← Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar
Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar
4/2/26: Oil Prices Spike As Markets Tank, Iran Predicts US Invasion As Key Negotiator Wounded
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- [00:00]
Krystal Ball
This is an iHeart podcast.
- [00:02]
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- [02:21]
Krystal Ball
Hey, guys, Sagar and Crystal here.
- [02:23]
Saagar Enjeti
Independent media just played a truly massive role in this election and we are so excited about what that means for the future of this show.
- [02:30]
Krystal Ball
This is the only place where you can find honest perspectives from the left and the right that simply does not exist anywhere else.
- [02:36]
Saagar Enjeti
So if that is something that's important to you, please go to Breaking Breaking Points.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.
- [02:47]
Krystal Ball
We need your help to build the future of independent news media and we hope to see you@breakingpoints.com Good morning, everybody. Happy Thursday. We have an amazing show today. What do we have, Crystal?
- [03:01]
Saagar Enjeti
Indeed we do. Stayed up for Trump's big speech last night and pretty much everybody hated it, ourselves included, certainly the market. So we'll take a look at the highlights and lowlights of that one treat to Parsi is also going to join to break that down and the Iranian reaction. We're going to take a closer look at the backlash in Europe, the economic pain that they are already suffering and what's to come, what they're doing about it. We're also going to look at the Gulf Arab freakout. As the UAE said, they want to join the fight directly and Iran continues to cause significant damage throughout the region. An economic historian is going to join us to talk about just how much the world order has already shifted, with Iran claiming significant economic power. And are we already seeing the AI bubble collapse? There are some pretty extraordinary indicators in that direction.
- [03:47]
Krystal Ball
Yes, that's right. Thank you to everybody who's been subscribing and supporting the show. BreakingPoints.com if you want to become a premium subscriber. But today we have our biggest ask. 1.99 million YouTube subscribers. So if you're watching this, just please do us a favor. Hit the subscribe button. Only 10,000 more of you need to do so. And we will hit the coveted 2 million. Not that you actually get a plaque or anything, it's purely for bragging rights. So 1.99 get us to. And it's just unseemly to see those two nines by themselves. A nice clear 2.0. It's nicer, it's clean. It's clean.
- [04:22]
Saagar Enjeti
And thank you to folks send us in the Weekend. The right way, right?
- [04:25]
Krystal Ball
Exactly. Into the Easter holiday. All right. And thank you also to our podcast listeners for subscribing and for sharing the show. Please rate us five stars if you're able to do so, or share an episode with a friend. Really helps other people find it. But as Krystal said, we had a landmark Trump speech. As in, it basically said nothing. I'm calling it the Mission Almost Accomplished speech. Stayed up late, there's bags underneath my eyes. All for effectively an amalgamation of truth social posts. And for anybody watching this show, absolutely nothing of substance or new was said. If anything, the substance was that he has no plan and is truly caught in Iraq and a hard place. He gave us a new update of a timeline, two to three weeks of when the combat operations will resume, at least according to him. Let's take a listen.
- [05:16]
Donald Trump
We are going to hit them extremely hard over the next two to three weeks. We're going to bring them back to the Stone Ages where they belong. Time no deal is made. We have our eyes on key targets. If there is no deal, we are going to hit each and every one of their electric generating plants very hard and probably simultaneously. We have not hit their oil, even though that's the easiest target of all, because it would not give them even a small chance of survival or rebuilding. But we could hit it and it would be gone. And there's not a thing they could do about it.
- [05:54]
Krystal Ball
Nothing they could do about it. I mean, this is why it was very Mission Almost Accomplished. It was like, we've decimated them. We will continue to do so. But the big picture takeaway was it was neither a call to end the war. It was also neither a call to expand the war. It was basically a call of continuation of the current bombing campaign and continuing threats to the Iranian regime, saying that if you do not sign some sort of a ceasefire, reopen the Straits of Hormuz, then this will continue and will attack your energy grid. But that actually does show how stuck Donald Trump is. And I think it's worth going through the options. Right, Crystal, where you have this option of a ground invasion or of this insane uranium grab, which we'll get to in a little bit of what the exact details are. Well, that would obviously draw us in further. That would be a disaster. You could obviously bomb Iranian energy infrastructure and desalination plants. But after a month of bombing, the Iranians are continuing their ability to strike critical infrastructure all across the Gulf. So we know that if we do that, then they will do that to the Gulf Precipitating more an energy crisis. And then you have the Straits of Hormuz problem. The Straits of Hormuz problem, that it's closed, that the Iranians have almost total control over it. They're able to charge this toll. They're asking for denomination in yuan and or cryptocurrency. They're making deals with the Philippines, with India, with China, with various different nations. But it is closed to all critical US Allies and spec to the Gulf. And so he has no plan for reopening it. And the only declaration he really could give was you guys who depend on it. You go and take it. And so if he unilaterally tacos, it's a surrender. If he continues just bombing infrastructure, it will still come back to bite us in our energy markets. And if he does a ground invasion, then we're gonna draw further into this thing. So I actually think that the speech is very important to show how stuck Donald Trump is in the crisis of his own making. And the world and the rest of us by extension.
- [07:52]
Saagar Enjeti
Yeah, no, there are zero good options on the table right now. There are only terrible options on the table right now vis a vis America and America's preeminence in the world. And so the speech was basically like, we're doing an amazing job. Of course, we haven't actually accomplished any of our strategic objectives, and things are measurably worse than they were before we started this war. But we're just going to continue basically the same thing for the next two to three weeks and hope that something about that changes the dynamic. So, you know, there was all kinds of insider info being leaked before, oh, he's going to signal that the war is coming to an end, or, oh, he's going to signal that there's going to be a ground invasion. He signaled absolutely nothing. And so I think the markets, which have been sort of delusional about the idea like this can't possibly go on, right? This has to. This cannot persist. Something has to change. He's definitely going to find some way to extricate himself and the country and the world from this situation. They listened to this speech and they were like, you've got nothing actually. You actually have nothing. And you're. You're not unilaterally taco ing. You're saying, okay, this is going to kind of go on two to three weeks, but that basically means indefinitely can put a two up on the screen. I mean, we instantly saw oil prices going back up. Look at that surge we saw. Put the next one up. On the screen you saw saw stock futures tanking. And this is after they had rallied based on some of the noises he was making and some of the information that was being leaked about how hard he was looking for an exit. So he has run out of his ability to bullshit the markets. And I think that was the real goal of this speech, was to continue to try to buy himself some time so he can figure out what he's going to do here or give himself some time maybe to continue to amass more military assets in the region to pursue whatever next military option he's going to pursue. But certainly people were not comforted by this. Far from it.
- [09:50]
Krystal Ball
Yeah. And everybody keep in mind, you know, we're recording this early in the morning before the markets close. But where things stand right now is the S and P futures are down 1.67%. And actually what's even crazier is the huge rally in crude oil. West Texas Specifically, it's at $109 a barrel, 9.7% in the pre market open. Brent is also at 109. What's interesting is that the spread between those two, which traditionally Brent for the last month or so had been about $10 a barrel higher than West Texas. They have now equalized to roughly the same price, either affecting total price but reflecting I think what people know now, which is that people are going to have to come and buy oil either from wherever across the globe, limited amount of supply and the equalization of price. This is from some oil analysts, which I follow. What that demonstrates though is that gas prices for us here at home, at least in the interim, because remember, if he says two to three weeks, that is an effective more declaration of two to three weeks of effective closure in the Straits of Hormuz. Now one of the reasons why we're not in a full blown catastrophe scenario. I was listening to Javier Blas over at Bloomberg this morning. What he explained is that there actually was a bit of a glut in the oil market. So there was a lot of, of floating storage, there was approximately, actually about a month of storage and or capacity inside the system because it takes a long time for these ships to make their ways across the oceans to Asia, to Europe. It's like almost 40 days actually to the United States. So obviously there was a lot of actually elasticity inside the system. But all of that is now effectively been used up. There's no more spare capacity. And with no more spare capacity then you're gonna see the real shortage. And the other problem is you Know, in a lot of ways he actually contextualized something very interesting to me, which is that at the end of the day, like people like us focusing on the actual price of the barrel, why do we care about the price of a barrel of oil? We don't. What we care about is the price of these refined products. What Rory has called these, what is it? Middle distillates. I think that's what he said. And those distillates are like jet fuel. Gasoline. Well, jet fuel in Europe just hit $200 a barrel. That's after Singapore hit 200 a barrel. You have got airports across Asia and across Europe issuing basically guidance saying, hey, there's a chance where we just don't have jet fuel. Like you can't land here in a few months. So three more weeks of closure of the strait is not just an oil problem, it's a jet fuel problem, it's a gasoline problem. Diesel, $6 a gallon looking very, very likely. I think European, again, $200 a barrel. So you can actually see how the crisis is now escalating dramatically in two to three weeks. And that's what's catching up to the reality of the oil market. And again, to stand with Donald Trump's speech, he actually did address gas prices head on. And it was the opposite of comforting. It was just the classic short term gain for long term, short term pain for long term gain. Here's what he had to say.
- [12:54]
Donald Trump
Many Americans have been concerned to see the recent rise in gasoline prices here at home. This short term increase has been entirely the result of the Iranian regime launching deranged terror attacks against commercial oil tankers in neighboring countries that have nothing to do with the conflict. This is yet more proof that Iran can never be trusted with nuclear weapons. They will use them and they will use them quickly.
- [13:21]
Krystal Ball
I love this. It is Iran cannot be trusted because they will attack if we attack them. I'm pretty sure that's the strategic logic of literally every country in the world. But you could see the short term increase is the result of Iran, not the United States, launching and entering into this war. Really though, you know what's also fascinating is how undemocratic this entire war has been. TMZ doing such a great job of tracking all these congressmen on their vacations. Lindsey Graham, a childless 70 year old freak hanging out at Disney World. Sorry, you know, I'm not. I've made my declaration with this princess wand. I've made the declaration here on the show that I'm not going to Disney. I daughter May change my mind around age 4 or 5. I don't want to see Grandpa Lindsay walking around childless man with a princess wand while my daughter's there. Just. Just me.
- [14:10]
Saagar Enjeti
Okay, how about Wally sending our sons and daughters off to the Middle East? How about that? Do we want to. You know, I mean, it's just disgusting. Too much so, right? That, too. You know, it almost. It almost is lost in all of the mania that there was no vote, there was no debate. You know, there's been very little direct information given to the American public. And to the extent there is, they just consistently lie about what every day, the goals change. Marco Rubio now is added back. You know, making sure that Iran can never have a nuclear weapon. That's in the latest iteration of what the goals are. It's just, to your point, fundamentally undemocratic in a way that is deeply troubling because it seems to signal. They don't think that they need democratic consent. They didn't bother manufacturing consent. They barely bothered to speak to us. And I think the only reason that Trump gave this speech yesterday, which was, you know, packed full of lies and deception, as usual, but I think it was not really about the American people. It was trying to calm the markets and give them, you know, make sure that oil prices stay low per barrel, make sure the markets go up, make sure the bond yields. And that's the other thing we need to continue to talk about. Make sure the bond yields don't spike up too high. Because, you know, that is as significant a driver of his moves as anything else. And then there was this really wild moment where he's like, well, we've been doing this for a month, but, like, if you think about, like, World War I or World War II, this is nothing in the grand scheme of the type of wars that we typically wage. Let's go ahead and take a listen to that.
- [15:40]
Donald Trump
We'll hit them with missiles very hard. Again, we have all the cards. They have none. It's very important that we keep this conflict in perspective. American involvement In World War I lasted one year, seven months and five days. World War II lasted for three years, eight months and 25 days. The Korean War lasted for three years, one month and two days. The Vietnam War lasted for 19 years, five months and 29 days. Iraq went on for eight years, eight months and 28 days. We are in this military operation, so powerful, so brilliant, against one of the most powerful countries for 32 days, and the country has been eviscerated and essentially is really no longer a threat.
- [16:36]
Krystal Ball
Yeah, not very bad.
- [16:39]
Saagar Enjeti
Yeah. I don't know if I was advising him, if I would be like, you know, definitely remind people about Vietnam and Iraq in this speech. Definitely bring those wars up in comparison to what we're doing now.
- [16:50]
Krystal Ball
I oppose, like, half of the wars he just listed. And by the way, every single one of those at least had the pretext of Congress, who was authorizing all of those operations. I would also note that in the case of Iran, Iraq and Vietnam, that in both of those, the way that it was sold to the American people was basically exactly like this. It's just a small operation. We could take a few weeks, a few months, who knows? And then we'll be out of there. It'll be easy. Remember the General Westmoreland quote where he was like, there's no scenario in 1965 where Marines will be directly engaging with the Vietnamese. How did that work out? So that's the problem about how he. Out of control. This entire situation really has gotten. And I think you now have to just turn and look to the horrible options that Trump faces. And at this point, you and I kind of were hoping for this unilateral taco. Well, unfortunately, it just seems like his ego and the United States just can't take it right now. There hasn't been enough pain exacted upon our population or upon our system for the population to actually want to drive the president to really, you know, have to accept a historic defeat. So that's one. He's not gonna do that. Which is why they wanna continue to bomb for the next two to three weeks. Well, the longer that that goes on. Well, you obviously have the same escalation trap that Professor Pape has been on the show talking about. And you see all of these military assets which just continue to move into the region. Let's put A six up there on the screen. Here's a good example. The Pentagon is doubling the fleet of the A10 attack planes in the Middle East. The famed Warthog, which, of course, is used for what? It's for close air ground support. Right. And this is something where, I mean, you can literally go on YouTube, you can watch videos of this plane in Afghanistan and in Iraq. I mean, it's pretty awesome to watch. But it's not just a video game, right? This is about potential invasion where you'd have to support. You'd have to have close air support to ground troops which are engaged in combat with Iranian forces. You also have all of These Marines, the 82nd Airborne, all of these cockamamie schemes. That are being drawn up like, like he is grasping at straws across the board for how to get out of this. And the Iranians just continue to say, no, no, no, we're not doing your ceasefire, we're not negotiating with you. Our terms are very clear. They also are not in a position where they've felt nearly enough pain. And so the logic from the White House is, well, we have to continue to make them feel pain. One quote, which I don't even think we have necessarily, but I think is really important is that, did you note that Donald Trump kept dropping that famous line, we're gonna bomb them back to the Stone Ages? And Pete Hegseth also tweeted it out actually last night, I have it in front of me. And he says, back to the Stone Age, right? And it's supposed to be like this rah rah chest beating thing. Well, let's take a look at the history of that quote. That quote was uttered by General Curtis LeMay in 1965 about North Vietnam. That quote was the logic for rolling thunder and linebacker two is all we have to do is bomb the North Vietnamese into submission. How did it work? So it's like, you know, let's look at the history of the back to the Stone Age logic, which is that we can accomplish this entirely from the air and that we can compel the enemy to try to make these concessions by just bombing so much of their critical infrastructure. And maybe that would work if you weren't dealing with a country which has underground missile cities and drones and after a month is still able to inflict a significant amount of damage on critical infrastructure in the Gulf. And that's the problem is if we bomb them back to the Stone Age, well, they're gonna try and get the Gulf as close to that as possible as well. This is the core problem. If there's an invasion and or so called Stone Age style bombing, well then the Strait will just be mined entirely. If you try and knock out power plants or desalination, then they're gonna do the same to the Gulf. I mean, I was looking apparently Saudi Arabia, I mean Saudi Arabia is a huge country, right? Apparently their defense on the desalination plants, it's not very good. And they're already running low on interceptors, right from the United States and the UAE and the Gulf, Qatar, Bahrain. But these countries, it's not like they're not very well hardened. A lot of their infrastructure sites in the same way that Iran's desalination plants and others aren't nearly as hardened. Except Iran is not nearly as reliant on desalination as the Gulf countries. We're talking about like less than two weeks worth of water. So every action is gonna have an equal and opposite reaction here from a strategic level perspective. And I just think that's so important to hammer home is like, look, everything that's old comes back around back to the Stone Age. Like I said, it was coined at a time by the father of the Arab campaign in World War II. And there was reason to believe why that might work at the time. But now we have the evidence, like it actually didn't work. It was a titanic failure just to see it recycled as some sort of chest beating thing. We have to just take a step back and say, guys, this is not gonna work. And that's why I just came out that speech with despair. I'm like, the war can't end, it can't continue either. And you're like, how do we get out of this one? I really don't know.
- [22:08]
Public Podcast Sponsor
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- [24:40]
Saagar Enjeti
I mean, that's what you get is really, it feels like Trump is well and truly lost. And to your point about the back to the Stone Age, I mean, it's just, I mean, it's a disgusting thing to say to begin with. So we'll start with the amorality or immorality of the way that he operates, the way Hegseth operates, the way they brag about committing war crimes. I mean, it truly is disgusting. And even if you have no moral qualms with it, you see the way that enabling that sort of, you know, terroristic warfare that, you know, also can apply to our adversaries. So, you know, no one is going to really have any moral credibility to wag their fingers at Iran when. And they are also targeting civilian infrastructure. So there's that. But I was thinking, when I listened to that line, I was thinking of what Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson talked to us about, that if he was in a war game with someone who was just like, yeah, I blew up a lot of stuff, he'd be like, what is wrong? Okay, did you accomplish any of your objectives? No, you didn't. Just because you can blow up some stuff doesn't mean that you're accomplishing any of the actual goals here. Of course, in this war, we don't even know what the actual goals are. One of the goals was originally regime change. Now we're being told Both in this speech last night, that that was never one of the goals, even though that was highly featured in the original announcement of this war. We're also being told that it's already happened, even though you have literally, you know, another Khomeini in charge of the state of Israel. So, I mean, the state of Iran. So this is just really wild the way that he approaches this. But, but, you know, again, what I. My big takeaway is he really is lost. He doesn't know what to do. We're. I'm about to play a soundbite. He, you know, in this leaked audio that was not supposed to come out, actually leaked video that was not supposed to be posted, he admitted that he thought this would be over in three days. And that was the reporting before that. He was telling our allies that in four days the whole thing would be over. And when it wasn't, was like, okay, what now? So maybe he wants to get out of this thing, but he actually can't take the humiliation that would be involved in just walking away with Iran having scored a major, major strategic victory in terms of taking control of the Strait of Hormuz, something he also talked about in this speech, again, going with this line of like, well, the people who, you know, the people who really rely on it, they should come in, they should cherish it. He said they should come in and they should take it over. And we've done the hard part, so good luck to you all. But in any case, you know, as evidence of how this is all just improvised and there really is no strategy and the goals here change day to day, let's take a listen to a little bit of this leaked video where he admits he thought it would be over in three days.
- [27:24]
Donald Trump
I said, you have two old broken down aircraft carriers. You think you could send them over? Oh, I'll have to ask my team. I said, you're the Prime Minister, you know. No, no, no. I have to ask my team president. My team has to meet. We're meeting next week. Next week? But the war already started next week. It's not good. The war is going to be over in three days. My prediction, it turns out, by the way, do we have the greatest military
- [27:52]
Dr. Trita Parsi
ever
- [27:55]
Saagar Enjeti
going to be over in three days? Well, guess what? That didn't happen. And now he's saying it's going to be over in two weeks. I don't think that's going to happen either, Sagar.
- [28:01]
Krystal Ball
Yeah, and actually, probably the piece of video. And just to explain, basically, this was a White House Easter lunch It was not open to the press. Obviously, though, the White House filmed the whole thing. They accidentally uploaded the whole video to YouTube for maybe only five minutes. But in that time, enough people were able to download the full video and so they could get some of the clips of the president talking at least somewhat more candidly than he would necessarily. And this one, you are gonna see this everywhere. Here is Donald Trump saying why we can't have daycare or Medicare or Medicaid because the purpose of the government is to fight war. That's about as unpopular and as opposite to his original message in his campaigns as you could possibly get. Let's take a listen.
- [28:48]
Donald Trump
Because the United States can't take care of daycare. That has to be up to a state. We can't take care of daycare. We're a big country. We have 50 states. We have all these other people. We're fighting wars. We can't take care of daycare. You got to let a state take care of daycare. And they should pay for it, too. They should pay. They have to raise their taxes, but they should pay for it. And we could lower our taxes a little bit to them to make up. But it's not possible for us to take care of daycare, Medicaid, Medicare, all these individual things. They can do it on a state basis. You can't do it on a federal. We have to take care of one thing, military protection.
- [29:27]
Krystal Ball
We have to take care of one thing, military protection. So basically, we can't do Medicare, we can't do Medicaid, we can't do childcare, we can't do child tax credits because we have to fight an unpopular war of 26%. And not even George W. Bush would deign to say something like that. So incredible. That's coming to a midterm ad near you. Can you. Can you imagine what if you're a voter? And again, most voters, again, they really have no idea that's going on. I know that's crazy to people who watch this show, but I'm telling you, the vast majority of people, to the extent they know that there's a problem, it's that there's $4 gasoline. I've compared it to Covid. They think it'll resolve relatively quickly. They're not reading quotes and looking at jet fuels, crack spreads, and all this other stuff. They're just living their lives, and there's nothing wrong with that. But when they see something like that, when they're still paying $4 a gallon a month from now or 450 or $5 a gallon in the future, which is not out of the question considering where oil continues to trade and the closure of the Straits of Hormuz. Yeah, good luck to anybody who tries to bolster that one in the midterms.
- [30:34]
Saagar Enjeti
Yeah, I was just looking. Today, it's 408 is the national average gas price. So every day we're ticking up and up. We are going to hit all time highs, I think, here very shortly. And, you know, it also reminds me, as I hear Trump talking about, oh, we can't afford child care or Medicare or Medicaid, sorry, because we got to spend on all these wars of choice that I'm starting. We got to pay for the $1.5 trillion defense budget that he's requesting. We got to pay for the $200 billion supplemental that he wants just for this particular quote, unquote, excursion. Sorry, we can't do anything to help you out. I was also thinking about all these quotes from Pete Hegseth and others who are like, Iran is such a terrorist state because instead of spending their money on their people, they choose to spend it on all these missiles and all this military technology. It's like Iran's military budget per year is roughly $10 billion. 10. Okay, we are looking to spend 200 billion just on this one freaking thing. But to hear Trump outright say we are trading your health care for this wildly unpopular illegal war of choice is one of the most shocking admissions in American life that you could possibly imagine. Of course, we all know that that is the case. But to hear the President of the United States just out and out admit that that's the way he thinks about it, too, is wild. And we know soccer, we're talking the other day about how, you know, to pay for this $200 billion in supplemental funding. What are they looking at? Health care. Health care. They're looking at, you know, maybe it's Medicare Advantage that they'll figure out some way to cut to the bone. They're going to take away services from Americans who rely on those services in order to, you know, drop more bombs on little girls, schools and athletic complexes and bomb them back to the Stone Age. So this is the choice that the President of the United States has made, him and him alone. There was no precipitating event. All of the stuff, though, they were pursuing a bomb, total and complete lies. There was a very generous deal on the table, according to, you know, the Omanis who were involved in this. A very generous deal on the table. And instead he chose to Send your health care away in the form of, you know, bombs and war crimes.
- [32:58]
Krystal Ball
Yeah. And, you know, I was thinking too, I was in a reflective mood with Artemis 2. Congratulations, by the way, to the crew. Artemis 2 is a, a redux of Apollo 8. So Apollo 8 was the lap around the moon. And a lot of people may forget Apollo 8 happened in 1968, literally at the height of the Vietnam War. And I was like, wow. I mean, exactly 58 years later, we're going back to the moon for a moon lap, except this time we're just doing what we've already done again. And then at the height, you know, it's 1968, it was one of the only bright spots of 1968. And then I was thinking, you know, obviously I'm a huge fan of, of space exploration. I want to see more things like that. What ultimately killed the Apollo program and space exploration writ large? It was basically the unpopular war in Vietnam and this notion that we were going abroad with Vietnam and we were spiking our own inflation and we ruined our own economy with interest rates and that we didn't focus enough here at home. And it's like, it seems genuinely like so much continues to rhyme with that time. Like I remember reading about the Apollo program at the time and how unpopular, at least somewhat, it eventually became in the 1970s, why they ended up cutting many of those missions. And it was exactly because of sentiments like this. Now, I'm of the belief that we can do all of the above, but one of the things that we shouldn't be doing is unpopular crazy wars of choice which spike the global energy or spike global energy markets, turn the world and all of that against us. We could have the better parts, like, you know, healthcare and all these other things and the Apollo Program or the Artemis Program, but we don't have to have this part. And this part is really what sours and drains all of the resources for any of the cool and the good things that we could actually do. It's really sad, actually, to see such an incredible feat of engineering and of humanity happen at the very same time. To watch the same exact playbook run back, which is what cost us a lot of that future in the first place. But all right, I mean, I guess that's what we've been destined to repeat, isn't it?
- [34:58]
Saagar Enjeti
Well, and one last point on that, just to, to continue on your reflective journey is, you know, I mean, this administration has wildly cut the budget for any sort of scientific endeavors. I mean, it's almost undoubtedly the case that China, which continues to invest a lot, a lot in research, technology, value scientists, et cetera, is going to, you know, leapfrog us in terms of this sort of technology and all sorts of technological frontier developments. So you know, yet another choice made by this administration.
- [35:28]
Krystal Ball
Sad. All right, we got Trita Parsi standing by. He's gonna break down the Iranian response, some of Donald Trump's speech, a new letter released by the President of Iran, God bless him, thinking that any of us are gonna read 1,000 words. But Trita will do his best still to break it all down. So let's get to it.
- [35:44]
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- [36:46]
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Bethenny Frankel
code free meatrunature meats.com this is Bethenny Frankel from Just Be with Bethany Frankel. Let me be blunt. Most dog food is junk. It just is. And I'm not feeding junk to Biggie and Smalls. That is why they eat just food for dogs. It's real 100% human grade food with ingredients I actually recognize not Mystery pellets pretending to be healthy. And once I switched, the difference was obvious. Better digestion, better skin, more energy. Dogs who actually feel good instead of just surviving dinner. Here's the thing. You care about quality. You make an intentional choice to be healthy. So why are you gambling with your dogs health? So let's think about our furry babies. Go to justfood for dogs.com right now and get 50% off your first box. No code. Just try it. Because once you see the difference, you're not going back.
- [38:03]
Saagar Enjeti
Joining us now is Dr. Trita Parsi. He is the Executive Vice President of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. Great to see you, sir.
- [38:10]
Krystal Ball
Good to see you.
- [38:10]
Dr. Trita Parsi
Good to be with you guys.
- [38:12]
Saagar Enjeti
So Trita, first off, just your reaction to whatever that speech was last night from the President.
- [38:18]
Dr. Trita Parsi
Yeah, what was that? I mean, really, to me it sounded like a summary of his social media tweets and posts for the last 30 days, put kind of in chronological order. I did not see anything new. Threats that he has issued before and not acted upon, you know, statements of why the Iranians are so bad in a rather confused way, nothing coherent whatsoever. I do not understand why he said that he wanted to give a speech if the aim was to do a more aggressive intervention in the markets. His previous interventions have been successful. The oil prices should be much higher than they are. But if the aim was that he needed to do something more aggressive because his other interventions are starting to lose force, it achieved the opposite because essentially what people took away from that is that, that he does not have a plan, he didn't say anything new. And that's reflective of the fact that he doesn't have anything to say, he doesn't have a plan. And that led the markets to, you know, oil prices shot up again because the expectation that he himself had set was that this would be a statement, a speech in which he would talk about a winding down of the war. And that is not what people took away from that speech.
- [39:38]
Krystal Ball
Yeah, I mean, it's very clear from the reaction, oil markets up some 13% as you and I are speaking. However, what's also important, I think, to say is this was obviously intended to Iran. And shortly before Donald Trump's speech, Iran released this letter to America. Let's go ahead and put some of the excerpts up here on the screen. I'm sure you've read it all fully. I'm curious if you could break it down, what import the letter actually has in their intention. What do you take away from it?
- [40:08]
Dr. Trita Parsi
The Iranians are expecting Trump to go in with ground troops. They, they believe that this was a speech aimed at confusing everyone about his actual intent. But because of the Easter holiday and a couple of days in which the markets will be closed, they believe that he is likely to attack this evening or tomorrow. And that essentially everything that Trump does, the Iranians interpret it in the worst possible way. That is partly because of long term paranoia, but also because of recent experience given everything that Trump has done in terms of bombing them in the midst of negotiations. So I think these statements are two sides of the same coin. On the one hand, you have the president coming out essentially declaring they have no enmity with the American people. This is a long standing framing that they have. They want to put the blame on this, on Israel, and essentially say, why is the US Attacking Iran? There's no enmity that necessitates this type of conflict. This is all because of Israel. On the other hand, you have Kolibov, the Speaker of the Parliament, who's now emerged as one of the last standing, most powerful men in that system, who issued a long tweet this morning in which he talked about how he lost his brother in the Iraq Iran war. He himself volunteered at the age of 18 in that war and that these are losses that he still feels today. But this is the type of sacrifices the Iranians will make for their soil, for their homeland, and that they are ready. And he ends it with saying, bring it on. So they're sending two messages. On the one hand, they don't want any enmity. They don't understand why the US Is doing this. They believe it's because of Israel. But on the other hand, if the US Goes in with troops, the Iranians will fight to the last ounce of their being.
- [42:02]
Saagar Enjeti
You mentioned there are repeated tactic of using negotiations as a ruse to begin wars and to assassinate various leaders. We've got another attempted example of that we can put before up on the screen here. And I'm curious for your reaction to this news. So Kamal Karazi, Iran's former foreign minister, has been seriously wounded following US Israeli strikes on his home that also killed him, his wife. He'd been overseeing talks with Pakistan to arrange a possible meeting between Iranian officials. And J.D. vance, first of all, do you suspect that this was Israel that conducted this attempted assassination? And then what do you think is the significance of this particular attack?
- [42:48]
Dr. Trita Parsi
I think it's quite certain that it is Israel that is behind us just as much as Israel has been behind most of these other assassinations. Perhaps there's intelligence that they get from the United States, but they're the ones who have been conducting these assassinations. This is someone who was involved in these talks. I don't know if he was leading it or not, but he is an old foreign policy hand. Even two, three years ago, he gave a speech at the Doha Forum. He was essentially sent there as an envoy of the then Supreme Leader, Khamenei. He served as Iran's foreign minister for many, many years. And within that system, these former officials still tend to play a critical role. And given the fact that so many of them have been assassinated, it means that the remaining ones end up playing an even greater role. So it wouldn't surprise me at all that he has been deeply involved, whether he was overseeing it or not, but deeply involved in this channel initiated by some regional states and currently led by Pakistan. The fact that the Israelis would target him is just, just a continuation of a long standing pattern in which the Israelis are trying to kill every person that potentially not only could negotiate, but also could bring the Iranian system into a consensus on a deal. It's very important to understand this point. This is a very diverse system. They have factions, a lot of infighting, etc. It's not just about having someone who has the capability of negotiating, who has the endorsement of the Supreme Leader leader, but also someone who can build consensus within that system in order to go along with an agreement. So when they killed Ali Larijani last week or so, that was someone who played a critical role in getting conservatives to agree to the JCPOA 11 years ago. And he had that ability. He was essentially the consensus maker in chief. Going after Kharaz is just a continuation of that pattern. And it's very interesting because Trump himself said, when he was asked, who will you negotiate with? He said, perhaps I shouldn't say it because they might get killed. Revealing that he himself seems to understand that the Israelis are killing off his counterparts in order to make sure that this war does not end.
- [45:00]
Krystal Ball
You know, I'm just thinking through how exactly some sort of deal could be made. And it seems very clear, like you said, that you need a consensus maker with credibility who can speak to the west, who could speak with some of the hardliners. It seems that we made the job actually much harder because we've killed many of the consensus makers and or Israel has, and we also killed the Ayatollah. Really strengthening the hands of a lot of these hardliners at this point. What do you think they could accept or would accept really? Because it Seems very clear from many of the demands, their most maximalist demands. It's not really going to happen. Some are seeing that as a negotiation tactic. Are they being serious about that? Like, where do they view themselves internally to the point where they could actually want to make a deal?
- [45:43]
Dr. Trita Parsi
I think something very significant has happened, which is that the US's position, acceptance, et cetera, may no longer matter. And this is thanks to Trump's own statements. Trump is saying that the Strait of Hormuz is not that important to the us. It's feeding European and Asian markets, not American markets. So we don't care about that. If you want to open it, you open it by saying something like that. Perhaps he thinks that he's taking Iran's leverage away from Iran because Iranians are obviously controlling it. And originally, at least, I think they were aimed at using it as a point of leverage in a negotiation with the us. At this point, it seems like they're moving ahead regardless of what the US position is. The US simply cannot do much about this. And they're going to be using their control. They're not going to keep it closed. They're open, opening it, but they're opening it vis a vis fees that they will get for transit. And they may keep it closed for some hostile countries, but they're essentially looking at the control of the Strait of Hormuz eventually, in a collaboration with Oman, which probably will have a grounding in international law. You have several examples of this. In some variations, the Danish have for 400 years taken transit fees for ships going through the opening to the Baltic Sea, and that they will use that in order to recuperate money for all of the damages that have been inflicted on Iran as a result of this war. So as these damages increase, it's not that the Iranians are hardening their position necessarily, it's that they have no choice but to try to find other ways of being able to compensate and pay for the massive cost of reconstruction that will follow this war that increasingly is taking an Israeli character. And I think this is very important to understand. I've been very critical of the Iraq war, but the United States did not deliberately intentionally bomb universities or pharmaceutical factories in Iraq. That's what the Israelis do in Lebanon. That's what they have done in Gaza, destroyed almost every university there. And that is what they're starting to do do in Iran as well. Just today, they bombed a very important pharmaceutical medical research institute that was built together with the French more than 100 years ago. And the United States is now complicit in this Israeli form of warfare that is actually very different from how the US has conducted war. Again, you know, I'm very critical of the Iraq war and other things, but this is just way beyond that. This is just an absolute destruction. And again, then, because Trump doesn't appear to have a plan by default, he is following the Israelis lead. And this is also what we see when he says that he's going to bomb the Iranians back to the Stone Age. That is an Israeli goal. They don't care about the political fallout. They just want to destroy as much of Iran's infrastructure industrial base as possible in order to eliminate Iran as a geopolitical player in the region. What comes afterwards, what it does for the regional stability, is of far lesser concern to the Israelis. That is not the American goals or interest in this war. But because Trump doesn't have a plan, he's just following what the Israelis are doing.
- [48:59]
Saagar Enjeti
Yeah, I mean, I think in fairness, you know, the ideology of Pete Hegseth in particular, but Trump to some extent as well, is very consistent with that Israeli ideology. I mean, one of the things Pete Hegseth is known for is going to bat with for convicted war criminals and trying to get them off the hook. Hook and posturing constantly, like any sort of rules of engagement are basically like liberal woke nonsense. So, you know, Stephen Miller articulated this view, I think most clearly when he said effectively, like, power is power. That's what really rules the world and that's the way we're going to operate. We're going to throw our weight around. And certainly Trump as sort of like the his mob boss style of leadership, he goes along with that too. So, you know, we already were complicit in the genocide in Gaza throughout the Biden and Trump administration. And now, you know, we're more than happy to go along with the Israeli approach of quote, unquote, bombing them back to the Stone Age. And so that leads me to wonder, Trita, if what we're going to end up with here is adopting effectively the Israeli, quote, unquote, mow the lawn approach, where every now and again we go in and bomb them back to the Stone Age and make some noises about, oh, they're pursuing this weapon or they're pursuing that weapon. We can't allow, we've got to go in and kill a bunch more people. Is that the direction that we could be heading for here?
- [50:14]
Dr. Trita Parsi
Absolutely. First of all, you're totally right about your previous comment. That is the Israelization of American warfare could not happen without the consent of decision makers in the United States. And those decision makers already have shown, prior to this, an inclination in going in that direction. And I've also heard even before during the Gaza war, that there were people in the Pentagon that were rather happy to see the Israelis deliberately destroy the norms around the use of force, because that would open up the U.S. s ability to conduct a potential war with China in a much different way than it otherwise would. So, undoubtedly, there are people in Washington who have been quite favorable in going in this direction in the first place. So you're right about that. On your second point, Trump has already admitted this. He said that in interviews two days ago that he's going to bomb them back to the Stone Age, and then if they rebuild, the next president will have to go in and bomb them again. That is mowing the lawn. That is the very essence of mowing the lawn. And this is precisely why previous presidents actually didn't do it, because all of the gaming showed that this is the situation we would end up in. And as a result, we would be in a state of eternal warfare affair with Iran, which is something everyone else, including Trump in his first term, decided would be a terrible situation to be in. Now, not only are we there, Trump seems to be embracing it as if this is what he wanted all along.
- [51:45]
Krystal Ball
So then, last question, sir. You said the Iranians are expecting a ground invasion. How likely do you think that that is?
- [51:52]
Dr. Trita Parsi
Look, it's impossible to be able to predict what's going to happen, because predictions require some sense of some assumption of rationality in the White House. And then based on that rationality, you make some sort of an assumption, some assessment of what direction they would go in. If there was rationality, we would never have started this war in the first place. It's not just a miscalculation, it's a complete misread of the situation that brought Trump into this war and listening to the Israelis. So at this point, would it be utterly irrational, suicidal to go in with ground troops suicidal, in terms of destroying Trump's presidency? Absolutely. Is that a reason as to why he wouldn't do it, based on what we've seen in the last couple of years, is absolutely not a guarantee that he won't do it. The Iranians are essentially assuming that's going to happen. They're preparing for this, and they will be in a position in which they will then be able to. They will take huge losses. Undoubtedly much more will be destroyed, but they will be able to inflict a certain type of damage that so far they have not been successful in doing, which is to kill a large number of American soldiers. Soldiers. And once that happens, it will be very difficult for me to see that Trump's base will continue to trust Trump on this one, continue to believe that this was worthwhile, continue to believe that this is a winning war. And that's part of the reason I think he will destroy his own presidency if he goes down that path. That, however, is not a guarantee that he won't.
- [53:16]
Saagar Enjeti
All right. Well, Dr. Tritiparsi, we're always grateful for your analysis. Thank you so much for joining us this morning.
- [53:39]
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- [54:09]
Public Podcast Sponsor
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- [54:45]
Bethenny Frankel
This is Bethany Frankel from Just Be with Bethany Frankel. Let me be blunt. Most dog food is junk. It just is. And I'm not feeding junk to Biggie and Smalls. That is why they eat just food for dogs. It's real, 100% human grade food with ingredients I actually recognize, not mystery pellets pretending to be healthy. And once I switched, the difference was obvious. Better digestion, better skin, more energy. Dogs who actually feel good instead of just surviving dangerous. Here's the thing. You care about quality. You make an intentional choice to be healthy. So why are you gambling with your dog's health? So let's think about our furry babies. Go to justfood4dogs.com right now and get 50% off your first box. No code. Just try it. Because once you see the difference, you're not going back.
- [55:31]
Krystal Ball
This is an I heart podcast.
- [55:34]
Saagar Enjeti
Guaranteed human.