4/22/26: Iran Fires On Ships In Hormuz Strait, Ryan Debunks Laura Loomer, Robert Pape On Iran War

Summary

Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar – 4/22/26: "Iran Fires On Ships In Hormuz Strait, Ryan Debunks Laura Loomer, Robert Pape On Iran War"

Date: April 22, 2026
Podcast: Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar
Main Guests: Jeremy Scahill, Professor Robert Pape
Key Theme: The episode delivers breaking analysis of the escalating Iran-US conflict in the Strait of Hormuz, debunks viral misinformation regarding "Soleimani's niece," and explores the broader geopolitical stakes with expert commentary.

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Episode Overview

This episode focuses on dramatic, real-time developments in the Iran-US confrontation in the Strait of Hormuz, reports of ship seizures and attacks, and the breakdown in ceasefire negotiations. The show features original reporting, expert analysis, and a detailed effort to correct high-profile misinformation about Iranian-American detainees. Key segments include firsthand reporting from Jeremy Scahill, a major debunk by Ryan Grim regarding Laura Loomer's claims, and strategic insight from Professor Robert Pape.

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Table of Contents

• Escalation in the Strait of Hormuz
• Jeremy Scahill: Inside the Talks and Media Narratives
• Debunking the "Soleimani's Niece" Arrests
• Robert Pape: The Geopolitical Trap and Iran's Power
• Notable Quotes
• Memorable Moments
• Timestamps & Segment Guide

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Escalation in the Strait of Hormuz (06:17)

Context:
Krystal and Ryan open with breaking news: Iranian IRGC forces have seized (and, in some cases, fired upon) up to three commercial ships in the Strait of Hormuz. This comes directly after President Trump extended a contested ceasefire but maintained the US naval blockade on Iranian waters.

Key Points:

• The media initially framed the IRGC's actions as "enforcement," shifting later to more loaded language like "attack and board" (07:09).
• The Iranian side justifies this as a response to a US attack on an Iranian ship and ongoing blockades.
• Ceasefire negotiations, mediated by Pakistan, are on thin ice; Iranians claim Trump's trustworthiness is in question.

Krystal (08:41):
"They have absolutely responded... three ships came under fire in the Strait of Hormuz on Wednesday, putting the possibility of any peace talks in jeopardy after a senior Iranian official said that President Trump's last minute cease fire extension, quote, means nothing."

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Jeremy Scahill: Inside the Talks and Media Narratives (15:16)

Context:
Jeremy Scahill joins the panel to provide in-depth reporting and on-the-ground perspectives regarding the negotiations and competing narratives on both US and Iranian sides.

Key Insights:

• Trump’s public statements and private negotiating posture are erratic; he alternates between threats and (temporary) diplomatic overtures.
• Claims of a breakdown and chaos within Iran's government ("coup" rumors) are largely information warfare from US/Trump-aligned media.
• The “face-saving” narrative from the US is psychological ops; in fact, Iran’s decision-making is highly centralized and calculated.
• Pakistan’s mediating role is complicated: they may be misrepresenting or miscommunicating Trump’s intentions, largely due to Trump’s unpredictability.

Jeremy Scahill (18:10):
"This does appear to be a quite provocative action. They reportedly fired on one ship and then they seized two others... this type of an action right now, particularly when the Strait of Hormuz is at the center of whether or not there's going to be talks, there's going to be some serious discussion about how this goes down."

On US/Media narratives:
“It also is a kind of story for the utter chaos of the Trump administration that has played out in public... I would be very shocked if any of what is being said in the MAGA media ecosystem turns out to even be minimally true.” (25:09)

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Debunking the "Soleimani's Niece" Arrests (30:25)

Context:
Ryan Grim delivers an original, meticulously sourced report debunking viral claims (spread by influencer Laura Loomer and amplified by the State Department) that two Iranian-American women arrested in Texas are related to Qasem Soleimani, the late IRGC general.

Key Details and Findings:

• The State Department announced the arrests as a “major win,” claiming the two women are Soleimani’s niece and grandniece.
• Ryan and his team reviewed extensive Iranian public records: birth certificates, wills, passports, family photos. They conclusively prove no familial connection to Soleimani.
• The women were previously persecuted by the Iranian regime for activism (not regime loyalists), and are being unfairly targeted due to anti-Shah activism in LA's Iranian-American community.
• State Department is moving goalposts: now using “anti-American” as their justification, not the Soleimani relation.
• Laura Loomer, confronted with documentation, doubled down, saying “I want all Islamic immigrants deported. I don’t support any of their asylum claims.”

Ryan Grim (34:28): “The idea that it's okay to punish two women for being related to a man who previously did battle with the United States when he was alive is itself absurd. None of us are responsible for what our uncles do. God help us all if we are. But because Rubio made such a big deal about these arrests and this claim, it's worth asking whether it's even true... it's entirely a case of mistaken identity sparked by right-wing activist Laura Loomer and also some fans of the Shah.”

• The segment also explores conflicting political motives among Iranian-American exiles, the fragility of asylum cases, and the human impact on the women detained in ICE.

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Robert Pape: The Geopolitical Trap and Iran's Power (53:37)

Context:
Professor Robert Pape returns to lay out the “escalation trap”: why the US (and Trump) have lost leverage, how Iran is becoming an emerging global power, and why the conflict is now deeply structural, not just a matter of personalities.

Core Analysis:

• “Trump’s Illusion of Control Lost” – The US is losing ground, while Iran is on a rising trajectory, playing the “power politics of the first order.”
• Zero-Sum Negotiation Fails – On both nuclear enrichment and Strait of Hormuz control, there’s no possible compromise: “One side has to give up, essentially. And what you're seeing is both sides, rather than give up, prefer to escalate.” (55:43)
• Iran’s Goal: Torpedo Trump’s Presidency – Pape argues Iran is strategizing not just for leverage, but to permanently damage Trump – “they want Donald Trump to become the lamest of lame ducks” (56:31).
• On Third Way Solutions: Pape critiques proposals, like former official Joe Kent's, as ultimately accepting Iranian ascendancy: “That’s not a third approach because there's no actual way to stop Iran from exerting more power in Kent's plan.” (62:05)
• Legacy and Danger: Pape frames Trump’s approach as uniquely catastrophic, teaching Iran that they can actually beat America – “This is way beyond survival. And this is why... This is all on his back. And Iran is not letting him off the hook with some face saving gesture.” (66:03)
• Parade of Missiles: Pape notes Iran's missile parade with American city names as deliberate escalation, signaling “America, you're next. You keep targeting us in our homeland.” (72:55)

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Notable Quotes

• Ryan Grim:
  • "None of us are responsible for what our uncles do. God help us all if we are." (34:53)
  • "This war is anti-American. It is damaging to America. And if we listened to Serena's mom instead of to Netanyahu, America would have made a better decision." (49:02)
• Jeremy Scahill:
  • "It's become clear to [Iran] that the Pakistani officials they’re dealing with often are scrambling to try to figure out what it is they were just told by Donald Trump and what they can reliably go to the Iranians with." (21:16)
  • "It’s counterintellectual and really oversimplified... to imply that Iran is sort of a banana republic. If anything, I think it’s a highly centralized state and I would be very shocked if any of what is being said in the MAGA media ecosystem turns out to even be minimally true." (25:09)
• Professor Robert Pape:
  • "America's not winning. Trump is not in control. And what you are seeing is a rising trajectory for Iran." (55:12)
  • "This is the game we're in: power politics of the first order. This is not real estate negotiation... We are not playing up to Iran’s just beating us at power politics." (57:13)
  • "Iran has learned... they can beat America. Not just survive, they can actually beat America. And they're not just beating Donald Trump." (66:03)
  • "They would rather wreck his presidency than give the fig leaf of cover for him to declare victory. That's why he can't declare victory now." (74:49)

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Memorable Moments

• Jesse Watters' “coup in Iran” claims mocked as pure fiction (03:13, 27:44).
• Krystal notes the “propaganda game” of both US and Iranian messaging (07:09, 25:09).
• Ryan's inside detail gathering documents to debunk the Soleimani connection—family trees, birth records, wills (35:58).
• Exploration of LA's Shah-supporting Iranian-American community and its political battles (43:20).
• Professor Pape's blunt warning on the global economic and strategic fallout ("This is all on [Trump’s] back... Vietnam did not wreck the world’s economy" 66:03).

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Timestamps & Segment Guide

• 06:17 – Start of Hormuz Strait breaking news (ship seizures/firing).
• 15:16 – Jeremy Scahill: Inside Iran-Pakistan-US negotiations, and media spin.
• 30:25 – Ryan Grim: Reporting and debunking "Soleimani’s niece" arrests.
• 53:37 – Professor Robert Pape: Escalation trap and zero-sum geopolitics.
• 62:05 – Pape critiques "third way" policy plans.
• 66:03 – On the new Iranian strategic posture and Trump’s legacy.
• 72:55 – Iran's missile parade as escalation signal.

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Summary

This episode of Breaking Points offers urgent, deeply-sourced analysis of the latest crisis in the Strait of Hormuz, with on-the-ground reporting exposing false government claims, and expert commentary from Professor Pape on why Iran is winning the escalation. Krystal, Saagar, and Ryan cut through US/Western media distortion, while guests deliver high-impact clarity on how policy failure and propaganda are shaping outcomes – from ship seizures at sea to family fights and exiles in Los Angeles, all the way to the global balance of power.

Transcript

[Krystal Ball]

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[Krystal Ball]

guys, Sagar and Krystal here.

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[Ryan Grim]

Good morning and welcome to Breaking Points. How you doing Emily?

[Krystal Ball]

Doing great. We've got some big breaking news just this morning to get to in a moment when it comes to Iran. So we have all kinds of stuff. We got Jeremy coming up to talk to us about the negotiations. And Jeremy's been in the middle of reporting from the, like, inside what actually, I mean, he called like, what, two

[Ryan Grim]

days ago, it was Sunday, that this

[Krystal Ball]

wasn't going to happen.

[Ryan Grim]

Sunday, he and Mas were like, why are you guys reporting that these negotiations are happening in Islamabad? They're not. Like, the Iranians are not going to, they haven't said they're going. Like, why are you claiming that they're there? They're not. It's so weird, like being in the US and reading US News and being able to then read Jeremy's stuff and be like, we're just completely lied. Jesse Watters last night was like, there was a coup in Iran.

[Krystal Ball]

I saw it.

[Ryan Grim]

Which is funny, but it's like, wait a minute, you're the most watched, like cable news primetime show in the country and you're. That is just fake. There was no coup. Like, is this a game?

[Krystal Ball]

Right.

[Ryan Grim]

It's so weird. Like, you're not required to say this stuff. So like it's a, it's, it's incredible. It's been incredible to watch.

[Krystal Ball]

Well, we'll have Jeremy Scahill Ryan, of course, is his co founder at dropsite joining us shortly. Actually, to break some of this down, we also have Robert Pape on the show today. The Fed chair, Trump get to keep

[Ryan Grim]

having him back until he's wrong. I mean, he's unfortunately cooking. Yeah, the escalation trap is you are trapped into having Robert Pape every week forever.

[Krystal Ball]

Yes, well, it's a good trap for the audience, of course, because then they leave better informed. All right. Also, Trump's Fed chair pick was testifying in front of the Senate yesterday and it was brutal. I mean, some Democrats really laid into him. Elizabeth Warren really laid into him. So we'll have some details about that. Really interesting new stuff on the AI front, the data center front, the political part of the data center front that we're going to get into. And a crazy reporting coming out of Mexico, not surprising, but crazy reporting coming out of Mexico about a potential CIA operation. We don't know exactly what it was,

[Ryan Grim]

just a little car accident that ended up with the car engulfed in flames

[Krystal Ball]

as, as happens regularly when CIA officers are involved. So two CIA officers killed in Mexico. A lot that we don't know yet, but some reporting starting to come out. We'll be joined by Wandavid Rojas to break that story down. And finally, huge political news last night as Virginia's redistricting went through barely as where the votes are now, just over. A majority of Virginia voters went with the Democrat gerrymandering plan. And Democrats are really excited. Hakeem Jeffries saying, what do you say when they go low? We hit back. Florida is then going to be calling a special session. Iran DeSantis has already called a special session for next week for a Republican gerrymandering opportunity. And the fate of the House is up in the air.

[Ryan Grim]

Yeah, this is. This will be a fun one.

[Krystal Ball]

Yeah, you got to see these districts. You got to see these districts. They're really something. Also, we should mention Ryan is debating Scott Jennings on the after party channel. So that's going to. I think that pops next week, so.

[Ryan Grim]

Oh, I didn't know this was gonna be on after party, too. It's at gw and it's like a live event, right?

[Krystal Ball]

Yeah, it's gonna be at gw. I don't know if the public can still get in. Probably the public can still get in,

[Ryan Grim]

but an event like that sells out immediately.

[Krystal Ball]

Yeah, it's done. It's in, like, one of the old classrooms that I took, like, my history stuff, my history classes in. Yeah, it'll be. This is some lore, but anyway.

[Ryan Grim]

Well, school will be back in session for Scott Jennings on Thursday.

[Krystal Ball]

Well said, Ryan. All right, breaking points.com if you want to get a premium subscription to the show, we appreciate it. Help us keep doing the independent journalism so that we don't report on false Iranian.

[Robert Pape]

Right.

[Ryan Grim]

Don't make us do that.

[Krystal Ball]

Please don't make us do that. All right, let's start with the latest in Iran. We can go ahead. Toss this tear sheet up on the screen from the New York Times. This really is breaking news as we are coming to you now. Iranian forces claim seizure of two ships after Trump extends truce. So this is right now in the Strait of Hormuz. The IRGC is saying that it has seized two container ships. Obviously, we have the competing blockades over there. Ryan Fox is reporting. Three ships, right?

[Ryan Grim]

Yes. And originally the New York Times, in their first dispatch on this, called it an enforcement action on the part of the irgc, which is kind of delightful because we're talking about American media and Western media and propaganda, et cetera. It's like, it's rare that you see something neutral or even almost. That's almost favorable language to.

[Krystal Ball]

I would say that's favorable language.

[Ryan Grim]

You could also describe it as just subjective. Like, they say that they're enforcing this blockade.

[Krystal Ball]

Two things could be different.

[Ryan Grim]

This was an enforcement action Right. This was an action towards the enforcement of their blockade. Now we have our own blockade of the straits. So when we attack now they've changed it, now it's attacked and boarded. So an editor there, like had a cup of coffee, like, wait a minute, hold on. Get the Western propaganda language back into there. So, yes. So this comes and it appears that the US attack on the Iranian ship in the Strait of Hormuz that took place over the weekend was quite debilitating to the ceasefire talks like that. It does seem like the Iranians who had been suspicious of the seriousness of the White House, used that as more evidence to say these guys aren't serious, they're firing on our ships in the Strait of Hormuz. They don't, they don't recognize Donald Trump's naval blockade of the Strait of Hormuz as remotely legitimate. They say this, they, they say this is not international waters. And I think we don't need to get into the technicalities of it, but it's basically not like it's, it's far enough inland. So you be like trying to, you know, blockade the Mississippi because it pours into the Gulf of America and say, well, Mississippi is international water. It's like, nah, bro, this is Mississippi. You can't do this. So they said they would respond and now they have responded.

[Krystal Ball]

Yeah, they have absolutely responded. So we should also mention that they're actually under fire. They weren't just seized. So I'm reading from NPR here, which also has the three ship number. They say three ships came under fire in the Strait of Hormuz on Wednesday, putting the possibility of any peace talks in jeopardy after a senior Iranian official said that President Trump's last minute cease fire extension, quote, means nothing. We're going to get to that in just one moment. But the first ship, NPR reports, was attacked and damaged by Iran's paramilitary Revolutionary Guard Corps. According to the British military said no injuries have been reported as of yet. This is According to the UK's Maritime Trade Operations Center. They say the master of a container ship reported that the vessel was approached by one IRGC gunboat. No warning was given, but it then fired upon the vessel which has caused heavy damage to the bridge. That's according to a post on X from the Maritime Trade Operations center over in the uk. Iran's, as NPR puts it, quote, semi official Tasnim news agency confirmed the incident, saying the container ship had ignored repeated warnings. This is also from other Iranian news agencies that are saying the Navy attacked a third ship called the EUPHRATES And Iranian media reported that the Iranian navy had, quote, seized the other two vessels, which it identified as MSC Francesca and the Epaminides. So that's where things stand as of right now, Ryan.

[Ryan Grim]

Yes. And so yesterday the ceasefire was supposed to expire, and you had, what, Witkoff and Kushner kind of on the way to Islamabad and then turned their plane around. You had rumors that. Or you had actually reports that J.D. vance was going to Islamabad. Those reports were not true. They. They turned back around. There's no Iranian delegation in Islamabad. And then Trump came out basically saying. And we can go through his post here.

[Krystal Ball]

Yeah, we can put it up on

[Ryan Grim]

the screen, basically saying that the ceasefires extended indefinitely. So I don't have my glasses.

[Julian Edelman]

You want to.

[Krystal Ball]

Yeah, I gotcha. Trump Impersonation, he says, based on the fact that the government of Iran is seriously fractured, not unexpectedly so, and upon request of Field Marshal Marshal Asim Munir and Prime Minister Shabazz Sharif of Pakistan, we've been asked to hold our attack on the country of Iran until such time as their leaders and representatives can come up with a unified proposal. I have therefore directed our military to continue the blockade and in all other respects remain ready and able and will therefore extend this cease fire until such time as their proposal is submitted and discussions are concluded one way or the other. And then he signed it. President Donald J. Trump. This was after he went on CNBC earlier in the day and said he was not inclined to extend the ceasefire. So the talk of Twitter yesterday was Taco Tuesday.

[Ryan Grim]

Yes. And so. And then let's read the next truth from Trump Social, and then we'll bring Jeremy in to get his reaction to it. He posted. Iran doesn't want the Strait of Hormuz closed. They want it open so they can make $500 million a day, which is therefore what they are losing if it is closed. They only say they want it closed because I have it totally blockaded, parentheses closed. So they merely want to save face. People approached me four days ago saying, sir, Iran wants to open up the Strait immediately, but if we do that, there can never be a deal with Iran unless we blow up the rest of their country, their leaders included, exclamation point. President Donald J. Trump. All right, so let's bring in Jeremy Scahill to unpack what on earth President Donald J. Trump is talking about here.

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[Ryan Grim]

okay, so Jeremy, what is going on here? Let's start with kind of from the kind of MAGA perspective, from the Trump perspective. How are they explaining this series of posts and this kind of about face?

[Jeremy Scahill]

Yeah, I mean, look, the fact is that Trump just days ago was saying the Iranians capitulated to everything, that they were going to allow US Military forces into Iran to pick up the quote unquote nuclear dust, that they were going to work together, that Iran had basically caved in to all of Trump's demands as a result of his threat to, you know, bomb their civilization. He said, you know, J.D. vance, Steve Witkoff, and Jared Kushner, like, they're literally on their way to Islamabad. I may even come at some point to attend the talks. And then reality kind of, you know, hits last night when it became clear that the Iranians were holding firm in their rejection of any future talks until Trump lifted the blockade in the Strait of Hormuz. And so once that was clear that they weren't going to budge on that, and, you know, I was told last night by a senior Iranian official that the highest levels of power in Iran had issued a final decision and that that was their bottom line. Then the ball was back in Trump's court and the Pakistanis were going back and forth between Trump and the Iranians. And finally what happened is that Trump comes out with a post on Truth Social and he says, I'm extending the ceasefire. This was just hours from it expiring, but he says, I'm gonna keep the naval blockade in place. The Iranians then told the Pakistanis, we're not gonna move forward with these negotiations. And so it came to a standstill. And so what we're seeing now is that a narrative has been crafted by the White House and the kind of Trump aligned media ecosystem where they're saying Trump had to do this because there's total disarray right now in Tehran that, you know, there's reports Foreign Minister Arachi and the speaker of the Parliament, Mohammed Bagar Golubov, are like, under house arrest, that the IRGC has essentially seized control of the entire deal making process, that the diplomats were about to make a deal with Trump, but now the IRGC has intervened. You know, Barack Ravid, who often is the recipient of, you know, intentional leaks from the White House or Israeli officials, is now saying, oh, Trump had to do this so that the Iranians could, quote, unquote, get their shit together, and that it may only last three to five days. And, you know, in talking to Iranian officials and also well connected Iranian analysts, what they're saying is that this is pure psychological warfare. That if you look at the way the United States has systems of succession, that the way that the US Is a country also of institutions, that Iran is the same, and that this decision that was made on this posture on the Strait of Hormuz actually was made by the highest levels of power in Tehran, an attempt to try to allow Trump to save face, because, as they put it, he blinked first and wasn't prepared for the Iranians to hold their ground diplomatically.

[Krystal Ball]

And what do we know so far? What should we be reading into so far? The decision to take three ships, or it looks like take three ships as of just this morning, US time, Jeremy?

[Jeremy Scahill]

Yeah, I mean, look, the Iranians have. Have sort of said that they're not going to strike first. They haven't really officially accepted the extension of the ceasefire. They said that they didn't ask for it and that, you know, unilaterally decided to extend this ceasefire. But this does appear to be a quite provocative action. They reportedly fired on one ship and then they seized two others. It's unclear really why they did this other than they said that they were not following rules and that they were interfering with maritime navigational procedures, and so they brought them back to Iran's coastal waters. You know, I mean, this type of an action right now, particularly when the Strait of Hormuz is. Is at the center of whether or not there's going to be talks, there's going to be some serious discussion about how this goes down. But it's clear, you know, the Pakistanis have spent an enormous amount of money and that country is in economic shambles as it is. The Pakistanis have been promoting their prime minister and their Minister of defense as sort of like the kingpins of modern diplomacy right now. So the Pakistanis have egg on their faces. US Trump aligned media are reporting that the Pakistanis are furious with Iran. What I was told by Iranian officials last night is that Pakistan had come to Iran and said Trump has agreed that soon before the expiration of the ceasefire, he's gonna announce that he's lifting the blockade on the Strait of Hormuz and extending the ceasefire. And the Iranians told me that they had responded to the Pakistanis saying, if that happens, we will schedule a second round of talks for Thursday. Soon after I reported that Trump posted then his true social saying he's extending the ceasefire, but he's keeping the maritime blockade in place. I went back to the Iranians and they said, look, this has happened before where the Pakistanis have told us something like this. We don't know if it's that they just said this or that. Trump actually told it to them and then they turned around and told this to Iran. So it's really complicated to determine who's exactly telling the truth right now because of the players involved, not the least of which are quite erratic and often contradicting himself President.

[Ryan Grim]

And so that's, you know, that's significant. News right there, and as you reported, you reported it yesterday, too, that the Iranians were ready to come to the table, the meetings would happen tomorrow. The Pakistanis told them, their Pakistanis and the mediators that Trump was going to make X gesture, and the gesture was going to be on lifting the blockade and extending the ceasefire. And then that didn't happen. There's a major trust gap right here because multiple negotiations have ended with US Surprise attacks. It seems like the US Is not doing much to try to regain the trust of their kind of Iranian interlocutors. So what is the Iranian thinking at this point about whether, are we back at war? We're in a bizarre situation. Are we back at war? You can't exactly unilaterally declare a ceasefire, but you sort of can.

[Jeremy Scahill]

I mean, I'll tell you something kind of informal that I think just sort of peels back a layer on something we don't often get to hear about. And that is, you know, in speaking to an Iranian official last night and asking him, sort of, what do you think happened here? He said, you know, we don't exactly know. Like, we don't know what Pakistan was told and sort of what game is being played here and who the players are that are pulling which levers. But they also said that it's become clear to them that the Pakistani officials that they're dealing with often are scrambling to try to figure out what it is they were just told by Donald Trump and what they can reliably go to the Iranians with. And I tend to think that that's true, that actually there are cases where Trump probably does say something to the Pakistani prime minister. It seems clear. Then it gets run up the chain. It gets communicated to Iran. The Iranians come back and they say, okay, if that's the case, we'll move forward here. And then, as happened last week, Abbas Arachi, the foreign minister, says, oh, the Strait of Hormuz is going to be open because the United States has compelled Israel to respect a ceasefire in Lebanon. Trump then thanks them and says he actually refers to it as the Strait of Iran. And then moments later, Trump goes nuclear on Twitter and says, no, we're keeping our military blockade in place and the naval blockade in place. And then the Iranians say, okay, we go back to the status quo. Before this. Right now, what I had been told was that this had been choreographed via the Pakistanis, that Iraqi was going to say X, Trump was going to say Y, things were gonna calm down a bit, and then the talks were gonna proceed. It all gets entirely blown up. And I suspect that there's a combination of the Pakistanis playing some dirty games to an extent here, and the fact that Trump is erratic and he does say things that he doesn't mean. I mean, just look at the last 72 hours, all these interviews he did with the New York Post, with pbs, with cnbc. He's saying, I might go to Islamabad. Jared and Steve are on their way. No, actually, J.D. is on his way. Oh, actually, they're not going now. We're gonna bomb them back to civilization. Oh, I'm going to extend the ceasefire. Imagine. Forget that it's Iran. Let's talk about any country. Imagine having to deal with that when it's actually like War and peace, where you have two nuclear powers attacking another country, where they are a nation of institutions and they're just basically trying to say, let's figure out our red lines here. I mean, it's crazy making. And Pakistan has a long history of dirty tricks. So all this whole cocktail is really insane that we're looking at right now.

[Krystal Ball]

Let's put a five on the screen just to the point Jeremy was making. This is a Barack Ravid Tweet from yesterday, 1208pm Eastern Time. Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner are also still in the U.S. ravid reported at the time the DHS plane that was supposed to take them this morning from Miami to Europe and to Pakistan didn't leave until several minutes ago and is making its way now to Washington, D.C. maybe they are going to see Trump. That was shortly after Barack Ravid had posted that Vice President Vance was also still in Washington and a White House official had told him, quote, additional policy meetings are taking place at the White House today in which the Vice President will participate. So this is all happening around noon yesterday. There's the deadline looming. So, Jeremy, is there any, I guess what is the truth, as far as you can tell, about whether the Iranian side, you know, Jesse Watters was on primetime last night saying that there had been a coup in Iran. But what truth is there, if any, to the idea that the Iranian side is also kind of in shambles? Nobody knows who's in charge that we've started to hear come from Trump and others in MAGA world In the last 24:48 hours particularly, I don't think there's

[Jeremy Scahill]

any doubt that there has been ferocious debate within Iran. In fact, I was speaking yesterday to Hasan Ahmadi and one of of the best connected and most respected Iranian academics, and he's one of the Most prominent people now in Al Jazeera Arabic. His appearances go viral because of his debating tactics, but also his ability to sort of predict what's going to happen. And what he said is that there was great debate over Iran's decision to accept this two week pause because some factions within Iran believed that Iran had its best leverage by not backing down from the war and forcing Trump to agree to softer terms in any kind of a negotiation framework. And so there's no doubt that there is very intense debate. I'm sure there are shouting matches. I'm sure that there is, you know, a lot of animation to it. But I really do get the sense that, that these stories are primarily aimed at propaganda. It's information warfare against the Iranians. And it also is a kind of story for the utter chaos of the Trump administration that has played out in public. You know, Ghaliba, the speaker of the Iranian Parliament, is an IRGC veteran. He's a multi decade player in Iranian politics. But I'm told that there is no chance that he would be leading this delegation or staking out the positions that he has unless it was signed off on by the Supreme National Security Council of Iran. I mean, I think that we often or that Western media and commentators cartoonize the institutions of other countries. This is not, you know, Libya and this is not Syria. This is a Nation that for 47 years has recognized that the US at any moment could wage a war against it. They built up institutions and they built up parallel institutions. They have an official armed forces and then they have the irgc. They have an official Ministry of Intelligence and then they have the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps intelligence. They have religious and judicial and political institutions that run in parallel checks and balances in the same way that the United States does. It is true that the Supreme Leader has the right to veto these decisions, but I really think that it is sort of counter intellectual and really oversimplified. And it does a disservice to the American public to imply that Iran is sort of a banana republic. If anything, I think it's a highly centralized state and I would be very shocked if any of what is being said in the MAGA media ecosystem turns out to even be minimally true.

[Ryan Grim]

I would just say that on this program we cannot call into question the intellect of Jesse Waters. I mean, that's just, I think that's just beyond the pain.

[Krystal Ball]

Well, it's White House Correspondent dinner weekend, so Ryan's reminiscing on his.

[Jeremy Scahill]

I want to, I want to just strongly denounce any violence between journalists. However, I wouldn't call Jesse Waters a journalist. So anyone can Google Ryan Grim. 2016 Bar fight with Jesse Waters.

[Krystal Ball]

Fair game.

[Robert Pape]

Yeah.

[Ryan Grim]

Counterintellectual indeed. Well, Jeremy, thank you so much for this update. Really appreciate it.

[Jeremy Scahill]

Thank you guys.

[Saagar Enjeti]

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[Julian Edelman]

This is Julian Edelman from Dudes on Dudes with Gronk and Jewels. One thing I've learned over the years, before you head out on any adventure, you gotta be ready to stay hydrated because dehydration ruins the fun faster than you can spell it. Pretty sure there's a Y in there somewhere. I was a slot receiver, not a spelling bee champ. Speaking of adventures, Liquid IV has been rolling with us for a while now. Total pros. Pro show up, does the job, makes everyone better. We're pumped to have them on the team, and trust me, you'll be thankful to have them with you when dehydration tries to sneak up on you. No playbook required. All you got to do is tear, pour, and enjoy. Go to liquidiv.com and use the code nuthouse for 20% off your first purchase. And check us out on YouTube or listen to dudes on dudes on the iHeart app or wherever you get your podcast.

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[Krystal Ball]

has some original reporting for us this morning. Ryan, take it away.

[Ryan Grim]

This is an interesting one. All right, so on April 4, the State Department celebrated a new set of arrests, issuing a statement headlined Secretary Rubio revokes green cards of foreign nationals with ties to Iranian terror regime, announcing that Quote, the niece and grandniece of deceased Islamic Revolutionary guard Corps Major General Qasem Soleimani were arrested by federal agents. So the two women are Hamida Soleimani Afshar. She's 47, and her daughter Serena Hosseini, who is 25. And they are, or they were, legal permanent residents with green cards living in Los Angeles, like a lot of the rest of our Iranian American population. Now, the idea that it's okay to punish two women for being related to a man who previously did battle with the United States when he was alive is itself absurd. None of us are responsible for what our uncles do. God help us all if we are. But because Rubio made such a big deal about these arrests and this claim, it's worth asking whether it's even true. So we reviewed Iranian birth records, identification papers, and other personal documents, including wills and other records, and we can reveal that, no, these women have no connection to Qasem Soleimani whatsoever. It is entirely a case of mistaken identity sparked by right wing activist Laura Loomer and also some fans of the Shah. So birth certificates from Iran collected by the family lay out a documented family tree spanning multiple generations, with no connection to Soleimani or even to relatives of the late General. So at Dropsite News, my colleague Murtaza Hussein and I also reviewed other personal identifying documents, including passports, family photographs, and work documentation from both Iran and the US that strongly contradict the allegations that the two women were connected to the late Iranian commander or that they were living lavishly from any connection to the Iranian government. I spoke to both women yesterday from their South Texas ICE detention facility, which is privately run by the GEO Group, and they remain shocked at the situation they find themselves in. Hamada, she told me, had actually previously been imprisoned by the Iranian government for protesting it. When she got to the United States, the thing she told me that she was most looking forward to was being able to freely speak her mind. Serena told me that, yes, her mother is highly opinionated, but what they are not is related to Qasem Soleimani. Now, in order for Soleimani to be Hamada's uncle, based on her last name, he would need to be the brother of Hamada's father. Hamada's father, Ali Soleimani Afshar, was born in Tehran in 1947. Yet according to the documents, he had no brothers at all, let alone ones corresponding to the identity of General Soleimani, who was born 10 years later in a small village in the southern province of Kerman. Ali Soleimani Afshar's parents died in his childhood. Historical passport documents also show that Soleimani Afshar's family origins go back generations to the city of Yazd in central Iran, a province away from the roots of General Soleimani. The late general is also known to have two brothers, Sohrab and Hossein, who have previously given interviews about their upbringing in Roll Kerman that identify themselves as his only brothers. They have no connection to Ali Soleimani Afshar. The State Department, though, is standing by its entirely false claims. They told me in a statement, quote, hello. The following is on the record attributable to Assistant Secretary Dylan Johnson, quote, while we do not comment on matters of classified intelligence, we remain certain of the Secretary's determination. If Dropsite News scare quotes is aware of anti American green card holders with ties to terrorists present in the United States, we would gladly investigate those individuals for possible termination of legal status and deportation, unquote. Now, one of Serena's friends has set up a GoFundMe to help cover legal bills, which I verified is authentic, and we'll put a link to it in the description. And so, Emily, what we'll do is we'll also put. We'll kind of. We'll put up a Google Drive that has all of these records. So we've got, you know, passports, birth certificates, all kinds of other verified documents, like even wills from her grandparents. And the wills list all of the relatives. And so by doing that, you can say, okay, here are the. Here are the possible people that could be her uncle. And they're saying Uncle Qasem is their uncle. Then if you look at Qasem Soleimani, here are his brothers and sisters. There's no overlap between them. And also separately, they're from completely different areas. So he is. And also politically, you can understand this. The fact that she was in prison for protesting against the government of which Soleimani was a leading figure means it's completely absurd to think that they'd be related. Like, there's no world in which the rural conservative family of Qasem Soleimani, the niece, has a niece who's protesting Soleimani and going to prison for it. Like, maybe in America you have those kinds of things happening, and maybe there's some weird case of that happening in Iran. In any event, it didn't happen. Like, here are the family trees. They are hundreds of miles apart.

[Krystal Ball]

What was it like trying to verify those documents from the other side of the world?

[Ryan Grim]

Well, huge ups to Maaz, who speaks Persian, of Course he does. You guys know, amazing. My colleague Mentazi speaks like seven languages or something. Like, hey, Maaz, I got a whole bunch of Persian documents. Can you read these? He's like, yeah, of course.

[Krystal Ball]

Wow.

[Ryan Grim]

Here you go. So once you have them, they're pretty straightforward.

[Robert Pape]

Right.

[Krystal Ball]

The other thing I wanted to ask you about was the State Department's on the record comment to you, which is interesting to me, because they say anti American green card holders, I think, is the phrase that they use in that they say they're standing by the designation. But that's interesting because it's kind of a shifting of the goalposts from related to Soleimani to anti American. Now, you could see how maybe they're using that in overlapping terms.

[Ryan Grim]

That's a good point of backing off that claim. They're saying we by the determination.

[Krystal Ball]

Right.

[Ryan Grim]

And by determination, I think what they mean. That's a good point. They mean our determination, basically, that we want to kick them out of the country.

[Krystal Ball]

That you could be a Ramessa Oz Turk, basically.

[Ryan Grim]

But we're not. But they're. But they don't comment on whether they're standing by the original claim, which was the reason for the arrest. It's slippery that they're related to Soleimani and they calling them anti American is. Well, first of all, Serena, the daughter, seems to be completely apolitical. Like, she's just caught up in this. Her mom is constantly fighting on Instagram and other. Other places with supporters of Reza Pahlavi. She does not want the king, the Shah, going back to Iran, being brought back to Iran by a war.

[Krystal Ball]

Like many Iranians.

[Ryan Grim]

Yeah, but now there's many rabid Iranians, Iranian Americans who love the Shah. And what seems to have happened is that they saw her last name and they whipped up this frenzy that she was related to Soleimani and then told Loomer, and Loomer then went with what she was told by these Iranian Americans who hate her. They don't hate her because she's anti American or anything. They hate her because she's anti Shah. And of the different groups who come to this country, to me, the ones that are more offensive are the ones who come here and then agitate to use American service members in the American military to then carry out other grudges in their home country.

[Krystal Ball]

Yep, 100% hate that. Yeah.

[Ryan Grim]

Whether you're Cuban, Israeli, whatever. Like, that's not America. First, like, our. Our military is not your plaything to go, like, exercise your grudges.

[Robert Pape]

Right.

[Ryan Grim]

Like, I'm sure. Like the.

[Krystal Ball]

Maybe that's the argument you make to Laura Loomer.

[Ryan Grim]

Yeah. And I'm sure there's a lot of, like, a lot of Somalians have different grievances with other clans in Somalia.

[Krystal Ball]

Exactly. Yep.

[Ryan Grim]

We don't want the US Military to go in and, like, settle those scores. That's not what we're here for. Nobody signed up for that.

[Krystal Ball]

So in a way, Lumer is just. I mean, you can see how, in that sense, the cause of lore luminism are almost undermining the, like, America first mentality, as you just explained.

[Ryan Grim]

Yeah, I think so.

[Krystal Ball]

Yeah.

[Ryan Grim]

So we also looked into their asylum claim. So let's. So we'll roll through that. So onto the this, the other State Department claim, namely that the two arrested women had filed a false claim for asylum, which was undercut, they say, by the fact they had visited Iran in subsequent years. So friends of the family and the family themselves say that they had indeed been forced to leave Iran under duress. And it happened after Serena had taken part in a public dance performance in 2012, when she was about 12 years old. So what happened is that she was in Turkey on vacation, and she competed in this dance competition for the satellite channel TV Persia. It's illegal to watch TV Persia in Iran, but people can get it anyway. And it's the kind of soft cultural influence that the US Government funds. I don't know if they funded TV Persia at the time, but either way, when it aired back in Iran, it went viral and not in a good way. All hell came down on her and her mom. She was expelled from her public school, then not long after that, expelled from her next school, a private school. When the scandal resurfaced, her mother was attacked on occasion, and they continued getting death threats. So here's one of the performances that went viral and aired on TV Persia. So under continuous pressure, they came to the US when she was 14 and filed for asylum. They won, and they have since become legal permanent residents. Now, Rubio's argument that the women don't deserve asylum is odd, because one of the top US complaints about the Iranian government is that they don't respect women's rights. Now, in general, a grant of asylum is called into question if the asylum seeker travels back to the country where they claimed they feel unsafe. And that honestly makes sense in general. But in the case of the two women, the threats they faced were indeed real, and they were in fact, representative of what American authorities say about the repressive nature of the government in Iran. Yet you can also understand that visits home to family would still be relatively safe in their circumstances. You go to the airport, you visit the cousins, you go to the market, you walk in the park, whatever, you're going to be fine, especially if you're covered up. Serena told me she went back to Iran and visited her cousins and her father, but stayed away from those she knew were mad at her and told nobody she was coming. When she returned to the US she was honest with customs officials, was questioned for about 45 minutes, and let back in. It never came up. Again. Until now. If the Trump administration insists that their asylum claim is bogus and deports them to Iran, Rubio will be simultaneously saying that Iran is, in fact safe for such women, undercutting decades of American claims to the contrary, while we also are waging a war on Iran, partly because we say those women are not safe in Iran. So which is it? Serena's friends also disputed characterizations in the press and that were put forward by the State Department that the family had been living lavishly in the United States, pointing out that they had been behind on mortgage payments that they had been relying on, on the support of friends to pay for legal support in ICE detention. In reality, the Los Angeles residents had assimilated to the culture of their new country. The jewelry and handbags flaunted on Instagram and highlighted by the US Government were, they said, like much else in North Hollywood, entirely fake. Now, worse still, the mother's address was doxxed and her house was ransacked and attacked by what appears to be an Iranian American who believed she truly was related to Soleimani. Here is ring camera footage that they presented to me. And so this was April 8th, and they got in and they really trashed her house.

[Krystal Ball]

Did it say one in the morning, four in the morning?

[Ryan Grim]

Yes.

[Krystal Ball]

Four in the morning.

[Ryan Grim]

Yes. And so what really does appear to have happened is that. And there's a lot of kind of Shah supporters in Iran. Shah's Sunset takes his name from there

[Krystal Ball]

in the LA area.

[Ryan Grim]

I didn't mean Iran. There's a lot of Shah supporters, a

[Krystal Ball]

lot of Shah supporters in Iran, just not as many as the Shah supporters in the US Want us to believe There are.

[Ryan Grim]

There's a lot of Shah supporters in Los Angeles. They're constantly doing these weird protests and whatever. They're very excitable. They're very fervent and passionate believers in their cause. And the cause is going terribly. Trump himself agrees with Hamada that the Shah should not. He said the Shah is not really up for this?

[Krystal Ball]

Yeah. So the Shah himself has kind of said that.

[Ryan Grim]

The Shah himself, when he goes to bed at night, knows he's not up for this.

[Krystal Ball]

Yes.

[Ryan Grim]

I think he, like, he's up for exactly what he's doing. Pretending to be. Pretending to go back and going on Fox News and urging people to go out in the streets and get killed. So she's against him. She's also against the Iranian government. That is supposed to be a position that you're allowed to take in the United States. So talking to them last night, it was wild. And Serena would translate for her mom and it was a very kind of. You could feel the mother daughter relationship. She's like, yeah, my mom is pretty fiery. She's pretty passionate about stuff. And she was really excited when she got to the US that she could finally speak her mind without the mullahs telling her what she can and can't do. Now Serena too.

[Krystal Ball]

And it's the enemies of the mullahs, the self declared enemies of the mullahs who are then putting them in this situation.

[Ryan Grim]

Yeah, she's like, she went to prison for speaking out on politics. This is what, this is how they describe it. She went to prison for speaking out on politics back in Iran. Now she's back in prison for speaking out on politics here. But she says it's worth worse here in Iran. It was one week here, it's three weeks and counting. And yesterday was the first day she was really able to speak. But she has an autoimmune disorder which requires kind of regular blood transmissions. She has a hemoglobin level that was down to 6, which people can look that up. That's not good. She got some pills finally from the GEO Group ICE detention center, which apparently pushed her hemoglobin levels back up to eight, which is still not high enough. They're not. But they do not seem to have any interest in offering her the blood transfusions that are regularly required with her condition. But you arrest somebody accusing them of being related to this guy, you're responsible for her health care at this point. So it's a dire situation for them. I reached out to Loomer and said, if I can prove to you that these women are not related to Soleimani, would you call for them to be released? She said no. Her direct quote was something like, I can even pull it up. But it said something like, I want all Islamic immigrants, migrants deported. So.

[Krystal Ball]

Which she doesn't even know that they're. She doesn't even know that they're Muslim.

[Ryan Grim]

Yeah. She doesn't.

[Krystal Ball]

Not that it matters, but she doesn't even know that.

[Ryan Grim]

Here's her quote. I want all Islamic immigrants deported. I don't support any of their asylum claims. And she said. And they are related. She still believes that they're related because she was told, I think she was given a bunch of evidence by these Shah supporters that they're related to Soleimani. It's untrue. It's bad evidence. It's bunk. But I think she genuinely believes that Shah. But as she's saying, she also doesn't care.

[Krystal Ball]

Right. I don't think Rubio and Trump are particularly worried about the media backlash, that. That getting these cases wrong causes them. But legally, I mean, I have to imagine that the higher you go up at the State Department, they're looking at the shoddy work in the ostrich case, the Khalil case, where you then had the administration working backwards from their determination, gone by to try and come up with reasons that people were threats to make their case in the court of public opinion. Right.

[Ryan Grim]

With Khalil, they thought he was on a student visa and.

[Krystal Ball]

Yeah, exactly. That's right.

[Ryan Grim]

So they had to like, oh, shoot, he's a green card holder now. We need to make something up.

[Krystal Ball]

Right, right. And then they were going back to Instagram posts from, like, groups that he used to belong to, affiliated with.

[Robert Pape]

Right.

[Krystal Ball]

That he didn't have current affiliations with. And it seems like there's a similar situation here where Laura Loomer has a direct line to somebody of some power at the State Department. I doubt to Rubio himself, but probably somewhere in the middle that can make these decisions. And then the secretary signs off on them. They put it in front of you. Yeah, maybe Trump. And then they put it in front of the secretary. You have to trust your deputies of your secretary of state. And then you go back and you're like, who the hell got us from point A to point B on this? And so I wouldn't be surprised if we start seeing them work backwards. Their statements saying, for example, anti American green or anti American asylum claims people. Asylum claims from anti American people. That is, again, moving the goalposts. It's very different than saying this person is related to Soleimani. So it seems like maybe another really

[Ryan Grim]

doesn't apply to Serena. If you really want to say her mom is anti American because she was against the war as it related to bringing the Shah back to power. If you want to make that claim, I think that's insane. I think you're pro American if you're against this war, frankly, because I think this war is anti American. It is damaging to America. And if we listen to Serena's mom instead of to Netanyahu, America would have made a better decision. Setting that aside, Serena doesn't even have, as far as I can tell, much of an opinion on this.

[Krystal Ball]

They might find something, but who knows? They don't have it right in front of us right now, that's for sure.

[Ryan Grim]

But she seems mostly like apolitical, like a normal 25 year old person in Los Angeles who just wants to like dance and, you know, she's a 25 year old version of the 12 year old you saw on stage there.

[Krystal Ball]

And then you get into these protracted legal battles where the State Department, whether or not, again, I don't think Rubio and the State Department and the Trump administration overall are particularly concerned about the fallout in public opinion. I think they feel confident they can make these cases and it's not going to be a big deal to voters, but they do then have to make these cases in court. And it's a pain in the ass when you have to work backwards and start coming up with reasons that you had evidence in the first place.

[Ryan Grim]

And the best they're gonna have for them is the fact that they went back to Iran. Immigration attorneys will tell you that's bad for your case because you said you're not safe there. You went there. Yeah, I think they have an extremely credible point to make. Like, yes, it was very dangerous and it would still be dangerous to live there. But flying back, not telling anybody, visiting your father and your cousins, if that's all you do, that actually is safe.

[Krystal Ball]

But again, that's just about the asylum.

[Ryan Grim]

And Serena says she told the government ahead of time.

[Krystal Ball]

Yeah, that's also still justified.

[Ryan Grim]

They're like, yeah, it's fine. Your green card holder, because at that point, they weren't asylum pending, they were green card holders, which is again, different

[Krystal Ball]

than whether or not they're anti American.

[Ryan Grim]

Right. And also they had a chance once they flew back and said, hey, we were just in Iran, this is our situation. And we're like, cool, come on back in. To then, years later, on a false claim that you're related to a dead guy, arrest them is, I would like to say, un American.

[Krystal Ball]

Yeah, it was great job site reporting, Rin.

[Ryan Grim]

Well, thank you.

[Krystal Ball]

Let's go ahead.

[Ryan Grim]

Well, hopefully it does something anyway.

[Krystal Ball]

It probably will.

[Ryan Grim]

We'll see.

[Krystal Ball]

Let's go ahead and bring in Professor

[Saagar Enjeti]

Pate if you're feeling off fatigue, mood changes, skin shifts, yet your labs say everything's normal. You're not alone. Meet Oestra from Inner Balance. The first all in one prescription strength bioidentical hormone cream that's natural and effective and only takes one drop, 10 seconds a day. Oester replaces five to six products women typically use to treat symptoms and is third party tested to ensure the highest quality. Visit innerbalance.com today to start feeling like yourself again.

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That's innerbalance.com this Mother's Day celebrate all the women who make life brighter with a gift from Pandora Jewelry. Choose jewelry that reflects what she means to you and the moments you share. Make it even more meaningful by personalizing your piece with an engraving in your own handwriting, something no one else has, either a date, a name, or something unique to you. Because the best Mother's Day gift says more than I love you. It says I appreciate you. It says I see you. Find the perfect Mother's Day gift at your local Pandora store or [e-mail] thank

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[Krystal Ball]

We're happy to be joined once again by friend of the show, Professor Robert Pape at the University of Chicago. And of course, the Escalation Trap substack. Make sure to subscribe to that if you haven't yet. Professor Pape, thank you so much for joining us once again.

[Robert Pape]

Yeah, thanks for having me. I really enjoy these discussions. You guys are just the best. So thank you so much for having me.

[Krystal Ball]

Well, we appreciate you for being here.

[Ryan Grim]

Yep. Keep the compliments flowing and we'll stay happy.

[Robert Pape]

It'll be part of the escalation promise.

[Krystal Ball]

Yes.

[Ryan Grim]

In fact, I've been noticing and I don't tell me if you noticed this at all. It feels like Iranian officials have actually been following some of your analysis, particularly the argument that they're becoming a major power. Like I've seen them sort of repeating that back several times.

[Robert Pape]

That may be right. And so, just so listeners know. So Russian television wants me on and has For a long time, Iranian media, various kinds, wants me on. I just won't do that here. So I'm laying out what to expect for the world here. And I'm not trying to, you know, certainly not help the bad guys here or something like that. This is not. You're not seeing somebody who's in any way other than an American supporter here. What?

[Ryan Grim]

You said you weren't trying to help.

[Robert Pape]

Everybody knows my, my ideal world is where America remains number one. We're the strongest, richest country in the world. We want everybody to come here because we're the best place on the planet to be. And I think we need to get back to being the best place on the planet to be here. But we're not going to get there if we don't understand the world that's coming at us.

[Krystal Ball]

Well, let's just start by getting your reaction to the whirlwind of events yesterday, where the deadline was looming, where J.D. vance, Jared Kushner, Steve Witkoff were supposed to go to Islamabad and everybody was waiting, trying to figure out if the plane had taken off. They ended up, of course, not going, and Trump extended the deadline. We woke up this news to this morning to news that there were ships fired on in the Strait of Hormuz. So, Professor Pape, wild 24 hours. What do you make of it?

[Robert Pape]

Yes, but fully in line. If you're following the substack posts here, this is just in line with the expectations I've been laying out on both sides. So. And what you are seeing, number one, is. And as I've been saying, you know, from my early post about how Trump has the illusion of control, Trump's just lost control. So. So the bottom line is America's not winning. Trump is not in control. And what you are seeing is a rising trajectory for Iran. It is. It's just growing, you know, sort of bit by bit. It's not exactly linear, there's some pauses, but. But it is growing, just as I've been saying. And Iran has cards to play. They are more in control as each day passes. And since the first hour of the bombing, America has been less in control and has less cards to play. And that's actually playing itself out now in detail. Let me just shift over to the details here, because I did post these here, these longer articles about what's happening with why is the ceasefire breaking down? Well, the ceasefire is breaking down. Not because this is not a case of misunderstanding where you need to have negotiators get to the table, talk to each other, face to face, to clarify things. No, that's not what's occurring here. What's occurring is a zero sum problem. We have two zero sum problems and that's what's breaking us in the negotiations to break down. You see, we have two issues, the nuclear enrichment and Iran's control of the Strait of Hormuz. And these are classic zero sum issues. Iran cannot both control and not control the Strait of Hormuz. There's no middle ground here. Iran cannot both have enriched uranium to make a bomb and not have enriched uranium to make a bomb. So there's no real way to cut this pie evenly. You know, 50, 50, 60, 40. That's just not what's occurring. One side has to give up, essentially. And what you're seeing is both sides, rather than give up, prefer to escalate. Now, Donald Trump is also trying to find a third way. So I've been arguing this for some time and explain this. I just explained more in detail that we're at a fork in the road. Either we pull back here from escalation and Iran becomes the fourth center of world power, or we go forward with escalation while Donald Trump is trying so hard to get a third way, which is, can't you just give me the fig leaf of a cover Iran so that I can declare victory and then I'll maybe even give you the straight of Hormuz or something here under the table. We'll just kind of let me just have my victory, okay? They're not doing that, folks. They're not doing that. And there's, I think, a very simple reason they're not doing that, which is they want to torpedo Donald Trump's presidency. I think this has got the classic earmarks here where they want Donald Trump to become the lamest of lame ducks. Now, he's hurt right now. He's a wounded animal as it comes to his presidency. That's why he's squirming trying to get out of this thing. But he's not unrecoverably wounded. So I think what you're seeing on the part of Iran is they're gonna wanna string this out. Now, I don't know exactly how far they can string it out, but I can tell you they're going to want to string it out at least to November. Now, that's horrible for the economy. Think about that. I'm about to do a new substance. I did this one on the economy. I'm about to do a new one. Projecting out even further so here, because what's Happening is everybody wants this to be over. Well, that's because they are not Iran. Okay? That's the bottom. And what Iran is now wants is they have. They want to become that emerging power. Okay, so how do you do that? You keep the straight of Hormuz and you make sure everybody knows you're in control, which is what they just did this morning with demonstration number two. In about a year, you want nuclear weapons, you're going to. They're going to want nuclear weapons here. And number three is you want to go down in history as the country that torpedoed Trump's presidency. When the Democrats couldn't just think about that on their legacy, you see, this would now establish them in this powerful way. And you're gonna, if that happens, if they torpedo Donald Trump's presidency, oh, my goodness, the kowtowing, that's gonna come to them from uae, because the governments in the UAE and Saudi Arabia, they're gonna start to be fearful. Well, if you can torpedo Trump's presidency, what are you gonna do to me? So this is what the game we're in is. Power politics of the first order. This is not real estate negotiation. This is not this idea of just getting to. Yes, I knew Roger Fisher's son here, so I'm familiar with all of this. This is now power politics of the first order. And we are not playing up to Iran's just beating us at power politics. And they're doing it almost every single day.

[Ryan Grim]

So Joe Kent, the former top of Trump official who resigned in protest, has put out a version of another third way that he sort of presented, which is similar to what you were talking about, but not exactly. He was saying what Trump should do is just walk away and. But. And slash. But. But leave sanctions in place and you then leave Iran in this situation where they are then left to negotiate bilateral or multilateral deals around passage through the Strait of Hormuz. But it's very difficult for them to then fire on Israel or anybody else at that point, if they're not fired on themselves, because then they become the aggressor rather than defending themselves. But if sanctions continue to choke them, yes, they'll be getting revenue, yes, they'll have control of the Strait of Hormuz. But without the ability to kind of engage with the kind of international economy they would, they'd be slowly choking out.

[Robert Pape]

Well, and you have a population. Joe Kemp's plan is a version actually of you walk away and Iran becomes the fourth center of world power, maybe a little more slowly, because he's Trying to slow it down a little bit. It's not really a third way. That's not a third approach because there's no actual way to stop Iran from exerting more power in Kent's plan. And what I'm specifically referring to in the hole in Ken's plan is the UAE and Saudi Arabia. So if we follow Kent's plan here, and, okay, we keep the blockade even going here, the U.S. blockade going, what that's going to do is it's still going to open the door for Iran, not necessarily in a week, but in several months, to topple the governments of the UAE and Saudi Arabia over time. You could never really put a time clock on how you topple governments and so forth, but they have a lot more powerful ways because they're in the region. There are different groups inside of the UAE and Saudi Arabia that they don't like to talk about, who are minorities, who they try to keep a close eye on, of course, but Iran, if you can penetrate Iran, they can penetrate you. So this whole game here will change. And so the idea that Kent has is, well, we'll have a stable equilibrium that will keep a containment band around, around Iran. And that's just not what's going to happen. This is not Iraq. This is not a situation like Iraq. It's worse than Iraq there. I mean, some similarities, of course, but it's worse than Iraq. And so what he's doing is he's saying there's a fork in the road, as Pape is saying, I want to take this fork over here, back away, you know, slow down this rise of Iran becoming the fourth center of world power. And notice in Kent's plan, they still get nuclear weapons. They can still process all that material and become a nuclear weapons state in Kent's plan. So this will, you know, and that's really the hole in the plan. And I'm not saying. I'm not. I'm telling you what the choices are in front of us. Okay? And in this situation, one final point with Ken's plan is just recognize the world still. The economy still goes over the cliff or the dips here. So he's not actually stopping the. He's not opening the Strait of Hormuz for the UAE and Saudi Arabia to have its oil exports come out here. So just, just be aware, this is the fork in the road he's choosing, clearly. SA and then there's b. Escalation. He doesn't want to do that. And I can appreciate that. I'm not really happy about escalation either. So I'm not, I'm not fundamentally saying that this, the choice he wants is necessarily wrong. I just think we need to go into this with open eyes. And I'm not gonna sell the country a bill of goods and say, oh sure, this will all be fine over here. And this is what people are frustrated with me cuz they want me to be the happy guy who says, well, if only we would not do X and only do this over here. Everything's working out and I'm sorry. Donald Trump has doomed us to a trap. And what you're seeing is Joe Kent choosing one side of that trap, but he's not getting out of the trap.

[Ryan Grim]

Because the move would be a U turn at the fork and go back. Pardon me, the move would be to pull a U turn at the fork in the road and go backwards and not.

[Robert Pape]

Well, the move would be go to Star Trek and we go back and we don't do this at all.

[Krystal Ball]

Right?

[Robert Pape]

I mean, come on. I mean, we're just not in a situation where we can have these magical ideas and go back to February 27th. Iran has learned something even I think even more than their material gains. They learned something in the last eight weeks they did not know before, which is they can beat America. Not just survive, they can actually beat America. And they're not just beating Donald Trump. Nobody in America is coming up with this brilliant plan where you're going to use escalation, dominance that we're all going to be happy with to win. And I'm saying this is not good. This is not good. When a major rival in the world really understands they can beat you here, this is different. And this is what Donald Trump has done more than anything else. He's, he's given Iran actual knowledge they did not have before. They had uncertainty before and they thought, well, could they survive? This is way beyond survival. And this is why this is what's happened here is Trump will go down as the worst president probably ever that we've had. Worse than Jimmy Carter, worse than Lyndon Johnson. And this catastrophic disaster will probably go down certainly the worst since Vietnam. And it won't have necessarily the military casualties of Vietnam, but Vietnam did not wreck the world's economy. In the 2003, Iraq war did not wreck the world's economy. We didn't have gas prices shooting up like this in that, that's why this is Donald Trump. This is all on his back. And Iran is not letting him off the hook with some face saving gesture. And that's Gonna frustrate people. But now come January, so as bad as I'm painting it, I'm saying it's gonna possibly get quite much worse here, because I think they want to torpedo Trump's presidency more than the Democrats wanna do it. I mean, imagine that they wanna do it worse than the Democrats. So what you're getting here is maybe by January here, when Trump's presidency is thoroughly wrecked, unrecoverable, the Republicans wanna get him out of do not just simply the Democrats here, then you might actually have a situation where they wanna. Because they will be around for decades, okay? And us will be around for decades. But I really think this is this missing ingredient that I'm not hearing in the media, that Iran, I think, has a true interest in wrecking Trump's presidency. And send me emails, folks, listen, you know, if I'm missing this on all these other channels, you just let me know. I'm on those channels. I'm watching them on tv, I'm listening to them on podcast. I'm just not hearing people explain that Iran wants to wreck Trump's presidency. And that's gonna take some time. I mean, if you're really gonna do this for real, you see, and make it so he can't come back after January 6th, the Democrats let him back in office. I mean, think about that. They weren't. You want to wreck a president, you got to do worse than what happened here. And I think they're trying to do that now.

[Krystal Ball]

I wanted to get you to respond to the very influential, popular historian Neil Ferguson, who's of course, at the Hoover Institute. Now, he posted a viral X, I guess, tweet yesterday, and it's super interesting. Now, back when the war began, Professor Pape, you were already warning of the escalation trap. Neil Ferguson's first column on this was tepid, but I would say bullish on the U.S. now, as of yesterday, he's saying his point seven in this was the Iranians have survived regime change and discovered that closing the strait is just as powerful a lever in economic warfare as they had always hoped. It's not, despite the Russian quip, a quote, economic nuke, because unlike a nuclear weapon, you can use it. Then he says, where we go from here is fairly predictable. I would be surprised if Trump now deploys ground forces. There will be more negotiations. So Islamabad, here we come. There may have to be more bombing if the Iranians dust down the North Vietnamese playbook of stringing the US Negotiators along. Neil's actually the Kissinger's biographer. He continues to say the final compromise will take longer to be agreed upon than Mr. Market currently believes. What's your expense? Your response to this, Professor Pate, because in a way, he's come around to your perspective.

[Robert Pape]

Yeah, that's right. So one thing, one thing that your listeners would not be surprised about, but won't know is I do more than talking to the media. I talk to very important people outside of the media. These are people in government, these are people not in government. And we have more lengthy back and forths and you're willing to give me quite lengthy back and forth. I really appreciate that most of the media won't do that, but we have. Your audience gets more informed and so you can actually have that intelligent conversation. And you see right away that he's directly on the paid path. Right. That is, I mean, there's no gap, there's no daylight anymore. Well, I'm just pointing out, and I won't talk about these private conversations, who they are and so forth, but it is the case that there are very, very smart people. I highly respect people, even people that may seem to disagree with me. There are people I highly respect in that way. And I will have lengthy conversations with them offline so we can talk about things that they really want to hear about, which might appear to the ordinary person to be sort of off track or in the weeds. But when you get the experts together, this is what the talk is like. I'm sorry to say that we get to it, to the weeds, we get into certain things and it really does matter here. And I value that tremendously here. And I think that for me is quite an honor that Ferguson. And whether it's an honor to me or he just come up with his own view, I don't really. That's not really. That's neither here nor there. What it really means is the world is coming around and these frameworks that I been laying out, super smart people, everybody is, I think I get so much email here about the benefits of the frameworks, the actual frameworks. You see what I mean? Not just simply commenting on yesterday's news. And I think that's what you see here. And I'm really glad I started the substack. I could not be happier.

[Krystal Ball]

And we're glad to have you here, Professor Pape, to talk about the substack. Hope everybody goes over and subscribes to the escalation track.

[Robert Pape]

Yeah, I think that people need to be aware just before we leave here that so yesterday I published a trajectory on the sub stack here. And this was. I said, the ceasefire is about to end in just a few hours. Don't be surprised if you see the next stage would be demonstration attacks. And what you're seeing, and I don't think Iran could have read it and responded in time. It's just not possible. But what you're seeing is, is the validation of this. When Iran took those ships and then the other thing you didn't mention is they had a parade where they brought in the missiles. I don't know if your listeners can see or your viewers can see the missiles. This is just like with North Korea. This is just like with Russia, just like with China. And what they're doing with those missiles is they're saying, you mess with us, we're going to go beyond demonstration. And those missiles have American city names. And on them now, they can't really reach American cities. So I don't want America to freak out over this. But what they are doing is they're moving up a ladder of escalation that other countries have done. This is just, you know, if you studied this for 30 years, demonstration, there's whole articles on this, you would see they're, they're moving up a standard rung themselves. And the fact that they're having those missiles out there, that tells me that this is not going to be over anytime soon. The idea that they're simply now going to kowtow here and just surrender that power, I don't think so. They're feeling their oats here and they're sending a direct signal. Maybe most Americans don't understand it, but those people in the White House get it, which is America, you're next. You keep targeting us in our homeland.

[Krystal Ball]

Yeah.

[Robert Pape]

So maybe Joe Kent's not necessarily all bad, Right?

[Krystal Ball]

Well, I think he's trying to speak Trump's language and be persuasive.

[Robert Pape]

Well, he's trying to speak Trump's language, but Trump wants a clear victory. He wants the fig leaf of victory. And the reason is because that way he can recover his presidency. I don't think Iran is going to be. If Iran was going to give him the fig leaf of victory, they would have met with J.D. vance. And I don't. And I think that's a clear sign that they understand what Trump wants and he, and he's begging them for this. And I think that this is just not. I don't think they're going to play that game because this is signaling to me, intel to me, that they're revealing their preference. They would rather wreck his presidency than give the fig leaf of COVID for him to declare victory. That's why he can't declare victory now. What's he gonna say, you know, they took a ship and now we won? I mean, this is just not. Yeah, they're making it impossible for Trump to declare victory and walk away. He can still walk away. He just can't walk away with a victory.

[Ryan Grim]

He can declare it.

[Robert Pape]

He can try it, but they're gonna say. They're gonna do the next thing and say, sure. They're gonna have the big image. Trump declare victory, we take ship. Trump declare victory, we topple uae.

[Krystal Ball]

Yes.

[Robert Pape]

That's what they want. That's what they're doing. And I'm just saying this is power politics of the first order. Trump's playing domestic politics, okay? Iran is playing power politics. And you can see that when our CIA goes in to topple governments, as we have done, including in Iran, okay, We're playing hardball for real. We may paper it over with. We're Mr. You know, Trump said we're Mr. Nice. No, we're rarely Mr. Nice Guy. When we topple governments here, we're pretending to have the fig leaf of this. We topple. It took us 15 years to topple the Syrian government. So over time, you might be able to topple a government like. Like 15 years, you see? So you keep at it for 15 solid years, you might be able to topple the Syrian government. But in that 15 years versus Iran, you can see Iran has a lot of cards to play in that period of time.

[Krystal Ball]

Professor Pape, thank you so much for being so generous with your time once again. We really appreciate it.

[Robert Pape]

Well, and thank you. It's just a great pleasure and honor to be on with you in every possible way. And I just wish your folks in the audiences here all the best.

[Ryan Grim]

No, they. They love to hear that. All right, we'll talk to you later.

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