TRIGGERnometry - Our Thoughts On The Iran War

00:00:00.000 I'll be honest, I think this is going to be a very controversial episode, and a lot of people

00:00:07.240 are not going to like what we have to say. The reality is, this is one of the most important

00:00:13.460 topics that we have covered in the history of trigonometry. We are not experts, but what I

00:00:19.120 think we can do is share some of our impressions, including of a number of conversations we had

00:00:25.800 with people who do have access to the administration's thinking on these issues.

00:00:29.940 I'm not saying they're right.

00:00:31.040 I'm just saying this is what we have heard, and you take it or leave it as you want.

00:00:36.080 Almost every recession in history is caused by the primary form of energy

00:00:40.340 dominant at that time, spiking in price.

00:00:43.560 If we look closer to home, this war in Iran could have very, very real political consequences.

00:00:49.920 so francis another u.s trip summing up we haven't released most of the episodes we've recorded

00:00:59.980 but we wanted to record this to catch everybody up to where we are and what we've learned and

00:01:05.880 what we've seen here which is quite a lot and a lot of it is to do with the war in iran

00:01:10.440 and i'll be honest i think this is going to be a very controversial episode and a lot of people

00:01:16.440 are not going to like what we have to say which is why i think it's really important that we

00:01:20.220 explain how we've arrived at the views that we've come to so first of all i think it's worth setting

00:01:26.340 out how we've covered this war from the beginning and how we've we've began to shape our views on it

00:01:33.300 it's a great point so first of all i want to talk about how we came to this war even before it

00:01:40.380 started so we were broadly in support the 12 day war because we thought that was the most effective

00:01:46.180 way of dealing with iran's nuclear weapons it's really important that iran doesn't develop a

00:01:51.860 nuclear weapon for the stability of the middle east more broadly and for the globe as well we're

00:01:57.860 also products of the iraq war we came of age during the iraq war so whenever men someone mentions the

00:02:04.420 words regime change immediately we get an almost i would say visceral reaction because we saw what

00:02:11.460 happened when the invasion of iraq happened we saw what the long-term consequences spikes in

00:02:16.980 terrorism all of that and by the way what about libya what about syria etc so when this war was

00:02:25.380 initially being spoken about and then the bombing started i initially had quite a negative reaction

00:02:33.620 to it but one of the things that we have both learned in trigonometry is it's important to

00:02:39.380 realize that those are emotional reactions to put them to one side and then to analyze the

00:02:44.660 arguments as they are and decide independently and come to our own conclusions of what the best

00:02:50.740 arguments are and therefore the best possible course of action to take and one of the things

00:02:56.100 that really shaped my framing was the fantastic live stream we did with Eamon Dean and Richard

00:03:02.260 administrator. And Ayman Deen is a former Al-Qaeda MI6 double operative. And Ayman explained to us

00:03:10.040 the makeup of Iran. 25% in favor of the regime, 25% vehemently against it. So those are the two

00:03:18.180 polars. And 50% in the middle who essentially just want to live their lives. Immediately,

00:03:25.420 that's an alarm bell ringing in my head because I think, I thought to myself, well, that's surely

00:03:29.260 the potential for a civil war there if 98 were against a regime that would make regime change

00:03:36.060 not easier but more easy and then you have factored on top of it as you well know coming from the

00:03:42.140 soviet union as i would know from my mother's from venezuela everyone can now drink what

00:03:46.780 authoritarian regimes do is once they install themselves they then put in secret police they

00:03:53.660 then put in their own army to remain fiercely loyal to them and what the Iranian regime has

00:03:59.640 is the IRGC who are 200,000 strong military trained soldiers many of whom are highly

00:04:08.160 ideological if not fanatical and what the U.S. and its allies haven't dealt with is how do you

00:04:17.140 get rid of that how do you deal with that element of the regime well we'll get to that um it's

00:04:22.740 interesting for me because I didn't have the negative reaction you did because if you looked

00:04:28.100 at things that had been happening prior to that Venezuela I mean we don't know exactly we've done

00:04:34.500 an interview on this trip with somebody to Daniel DiMartino actually who predicted it was about to

00:04:38.700 happen um to talk about what is happening in Venezuela today and so far you know it's been a

00:04:44.500 success but the you know there's there's some questions about the long term obviously and Cuba

00:04:50.600 being another but you know the idea that we that America under President Trump is reshaping the

00:04:58.120 world to the benefit of the United States and the West to me was a good thing so my initial reaction

00:05:05.100 was what we said when we first arrived here three weeks ago on Joe Rogan's show which is the coin

00:05:11.080 is in the air nobody knows how it's going to land and let's wait and see and the one thing that I

00:05:17.560 it's worth also saying is we're not experts we're not claiming to be experts we're not saying anyone

00:05:23.000 should listen to our opinion about this and they really shouldn't listen to our opinion in isolation

00:05:29.080 but what i think we can do is share some of our impressions including of a number of conversations

00:05:35.960 we had with people who do have access to information and who do have access to the

00:05:41.160 administration's thinking on these issues that we had privately and publicly so we interviewed

00:05:46.200 ted cruz for example but we also spoke to a lot of people every time we come to the us what we

00:05:51.720 do is we meet lots and lots of people from different walks of life different backgrounds

00:05:55.480 and we try and gather a different different sets of perspectives and if you go back even further

00:06:01.160 to before this conflict and before the 12-day war and really if you look at our entire coverage of

00:06:07.800 this issue of the middle east it wasn't an issue that we ever really talked about the only time we

00:06:13.960 think we talked about was with Melanie Phillips I would say 2018 or 2019 and as I said to her in a

00:06:20.120 subsequent interview I didn't buy a lot of the things she was saying at the time and I don't

00:06:24.360 think you did either no to be honest then I think Noam Dwormann raised it as an issue like I think

00:06:30.920 in the final question in the interview we did with him which would have been 2023 2023 and then

00:06:37.000 October 7th happened and when October 7th happened we actually did the very thing that we're doing at

00:06:42.040 the moment which is we talk to people from different perspectives when it when it came to

00:06:46.680 the gaza issue we had ben shapiro natasha hausdorf and other people who are very pro-israel we also

00:06:53.960 had basim yusuf and norman finkenstein and others and dave smith since obviously as well

00:06:59.800 who have a different perspective we talked to people from all different sides and for about a

00:07:04.120 year we didn't express any opinion on it at all then eventually and it was my video but actually

00:07:11.400 it was very much informed by conversations you and I had been having the entire time after

00:07:15.540 listening to people from different sides. We did a video, I did a video called Why I'm Off the

00:07:20.700 Fence About Israel's War in Gaza specifically, in which basically I kind of broke down why the

00:07:27.220 arguments of the people who are vehemently pro-Palestine didn't make a lot of sense to me.

00:07:32.940 And really, the main thing I was saying there is that I refuse to be a hypocrite.

00:07:37.120 i know for a fact that if britain or america or any other country frankly was attacked in the way

00:07:43.820 that israel was on october the 7th we would do to the people who did that exactly what israel has

00:07:50.760 done to hamas and unfortunately a lot of the civilians that hamas is using as human shields

00:07:55.920 in gaza so i refuse to sit in the comfort of of my home or air conditioning studio and have all

00:08:04.060 these opinions about how israel is is doing things that they shouldn't be doing even though i know

00:08:08.780 that that is exactly what we would do right so my point being is what we try and do about

00:08:15.900 all of these issues is actually something that someone came up to us in new york last time we

00:08:21.020 were there uh and said you know what i love about your show is you guys do sense making

00:08:26.140 and i was like what does that even mean and basically when we had the conversation with

00:08:30.460 him we came to the point where we understood sense-making is when you're not just expressing

00:08:36.140 an opinion but you actually explain how you arrived at that opinion and you're willing to

00:08:40.540 change your opinion when you're presented with better arguments or with more information

00:08:45.260 and that is exactly where we are today and so a lot of people who hate us have tried to position

00:08:51.100 us as pro-israel we're not pro-israel we're not anti-israel we're not pro-palestine we're not

00:08:57.660 anti-palace and we're pro the truth and that is our approach to this current conflict as well

00:09:02.740 absolutely and what's really important when you're dealing with these kind of conflicts

00:09:07.400 is you try and be objective about it because what we talk about on the show they're important topics

00:09:12.980 and they're important subjects but the reality is this is one of the most important topics that

00:09:20.340 we have covered in the history of trigonometry not just because it's a war and because people

00:09:24.720 are dying which is obviously awful but also because the implications from this war economically

00:09:32.280 could be disastrous and politically as well yes and could have a knock-on effects not only for

00:09:39.700 the politics in america or the politics of iran but but politics right the way through the globe

00:09:45.560 because if the global economy crashes then that is going to mean upheavals socially economically

00:09:52.520 and politically right the way through Europe, right the way through Asia, and in countries

00:09:57.620 like Australia as well. And I think it's important to say that when you say the global economy

00:10:02.640 crashes, or I think a better way to frame will probably be there's a global recession.

00:10:06.380 That's not just like something we heard someone say. We will talk in a bit about the rationale

00:10:11.940 for seeing that coming down the pipe. But first, let's start with, like I said, where we started

00:10:17.600 three weeks ago. We were on Joe Rogan's show. We said the coin's in the air. Nobody knows how it's

00:10:21.540 going to land. And what I said is, I'd love to know what the strategy is. What is the thinking

00:10:26.960 of how you achieve your end goals, your stated objectives? And let's just restate those for

00:10:32.500 the purposes of the discussion. The United States has set out its objective as preventing Iran from

00:10:39.000 nuclear breakout, which means enriching uranium to weapons grade and building a nuclear weapon,

00:10:45.320 to degrade their ability to terrorize the region

00:10:49.460 with Hamas and the Houthis and Hezbollah,

00:10:52.700 to degrade their ballistic and drone missile program,

00:10:56.460 and regime change.

00:10:57.900 I mean, they did say this, right?

00:10:59.240 They wanted to change the regime,

00:11:00.580 which is why they killed a hell of a lot of people

00:11:02.380 at the top of the regime.

00:11:04.260 And so you have to assess success or failure

00:11:07.200 against those criteria.

00:11:09.120 Now, I say I'd love to know what the strategy is.

00:11:12.480 unfortunately one of the things that became apparent to us pretty quickly and I mean from

00:11:19.020 talking to people within the administration journalists who are in the know other people who

00:11:24.820 you know I don't want to get into the details of who they are and what they do but nonetheless

00:11:28.520 these are people who have insider information not saying they're right I'm just saying this is

00:11:34.580 what we have heard and you take it or leave it as you want there is no plan and there was no strategy

00:11:40.940 and what they all say pretty much in the same terms is they thought after Venezuela

00:11:47.240 that they're basically like unstoppable and they can just oh we did this we did this we did this

00:11:53.760 we did this and there is no plan there is no strategy for how you get there and as we sit

00:12:00.380 here today recording this I think the facts on the ground bear that out you see that the US

00:12:10.020 military has been extraordinarily successful in destroying Iranian military assets, sinking the

00:12:16.260 Navy, taking out the leaders and whatever. But Iran retains the main thing, which is control of

00:12:23.460 the Strait of Hamas. And we'll talk about why that's so significant in a moment. And there is,

00:12:31.500 from what we understand in the conversations that we have, particularly the discussion we've had

00:12:35.280 with Robert Pape, which I hope more people go and watch, there is no military option

00:12:41.400 that allowed you to reopen it short of putting Marines and the airborne, which are already

00:12:47.040 moving to the Gulf, on the ground on Kargah Island and the coastline of the Gulf.

00:12:53.160 But that will lead to more escalation.

00:12:56.140 And it's very, very clear that that is what's already happening.

00:12:59.140 Every time Israel strikes an Iranian asset that they're not supposed to, let's say,

00:13:03.380 might lead to escalation, the Iranians immediately respond by bombing the equivalent thing in the

00:13:08.980 Gulf, Arab countries. So the first thing to say is, for all our desire for there to be a plan,

00:13:17.020 all the signs are there was no plan. And that's the concern, because people compare it to Venezuela

00:13:24.300 and go, look, well, this happened in Venezuela. Number one, Venezuela wasn't regime change.

00:13:30.000 Delcey Rodriguez, who is now president or de facto president of Venezuela, was part of the regime.

00:13:35.840 She was a very senior part of the regime.

00:13:38.300 What they did, and their plan was very clear and very simple.

00:13:41.840 They're going to effectively arrest Chavez on foreign soil and his wife and take them back to the United States.

00:13:49.120 They had already had in mind a successor, who was Delcey Rodriguez, who I think it's fair to say knew about it.

00:13:56.700 I would be highly skeptical that she just woke up one day and went, what, me, presidente? What a surprise.

00:14:03.240 No, that had been planned in advance, and it was almost seamless and smooth the way that she was just put into power.

00:14:11.220 But if you look at the rest of Venezuela, everybody else is still in place.

00:14:17.600 Everything, the colectivos, which is essentially the armed thugs who keep the Venezuelan people, they're still there.

00:14:24.200 The military, they're still there. In fact, Trump said that the reason he didn't want Machado in power, Karina Machado, who is widely recognized in Venezuela to be the rightful leader, is because the military didn't respect her.

00:14:38.080 Which is what Trump's works. The military didn't want her. So he didn't want to destabilize the country.

00:14:43.520 And also what you have in Venezuela is it's a pretty homogenous Christian country,

00:14:49.600 conservative Christian country, where the majority of the people there are sick of the regime.

00:14:55.820 They didn't want it.

00:14:57.140 They're not religiously ideological in the same way people in Iran are.

00:15:02.040 And as a result of that, it's a much, much easier fix.

00:15:06.180 Right. And so this is the thing is if in Iran, if what we were talking about is what I like to call regime adjustment,

00:15:12.600 which is what you had in Venezuela, that would be one thing.

00:15:15.820 Or, frankly, if you were talking about a military operation

00:15:18.460 simply to degrade their ballistic missile and drone program,

00:15:21.400 try and get some of the nuclear material destroyed as well,

00:15:25.060 that makes perfect sense.

00:15:26.660 Whether you're going to achieve it successfully,

00:15:29.140 you know, there's maybe some questions about that.

00:15:31.320 But once you start taking out the regime

00:15:33.580 and then now potentially putting boots on the ground,

00:15:36.980 that's different.

00:15:37.600 And also, Venezuela didn't have control over 20% of the world's oil,

00:15:41.160 25% of the world's LNG, and 50% of the world's trade fertilizer, to say nothing of plastics,

00:15:47.900 helium, etc., which these are very important things for the global economy.

00:15:51.940 So the first sign for us was talking to people inside the administration and other people who

00:15:58.800 understand these things. And these are not people who are Trump haters. These are not people who

00:16:02.700 are Israel haters, who expressed the real concern that there was no plan and there is no strategy.

00:16:07.640 Now, look, sometimes you don't have a plan, but you can still style it out.

00:16:11.400 That can happen.

00:16:13.420 Then we talked to people from across, and we will continue to talk to people from across

00:16:18.480 the political spectrum and across the spectrum of opinions on this conflict.

00:16:23.000 First, we had Ted Cruz on.

00:16:24.580 We had Mehdi Hassan on.

00:16:26.280 And we had Robert Pape on.

00:16:28.000 We had Mike Baker, who's an ex-CIA guy.

00:16:30.460 And we'll probably continue to have conversations from different perspectives about this.

00:16:34.400 and you have to say

00:16:35.800 our interview with Ted Cruz

00:16:37.140 is very special

00:16:38.320 it's a very special interview

00:16:39.860 for us

00:16:40.360 it was a great honor to meet him

00:16:41.700 to interview him

00:16:43.220 in his office in the Senate

00:16:44.620 I thought he was incredibly

00:16:46.400 articulate about

00:16:47.460 the evils of communism

00:16:48.500 I thought he was

00:16:49.920 he was very good

00:16:51.460 at reminding

00:16:52.140 us and our audience

00:16:54.560 about

00:16:55.000 the power of leadership

00:16:56.980 with the example

00:16:57.940 of Ronald Reagan

00:16:58.580 but

00:16:59.420 when we talked about

00:17:00.900 the off-ramp

00:17:02.760 for this conflict

00:17:04.400 i didn't hear anything that made any sense to me you know what he said is well the people of iran

00:17:10.640 have to decide their own future i don't see how that happens here there is no evidence that the

00:17:18.160 people of iran are going to rise up and overthrow the regime at this point i hope to god i'm wrong

00:17:23.920 but at this point what we've seen is there were mass protests were encouraged by people in the

00:17:28.880 the west the leaders of those protests were all slaughtered and now you can take out one commander

00:17:36.100 and another navy admiral and this and this and that but nothing is happening and i don't think

00:17:43.780 it will because i always say to people like imagine like we're not fans of the current

00:17:49.480 british government but if france you know did a targeted strike on 10 downing street i don't think

00:17:55.840 we'd all rise up and overthrow the Labour Party. We'd think about defending our country from the

00:18:00.580 French, right? When your country's attacked, what you do is rally around the flag. And also,

00:18:05.960 the people who were prepared to really overthrow the regime, unfortunately, they've all been killed.

00:18:13.060 The news doesn't just tell you what's happening. It often tells you what to think is happening.

00:18:18.560 And these days, the biggest red flag isn't what's said, it's what gets left out. That's why I use

00:18:23.540 Ground News. It's the only app that compares how the same story is covered across the political

00:18:28.480 spectrum and show you what whole audiences are not being told. The blind spot feed is one of

00:18:33.620 my favorite features. Every day it flags upwards of 20 stories that are being ignored either by

00:18:38.480 the left or the right. Follow along at ground.news.com. Like this, a new study from UC San

00:18:44.540 Diego found that climate change cost almost twice as much as we thought because earlier estimates

00:18:49.700 left out damage to the oceans. That's a pretty big update, and yet no coverage. Literally zero

00:18:54.260 came from right-leaning outlets. Or this. A recent Gallup poll found trust in the media has hit a

00:18:59.540 record low, with just 28% of Americans saying they trust newspapers, radio, and TV to report the news

00:19:05.580 accurately and fairly. That's a staggering result, but if you only read left-leaning news, you likely

00:19:10.760 never saw it at all. Go to ground.news slash trigonometry to get 40% off their unlimited

00:19:16.080 advantage plan, the same one we use, and stop being managed by the media.

00:19:21.840 And that's the real concern, because you go, if there is no plan, which there doesn't seem to be,

00:19:29.260 then effectively what we're doing is we're moving towards chaos, because you need a plan. If you

00:19:35.440 think about Vietnam, what was the objective of Vietnam? To win hearts and minds. Well,

00:19:41.200 of course we failed because there was no clear strategic plan in place. And then what you have

00:19:46.480 is then you have the Americans who have got one objective and then you've got Israel who have got

00:19:51.540 another objective. And you've got the Gulf states who are also there much more like Israel. We'll

00:19:55.340 talk about this later as well, for sure. Yeah. So you're just going, if the objectives are not

00:20:02.200 aligned, if we don't have a clear focus and a clear strategy, if we don't have the same objective,

00:20:08.460 then how are we going to be successful it's like think about this show if you had one objective

00:20:13.960 I had another objective even with a company as small as trigonometry in a YouTube channel

00:20:19.400 your objectives are misaligned therefore you are not going to be working in tandem therefore you're

00:20:26.920 not going to be working in an alignment and what will naturally happen is that there will be

00:20:31.080 conflict not only with Iran but also with each other and you look at for instance what happened

00:20:37.140 with Israel bombing the oil plantation, not the oil plant, the oil factory.

00:20:42.920 What's the word?

00:20:43.580 I think it was gas, actually.

00:20:45.600 It was a gas.

00:20:46.600 Apologies.

00:20:47.660 In Iran.

00:20:48.660 And you look at that and you think to yourself, well, the Americans, Trump was obviously very

00:20:54.520 angry and very upset about this, and quite rightly so, because it couldn't be interpreted

00:20:59.200 as anything other than an escalatory move, an escalatory tactic.

00:21:04.240 Now, look, there is some debate about this because there are people who say, well, actually, Trump is pretending to pursue negotiations while actually secretly allowing Israel to bomb because it puts Iran in a pickle.

00:21:16.820 We'll talk about Israel in a second, but let's just come back to the conversations that we had.

00:21:22.620 We had Ted Cruz, we had Mehdi Hassan.

00:21:25.460 And look, I didn't find Mehdi's arguments particularly persuasive either, but it's important to have people from his perspective on the show, and I'm very glad he came on.

00:21:33.120 But then we had Robert Papon. And that's where I think both of us felt that this was the first time we were presented with arguments where we couldn't really find a gap or a hole in them.

00:21:48.680 There are some concerns about what you're saying, but it's probably worth restating for people who didn't watch that interview.

00:21:54.080 I mean, he's a guy who's been studying air campaigns for over 30 years.

00:21:59.880 He predicted the 12-day war.

00:22:01.640 He predicted that it would lead to a regime change war later.

00:22:05.620 And his arguments are basically this.

00:22:07.600 First of all, the nuclear material was not destroyed in the 12-day war.

00:22:11.460 We know that for a fact, because otherwise, why would this war be happening, right?

00:22:15.620 So the nuclear materials are still there, and they're now dispersed around Iran.

00:22:18.780 they are not going to be secured through extract and people are openly saying this

00:22:27.400 whether it's bb netanyahu or mark levin on twitter i saw him today saying you can't get

00:22:33.500 nuclear material without going into the tunnels where it's stored and getting it out which means

00:22:38.380 boots on the ground right so you're not going to get the nuclear materials without far far far more

00:22:46.060 escalation. And even that is a risk. And his argument is the U.S. is now in an escalation

00:22:51.580 trap where every step they take to escalate will be met by Iran with more escalation that

00:22:58.700 creates now permanent damage. So rather than temporarily closing the stratophimus,

00:23:04.380 what you end up with is destruction of Gulf Arab and Iranian oil facilities, which means

00:23:10.480 that the current spike in oil prices, which if it lasts for a few months will cause a global

00:23:15.860 recession could actually last a year or more if that happens so this escalation trap is there and

00:23:21.480 so in other words unless the united states is prepared to do to iran what the western allies

00:23:27.720 did to japan and germany there is actually no way of achieving the objectives of getting rid of the

00:23:33.900 nuclear weapons and of reopening the share of emotion and i haven't heard and we've tried to

00:23:39.200 find people who offer a counter perspective to that i haven't heard a persuasive argument about

00:23:43.680 why he's wrong. Well, this is the worry because then you also, what the Americans are trying to

00:23:49.600 do now is have talks in Pakistan with the Iranian officials. But Iran doesn't seem to be wanting to

00:23:56.980 play ball. And if you look at it from an Iranian perspective, why would they? Why would they? You

00:24:02.660 have started a war. You have killed their leader. You have killed many of the highest ranking

00:24:07.460 officials. The Iranians have come out and said, look, Trump has tricked us twice. Why would we

00:24:13.440 believe him why would we actually go and try and negotiate with him and if you look at it another

00:24:19.200 way look they can continue going down this path but the reality is iran holds the major trump card

00:24:27.640 which is the strait of hummus eventually we are going to have to sit down and have a negotiation

00:24:33.500 with the iranians and what robert pape was saying is that it would have been far better to do this

00:24:40.960 and accept the original deal that was on the table

00:24:44.220 than to go bomb, start a war,

00:24:48.260 when the reality is that Iran are now, to put it bluntly,

00:24:52.720 a little bit annoyed about what's happened

00:24:54.500 and are very much going to be less likely to want to agree a deal.

00:24:58.840 Well, and forget about annoyed.

00:25:01.340 There's also the real politic of this,

00:25:03.160 which is they hold the Trump card, as you said,

00:25:06.700 and they know that America is in an escalation trap.

00:25:09.980 So it's perfectly within reason that they don't have to reopen the Strait of Hermos because it's not closed.

00:25:15.820 The Strait of Hermos is not closed. This is what people need to understand.

00:25:19.260 What they've done is they effectively made it a toll booth where they let in the ships that they choose

00:25:24.840 and don't let in the ships that they don't choose.

00:25:28.020 And this is where the problem is because a lot of people say, well, you know, there's a secret plan.

00:25:32.020 There's a strategy. You know what this is really about?

00:25:34.140 This is about screwing China and Russia because Iran can no longer send drones to Russia

00:25:39.200 and China gets so much oil from Iran.

00:25:42.120 Well, the two problems with this, in terms of China, China is still getting the oil.

00:25:47.340 And in terms of Russia, OK, Russia is not getting Iranian drones,

00:25:51.700 but they're making them themselves and haven't for a long time using Iranian designs.

00:25:55.780 And also because of the pressure on the oil price,

00:25:59.480 Russia, the United States has lifted sanctions on Russia

00:26:03.840 And Russia is now selling its oil in a way that it couldn't before.

00:26:08.060 So this is actually helping Russia, and it's not hurting China.

00:26:12.760 Who it's really, really, really hurting is Europe, less so America, but Europe in particular.

00:26:19.580 And that's another concern, because when you look at, for instance, the war in Ukraine,

00:26:24.960 more money is now flowing into Russia, which means Russia will be able to buy better armaments.

00:26:30.440 It will be able to ramp up its efforts on the war on Ukraine.

00:26:34.180 It will also mean as well that Europe is now torn because, I mean, look, the alliances between the U.S. and Europe, they've always been turbulent at times, calmer at others.

00:26:48.360 But for looking back over my lifetime, I think this alliance between the U.S. and Europe has been its most fraught in my lifetime, certainly.

00:26:58.220 Oh, sure.

00:26:58.720 So you're looking at the way that European leaders are behaving, you're looking at the way Trump is behaving, and you're thinking to yourself, I mean, the fractures are looking ever wider.

00:27:10.620 And you're really worrying, could these fractures become permanent?

00:27:15.240 And that would mean a massive, massive problem, particularly when it comes to a China, which is becoming ever stronger, ever richer, and we are becoming weaker because our alliances are becoming more and more frayed.

00:27:28.720 which is a very real concern, because take Britain, for example.

00:27:33.000 I mean, if we got invaded by Liechtenstein now with our armed forces,

00:27:37.080 I'm not sure how good a fight we'd be able to give.

00:27:40.040 We are severely weakened.

00:27:42.200 And you're looking at Europe.

00:27:45.060 Practically everyone, particularly, you know, Spain, Italy, England, France, or the UK,

00:27:51.220 we're in real debt.

00:27:53.440 We can't even muster the resources to defend ourselves.

00:27:58.040 let alone go and defend other countries and we saw that with attacking bases in cyprus

00:28:03.720 where it was like well we can't defend you and the cyprus were like well then what's the point

00:28:08.720 and you having bases here if you literally can't defend us right and look whether you you are

00:28:14.300 someone who is super pro-trump or you're super anti-trump actually it works both ways because

00:28:19.120 you could say well you know trump trump is a is a stupid arsehole he's doing all this stuff

00:28:25.280 and this is really, you know, it's all his fault.

00:28:28.600 Okay, but the problem is, if you are someone who thinks

00:28:31.920 European countries shouldn't be involved in this conflict,

00:28:34.280 which personally I think makes a lot of sense, if I'm being honest,

00:28:37.560 the problem is, Europeans are going, well, this is not our war,

00:28:41.540 and Americans are going, okay, well, Ukraine is not our war,

00:28:44.160 and we've been the country that's contributed the most

00:28:47.120 to Ukraine's defence.

00:28:49.380 So if European countries expect America to defend Europe's border,

00:28:53.320 you can see why that would come with some cross obligations the other way right so this fracturing

00:29:01.160 is bad for everyone in my opinion and it doesn't and that's true irrespective of where you place

00:29:08.540 the blame personally i thought for example what both trump and marco rubio said earlier in the

00:29:13.900 year at davos and at munich was actually broadly speaking true which is european countries have

00:29:19.080 been taking the piss as we say in the uk they've been taking advantage of america they've not

00:29:24.260 funded their own defense properly they've destroyed their own economies on purely luxury beliefs

00:29:29.400 like net zero uh which means they actually can't defend themselves anymore um and i think that's

00:29:35.760 all very true but i also think this conflict plus the the hostile rhetoric from the u.s

00:29:41.900 has pushed europe away and it's just a fraught situation for the entire western world as a

00:29:47.660 result it is a fraught situation for the western world there is one positive that i would like to

00:29:53.180 actually i know it's not on brand but there is one positive which is i do think and i hope this could

00:29:59.220 be the death of net zero because you can have luxury beliefs for instance we're recording this

00:30:05.120 in west hollywood it's a beautiful place you walk around why can't trans women be women it's wonderful

00:30:10.900 who cares i've got a i've got a 12 coffee in my hand the sun's shining the sun is going to shine

00:30:16.460 tomorrow but if you literally can't afford to heat your house and that might very well be the income

00:30:22.360 for a large portion of people in the uk if energy becomes so expensive the businesses will eventually

00:30:31.640 go out of business or struggle to function or and struggle to do the basics eventually the bubble

00:30:38.860 might pop on net zero and we think to ourselves well look what's happening around the world look

00:30:44.060 course happening with the Strait of Hormuz. The reality is we have the potential to frack gas

00:30:49.460 in our country. We can move to become more energy independent. And as a result of that,

00:30:56.300 we are going to be more insulated from shockwaves like the war in Iran. So there is the potential,

00:31:02.940 if we're looking at this through a positive light, which I'm always trying to do, of actually,

00:31:08.700 this might be an instance where the uk will wake up it may not be the case but there is that

00:31:15.080 there is hopefully that potential i hope that happens i also see a lot of the pro net zero

00:31:19.860 lunatics now saying uh the war in in iran shows that we must make ourselves independent of fossil

00:31:25.760 fuels i mean you physically can't do it but lunatics don't care about things like that

00:31:30.560 look let's talk about the economic side of it because um it's something that i think the

00:31:36.680 overwhelming majority of people haven't appreciated. The reality is, I mean, Neil Ferguson,

00:31:43.760 frequent guest of the show, who I think I'm being fair to Neil in saying he was broadly

00:31:48.680 favorable about this conflict at the beginning. He has now written an article in the free press

00:31:54.080 in which he basically breaks down why a global recession is pretty much inevitable at this point.

00:31:59.780 And his argument is almost every recession in history is caused by the primary form of energy

00:32:05.820 dominant at that time, spiking in price. So when coal was the dominant form of energy that we used,

00:32:14.240 a coal price spike, mainly due to coal miner strikes, led to recessions. Most of the recessions

00:32:21.780 were caused by that. Likewise, in our times, when oil has been the primary energy that we use,

00:32:28.480 oil price spikes have caused recessions. And his argument is, we are now already at the point

00:32:35.060 where that's going to happen now let's talk about why iran doesn't produce 20 of the world's oil but

00:32:41.060 if you again people should go back and watch the robert paper interview the strait of hermoz is

00:32:47.300 the the place through which 20 of the world's oil is transported to the rest of the world from

00:32:52.260 various gulf countries that's also true of i think 25 of the world's liquid liquefied natural gas

00:32:59.140 half of the world's traded fertilizer i was talking to a friend of mine who's a farmer

00:33:03.780 in australia he was saying they can't get enough fertilizer just to cover the planting they need

00:33:10.220 to do now and i and we're not talking about the price has gone up we're not talking about

00:33:16.860 this temporary delivery issues they literally the country of australia cannot get enough fertilizer

00:33:24.340 to plant the crops that they want to plant they're also having diesel shortages he was saying and

00:33:31.040 And this guy, the very reasonable guy, he's not some kind of prepper, he was saying, I'm getting more guns because at some point I worry I'm going to have to protect my diesel stocks because people will try and steal some of them.

00:33:41.800 Because that's the situation we're headed to.

00:33:43.680 And, you know, a good friend of the show, John Anderson, who's former deputy prime minister of Australia, I mean, he is livid about net zero, which has basically created these problems that they now have.

00:33:54.160 Even though Australia has an immense amount of its own energy resources, they just refuse to use them.

00:34:01.040 as we do in the UK.

00:34:03.340 I talked to a friend of mine who's a gas trader.

00:34:06.240 You know, the people who are involved

00:34:09.040 in all these different markets,

00:34:10.780 they see this coming already,

00:34:13.420 and it's important to understand,

00:34:15.600 A, we're not anywhere near a resolution,

00:34:18.100 and B, even when there is a resolution,

00:34:21.600 it will take a very long time,

00:34:24.420 probably weeks if not months,

00:34:26.360 for the situation to go back to normal,

00:34:29.020 which means the current oil prices

00:34:30.880 which are as we record this just around a hundred dollars a barrel which is a significant increase

00:34:35.920 in what they were before the war if this carries on for a few months you'll guarantee the world

00:34:40.640 recession but there's no guarantee that it won't get worse either so economically we're in a very

00:34:47.280 bad place and you know the fertilizer point doesn't get talked about enough i mean fertilizer

00:34:53.120 you might eat organic which means no fertilizer but to feed eight billion people you need the

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00:36:47.660 well i was reading an article in the times of london that said without fertilizer

00:36:52.860 one in two people would effectively starve to death in this planet i mean without the

00:36:59.500 fertilizer from the gulf oh no just fertilizer we're just talking about how important fertilizer

00:37:04.400 is so just to say right we produce half the food yeah and how important that is and it's it's

00:37:11.080 essential without it we wouldn't be able to sustain the population that we currently have

00:37:15.560 I was also, in the same article, reading about a very senior person when it came to helium and dealing helium, a helium trader.

00:37:24.460 And he compared the current economic situation to being on the beach.

00:37:29.460 He said, the sun is shining, not a cloud in the sky, but there's a tsunami coming.

00:37:35.920 But you can't see it, but it's coming.

00:37:38.000 You just don't feel it at the moment.

00:37:39.680 But when it does arrive, boy, will we feel it.

00:37:42.720 And if you look at, for instance, Iran bombing the gas fields of Ras Lofan in Qatar, that is responsible for around 15% of the world's gas production, liquid gas production.

00:37:57.000 And you think to yourself, what effect is that going to have on gas prices?

00:38:03.020 That is going to have a major significant effect.

00:38:06.540 And then they were also interviewing in this article the people who were working there who were saying it's going to take about three to five years for it to be up and running.

00:38:17.280 And he went, that is the best case scenario, three to five years, because we can't repair anything until the war stops.

00:38:25.100 A ceasefire is agreed because there is literally no point in us repairing something if tomorrow it can get bombed again.

00:38:31.940 And Robert Pape's argument is if the United States escalates, what will happen is Iran will naturally then be forced to do more of that, which actually it doesn't want to do at this point.

00:38:43.800 They will be forced to destroy more oil facilities in the Gulf Arab countries, more gas facilities in all Arab countries.

00:38:50.740 And this is where I think it's important that we address the conversation that you raised earlier,

00:38:57.660 which is the difference between the objectives of the United States

00:39:00.680 and the objectives of the allies of the United States in the region,

00:39:04.320 not just Israel, but also the Gulf countries.

00:39:06.520 Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Israel, they're all behind continuing this bombing.

00:39:12.460 And the reason is that their objectives, quite understandably, are different to the United States.

00:39:18.020 But Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Israel would be very happy for Iran to be pummeled into the ground, even if it doesn't address the nuclear issue, because Iran is a regional threat to their interests.

00:39:34.100 Iran is an enemy of both Saudi Arabia and of Israel in the region.

00:39:39.680 And so using the help of the United States to bomb the shit out of all of their military facilities,

00:39:46.460 destroy their military industrial complex, whittle down their rocket program, their ballistic program,

00:39:51.740 get rid of their drone manufacturing, weaken them economically.

00:39:55.080 That's all wonderful from a Saudi, UAE, less so Qatari, but definitely Israeli perspective.

00:40:02.020 and this is where i've got some very bad news for our pro-israel friends of whom we have many

00:40:08.720 not anymore we've talked to many many people in the united states on camera and off and i have to

00:40:16.460 report honestly there are many many people now in america who are not anti-israel and they're

00:40:22.740 definitely not anti-semitic who feel that israel's interests are not the same as those of the united

00:40:30.340 States and who I don't even necessarily agree with their analysis because I don't think Israel

00:40:36.600 tricked America or manipulated Trump. I mean, it's ridiculous, right? Tiny country manipulating

00:40:42.040 America. I don't think that's true. But what I think is becoming very clear to me is if this

00:40:46.860 conflict is successful, President Trump will get all the credit. If this conflict fails, yes, there

00:40:52.880 will be repercussions domestically. The Republicans will probably lose the Senate and the House and

00:40:57.020 probably the presidency if this causes a global recession. But I think ultimately what this will

00:41:03.980 cause is a permanent realignment of many, many, many people's view of Israel. And they will see

00:41:11.580 that this conflict, which caused so many problems down the line, was done primarily for the benefit

00:41:18.720 of Israel. And they won't think about Saudi and the UAE. And they won't think about the fact that

00:41:23.420 the president of the united states is ultimately responsible this will change people opinions

00:41:27.340 people's opinions permanently and we already see that from otherwise very reasonable and moderate

00:41:33.320 people and you it is understandable why they would why they would think that because if you think

00:41:39.520 from israel's point of view let's look at october the 7th it happens in 2023 it was a devastating

00:41:46.980 horrific terrorist attack that i don't think enough people in the west actually understand

00:41:52.200 how awful it was and also the deep levels of trauma that were inflicted upon Israel and the

00:41:59.080 Israeli psyche and they then went to war which is a war that we both understood and about why it

00:42:06.300 happened and why they carried it out in the way they did in Gaza and also with Hezbollah as well

00:42:12.300 and what I think the Israelis are thinking at this moment is this is a once in a generation

00:42:19.200 opportunity to get rid of the government that funded not only Hezbollah, but Hamas and October

00:42:28.840 the 7th. And so for them, it makes sense to do their very best right now while striking whilst

00:42:37.280 the iron is hot, going after the Ayatollah and the regime and nullifying it. And also as well,

00:42:43.680 it makes sense from a uae from a saudi perspective because iran is basically like a neighbor that is

00:42:51.100 mental and every day you wake up and you think to yourself what's he gone and done now what has he

00:42:57.080 set fire to the fence has he attacked someone has he eventually you go i can't live like this anymore

00:43:02.780 let's call the police exactly and let's get this dealt with but the reality is that is not as much

00:43:11.780 in America's interest, nor in the American people's interest. And there's going to be a lot

00:43:16.920 of people who are saying to themselves, look, 12-day war, fine. Nuclear weapons, that has the

00:43:23.060 potential to destabilize a region. That has the potential to give the Iranian government far more

00:43:29.660 power than I'm comfortable with. Totally get it. But when we're talking about boots on the ground,

00:43:35.100 maybe, we don't know, that automatically changes everything. And then there's going to be a lot of

00:43:40.600 people thinking to themselves, is this going to be Iraq 2.0 or potentially even worse?

00:43:47.920 Well, Iraq didn't have the leverage that Iran has. Iraq didn't have the Strait of Hormuz.

00:43:55.280 So that's a critical difference. And so if you put boots on the ground,

00:44:01.560 it's hard to imagine it being less bad than Iraq at the very least. But even short of putting boots

00:44:09.220 on the ground i mean trump is clearly trying to end this and get an off-ramp which is what

00:44:13.780 robert pape said he should do which is what mike baker said he would do on our show which is what

00:44:18.660 ted cruz said i mean ted cruz said and you know i wonder how um how prudent it was of him to say

00:44:29.060 this given where this might be headed he said well if this conflict is still going on by by

00:44:33.620 november when the midterms happen we failed i think we will say his exact something's gone

00:44:37.540 terribly wrong i hope it doesn't go to that but either way whether if it's a global recession

00:44:43.620 or whether if it escalates further that is not going to be a good outcome and israel will get a

00:44:48.660 lot of the blame and i can see from a bb's perspective you know he's been dreaming about

00:44:53.860 destroying the regime for 40 years i don't blame him if i was the prime minister of israel i would

00:44:59.140 want to deal with the people who did october 7th in the most with extreme prejudice let's say to

00:45:06.580 It's a apocalypse now.

00:45:09.020 But in the long term, this has the potential, I suspect,

00:45:12.800 over time, over generations,

00:45:14.700 to reset the relationship between the United States and Israel

00:45:18.080 in a way that will not be beneficial to Israel at all.

00:45:21.180 And that, I think, should be a real worry

00:45:23.920 if you are actually pro-Israel.

00:45:25.800 If you're interested in the long-term survival

00:45:28.260 of the state of Israel,

00:45:29.780 that is a concern you actually ought to be thinking about.

00:45:32.740 and when you again this isn't data this is anecdotal evidence but we talked to one of the

00:45:39.480 great things about doing this show one of the things i love the most about it is the connections

00:45:43.200 that we make with people not just people on the right but people on the left people on the center

00:45:47.800 libertarians young old male female black white whatever and i i really treasure the conversations

00:45:55.560 that i have i'm very offended you didn't mention trans the three trans people who watch our show

00:46:00.740 But when I talk to people about it, there is a generational divide that is ever widening between the way that young people, so I'm talking about people 35 and under, view Israel and how people 35 and older view Israel.

00:46:15.200 And it's not just left and right.

00:46:17.000 People on the right who are 35 and under are highly skeptical of Israel, to put it mildly, and its policies.

00:46:23.720 And my concern is the more this carries on, the more ill will is directed to Israel.

00:46:31.460 Inevitably, the more ill will will be directed to Jewish people and the more Jewish people and the West will be at risk from Islamic terrorism.

00:46:40.360 That is Islamist terrorism.

00:46:41.820 That is a very real concern for me because we've been in this country a matter of weeks and we've already seen just before we arrived.

00:46:48.340 And Islamist terrorists in Austin.

00:46:51.160 we saw what could have been a horrific terrorist attack happen in Michigan where a man drove a

00:46:58.420 truck loaded with explosives and tried to ram a synagogue with it. And we also saw a thwarted

00:47:05.240 nail bomb attack in New York. And the more this carries on, the more people die, the more that

00:47:12.020 we see the Middle East become destabilized, we are going to see Islamist terrorist spikes and

00:47:18.300 particular anti-semitic attacks and i'm glad you brought up the word anti-semitism because i think

00:47:24.460 this is really worth saying as well and i hope that people can hear it in the spirit in which

00:47:29.740 it's intended but it's important to distinguish between different things anti-semitism is a real

00:47:36.620 thing and i think it's undoubtedly the case that we see more of it than we've seen at any point in

00:47:41.980 my lifetime and it's horrific and at the same time if you criticize the foreign policy of britain

00:47:48.300 that doesn't make you anti-British.

00:47:50.760 If you criticize the foreign policy of the United States,

00:47:53.220 that doesn't make you anti-American.

00:47:54.760 And if you criticize the foreign policy of Israel,

00:47:58.140 that doesn't make you necessarily anti-Israel or anti-Semitic.

00:48:01.620 Now, there are many anti-Semitic and anti-Israel people

00:48:04.720 who criticize Israel's foreign policy.

00:48:06.860 But that does not mean that if you don't agree with everything Israel has done,

00:48:10.500 you are anti-Semitic.

00:48:11.580 And my worry is, I see a lot of people now

00:48:14.760 who just they don't bother having the argument anymore they just say this person is a bad person

00:48:23.400 i mean right as we recorded this uh joe rogan has just had dave smith on and our disagreements with

00:48:30.140 dave on this issue are pretty much on the record i've debated him on ukraine i've debated him on

00:48:36.000 the 12 day war on pierce morgan show we've had him on this show to debate him i don't agree with

00:48:41.480 everything Dave says about the Middle East. But I do believe his arguments have to be taken on

00:48:47.060 on the merits of the arguments. And all that happens now, every time I open Twitter, I see

00:48:52.720 people who I otherwise like and respect just calling those two people names. And I don't see

00:48:59.800 what that achieves. And there are people, you know, I don't like to go after people by name

00:49:04.360 individually. But when I see some of the American sort of pro-Israel commentators, some of them,

00:49:09.600 The way they behave and the way they just insult and attack anyone that doesn't agree

00:49:14.900 with them and don't actually take on any of their arguments, I don't think that's helping.

00:49:19.040 And calling everyone anti-Semitic that simply disagrees with you about foreign policy,

00:49:25.060 I don't think that makes the problem of anti-Semitism better. I would argue from an

00:49:30.880 outsider perspective watching this, it makes it worse. And we just lived through 10 years

00:49:36.420 where the label of racist and transphobic and homophobic and misogynist

00:49:41.140 was thrown around with such, I nearly said gay abandonment.

00:49:46.000 LGBTQIA plus abandoned, Constantine, thank you very much.

00:49:48.740 That no one actually believes those words have any meaning anymore.

00:49:53.840 And so when I say, for example, that someone like Daryl Cooper,

00:49:58.940 this, I nearly said historian,

00:50:02.400 this guy who has all these theories about hit how hitler was uh provoked by churchill and

00:50:09.080 churchill's the greatest villain of world war ii etc when i say he's a nazi apologist because i

00:50:13.420 know what the word nazi apologist means the term nazi apologist means people can't hear that anymore

00:50:18.540 because they just think i'm i'm just insulting him i'm just having a go at him and attacking him

00:50:24.540 and this is what will happen to the term anti-semitic if people keep using it in this way

00:50:29.680 and I'm really worried about it because when you misapply words what you do is you erode the word

00:50:35.760 itself and then you can't actually accurately describe the phenomenon and then you can't say

00:50:41.300 Nick Fuentes is anti-semitic because people go well you just called Joe Rogan anti-semitic or

00:50:46.520 you just called Dave Smith anti-semitic or you just called someone who criticized Israel attacking

00:50:50.760 a gas facility anti-semitic well if everyone is anti-semitic then no one is. And there's another

00:50:57.240 component to this which is when let's go back to woke times immediately when you said something

00:51:04.460 that was against the prevailing narrative criticizing blm that automatically meant you

00:51:11.060 were racist so the vast majority of people quite rightly don't want to be called racist because

00:51:16.020 they're not racist and it's a very upsetting thing to have a label put on you that is not

00:51:20.780 accurate and is also as damaging reputationally as being called a racist so what do you do

00:51:26.360 you simply don't voice your opinions but that doesn't mean your opinions go anywhere and in

00:51:32.020 fact you're probably somewhat aggravated by not being able to express them and what happens is

00:51:36.780 you become resentful and resentment rapidly turns into anger which turns into bitterness which turns

00:51:41.800 into something far more cancerous and dangerous the reality is is that we all have opinions which

00:51:47.280 are sometimes wrong sometimes stupid sometimes all thought out the only way we get better opinions

00:51:53.200 is by being able to have honest conversations with people and we do it all the time it's one

00:51:58.000 of the things i treasure about our friendship where i go well what do you think about this

00:52:00.960 and you go well what about this and what about that and i'm like i never thought of that and

00:52:04.720 what about but that's how you get better that's how you get better opinions that's how you become

00:52:09.040 more informed and the reality is that process never stops and nor should it because that's

00:52:14.080 how you become better as a human being you get better opinions and not only that you get you

00:52:18.880 are able to think better and more effectively your process becomes streamlined and sharpened

00:52:24.240 but when you start shutting people down as we saw with wokeness then eventually what you will get

00:52:30.080 is a backlash which is what you are seeing right the way through social media and in the politics

00:52:35.360 in our country which we'll come to a little bit later on and that's a very real concern and by

00:52:39.760 the way that we shouldn't separate what we've just said from the fact that there are clearly people

00:52:44.400 who lie about israel for a living and there are people who say things about israel that aren't

00:52:49.680 true for whatever their agenda is joe kent for example this this counterterrorism guy who resigned

00:52:55.120 uh from trump's administration by all accounts this is a guy who served 11 tours for so i you

00:53:02.160 know me i am pro-military people all the way and even when i'm not in my own country if i find out

00:53:08.080 someone served in the armed forces of their country i always say thank you for your service

00:53:11.760 It's just how I think about if you're willing to put your body on the line for your country,

00:53:17.400 irrespective of my agreement or disagreement with your views,

00:53:20.580 that to me is like, my level of respect for you goes up tremendously.

00:53:23.940 Of course.

00:53:24.600 He's also saying things about Charlie Kirk and Israel or insinuating things about Charlie.

00:53:30.900 They're just factually incorrect or just lies, right?

00:53:34.320 Yeah.

00:53:34.500 He's insinuating that somehow the investigation into Charlie Kirk's murder

00:53:39.820 wasn't properly looked into because there's an Israeli connection

00:53:43.420 and he would know even though he had nothing to do with the investigation

00:53:46.240 or the FBI whose job it is.

00:53:48.400 Anyway, he's just making things up as far as I can tell.

00:53:51.380 And there are other people in the media commentary space

00:53:55.100 who are so frothing at the mouth anti-Israel

00:54:00.040 that they are now, I think, some of them anti-Semitic.

00:54:03.380 That is also true.

00:54:05.380 But you cannot take the label that is appropriate to apply to them

00:54:09.300 and then apply it to whole swathes of other people

00:54:12.700 who just have a question about something

00:54:16.700 or they maybe don't understand something

00:54:18.420 or maybe they've heard a narrative

00:54:19.840 that seems reasonable to them

00:54:21.320 and when you actually talk to them

00:54:22.500 and you say, well, have you considered this aspect of it?

00:54:25.060 They might change their mind.

00:54:26.340 You know where one thing is not going to change their mind?

00:54:28.660 It's being called names.

00:54:29.940 People do not change their mind when you call them names.

00:54:32.760 That's not to say you shouldn't accurately describe people

00:54:35.780 who fit the description,

00:54:36.900 But these labels are now being so badly misapplied, I really worry that it's actually creating more antisemitism.

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00:56:24.660 agreed and like i said before it will create a backlash and it will create a backlash against

00:56:30.740 israel and against jewish people because unfortunately there are people in society

00:56:36.420 and online who equate israel with jewish people and vice versa and once they do that then we get

00:56:43.660 into quite a worrying position because they see an attack on jewish people as an attack on israel

00:56:50.740 Yes. And as a way to punish Israel for what they're doing, even though Jewish people, I don't know, who live in Michigan, who are simply going to a synagogue, many of whom I suspect have very little, if no connection at all, with Israel itself.

00:57:04.780 And what that creates is every Jewish person becomes a target. And we really, really need to be careful in order to dial down this rhetoric.

00:57:15.040 And that comes from one side, but it also comes from the pro-Israeli side.

00:57:19.400 And if people come to you with a concern or a worry or a criticism of Israel,

00:57:25.260 what you need of Israel's policy, you need to think to yourself,

00:57:29.100 right, how can I engage with it in good faith?

00:57:32.480 But number two, is it a valid criticism?

00:57:35.880 And also, if it's not a valid criticism, how do you engage with it in a productive way?

00:57:41.520 For example, people say Israel tricked Trump into this war.

00:57:46.460 I'd like them to explain the mechanism by which they think that happened.

00:57:49.880 And I haven't heard it. There's always a bit missing, right?

00:57:53.280 So when we interviewed Mehdi Hassan, for example, he said, well, you know, the Israel lobby is so powerful.

00:57:58.200 You can see the Democrat politicians, they are pro-Israel on the whole and Democrat voters are anti-Israel on the whole.

00:58:05.580 How do you explain that?

00:58:06.500 actually that gap between what the elites of a party think and what the voters think exists on

00:58:12.820 many many other issues right that have nothing to do with lobbying necessarily because people who

00:58:18.100 are in charge of a party and the voter base often have different perspectives on things for all

00:58:22.900 sorts of reasons now lobbying is definitely part of that but that doesn't mean that that's the

00:58:27.240 entire explanation of that or for example people say well israel dragged america into this conflict

00:58:32.780 How? Explain it to me. What power does Bibi Netanyahu have over President Trump?

00:58:38.960 Does he have a picture of him with prostitutes somewhere? What is it? And this is where you get

00:58:45.540 this conspiratorial retard nonsense that you get from some people on the kind of online right,

00:58:51.680 where they don't actively say, but what they imply is that actually Trump is being blackmailed,

00:58:58.360 or Joe Kent, I think, implies even that Trump is afraid of being assassinated by Mossad, right?

00:59:06.640 Because no one ever explains the mechanism by which this tiny, relatively poor country, Israel,

00:59:12.800 manipulates the most powerful country in the world.

00:59:15.560 And the question is, well, if it's the money that they spend,

00:59:18.180 there are countries in the world that spend way, way, way more money

00:59:21.060 lobbying the American government.

00:59:23.160 They don't seem to have the same effect.

00:59:24.760 I mean, Qatar spends a ton of money here.

00:59:27.360 China spends a ton of money here.

00:59:29.360 The Ukrainians, obviously, are trying to get America to do what they want.

00:59:33.340 The Russians are trying to get...

00:59:34.760 Everyone in the world wants America to do their thing.

00:59:37.940 And yet this one tiny country miraculously somehow is able to do it.

00:59:42.560 There's not a good explanation.

00:59:44.580 And that's where you can poke and prod at it.

00:59:46.680 We're just calling people names.

00:59:47.840 I just don't think this is helpful at all.

00:59:49.800 And you touched on it.

00:59:50.740 Shutting down a conversation, what it effectively does is it creates a vacuum.

00:59:54.880 and we all know nature abhors a vacuum and what fills the vacuum is people theorizing and quite

01:00:02.920 naturally what happens is that will lend itself towards conspiracy because conspiracies are

01:00:08.400 glamorous they're exciting they're sexy that's why conspiracy theory content is one of the most

01:00:13.740 viewed types of content on youtube because it triggers the amygdala you're like oh this is

01:00:18.380 exciting this is dangerous it doesn't mean that it's right or it's correct but that's all you

01:00:24.040 are doing when you shut down conversations you're allowing conspiracy theories to flourish and i

01:00:30.320 don't need to be the most perceptive person in the world to go conspiracy theories jewish people

01:00:36.380 tend to go together and we need to be very very very careful because if we don't handle this

01:00:44.900 correctly if we stop if we start shutting people down if we continue down this path of smearing

01:00:51.200 people, the conspiracy theories will only rise and they will become more prevalent and they will

01:00:56.540 become more anti-Semitic in their nature. And that again will lead to dangerous outcomes in the real

01:01:01.900 world. Look, we're British. If we look closer to home, this war in Iran could have very, very real

01:01:09.580 political consequences. We see in the UK, the conversation now tends to be, look, life has

01:01:17.100 become more unaffordable for the vast majority of people, which is true. We're in a cost of living

01:01:22.360 crisis, a housing crisis. All these things are true. What the hard left does is go, we need a

01:01:28.200 wealth tax. The reason we can't afford things is because the billionaires and the millionaires are

01:01:33.780 not paying their fair share. Therefore, we need higher taxes because that's the only way we can

01:01:39.680 redistribute wealth in order to make society fairer for all. Now, the reality is that simply won't

01:01:45.100 work quite simply because if you decide to tax these people and tax these people incredibly hard

01:01:49.900 they will leave and you can agree or disagree with that but that is a reality but what worries me is

01:01:56.840 that more and more people will become persuaded to this line of thinking the more unaffordable

01:02:03.700 their lives become partly due to the war in Iran and rising oil energy and food prices and that is

01:02:11.580 a very real concern and then we have political parties like the green party who will make who

01:02:17.840 will make hay with this particular argument and a lot of people will be persuaded about it and

01:02:22.840 we're going to see more and more people go over to the populist left and that is a very real worry

01:02:28.800 because if they as if they become more powerful then what we're going to see in my opinion is an

01:02:35.320 economic catastrophe well right i mean if uh the recession happens then i mean i mean the greens

01:02:43.740 people don't want want to hear this particularly people on the right but the party with the biggest

01:02:48.680 momentum in british politics as we sit here now is the green party they're not denying it reform

01:02:54.640 are leading the polls but the greens are second from from very low numbers if you look at the

01:03:00.740 last election, which was only a year and a bit ago. So if there's the economic impact that we

01:03:06.900 suspect there will be, you're basically getting the populist right versus the populist left at

01:03:12.740 the next election. And that will probably be replicated across the European continent.

01:03:19.760 And then you are kind of in the 1920s, 1930s territory. And I'm not saying it's the rise

01:03:26.840 of fascism or the rise of Stalin exactly but you are in a point where the entirety of the center

01:03:32.360 is broken down and everybody wants a fake simple solution to very complex problems

01:03:38.180 and people in Britain will absolutely vote for the lunatic fringe far left as long as the lunatic

01:03:45.800 fringe far left points the fingers of the people they don't like and blames them for the consequences

01:03:51.600 of this conflict and also zach polanski is very critical of trump and he's very very anti-israel

01:04:00.820 and so what that will see is a is an increased fracture in alliances between the uk and america

01:04:08.080 and again we as a country economically we're degrading at a rate which i find profoundly

01:04:17.800 worrying as a British person.

01:04:20.320 Well, we recorded an interview with Dwarkesh Patel,

01:04:22.900 who is, they call him, Silicon Valley's favourite podcaster.

01:04:26.100 And one of the questions that our supporters asked

01:04:29.120 in the Substack section was about Britain and AI.

01:04:32.300 And when you said to him, you know,

01:04:33.460 how well is Britain doing on AI?

01:04:35.460 He literally laughed.

01:04:37.120 Because, of course, you can't involve yourself

01:04:40.000 in this new growing industry

01:04:41.460 if you've got very, very high energy prices, as we do.

01:04:45.640 And even though we have one AI company in the UK,

01:04:49.680 their competitive disadvantage is so huge

01:04:52.320 and will become even worse

01:04:54.120 if this economic situation deteriorates

01:04:57.700 that we're just not going to be able

01:04:59.520 to have a functioning economy.

01:05:01.140 And look, we should be honest with people,

01:05:02.660 I don't see Britain as a viable place to live

01:05:07.440 for anyone who wants to run any kind of business,

01:05:09.440 including a small business like ours,

01:05:11.200 if you've got a Zach Polanski premiership.

01:05:13.800 I just, I don't, I think every, I think at that point, even people like us who are desperate to stay and want to make Britain better, we would have to look at that and say, there is no future for us here.

01:05:25.760 And that's a very real concern because it's not just, and there'll be people, you know, making jokes in the comments, fair enough. But it's not as if we'll be an isolated case. There will be huge swathes of entrepreneurs, people who create jobs, who create wealth, who create opportunities for others.

01:05:43.800 who will look at the economic situation in the UK

01:05:46.820 and go, this is no longer viable.

01:05:49.560 Well, hold on.

01:05:50.080 You say we won't be an isolated case.

01:05:52.100 We're an isolated case now.

01:05:54.860 We're an isolated case now.

01:05:56.800 Everyone who does a big podcast in the UK,

01:05:59.640 when they get to not even the size we have now, smaller,

01:06:02.760 what do they do?

01:06:03.560 They leave.

01:06:04.080 They leave.

01:06:05.020 So we are already an isolated case.

01:06:07.960 In that we are desperate to stay

01:06:10.680 and try and make Britain better

01:06:12.040 so that our families can live there and enjoy themselves there.

01:06:15.940 I mean, when I was on Stephen Bartlett's show the last time,

01:06:18.280 Diary of SEO, we talked about this.

01:06:19.520 I said to him, we've never talked about this, Stephen,

01:06:21.420 but I bet you can name 50 people off the top of your head

01:06:24.060 who've left the UK in the last few years

01:06:25.840 who are entrepreneurs, business owners.

01:06:29.480 And he was like, yeah, of course.

01:06:30.800 So if you've got an economic problem

01:06:34.600 of the kind that we've described,

01:06:36.300 followed by the election of the populist left,

01:06:39.080 you will lose everyone.

01:06:41.360 Everyone who creates jobs and can take their business somewhere else.

01:06:46.180 Agreed.

01:06:46.900 And when you think about it, our economy is essentially dependent on financial services.

01:06:52.680 How many of them are going to stick around if that happens?

01:06:55.660 If we get these kind of taxation, if we get this kind of politics come in?

01:06:59.600 We're essentially going to return to the 1970s,

01:07:02.980 where the top rate of tax was 90% for the highest earners.

01:07:07.100 And we should say this, man.

01:07:08.040 Like, look, in the last couple of years, we've become fairly successful.

01:07:13.140 We pay a lot of tax.

01:07:14.940 I don't mind.

01:07:15.660 I don't mind effectively paying, you know, I don't know what the effect of tax rate exactly,

01:07:20.160 but it's probably something like 40%, let's say.

01:07:22.800 Let's say it's 50% even.

01:07:24.160 I actually don't mind paying 50% tax to live in a country with good infrastructure,

01:07:30.460 with safety, with good schools, with good health care,

01:07:35.940 with a functioning government, etc.

01:07:39.360 But we don't have any of those things anymore.

01:07:41.520 And we're getting poorer all the time.

01:07:43.860 And now you want to bring in people who are going to make things a lot worse.

01:07:47.680 On top of that, if you are the head of a household,

01:07:54.960 you would not be responsible in keeping your family in that situation.

01:08:00.460 if you could if you had the option to have them somewhere else to say nothing about the fact

01:08:04.780 that obviously as you've just discussed you know the problem of islamist terrorism but just

01:08:10.620 integration more broadly is very acute in britain in a way that it's not even it's not remotely

01:08:16.540 like this in the us and in many other parts of the world so you put all that together this has

01:08:22.780 the potential this conflict if it goes badly has the potential to make worse things that are all

01:08:30.300 already very bad for people in Britain and for the country itself agreed agreed and that's why

01:08:38.280 when I look at this conflict I'm not hopeful but I really do hope that over the next weeks

01:08:45.900 and months they can sit down in Pakistan or another country if the talks in Pakistan don't

01:08:52.100 come to anything don't come to fruition and actually get this sorted out because the longer

01:08:57.720 we carry on down this path the worse it's going to be for everyone involved but particularly

01:09:04.240 europe particularly the uk and particularly our economies and our politics because what we need

01:09:10.500 right now is a lurch away from these types of extremist policies and get back to something more

01:09:17.980 calm and reasonable and stable and sane and that means an economic policy that actually works for

01:09:24.420 the majority of people not appealing to people's worse and base instincts and point the finger at

01:09:30.980 others and going the reason that this country is screwed economically is because of this person or

01:09:37.020 this billionaire when the reality is the world and life is far more complicated than that

01:09:42.420 we need to have people who are of the elite whether it's media or politics who are actually

01:09:50.000 able to dial down the rhetoric and begin to have better conversations about geopolitics you can't

01:09:58.100 dial down the rhetoric you can't dial down the rhetoric if things are getting worse it's not

01:10:03.160 going to happen why would people dial down the rhetoric if the situation in the country is

01:10:08.700 getting worse not better the reason the rhetoric is dialed up is people are desperate yeah the

01:10:14.600 reason the right is as vocal about immigration as it is, is that people feel that the situation

01:10:20.720 has become desperate. And they're right. They're right. I mean, we had in the course of this trip,

01:10:26.040 Robert Greene, who I think in terms of his politics, particularly on immigration, there's

01:10:29.860 like, I don't know if he's pro-open borders exactly, but he's as close to that as you can

01:10:33.760 get without being actually pro-open borders. And he said when he went to France, he looked around

01:10:37.980 in Paris and said, this country is losing its national identity. People in Britain, a lot of

01:10:43.940 them, particularly those on the right, feel like the country is losing its national identity

01:10:48.080 because of the scale of mass immigration that we've had. And people on the left, and frankly

01:10:52.460 across the political spectrum, who are not billionaires, and who didn't have huge assets

01:10:57.680 that have inflated over the last 20 or 30 years, feel that the economic situation is desperate.

01:11:03.340 And they're right, because we have got poorer since 2008, and we certainly haven't got richer

01:11:09.960 since 2008 on average um and you can perfectly understand people's sense of frustration and the

01:11:18.080 fact that their living standards haven't risen in basically 20 years and now you've got this

01:11:22.840 potential economic disaster looming as well you put all that together no one's going to dial down

01:11:28.840 the retrograde that's why you have to fix the actual problems yeah but i was talking also about

01:11:35.220 the way we talk about geopolitics and israel and all of the rest of it

01:11:39.380 what we've tried to do on our show is provide an antidote to that

01:11:43.520 and go look these are contentious subjects and these are contentious issues but there is a way

01:11:49.380 to do this and actually have a conversation like we do with dave smith or like we did with mediv

01:11:56.280 about who we disagree with on many different things but ultimately assume good faith in the

01:12:02.480 person who you're talking to and actually try and see if you can come to some kind of agreement

01:12:08.700 or if not maybe you can learn or change or alter or you know sometimes you have someone on and

01:12:15.780 Mehdi is a good example our job is not to challenge every single thing that he says even

01:12:21.280 if we don't agree but it's to show you what his perspective is and you can like it you can hate

01:12:25.620 whatever uh but we have to address people's actual arguments instead of just this mudslinging that

01:12:33.180 you see um and even you know i've obviously been very critical of tucker carson for a long time

01:12:38.680 but even there i criticize the things that he says and the actions that he takes i don't call

01:12:45.560 him names and i don't think that works at all i i don't think people uh you know maybe i'm wrong

01:12:52.200 So maybe in criticizing some of his arguments, I probably also call them names.

01:12:55.680 I don't, have I ever called them names?

01:12:57.220 I don't think so.

01:12:58.120 Maybe I have.

01:12:58.800 We'll find out.

01:12:59.780 The internet will fact check me on this.

01:13:01.340 But my broader point is you have to address people's arguments.

01:13:04.680 Of course.

01:13:05.140 And not enough of that is happening.

01:13:06.960 So look, we'll continue to cover this.

01:13:10.060 I suspect, unfortunately, this conflict will run.

01:13:12.920 I hope it doesn't.

01:13:14.800 But if it does, we will continue to speak to different people with different perspectives

01:13:18.040 in order to come to some better understanding of where we are,

01:13:23.480 just like we did with the war in Gaza,

01:13:25.540 where we took a full year, really, before commenting on it at all.

01:13:29.220 This, I think, is more immediate,

01:13:31.100 and the consequences are much more impactful

01:13:33.820 on the rest of the world and us.

01:13:36.380 So we'll keep covering it, and we'll, you know,

01:13:38.920 I appreciate that not everyone who is a fan of our show

01:13:42.580 will agree with what we've laid out here.

01:13:44.980 And that is the right, we've done this many times.

01:13:46.680 I remember when we criticised BLM in the summer of 2020,

01:13:50.040 some people didn't like it.

01:13:51.680 When we criticised January the 6th after that,

01:13:53.880 the people who loved us criticising BLM didn't like it.

01:13:56.920 And we go through this over time.

01:13:58.760 But the only thing we can do is speak the truth

01:14:01.200 as we see it at the time.

01:14:03.240 And that's what we're going to carry on doing.

01:14:05.080 Absolutely.

01:14:06.080 And hopefully everything will calm down

01:14:09.520 and the rest of 2026 will be smooth sailing.

01:14:13.120 It's only March, believe it or not.

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01:14:38.020 best western gift card life's a trip make the most of it at best western visit bestwestern.com

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TRIGGERnometry - March 31, 2026

Our Thoughts On The Iran War

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