3/12/26: US Lies About Casualties, Trump Declares Victory, US Flagged Ship Struck

Summary

Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar – March 12, 2026: "US Lies About Casualties, Trump Declares Victory, US Flagged Ship Struck"

---

Episode Overview

In this urgent and information-rich episode, Krystal Ball and Saagar Enjeti dissect the spiraling crisis in the Middle East, especially focusing on the U.S. government's ongoing cover-up of military casualties, Donald Trump's premature declarations of victory in the war with Iran, and the escalating attacks on oil infrastructure—including the first direct strike on a U.S.-flagged tanker. Joined by investigative journalists and policy experts, Krystal and Saagar unravel government disinformation, humanitarian disasters, and the frightening geopolitical and economic fallout, providing forceful, independent analysis from both the left and right.

---

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Update on Dropsite News Libel Lawsuit

• Guest: Ryan Grim
• Dropsite News, facing a libel lawsuit in the UK for reporting on BBC’s Israel/Palestine coverage, wins a crucial ruling confirming their article was “honest opinion.”
• Quote:

  “A key decision came down which finds that the article is, quote, kind of honest reporting...as long as any honest person can hold that opinion, then we win.” – Ryan Grim (05:19)

• Importance: Highlights the cost and necessity of supporting independent journalism to resist legal intimidation and censorship. Emphasizes community-funded media resilience.

---

2. US Government Lies & Casualty Coverup

• The Trump administration is directly accused of falsifying casualty/injury reports following Iranian drone strikes on American bases.
• Initial official statements grossly downplayed the extent of injuries and deaths; reality reveals dozens with serious trauma and upwards of 150 casualties so far, creating an atmosphere of deep mistrust.
• Quote:

  "A straight up lie there from the Pentagon." – Saagar (12:46)
  “If they’ll lie about something so basic and so essential and so sensitive as the number of US service members who were gravely injured, they will lie to you about absolutely anything.” – Krystal (16:31)

• First-person Account: Sgt. First Class Corey Hicks describes the moment of the drone strike and its aftermath, underscoring the human cost (13:52).

Timestamps

• [11:23] – Introduction of cover-up topic
• [13:52] – Sgt. Hicks’ testimony
• [15:07] – Analysis of why governments lie and the culture of disinformation

---

3. On-the-Ground Reality: US Military Bases & Civilian Sites Struck

• Satellite imagery, though delayed by commercial providers under pressure, reveals at least 17 American sites struck, including bases in Kuwait, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, UAE, Jordan, and Iraq.
• Hotels housing US personnel and strategic radar sites have also been hit, with limited, outdated info filtering through due to government obscuration and crackdowns on reporting.
• Quote:

  "All of them are authoritarian...they are not allowing anyone to pose the damage because for them, it's embarrassing..." – Krystal (20:44)

• Large medical facilities like Landstuhl (Germany) have stopped non-emergency services due to the influx of wounded service members (22:17).

---

4. Civilian Casualties: Girls’ School Bombing

• Confirmed US origin of the strike that killed 168 girls at a school, a tragedy compounded by apparent intelligence failures and possible AI misidentification.
• Internal investigations are highlighting massive procedural flaws; meanwhile, Trump deflects blame.
• Quote:

  “Now you've got 168 little girls who are dead and can't be brought back.” – Krystal (26:16)
  “It might be one of the worst atrocities the United States has been directly involved in in years.” – Saagar (26:16)

Timestamps

• [22:17] – Landstuhl hospital focus
• [24:35] – Trump’s denial regarding school strike
• [26:16] – Commentary on US responsibility

---

5. Trump’s War Messaging: "Mission Accomplished," Mixed Justifications, and Nuclear Threats

• Trump repeatedly declares victory, calls the war "an excursion," and simultaneously escalates rhetoric by threatening nuclear action.
• His narrative is wildly inconsistent and out of sync with the factual escalation on the ground and continued Iranian resistance.
• Quote:

  “We could take them out within an hour...they literally would never be able to build that country back.” – Trump (31:16)

• Saagar and Krystal analyze Trump’s bluffing, regime-change logic among administration and pro-war lobbies, and lay out the dangers of pride-driven escalation.
• The “mission accomplished” spin is vigorously challenged given concurrent US defeats and new fronts of violence.
• Quote:

  “You can’t say the words we’ve won or some sort of mission accomplished on the very same day that a US flagged ship gets struck in the middle of the Persian Gulf.” – Saagar (41:55)

Timestamps

• [11:47] – Trump declares "victory"
• [31:16] – Nuclear threats, rhetoric analyzed

---

6. The Oil War: Tankers Struck, Strait of Hormuz Closed, Oil Markets in Chaos

• Multiple oil facilities and tankers (including a US-flagged vessel) have been struck by Iran, setting fires in the Persian Gulf and causing insurance and shipping crises.
• The US Navy admits inability to escort ships through the mined Strait of Hormuz; only Iranian interests are moving freely.
• Massive releases from strategic oil reserves have failed to stop skyrocketing prices, now exceeding $90/barrel, gas approaching or surpassing $4/gallon.
• Quote:

  “The Navy has said, no, no, it’s too dangerous, because how can you accomplish this?...The Strait of Hormuz has now been mined.” – Krystal (48:04) “At the exact moment [Trump] was saying that, US flagship was getting attacked in the straits.” – Saagar (52:03)

• Broader economic impacts, including fertilizer and helium shortages, portend shocks for food production and global semiconductor supply.

Timestamps

• [46:56] – Reporting on tankers and oil fires
• [51:03] – Trump on secure shipping lanes (audio clip)

---

7. Global Economic Fallout: Fertilizer & Helium Shortages, Potential Famines

• Explosive fertilizer prices (up 77% in 12 days) and supply chain shocks threaten farmers worldwide, with worst consequences anticipated in the developing world.
• Helium shortage, worsened by Qatari shutdown, already imperils the semiconductor industry, risking a major chip crisis.
• The US and allies are increasingly disadvantaged as Iran maintains or even increases oil exports—especially to China—despite the chaos.

---

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “If they’ll lie about something so basic...they will lie to you about absolutely anything.” – Krystal (16:31)
• “He's like, it looks like Gaza, it looks like Khan Yunis. And this is just from Iranian drones and missiles.” – Saagar, citing Brandon Weickert (19:06)
• “Now you've got 168 little girls who are dead and can't be brought back.” – Krystal (26:16)
• “We could take them out within an hour...they literally would never be able to build that country back.” – Trump (31:16)
• “You can’t say the words we’ve won on the very same day that a US flagged ship gets struck in the middle of the Persian Gulf.” – Saagar (41:55)
• “The global economy didn't plan for this...our system, our global economic system, is built in a very fragile way. That has been the basis of neoliberalism.” – Krystal (59:20)

---

Segment Timestamps (MM:SS)

• 04:17 – Ryan Grim’s legal update on Dropsite News
• 11:23 – US government casualty cover-up & Trump’s “victory speech”
• 13:52 – Sgt. Hicks’ testimony about drone strike
• 15:07 – Krystal on government lies, info blackout
• 22:17 – Largest US military hospital abroad suspends services due to wounded influx
• 24:35 – Trump tries to dodge responsibility for girls’ school strike
• 31:16 – Trump’s nuclear threats from White House lawn
• 41:55 – Saagar: “You can’t say ‘we’ve won’ as ships burn”
• 46:56 – Oil tanker attacks, shipping crisis visuals
• 51:03 – Trump tells oil companies to “brave” the Strait of Hormuz

---

Tone and Language

• Fiercely critical, urgent, anti-establishment.
• Honest, unsparing—"fuck you," "idiotic," and similar language used on air.
• Speakers balance emotional gravity (loss, outrage, cynicism) with clear-eyed analysis and skepticism.
• Direct, often polemical, with frequent calls to question all official narratives and to support independent journalism.

---

Conclusion

This episode offers a searing examination of government deception, mounting humanitarian disaster, and accelerating global economic fallout from the US-Iran war. Krystal and Saagar, along with guests, cut through euphemisms and spin, painting a grimly realistic picture of a conflict with still-unknown ramifications—while repeatedly underscoring the necessity of independent media to counter state and corporate propaganda.

---

For listeners seeking facts and critical context drowned out by official noise, this episode is essential, bracing, and at times shocking.

Transcript

[A]

This is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed Human peace to the planet.

[B]

Charlamagne Tha God here. And listen, we are back.

[C]

The Black Effect Podcast Festival is back in Atlanta on April 25th at Pullman Yard. Yeah, and the full lineup is nuts. We got the Grits and Age Podcast, Deontay Kyle and Big Ice Cup Cat. We got Club 520 with Jeff Teague and the gang.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, don't call me White Girl.

[C]

Mona will be there. Keep it Positive, Sweetie with Crystal Renee. We got Reality with the King with Carlos King.

[B]

And yes, drink champs will be in the building.

[C]

Plus, you know we gonna have a lot of guests, so you need to join us. And we got the Black Effect Marketplace

[B]

to pitch your podcast and everything you

[C]

expect from the Black Effect Podcast Festival tickets are on sale right now. Go get [e-mail] podcast festival.

[B]

Don't play yourself.

[C]

Okay, pull up. I'm Clayton Eckerd. In 2022, I was the lead of ABC's the Bachelor.

[A]

But here's the Bachelor. Fans hated him.

[C]

If I could press a button and rewind it all, I would.

[A]

That's when his life took a disturbing turn. A one night stand would end in a courtroom.

[C]

The media is here.

[A]

This case has gone viral.

[C]

The dating contract.

[A]

Agree to date me, but I'm also suing you.

[C]

This is unlike anything I've ever seen before.

[A]

I'm Stephanie Young. Listen to Love trapped on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[C]

This Women's History Month.

[A]

The podcast Keep It Positive Sweetie celebrates the power of women, choosing healing, purpose and faith. Even when life gets messy.

[C]

Love. It's not a destination. You have to work on it every day. Keep it Positive, Sweetie creates space for honest conversations on self worth, love, growth, and navigating life with grace and grit. Led by women who uplift, inspire, and tell the truth out loud. I have several conversations with with God and I know why it took 20

[A]

years to hear this and more. Listen to Keep It Positive sweetie on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

[C]

Hey, guys, Sagar and Krystal here.

[A]

Independent media just played a truly massive role in this election and we are so excited about what that means for the future of this show.

[C]

This is the only place where you can find honest perspectives from the left and the right that simply does not exist anywhere else.

[A]

So if that is something that's important to you, Please go to BreakingPoints.com, become a member today and you'll get access. Our Full shows, unedited ad free and all put together for you every morning in your inbox.

[C]

We need your help to build the future of independent news media and we hope to see [e-mail] Good morning everybody. Happy Thursday. Have an amazing show for everybody today. What do we have? Crystal?

[A]

Massive, massive show today. Trump Admin caught lying about the number of American casualties. Something we and many others have suspected. Trump says that we've won the war. Don't you guys feel amazing? Like this thing is all over? He says it's just a little excursion. Meanwhile, oil prices are once again surging. Even though there was a massive release of reserves, more oil tankers, including a US flagged one, have been struck by Iran. So a lot to get into there. We've got two gigantic guests. Yanis Varoufakis is going to join us. Robert Pape is going to join us to talk about the escalation trap. Very excited to speak with both of them. We've got some specific numbers about the amount of damage being done inside of Israel and we're going to take a look at this allegation that Iran is planning to drone strike California. So see what we can make of what is going on there. Sagar.

[C]

That's right. And thank you to everybody who's been supporting our show. BreakingPoints.com, if you're able to. Today is, or I guess this week is the last week that we're gonna have our free month trial. Let's put it up here on the screen.

[A]

Only got til what, Sunday?

[C]

I think till Sunday.

[A]

Last call guys.

[C]

AP free 26 free month trial. If you can't afford it or if you don't wanna do it since there's actually no cost to you right now, no worries, please just hit subscribe to our YouTube channel and if you're listening to this on a podcast, please share an episode with a friend and rate us 5 stars. Really helps other people find the show. We've had millions of new listeners and viewers. We've had tens of thousands of people who have been coming in for our YouTube subscriptions and then thousands of people joining our premium program. So thank you and please join them if you can. We really appreciate it. But before we get to any of that, we have Ryan Grimm standing by for a special update.

[A]

So as you guys probably know, Dropsite News has been facing a lawsuit in the UK because of a piece of reporting they did about BBC and they're reporting on Israel and Palestine and Ryan has a very significant update in this lawsuit. So we Just wanted to quickly bring that to everybody. Ryan, first of all, great to see you. Second of all, give us a breakdown of what is going on here.

[D]

Wonderful to see you guys, especially under these circumstances. And let me start with a massive thank you to all of the viewers of this program and all the readers of Dropsite News. I was looking it up the other yesterday we got I think more than 4,000 people donating to our legal defense against this lawsuit from this BBC editor which raised more than $250,000 so that we could hire this like team of of lawyers who has been fighting this defamation claim that was brought against us. So we just got a ruling this morning in the key.

[C]

It's.

[D]

We don't even need to get into how complicated the UK libel laws.

[A]

The key.

[D]

A key decision came down which finds that the article is, quote, kind of honest reporting. And so that we're able to use the honest. Honest or honest opinion. The honest opinion defense. Which is what, which is what you want in cases like this. So if anybody can be found to hell to hold the honest opinion, then we win. So I expect he's not going to go forward with this anymore, but if he does, we'll, we'll see him in court.

[C]

But 30 second rewind. Ryan, what was the case about? What was the claim?

[D]

For those who don't know, this was the. A top editor at the BBC sued over a story that Owen Jones, British journalist, wrote for us about the BBC's bias coverage. The ruling is pretty interesting. I'll just read this part and then I know you guys got to get to the show. So this is from the court. The court found that this was the statement of opinion that we put forward in the article. Quote, the claimant in his senior editorial role and as a writer has consistently failed to meet the BBC's editorial standards of impartiality and fairness by shaping coverage of the Israel Palestine conflict so as to favor Israel, including by editing the BBC's coverage in ways that one, promote the government of Israel's narratives and two, fail to humanize Palestinians killed or injured in the conflict, thereby producing biased and imbalanced journalism, unquote. So that's from the court.

[A]

Wow.

[D]

Which is describing the opinion of. That is established in our article. That is put forward in our article, which is a 10,000 word investigation kind of into the BBC, not just into this editor, but he's the one that ended up suing. So as long as any honest person can hold that opinion, then we, then we win. And any honest person, I think, frankly well, congratulations.

[C]

Congratulations, Ryan, and thank you for reminding us why we should never do business in the uk Good Lord.

[D]

Good Lord. They didn't sue us directly. They only sued him because we're in the US but we had told him when he brought the story to us, if you get sued, we'll have your back on this.

[C]

And you did.

[D]

So that's how we got involved.

[A]

Anyway, thank you to everybody that this could happen, because he.

[D]

Why you got to keep supporting independent journalism? If it has the resources to fight back, it can do it.

[C]

That's right.

[A]

Well, congrats to you guys, Ryan. Congrats to Owen as well. And, you know, keep us updated on this. Very glad to hear that this has gone the way that it should go at this point.

[C]

Seriously. And just, you know, while you're here, Ryan, we should tell everybody. This is why supporting your show or your drop site, supporting Breaking Points is so important. If you don't have resources, then when those lawyers come calling, you are facing literal death.

[A]

Yeah. You can't do the story, I mean, to begin with, because, you know, the possibility of the. Of the lawsuit, and they use that threat to censor and keep people from reporting things that need to be reported.

[C]

You guys have faced it. We've all faced it now multiple times here at Breaking Points, and we're able to use our size, our premium subscription and everything to just tell everybody. Yeah, fuck you. You know, we'll see you later. So great. Thank you very much, Ryan. We appreciate you, brother.

[D]

It sounds crass, but you guys still have that. That free month, like, people should do it.

[C]

Yeah, we did. Yeah. See Ryan do the free month. Shameless than I am.

[D]

Yeah, I skipped the free month.

[E]

Just.

[D]

Just pay the first month. Come on, people. Yeah.

[C]

Thank you, Ryan. We appreciate you, man.

[D]

See you guys.

[A]

Thanks, Ryan. See you later.

[C]

This episode is brought to you by Spreaker, the platform responsible for a rapidly spreading condition known as podcast brain. Symptoms include buying microphones you don't need, explaining RSS feeds to confused relatives and saying things like, sorry, I can't talk right now. I'm editing audio. If this sounds familiar, you're probably already a podcaster.

[E]

The good news is Spreaker makes the whole process simple.

[C]

You record your show, upload it once, and Spreaker distributes it everywhere.

[E]

People listen.

[C]

Apple podcasts, Spotify, and about a dozen apps your cousin swears are the next big thing. Even better, Spreaker helps you monetize your show with ads, meaning your podcast might someday pay for, well, more microphones. Start your show today. @spreaker.com spreaker. Because if you're going to talk to yourself for an hour, you might as well publish it.

[E]

You know Roald Dahl, the writer who thought up Willy Wonka, Matilda and the bfg. But did you know he was also a spy?

[C]

Was this before he wrote his stories?

[A]

It must have been.

[E]

Our new podcast series, the Secret World of Roald Dahl is a wild journey through the hidden chapters of his extraordinary, controversial life. His job was literally to seduce the wives of powerful Americans.

[C]

What?

[E]

And he was really good at it. You probably won't believe it either.

[A]

Okay, I don't think that's true.

[E]

I'm telling you, the guy was a spy. Did you know Dahl got cozy with the Roosevelts, played poker with Harry Truman, and had a long affair with a congresswoman? And then he took his talents to Hollywood, where he worked alongside Walt Disney and Alfred Hitchcock before writing a hit James Bond film. How did the Secret Agent wind up as the most successful children's author ever? And what darkness from his covert past seeped into the stories we read as kids? The true story is stranger than anything he ever wrote. Listen to the Secret World of Roald Dahl on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[B]

I went and sat on the little

[C]

ottoman in front of him.

[B]

Hi, dad.

[C]

And just when I said, my mom comes out of the kitchen and she says, I have some cookies and milk. This is badass. Convict just finished five years. I'm gonna have cookies and milk at mall.

[E]

Yeah.

[B]

On the Cino show podcast, each episode invites you into a raw, unfiltered conversations about recovery, resilience and redemption. On a recent episode, I sit down with actor cultural icon Danny Trejl. Talk about addiction, transformation and the power of second chances. The entire season two is now available to binge, featuring powerful conversations with the guests like Tiffany Adish, Johnny Knoxville, and more.

[C]

I'm an alcoholic, and without this program, I'm a die.

[B]

Open your free iHeartRadio app, search the Cino show and listen.

[C]

Now, Turning now to a massive cover up in the United States government. Multiple casualties hidden from United States of America in that initial strike where multiple US Service members were killed. But before we even get to any of that, Donald Trump on the campaign trail yesterday declaring victory. One might even say, mission accomplished in the war in Iran. Let's take a listen.

[B]

Is that a great name? Well, it's only good if you win, you know, you can only do. And we've won, let me tell you. We've Won. You know, you never like to say too early, you won, we won. We won. The bet in the first hour, it was over, we won.

[D]

But.

[B]

But they gave me a list of names that General, sir, you can pick the name you'd like. Sir, I said, the name of what? The name of the attack on Iran, sir. And they gave me like 20 names and I'm like falling asleep. I didn't like any of them. Then I see epic fury. I said, I like that name. I like that name.

[C]

We won. And if you want to see how much we're winning, let's put a 2 up there on the screen. This just came out yesterday. The Iranian drone attack in Kuwait that killed U.S. service members in the early hours of the war was more severe than previously known. Dozens suffering injury that included brain trauma, shrapnel trauma, burns. More than 30 remained in the hospital yesterday. This was published yesterday with battle injuries. One at Brooke Army Medical center in San Antonio, 12 at Walter Reed here in the DMV area, 25 at Landstuhl in Germany. Of those, about 20 arrived on a C17 military transport aircraft at Landstuhl on Tuesday with injuries the military designated as, quote, urgent and requiring evacuation. More than 100 medical personnel were sent to Landstuhl to assist. What's even worse is that we can see how they initially described the attack. Let's put that one up there on the screen. This is what they said on the day. As of 9:30am Three U.S. service members have been killed in action. Five are seriously wounded. Several others sustained, quote, minor shrapnel injuries and concussions, and are in the process of being returned to duty. A straight up lie there from the Pentagon. And if you wanna see how bad it was, a surviving US service member, Sergeant First Class Corey Hooks, actually described the moment that drone struck the tactical operations center and what it was like. You can see the injuries that he sustained. Let's take a listen. I remember turning my head to the left and I seen the nose of that drone pop through.

[B]

And as soon as it did, I

[C]

knew what it was. It was either a missile or a drone. So I turned to my right and that's when it blew up and just blew the whole building apart. Life is precious. Precious life is short.

[B]

You never know when you're going to

[C]

be putting in a situation like we were in. Wow, it's tragic, Sergeant Hicks. I mean, you could see the injuries to his face, to his hand. He's lucky to survive. But there's so many of his other comrades who are now literally languishing in hospitals. And they lied to us. They lied to us completely. Also we should note at least five were killed in this attack. We don't know the exact number. But don't forget about the other recent service members who we've learned about who were killed in attacks on Saudi Arabia. What's the wounded number there? What's the wounded number for all the bases that we're about to show people which have been attacks from 17 different bases or sites in the, from the United States military where we've had untold billions of damage, but more importantly, wounded service members. We have no idea the number of casualties. We know that the current number is somewhere around 150. That was just a couple of days ago. But you can see right there what the COVID up is currently happening right now and it only continues to escalate.

[A]

Well, and here's the thing, like all governments lie and actually democratic governments tend to like small d Democratic governments actually tend to lie more because they have to bring their population on board. So they have more of an incentive to lie to their population. But this is something different from the Trump administration. And what's different here? And we've seen this. It, you know, reminds me of the lies around Renee Goode, the lies around Alex Preddy, the lies that we've seen routinely from this administration where they have to know that the video is gonna emerge. They have to know that the service members who survived are gonna come out and speak. They have to know that the family members who lost loved ones or whose loved ones are now gravely injured, not just with minor boo boos the way they tried to frame it to begin with are gonna ultimately speak. They know this information is going to come out and yet they lie anyway. That is what is so incredibly wild to me. And so I think a lot of people are being treated as conspiracy theorists for saying are we getting story about the overall casualty number, the number of deaths, but specifically the number of injuries. And now those concerns about the fact that this government just routinely lies about even things that you know are going to come out eventually. That has been completely, that concern has been completely validated. And so there's no reason that you should trust any of the numbers that they tell you. There's no reason you should trust anything they tell you. Because if they'll lie about something so basic and so essential and so sensitive as the number of US service members who were gravely who were seriously injured in this initial attack, they will lie to you about absolutely anything. And so we have no idea. I mean this is the information they're giving us now. But this one attack, this has been reported out. Some reporter was able to get their hands on this. But we have no idea the overall number of casualties. We have no idea the amount of damage that has been done to our bases in the region. We have no idea how there was a leak yesterday or to the Congress's brief that this has already cost us over $11 billion, the amount that they are hiding from the American people. Just, you know, you can't even begin to wrap your head around at this point.

[C]

It's so unbelievable. And just to show you the scale, let's go and put the next one up there on the screen. At least 17 US sites were damaged in the war with Iran. These are all satellite images from March 2. Here's what another thing I want to flag to everybody and I want to very much call out these private satellite companies. For years, news organizations, I used to work at one of them. We had deals with these private satellite companies where they would give you up to date satellite imagery of some of these sites which were involved, let's say with the military. Out of the blue, all of these private satellite companies just said, you know what, we're going to go on a two week delay. So we have no idea what's actually happening in the battlefield. So this is just what we know about which have been damaged. So let me read some of the lists. 17 US sites damaged in the war with Iran. Iran has responded with installations, quote, several of which have been struck more than once. Their analysis is currently based on high resolution commercial sat imagery from a couple of days ago, remember? So it's not even currently up to date. Thousands of missiles, many of them include in Kuwait. We have the Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the uae, Jordan and Iraq. All of these are US sites where you have either US service member or US personnel which are currently there. You have drone attacks, you have missile attacks. Perhaps the most important ones are some of the Thaad radar battery sites which we've talked about here previously. And you can actually see the damage. And again, this is some 10 days ago that were able to see the damage. So God only knows what it is today when you have escalating actions all across the entire Middle East. Hotels where US personnel are staying, remember, still haven't got any casualty update on that. We know from the DoD's admission that there are all these service members which are staying in these high priced hotels. Tons of these hotels have been struck day after day. A couple of them were struck just yesterday.

[A]

Right.

[C]

And you have to imagine whenever they're striking at certain floors, you know, it doesn't seem to be random. It's very obviously maybe Russian intelligence, Iranian intelligence, Chinese intelligence, about where some of these people are, in addition to the exact coordinates in many of their civilian infrastructure, the Dubai airport. By the way, let me make sure everybody knows this. There's a story out literally today where a British tourist who fire. Who filmed Iranian missiles in Dubai is now facing two years in prison and being charged with a cybercrime offense. So remember this, you have no idea what's going on in Dubai. You have no idea what's going on in Qatar. We barely have any idea what's going on in Israel. The video we're able to show you soon that Israel allowed to be released is only because they're gonna use that video as a pretext for a massive ground invasion of Lebanon. So everything that we're able to see is totally controlled by all of these governments. And these commercial satellite images are the closest that we get only from 10 days ago showing damage to all of these different sites. Our friend Brandon Weickert, he described one of these bases as. He's like, it looks like Gaza, it looks like Khan Yunis. And this is just from Iranian drones and missiles. So, I mean, God help our troops who are stationed and have to sustain fire underneath these circumstances. We're going to talk here in a little bit about the oil tankers. I mean, it's apocalyptic. Not just Tehran, you have ships in the middle of the ocean just getting struck and going up in flames. Those storage facilities in oman, I think 10 different countries were involved in an attack yesterday. 10 were embroiled in the war. It's a full blown world war now. We have troops, you know, covered up.

[A]

It is a nightmare possibility of it spilling over to the Horn of Africa as well, because Israel wants to take up a position there in order to hit back at the Houthis, who may also be joining the conflict. It appears. So. It's an absolute mess. And to Sagar's point, these are. All of them are authoritarian and to include Israel are authoritarian countries. And so, yeah, they are not allowing anyone to pose the damage because for them, it's embarrassing. You know, for the Iranians, there's a different incentive where, you know, we actually see more of the damage there because they want to show the brutality of the US And Israeli attacks. For the US A big part of the goal here is to save face. I mean, that's a big part of what the risk is for the US in this conflict, which is already, I mean already they have sustained significant damage in terms of our ability to project that we are invincible, that you can't mess with us, that you don't mess with us, that we are the big bully on the block. And so they are highly incentivized to hide all of the damage to our facilities, to our radars, to our thaad battery systems, also to our service members themselves. One more indication of how high the casualty numbers are. And this had come out a few days ago and was one of the things that people were kind of scratching their heads about. Put this next thing up on the screen. Lonstool, this largest US Military hospital abroad paused some services like labor and delivery because of the war with Iran, meaning that they were having to take in enough injured service members that they had to prioritize that over some of the other normal services like labor and delivery that any hospital but this one included would typically offer. So that came out a number of days ago and people were going, okay, well if we're only being told by the government, there were like, oh, just this handful of minor wounds. This doesn't track. With the largest military hospital abroad having to completely cease certain operations in order to care for wounded service members. We also have an update on, you know, now put a 8 up on the screen. Obviously news organizations had already all but proved that the strike on the girls school that killed some 168 young children, young girls, that, that came directly from the US well now we have reporting that our own preliminary inquiry that is happening internally here also found the US to be at fault. And it's still question about exactly how this happened. There appears to have been sort of old intelligence that was used to target the school. The school site used to be part of a military base. Obviously now it is no longer part of military base. It was a children's school, a girl's school. And there continues to be a question over whether or not Claude, the anthropics AI was implicated in helping to create this faulty information. And when you come up with these targets, this isn't just like a one step sign off. It's not supposed to be. It's supposed to go through multiple layers of approval, including checking the most recent satellite data to make sure that what you're targeting is what you think you are targeting. So still huge questions about how this happened. And then of course the fact that there's reporting that this is a double tap strike adds increasingly dire questions about exactly what the hell happened here. Trump was asked about this and continues to pretend like he has no idea about it. He doesn't know what's going on. You recall that previously he had tried to blame Iran and claimed that they had somehow gotten their hands on a Tomahawk missile and then bombed their own girls school. Let's go ahead and take a listen to Trump. This is a seven for the strike on the school in Iran. A new report says the military investigation has found it was the United States that struck the school.

[B]

I don't know about.

[A]

Don't know about it. So still just complete, you know, complete Israeli answer there.

[C]

Yeah. And you can say very unequivocally now that you can not only know how this happened, but you also need a serious investigation. Also didn't even know this. Apparently Pete Hegseth fired a bunch of the people who are in the office who are responsible for investigating civilian casualties. So this is even, even though this did happen, what we'll now see with the preliminary finding. The big question is they said the preliminary finding said it was passed on from the Defense Intelligence Agency. Who, who did it? Who is responsible for updating the target list? Everybody knows that there's a shelf where they just keep all these targets in Iran. So was this target list created in 2013 and never updated despite the. And they just pulled it off the shelf and plug and played it. Because that's a complete failure. In fact, the person who is in charge of that office or whoever had that portfolio on their desk, let's say at the chairman of the joint. The way it works, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs is they have like 200 people who work for them. One or two of them is going to be the head of the Iran desk and they're responsible for coordinating all this stuff and keeping it up to date. Need to know the name. The guy's got to go. He's got to be very minimum fired and probably be investigated for responsibilities of his duties because that is what a culture with real responsibility in the chain of command actually looks like.

[A]

Yeah. And this is what happens when you have a, you know, chaotic moron in charge of the Pentagon and, you know, total incompetence and bloodlust and, you know, not caring at all about the rules of engagement and thinking that these sort of like checks on military power are like woke dei bullshit. And now you've got 168 little girls who are dead and can't be brought back.

[C]

It might be one of the worst atrocities the United States has been directly involved in in years. I really, I it, I'm trying to think back to 03. I'm sure there were one or two in the very early days of Iraq and there were a few, you know, the Kundu's hospital and all that. But this to be on the very first day, it should give you a lot of pause about how this entire war has already gone. And so whenever they tell you, oh, we struck 2,000 new targets, you know, over the last week, it's like, were they all legitimate? Were they all part of the same target set? Do you have any processes in place to make sure that this isn't going to happen again? Because, you know, this one is particularly egregious because it's a girls school. You only, you know, God only knows about the rest of them. And then even inside of Tehran, it's such a chaotic situation inside the entire country. Are they even able to, you know, go into, have cameras there like they were originally? Again, same thing. We have no idea. So be very careful about trusting what the government is saying and also what the UAE and all these other places are saying. There's an immense amount of censorship. But we could say this at the very beginning or from, at the very least, the United States lied to the American people about the casualties that initially came out on the very first day of the war. Let's continue on with Donald Trump. This episode is brought to you by Spreaker, the platform responsible for a rapidly spreading condition known as podcast brain. Symptoms include buying microphones you don't need, explaining RSS feeds to confused relatives, and saying things like, sorry, I can't talk right now, I'm editing audio. If this sounds familiar, you're probably already a podcaster.

[E]

The good news is Spreaker makes the whole process simple.

[C]

You record your show, upload it once, and Spreaker distributes it everywhere.

[E]

People listen.

[C]

Apple podcasts, Spotify, and about a dozen apps your cousin swears are the next big thing. Even better, Spreaker helps you monetize your show with ads, meaning your podcast might someday pay for, well, more microphones. Start your show [e-mail] spreaker because if you're going to talk to yourself for an hour, you might as well publish it.

[E]

You know Roald Dahl, the writer who thought up Willy Wonka, Matilda and the bfg. But did you know he was also a spy?

[C]

Was this before he wrote his stories?

[A]

It must have been.

[E]

Our new podcast series, the Secret World of Roald Dahl is a wild journey through the hidden chapters of his extraordinary, controversial life. His job was literally to seduce the Wives of powerful Americans.

[C]

What?

[E]

And he was really good at it. You probably won't believe it either.

[A]

Okay, I don't think that's true.

[E]

I'm telling you, the guy was a spy. Did you know Dahl got cozy with the Roosevelts, played poker with Harry Truman, and had a long affair with a congresswoman? And then he took his talents to Hollywood, where he worked alongside Walt Disney and Alfred Hitchcock before writing a hit James Bond film. How did this secret agent wind up as the most successful children's author ever? And what darkness from his covert past seeped into the stories we read as kids? The true story is stranger than anything he ever wrote. Listen to the Secret World of Roald Dahl on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[B]

I went and sat on the little

[C]

ottoman in front of him.

[B]

Hi, dad.

[C]

And just when I said, my mom comes out of the kitchen and she says, I have some cookies and milk. This is badass, Convict. Just finished five years. I'm gonna have cookies and milk at mall.

[E]

Yeah.

[B]

On the Cushow podcast, each episode invites you into a raw, unfiltered conversations about recovery, resilience, and redemption. On a recent episode, I sit down with actor cultural icon Danny Trejl to talk about addiction, transformation and the power of second chances. The entire season two is now available to binge, featuring powerful conversations with the guests like Tiffany Adish, Johnny Knoxville, and more.

[C]

I'm an alcoholic, and without this program, I'm a die.

[B]

Open your free iHeartRadio app, search the Cino show and listen.

[C]

Now, Turning now to Donald Trump and his current justification of the war. He's all over the place. It's a war. It's an excursion. It's both, as he said, it's going to both beginning and is also ending very. No, he said it's just beginning. It's also ending very soon. We showed you that one. This one. Oh. And we won. And even though we haven't won, we can continue to win. So here it is. You just said it is a little excursion.

[D]

And you said it is a war. So which one is?

[C]

Well, it's both.

[B]

It's both. It's a. An excursion that will keep us out of a war. And the war is going to be. I mean, for them, it's a war. For us, it's turned out to be easier than we thought.

[C]

So, yeah, it's an excursion. It's a war. It turned out to actually be an easier war excursion than we thought. However, what we can also see is that things are not going well already. You have Trump effectively threatening the use of nuclear weapons, reminding them of our nuclear superiority. Very fire infurias. Take a listen to this from the White House lawn.

[B]

They are, they've lost their navy, they've lost their air force, they have no anti aircraft apparatus at all, they have no radar. Their leaders are gone. And we could do a lot worse than one another. We're leaving certain things that if we take them out, or we could take them out by this afternoon, in fact, within an hour, they literally would never be able to build that country back.

[C]

We could take them out within an hour. I mean, look, as we continue to see, Trump gave away all of his negotiating leverage. Why? Cuz he keeps being like, if you don't, if you do this, I'm gonna bomb you. And Tehran is like, well, you are bombing us. You have threatened and killed, you've killed our ayatollah, you killed a vast majority of our upper echelon, you have literally made acid rain fall on the streets of Tehran. You have killed border guards, you have tried to foment civil war. You've demanded unconditional surrender. What more can you do to us? And the answer is only two things. More US ground troops, thousands of US ground troops, perhaps to take over the Straits of Hormuz or drop a nuclear bomb. Would it be us? Would it be Israel? Could be either. We talked about Brandon with that. But the strategic logic of it. I mean, I don't know what your percentage at. I'm at like 5% now. You know, I was at 3%, now I'm at 5% and I'm actually at 20% for an atmospheric test. Because we're gonna talk about this with oil. The longer the shit goes on, if we start to get to oil at 200 a barrel, the energy secretary this morning said 200 a barrel. We need to stop talking about this. Let me put it in gas prices, that's $8 a gallon. So $8 a gallon at the pump. People are gonna riot. Or they should. At $8, I certainly will. And I have electric car, I'll be mad on Everybody's behalf. At $8 a gallon. Think about this. The immense pressure to wrap things up. They're too prideful and too hubristic and too far in to say, okay, we're done. And so what's the other option? You gotta invade or you gotta bomb them. That's the only other thing that's left in our arsenal. Like, and I mean, look, at this point, they're so afraid of ground casualties, that you could see like an atmospheric nuclear test that would happen as a signal for unconditional surrender, which is, I mean, unfathomable, like literally in the modern nuclear age, that that alone would be one of the most shocking events of the century to actually happen.

[A]

Absolutely, absolutely. Now, I think we would have ground troops before we would have even an atmospheric test.

[E]

Really.

[B]

I don't know.

[A]

I think we would have ground troops first. I think that would be the night. Because there is such, even for this, where there is such a taboo around nuclear weapons, I think you would go ground troops first. Obviously, they've been briefing Congress that that is a very real, if not likely possibility. Reporters have been able to get their hands on plans of some sort of really extraordinarily dangerous, risky to the point of foolhardy operation to go in and secure the loose nuclear material. I think that's probably the next step. But then if that goes sideways, where do we go next? And that is very likely to go sideways in terms of the ground invasion. I mean, that I'm at like, very high likelihood, because if you think about it, we're gonna talk later on in the show, but Iran is now close the Strait of Hormuz, effectively, except for they're able to export what they were actually exporting, more oil to China than they were before. So they're doing what they want to do. They're blowing up oil tankers. You know, the Navy saying, we can't escort you. It's too dangerous. We can't do it. They've mined the Strait. Now, the US has confirmed that that has in fact happened. So they're doing what they want to do with the Strait of Hormuz. The Houthis may join the action and also close down that area as well in the Red Sea, which would was one of the ways they've been rerouting oil to lessen the blow to the oil market. So they're destroying the capacity of the global oil market. So that's one thing. They've also now threatened the regional banking system in Dubai because we or Israel attacked one of their banks that is linked to the irgc. And so they say, okay, game on then. Be on. Notice that HSBC City, all of these local branches and anyone within a 1km blast radius of those branches, you are now at risk, you are now a target. So they're bombing the oil, they're bombing the banking. They've also put on notice the tech companies who are complicit in the US's and Israel's entire war machine and who are also, you know, have made deals with these local monarchies, et cetera, and building out their data centers. They've also put them on notice, like, you are also a target, by the way. There is no way that the US Is just going to allow them, that the Trump regime is just going to allow them to mess with the oil, mess with the banks, mess with the data centers and not escalate to the next level. So that's why I feel very sickeningly certain that we are likely to see some sort of a ground invasion. And where things go from there, no one can say. But back to Trump's comments here about, oh, we won and, you know, we took them out and it's gone so much better than expected, blah, blah, blah. Our own intel community is saying that Iran's leadership remains stable despite the strikes. I just saw the new supreme leader, the son who's, you know, mom, dad, wife, kid, other relatives were all murdered by us in Israel, that he's about to put out his first statement. There were some rumors. I think the Iranians did confirm he was injured in that attack as well. There were some rumors that maybe he was gravely injured or on the verge of death, et cetera. So anyway, they're putting out a message. You can see that the Iranian, the IRGC has continued to operate. They had made contingency plans in the event that the top leadership was taken out, and obviously they continue to be able to execute on that. So even our own intel community says there's no sign of collapse here. There's no sign this thing is wobbling and on the ver of collapse. And you can tell by Trump's rhetoric himself, because when he first announced the war in his baseball cap without a tie, he said, it's time for the Iranian people to rise up. I think he really believed that they'd taken out the Ayatollah and now there was gonna be this organic movement on the ground to overthrow the regime. Obviously, none of that has manifested and now they don't even talk about it anymore.

[C]

No, actually, one of the most revealing comments that I have seen so far is from Mark Dubowitz. If you don't know who Mark Dubowitz is, he is, I mean, I would say, the preeminent, like, regime change for Iran lobbyist called the foundation for Defense of Democracies, which is like a cutout front, really, for a large part of this pro war lobby. I don't even think he would really disagree with that, to be honest. Like, I think you would say it is honorable. Like he absolutely, for years has been beating the drums for war with Iran. He very recently put out a statement where he's like, okay, it will be a victory. He put out a tweet where he said it would be a victory if we leave the regime somewhat intact and we follow up the job later. As long as we reduce their defense capability so they know that the war is not going well. Three days ago, they weren't saying that they were demanding regime change. Even the Israelis are still demanding regime change. And Trump is trying to spin everything. But this is the thing about bullshit is you can't bullshit collides with reality. You can BS your way out of a whole lot of stuff. And while the stakes were high for tariffs and the stakes were high for a lot of this stuff in war, it very quickly gets revealed. So, for example, let's go ahead and put a 12 on the screen. Trump tells Axios there's practically nothing left to target in Iran. They're like, all their munitions are gone. They have no capabilities. The very same day that he says this, 10 different countries are then either struck by a drone or involved in the war. A US flagged tanker, which we'll talk and show you pictures of in a little bit, gets struck in the middle of the Persian Gulf. Oman storage facilities are literally on fire. Three different ships in the Straits of Hormuz get attacked. You have drone and missile attacks all over the entire Middle east. And you have a coordinated effort with Hezbollah, which again, you will all get an Update on which 100 rockets that fire into northern Israel. By the way, only 50%, according to at least some initial reports on the ground, only 50% were even intercepted just to show you how low that they're running. Right. And so this is a global catastrophe already. And finally just had to show everybody this. A14. The only regime change that we currently seem to be on track for is potentially in Bahrain. From Dropsite News. Bahrain is bringing in foreign riot police, the first time since 2011 to deploy foreign forces to contain their domestic unrest. Demonstrations have erupted against the monarchy and their role as a base for US military operations, including the Navy's 5th Fleet headquarters. So that's great. Multi billion dollar facility, tens of thousands of sailors, so many people. If you ever served in the US Navy, you've probably transited at some point through Bahrain now. Oh, great. Now we have a full blown Arab Spring style situation requiring riot police and potentially a massive crackdown in that country. Remember, Crystal, some of the videos that came out of Bahrain, where their own population was cheering whenever their country is being struck. Remember, 50% of their population or so is Shia and has long been oppressed by the monarchy there. So this is really bad. And then the final thing I do want to Show Everyone is a 13 where Trump says Iran war is nearly won, but Israel has other ideas. And shocking. Lo and behold, down in the bottom, they say that actually Israel is still fully on track for regime change, that the different priorities show that they're very willing and want to strike at the heart of the Iranian leadership, at the heart of their civil society. There's reports just last night of drones, Israeli drones, that are hovering around, shooting precisely at the police forces, trying to collapse any enforcement in the streets. They're doing everything they possibly can to incite an uprising and a civil war, which of course is leading to massive nationalism in the country. So everything is unstable. The global. I mean, I'm shocked that oil is currently where it's at. I have no idea what some of these people are thinking. I'm amazed our own economy hasn't tanked. Honestly, like with fertilizer oil, the global inputs helium. That's another thing. Qatar this morning said that they're going to shut down their production with helium. It's one third of the global helium supply. For those who don't know, helium is absolutely critical to the supply of semiconductors and specifically chips, both in the United States and South Korea and in Taiwan. So we may have a global chip shortage as a result already of some of the helium shortages that we're already seeing. Food prices are going to skyrocket. When we talked all about this with the war in Ukraine, diesel is currently on track for $5 a gallon. So it's bad. It's really bad. And any talk of we've won or any of that, you literally cannot say the words we've won and, or some sort of mission accomplished on the very same day that a US flagged ship gets struck in the middle of the Persian Gulf. You can't say it, it's on fire, supposedly under protection of the United States of America. Shocking.

[A]

Yeah. And yes, sure, we're bombing the hell out of Iran, we're bombing the hell out of Tehran. Are we accomplishing. We don't even know what our objectives are. Like, let's even start with that originally as a regime change. Now they've walked away from that. Now it's. Then it was the nuclear material that walked away from that. Now it's like, well, we're gonna blow up their navy and, well, they seem to still be able to do some stuff on the seas. So I'm not sure what's going on there. We don't even know what we're there for. And we are certainly not accomplishing any of the objectives that have been set out. All Iran has to do is survive and they win. That is all they have to do. And right now, what our own intelligence community is saying is that they are winning. That is the translation there. They say the regime is stable, so your goal of destroying them, of creating chaos, civil war, regime change, whatever the goals were, those goals are not being accomplished. And in fact, Financial Times had another report about Iranian nationalism. Surprise, surprise, that people are rallying around the flag, even people who are critics of this regime, and there are many critics, and for good reason, of this current Iranian regime. But do they support having their little girls murdered at school and acid rain rain down on them and Tehran being carpet bombed and cultural sites, heritage sites being destroyed, and Trump saying, oh, the map's probably not gonna look the same after this? No, of course they don't support that. So that's where we are. And anyone who wants to deny that reality is just living in a fantasy land. Because like Sara said, especially in wartime, you know, Trump can bullshit a whole lot of things and convince people of a whole lot of lies, but when it comes to war, reality is going to smack you in the face. And that is what is happening right now.

[C]

Italian subs for your finance team at Chicago.

[B]

Ezcator. Burritos for your call center crew in Plano. Easy Cater. Bagels for your sales reps meeting clients in Charlotte. Easy Cater. Hot chicken sandwiches for your third shift warehouse workers in Memphis. Easy Cater.

[C]

Your teams may be spread out across

[B]

the country, but you've got one platform to feed them all whenever and wherever they work. With food they love from favorite restaurants. EasyCater. Food for the workplace, all in one place.

[E]

Order [e-mail] youm know Roald Dahl, the writer who thought up Willy Wonka, Matilda and the bfg. But did you know he was also a spy?

[A]

Was this before he wrote his stories? It must have been.

[E]

Our new podcast series, the Secret World of Roald Dahl is a wild journey through the hidden chapters of his extraordinary, controversial life. His job was literally to seduce the wives of powerful Americans.

[C]

What?

[E]

And he was really good at it. You probably won't believe it either.

[A]

Okay, I don't think that's true.

[E]

I'm telling you, the guy was a spy. Did you know Dahl got cozy with The Roosevelts, played poker with Harry Truman and had a long affair with a congressman. And then he took his talents to Hollywood, where he worked alongside Walt Disney and Alfred Hitchcock before writing a hit James Bond film. How did this secret agent wind up as the most successful children's author ever? And what darkness from his covert past seeped into the stories we read as kids? The true story is stranger than anything he ever wrote. Listen to the Secret World of Roald Dahl on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[B]

I went and sat on the little

[C]

ottoman in front of him.

[B]

Hi, dad.

[C]

And just when I said that, my mom comes out of the kitchen and she says, I have some cookies and milk. This is badass, Convict. Just finished five years. I'm gonna have cookies and milk at mom.

[B]

On the Cino show podcast, each episode invites you into a raw, unfiltered conversations about recovery, resilience, and redemption. On a recent episode, I sit down with actor cultural icon Danny Trail. Talk about addiction, transformation and the power of second chances. The entire season two is now available to binge, featuring powerful conversations with the guests like Tiffany Haddish, Johnny Knoxville, and more.

[C]

I'm an alcoholic, and without this trope, I'm gonna die.

[B]

Open your free iHeartRadio app, search the Cino show and listen now.

[A]

All right, well, let's talk about some of that reality with regards to oil. We can put this up on the screen. Just incredible scenes that are unfolding across the region as oil facilities and tankers are being struck by Iran. So this first one here, you can see a tanker on fire. This is in the Persian Gulf tonight. Here is an oil facility that was also struck. And you can see just fires everywhere. Here's a picture. So this is the Strait of Hormuz right there. That's where Trump says, just go ahead, just brave it. This is the US Flag tanker. This is the first time a US Flagged tanker has been struck. This is near Iraq. There were a couple of oil tankers that were struck near Iraq. This is another tanker that is on fire. You can see the damage that was sustained here. And so in terms of the. Here's someone. Someone posted this with. This is what it looks like when Trump tells you to go ahead and be brave.

[C]

Poor guys. Some Thai oil tankers on a Thai flagship. They have no idea.

[A]

It's a very difficult life. It's not their choice because it's not like they can just be like, hey, boss, I'm not down for this. So they're being brought into this conflict. And, you know, these are civilians who are just trying to do a job. This is like the global working class, truly. And now they're, you know, they're being attacked, some of them are being injured. Some of them are losing their lives in these attacks. And the Navy had originally said, you know, we had. I think Trump had originally announced, or hegseth, one of them had announced, like, oh, the Navy is gonna escort these tankers through to make sure that they're safe. And then they immediately were like, ah, well, we actually can't do that. They're getting tons of requests to do that from these companies that want to be able to. I mean, this is how they earn their living. And the Navy has said, no, no, it's too dangerous, because how can you accomplish this? The Strait of Hormuz has now been mined. We don't know how many. We don't know where they are, but that is an incredible risk. And obviously, they're continuing to be able to strike these blows in spite of Trump telling us that, oh, we've won and they're defeated and they have no ability to project any more power, and this thing's just about over. They're having their way there in the Strait of Hormuz. They're able to do and operate and do whatever they want to do. Early on, just based on the threats from Iran, the insurers had effectively sort of pulled out spike prices to the point of being prohibitive. Now our government came in and said, don't worry, we'll insure you. But who is going to take this risk? Who is going to look at these images and sign up and say, yeah, I want to do this. I want to risk, you know, not only the lives of these individuals, but it's a lot of money that these ships are, these tankers are, and a lot of money on board as well.

[C]

Yeah, no, I mean, it is so bad that these attacks actually are what really sent some of the oil prices going up again last night, somewhere around $90 a barrel. Brent, I believe, is actually higher, somewhere near 100. Again, just to translate, I think if crude goes to 100, it will be roughly $4 a gallon in our NASDAQ.

[A]

That's it at $93 right now.

[C]

So we're at 93. So maybe three. It depends, obviously, where you live, whether we're going to do gas taxes. They've currently a gas tax relief, Jones Act. There's a lot of other stuff which actually could further reduce the price. But as of right now, that's roughly where things are going. Highest gas prices we've seen under Donald Trump's presidency. We should of course also note the mines that Ryan and Emily covered. Some 10 mines according to the US intelligence community so far been laid in the Straits of Hormuz. And they have thousands of ships, obvious or boats, small craft which just have two mines or something you could just float out into apparently into the middle of the Straits of Hormuz, which still have their capability. The US said they're only destroyed 16 of those boats now so far. The estimate again literally is like thousands of some sort of small craft, many of which are hidden in tunnels and in bunkers. But here is what Donald Trump said about braving the Straits of Hormuz and the mines. Let's take a listen.

[B]

Are you Talking to the CEOs of various oil companies and encouraging them to

[C]

use a straight up?

[B]

Yeah, I think they should, I think they should. I think they should use. Look, we took out just about all of their mind ships in one night. We're up to boat number 60. I didn't realize that that big a

[A]

navy, Treasury Department buy oil futures as a means to keep the oil prices down or bring the oil.

[B]

We're going to be in very good shape. You see it, what's happening? They are pretty much at the end of the line. Doesn't mean we're going to end it immediately, but they are. They've got no navy, they've got no air force, they've got no anti air traffic anything. They have no systems of control. We're just riding free range over that country. And now we're going to look very strongly at the straits. The straits are in great shape. We've knocked out all of their boats. They have some missiles, but not very many.

[A]

Wow.

[C]

At the exact moment he was saying that US flagship was getting attacked in

[A]

the straits are in. At the exact same moment states are in great straits are in great shape.

[C]

No, they're shut down. They're completely shut down. There's nothing moving through there except what Iran wants to move through there. All of that coastline I was already seeing this morning. What do you, what do you think? I'm reading reports. Contingency plans for taking over the straits would require us securing the coastline. So like all the coastline on the Straits of Hormuz, US troops have to go there. If they're there, then you gotta make sure that they don't get attacked from the rear guard. Which means what? A large ground force. You can't bomb your way out of this as we're gonna talk about with Professor Pape.

[A]

Yeah. And if you do just try to send those Navy escort, they're sitting ducks.

[C]

Yep.

[A]

Right. I mean, that's why they can't do it. And that's why, coincidentally, I mean, this is one of the many reasons why the military did not want this war. I mean, Bibi said himself, he has been dreaming of this war for 40 years. And we have had, in that time period, many American presidents who were extremely pro Israel, who did many things that Israel wanted them to do, and were on their side through thick and thin. But when it came to this war with Iran, those presidents said, that would be an idiotic move, it would be dangerous, it would be extraordinarily risky. We cannot do it. It took till this president, and whatever is going on with him and his sugar high after Venezuela and his foolishness to actually get us into this thing, because the military knew that this would be a disaster. And this is one of many reasons why this is extraordinary, too. So let's put B3 up on the screen. So originally, Trump had actually been opposed to any sort of strategic Petroleum release. He has now completely done a 180 on that, not only in terms of our own reserves, but in terms of global reserves. The IEA has announced their largest ever oil release from global strategic reserves. They've decided to release 400 million barrels in an attempt to prevent supply disruptions and tame crude prices. So you have that. You have an announcement about a release from our own Strategic Petroleum reserve. And so as that is happening, at the same time, we still have oil prices going up. That is an extraordinary situation. Okay. What this was meant to do was to keep those oil prices low, to calm the markets, to bring the price back down or at least maintain its position. That has not succeeded. That has failed. Why? Because of exactly the scenes that we just showed you, because of these tankers on fire right near Iraq in the Persian Gulf. And people are looking at that and saying, you can release all of the reserve that you want to. It is not going to be sufficient to deal with the disruption that we are seeing in the Persian Gulf. So the fact that you have this release and you still have oil prices ticking up and up and up, that tells you the markets are starting to figure out. This is a dire situation. To me, they're still underestimating just how bad things are at this point, but the combination of those two news stories is highly significant.

[C]

They still have faith that they're gonna figure this thing out, and they just don't seem to understand that we are in it now. Unless Iran decides that they don't wanna do it anymore. And for them not to do it anymore, well, we are gonna have to give them an extra extraordinary amount of concessions. This is why, as he said, we'll talk about with this, with Professor Pape, all logic, all internal logic. It would take one of the most supreme acts of heroism of Donald Trump's entire life to say, I'm done, I'm done. Do you have any idea, though, how difficult that is? The troops are out there, everyone. I mean, he would be ridiculed. I won't do it because even though I'm furious about the war, I would do the fake thing. I'll go on television and be like, thank you. You're the most courageous president ever to try to do so. But most people won't. They'll ridicul. Rightfully so. You know, if we're being honest about dragging us into this as a disaster, all of his advisors are too afraid to actually tell him that this is bad. And so all logic, it's just like Vietnam, the easiest thing to do, or Afghanistan or Iraq. What's the easiest thing to do? Send in more troops, Escalate more, Do more, do more. Save face. God, it was peace with honor. Can't withdraw even though it all ends up at the same place. Saigon on a helicopter in 1975. You can see exactly how this is all going to go, except you just waste billions of dollars lives in the process. That's the real tragedy of it. I do want to talk about Fertilizer. We have B5 here. It's a farmer who was just interviewed talking about the spike in fertilizer prices. And I'll talk a little bit more on the other side. Let's take a listen. Those that need to buy are hurting pretty bad because we've had this huge jump in fertilizer prices because of this conflict. And, you know, with only about 30% of fertilizer coming through the Strait of Juarez, that's if you divide that out per day, that's about 0.09% of the world's fertilizer coming through there. And Even if the US only uses 30% of that, which I think is probably a really high number, that's.03% per day. So we've only been in conflict for nearly 12 days here, and our fertilizer costs have jumped nearly 77%. So he's talking there about the price spike. So I recently listened. I highly recommend it. Odd lot's friend, Joe Weisenthal. They just did an episode on fertilizer. So I did. Obviously not a fertilizer expert or anything. We have no fertilizer strategic reserve like we do with oil. A huge portion of it moves through the Straits of Hormuz, apparently urea. The way that it's whatever grown or something like that has to be done next to these natural gas plants. And so it's naturally from Russia and or the Middle East. So that's natur natural place for it to be grown. Right now is planting season. So right now is when the fertilizer is apparently needed the most. Already the spot price, I think of urea and corn is like near its all time high. If you look at those two things, the price spike for the farmers here will eventually be passed on to us as consumers in the form of groceries and inputs for all these different goods. But the worst part actually is for the developing world, because this is an outright massive shortage. That shortage will mean that many developing countries, as we see now with Bangladesh or India, many countries which are poor, can't afford some of the higher oil prices or fertilizer. They just won't buy it, which means low crop yield, which means potential famine. Or like they have to declare a state of emergency and buy, you know, food from some other country, tap into debt. IMF could get involved. Like you have no, like the World Food Program. Like it's a serious, serious crisis. And that is something I had never thought about, you know, really even seen for the movement through the Straits of Hormuz. And the other problem for fertilizer is that oil is the number one concern. So even when it does reopen, as Rory has told us, that it'll take a couple months just to go back to normal. Well, oil's gonna get first priority, which means a fertilizer will continue to be back behind that. And there's all this stuff about how you can't really store it. Like it doesn't store very well for a couple of months. So we really could be in a serious shortage. It's something I'd never considered, but it really, like this could actually be really.

[A]

I mean, it reminds very much both of the Ukraine war and also of COVID where all of these sorts of things that people didn't think of, including not just us, but like, you know, experts who run the global economy didn't think of the ways that, you know, these problems would compound and there would be all sorts of unintended consequences and that it wouldn't be just like, okay, we're open again, so everything's all good. That there would be months and years of getting back to some semblance of quote unquote normal. Because our system, our global economic system is built in a very fragile way. That has been sort of the basis of neoliberalism. You mentioned helium. Someone on Twitter is saying Barron Investment says good piece on Bloomberg Intelligence. And for those with helium exposure, Qatar's shutdown of LNG production has taken about 18 third of global helium production offline, affecting chip makers who rely on helium for semiconductor manufacturing. Helium has no viable substitute in the chip manufacturing process. No other source can immediately replace Qatar supply. Helium containers already filled before the war remain stranded. If the disruption persists, helium shortages could force chip makers to deprioritize lower margin product lines, reinforcing existing allocation toward AI memory, deepening an already severe memory shortage. So yet another unintended consequences that, you know, certainly no one in this, this idiotic administration has thought of. I mean, they didn't even think about the oil thing, which is like the most obvious thing that you could ever think of with a war in the Middle east. And they had not even planned for that because Trump was so high on his own supply, he genuinely thought that if he just murdered the Ayatollah and hit Iran hard that the whole thing could be all wrapped up in a Mission Accomplished banner. And now here we are and they have no idea what to do. Lastly, I mentioned this before, but I just think this is incredible. Put B6 up on the screen. So while, you know, while oil shipping through the Strait of Hormuz is completely closed for us or any of our allies, Iran is still doing what they wanna do. They've actually increased the amount of oil exports that they have been able to ship out largely to China. So, you know, the whole cope around, oh, this is all about hurting China, blah, blah, blah. First of all, Iranian oil is not even a really large percentage of China's energy doesn't meet a large percentage of China's energy requirements. Overall, it's like 1% of the energy that China consumes. China itself is a large oil producer. They've also invested heavily in renewable energy, et cetera, et cetera. But in any case, even if they were, even if this was a big problem for them, apparently they're still getting what they need from Iran in terms of their energy needs. So just an incredible, incredible statistic. You know, it's one thing that, that we have heard and I've been saying is, you know, by closing on the street of Hormuz, they're also hurting themselves. Apparently, that's not the case. Apparently they're able to operate in a way that we are not able to operate there at this point.

[C]

Yep, that's right. It's really. I mean, it's just such a bad, bad situation.

[A]

Foreign. This is an I heart podcast. Guaranteed human.