3/17/26: Top Iran Official Assassinated, WH Panic Over DropSite Report, Yanis Varoufakis on Iran War

Summary

Breaking Points Episode Summary

Episode Date: March 17, 2026
Main Theme:
Explosive developments in the US-Iran conflict, including the assassination of a top Iranian official, the unraveling of Trump's Strait of Hormuz strategy, diplomatic dead ends, surging war costs, and global repercussions. The episode features in-depth discussion, original reporting, and expert analysis from Jeremy Scahill and Yanis Varoufakis.

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Episode Overview

Krystal Ball and Saagar Enjeti unpack seismic updates from the Middle East, focusing on the joint Israeli-American assassination of key Iranian officials and its cascading effects. They dissect the White House's failed diplomatic outreach, growing international reluctance to join the US in military operations, the spiraling human and economic costs, and the broader implications for US empire and global order. Special guests Jeremy Scahill (DropSite News) and Yanis Varoufakis (economist and former Greek finance minister) provide critical insights throughout.

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Key Topics and Discussion Points

1. Assassination of Top Iranian Officials

• [05:07] Saagar and Krystal report that Israel, collaborating with the US, killed top Iranian official Ali Larijani and Basij commander Ghalamreza Soleimani in overnight strikes.
  • Israel views these strikes as steps toward destabilizing or collapsing Iran’s regime.
  • Larijani was a major civilian power broker post-Khomeini, recently Secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council.
  • Initial analysis suggests these killings might actually solidify control by Iran's hardliners and current Ayatollah, removing moderating competitors.
  • Krystal: “So far, they have not been correct about that—decapitation strikes haven’t led to collapse. The system’s designed to absorb such blows.” [07:02]

2. Trump's "Strait of Hormuz" Disaster

• [07:40] Krystal details how Trump underestimated Iran, believing the government would collapse within days and Strait of Hormuz would remain open. In reality, Iran holds tight control, selectively blocking passage.
  • Few US allies are joining the mission to re-open the Strait, with European—especially UK, Germany—refusing and even Argentina's participation explained as a political quid pro quo.
  • European leaders are resistant both for political reasons (“massively unpopular in Europe”—[11:33] Sagar) and strategic ones, as they prioritize resources for Ukraine.
• [09:23] Donald Trump clip: Trump publicly complains about US allies’ reluctance to commit military assets, expressing personal frustration and highlighting US “protection” of others.

3. Regional Escalation and Human Costs

• Trump administration was "shocked" by Iranian retaliation against Gulf allies (Qatar, Saudi Arabia, UAE, more) despite clear signals and analysis.
  • Sagar: “Nobody expected that. We were shocked. Except for every independent analyst...including on this show.” [13:46]
• [16:34] US casualties have surpassed 200 wounded across 7 countries; 13 Americans killed so far, with deployments ramping up and no off-ramp in sight.
  • Extended deployments cause severe hardships for service members (e.g., fire and living conditions on the USS Gerald Ford carrier).
  • Krystal: “This is the sort of thing that you're dealing with...all these aircraft falling out of the sky...significant damage...You cannot believe these people on anything. They just lie.” [18:07]

4. Breakdown in US Diplomacy

• Jeremy Scahill Interview [28:50]–[43:14]
  • Scahill reports White House (via envoy Steve Witkoff) has repeatedly (and desperately) attempted via intermediaries and direct messages to open back-channel talks with Iran—which Iran publicly denies and continues to ignore.
  • Scahill: “There’s an old saying in journalism, you never know that a story is true until it’s officially denied. And I think this is a case where they then freaked out about this…” [33:39]
  • Iran’s demands (as reported by Scahill): broad ceasefire (Iran, Iraq, Lebanon), reparations, UN resolution—none of which the US is prepared to grant.
  • Scahill notes Israel may be targeting moderate Iranian leadership specifically to forestall any diplomatic solutions, ensuring only hardliners remain: “[Israelis] have assassinated one of the figures that would have been a more moderate voice...when they're taken out, the people that replace them tend to take a much harder border line.” [34:49]
  • Scahill criticizes Trump's advisors for being radically Zionist and out of their depth, with Netanyahu and Kushner shaping US policy to further Israeli aims. [37:47]

5. Global Political Refusals and Implications

• [47:40] Nearly all US allies are refusing to support direct military operations to reopen the Strait of Hormuz—Japan, Australia, South Korea, UK, Germany, Denmark, Italy, and Greece all demur.
  • Varoufakis: “They’re simply refusing to...send ships to a suicide mission...But...European leaders...are complicit [by permitting US bases, etc.]...quite pathetic...they are complicit in the United States attack on Iran, but...won’t fight its unwinnable wars.” [48:50]

6. Economic Impact and Global Repercussions

-[51:31] Gulf States face economic catastrophe if war persists—Goldman Sachs warns of massive GDP drops. Extended oil/gas disruptions threaten the footing of AI investment, push up interest rates, and destabilize markets. - Varoufakis: “The Gulf states, their business model is finished, that the United States and Israel have killed it, they've killed their economies.” [52:09] - Energy prices surging, AI and tech investment curtailed, rising global interest rates—a “perfect storm.” [53:40]

• Varoufakis argues the war will have permanent, not temporary, economic effects—even if it ends now.

7. Decline of the US-Led Order?

• Krystal reads from Ray Dalio speculating this may be a “Suez moment” for US hegemony.
  • Varoufakis: “Let’s not rush into conclusions...Every empire at some point collapses...but the American empire has shown a remarkable capacity...because of the power, the exorbitant privilege of the dollar...the Chinese are the real adults in the room... doing whatever it takes to stop Trump from destroying American hegemony...” [61:31]
  • True collapse would occur only if major global players shift their reserves out of US dollars.

8. Other Global Flashpoints

• Krystal asks about US actions towards Cuba—Trump threatening a takeover, exacerbating an energy collapse during an embargo.
  • Varoufakis: “The Trump administration is committing a crime, an international violation...starving a whole population...is just an awful abomination of a crime.” [65:41]

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Notable Quotes & Time Stamps

• Krystal Ball [07:02]:
  “Even if the top leadership is taken out, they're still able to persist and able to continue governing the country.”

• Sagar Enjeti [11:33]:
  “It’s massively, massively politically unpopular in Europe.”

• Donald Trump [09:23]:
  “We have some countries where we have 45,000 soldiers, great soldiers, protecting them...when we want to know, do you have any minesweepers? ...‘We’d rather not get involved, sir.’”

• Krystal Ball [18:07]:
  “You cannot believe these people on anything. They just lie. Routinely. Routinely. They lie about the most basic things, even things that they know will ultimately come out in the end.”

• Jeremy Scahill [33:39]:
  “There’s an old saying in journalism, you never know that a story is true until it’s officially denied.”

• Yanis Varoufakis [46:14]:
  “It is going abysmally for Donald Trump. Whatever his goals were, it is a war that he started without much of a strategy regarding how he's going to end it...There is a very long tradition...of the United States pursuing its strategy of forever war on behalf of the military industrial complex.”

• Yanis Varoufakis [52:09]:
  “The Gulf states, their business model is finished, that the United States and Israel have killed it, they've killed their economies.”

• Yanis Varoufakis [61:31]:
  “Let’s not rush into conclusions...the American empire has shown a remarkable capacity to increase its hijab [hegemony] at the same time as it depletes its soft power as well as its industry...because of the power, the exorbitant privilege of the dollar.”

• Yanis Varoufakis [65:41]:
  “The Trump administration is committing a crime...starving a whole population...is just an awful abomination of a crime.”

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Key Timestamps

• [05:07–09:23]: Iranian official assassinations; regime implications
• [09:23–13:26]: Trump’s coalition troubles, global reluctance
• [16:34–22:20]: Human/military toll, domestic hardship, economic fallout
• [28:50–43:14]: Jeremy Scahill on failed diplomacy, policy capture, Israel’s assassination strategy
• [46:02–67:57]: Yanis Varoufakis on US decline, economic collapse, international complicity, and the broader world order

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Overall Tone and Messaging

• Unvarnished, skeptical, and critical, with a focus on failures of US leadership, media misinformation, and the catastrophic consequences of current strategy.
• Emphasizes the systemic nature of the crisis, the lack of serious planning from US officials, and the regional and global ramifications.

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For Listeners

This episode delivers granular insight for anyone following Middle East policy, US foreign affairs, or the evolving global order. It features sharp original reporting, high-level expert analysis, and a consistent anti-establishment perspective.

Key takeaway: The war is spiraling, diplomacy is stymied, US influence is wavering, and the “forever war” machinery continues to roll—all with devastating human and economic consequences.

Transcript

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[Krystal Ball]

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[Sagar Enjeti]

hey guys, Sagar and Krystal here.

[Krystal Ball]

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

[Sagar Enjeti]

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

[Krystal Ball]

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

[Sagar Enjeti]

We need your help to build the future of independent news media and we hope to see you@breaking points.com. good morning, everybody. Happy Tuesday. Have an amazing show for everybody today.

[Krystal Ball]

What we have Crystal Deed we do. We've got a bunch of big guests in the show and we've got a bunch of breaking news. So a top Iranian official reported killed Trump is apparently getting rejected pretty much across the board in terms of his whole straight of Hormuz gambit. Jeremy Scahill is going to join with some important reporting about the negotiations, the lack of negotiations. The Iranians still saying we, we have absolutely no interest in any sort of a ceasefire deal. Yanis Varoufakis is going to join to give us his perspective on how this is all going. We're going to take a look at the likely $100 billion request for war funding and how that's going to go down. Taking a look at some public polling and how much the American public, Democrats in particular, have turned on Israel. Rachel Maddow is offering an absolutely abysmal and embarrassing take on the war. And Glenn Deason is going to join us for the first time. Very excited to speak with him. He'll give us a bit of a perspective on how the rest of is viewing what's going on here.

[Sagar Enjeti]

Yes. Before we get to that, we did get some shocking news overnight. Let's go and put this up here on the screen. We had no expectation of winning this, but it turns out that we did. IHeartRadio has called us the best political podcast. So, wow. Thank you very much, iheartradio. It's nice to be partnership with you again. We had no influence or whatever on the decision. We had no idea really that anyone.

[Krystal Ball]

We lobbied no one.

[Sagar Enjeti]

We lobbied no one.

[Krystal Ball]

We already assumed we would lose.

[Sagar Enjeti]

No clue. We were informed we were nominated a few weeks ago. I was like, oh, that's cool. And then, yeah, apparently we won. Found out overnight from our representative.

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So thank you.

[Sagar Enjeti]

Thank you.

[Krystal Ball]

First time winning, like, yeah, some sort of award for the show. So it's kind of cool.

[Sagar Enjeti]

Yeah, that's right. Anyway, so thank you. Really. That's only made possible by everybody here who is all especially, I guess, listening to this podcast. So seriously, thank you to everybody who's listening to this as a podcast. Share an episode with a friend, you could say it's iheartradio. It's called Political Podcast. Also, for everybody who has signed up for our membership, thank you so much. We have thousands of new people who signed up. Please make sure that when you check your email, we actually have a link in that email to help you sign up, make sure you get your premium benefits, for example, example, to connect to Spotify or any other technical questions. And there's actually a link inside of that to be able to ask a technical question which our producer, Griffin personally responds to every single one of those. So please make sure if you've signed up that you're getting the full benefit of all of your premium that you signed up for. Griffin, as I said, will personally respond to any of those. And if you haven't yet, please go ahead and support us BreakingPoints.com if you're able to. But any other, any, anything else at the top? I don't think so.

[Krystal Ball]

I think that's good.

[Sagar Enjeti]

Let's do the news. All right, let's do the news, shall we? So with all of that huge news breaking overnight, let's go and put this up here on the screen. Israel is now announcing that the top Iranian official, Ali Larijani, and the Basij commander were both killed overnight. According to the Israeli defense minister, they were separate strikes and part of a joint Israeli American effort. So we have been, of course, tracking a little bit of Larjani since the war began. He's been issuing many of the security proc. Proclamations. The Financial Times here in the story about his death, quote, was one of the most powerful members of the Iranian regime, one of the key civilian figures leading the Islamic Republic after the killing of the Ayatollah Khomeini. The defense minister said he had been targeted and killed in an overnight strike. They warned that more assassinations and targeted killings would continue. This is being seen more as a regime collapse effort. Larjani was apparently a key figure in the crackdown on those protests that happened as well as this besieged commander. So this is trying to fumble meant some sort of revolution inside of the country. However, initial analysis actually shows that this is likely to increase the amount of control that the IRGC and the new Ayatollah will have because he no longer will have any competitors in the security establishment and that Larajani himself was kind of More of an independent power base. And this will roll up into the hardline command that has taken over the country. So you could see it a couple different ways. First and foremost was quote, unquote, revenge, I guess, for the protesters. Same with trying to crack down on the internal security establishment of the country. But second, what is the follow on effect? Very much like the killing of Khamenei is more likely to centralize control into the new ayatollah. And even if he is injured or he's being controlled, whoever is controlling him will now gain more stature, I think, inside of the country. That's kind of the initial political reaction. Some of the analysis has been going around.

[Krystal Ball]

Yeah. And I'd be interested to ask Jeremy about what he makes of this and the significance and how much of a blow this is is for the Iranians. Few things to say about this. Number one, clearly the Americans and Israelis are continuing to pursue this idea. If we just keep on taking out the leadership as they did with Hezbollah, as they did with Hamas, then eventually maybe this thing will crumble. You know, we'll see if they're correct about that. So far they have not been correct about that. That's what Trump thought would happen in the early days with taking out the Ayatollah, that the whole thing would just sort of collapse after the decapitation strikes. So, you know, the way the system has been designed and you know, pre over decades is that even if the top leadership is taken out, they're still able to persist and able to continue governing the country. So that's one piece. The other piece that Sagar alluded to. Larajani himself, a very interesting and contradictory figure. He was studied philosophy and math in certain ways. This very idealistic figure in other ways, this incredibly brutal and vicious figure was very involved in the crackdown on the protesters. Also had been previously very involved in the government propaganda, propaganda efforts and some, you know, some pretty outrageous propaganda efforts coming from him. So in any case, he is taken off the field and we'll talk to Jeremy about what that may mean going forward. At the same time, you know, we have been covering, Trump has gotten in over his head with the Strait of Hormuz. Apparently, reportedly he didn't think Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz. He thought this whole thing would be over in four days. He thought the Iranian government would completely collapse. Obviously that did not happen. Not only did it not collapse, but they have effect. Close the Strait of Hormuz, at least for the ships that they want to close it for the Iranians have continued to be able to export oil themselves. Yesterday, Scott Bessant came out and said we're allowing them to export their oil. As if this is, you know, really in our court at this point. They really have taken control and called the shots in terms of what is going to go through the Strait. So Trump making some interesting comments yesterday, as he does about, you know, he's kind of all over the place. He's saying, yeah, the coalition of these other countries is coming together and then at the same time talking about, about how many countries are reluctant to join in the US Effort here for very understandable reasons. Let's go ahead and take a listen to a 1.

[Donald Trump (clip)]

Numerous countries have told me they're on the way. Some are very enthusiastic about it and some are. And some are countries that we've helped for many, many years. We've protected them from horrible outside sources and they weren't that enthusiastic. And the level of enthusiasm matters to me. We have some countries where we have 45,000 soldiers, great soldiers, protecting them from harm's way. And we have done a great job. And when we want to know, do you have any minesweepers? Well, would rather not get involved, sir. I said for, you mean for 40 years we're protecting you and you don't want to get involved in something that is very minor, very few shots going to be taken because they don't have many shots left. But they said we'd rather not get involved. I just want the fake news media and everybody else to remember that that was said because when, you know, I've been a big critic of all of the protecting of countries because I know that we'll protect them and if ever needed, if we ever needed help, they won't be there for us. I've just known that for a long period of time, just like I knew about the Strait, that it would be a weapon which I predicted a long time ago.

[Krystal Ball]

So so far we don't know of many countries that I think I saw one, Argentina, I believe, signed up and said they were willing to join after we effectively like, you know, rigged their elections in favor of Javier Milei. But in any case, the European nations have been uncharacteristically have found a backbone on. And the reason is because they're like, okay, you got yourself into this mess and if you're going to be escorting ships through the Strait of Hormuz, you're effectively sitting ducks. I mean, this is not something to be done. It doesn't take a lot of military capability for the Iranians to be able to strike these tankers or whatever ships are trying to escort them through there. So the Europeans thus far, like, yeah, no, I don't think so.

[Sagar Enjeti]

There's two reasons the Europeans don't want to do it. Number one, it's massively, massively politically unpopular in Europe. Keir Starmer, who himself is a political joke, is putting out hype reel videos about how he stood up to the big bad United States. And he's like, reform and conservatives wanted to drag us into war. And I stood up and I said, no, we're not. And by the way, that was cooler than the way that he did it. My rendition, you have multiple other European leaders who are like, ah, I don't want some part of this. The second is actually a bigger strategic question. They have to husband their resources because their population is getting hit by natural gas, by oil. But remember, they have Ukraine that they care a lot about. And right now, they have to decide specifically on the munitions front, whether to continue buying their assets from the United States, passing them on to the war in Ukraine. They care a lot about the Russian front. There's already a fracturing in the political coalition within the eu. The Belgian prime minister came out yesterday and said, look, guys, maybe we should just normalize relations with Russia. They're like, this isn't working anymore. I know. So the whole world is moving on right now. So they have a ton of their own considerations on the continent, not to mention lack of political popularity. And their willingness to take casualties is way lower than the United States. They also, look, I mean, if you're like the Gulf countries, the Gulf countries were said they were some of the best allies of the United States. We have all the defense cooperation agreements. They bought a ton of missiles from us. Well, they're furious right now over the lack of political and military defense from the United States. We're topping up Israel with new interceptors and new munitions. And for many of them, they feel as if they were thrust into this war through no choice of their own. Or maybe, you know, their political leaders, the monarchs, may have supported it, but the ordinary people, their economies, a lot of their investors and others, they're freaky out. And this clip which we're about to show you, Trump saying we had no idea that they were going to get hit isn't going to go over so well in the Middle East. Let's take a three and take a listen.

[Donald Trump (clip)]

In the last two weeks, they weren't supposed to go after all these other countries in the Middle East. Those missiles were set to go after them. So they hit Qatar, Saudi Arabia, uae, Bahrain, Kuwait. Nobody expected that. We were shocked.

[Sagar Enjeti]

Nobody expected that. We were shocked. Except for every independent analyst on the war in Iran, including on this shit. You could go and look back. Seriously. I mean, many of these Tricha Parsi interviews that we've done have aged incredibly well over just the last couple of weeks.

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[Sagar Enjeti]

By the way, what's the cost? Does anybody want to tell me? The real cost is not just all of the dead Iranian civilians, all the civilians in Israel, all of the civilians in Lebanon, all of these like poor migrant laborers who are getting struck or working in Kuwait or Dubai airport. It's also our own American soldiers who we owe the highest responsibility to. So let's go ahead and put a four up there on the screen. As you guys can see in front of you, the number of U.S. troops wounded in Iran now surpasses 200 across seven different countries. And I think that hits it home. This is not just one attack. That's what they try to sell it to you as they're like, oh, it was just one attack on a tactical operations.

[Donald Trump (clip)]

No.

[Sagar Enjeti]

You have 200 troops who are wounded in seven different countries. You had a medical evacuation flight already from Saudi Arabia from that base or from the tactical operations center, which was hit. You have now seven different countries, 180 have thankfully been able to return to duty, but at least some 10 remain in critical condition. You have 13Americans which are now dead in the conflict, the same number that were killed in Joe Biden's withdrawal from Afghanistan. And that's just where things stand as of two to three weeks into the conflict. Remember that we have 2,500 US Marines which are now on their way to the Middle East. They'll be arriving sometime within the next week. A lot of eyes and ears open for potential ground operations. You have the 82nd Airborne, whose tactical. What was it? Their training exercise was canceled for potential deployment. So this is just beginning at this point. No signs of an off ramp, which is what we're going to talk to Jeremy about.

[Krystal Ball]

Yeah, and we also learned yesterday, you know, the, that fire, the laundry fire on the Gerald Ford aircraft carrier, which these sailors have been at sea already for like almost a year. They're going to break the record for the longest deployment on, you know, without any sort of a break in a long time. That fire, if we're even buying the official story at this point, that this was a fire that started in the laundry room. They battled it for 30 hours. 600 sailors and crew members are now without their beds so they're having to sleep on the floor or on tables, by the way. Now there is no laundry facility on this aircraft carrier. So all of these thousands of sailors without the ability. I mean, this is not like life threatening, but it sounds incredibly horrible and unpleasant after you've been at sea for all of these many months and keep getting extended and extended and extended. And this is also the ship that was having all the toilets issues. So the whole thing, I mean, it sounds absolutely miserable. And this whole thing is breaking down. And they also, you know, they completely undersold this fire from the beginning. And there were a bunch of these sailors that had to be treated for smoke inhalation. Like, this was a serious deal. So this is the sort of thing that you're dealing with as well with this military. And we've had, you know, all of these, you know, aircraft falling out of the sky. We're not really sure why we're getting the official story. We're not really clear on whether that's accurate either. But, you know, yeah, there's already significant, certainly significant damage in terms of, you know, radars, bad battery systems, bases in the region. And we are now getting a little bit more of a glimpse into what the actual human toll is, which again, is very different from what they told us. You cannot believe these people on anything. They just lie. Routinely. Routinely. They lie about the most basic things, even things that they know will ultimately come out in the end.

[Sagar Enjeti]

Yeah, so I spoke to somebody who would know. Former U.S. navy, served on, on board of aircraft carriers, apparently. And I've talked about this a little bit about why fire control is so important in the US Navy. Obviously, it's a ship. Fire is bad. Right. So one of the things is, apparently when fire gets into ventilation, it makes it incredibly difficult to be able to put it out. And that's one of the reasons why it raged. So the official story may be correct, but the point actually remains. First of all, you know, this is not ever supposed to happen. Like, this is a disaster. It's almost certainly a result now of this prolonged deployment. They will likely break the record for a post Vietnam carrier deployment longest. So what is that, 50 years? At some point, they are also being told on board that they are likely to extend at least until May. So it's already March 17th. They've got a month and a half left to go. You have another carrier strike group which is coming to relieve them of duty. Obviously these poor guys have been stuck out there. Just imagine, you know, toilets, laundry, fire. I mean, It's a nice 600. I don't know if you've ever seen, I mean I haven't seen a modern aircraft carrier. I've been on board, you know some of the ones that are like museums, like in San Diego. It's not a comfortable environment to be living on board for 10 months in

[Krystal Ball]

the best of conditions.

[Sagar Enjeti]

Yeah, that's with decent food and port calls and all this other stuff. So it's not great from what we're learning so far. And these guys, I mean these poor, poor service members on top of, not to mention all of the, you know, it's not just that they're at sea, they're also supporting actual combat operations. So their tone, tempo of like operation is probably much more, is much higher. Having to deal with this at home, not all of these US troops who have now, now been injured, I mean it's already, this is a total nightmare. And it's very obvious that you can see inside of the way that the Trump administration is currently handling this, that they just don't know what to do. And they're trying and scrambling potentially, which is, we're gonna talk about here with Jeremy about trying to get some sort of off ramp, like trying to open up negotiations on the Iranian side. But you've also got Israel which is just like hovering over where they're obviously trying to do regime change. They're invading Lebanon. So every day the war goes on, it just continues to rage. Just this morning we officially got the news. Diesel is now $5 a gallon, right? So $5 a gallon, we all live that way under Biden. Remember the grocery store inflation, Every good in the country that's gotta be trucked across. That's it.

[Yanis Varoufakis]

Boom.

[Sagar Enjeti]

Diesel. Also jet fuel, just like I said, Singapore is trading like $200 a barrel. Dubai airspace was just closed yesterday. Closed, like closed. I mean one of the busiest airports in the world, right? And Qatar, there's a missile interception as of this morning. So it's not like things are turning down every day, they're like 95% capacity and all of that have been lowered. Part of the reason things that you have to pay attention is let's say it's true, 95% capacity of Iran has gone down as we have all now seen with these drones. It only takes one cheap little drone to go into cross critical oil infrastructure. It only takes one of these things to wipe out a $200 million radar balloon. I mean and we've seen all of this happen already and remember, we still don't know the damage. The satellite Companies, they're holding the images for two weeks. So two weeks from now, we're gonna find out what things look like today. And I'm betting you it's not nearly as rosy as the Pentagon is making it look like.

[Krystal Ball]

Yeah, I really learned something about this on October 7th when these rallies had built this multi, multi, multimillion dollar wall and security with these cameras that are trained on Gaza and automatic machine gun fire if anyone approaches. And Hamas, which far fewer resources than the country of Iran has, was able, with a cheap drone to go and take out the camera and then they were able to break down the wall. That's all it took. And come in with paragliders. We are in a different era of war warfare where, yes, like, you know, militarily we have all of this capacity and obviously we're nuclear armed and they're not in Israel's nuclear armed and they're not, et cetera. And we can bomb them from the air relentlessly. We can target their top leaders and take them out over and over and over. Yes, we can do all of that. But the few things that have really made a difference in terms of tilting this in Iran's favor is the fact that, number one, they are willing to take so much more pain than we are. Number two, they understand, they thought about us and where all our vulnerabilities were much more, much more than Trump certainly thought about them and how they would react. And that's where those comments about, you know, oh, I had no idea they would target the Gulf Arab nations. It's like you didn't need a military planner to tell you that. You could just have listened to them. They were broadcasting, this is our plan, this is how we will respond. This is the threat to you. Like, this is what we will do. But because he didn't bother to take any of this seriously, then he comes in. Oh, my God, I can't believe they closed the street of hormones. Oh, my God, I can't believe I'm dealing with this oil crisis. Oh my God, I can't believe they're hitting our allies in the region. How did you not think any of this through? It truly is extraordinary. And let me go ahead and put Jeremy's reporting here up on the screen, cuz it speaks to this as well and where they are and the total miscalculation, at least on Trump's part, of how this would all go down. So Iranian official officials say that they have been ignoring. They have basically ghosted Wycoff. He has been privately requesting for them to talk. Trump's special envoy has been texting Iran's foreign minister, asking to start talks. Tehran says the war will end only when Iran believes it has established long term deterrence. And so the story here is that Wycoff is basically like, hey guys, let's check in, let's talk, let's have discussions. They're like no, because you haven't felt enough pain yet. Which again is their strategy that they have been broadcasting and that Trita Parsi told us was likely before this war ever started, that that was the way they're thinking about it of like if we don't strike some sort of a blow and cause some significant pain for the Americans and the Israelis, we are just gonna be subject to this cycle over and over and over again. So again, this is thoroughly, obviously predictable. Now the Trump administration has planted a story with Barack Ravid and Axio saying no, no, no, they reached out to us, the ones who aren't ready to to deal. I will leave it to you to decide, dear viewer, whether Dropsite and Jeremy Scahill are more credible reporters than Barack Ravid over at Axios who just loves to take whatever the administration gives and running with it. But you know, Jeremy's Jeremy sources are on the record and the ones with Barack Ravid are anonymous. So all of that being said, we have Jeremy standing by to break down his reporting. So let's get get to it.

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[Sagar Enjeti]

Joining us now is Jeremy Scahill, co founder of Dropsite News, great friend of the show. Good to see you Jeremy.

[Jeremy Scahill]

Thanks for having me back.

[Sagar Enjeti]

So Jeremy, we broke down a little bit of your reporting and the White House's denials via Axios. Why don't you just break down more if you can about these alleged communications that Steve Witkoff and the White House are denying happened and which the Iranians are saying. Yeah, they keep reaching out to us and we're basically leaving him on read this entire time.

[Jeremy Scahill]

You know, I think it was on the third day of the Israeli US Bombing of, of Iran. I started hearing from Iranian officials who were telling me off the record, at first they were saying it's interesting because a number of third countries countries have been sending messages to Iran saying that the Trump administration wants to start back end talks about sort of, you know, end game and if Iran is interested in having some kind of dialogue. And my understanding in that early stage was that Iran's political leadership had made a decision that they were not going to talk for one central reason that they felt that they need that the primary goal in this war was to send a message that the US And Israel can't just bomb, bomb Iran every four months and pretend to be engaging in negotiations. And so they inform those third party countries that Iran is not interested in talking. And then you started having Trump once he was informed of this, and this is from the perspective of the Iranians, start saying openly, oh, the Iranians are begging us to talk. The Iranians want to make a Deal, I'm not ready to talk to them yet. And then some days after that. So this was early last week, week I was told by a senior Iranian official that Steve witkoff had sent WhatsApp messages to Iranian officials, including Abbas Arachi, the country's Foreign minister. And I said, oh, I want to go to Witkoff and ask him that. That's what I told the Iranians. And they said, well, you know, this is still off the record because we haven't figured out if we're going to respond or how we're going to deal with this. So I was sort of informed of this for several days and then I kept pushing the Iranian sources and I said, I want to go to Witkoff and ask him about this. Because Trump keeps saying over and over that the Iranians are begging him to talk. And the Iranian officials were saying, you know, do you, can you imagine Abbas Arachi, the Foreign Minister of Iran, like texting Steve Witkoff, the guy who he was supposedly negotiating with when they turned Iran bomb? He absolutely has not. And they said, in fact, we're just trying to figure out like what our diplomatic response is gonna be to this. Do we tell to it him we're not ready or do we just ignore him? And they what, what they ended up on was we're not going to respond to him at all. What they have done though is they've told, this is what they've told me, that they've told third party countries that Iran's demands include a ceasefire that would apply to not only Iran, but to Lebanon and Iraq as well. That they want reparations for the damage that has been done in this war war and that they want a UN Security Council resolution. But they still aren't at that point. Cuz they feel that the deterrence has not been established firmly enough yet to try to raise the costs so high that the US wouldn't consider doing this again in a few months time. So then the intermediaries from other countries go back and they've told this to Trump. And you know, you get some flashes of reality from Trump sometimes where he's saying, you know, when he's, he says, I think they want to talk, but they're not ready yet. They're not just around of the position. I think part of what he is revealing to the public there is that he's aware that Iran's position is we're not going to engage in a ceasefire right now. And so what happened yesterday was I go to the White House and I sent Steve Wyckoff A WhatsApp message. Cuz apparently that's his preferred way of communicating. And I asked, you know, I asked for comment on this. And typically when we go to the White House, they do give us comment, but it'll be, you know, sort of a copy and paste of whatever Trump's latest statement was. They'll say, I refer you to the President's remarks on this. But in this case, they send this response that read like Trump had dictated it himself for his Truth social feed. You know, calling drop site abhorrent and saying that we're carrying water for the Islamic terrorist regime and that were engaging in what they called America last behavior. And the only reason that I think it wasn't Trump doing it is because there were no all caps in it. But other than that, it basically was like a true social post. And you know, there's an old saying in journalism that, you know, you never know that a story is true until it's officially denied. And I think this is a case where they then freaked out about this. Cause it's humiliating. And they go to one of their favorite journalists, Barack Ravid, and they spin the Alice in Wonderland upside down version of this. And it's like they could solve this in two seconds. Show Orochi's text messages where he's begging Steve Witkoff to talk. That would be my challenge to them. Okay, Steve Witkoff, let's see the text messages and put them out. Cuz what the Iranians are saying is there aren't any text messages for anyone to put out from their end.

[Krystal Ball]

Yeah, well, in the timeline there makes sense too, because you said it was day three where Witkoff starts reaching out like, hey guys, you up? Question mark. And Trump reportedly thought this would be over in four days. So that would be the time period where they're like, all right, we killed their leader and we've destroyed our other capabilities. They have to be willing to capitulate now. Right, right. And then are just completely ignored by them. I wanted to get your reaction, Jeremy, to this news that broke overnight. That top Iranian official Ali Larajani and besieged commander Ghalamreza Soleimani were both killed overnight. This is according to Israel's Defense Minister Katz, in separate strikes, you know, how significant of a blow, if confirmed, how significant of a blow is this to the Iranians?

[Jeremy Scahill]

Yeah, I mean, I think it's significant that Israel Katz came out and said this rather than it just being speculation or something in the media. But again, Iran has not confirmed this yet. I mean, Ali Lahrajani is one of the most important figures in Iran going back to the 1990s. And he was involved in. Involved with nuclear negotiations going back to the 1990s. He's also a scholar of Kant, a highly educated man. He recently was named as the secretary of the Supreme National Security Council, which is the most important security apparatus in Iran. But he was, I think, viewed, and I've just been talking to sources in Iran, and they said, if confirmed, what this means is that the Israelis have. Have assassinated one of the figures that would have been a more moderate voice in any discussions that lead to the end of this war or sort of what happens next. And there was some suspicion that I've heard that part of why the Israelis wanted to assassinate Ali Lerojani was not just because of his role in the national security apparatus and this war, but also because Trump has been indicating that he may want to just try to make a deal with Iran and may not want to go all the way to completely smashing or dismantling the state. So it's certainly significant. And I think that the pattern that we've seen is that when figures like Larajani or others who are considered in a more moderate camp, that when they're taken out, the people that replace them tend to take a much harder border line. And so how this is going to impact things, I think this is Netanyahu hoping that another phase opens up where there's uprisings within Iran. We haven't seen any evidence of that yet, but I think the Israelis are very much pushing and hoping that that happens and trying to facilitate that happening. And I think it's also, to an extent, attempt to make sure that there aren't really going to be these kinds of figures around to talk toward the end of the war.

[Sagar Enjeti]

Very much like the Hamas draft strategy right back in with Gaza. So very much of the playbook. We've all talked about it now a lot over the years. We do want to talk about wyckoff. Let's put a 8 up there on the screen. Apparently, Wyckoff is staunch supporter of Israel. I think we knew that. But apparently counts Miriam Adelson as a dear friend and carries a custom pager gifted to him by Netanyahu and senior Mossad officials. I have to be honest, Jeremy, I think I misread Wyckoff. So Wyckoff, obviously was one of those people who. Who pressured Benjamin Netanyahu early on in the Trump administration. He pressured the ceasefire. Seemed to be somewhat of a diplomat or somebody who was diplomatic in the way that he shed Some of the pre existing notions about way things should be able to, should happen, open to talking to anybody, to Putin, I said, oh, wow, I appreciate that. I praised him a lot here. Is he showing us his true colors? Is he totally out of his depth? Is the way that the Iranians seem to play it? What's your understanding having talked to the counterparties on the square other side?

[Jeremy Scahill]

I mean, I don't know that you entirely got it wrong. And you and I talked about Wyckoff at that time when this first started, you know, I think Wyckoff is also a manifestation of part of what's happened with Trump as well. In his first term as president, Trump was very nervous about sort of waging a wider war against Iran. There was great consternation about the decision to assassinate Qasem Soleimani, the neocon wing of the Trump base, or that administration was a minority player in the out in the running of the administration. And then Trump 2.0. Now you have the Miriam Adelson Netanyahu wing of the MAGA movement that has literally purchased this part of American foreign policy. Trump is not an ideological person. You know, he's a, he, he is a businessman. I don't believe he's a religious man. I don't believe he believes in much of any anything. And so he's sort of been purchased to an extent, bought in, in other ways. And I think that he sets the tone for what Wycoff is going to be. So when Trump was running for president this time, I think genuinely he was telling Wyckoff, you need to force Bibi to do this. And so when those are the deployment orders from Trump to his real estate buddy, I think Wycoff was a key player in sort of pushing that Gaza deal through, through. At the same time, though, you have Jared Kushner, who is an ideological religious figure that has a different level of connections to the entire Israel situation. And I think that Witkoff has been radicalized immensely. It's not that he wasn't already a Zionist. It's not that he already didn't have some of these convictions, but I think that those tendencies within Witkoff were brought out by this whole situation. And he was sort of radicalized to become a fanatical Zionist, Zionist Israel Firster. And it's just, it shows you what happens when you get put in this meat grinder of ideology. And Netanyahu's been doing this since the 1990s and they have really successfully played Wyckoff. And I think that Kushner has Also successfully played both Wyckoff and Trump.

[Sagar Enjeti]

Interesting.

[Krystal Ball]

Jeremy, I wanted to know what you make of Trump's increasingly desperate efforts to convince U.S. allies to join him in some fool's errand of attempting to reopen the Strait of Hormone Hormuz. It seems that, you know, among the many things certainly he didn't anticipate, he seemed to not believe they would actually close the strait. There's also been reporting that a lot of war planners thought that, yeah, it's possible they close the Strait of Hormuz, but that would be very damaging to them as well. But it seems the Iranians have been able to not fully close the strait, but able to pick and choose, hey, this ship can come through. Our exports are going out to China. But if you're, you know, an ally of the US Or Israel, Israel, you're not coming through. You're not going to be able to do what you want to do here. So what do you make of how central this has become to the war effort?

[Jeremy Scahill]

I mean, it's extremely central. And I think Iran has been war gaming this for many years. In fact, weeks before this war happened, in the month of February 2026, Iran did war games in the Strait of Hormuz that included operations aimed at shutting it down down or attacking any quote, unquote, enemy vessels, military vessels that tried to come into the Strait of Hormuz. So, you know, we don't even have to back up that far. We can say that literally days before this, this war began, the Iranians were war gaming those types of scenarios in the Strait of Hormuz. I think that, you know, we have to connect this, though, crystal, to the fact that the Marine Expeditionary Units are being deployed that could be anywhere between 2,000 and 5,000 troops. These are sort of the 911 forces of the US milit. They may try to take this island, Kharg island, that they bombed repeatedly. 90% of Iran's oil passes through there. Trump says that he hasn't yet decided to bomb the actual oil that's on that island, but you could see discussion about trying to seize that as a territory. Trump's having an enormous difficult time getting any nations to agree to deploy. The German chancellor, who has largely acted sort of like a poodle for Trump since he became the leader of Germany, issued a statement yesterday and multiple German officials said, we're not going to get involved with this. They said the Americans and Israelis didn't tell us about this beforehand. They said they didn't need us. So now, all of a sudden, they want us to go there. It's not a NATO mission. I think if the Trump administration wants to start attempting to escort ships through there, you're going to be much closer to Iran's coastal territory. You're going to put yourself in range of short range missiles and you have the possibility of many more Americans dying. I don't think the world really has an appetite for this at all, but we've seen and you guys have reported on this. Trump doesn't seem to be fully listening to what military advisors are saying, and I think that if they're contemplating putting boots on the ground, then Americans should brace for more coffins coming home draped in the American flag. And it's shocking to say that you can't rule out that they're contemplating this right now, but it's real, it's true. And the neocon wing of the MAGA movement is in pole position right now in this White House.

[Sagar Enjeti]

Very, very, very true. Jeremy, thank you as always for joining us. Keep it up drop side news link down in the description. We appreciate you man. Thanks for joining us.

[Jeremy Scahill]

Thank you guys for all your work.

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[Krystal Ball]

For more on the Iran war, we are joined this morning by Yanis Varoufakis. He of course, is an economist, he's a bestselling author, he's former Greek finance minister and also host of the podcast the Econoclass. Great to see you, sir.

[Sagar Enjeti]

Good to see you. See you.

[Yanis Varoufakis]

Very good to see you again.

[Krystal Ball]

Yeah, of course. So just off the top here, your reaction to the purported goals, to the best we know them of this war and how this all seems to be going?

[Yanis Varoufakis]

Well, it is going abysmally for Donald Trump. Whatever his goals were, it is a war that he started without much of a strategy regarding how he's going to end it. This is not new, of course. It hacks back to Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan. There is a very long tradition, tradition of the United States pursuing its strategy of forever war on behalf of the military industrial complex. It works really very well for those who are selling guns and bombs and missiles. It doesn't work very well for the American people. It doesn't work at all well for the rest of the world. So in, you know, on the altar of a forever war that suits the military industrial complex and now the AI industrial complex or military become complex, we are caught in a conundrum that is jeopardizing the well being of the vast majority of the human species. And we have a Donald Trump who is slowly realizing that he has fallen headlong into a trap of his own making. My assessment is that Trump was actually winning on all fronts up until he made that ridiculous decision essentially to fall into Netanyahu's trap of fighting Netanyahu's war. And from now on, there is nothing can save Donald Trump politically.

[Sagar Enjeti]

One of the things we wanted to talk to you about, Giannis in particular, is your expertise with respect to Europe. Many of the other US Allies, we have been stunned already to see an almost total rejection by the United States request for assistance in the Strait of Hormuz. Guys, we can go ahead and put B1 up here. On the screen. We have a summary of all of the US Allies. Japan says it currently does not plan to dispatch naval vessels. We can go to the next one. Australia said it will not do so. South Korea says we will not do so. The United Kingdom said they will not be drawn into a war with Iran. The European foreign ministers said they will discuss it, but are not expected to expand its role. The Germans explicitly say they will not participate. The Danes saying that they ahead of the EU meeting. It would be wise to keep an open to mind, but as a small country, we are not as a small country, large maritime nation, but we don't expect to do so. Italy, and then of course Greece as well, says it will not engage in military operations. It's pretty stunning to say that not even a single one of these people are willing to step up. I'm curious for your reaction as to why this time they're willing to stand up to the United States and what it means for the US and for Europe.

[Yanis Varoufakis]

I wish you were right that they were standing up against the United States. They're simply refusing to, do you know, to send ships, ships to a suicide mission, to a mission that is bound to fail because let's face it, even if all those naval vessels of every possible flag from Japan all the way to Norway were to accumulate to amass at the state of Hormuz. Well, this is a very asymmetrical situation. The Iranians only need to send one or two drones past these vessels and they will succeed in what they are interested in, which is to make sure that the insurance costs of these vessels are so high that it's uneconomical for them even to try to pass the straits. But you know where I disagree and I wish you were right, is that our European leaders, the Japanese, the Canadians, the Australians are standing up to the United States. They're not doing no such thing. So take Chancellor Merz of Germany, a typical example of someone lacking the moral spine and the intelligence to Oppose Donald Trump, Washington, D.C. on the one hand, he says, oh, we're not going to take part in this. Of course they won't take part in this. But at the same time, he allows Ramstein, the largest American military base in Germany, to be used in order to bombard guard a United nations member state and to therefore, you know, become complicit. Germany is complicit in the violation of international law. The Brits are doing the same thing with their, their bases in Cyprus, the Arab states, you know, they still maintain the United States military on their ground and therefore they're opening themselves up to missile and drone attacks by Iran, my country, Greece, our pathetic government sent a frigate and F16s to Cyprus to do what? To protect the British sovereign ground of the Akrotiri base, which the United States has been using in order to attack Iran illegally. So our governments are quite pathetic. Let me be very straightforward on this. On the one hand, they are complicit in the United States attack on Iran. They may not like it, but they are complicit. They are choosing to be complicit in it. And on the other hand, they say, well, we're not going to send any vessels to achieve the unachievable.

[Krystal Ball]

I'm curious for your view on the likely economic fallout. We can put B3 up on the screen. This was an analysis for the GCC member states. Goldman Sachs predicts that if this war goes on another two months, they're going to see massive falls in their gdp, Qatar and Kuwait in particular. But obviously there are global implications for the strait continuing to be more or less or less closed reverberations throughout all of the economies of the world. What do you expect if this war continues to drag on as it appears likely to do, given that Iran has projected that they are nowhere near ready to pursue a ceasefire?

[Yanis Varoufakis]

Well, you don't need to be an economic genius to know that the Gulf states, their business model is finished, that the United States and Israel have killed it, they've killed their economies. And it's not something that has just begun. Now, let's not forget that this has been happening now for five, six years. Remember when Trump, in the dying days of his first administration, took out a military commander of Iran, Soleimani. Soleimani was just about to meet his Saudi Arabian counterpart to strike a deal, a peace deal between Iran and Saudi Arabia. After that, essentially what the Americans, with the support and the egging on of Israel, were trying to do was to stop at the taunt between Saudi Arabia and Iran. That didn't work because a couple of years later it was the United, United Arab Emirates that opened an embassy in Tehran. Later on it was Qatar. It was even, you know, Saudi Arabia in 2023. Essentially, Israel has been at it now for five, six years. What do I mean by being at it? They've been trying to ensure that there's no detente between the Emirates, between the Gulf states and Iran. And that's the main reason why they entrapped Donald Trump into this attack on Iran at the cost of decimating the business model of the Gulf states. Netanyahu has succeeded with the complicity. Explicit thinking. I don't know whether it was something that Trump understood that he was doing, but nevertheless, he was playing the Netanyahu game of wrecking both the town between Iran and the Gulf states, and the Gulf state economies. But since you're asking me about the economic implications, are the economic implications awful in your own country? I mean, if you are a man, a blue collar worker driving 150 miles a day to go to your bullshit job in order to make ends meet and you have to pay these gas prices, you're destroyed. Trump came out the other day with an inane comment that the United States is a net oil and gas producer, which is true. And therefore he said, since we are a net exporter, if the price of fossil fuels goes up, we make more money. Well, who are you to say that? Have you asked your own base, are they shareholders in Chevron, are they shareholders in Exxon? They're not. They, you know, things were bad enough. They elected you because of the unaffordability crisis or affordability crisis. And now affordability has gone into the dustbin of history. And it's not just that. You know, last year I was one of those also commentators, economists, politicians who were arguing that his tariffs were not that big a deal. Unlike other economists who were pulling their hair out. Maybe it's because I don't have much hair. I wasn't pulling mine out over the tariffs. And the reason why those tariffs, and you remember the Liberation Day spasm in the stock markets didn't last long. And very soon after that, markets were gung ho again and they became bullish again. Well, the reason is because back then the situation was very different to what it is now. The war that he has unleashed against Iran, even if it ends today, is going to have long term effects. The damage is permanent. It is not temporary. It's not like Liberation Day. Remember last year you had in your country, in the United States, you had a massive wave of investment due to AI. Well, this is going to be STEM now. Why? Because AI is very energy intense, very energy hungry. And with energy going through the roof, the AI investment spree is severely circumscribed. Then at the same, there's another element to this. Last year, this time around Liberation Day, if you remember, the Fed was in the process of cutting interest rates. Not as fast as Donald Trump wanted them, but they were cutting interest rates. Well now with yields going through the roof, 10 year bond yields in the United States, in the United Kingdom, in Britain, in Britain, in Frankfurt, in Brussels, in Tokyo, all the West's central banks are either slowing down the rate at which they're cutting interest rates, or they're actually going to start increasing them. We already saw in Australia, Australia an increase in interest rates. So this is a perfect storm. You have energy going up, AI investment tapering, interest rates going up. As I said, even if the war stops today, which it can't, because Donald Trump has no way of de escalating unless he opens the state of Hormuz, which the Iranians are never going to allow, because the Iranians, they felt an existential crisis, they were attacked. Their leader, whatever you may think of Khomeini, he was the leader of a member state of the United nations and he was murdered by the Israelis and the Americans. And they are saying, no, I mean, we're not going to let you come back at us. We are going to bring you down, even if it means bringing down the Gulf states, even if it means damaging significantly Bangladesh and India, these are countries and South Korea, these are countries that rely on, rely on the natural gas and the oil that goes through the states of Hormuz. So you know, Donald Trump, like George W. Bush before him, like LBJ in the 1960s, has been caught into a trap of his own making and he doesn't know how to wriggle out of it.

[Sagar Enjeti]

Giannis, you have described this previously as a breakdown in the neoliberal economic order. What do you see exactly the different pieces that make this happen?

[Yanis Varoufakis]

Well, this breakdown goes back to 2008, the great financial collapse. The Lehman Brothers American led dollarized capital is never recovered fully from 2008. You have to remember that between 2008 and the end of the pandemic in 2022, the central banks of the west pumped out $35 trillion. That is $35,000 billion dollars. That was quantitative easing, if you remember, while at the same time imposing austerity to the vast majority of people in the United States in Europe, in Britain. So if you have this combination of austerity for the many, which depresses demand and therefore in turn the secondary effect is that it depresses investment in productive machines, in real stuff. And at the same time you print 35 trillion and you give it to the financiers who give it to big business that use it to buy back their own stock shares so asset prices go up, but there's no investment. And the only people who invest in this world of ours essentially are the Chinese on one hand and big tech on the other, who are not producing anything except the power through Amazon.com and Uber and so on to reach deep into your pockets and take money out, which then is not invested into productive capacity. It is invested into more machines that create more power for the Jeff Bezos of the world world to put their long arms deeply into your pocket. You realize that this is not a sustainable macro economy. And the result is that we have stagnation in the West. The carnage that Donald Trump said he saw in the working classes of the United States, which was there, he did have a point when he was raising this. Of course, now he's making it far worse. He invoked that sense of carnage amongst blue collar workers to get elected to the White House in order to enrich big tech and the military industrial complex and, you know, essentially promote the agenda of Benjamin Netanyahu and his forever wars in the Middle East.

[Krystal Ball]

Let me get your reaction to something that Ray Dalio was writing about. So he says his reading of history and sense of what is happening now leads him to believe that if the US were to lose in this way, in that way specifically, being unable to take control, retake control of the Strait of Hormuz, there would be a significant risk that losing control of Hormuz would be for the US what the Suez Canal crisis was for Great Britain in 1956 and analogous defeats were for the Dutch empire in the 18th century, in the Spanish Empire in the 17th century. The pattern of events that leads to the breakdown of empires is almost always the same. Do you see this war with Iran as existential for the US Empire and the current existing world order?

[Yanis Varoufakis]

I think it's far fetched to make such gross predictions at the moment. Let's not forget that we've had many prognostications in the past of the demise of America's hegemony in the late 1960s, when America, for the first time after the, you know, the 1900s, went from being a surplus country to being a deficit country. When Richard Nixon in August of 1971, blew up the Bretton woods system, which was the pride and joy of, you know, American politicians and American financiers and American diplomats and economists. Again, back then in the late 60s, early 70s, people were procrastinating the end of American hijack Germany. America has lost almost every war that he has waged since Vietnam. Every war begins with claims of mission accomplished, and then very soon after that ends up in a quagmire from which the United States extricates itself, sometimes with, sometimes very ignominiously. Remember the helicopter departing from the American Embassy in a such Saigon, or similarly under Biden from Kabul. So let's not rush into conclusions. There's no doubt that, I mean, all empires at some point collapse or wane. It's true about all the viruses that you mentioned, the Dutch Empire, the Spanish Empire, the British Empire. But, you know, the American empire has shown a remarkable capacity to increase its hijab at the same time as it depletes its soft power as well as its industry. After 1971, we had a remarkable phenomenon, and this is the result of the Nixon Shock of August 1971. America went deeper into the red. And the more into the red the United States went, both in terms of its trade deficits and its federal budget deficit, the more hegemonic it became. That has never happened before to any empire. Every empire that got into the red very soon after that waned and died. The United States didn't because of the power, the exorbitant privilege of the dollar. Because, you know, sometimes this is a paradox, but it ceases to be a paradox once we start looking into it. People talk to me about de dollarization and the way in which the dollar is going to be thrown of its throne. Well, I ask them the question, okay, now, what is it that keeps the dollar hegemonic today? And the answer is its enemies. So China doesn't want to see the dollar being dethroned. Why? Because they have four and a half trillion dollars in savings. So if you had your savings in a Swiss bank account, would you want to see Swiss banks go under? No, you wouldn't. So the Chinese are the real adults in the room, and at the moment, and they're doing whatever it takes in order to stop Trump from destroying American hegemony. Not because they are philanthropic towards the Americans, but because, you know, they have their savings in US Dollars for the time being, they are slowly shifting their savings away from it. Now, when a significant part of the world, including Saudi Arabia, including India and so on shift their savings away from the dollar system. That's when the American empire would start withering.

[Krystal Ball]

Lastly, sir, for from me on a different but related matter, Cuba is being threatened directly by Trump. He says, oh, I'm just going to take it. Their electrical grid has reportedly suffered a complete and total collapse, according to the country's power operator. Obviously this puts, you know, thousands of people's lives at risk. The island is effectively under a U. S led embargo. Door joined them. Somewhat of what we did in Gaza as well. What do you make of what is happening to Cuba right now, what we're doing to Cuba right now and how this fits into whatever Trump's aims are around the world?

[Yanis Varoufakis]

The Trump administration is committing a crime, an international violation of international law and basic moral standards by what it is doing in to Cuba. Whatever you may think of the Cuban regime, it is clear that given that it doesn't have any support from anywhere, long gone are the days when Cuba could rely on the Soviet Union, China, Russia, they may pay lip service to Cuba. The fact that the people of Cuba remain broadly in support of the system of government that they have broadly in support with a lot of criticisms and a lot of moaning and groaning and so on, but nevertheless, the fact that this regime is in Cuba is still there just goes to show that it does have still support. The idea that somehow to go back to the pre Castro era would be liberation is an abomination. Remember that before Castro's revolution, Cuba was effectively annexed by the mafia, by prostitution, by drug cartels, and so starving a whole population in order to force them to overthrow a government that does have an intertapular support is just an awful abomination of a crime. Now Gaza, of course, is going to stigmatize our generation independently of our politics. In the next 100, 200 years, people will think of us as a generation which allowed the genocide in Gaza to continue and to continue even after a supposed ceasefire, because it's going on as we speak now by other means, through starvation, through denying them, you know, they're still operating, or children without anesthetics because the Israeli army does not allow, as we speak, anesthetics to go into Gaza.

[Krystal Ball]

Unbelievable. Well, it may not take an economic genius to figure out some aspects here like oil prices going up is going to be bad, but we're very fortunate and glad to have an economic genius to help us sort through these many things. Giannis Varoufagus, thank you so much for your time today.

[Sagar Enjeti]

Thank you, sir.

[Yanis Varoufakis]

My pleasure.

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