00:00:43.320why do we really not know what's going on
00:00:48.280when you watch something and this is a normal human uh trait we we we have this innately so
00:00:58.420we can survive. We are not meant to live in chaos, and we're not meant to live in a world that is so
00:01:06.940unbelievably complex. So we're all looking for answers. We're all looking for meaning. We're
00:01:14.980looking for straight lines that make sense to us. Draw a line and say, that's what's happening.
00:01:21.460Unfortunately, in something like this, at this point, that instinct is going to hurt you.
00:01:26.120because what we're looking at right now is not clean. It isn't one plan. It's not just one guy
00:01:36.860or even two guys moving pieces across the board. It is competing interests stacked on top of each
00:01:43.120other, sometimes working together, sometimes working at cross purposes, sometimes colliding
00:01:49.360in ways nobody fully controls at all. So let me just take this apart. What are we looking at here?
00:01:55.580We're looking at first Iran. From the outside, it's easy to say Iran. And it's one thing, one regime, one decision maker, one intention. But it's not. It's not. You have the people who some of them are for the old regime. I think the majority are against the old regime. But we haven't even seen anything from them.0.53
00:02:17.560then you have the politicians who sit across tables and speak the language of diplomacy and
00:02:23.200understand sanctions and market pressures and what isolation is going to cost us and
00:02:27.800all of that crap okay and those people are now the the pragmatists they're the ones going uh we
00:02:35.780got to keep the country breathing where the economy is about to collapse i have a story
00:02:39.800on this coming up in just a minute i can i can i can quote them word for word the economy is about
00:02:45.660collapse. Then you have another group. You have the Islamic Revolutionary Guard. This is a
00:02:52.020completely different animal entirely. They don't just fight the wars. They are the ones that run
00:02:59.680industries. They control all of the ports. They move the money. They have built a banking and
00:03:06.140ecosystem that feeds off of chaos and instability. The more tension in the system, the more relevant
00:03:13.040they become, the more indispensable they become. And they're not dead yet. So when you see a
00:03:20.400negotiation on one side and a missile on the other, the easy answer to say, they're out of
00:03:24.760control. No, no, no. Sometimes they are. Sometimes they're not. Sometimes they're doing exactly what
00:03:32.440they were built to do, apply pressure without triggering collapse. Now let's look at the
00:03:40.340other players. Let's just look at China, because there was something going around yesterday going,
00:03:45.840China, you know, Donald Trump is playing and going after China. And I think that's part of it.
00:03:50.600But China's not in this for the ideology. Let's look at China here for a second.
00:03:54.980They certainly don't care about, you know, revolution and theology. What they care about0.97
00:04:00.660is flow of oil, trade routes, stability where it matters, instability where it can be managed.
00:04:08.480No one, well, except honestly the IRGC, nobody wants chaos because it doesn't benefit anybody
00:04:15.440if you want to live in today's world, okay?
00:04:18.760Iran is giving them away around all of the pressure to be able to keep them on their side.0.68
00:10:27.540And it's not right because we don't have all of the facts yet.
00:10:34.300And also, power at this level, when it is this complex, is not a single mind playing perfect chess.
00:10:41.400It is moving through advisors and priorities and different countries and public pressure and limited information.
00:10:49.160There are strategies, there are patterns, but there's also just reaction.
00:10:56.100There are moments when decisions are made with incomplete picture.
00:11:00.140And that's happening right now in real time in all of our information systems.
00:11:05.660so let me go through this because there are constraints here in america and there are
00:11:14.520things you need to understand and then i want to go through some of the things that people were
00:11:18.560saying and i want to explain them to you not justify anything just explain them to you so you
00:11:24.160you maybe can reduce the chaos in your day and understand this a little bit better
00:11:28.780Okay, so we have things that are really constraining us. Here in America, we're constrained by our war fatigue and our economic risk. Alliances that we have that have to be managed, not commanded. And everything we do carries weight beyond the immediate target.
00:11:53.560So when you're looking at the news of the day, especially when it comes to the war, you have to understand you're not watching one or two entities.
00:12:02.240You're watching a very crowded room, different players, different goals, overlapping strategies, some of them pushing towards stability, others benefiting from tension, few trying to shape outcomes that nobody fully controls.
00:12:16.460Iran's not a voice China isn't a puppet master the United States isn't operating without limits
00:12:23.180Israel isn't sitting still or controlling all of it the proxies are not background noise all of it
00:12:29.660is one giant stew and if you try to reduce this as people have been trying to do one villain one0.85
00:12:37.200genius one plan you're going to miss the signals that actually matter and I did my homework on
00:12:43.620this yesterday because I thought of something that really kind of scared me. Uh, and I thought,
00:12:47.980Oh, I haven't even thought of this. And I started doing my homework on it and I think we're okay.
00:12:54.620But with that one understanding, it gave me a completely different view of even this 10 point
00:13:01.880plan, which we don't even know what the 10 points are. Okay. We don't even know,
00:13:06.380but you got to look for the small shifts and the pressure points and the moments where things can
00:13:11.340tip not necessarily because somebody intended it but because the moving parts lined up in the wrong
00:13:17.880way or the wrong time or worse yet i've been telling you this for a while world wars are not
00:13:22.480started by one party um you know just being crazy it's usually started by one party just making a
00:13:30.000bad miscalculation that's how situations like this get away from people and that's why i urge
00:13:37.000podcasters and everybody else. Slow down. Slow down. You don't have to be right today. You don't.
00:13:43.540Just try to make sense. Try to help people understand what is happening right now.
00:13:51.180Because if we don't, if things like this get misunderstood, the next move is usually made
00:13:58.000with far too much confidence. We have to understand it first. And we have to understand
00:14:04.180first, that we don't understand it. That's why I think we need to slow down. That's what I think
00:14:10.920the media, new and old, is missing. So let me get to the problem that hit me yesterday. And I think
00:14:17.180I have a happy answer after doing some homework. But our side is being run by the world's best
00:14:22.600dealmaker, right? I trust that guy to sit down at the table against anybody and make a deal and
00:14:29.740think that deal is going to be in our best interest and we're going to get the best deal
00:14:33.220we could possibly get with whomever he's sitting across the table, okay?
00:14:37.760But he's used to sitting down with people who are buying buildings
00:14:41.000or even nations, that nations want to survive.
00:14:47.760There is a group of people in the IRGC that they think their win is death and chaos.
00:14:56.780We're judging all these non-existent 10-point deals and talking about dealmaking,
00:15:01.000But what if the people that actually have control don't want a deal?0.79
00:32:21.720See what he's saying here? And my job is to help you try to make sense of the world. And nothing in the world makes sense. And especially in war. And war with this kind of media. And war with this kind of access to the internet. And everybody has an opinion. And then you add on top of it, AI.
00:32:46.800i mean it's going to get more and more confusing every day so i'm trying to um not tell you what's
00:32:55.060right or what's wrong i'm telling you right now slow down slow down he's talking about the 10
00:33:01.140point plan and yesterday we were arguing i wasn't but many people were arguing the president is
00:33:07.520gonna he's just gonna let them charge for oil and he's gonna let them have the nukes well that would
00:33:13.460Okay. You don't even know which 10-point plan is real. Now, yesterday, you might have thought
00:33:20.780that you knew which one was real. But you know today, you don't. We have no idea which one is
00:33:29.420real. There are multiple versions of this. And so all of that energy was wasted yesterday.
00:33:35.240But let's just say that we did know that there was only one version of the 10-point plan.
00:33:43.460Should we argue about it and dig our heels in it right now if we knew there was one?
00:33:52.560My answer would be no, because we're missing one critical piece of information.
00:34:01.820Who are we dealing with on the other side?
00:34:08.240You have to reset your instincts entirely before you even start this conversation, because most of us in America, we think negotiation is about finding the overlap, you know, finding the places of commonality.
00:34:24.820You figure out what the other guy wants. You give a little, they you take a little, they walk away with something. And it's good for both. I mean, if it's a good deal, it's good for both parties. Right.
00:34:34.200But that game only works if you're all playing that game.
00:34:41.180But look at what we're dealing with right now.
00:34:45.120Donald Trump has just announced a two-week pause, ceasefire, bombing stops, window opens.
00:34:51.260By the way, the ceasefire held yesterday.
00:43:45.100You can still make your moves, but you better understand which side is actually holding the matches and which one has control of the doors.
00:43:53.500And I think watching this week, Trump understands exactly what he's dealing with.