest parts of the entire region, Qatar Airways, many of these planes. These are gateways to Asia. So this will have demand destruction at every level, from the war and to oil. So I think last thing, sorry,

go ahead. Oh, I was just going to say, I mean, that airport is also just like very crucial to the economy of the UAE. You know, it's billions of dollars every day in revenue that comes through there. And I did see images that purported to be of Fuel Depot near the airport on fire after, you know, presumably an Iranian drone strike. So yeah, their economies are still, you know, being messed with in a way that is probably going to be very difficult for them to recover because their brand is being destroyed. The Iranian foreign minister went and did a couple interviews

yesterday as well. And he said, hey, the Strait of H and foremost, it's open for anyone we want it to be open for it's not open for the US and their allies. But you know, for for other countries, sure, straight and foremost is open. So let's take a listen to that.

Well, as a matter of fact, this straight of hormones is open. It is only closed to the tankers and ships belong to our enemies, to those who are attacking us and their allies. Others are free to pass. Of course, many of them prefer not because of their security concerns. This has nothing to do with us.

And at the same time, there are many tankers and ships who are passing through the Strait of Hormuz. And I can say that the Strait is not closed, but it is only closed to American, Israeli, you know, ships and tankers and not to others.

Yeah.

But we do know, though, that obviously traffic through the Strait of Hormuz is greatly, greatly, greatly diminished because, you know, even if you are not U.S. Israeli flag tanker owned tanker, you're probably not feeling real safe going through there at this point. And the insurance rates have just astronomically skyrocketed. I mean, a bunch of insurers are just like, yeah, we're not insuring actually your voyage through this area.

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