00:02:31.460or their capacity was reduced to the extent
00:02:35.060that the Kuwaiti government had to come out and say,
00:02:38.220you need to reduce your consumption of power between the hours of 11 a.m. and 5 p.m.
00:02:46.320These are the peak heat hours. They're also the main working hours in the country.
00:02:51.060So this is a pretty substantial hit. And it means that the ability of Kuwait to keep on generating1.00
00:02:59.560both power and water has been reduced. And as with everything, nothing is permanently survivable.
00:03:07.680If you keep on hitting a target enough times, eventually it will stop working permanently.
00:03:15.200And these facilities were built over the Gulf, all over the Gulf, over a period of 50-60 years.
00:03:22.160It takes a long time to build this kind of infrastructure, and it develops slowly,
00:03:27.680and once it's destroyed, it's difficult to rebuild it. And with power and desalination,
00:03:33.280The important part is that they are the prerequisite for any other kind of work
00:03:42.040in a region where temperatures might go up to 50 degrees Celsius
00:03:47.500and in a region that is a desert and insanely short on water.
00:03:52.640So if you don't have functioning water desalination plants and power plants,
00:03:58.760you can't have air conditioning and you can't have water.
00:04:01.600And that means that until you restore these facilities, you can't fix the energy infrastructure.
00:04:10.700You can't fix the ports. You can't fix the airports, etc., etc.
00:04:16.420They are a prerequisite for everything else.0.96
00:04:20.000And Kuwait is enormously vulnerable to Iran because of the distances involved.0.89
00:04:25.400It's just a very short stretch from Iranian territories here to Kuwaiti territories.
00:04:32.800That makes it generally a lot more vulnerable.
00:04:35.940But the Iranians aren't necessarily firing just from here.0.92
00:04:38.940They're firing from all over the region.
00:04:41.060And in this kind of airspace, if you fly these drones a couple of hundred kilometers low over the water,
00:04:49.000it's not going to be easy to detect them.0.77
00:04:50.840And if you're Iran, you will rinse and repeat the same process, mainly targeting Kuwait and then probably Bahrain and or the UAE.0.93
00:05:01.780And what that does is that it forces an exodus of the population, because for all of these countries, 90% of the population isn't native.0.94
00:05:11.580And for these expats, if they can't work, they'll have to leave.0.52
00:05:15.420the lowest level of workers, the people who are coming from the Indian subcontinent mainly,
00:05:23.740these guys are kind of stuck. But for these economies to function, you have armies and0.98
00:05:30.760armies of Western expats and Egyptians and Palestinians and Lebanese and Moroccans and0.86
00:05:39.020Tunisians who are all there to earn a living. When you paralyze the economy
00:05:45.560through repeated military strikes, but also through in particular strikes on
00:05:50.660power plants and on desalination plants, you essentially force these people out.
00:05:56.480And the ability of the economy to recover degrades accordingly. If you're
00:06:03.400getting paid, I don't know, $10,000, $20,000 a month to live in the Gulf, you probably have a
00:06:10.220decent nest egg and you don't want to risk your life and you don't want to live without power,
00:06:19.940without air conditioning, without water. You cannot. You have to go. So what the Iranians
00:06:26.080are signaling here is that if the Americans keep on attacking them, they are going to make Kuwait0.97
00:06:32.200uninhabitable and after kuwait it'll be bahrain and then the uae and then maybe qatar and then
00:06:39.800maybe the eastern province of saudi arabia so essentially the states of the region collapse
00:06:47.560they will no longer function as states if they don't have the two most basic things power and
00:06:55.240water. And Kuwait is the particular focus for the Iranians because Kuwait is where the Americans
00:07:02.280have most of their land forces. And if you make the country uninhabitable, you force the Americans0.93
00:07:09.200out, you collapse the government system, you cause all kinds of chaos there, and eventually1.00
00:07:16.520it just gets annexed by the Iraqis after the Americans leave. I've seen some speculation on
00:07:23.320saying that the Iranians are going to launch a ground operation against Kuwait.
00:07:29.080This is nonsense. They can't do this in a war. That's not what they're doing.
00:07:33.940What they are in fact doing is basically making the state of Kuwait unviable and therefore not0.68
00:07:42.060worth protecting so that eventually when the war ends it falls in their lap. And they will do the0.97
00:07:48.660same for the UAE and they will do the same for Bahrain. And by doing that, and maybe Qatar at
00:07:55.040some point, even though the relationship with the Qataris is a bit better. And once they've done0.59
00:08:00.000that, the strategic value of the region would have declined enormously because the oil wouldn't be
00:08:07.880available for extraction because of the living conditions. Now, oil companies, when they have
00:08:14.660free logistics and they're able to transport things into the middle of nowhere, they have
00:08:20.140more resilience than anybody else. But if transportation is disrupted because aircraft
00:08:27.060are being attacked, because airports are being hit, because trucks are being targeted, nobody
00:08:33.860can do anything in that environment. So the Iranian threat here by targeting Kuwait and by0.86
00:08:39.900hitting power and desalination Kuwait, is that, look, we can make this entire region,0.89
00:08:45.020which is where the oil is, uninhabitable, without having to destroy the oil infrastructure itself.
00:08:53.160And it forces a choice on the rulers of these countries. Do you want to have these prosperous
00:08:59.060economies where you bring in these expats, and when you bring them in, you make an insane amount1.00
00:09:06.520of money off of them, even though you pay them very high wages? Or do you want to be broke0.99
00:09:12.780and have your countries broken? And therefore, it intensifies the pressure on the Gulf states
00:09:20.060to pick a side. And we're already kind of seeing it work, because the Qataris are again howling,0.99
00:09:26.360trying to mediate some kind of ceasefire between the United States and Iran.0.61
00:09:31.200it doesn't look like it's going anywhere yet uh the americans will have to back down for that to
00:09:38.340happen and the americans cannot leave the Strait of Hormuz in the hands of the iranians with the
00:09:45.180iranians able to tax the countries of the region to use it and basically making them admit that
00:09:51.760iran is the actual guarantor of security in the middle east for the americans this has become a
00:09:58.200choice between a strategic defeat and humiliation and just trying to endlessly continue the war.
00:10:07.560And because of pride, which is the devil's favorite sin, the Americans cannot simply say,0.97
00:10:14.720we're going to leave the region to the Iranians. Because the message that that sends to people like1.00
00:10:20.220the Ukrainians, to people like the Taiwanese, the Filipinos, the Baltic states, is that if the enemy
00:10:29.020makes this war expensive enough and damaging enough, we will have to go. So the Iranians are0.99
00:10:36.440smashing the bases in the region, and they are escalating their attacks against infrastructure,0.92
00:10:42.300and they're using Kuwait as an example. Kuwait has in total eight water desalination plants,
00:10:50.660The numbers differ across countries, but the rate of dependency on these power and desalination plants does not differ.
00:10:58.840This is the Achilles heel of all of these countries.0.96
00:11:03.820And now that the Iranians have started doing it to Kuwait, the message is, we will do it elsewhere.0.99
00:11:10.780The other thing that's happening is that the Iranians are forcing the Americans back by targeting the bases in the region0.94
00:11:18.140and by dismantling the radars that are in the region which exist to protect the assets in each0.85
00:11:26.900of these countries in the Gulf, but also they are part of a networked radar system that helps
00:11:33.720protect the Israelis. And what the Iranians are doing there is that they are just going through0.97
00:11:39.320the various bases in the region and attacking them repeatedly. And the latest and most frequent1.00
00:11:44.640target of attacks seems to be the Jordanians, with Jordan getting repeatedly hit by Iran
00:11:53.240because it has four or five bases that are being used by the United States in order to
00:12:00.040both defend Israel and conduct attacks against Iran.
00:12:04.220And the fact that Jordan is now the focus reflects a couple of things.
00:12:08.320It reflects the fact that the U.S. Air Force has had to move back from most territories in the region to Jordan and to Saudi Arabia.0.59
00:12:18.780And it reflects the slow degradation of defense capabilities that are available to the United States to keep on protecting the Israelis.0.75
00:12:29.140So the Iranians are doing two things with that.0.98
00:12:31.240they are wearing down the United States and they are signaling that the eventual target is going0.97
00:12:41.520to be the Israelis. For now, the Iranians are not attacking Israel. And we can talk about that in0.62
00:12:49.440the Q&A and discuss it in a little more detail. But not only are they attacking Jordan, they're
00:12:55.720also inflicting casualties there. And the Iranians, interestingly, released a statement thanking the0.98
00:13:02.160Jordanians for sharing intelligence with them that led to the successful targeting of Americans.0.77
00:13:09.620This is partly psychological warfare, but if you know anything about the Jordanians,0.60
00:13:16.700their hatred for the... or there are elements in Jordan that deeply hate the Israelis and the
00:13:24.080Americans and that are part of the Jordanian Armed Forces. And it wouldn't be too difficult
00:13:30.920to imagine them sending some messages here and there to friends that they have in Iraq
00:13:37.040to pass it on to the Iranians to say where exactly the American soldiers are.
00:13:45.620That's a possibility. The other possibility is that the Russians and the Chinese
00:13:49.400are helping the Iranians acquire information about the deployment of the American forces,
00:13:55.980and then that's being used to target Jordan. So neither of these possibilities would surprise
00:14:01.880me. I'm not taking a position in either of them. I don't know. But you see the confirmation here
00:14:08.640from the New York Times that this is the strategy pursued by the Iranians, because they go over how
00:14:14.620Jordan, which hosts major U.S. air bases, grew in importance in the run-up and the early days of the
00:14:20.320war as the Pentagon shifted a number of troops from Bahrain, the UAE, and Qatar to relatively
00:14:26.140more secure locations in Jordan and Israel. So what have the Iranians done? They've pushed
00:14:32.480the Americans out of the bases that are here, that are right across from Iran, and they forced them
00:14:39.900into Jordan and Israel, and into, I believe, bases in Saudi Arabia, near Mecca, and near Shadda.
00:14:51.540Why? Because there's a lot more distance between that territory and Iran, so it's easier to detect
00:14:57.140missiles, it's easier to interdict the missiles, it makes it harder for the Iranians to strike there.
00:15:03.340But what we're seeing from Jordan is that this isn't going very well. And pretty much every
00:15:08.520American base in Jordan in the last few days has been hit. Aqaba in the very south of the country
00:15:13.580facing Eilat, that's been hit. In Azraq, there is the Muwafaq Salty airbase, that's been hit.
00:15:21.060There is the King Faisal and Prince Hassan and King Hussein bases up and down the country. These
00:15:27.800have been repeatedly hit. And so they're wearing down the capability of the Americans to deploy
00:15:33.920there, intending to push them more and more into Israel. That seems to be the plan. And then0.94
00:15:41.900it's basically the last remaining target would be Israel, and they would just hammer at the0.92
00:15:50.480Israelis, knowing that the Israelis are low on air defenses and that the Americans are also
00:15:56.440running low on air defenses. This seems to be what the Iranians are trying to do here.0.99
00:16:03.920And we see Al-Jazeera mentioning the strikes on desalination plants.0.59
00:16:08.300We see this kind of attack against military bases in Kuwait.
00:22:12.860But Jordan is there mainly to stop an army from Syria
00:22:17.440going south and into the sheer length of Israel, or to stop an army from Iraq going west and heading
00:22:26.720towards Jerusalem. That's why Jordan exists. So with the Iranians now focusing their fire on Jordan0.96
00:22:33.460and ensuring that Jordan can't fulfill its function as a defender of Israel,0.53
00:22:39.380they make Jordan a lot less viable as a state because it's a very poor police state
00:22:44.600that relies on an infinite amount of welfare from the West for it to keep functioning.
00:22:52.360Without that backing from the West, without the aid that goes to Jordan,
00:22:56.980in a few years' time, the country would be bankrupt.
00:23:00.140And once it's bankrupt, the people rise up against the king because they view him as a traitor.
00:23:05.360And then they join Syria or Iraq, and they become enemies of Israel.0.88
00:23:10.960So what the Iranians are aiming for with this missile strategy is really to change the geopolitics of the region and to take the states that have been most closely aligned with the West because they have no choice but to align with the West.0.85
00:23:33.100Like Kuwait, if it wasn't for American backing, the Iraqis or the Saudis would take it.0.86
00:23:38.740Bahrain, if it wasn't for American backing, the Saudis or the Iranians would take it.
00:23:46.960So they're taking these states and they're attacking the infrastructure of these states0.85
00:23:51.920and the bases of these states in a way that threatens their long-term viability,
00:23:56.700in a way that threatens the ending of their independence.
00:24:04.540And if they're part of a bigger country, be it Saudi Arabia or Iran,
00:24:09.580the Iranians then no longer have to worry about an American presence there.
00:24:14.420They just have to worry about the existing neighbor.0.84
00:24:18.860That's the change that they're imposing.0.59
00:24:21.780And with Jordan, I mean, the number of power plants in Jordan is small.0.61
00:24:26.700The resources of the country are very poor, it relies on only one port, Aqaba, although obviously it trades with the Israelis and it can rely on Israeli ports, but basically they are just going through the American presence in the region and disabling it and forcing the Americas into Israel.
00:24:49.320And if they hit critical assets in these countries, like Jordan, a huge chunk of its exports comes from phosphates.
00:24:57.200You bomb the phosphates facilities that Jordan has, you bomb the ports from which the phosphates are exported,
00:25:04.260Jordan enters into a massive financial crisis, an economic crisis, that quickly becomes destabilizing.
00:25:11.060Bahrain, it relies on exporting refined products and aluminum.
00:26:14.560And if the war continues, and it can easily continue, given that the Americans can't, or they believe that they can't, give up the Strait of Hormuz and leave Iran as the dominant power in the region, then these things become real possibilities.
00:26:32.360the ending of these states that only exist because the British and the Americans say they should,
00:26:42.440that becomes a very real possibility. And that favors Iran over the long term, regardless of0.95
00:26:48.200how much punishment they take in order to achieve that objective. So that's how they're playing their hand.0.94
00:26:54.840now some more imagery of what's getting smashed here this is interesting reporting here that came
00:27:05.000out in march uh from a site called semaphore which says it specializes in intelligence
00:27:11.200and what they are saying is that the israelis said to the united states that it's running
00:27:18.120out of interceptors. And the reason that this matters is because as the Iranians go around
00:27:28.600attacking the American bases in Bahrain and in Kuwait and the rest of the region and in Jordan,
00:27:36.520one of the big targets has been radars. When you disable the radars, you shorten the reaction time
00:27:44.360of the ultimate target, which at some point in this war is going to become Israel.
00:27:53.480When you shorten that reaction time, you then force the air defense batteries to fire more
00:28:01.400missiles at each target because they are less certain that they can intercept it.
00:28:07.560So there's a logic here. There's a logic to keeping Israel until the very end.0.93
00:28:14.360If you go through this debasing strategy of preventing the Americans from functioning in their bases and disabling their radars,0.96
00:28:23.580you get to a point where when you attack Israel, you have to attack Israel with fewer missiles,
00:28:30.640because every missile is going to require more interceptors.0.52
00:28:34.520Once the interceptors are depleted, you have an open field, and you can attack a lot more effectively.
00:28:42.620that's the other part of the strategy so the iranians as best as i can tell are thinking
00:28:49.520about this very systematically whereas when you look at the americans and what they are doing
00:28:55.040strategically they said that they wanted to go into this war to stop iran from having a nuclear
00:29:00.240program and to weaken the missile and drone programs okay ignoring the regime change bit
00:29:08.720which Trump mentioned a couple of times and then dropped as part of his speaking points.