3/26/26: Trump Threatens Iran, Pentagon preps Ground Troops, US Enlistment Age Increase

Summary

Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar Episode: 3/26/26 - “Trump Threatens Iran, Pentagon Preps Ground Troops, US Enlistment Age Increase” Date: March 26, 2026

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Episode Overview

In this urgent and in-depth episode, Krystal Ball and Saagar Enjeti dissect the latest explosive developments stemming from the ongoing US-Iran conflict under President Trump. The show covers Trump’s new threats against Iran, the Pentagon's preparation for possible ground troop deployment, and the sharp, policy-revealing move to increase the US Army enlistment age. The hosts blend political analysis, historical context, and deep cynicism about the government’s motivations, laying out how current events echo the most disastrous chapters in recent US military history.

The main themes include the blurred line between “military operation” and undeclared war, Congressional power failures, escalation scenarios, the crumbling credibility of US military dominance, and what the shifting enlistment rules mean for a war-weary populace. The show’s tone is oppositional, unsparing, and laced with moments of dark humor.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Trump’s Latest Threats and “Negotiations” with Iran

• Trump’s Claims of Victory and Ongoing “Negotiations”
  • Trump insists the US is "winning" in the Middle East and claims Iran is desperate to cut a deal but afraid to admit it (05:00).
    • Trump: “We’re winning so big, nobody has ever seen anything like we’re doing in the Middle east with Iran. And they are negotiating, by the way, and they want to make a deal so badly…” (04:59)
  • Krystal and Saagar emphasize that credible reporting (e.g., Scahill) indicates genuine negotiations are non-existent and Iranians themselves ridicule these supposed talks (05:30, 11:05).
• Rebranding War for Legal Cover
  • Trump argues against labeling it a “war” to avoid the need for Congressional approval, calling it a “military operation” instead (06:00).
    • Trump: “I won’t use the word war because ... you’re supposed to get approval. So I'll use the word military operation, which is really what it is.” (06:01)
  • Krystal calls out the blatant disregard for constitutional norms and Congress’s political cowardice (06:32, 08:23).

2. Congressional Dysfunction and the War Powers Debate

• Congressional Abdication and Cynicism
  • The hosts highlight bipartisan maneuvering to avoid a War Powers vote, exposing how politicians avoid accountability while the war drags on (06:32, 08:23).
  • Krystal: “Congress continues to cede all of their power to the White House. Just go and be a podcaster if you don’t wanna have actual power…” (08:41)
• Shout-out to Antiwar Lawmakers
  • Saagar credits figures like Thomas Massie and Ro Khanna for pushing for a War Powers vote, contrasting them with the broader cowardice (07:11).

3. The Illusion of US Dominance and Iran’s New Leverage

• Shifting Power Dynamics
  • Krystal details how Iran now enjoys “escalation dominance” and the ability to strike back in kind, with damage to US bases so extensive that troops have evacuated to hotels (10:45, 29:30–32:43).
  • Krystal: “Most of the 13 military bases have been damaged to the extent that they are effectively uninhabitable…” (32:27)
• 21st Century Warfare—Cheap Drones vs Expensive Hardware
  • Saagar draws parallels to Vietnam and Russia-Ukraine, stressing that new technology—namely, cheap drones—has neutralized US hardware superiority (11:05, 12:45).
    • Saagar: “Cheap little drones have the ability to destroy infrastructure, to kill troops… the asymmetry of a global powerhouse just gets completely mired in the mud.” (11:05)

4. The Messaging War: Propaganda, Gaslighting, and Reality

• Trump White House Messaging
  • White House spokesperson Caroline Levitt issues blunt threats: “President Trump does not bluff and he is prepared to unleash hell.” (13:58)
  • The Iranians openly mock US public statements, making negotiation nearly impossible (35:00).
• The Victory Narrative vs. Ground Realities
  • Repeated White House claims of near victory are met with skepticism; the majority of Americans believe the war is going badly (19:06, 21:00).
    • Krystal: “The vast majority of Americans think the war is going really badly or somewhat badly…” (21:00)
  • Saagar compares current talking points to the infamous “light at the end of the tunnel” spin during Vietnam (19:28).

5. Iran’s Conditions and the Impossibility of an “Off-Ramp”

• Iran’s Unyielding Terms to End the War
  • Iran demands (23:00–23:40):
    1. Halt to aggression and assassinations
    2. Mechanisms to prevent future attacks
    3. Reparations
    4. End of fighting for all resistance groups, including Lebanon/Hezbollah
    5. Control and recognition over the Strait of Hormuz
  • The hosts see no realistic scenario in which Trump could accept these and politically survive (23:51–24:21).
    • Krystal: “Do you think that Trump and Israel… are anywhere near feeling like this is something we’re gonna accept? No, Trump has to save face here.” (23:51)
  • Escalation now seems all but inevitable, as neither side can credibly trust the other or back down without domestic ruin (24:56).

6. Pentagon Planning for Ground Troops—Escalation Math

• Imminent Military Escalation Plans
  • The Pentagon prepares operations for a “final blow,” including the potential occupation of strategic Iranian islands and strikes on nuclear infrastructure (41:35–43:50).
  • Ammunition/logistical crises: Interceptor stockpiles are depleted—Israel and the US are “days away” from running out of key munitions (43:50–45:00).
    • Saagar: “Arrow 3 in the first 16 days was already 80% depletion. US was at 40.” (45:50)
  • The logic of escalation—once stockpiles run out, occupation becomes the only remaining military course, but every option carries unacceptable risks, from entrapment to mass casualties (51:02–53:22).
    • Krystal: “Even in the fantasy land where it succeeds spectacularly beyond anyone’s wildest dreams, it still doesn’t seem like any way to get to an off ramp. It seems more likely to get a bunch of service members killed and… get us further embedded in this thing indefinitely.” (53:22)

7. Regional Chaos: The Gulf, Saudi Arabia, and Escalation Threats

• Allied Pressure and the Broader Regional Picture
  • Regional allies like Saudi Arabia are now lobbying for US ground invasions to secure their own regimes (53:22–55:21).
  • The threat of Iran expanding the war horizontally—potential attacks and uprisings in the Gulf states if provoked (55:35–58:18).
  • The hosts emphasize Iran has hardly exhausted its options for inflicting further pain and regional disruption (58:10–59:39).

8. Troop Deployments and Iranian Response

• Deployment of US Marines
  • Thousands of Marines and paratroopers are arriving in the region; possible “feints” and decoys to confuse Iran as to actual invasion targets (59:39–61:36).
  • Iranian officials are publicly taunting the US, daring a ground invasion: “Come closer. We are waiting for them.” (61:36)
    • Krystal: “They’re practically begging us to do some sort of ground invasion because they think… they can drop us in a kill box.” (61:36)
  • Krystal advises focusing on military build-up, rather than Trump’s shifting rhetoric, as a key indicator (62:43).

9. Enlistment Crisis: Raising the Army Age and Easing Drug Restrictions

• War and Manpower Pressures
  • The Army raises its max enlistment age from 34 to 42 and drops restrictions on marijuana offenses (68:22).
    • Saagar: “You’re only for… This is like Ukraine level stuff, right?” (69:03)
  • The hosts see this as a last-ditch attempt to fill the ranks due to years of recruitment failure and public reluctance to fight, particularly for such an unpopular war (69:07–72:45).
    • Krystal: “The best recruitment tool is the immiseration of the population…” (72:45)
  • Saagar makes the case for a draft as the only way to secure true “democratic consent,” though both acknowledge a draft for this war would trigger mass resistance (72:45–78:15).
    • Krystal: “If they try to implement a draft right now for this fucking unpopular, monstrous, idiotic, illegal offensive war of choice—abso-fucking-lutely not.” (78:15)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments (with Timestamps)

• On Presidential Legality and Accountability
  • Krystal: “Just go and be a podcaster if you don't wanna have… actual power in the political arena.” (08:41)
• On American Hubris
  • Saagar: “We had a ton of confidence in our interceptors. Hubris, imperial hubris. A tale as old as time.” (33:19)
• On the Messaging Gap
  • Krystal: “His old ass declining brain is just being fed, like, Fox News propaganda condensed down into these two minute reels.” (65:00)
• On the Iran War’s Potential for Catastrophe
  • Saagar: “I hate to be so catastrophic… He doesn’t have a way out.” (38:44)
• On America’s War Recruitment Problem
  • Saagar: “This is Ukraine level stuff, right?” (69:03)
  • Krystal, on the draft: “Abso-fucking-lutely not. American people didn’t want this. They didn’t vote for this. You explicitly ran against this.” (78:15)

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Important Timestamps

• [04:59] Trump claims Iran wants a deal; Krystal and Saagar debunk
• [06:01] Trump: “I won’t use the word war…”
• [08:41] Krystal on Congressional abdication
• [11:05] Saagar explains asymmetric drone warfare
• [13:58] Caroline Levitt: “President Trump does not bluff and he is prepared to unleash hell.”
• [21:00] Krystal: Majority of Americans think the war is going badly
• [23:00–23:40] Iran’s five conditions to end the war
• [43:50] Saagar: Israel and US almost out of interceptors
• [61:36] Krystal: Iran is taunting US troops, inviting a ground war
• [68:22] Army increases enlistment age; relaxes drug policy
• [78:15] Krystal: “Abso-fucking-lutely not” to a draft

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Conclusion

Krystal and Saagar make clear that the US-Iran war is spiraling out of political, legal, and operational control. Trump’s bellicose posturing, combined with Congressional abdication and a collapsing recruitment pipeline, has painted the White House into a corner, while the realities on the ground and Iran’s expanding capabilities defy both Western media spin and tired old strategies. The specter of ground invasion, equipment depletion, and even a draft hover ominously, with neither side showing any willingness or ability to craft a credible off-ramp. The episode ends on a sobering note: America appears poised to repeat the worst mistakes of its past—only this time, at even greater cost.

Transcript

[Podcast Host]

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[Krystal Ball]

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[Saagar Enjeti]

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[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 this.

[Saagar 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.

[Saagar Enjeti]

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

[Krystal Ball]

Indeed we Do Trump making new threats against the Iranians as they mock him relentlessly. Lots to dig into there. We've also got a new Barack Ravid report about what the next steps in the war may be. So we'll dissect that new polls on just how unpopular the war is. And those numbers are only going down along with Trump's approval rating, which is truly hitting new lows. Oil markets are extremely confusing at this point. The market seem to be perhaps irrationally expecting that the war is going to end and things are just going to go back to normal. That does not seem to be the case to us Layman here, but we'll dig into what we can tell. Professor Robert Pape is going to join us again. Always an honor to get to speak with him and hear his thoughts on where we are and where we are going. And we're also going to include in this show an interview that Ryan did when he was down in Cuba with the top official there who offered some, you know, pretty significant accommodations to the United States of America. The kind of deal that you would think that Trump would be eager to take. Unfortunately, it doesn't look like he is headed in that direction, but we will, we'll share that with you today. Very significant reporting from Ryan.

[Saagar Enjeti]

That's right. Props to Ryan went on the ground already caused a lot of discourse here in the United States debating Newsmax hosts.

[Krystal Ball]

Oh, man.

[Saagar Enjeti]

What else could you possibly ask for?

[Krystal Ball]

You know, Ryan, I don't see him give that exercise that much. I know. That was the most exercise I think I've ever seen. Ryan has seen that Newsmax interview. That was amazing.

[Saagar Enjeti]

You gotta give the man props. Thank you to everybody who's been subscribing to the show breakingpoints.com Also, we are at 1.96 now YouTube, 1.96 million YouTube subscribers. Let's go to 2 million. Let's just get to 2 million. Then we can all just relax. We can sail off into the sunset. I really never thought we would hit 2 million. I mean, theoretically. But I was like, yeah, you know, we'll get there. Eventually we hit one. That's all you need. But we're so tantalizingly close. Okay, so let's go ahead, hit the subscribe button, if you will. And if you're listening to the podcast, please share an episode with a friend. We've had Titanic growth on our podcast, probably the most in our at least in the last several years. So seriously, thank you to all of you.

[Krystal Ball]

I think it's the most in our history Honestly, it probably.

[Saagar Enjeti]

I'd have to check the lifetime charts, but the growth has been unbelievable over the last month, which means a lot of you are sharing. It is the hardest platform, actually, to grow. So seriously, if one of your relatives or a friend or something like that is like, hey, what's going on with Iran? Please just send them one of your favorite episodes on the subject so they can be informed as well. With that, let's go ahead and start with Donald Trump.

[Krystal Ball]

Yeah, so he made some new comments last night about these alleged negotiations, which he swears is happening, the Iranians swear are not happening. Let's take a listen to that.

[Donald Trump]

We settled eight wars people sort of forget, and we're winning another one. I tell you, we're winning so big, nobody has ever seen anything like we're doing in the Middle east with Iran. And they are negotiating, by the way, and they want to make a deal so badly, but they're afraid to say it because they figure they'll be killed by their own people. They're also afraid they'll be killed by us. There's never been a head of a country that wanted that job less than being the head of Iran.

[Krystal Ball]

So as best we can tell, these negotiations are a fantasy. Not that things have not been sent from the US To Iran via intermediaries, but in terms of any either direct or indirect negotiations, the reporting from Scahill and others indicates that is simply not the case. And the Iranians have been quite adamant that that is not the case. Let me play another piece here from Trump, which I thought was very revealing in a way that he sort of uniquely can be, where he talks about how, well, he doesn't want to call it a war because that would mean he needs to get approval from Congress. Let's take a listen.

[Donald Trump]

But they're doing it for two reasons. Number one is they want to deflect from all of the tremendous success that we're having in this military operation. I won't use the word war because they say if you use the word war, that's maybe not a good thing to do. They don't like the word war because you're supposed to get approval. So I'll use the word military operation, which is really what it is. It's called a military decimation. But they don't like the good publicity. They don't like to see us succeed. They want to see our country fail.

[Krystal Ball]

And I know it seems quaint at this point, but just all but acknowledging Sager, how he's flagrantly violating the Constitution knows damn well he's supposed to get approval from Congress. Congress, on the other hand, you know, equally pathetic, there is a push for War Powers Resolution, another vote in the House and Democratic leaders, because it looks like it may actually succeed. They are trying to push that back a month. I don't know why the war is happening now. Like you need to take this vote right now. But you know, they low key support ideologically the war. They also think that it is damaging for Trump. So they also low key want it to continue to go on. It is deeply cynical and disgusting, but that is where we are.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Exactly. Thank you. Let me give a huge shout out to all the war powers activists who are working on this behind the scenes. People like Thomas Massie to Ro Khanna and many of the other heroes in the House who are actually trying to do this. Everybody else is either looking at it through a political lens or some cowardly. Really, the Senate Republicans just yesterday moved to make sure that a War Powers Act, a war powers vote would not come before Congress. And this is so important for our democratic process because it's what shows the ability for the populace to buy in. If we're gonna talk later about military recruitment and a draft. I mean, look, I don't think any of that is going to happen. But this is the path that we are now on and you cannot. I mean, look, even in Vietnam we had the sham Gulf of Tonkin resolution. Even during Iraq, we had the actual vote. There was a debate. People had to live and die on that. But they do not want to be held accountable for their actions now so far. And it's really important that we all just like put a pin in this for our democratic process, especially as we move to some potential ground invasion. To have boots on the ground in a foreign country with no authorization is the absolute height of cowardice from every single member of the United States Congress.

[Krystal Ball]

Yes, that's absolutely right. And if nothing else, like, I don't think any of us really expect that even a vote in favor of War Powers Resolution and ultimately against the war that that would constrain this administration. I don't think we're naive enough. It would create some problems for them as I think it's sort of like

[Saagar Enjeti]

it would create problems.

[Krystal Ball]

Acknowledgement of that from Trump here. But just to have everyone on the record is extremely important because it will be hard to hold people accountable after the. Because they'll, you know, oh, well, I did express my concerns, et cetera, et cetera. No, what did you do at the moment? How did you vote? Where were you on these issues? And so, you know, it's just extremely disgusting the way that Congress continues to cede all of their power to the White House. Just go and be a podcaster if you don't wanna have like actual power in the political arena. In any case, we've got. Let's put A to B up on the screen. New True Social here from Trump. He says the Iranian negotiators are very different and strange in scare quotes. For some reason, they are begging us to make a deal again with the scare quotes, which they should be doing since they have been militarily obliterated. Doesn't seem like it anyway. With zero chance of a comeback. Also doesn't seem like it. And yet they publicly state that they are only looking at our proposal wrong. They better get serious soon before it is too late. Because once that happens, there is no turning back and it won't be pretty. President djt, you know, the Iranians seemed, I mean, understandably like just thinking about this rationally from their perspective. Number one, the terms that the supposed 15 points that were offered from the Trump administration were completely unserious. You know, the Iranians view, and I think rightfully so, view themselves as winning this war at this point. You know, the US has failed to accomplish any of the stated strategic objectives. The Iranians are, you know, have escalation dominance here. They've been able to match what the US and Israel are doing, not in terms of total damage, but in terms of, okay, you hit our gas field, we're gonna hit you back, we're gonna make you pay. We're in exact pain in the global economy. There's a new report we'll get to in a moment here from the Washington Post. You know, all of our troops in the region are basically working remotely now because all of the bases are effectively unusable because of the damage that has been inflicted and, you know, and also dangerous. So that is, I mean, that is extraordinary. That is different from anything we've seen before. It's, you know, we make these comparisons to Vietnam and obviously the parallels are not exact, but, you know, this is. The ability to project power from the Iranians is unlike any adversary we've faced in a very long time.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Well, it's just a proof of 21st century warfare we have. There's every, every big war, there are signs of where things could have been. So like the script for the First World War, the trench warfare was written in the siege of Petersburg at the end of the Civil War, just the Europeans thought that they were better than us and they would be able to fight differently. They were totally wrong. The script for the Second World War, there were multiple skirmishes and other. I mean, even before the US entrance, you could see how things were working with Poland, with the Iraq War, Vietnam. Obviously even with Vietnam, it was not our Vietnam, but France's Vietnam. We just decided to redo that. And for this one, the proof has been there for four years now in Russia and Ukraine is that it doesn't matter. Like you can have all of this fancy stuff, but at the end of the day, these cheap little drones have the ability to destroy infrastructure, to kill troops, suicide drones, and the asymmetry of a global powerhouse like Russia, which has all these awesome tanks and all that, just gets completely mired in the mud and held up by the Ukrainians with not all that expensive military technology. Now I'm not saying they're going to win, but you can hold off for a long time. It's the asymmetry in the cost. And the perfect example of that is suicide drones taking out billions of dollars worth of natural gas infrastructure, while a multi billion dollar carrier gets taken out by a laundry fire or whatever and has to sail to port and is out of commission now for two years. So you know, at every turn you see very quickly that anyone paying attention to warfare, literally for the last four years and even before that in Syria we saw that for, you know, with the, and even, you know, the ISIS war with the body cams and the drones and all that, like everything was there for the last 15 years or

[Krystal Ball]

October 7th as well.

[Saagar Enjeti]

October 7th, I mean they bombed the

[Krystal Ball]

hell out of Hamas. Hamas doesn't have anything like the capabilities of Iran and you still couldn't defeat them. And they were able to penetrate into Israel and create havoc and you know, kill all kinds of both civilians and IDF and you know, again using just some of this little drone technology to take out the cameras. So you know, you're a fool if you think this is gonna be easy. And the Iranians of course willing to take on much more pain and damage cuz for them this is existential. For us, we don't even wanna be there. Let's go and play a little bit of Caroline Levitt here because clearly the memo went out yesterday, okay, The Iranians are ruthlessly mocking these, you know, the supposed negotiation from Trump. I mean all these videos that they're putting out, the rhetoric that they're using, I mean, really just like trolling and mocking the White House. And so they've rebuffed these fake negotiations. And so now the move has shifted from Trump and from Caroline Levitt and others to, okay, now we're going to, we're going to threaten you. We're going to threaten to punish you for not acceding to our demands here. Let's go and take a listen to Caroline Levitt yesterday at the White House.

[Podcast Host]

But the president's preference is always peace. There does not need to be any more death and destruction. But if Iran fails to accept the reality of the current moment, if they fail to understand that they have been defeated militarily and will continue to be president, Trump will ensure they are hit harder than they have ever been hit before. President Trump does not bluff and he is prepared to unleash hell. Iran should not miscalculate again, prepared to unleash hell.

[Krystal Ball]

Sager, what do you make of the White House tactics here? Because the Iranians feel that these negotiations, again, the demands are fake, but also they feel it could be like an intelligence gathering up, which they're right to figure out where their leadership is so they can murder them, which of course, they've done many times in the past. They're probably correct about that. It may also be a stalling tactic. It's also obviously designed to calm the markets, which, you know, Trump has a problem with, not only with the oil prices, but also with the bond yields, maybe even more of a significant issue. So that seems to be the sort of desperate strategy here being employed by the White House.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Absolutely. So what you're seeing is a lot of wish casting. And this is why we talked earlier. And Trump actually reminds me a lot of lbj. I think we're gonna talk a lot about this with Professor Pape in that LBJ was the ultimate dealmaker, the ultimate consummate Washington politician. His problem always is he would apply that deal making domestic political skill to war with Ho Chi Minh, who fundamentally was an anti colonialist communist who was like, I will basically never make a deal with you. I have the ultimate and total objective of keeping my country first safe and second of the reunification, north and south and taking over. There was no deal really to be made. There was only just, we have to get out. And that's very difficult for these type of people to accept. You could say over and over again, I'm not gonna be the first son of a bitch to lose on a war like the first American president. And you can watch how Trump is trying to do what he did in politics to great, obviously for victory for himself. He's trying to Shape the conversation. He's making sure. And pushing things. He's like, they wanna negotiate so bad, but I'm not gonna let them. That works maybe when you're dealing with Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi. It works when you're dealing with Ted Cruz in the 2016 primary, but doesn't work whenever you're dealing with an enemy who you basically have given no choice. You declare unconditional surrender, you've killed the ayatollah, you've made it a war of total survival on their part. And you've actually, so far have ballooned their ego because the Iranians are right now in the best pole position that they could be. But the biggest mistake that Trump has made is that he has made it so that the ground that could be laid for any negotiation is gone. And they can never actually trust our word. They can't trust Wyckoff. They've been bombed twice. And this is why when that happened, I remember thinking, I go, how are we ever gonna be able to make a deal in the future with Russia, with Ukraine, with China, with anyone if you're gonna bomb somebody other than the COVID of diplomacy? And so you can see the consequences of his actions. And he's trying to work in a vacuum and not in the context now fully of how he has behaved in his administration. Yeah, that's the prison that he has locked himself into, locked all of us into. That's the tragedy of.

[Krystal Ball]

Yeah. And part of what's different from Vietnam is, you know, I mean, it destroyed, obviously, LBJ's presidency. But the end of the day, they could just walk away. You can't just walk away here. I mean, it will destroy Trump. I think Trump's presidency will be destroyed either way at this point. But, you know, the Iranians have projected, like, no, we say when this ends. So you may. You may want to leave, but is Israel gonna stop firing? I mean, this is. They want to make this the last time that they have to deal with the US And Israel coming in and bombing them. And that is what they are trying to achieve. That's what they feel like they can achieve. But I don't believe that they think that they're there yet. And to your point about the, you know, the arrogance and the hubris of doing these, you know, negotiation ruses and then murdering the people involved world. Let's say the Iranians did want to talk to the US let's say they wanted to have some sort of a channel of communication just to keep the lines open, see what was possible. Et cetera. How would you do that? Yeah, they certainly aren't gonna meet anyone in person and give up their location. They certainly don't want to communicate electronically with them because the cell phone can be tracked, the communication be tracked, whatever. Literally, how are you going to communicate? I mean, so the US has basically made it impossible even to have those negotiations if the Iranians want to. Now, what we know right now is, you know, they're passing. The US Is passing things through Pakistan, they're through Turkey, you know, through Egypt, and Iran is also in communication with them. But if you were gonna have any sort of direct exchange, it's effectively impossible at this point. You've also got. Let's skip ahead to a five. You've also got this continuing victory narrative, which is increasingly just completely implausible. And the American people are not buying it one bit. The vast majority of Americans think the war is going really badly or somewhat badly. In any case, this is Caroline Levitt talking about how we're very close to meeting the objectives of Operation Epstein Fury. Let's take a listen to that.

[Podcast Host]

We are very close to meeting the core objectives of Operation Epic Fury. And this military mission continues unabated from the outset. President Trump and the Department of War estimated it would take approximately four to six weeks to achieve this critical mission. 25 days in the greatest military the world has ever known is ahead of schedule and performing exceptionally.

[Saagar Enjeti]

This is very Vietnamesque. This is exactly what they said before the Tet offensive. They were like, oh, well, we've Operation Rolling Thunder. But, you know, people really should go and study Rolling Thunder. Rolling Thunder had the exact same escalation logic. We're going to go in, we're going to bomb, and then every time that they don't back down, we're going to do a little bit more, and then we're going to do a little bit more, and then we're going to do a little bit more. And the entire time they're telling the. The American public, hey, what we've done, we've degraded 10,000 hectares or whatever. We've taken out 90 million Viet Cong. I'm exaggerating, obviously, but. And then what happened. And then what happened is exactly very similar circumstance to what we see right now, where US Troops are working remotely. You have multiple US Bases which are declared uninhabitable. You have an aircraft carrier which has to leave the region. We're running dramatically low on interceptors. The military logic of it all starts to be foreseen. And then you have a big event which shows for the final moment, you're like, oh, my God. Everything they told us is a total lie. Remember, the vast majority of people are still not paying attention to this war. They're mostly just going on with their lives to the extent that they have paid any attention whatsoever. Probably gas prices, if I had to guess. That's basically it, you know, they're mostly going about their lives. They know something is kind of happening, but it's not yet there. They're hearing some of the White House stuff and they're like, ha, sounds ridiculous, but whatever, just moving on. But the big one, when it comes to, that's what you want to avoid at all costs. Because that is those emperor have no clothes or even Empire has no clothes moments. You never come back from. You absolutely never come back from it. And we're, we're inching towards it.

[Krystal Ball]

We're already in a place where things will never be quite the same.

[Saagar Enjeti]

That's right.

[Krystal Ball]

We're all right. However this ends, things will not be the same on the other side of it. Let's go and put Iran's five conditions that they've been pretty consistently holding out here about what they would need in order to end the war. So they say. Tehran has therefore characterized the latest overture, which was to delivered by a friendly regional intermediary, as a ploy to heighten tensions and has responded negatively. The official outlined five specific conditions under which Iran would agree to end the war. They include, number one, a complete halt to aggression and assassinations by the enemy. Number two, the establishment of concrete mechanisms to ensure the war is not reimposed on the Islamic Republic. Number three, guaranteed and clearly defined payment of war damages and reparations. Number four, the conclusion of the war across all fronts and for all resistance groups involved throughout the region. And just upon pause on that one, there's reporting that they want to make sure Lebanon is included in any sort of, you know, war ending deal here and Hezbollah is included in that. So they want to make sure not only is the war ended here, but also on the additional front that Israel's opened up there, international recognition and guarantees regarding Iran's sovereign right to exercise authority over the Strait of Hormuz. The official further noted these stipulations are in addition to demands previously presented by Tehran during the second round of negotiations in Geneva, which took place just days before the US and Israel carried out a fresh round of aggression on February 28th. So they say they want everything to stop. They want to make sure it can't restart in the future and they want reparations because they feel, correctly, they were attacked, that it was, they were illegally attacked. All kinds of damage has been done to their country and they think that the US And Israel should pay them for that, for what they have done to them. Now I ask you, you know, in the Iranians minds, they feel they're win. You know, they feel they block the US from being able to achieve any of their strategic objectives. They feel they are, you know, they're in control of the Strait of Hormuz. They get to say how big and how quickly this war, you know, how much this expands, how much pain the region and the U.S. and the globe ultimately are going to, you know, going to feel. And so they think it's entirely reasonable that they get paid back reparations. Do you think that Trump and Israel, do you think they're anywhere near feeling like this is, you know, this is something we're gonna accept? No, Trump, Trump has to save face here. He has to save face because if he, let's say he accepted these conditions and walked away, it is the end of his presidency. I mean, it is humiliating. Like already we're in a situation where, you know, they've, Washington Post is saying they've given up on regime change, they've given up on ending the nuclear program. Now the war is to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, which the war closed. So I saw Arnaud Bertrand, he's like, it's the war to reopen the thing. The war closed.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Yes.

[Krystal Ball]

That's how much of a disaster this has already been.

[Saagar Enjeti]

The US this is how it always works. And this is why the traders and the markets, they're all like, oh, well, Trump wants to end the war. You think that the Kaiser didn't wanna end the war in 1914. Like you think LBJ didn't wanna end the war in 1966. You think that Abraham Lincoln didn't want the war to end in 1861. Everybody wants to end the war.

[Krystal Ball]

That doesn't mean that the war's gonna end. Speaking to this, this is what you're referring to, this Wall Street Journal piece that's like, oh, let's put it up

[Saagar Enjeti]

there on the screen.

[Krystal Ball]

Trump wants a speedy end. He's looking for an off ramp. It's like, okay, good luck. Good luck. Because this is what we've always warned about. Once you're in, it's not so easy just to walk away. You don't get to just. I'm bored with it. I mean, they talk in this article about how he's basically bored with the war and wants to get back to, I don't know, talking about his ballroom or sicking ice agents on America, whatever. He's like, I'm kind of over this, and it's kind of a problem for the midterms. Okay, you may feel that way. How are you going to get out of this? Because it doesn't seem obvious to me at all or a lot of experts that I've been listening to how you could even end this thing at this point.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Yes. And that's actually why I just feel really despondent because it would take the most supreme act of courage from now two separate individuals, not just one. First is the Ayatollah or whoever is running in Iran. He would have to have the recognition. This is probably the best we're gonna get. Let's drive it home and let's actually do something with the Americans and have a last and a final piece. However, and if I'm being honest, if I was one of his advisors, I would tell him not to do it. Because if I'm looking purely from the lens of an Iranian who is now fighting, we cannot trust these people. What actual confidence can we have that they're gonna restrain the Israelis? And then second, on Donald Trump, it would actually take genuinely the act of supreme courage to restrain now all of the Israeli action for forever. For now, for now and forever, to make sure that we're not gonna let that happen and that we're actually gonna take this massive political hit, which we know that we are, where it's better in the long run, to just say, enough, we're not doing this anymore. We're gonna sign a deal. But all of the bellicosity, moving the troops, the easy decision from Donald Trump's perspective right now is to do what every wartime leader has always done, escalate to deescalate. We'll break the back of the enemy, and then what we'll do is make a deal on the other side. For the Iranians, it's very similar. They're like, well, we haven't even hit oil at 200 yet. We haven't made them feel the pain. We need to feel the pain. Ultimately, this is a power mismatch. And what it means, though, is that the actual power of the US Empire is going to have to fully get involved ground troops. And even then, remember, we're only talking about a couple thousand ground troops right now. This could be, you know, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands. That's how it works. Starts with a few. Oh, and then, you know, 20 guys get killed. Well, we have to avenge their death. And now we're on. And this is why you don't want to get into this situation in the first place. Why anybody who had a hand in this can never be forgiven. Because what they've unleashed already do not only the damage to our credibility diplomatically, our standing in the world. I mean, you know, I remember how many of these neocons used to talk about America's humiliation after Afghanistan and how that encouraged the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Let's say that that's true, which I don't even think it's fully true, but let's say it's partially. It had some impact on it. What do you think? If you're China or Russia or any of these countries looking at how the United States just held up in a very limited ballistic missile exchange with Iran and think, and then our own, you know, political capacity to stand for a war of choice like this, what are you going to take away from that? You're like wow, this is much easier than we ever thought it would be. This is why this is really, really bad. And we also see the escalation that continues. Let's put a 10 up here on the screen. Iran, just yesterday they struck a chemical complex in the Negev desert which is linked to white phosphorus production. So the ballistic missile program is there. They're hitting targets in Israel, chemical complexes causing a huge blast. What does that mean? Why does that matter? Because the interceptors are running low. They're able to take out more critical infrastructure. And when you can take out critical infrastructure, you can take out interceptors. You actually become the great boogeyman threat that the Israelis always said you were. Now they really could be an existential threat to Israel. So what does Israel do? They might have to use a nuclear weapon. They don't have any forces. That's why like you know, everybody thinks you sound hysterical. But things move very, very quickly in war. And you can already see the strategic logic from the Israeli perspective. That's why they're opening, that's why they're expanding their borders. That's why they want and are pushing the United States. Cuz now this really is the boogeyman for the United States. We have to save face. We need to save the global oil market. We can't just sign a deal. And then from the Iranians, same thing. Like they haven't exacted the pain that they want. Cause they want this to be the last war, not just one war. And you know, all this language Every history book you'll read, you hear them all say the same thing. This needs to be the war to end all wars. This needs to be. You know, if we just do this, then the enemy will capitulate. It turns out, especially when you put people in a total war situation, which is what Trump's threat is, it's only gonna drag on even longer and longer and longer. And I'm just. I do not see a way out of this. None of these people have the courage to do what needs to be done.

[Krystal Ball]

Israeli logic, which apparently the Trump administration, Trump, has bought into completely. Is there just one bombing campaign away from, like, perfect peace and security? There's always one more bombing campaign, one more round of assassination, one more square

[Saagar Enjeti]

miles, more of territory outside.

[Krystal Ball]

Yeah, exactly. And I mean, they're already projecting they're going to go to war with Turkey next. After. After this. I mean, they've already picked their next target. Like, this is the. This is the logic that they operate under. And of course, there is no, like, there is no final answer here. At the end of the day, you're gonna have to figure out some negotiated settlement, figure out how to live with people so you're not constantly at war with them. But that is the polar opposite of the Israeli approach and certainly the Netanyahu approach. To your point about the amount of damage that Iran continues to be able to inflict. And I want you all to really take in how much you were gaslit by this administration and by the Western media about how, oh, they've taken on all of Iran's missile launchers and they're not gonna be able to do anything anymore. And, oh, look at how their missile launches are going down, et cetera, et cetera. Yeah, the number of missiles they're launching has gone down, but those missiles are finding their targets far more often because Iran, unlike us, they didn't underestimate us. They took us seriously. We thought that, you know, we. Trump came into this like, oh, they're gonna close down the Strait of Mooresa. I can't believe that. They've been planning for this for decades. They've expected this conflict and planned for it so smartly. What did they do? First, they tried to blind us, you know, take out the radar capabilities, exhaust the interceptors. And now they're at the point where their missiles are finding their targets more frequently. So let's put a 11 up on the screen. This is the other way that you've been gaslit and lied to, and a lot of the damage in the region has been Actively covered up by this administration with the collaboration of these private satellite companies, by the way. But in any case, this is Aaron Bassani of Navarro Media. By the way, they do great work. You guys should check them out. Many of the 13 military bases in the region used by American troops are all but uninhabitable, he says. A pretty extraordinary admission in the New York Times. You know, it's bad when they are being that candid. A ground invasion certainly makes a lot more sense after reading that. And let me just read you a little bit of this piece from the New York Times that he's quoting here. He says Iran has bombed U.S. bases across the Middle east in retaliation for the U.S. israeli war, forcing many American troops to relocate to hotels and office spaces throughout the region, according to military personnel and American officials. Now we've been told many times this is them using civilians as human shields. Right? Isn't that what's going on here? Isn't that, you know, the definite, oh, you're, you're in these civilian population, these civilian hotels, aren't you putting civilians at risk? Isn't it now not Iran's fault if civilians get killed when they're targeting U.S. military personnel? That's what we were told by the Israelis for years and years, it says. So now much of the land based military is in essence working remotely with the exception of fighter pilots and crews operating, maintaining warplanes and conducting strikes. They go on to talk about some of the specific damage to the various bases in the region. But Sagra, the fact that Most of the 13 military bases have been damaged to the extent that they are effectively uninhabitable and that our personnel feel so endangered there that now they're in civilian hotels and office. I mean this is extraordinary. I mean it's shocking.

[Saagar Enjeti]

I can't even describe it to you.

[Krystal Ball]

Yeah, I genuinely would not have thought at the beginning of this war I thought Iran could do damage. I thought they could definitely strangle the global economy. I didn't think that they could just willy nilly hit our military bases and force our troops to have to relocate to hotels and office space.

[Saagar Enjeti]

I knew it intellectually, I didn't know it for real. And that's really what I meant is, you know, having watched, I mean anybody can download Telegram and you can watch men die every single day on the Russian front. You actually can. And that's part of the tragedy is that you can see the exact same playbook as. I don't know if anybody's seen the videos, the first person view videos of them taking out like an army ambulance, helicopter, $10 million helicopter, $20,000 drone. I mean, it's just stories. You could see this every time that we are in one of these types of conflicts. But we didn't prepare properly. At the end of the day, we had a ton of confidence in our interceptors. Hubris, Imperial hubris. A tale as old as time.

[Krystal Ball]

Right?

[Saagar Enjeti]

That's the tragedy of it. And now you have tens of thousands of troops working remotely. God help us if some hacker or something takes out Internet access. Now what? I hope it works out right. I hope Starlink keeps working up there. Doesn't take much actually. Just think about the actual problem with that. And then also you have all this dispersal, which causes kinds of chaos. You have also the humiliation of having to evacuate a large base. By the way, as I just said earlier, this shows you how having these large, concentrated basis aircraft carriers, et cetera, probably not the way that you want to be prepared. Oops. That's the way our entire empire is structured right now. Very, you know, very. What is it very vulnerable to attacks and to tactics like this, which every military in the world who's an adversary of the United States will now be studying for all time. So you can just see how the script for the next big one. You can study this very easily. The vulnerabilities. Do we really trust our military industrial complex and our leaders to make any changes? They're gonna keep buying these multimillion dollar weapon systems. They're gonna keep investing in these things, even with the interceptors. They're gonna spend 15 million to shoot down a $10,000 drone. Well, probably even more. And that logic will make it so that when it truly becomes existential, that we could be left genuinely defenseless or it could invite real aggression in the future, is why we never, ever should have done this. I don't see a way out. I just don't.

[Krystal Ball]

The last thing I want to do in this blog. If we could put a 7 up on the screen just to get a taste of how the Iranians are talking about this. This is their military spokesperson. He says, have your internal conflicts reached the point where you're negotiating with yourselves? Don't call your defeat an agreement. You will see neither your investments in the region nor previous energy and oil prices return until it is our will. Nothing will return to how it was. That will only happen when the idea of acting against the Iranian people is completely erased from your minds. Our position from day one has been clear and remains unchanged. Someone like us will never come to terms with someone like you, not now and not ever. So that is the message the Iranians are putting out in response to, to Trump's talks of, oh, they're so they're desperate to negotiate, they're begging for an end to this, et cetera, et cetera. This is the message they're putting out to the world and to their people right now.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Exactly. And you can see exactly the logic around this about the message of the Iranian regime internally and then here in the US this desperate want for negotiation. By the way, this is part of the problem with Trump's timelines because at a certain point he only ever has taco or fulfillment and both are bad. Right. Because if he continues to taco while I am pro ultimate taco in the interim, he's just gonna keep leaving things open ended. So let's say if you look at what's the only real peace deal Trump has signed was Gaza. Right? Well, was it really a peace deal? We have this weird board of peace. People continue to die in Gaza every single day. There's no lasting settlement for what post governance is going to look like. Hamas remains largely in power over the population. The Israelis have total security control, like of the ability to impose a blockade and everything. On top of that, nobody has any future that that will work out. And by the way, for the Iranians, they see that very clearly. They're like, we can't enter an open ended, some sort of fake ceasefire where Israel just gets to continue to attack us every day. The only option is to continue to bomb the shit out of them and continue to bomb us. So the existing framework and infrastructure is not a real like pathway to real peace with this conflict. So you can actually see how Trump's preference for deal making is to keep everything open ended where you're dealing with an adversary which can still punch back, not like Hamas could, which could only internally, but could actually inflict some sort of damage and remains largely politically intact. Well, they're never going to accede to that. The only way to get them to do that would be to invade and to occupy them. And yeah, we can, we could do that. It would be a nightmare, right, politically for the people of Iran and also our own service members.

[Krystal Ball]

I mean we at our peak, I think we had like 170,000 service members on the ground in Iraq and Iraq. Iran is four times the size of Iraq and has notoriously extraordinarily difficult geography to control, by the way, because it's so mountainous. So I don't know. I mean, yeah, we could but even if we like went all in, it still would be a very difficult military jab. This is not, you know, this isn't a gimme. Even if we did do a full on hundreds of thousands of troops on the ground type invasion, I don't know. What a mess. That's all you can say. What a mess.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Yeah. I mean, I think in Vietnam, I'm looking it up, I want to say it was several hundred thousand at its absolute. Yeah. 543,000 troops in country in Vietnam, and that's South Vietnam, which is half of Vietnam, which is not a very big country. Now compare that to Iran. Right? So I mean, when I say we could do it like we could do it politically, like we could take over Tehran in a few of the, the population centers, can you truly occupy the whole country? No, I mean even that it's. And why would you even want to? Right? Yeah, exactly.

[Krystal Ball]

Oh my God.

[Saagar Enjeti]

So you could see. I hate to be so catastrophic. I've just been mulling it, you know, I see the Iranian response, I see the way that Trump is talking. He doesn't have a way out. You see the Israelis who are assassinating everybody that they possibly can. Just yesterday they came out and they go, we have taken the foreign minister off the kill list. And you're like, oh, okay. I mean, so you were trying to kill him before that. You're like, thank you. I guess. But it's what they did with Hamas.

[Krystal Ball]

Who could even believe them also?

[Saagar Enjeti]

And they just want to kill everybody who could possibly negotiate. That's literally what they did with Hamas, to make it so that the only viable option was total destruction, which even then they weren't able to achieve. So with all that big preamble, let's get to the ground troop stuff.

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[Krystal Ball]

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[Saagar Enjeti]

Turning now to the ground troops section, let's go ahead and put this up here on the screen. Some breaking news here from Barack Ravid, who is of course a White House scribe. Could it all be posturing? Certainly could, but we should take it seriously. He says the Pentagon is preparing for a massive, quote, final blow of the Iran war. A fin. I have never heard that word before in history, have I? Usually it accompanies a massive invasion that doesn't work out and has to lead to another final blow. And just this time, it will break the enemy. The Pentagon is developing military options for the final blow. A dramatic military escalation will grow more likely if no progress is made. They think a crushing show of force to conclude the fighting would create more leverage in peace talks or simply give Trump something to point to and declare victory. Iran, of course, has a say in how the war ends. Many of the scenarios would risk prolonging and intensifying the conflict. It would include potentially invading or blockading Kharg island, invading Larrak, an island that helps Iran solidify its control of the Straits of Hormuz, seizing the strategic island of Abu Musa and two smaller islands which lie near the western entrance to the strait and are controlled by Iran, but also claimed by the UAE and blocking or seizing ships that are exporting Iranian oil on the eastern side of the Hormuz Strait. The military has also prepared plans for ground operations deep inside the interior of Iran to secure the highly enriched uranium buried within nuclear facilities. Instead of conducting such a complicated and risky operation, they could also carry out large scale airstrikes on those facilities to try to prevent Iran from ever accessing that material. Now, you put this together with all of the troops that are currently on their way to the region and you could be reasonably confident that something like this could happen absent a huge diplomatic breakthrough in the next four hours. Starting tomorrow is when the five day deadline extension expires. Slash market is closed right exactly tomorrow at 4:30pm everybody opened their eyes. I joked it brings a whole new meaning to weekend warriors. You can only fight, you know, we literally are weekend warriors. We can only fight when the market is closed. Imagine trying to time D day with when the S and P was going to open in New York City. But that's the one.

[Krystal Ball]

Which stage of capitalism is this?

[Saagar Enjeti]

I don't even know. Let's go to the next one. Let's put this up here on the screen. Big indication that something big is happening is that at least three congressional Republicans, including the chair of the House and the Senate Armed Services Committees are quote, hinting strongly that a ground operation in Iran is planned and could potentially be underway soon. All of them have voiced frustration with the lack of information that has been shared from the Pentagon. One of them also, Nancy Mace, Senate Armed Services Committee, of course is the committee responsible for appropriating funds for the Pentagon. They are due many of the leaks that we've gotten, for example, about the billions in damage, how much munitions, et cetera, has been fired. That comes from legal updates that the Pentagon must make to the Senate Armed Services Committee and especially why. Remember that they're gonna request some 200 billion in the future. This is the way that it's all going to play out. Now why do we need to do a ground invasion? Why does something need to change? It's very simple. Flagged on the show from day one, Interceptors. The math doesn't. Math. Let's put this up here on the screen. So this is from the Royal United Services Institute. It is one of the oldest, I believe it might be the oldest defense think tank in the world. It's a UK based think tank and very similar, let's say here to the United States, the csis, the what is it center for Strategic Institute studies something like that. But these are very respected defense think tank, usually very tied into the military industrial complex and almost always actually have a pro war bias. However, they're very good at what they do. They do a lot of analysis around interceptors math, they read budget proposals, they look at open source and they compile all the data together. So I want to be clear here, they don't have the exact data, but they have a very good track record. Now here is what they warn. Let's put my tweet please up here on the screen. So. So the Royal United Service Institute now estimates Israel is days away from running out of Arrow interceptors and that the United States has already burned about 40% of the available Thaad stockpile in the Iran war and only has about three weeks left. So let me linger here a little bit on all of the types of munitions, the Arrow 2 and Arrow 3 munitions. These are the interceptors that come up hit the Iranian missiles. By the way, they haven't been working that well. Do you notice Crystal, the date on the Projected depletion date? March 27, 2026. The current date is March 26. Now they could be wrong. They could be wrong. This was based on the projections of the first 16 days of the conflict. And you know, one reason they might be wrong is they had to stop firing them. So they might extend the Runway a little bit, but that's not good. The second second allied Thaad interceptors partner operated uae, Jordan, right, et cetera. Other countries which have access. Projected run date is April 3, 2026. Israel. They have the Blue Sparrow air launched ballistic missile. Projected runout date April 5, 2026. David Sling Defensive April 6, 2026 Israel Rampage Supersonic missile April 9, 2026 US okay, April 12, April 2026 THAAD Israel operated April 11 and then THAAD US operated April 17, 2026. Only a couple of weeks. And then if you actually look at the percent of the total stockpile, arrow 3 in the first 16 days was already 80% depletion. US was at 40. And so just imagine at 40 and we'd already burned 25% of the existing stockpile in the 12 day war and we're already at 40 in the first 16 days. So the math is almost certainly correct. If you just look at how things worked in the 12 Day War to today. This means that the current way that things are going is impossible. We cannot keep this happening because all critical infrastructure, US bases, everything is now free. It's gonna be free game if things just Continue to operate as they do. Cuz we have been unable to take out all the drones or all the ballistic missile programs as we warned, you could take out 95% but even that 5%, if the interceptors are low, they can do a shit ton of damage. So here we are. Now we have to do something to change the strategic calculus because the status quo is not going to work. So you could either have diplomacy or you would have to have an invasion to go in and to secure and to change the status quo. And that is the problem. Also don't just take my word for it. Put B4 up there on the screen. Another piece of analysis, this is from the Jerusalem Post, who obviously would know Operation Epic Fury has drained one third of the bad supply. So their estimate's even higher or a little bit lower. And replenishment could take eight years. While the 90% hit rate is elite. Every launch against Iran depletes the readiness needed for potential conflict with China. And remember, we already stripped a decent amount out of South Korea of a lot of these interceptors and they take years to rebuild literally only for some Patriot. I think it's just like one facility, et cetera. The biggest problem now is okay, so ground troops to do what? Well as they said, for this final blow to take control of the Straits of Hormuz, I think that the nuclear facility option is the one that makes the most sense. And it's because for every one of these wartime leaders to change things, they need to do something big and especially trump spectacular and you can declare victory. So taking control of the Strait is basically a continuation of the war. Now I could see it as in I'll take control of the straight away from Iran, which means that they'll have to break cause they'll have no more money and that's their only real point of leverage. But that isn't something that's actually gonna wind up the war. The only way that I see that he could truly try to declare victory and say this is all over is to go in and actually take out their entire nuclear, their entire nuclear stockpile in terms of the material that could be enriched at some of their facilities, but that is fraught with risk. In the middle of mountains, they're going to turn it into a death trap. A lot of it is buried under rubble because we did that. And so it's not even that easy to go and get. There's no good options here. Like in terms of ground options, taking islands, you're sitting ducks for drones, for missiles. They want us to Invade. They've even said that they're like, we've been preparing for this and we want you to come and to try and take our territory. We're happy to try and to fight you. A lot of them will die, but it will actually probably mobilize their population more than ever. And of course, they want the American populace to turn against casualties. So for them, it might even be a good thing. Now, on the islands and the straits and all that stuff, the military logic would not necessarily be one that would truly break, you know, the negotiation power. I really think that the nuclear option is the only one or is the only one where he could potentially try and sell it as the end. Now, I don't even think it would be. I don't even think it would be the end. I think it would probably get us deeper into it. But in his mind, true. A true surrender is not on the table. You have to do something. That's all I can see them trying to do right now. Of course, it's just me. I could be wrong.

[Krystal Ball]

He's a big risk taker. He's a big gambler. So, I mean, I think there's a logic to what you're saying because they name all these different islands that they could come in and occupy. The problem with all the islands is the same. I mean, first of all, it's not easy. You're like a sitting duck there. But let's say you're able to take over the island, then you're there and you continue to be a sitting duck, and then you have to occupy it, what, forever? So, no, that's not. If you're looking to be able to declare mission accomplished and walk away. That's the opposite of that. That's you being embedded indefinitely on this Iranian island, getting your TR troops, having your troops exposed and killed whenever the Iranians feel like it, and doesn't take that much for them to be able to, again, exact pain. If you've got American service members occupying one of these islands, it will not fully solve the problem with the Strait of Hormuz. And again, you're there indefinitely. So, okay, that's one option. If you're trying to find some spectacular off ramp and you're still high on your quote, unquote, success in Venezuela. Yeah, maybe you go with the. What is truly like an insane and insanely risky option to try to drop, you know, paratroopers on the ground in Iran and secure this loose nuclear material that is buried underground and some of which they don't even know where it is and try to use that to declare mission accomplished. Problem is there too, not only, okay, let's say that by some miracle you pull this off or some facsimile of it off enough so that you can say, look, we did it, okay, we're going away. You think Israel is going to stop? Are you going to constrain Israel? Because there's no evidence of that. And the Iranians do not, you know, accept the idea that Israel acts independently of us, because they don't. So, you know, they're not fools enough to buy into, oh, that's just Israel doing that. We have nothing to do with it. So if Israel continues to attack them and mess with them, they're going to continue to, you know, hit our service, hit our bases in the region, etc. And then we're right back where we started. So I don't know. That's why we look at all of this and it's very hard to see how any of it, even if in the fantasy land where it succeeds spectacularly beyond anyone's wildest dreams, it still doesn't seem like it's any way to get to an off ramp. It seems more likely to get a bunch of service members killed and push us one more chain up the escalation ladder and get us further embedded and meshed in this thing indefinitely.

[Saagar Enjeti]

The other thing I've been thinking a lot about, let's put the next one up here just to kind of prove, prove this point out, is that we actually have made this existential for a couple of parties. One is Israel, because now they're screwed. They have to finish the job right for them, because now they really are a threat and they're really low on interceptors. The other is the Gulf. So how can the Gulf truly be safe with an existing Iranian regime? They can't, Right? They have. They, they need regime change now at this point, even though they wanted to avoid it in the past. Well, here, here we have some reporting from the New York Times that Emily flagged, which is that the mbs, the leader of Saudi Arabia, has been arguing that the United States should consider putting ground troops in Iran to seize energy infrastructure and to force the government out of power. Why? Because for them, they've taken hits now with the Aram in Aramco Daran, They've got these Houthis down in the Red Sea, they've had their refineries at Yanbu hit. They've had the straits closed. This is an insane, actual existential threat to Saudi Arabia, to the uae, to Qatar, to all of these countries. So Qatar has been courageous. I'll give them credit. They're like, look, we have to live with Iran. It is what it is. You know, we're a small country, they're a big country. We're not that far away from each other. But Saudi, UAE means they're filthy rich. Large powers. For them, they've had tremendous economic damage and they rely on foreign investment and foreign buyers more than anything. So you mess with oil, we can't be having this, right? So for them, they're actually itching to try and get into the war. The Saudis, they've been calling Trump, hey, yeah, let's do it, let's put ground troops in there. That's another issue is now you have allies who have divergent interests from ours. They need us to go all in to finish the job for them. They don't have the capacity. So that's a big problem. Now you have Israel and you have the Gulf, who again, we put them in danger. But the Gulf, at this point, they're stuck with us. It's like a marriage. And they're like, well, no, you have to go. And so that escalates the logic.

[Krystal Ball]

Well, and how much money does Trump and his family have?

[Saagar Enjeti]

Tens of millions.

[Krystal Ball]

Business investments throughout the region, too, that are totally cooked as long as you have an Iranian government in there that could any day send one of their shahed drones over and bomb your hotel.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Not just Trump, right? We've got our entire VC class, the entire Silicon Valley eco. You know how much Saudi money is sitting in, in Uber or even in Twitter? On Twitter, you wanna talk about all these massive Fortune 500 companies? Do you have any idea how much the Saudis, the Kuwaitis, the Emiratis, how much money they have flowing in US banks and all that? And of course for them, they're like, hey, all right, well, maybe we'll pull it out if you don't finish the job and secure our interest for us. Not even to mention here, the backbone of the Northern Virginia economy is what, what defense contractors? Who do you think keeps these people afloat? Not just the us, UAE and everybody. They've already purchased multi. They've already put in purchase orders in the last month for more thaads, for more missiles, all granted under emergency authority, which is a huge boon to the defense contracting industry. So put all that together. So you have the region itself, which actually is aligned Israel, the Gulf. They need regime change. America's got the only troops that actually do anything about it. And now, though, let's look at the other side to close the loop. Let's put this up here on the screen. The Iranians here now saying, based on some data, Iran's enemies, with the support of one of the regional countries, are preparing to occupy one of Iranian islands. All enemy movements are under full surveillance. If they step out of line, all the vital infrastructure of that regional country will, without restriction, become the target of relentless attacks. Probably a shot at Saudi Arabia, we're not exactly sure. We have also seen some reporting from many of the analysts in the Gulf is that one thing about Iran is that they've done horizontal escalation, right? Is they've gone all the way out. Well, if we try to seize some of their coast, what if they tries to seize the UAE or Kuwait or Qatar? Right. You only need a couple boats and some, you know, I mean, how well defended are these countries from an amphibious assault? Nobody knows. Have they even thought about it?

[Krystal Ball]

The two probably not. I saw most theorized were UAE and Bahrain.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Right?

[Krystal Ball]

And Bahrain is you know, roughly 50, 50 Shia Muslim. We've already seen some unrest there where the population is like, oh, yeah, we're actually on Iran's side. We're not on your side. We don't like these. I mean, these are installed family dictatorships that, you know, we prop up because they, they do what we want them to do and in exchange for that, you know, we protect them and do these deals with them, et cetera. Although I don't think they're feeling too protected anymore in any case. I mean, uae, how many actual, like UAE citizens even, are there? Not many.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Oh, sorry, I'm only thinking of Dubai, but yeah, it's probably like five to one foreigners to actual natives in the uae.

[Krystal Ball]

So, yeah, I mean, and that's why Iran hasn't come close to exhausting the things they could do. They haven't come close. Right. I mean, in the early days we saw some luxury hotels and things hit, which is not totally clear that it was Iran, but there was definitely damage in Dubai and some shocking things. How easy would it be? I mean, you've got US service members staying in hotels now throughout the region. You don't think they have any idea where any of them are? Of course they do. They know where some of them are. You know, you've got a population, some of whom are hostile to their own governments. You don't think they're feeding information to the Iranians, posting things on social media to let people know, you know, what's going on there. So, so they could do that. The Houthis have not gotten involved over on the Red Sea. They could do that. They could actually, like you said, change the borders themselves. Okay, you're gonna invade and occupy us in Lebanon, Whatever. Okay, well, we've got our own ideas for the region. And, you know, going into Bahrain or going into uae, there are so many more things. They could more aggressively even shut down the Strait of Hormuz, where right now they're letting friendly ships through, which is easing some of the pain in the oil market. We'll talk about that in a moment. You know, by at least half having some of that oil in the global market, they could take a more hardline approach there as well. So there are many more things that the Iranians actually could do. So they have far from exhausted their capabilities in terms of the pain that they could inflict here.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Yes. And then finally, I think what we need to mention here is about tomorrow. Tomorrow is a very important day. Let's put this up here on the screen. Be nine, please. Is that the thousands of Marines are now set to arrive in the region in CENTCOM on the exact same day as the Trump deadline. So keep that very much in mind. That is the Japan based amphibious assault ship USS Tripoli. Roughly 2,200 Marines on board from the 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit. You have another one which is on its way. And of course, you also had the 82nd Airborne. Where? Look, we don't know exactly. We do know based on the reporting, we know a couple things. Number one, the command element was given orders to go to centcom, to go to the region. The actual number of troops, it's probably classified. They're going to try and keep it, you know, as under wraps as possible. They could already be there. They might be on their way. Their mission is to be able to deploy in 18 hours anywhere in the world. So obviously they're well trained for this. It would probably happen under the COVID of darkness. There'll be decoys, et cetera. So we're never actually going to know. They really already could be there and prepared, ready to go. So keep that in mind as well, is that you have Marines and some of this is feints. If you were to ask me, I think that the Marine element is probably the feint, because what I would think is that they're gonna try and pose as if they're about to take over some island. That's kind of what they want, to concentrate their military resources while you have a paratrooper unit which is capable of coming in and deploying anywhere across the country. So they want to keep the Iranian attention divided and uncertain as to where actually some sort of landing or some sort of attack is going to actually take place. But some of these units may be employed at any time, obviously to go in and to participate in a very, very risky operation. And the reason why it's truly risky is that it's not a lot of people, like, they would have to come in for something for what? And are they really going to have the protection that they need? Very unlikely. That's the danger.

[Krystal Ball]

And Iran is taunting us. They're saying to American soldiers, come closer. I know, you know, sending out memes or the beginning has been like, we are waiting for them. Come on. Like we're waiting for. I mean, they're practically begging us to do some sort of ground invasion because they think that, you know, they can drop us and effectively a kill box. So I think, you know, and I don't think it's just bluster. I think they do feel, I think they feel very confident about the amount of pain that they could inflict there. So it's, you know, and so you'd look at it and go, well, I mean, these options all seem insane. And even as I agree with your logic about the way Trump would probably think, although he is so erratic that it's just very hard to say, and changes his mind on a dime depending on a whim, blah, blah, blah. And we've seen that many times. But I will say one thing, you really can't take anything he says seriously because he's such a fabulous liar. I mean, you just make things up on the fly, et cetera. We did learn, allegedly this big gift that the Iranians supposedly gave was allowing some tanker through the strait of hormones, but they were already doing that anyways. In any case, you can't listen to what he says. But I will say the build up to Venezuela, there were actually, they actually moved military assets into the region, something we paid very close attention to. And unlike with his other various threats against Greenland or Mexico or Canada or whatever, there were actually military assets there. And in the build up to Iran, same thing, all of these military assets brought into the region. So I would pay much more close attention to what assets are being mustered versus the words that, you know, constantly flow out of his mouth, which oftentimes are contradictory and make no sense. When he has brought military assets to the region, he has used them. So I think that's the, you know, that's the thing to look at from past behavior. That is the indication of where we are very likely.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Absolutely. And you know, you know, part of the reason why almost every president does it is it's the easy option. The diplomacy stuff, that's actually hard. That's way harder. Couple times. And you've got some guy raising Cain, he's wearing his Patagonia vest and he's sitting there. They're selling you a dream. Of course we could do it, right? Couple of tepid things. You got an idiot like Pete Hegseth and others in the Oval or in the Situation Room. You've got a bunch of people who allegedly were against the war and just not, you know, they're telling Trump whatever he wants to hear. You know, did we do the highlight reel thing?

[Krystal Ball]

Do we have that? No, I thought we had it. I was looking for it too. Maybe we can add it in post, but Ryan and Emily mentioned it yesterday. But it really is an important window into Trump's information bubble. And this is all, by the way, the way he constructed his administration. Okay. What he gets in terms of a briefing is like a boom, boom, pew, pew highlight reel of Americans doing badass bombing.

[Saagar Enjeti]

It's like this sitcom Twitter feed where it's like, boom.

[Krystal Ball]

Yeah. And very little information coming from about the amount of damage the Iranians have been able to do. He's getting very little information about that. He's getting these little short, couple minute long briefing like hype reels. That's the President of the United States. That is what he's getting. Like the equivalent of the stupid fucking DHS Twitter feed. That is what he's taking in. I mean, it's just. It's so disturbing and disgusting. But when you're thinking about how he's viewing all of this and all of these insane things and all the victory narrative about, oh, there are blue obliterated and we've won and victory is ours and they're begging us to talk, et cetera. Just keep in mind that his old ass declining brain is just being fed, like Fox News propaganda condensed down into these two minute reels.

[Saagar Enjeti]

It's the two minute reels plus Fox News propaganda. So those two things are a very devastating, very potent, and a dangerous.

[Krystal Ball]

How do we get to this point

[Saagar Enjeti]

where we'll have time for that?

[Krystal Ball]

I mean, it's just, you see these arrivals, multiple PhDs and whatever, and they're actually like, have thought about this and have a strategy, and we're just like Middle Eastern war. I don't think that'll affect the oil markets, do you?

[Saagar Enjeti]

Be careful where you go down this road because you may find out that totalitarianism often can breed decently. That's a whole other. That's a whole other conversation.

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[Saagar Enjeti]

turning now to enlistment and part of the other potential dangers here for the United States. Go and put this up here on the screen. The US army has now raised enlistment age to 42 and eased marijuana policies to bolster their ranks. The change takes effect April 20th alongside a new rule dropping restrictions for recruits with a single marijuana possession conviction. Obviously, I think people know my feelings on the marijuana front, but generally not usually a good thing whenever you have to say, hey, you've been caught with drugs before, no worries. Oh, oh, you're only 36. Come on in here, let's raise the age up.

[Krystal Ball]

You're only in your early 40s. Come on down.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Yeah, you're only for. This is like Ukraine level stuff, right? In addition to the age requirement, the army has removed restrictions for recruits who have a single possession of marijuana or drug paraphernalia. Previously, that would have required a waiver from the Pentagon and the passing of a drug. Wait, we're not gonna drug test guys who've been caught with drugs before? What are we doing here? All right, you want some weed addict? A weed addict not to be serving in the military, but behind plenty of

[Krystal Ball]

drug addicts in the military. According to Seth Harvard, that's even worse.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Okay, get them out too. Currently, the Navy and Air Force permit recruits over the age of 40, but the Marine Corps has a maximum age of enlistment for 28. Fiscal year 2025, the army did see a recruiting bump following seven years of decline, but in 2022 and many of the years prior, they significantly missed. Missed a recruitment goal. Part of the problem, I'm assuming, is that the 2025 army recruitment bump, or US military recruitment bump is not enough to make up for like a 25% deficit for years under the Biden administration. And so having to raise the recruitment age, it's just not something I would personally do in a time of war. Because this was by far of all the news that's broken through. I saw this one break through the normie firewall more than anything. People are like, wait, what? They're like, whoa, whoa, whoa. They're like, I didn't sign up for any of this. I will say this is personally why I support a draft. Because part of the problem with a volunteer arm, all volunteer military, while, yes, I think it makes it much more Professional is it makes it much easier to deploy without democratic consent, and I mean of the governed. So, for example, post Vietnam, they said, well, what was the most unpopular part of Vietnam? The draft. Well, let's just get rid of the draft part. And by getting rid of that, Iraq, Afghanistan, the years of the forever wars, you take the best and the brightest of like these poorer areas, promise them the moon signups and Ford F150s and all this other stuff, and then you just ship them off. And it actually enables you to keep it going for a longer period of time. So that's what I look at this recruitment age expansion as is to try and expand the pool to be able to offer all of these incentives, like the financial incentives and stuff, which I don't. I'm not opposed to any of that per se. But what it does is it creates the space to actually bring more people in the military and have less democratic consent. Like, only 1% of people ever served in the U.S. armed forces. Very few people actually know people who've served in the armed forces. It's one of the biggest class divides. If you're upper income, you probably don't know anybody. You serve in the military, it's extremely rare. If you're college educated, again, very, very rare, your closest connection might be like ROTC people on your campus, but you're not even gonna know necessarily, like enlisted folks. And that's the issue which we saw is that with Vietnam, yes, we had a draft, but we had basically the draft exclusion for a lot of the upper elite who didn't have to go in to serve is it ends up becoming the poor and the uneducated who are either forced by circumstances or tricked or told to be to go into the war. And it creates exactly this type of situation. When you are expanding recruitment age, it's usually a sign either that the populace is too obese, which is true, too drug addicted. True for a variety of reasons, like ineligible to serve. But you have to create this where you have to suck people more in for incentives. And it sends the message of we don't have enough people and we might be coming for you. And that's the danger. Even though I do support a draft, but it's one of those where I support it because I know that it would do what it did under Vietnam where people were like, I am not going for this war. Like, this is not happening. Which will force you to engage harder in the democratic process. It's a matter of life and death.

[Krystal Ball]

We also have reports that the number of conscientious objectors is surging that you have service members who are saying things like, I don't want to die for Israel. So there is a lack, I mean, think of who the military is. Largely young men, right? Some of many of whom may have supported President Trump and statistically probably did, the vast majority of whom very likely opposed this war because, I mean, if you look at the numbers, generationally young people are the most opposed to it. So you're gonna have a lot of service members who are in the military right now who are not down with this mission. So you have have that issue. You also just zooming out to the sort of more macro perspective. The best recruitment tool is the immiseration of the population. Because if people are desperate then and you're like, oh, we'll give you this perk and that perk, and you'll be able to live and earn a decent salary and have some prospects in life. And so as AI comes for like the, it's already destroyed a lot of the blue collar job path, as AI now comes for the white collar jobs as well. Look, my daughter's graduating high school. I know a lot of kids who she's graduating with that in my era would have definitely been college bound who are now going to the military. I know a lot. And so I think you've got now this expansion. Obviously it's very ominous at a time of war when you're looking at a giant country like Iran, 90 plus million people, all sorts of capabilities present, threatening ground invasion. And that's the moment when you jump the enlistment age from 34 to 42. I mean, that's also big. That's big jump, right? And we've seen what's happened in Ukraine. I mean, it's just very disturbing. And to your point about the draft, if that doesn't give them the numbers and we end up in some big war in Iran, guess what the next tool is? It is a draft. So I know these things seem insane right now, but let's not forget Caroline Levitt was asked, hey, people are worried about a draft. What do you have to say to that? She wouldn't rule it out. Let's take a listen to that moment.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Mothers out there are worried that we're

[Krystal Ball]

going to have a draft that they're

[Podcast Host]

going to see their sons get and

[Saagar Enjeti]

daughters get involved in this.

[Podcast Host]

What do you want to say about the President's plans for troops on the ground? As we know, it's been largely an air campaign up until now. It has been and it will Continue to be. And President Trump wisely does not remove options off of the table. I know a lot of politicians like to do that quickly. But the president, as commander in chief, wants to continue to assess the success of this military operation. It's not part of the current plan right now, but the president, again, wisely keeps his options on the table.

[Krystal Ball]

And, you know, the most charitable reading of that saga is that she was not responding directly to the piece about the draft. She was responding to like, you know, ground troops or whatever. But did they ever come out and be like, no, no, no, no, no. No drafts. Like, you guys took that out of control? No, they didn't. They let it stand. Just like they let, you know, stand. What Mike Huckabee said about Greater Israel Project. Let that stand. They let this stand. Look, they're happy to put on a tweet. You know, the fake news media is twisting her words. No, we didn't get any of that.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Yeah, exactly. And this is why, I mean, as I said, intellectually, I support a draft. Like, if you want me to leave my wife and my daughter, well, it better be for a damn good reason. Like the entire populace and also me. And nobody else should be able to buy their way out like they have in the past. Like, if we're in, okay, let's go. But then we all better be bought in to this decision. As a populist, we have clear defined ends. All of our congressmen and others have voted for it. Fine. I can make peace with that. I can't make peace with some sort of piecemeal system. And to watch the lessons of Iraq and Afghanistan. Cause you were talking about economically, this is part of the tragedy of it. Because here's the truth. Joining the military is a fantastic financial decision. You will get free education. You get paid actually pretty decently compared to like a normal market wage, especially if you're. If you're a newer graduate, if you're trying to buy a house in the future, usaa. I mean, there's no better program in America than if you join the military. And that's part of the why a lot of people do it, which I have zero issue with. I do have an issue. Whenever it creates this economic incentive at a time of war to potentially have to go and serve in something which other people who are more financially privileged don't have to do when they're not bought into. If the whole populace is not, and then those people are economically disenfranchised, it creates this. There's also a cultural difference. There's you know, a lot people talk about it in the south. There's a military culture, so you're more likely to join the military. And then it creates a lot of division in our society. We got, we lost 4 or 5,000 people during the global war. Actually no, 7,500 people in the global war on terror. But if you look statistically at the counties that they're concentrated in, the people who are quote unquote elite or richer had almost no contact with those people or those families. So Iraq was a distant conversation. And unfortunately it looks like that's what they want to recreate. Like, yeah, who are the type of people who even have marijuana convictions or drug paraphernalia conviction in the first place? Who are the type of people who are gonna want to join the military at age 30? I mean, who's a 39 year old who wants to join the military? It's usually not like uber patriot. It could be. And no, you know, if you are one of those people, God bless you. Most of the time it's probably, I've got two kids, I need, you know, I need health insurance, I need a mortgage. I gotta make this shit work. Yeah, that's the worst possible thing.

[Krystal Ball]

Look, I understand your, and I don't even disagree with your like philosophical argument in favor of a draft. But let me tell you, if they try to implement a draft right now for this fucking unpopular, monstrous, idiotic, illegal, offensive war of choice, abso fucking lutely not. American people didn't want this. They didn't vote for this. You explicitly ran against this. Like, no, no, no, no, no, we are not doing this. And the people who've already died, it's been way too, I mean every single one has been too many. I know, and to your point, I mean a bunch of like reserve, you know, reserve. They were thinking I'm on this base, you know, in Kuwait. Like they're not thinking that they're at risk sitting there in a double wide trailer getting blown up by a shot drone or whatever. I mean, it's just the cavalier way that they will just throw lives into a meat grinder and I have to connect it to the AI piece because they know that there's going to be tons of extra superfluous human beings that have nothing to do and what better to do with them than send them into some meat grinder? Honestly, I genuinely think that's part of what's going on here too. The logic of the oligarchs as exposed in the Epstein files. If it's perfectly with that notion. They don't see your sons and daughters as fully human. They don't care about whether they live or die. What they're looking at is how do I profit? What does this do for me personally? What does it do for my legacy, that is? Or what sort of compromising material might people have on me? That is the way that these people think and the way that they operate. And it shows in this war.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Yeah. All right, let's get to polling.

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