EMERGENCY DEBATE: Trump vs Iran is a FAILURE (Myron Gaines vs Dinesh D'Souza) | DSH #1926

Summary

Digital Social Hour — “EMERGENCY DEBATE: Trump vs Iran is a FAILURE (Myron Gaines vs Dinesh D’Souza)”

Host: Sean Kelly
Guests: Myron Gaines, Dinesh D’Souza
Date: April 22, 2026
Episode: DSH #1926

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Episode Overview

This episode is a high-stakes debate on U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East, with Myron Gaines and Dinesh D’Souza clashing over President Trump’s handling of the ongoing war with Iran. With America embroiled in another major Middle Eastern conflict, the conversation pulls no punches in dissecting the diplomatic, military, economic, and political consequences—both for the region and for U.S. interests. The tone is candid, sometimes heated, and both debaters make controversial arguments that challenge mainstream media narratives.
Sean Kelly moderates, keeping the debate focused and relatively civil while surfacing the underlying contradictions and complexities of American foreign policy.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Setting the Stage: The Trump–Iran War as “Catastrophe”

Myron Gaines’s Opening (04:48–07:30)

• Claims the war is a “catastrophe on every angle”:
  • Diplomatically: U.S. credibility and alliances (e.g. Gulf partners, NATO) undermined.
  • Economically: An energy crisis rivaling or exceeding the 1970s.
  • Militarily: While Iran is taking heavy damage, the root threat—their missile/drone capability—remains undiminished.
  • Politically: Trump’s promise of “no new wars” is broken, alienating key voters.
• Notable quote:
  • “Trump campaigned on no new wars…he’s betrayed his base…and it’s, you know, that voted for him for the anti-war perspective.” (06:51)

2. Dinesh D’Souza’s Counter-Frame: Trump as the “Transactional President”

Dinesh D’Souza’s Opening (07:46–10:50)

• Argues Trump doesn’t fit typical ideological molds; he’s transactional, viewing international relations like real estate—focused on “property values,” stability, and leverage more than dogma.
• Trump’s goal: a “peaceful, prosperous Middle East,” but with hardline responses to “arsonists” (i.e., the Iranian regime).
• Notable quote:
  • “Trump is not fundamentally an ideological guy at all. He is a transactional guy…He thinks like the Chinese.” (07:49)
  • “Trump is sort of the world’s first, certainly America’s first, real estate president.” (08:40)

3. Transactionalism, Propaganda & Abraham Accords

Back-and-Forth (10:52–15:46)

• Myron disagrees with framing Trump as “Chinese-style” pragmatic; says China is “anti-war” and not driven by the Israel lobby (10:57).
• He blames the Abraham Accords for destabilizing the region, contributing to the October 7 Hamas attacks (11:25), and criticizes U.S.–Israel alignment as a factor in escalating violence.
• Myron reframes “death to America” chants as cultural phrasing, not existential threats:
  • “Death to America is more like fuck America and fuck Israel...It’s more of a phrase rather than a political ideology.” (12:18)
• Points to historical U.S./UK meddling (1953’s Operation Ajax), saying U.S. intervention created modern Iran’s hardliners.
• Challenges focus on “radical Islam” by highlighting “radical Judaism” and the Israeli far right.

4. Historical Context: Radical Islam vs. Radical Zionism

Dinesh: Islamist Origins & Iran’s Trajectory (18:39–23:39)

• Traces violent strains of radical Islam to post-Ottoman collapse (1928, Muslim Brotherhood), predating Israel.
• Disputes the idea of Mossadegh’s legitimacy, calling him an autocrat, not a democratically elected leader (19:40).
• Argues U.S.–Israel alliance is pragmatic:
  • “It’s absolutely laughable that a country of 10 million, Israel, can somehow control a country of 350 million.” (22:10)
  • “Israel knows how to fight radical Islam 20 times better than the United States.” (23:28)
• Myron: Pushes back on the Israel-as-ally narrative, claiming Israel’s actions fuel regional instability, and U.S. backing drags America into costly wars (23:41–28:24).
  • “Israel is a huge liability. They’re reckless. They’re a rogue state. They are the real terrorists.” (24:42)
  • Points to Israeli policies, collective punishment, Temple Mount provocations, and harsh laws as catalyzing extremism (27:41).

5. Proportionality, Restraint, and Who Controls U.S. Policy

Proportionality Debate (28:28–40:08)

• Dinesh rebuts Myron’s “measured Iran” by saying Iran was simply militarily beaten and had no choice (28:28–30:35).
  • “Their restraint is fake. It’s not restraint; it’s actually genuine weakness that has been imposed on them.” (28:38)
• Myron: Stands by the argument Iranians have acted with restraint, focusing retaliation directly at Israel and providing warnings.
  • “When Israel loses a thousand, they do a genocide and attack all their neighbors. Iran loses a thousand and they respond with a measured response.” (47:07)
• Both sides debate if proportionality/reaction is shaped by principle or military might.
• Myron: U.S. blindly backs Israel due to “radical Zionist” influence, harming American reputation and interests (41:04).

6. The Quagmire: Strategic Success or Catastrophic Failure?

Military Outcomes, Regional Fallout (40:13–55:47)

• Dinesh: “At the end of the day, the guy who wins the war always wins everything else in the end.” (43:37)
  • Predicts if Iran’s regime is toppled or pacified, the region and U.S. benefit.
• Myron: Counters with the “paper tiger” critique—U.S. prestige and bases are more damaged than Iran’s reputation in the Gulf; calls the war a net loss (55:50).
  • America’s inability to protect Gulf partners, destroyed bases, and possible loss of regional influence.
• Dinesh: Downplays regime change as a U.S. goal, says only Iranians can effect real change, pointing to historical examples (e.g., Eastern Europe after the USSR).

7. Regime Change and Historical Analogies

Regime Change: Always Bad? (61:19–66:07)

• Dinesh: Insists regime change has a “glorious history”—American Revolution, Civil War, World War II, and more:
  • “Regime change actually has a very...great and glorious history.” (64:07)
• Myron: Flatly rejects the analogy for the Middle East:
  • “Regime change does not work. And this is why foreign intervention doesn’t work...Every single time that we’ve tried to effectuate regime change in the Middle East, it’s created problems.” (67:33)
  • Examples: Libya post-Qaddafi, Iraq post-Saddam, Afghanistan post-Taliban.

8. Influence, Lobbying & The Israel Question

• Myron reasserts his core critique: U.S. foreign policy is captive to an Israel lobby and donor class, not national interest (68:30).
  • “A lot of the people that are in positions of power are Zionist. And what they say goes.” (68:54)
• Dinesh dismisses the idea that Israel “controls” America, calling it “laughable,” but Myron insists outsized donor influence skews U.S. policy.

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Memorable Quotes & Moments with Timestamps

• Myron Gaines:

  • “Trump campaigned on no new wars...he’s betrayed his base.” (06:51)
  • “China is far more pragmatic and anti-war than Trump is.” (10:57)
  • “Death to America is more like fuck America and fuck Israel. Right? It’s like if you stub your toe, as he famously says, you’re going to say, oh my God, death to this corner over here.” (12:18)
  • “Israel is a huge liability. They’re reckless. They’re a rogue state. They are the real terrorists.” (24:42)
  • “When Israel loses a thousand, they do a genocide and attack all their neighbors. Iran loses a thousand and they respond with a measured response back towards the aggressor, Israel.” (47:07)

• Dinesh D’Souza:

  • “Trump is not fundamentally an ideological guy at all. He is a transactional guy...He thinks like the Chinese.” (07:49)
  • “It’s absolutely laughable that a country of 10 million, Israel, can somehow control a country of 350 million.” (22:10)
  • “Their restraint is fake. It’s not restraint; it’s actually genuine weakness that has been imposed on them.” (28:38)
  • “At the end of the day, the guy who wins the war always wins everything else in the end.” (43:37)
  • “Regime change actually has a very...great and glorious history.” (64:07)

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Important Segments & Timestamps

• Opening premise, format, and Myron’s opening statement (04:30–07:42)
• Dinesh’s opening statement (07:46–10:50)
• First back-and-forth (Abraham Accords, “transactional Trump,” U.S.–Israel relations) (10:52–15:46)
• Historical recap: radical Islam, Mossadegh, legitimacy of America’s Israel alliance (18:39–23:39)
• Proportionality, restraint, and power dynamics in the Iran war (28:28–40:09)
• Military and economic consequences, U.S. strategic goals, regime change argument (44:56–55:47)
• Closing statements: regime change in the Middle East—always doomed? (61:19–71:01)

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Takeaways

• Deep ideological divide: Myron views Trump’s war as a betrayal and disaster, while Dinesh frames it as tough but pragmatic realpolitik grounded in long-standing historical precedent.
• Military vs. Political Success: Winning battles may not matter if diplomatic, economic, and reputational loss is overwhelming.
• The Israel debate: Both discuss the influence Israel and its U.S. supporters have on policy—but with very different assessments of legitimacy and outcomes.
• Regime change skepticism: Myron leans on examples from the Middle East to argue that U.S. intervention always backfires, while Dinesh argues for a nuanced, historically broad view.
• Underlying realism and cynicism: Both guests clearly distrust idealistic approaches and see the world primarily through interest, power, and skepticism of mainstream narratives.

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Conclusion

This episode cuts through sanitized policy talk to expose the raw, often uncomfortable arguments lurking beneath America’s Middle East policy—addressing proxy wars, the limits of military power, and the complex entanglement of ideology, history, and realpolitik. Myron Gaines spearheads a trenchant critique of U.S. policy as self-defeating and unduly influenced by Israeli interests, while Dinesh D’Souza seeks to reframe Trump’s war as part of a broader, transactional and ultimately advantageous vision for the U.S. in the region—even if it requires hard choices.

Listeners come away with a nuanced sense of how little consensus exists, even among Trump-sympathetic voices, about how America should wield its power—and bear the consequences—on the world stage.

Transcript

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[C]

I think that we're losing this conflict from multiple different angles. I think we're losing it diplomatically, I think we're losing it economically.

[B]

Trump is trying to create a peaceful, prosperous framework for the Middle East. Trump looks at the Middle east and he sees many Muslim countries that want to trade.

[C]

So it's incredible how we push this propaganda in the west when it is the Israelis that are pushing a lot of the religious ideology to justify their warfare all across the Middle East.

[B]

Israel is a very valuable ally to have in that neighborhood because the truth of it is Israel knows how to fight radical Islam 20 times better than the United States.

[A]

All right guys Here for a debate today, we got Dinesh and Myron. The prompt is, is Trump doing the right thing? Is he winning or losing the war? We're going to do five minute openings, 40 minutes back and forth and then five minute closings. We're going to start with Myron's five minute opening. Myron, whenever you start talking, I'll start the timer.

[C]

Okay. So, yeah, so this war is a catastrophe in every angle. I think that we're losing this conflict from multiple different angles. I think we're losing it diplomatically, I think we're losing it economically, we're losing it militarily to a degree, even though we are still pummeling Iran with our over superior fighting power. But we're also losing our basically our footing in the region. And then lastly, politically, obviously this war and I'll kind of go through. So first when I say diplomatically, we are hurting our partners in the Gulf, who we just literally did strategic alliances with for more investments. We had a duty to protect them and support them and we've put them in harm's way and affected our own credibility in the region. Partners that have been along alongside us for a very long time, including members of NATO, have distanced themselves from this reckless foreign policy. Economically, we're literally experiencing one of the worst energy crisis we've ever experienced since the 1970s and or during the Russia Ukraine war when it first kicked off in 2022. Many different economists and energy experts agree to this. Militarily, we are destroying Iran and their, you know, their navy and air force, etc, but that's not really the root cause of the problem here. It's the ballistic missile program, which is what's actually doing the majority of their damage in their drones. And, you know, we see that they absolutely still have the capabilities to launch missiles and drones, despite the fact that, you know, people at the Pentagon say we took out 90% of their ability to attack, which I think is ridiculous and not true. And that's actually been corrected recently by intelligence agencies saying that, look, it's somewhere maybe around 50% that we've destroyed at this point. And then lastly, and we could go into more, you know, later, but this is my opening here. And then lastly, politically, Trump campaigned on no new wars. And the fact that he has gone back on that promise and got us into another conflict with a, you know, fairly formidable power has created a lot of issues for us alongside all the other issues that I've stated before. So this goes against what he campaigned against. It goes against what a lot of US Voted for. One of the main reasons I voted for Trump was foreign policy and not getting us into wars, ending the Russia, Ukraine conflict, not getting involved with Iran, not creating more Middle Eastern wars like we did with Iraq. When we seen that, that was a monumental failure. And quite frankly, he's betrayed his base and it's, it's, you know, that voted for him for the anti war perspective. So these are the reasons why I think this war has been a catastrophe and a strategic failure in many different ways, despite the fact that we might still be winning it militarily in some limited perspective.

[A]

You still have 220. Myron, do you want to end it there or keep going?

[C]

No, because I just wanted to kind of overview my, my different views of why we're losing this thing and then, you know, and then we can expand later on based on whatever Dinesh wants to go into.

[A]

When you start Dinesh, I'll start the timer.

[B]

All right, Sean, thanks for having us. Really appreciate the chance to have this conversation and participate in this debate. I'm in a little bit of a funny position because I have a defense of Trump and a defense of what he's doing in Iran, but it happens not to be Trump's own defense. In other words, I want to argue that it's very common on the left and the right among people who don't like Trump, but even people who like Trump to try to understand him in some kind of ideological framework. Like Trump campaigned on being sort of an isolationist. He said, we're not going to get involved abroad. And I want to argue that Trump is not fundamentally an ideological guy at all. He is a transactional guy. If you want to think of how Trump thinks, he thinks like the Chinese. When the Chinese go to Africa, they don't say, we're going to help you create democracy. They say, hey, listen, we'll give you some money to build a port, and we want to have some leverage over your economy, and we want to have part ownership of that port. And so the Chinese are building their leverage that way. Let's remember that a lot of people who voted for Trump voted for a businessman. They said, we don't want a politician. We've heard the normal political talk, a lot of it fundamentally dishonest. Let's bring in a guy who's transactional, who knows how to run things. In fact, we're going to bring in not just any kind of businessman, we're going to bring in like a real estate guy. And that's, in fact, what happened. And so Trump, I would argue, is sort of the world's first, certainly America's first real estate president, by which I mean he's protecting the property values, of course, the home values, of course, the people, also the assets of the United States. And he views the world through that framework. I think it's important to understand Trump before we defend Trump, before I attempt to make a defense of Trump. So in my opening statement, I'm going to make no defense. I'm just sort of laying out how Trump, I think, views the Middle east, how he views Iran. Essentially, Trump is trying to create a peaceful, prosperous framework for the Middle East. Even when Trump looks at Gaza, he's like, hey, listen, I'm a real estate guy. This is a bunch of rubble. Why can't we have buildings, coffee shops, maybe a Trump Tower, people going to work every day instead of all this death cult, instead of we love death more than life. Trump looks at the Middle east and he sees many Muslim countries that want to trade, that want to do business, that want to sell oil, that want to do AI, that want to build robotics. And here you've got this death cult in Iran and it's been going for 50 years, and it's all about debt to America and we want to get nuclear weapons and we want global jihad. And basically, I think Trump's view is that these are arsonists in a real estate neighborhood and they need to be stopped. So I think that is the fundamental motivation of Trump in this situation. I'll make my defense of it later here. I'm merely giving a description, a brief description of how I think Trump sees the region and indeed the world.

[A]

Ok, that was three minutes. You want to call it there, Dinesh?

[B]

I'm fine for right now. Yes.

[A]

Okay, so we'll move into timed responses now. Myron, you want to start off five minutes?

[C]

Yeah. So first, Dinesh mentioned that Trump is a transactional president like the Chinese. I disagree with that. The Chinese don't start wars, they don't back genocides, they don't give Israel support or, you know, other countries support to drop bombs on babies. So I disagree with that. The Chinese are far more pragmatic and anti war than Trump is. Also, the Chinese are not controlled by the Israel lobby like Trump is. As far as Trump having, he has peaceful ideas in the Middle East, I disagree with that. And the reason why is because he's backed Israel's campaign all across the Middle east to bomb all their neighbors and attack, despite the fact that, you know, he said that he wanted to bring some type of peace to the Middle East. And it's, oh, Trump's own policies, honestly, that have created a lot of the problems. You recognize the embassy and move the capital to Jerusalem. He. He brokered the Abraham Accords, which the Abraham Accords was a large reason why Hamas invaded on October 7, because they were basically trying to get. Well, Netanyahu for a very long time has been trying to get around Abraham, get around the Palestine question. And one of the ways that he was doing that was through the Abraham Accords, trying to get these Muslim countries to recognize Israel as a sovereign country or recognize them diplomatically. And Saudi Arabia was fighting with, potentially join the Abraham Accords. And this is actually what led to a part of the reason of what led to the Hamas attack, because they understood that if Saudi Arabia was to join the Abraham Accords, this would create lots of problems for them and they'd never be able to get the sovereignty that they're fighting for. Also, I think it's important to note, besides that, that you said, you also mentioned death to America argument and radical Islam. Now, you know when they say death to America, that's more of like a. And I had just had a discussion with Scott Horn about this. Death to America is more like fuck America and fuck Israel. Right? It's like if you stub your toe, as he famously says, you're going to say, oh, my God, death to this corner over here. That hit my foot. So it's more of a phrase rather than a political ideology. And I mean, let's be honest here. We've been interfering in their foreign. In their affairs since 1950s with the Operation Ajax in 1953, when we overthrew their democratically elected leader, Mosaddegh, that which led to the revolution that put these people into power in the first place. We tried to nationalize. He tried to. Mossadegh tried to nationalize the oil. We couldn't allow that. We stepped in with the Brits, Mi5, as well as Mossad, and we basically got him out of power so that we can maintain control. And then we put the Shah into power, and that Shah ended up getting overthrown because he didn't have the best interest of his country. And then you also mentioned Dinesh, radical Islamic. I would argue that we have radical that run America and Israel. If you look at people like Netanyahu in the Likud Party, Netanyahu is probably the most sane of these individuals. But let's not forget the fact that another reason why Hamas attacked on October 7 was because there's lots of radical in Israel that want to destroy the Laqsa Mosque and by destroying the Luxa mosque with their five red cows, etc. That is going to bring about the Antichrist and or their Messiah. So I find it interesting how people say all the time that these guys are radical Islamists, these guys are evil, blah, blah, blah, when in reality it is the Israelis and the Jewish lobby and the Temple Institute who are the ones that are pushing for a religious prophecy that's going to bring about the end of the world. So it's, it's incredible how, you know, we push this propaganda in the west when it is the Israelis that are pushing a lot of the radical religion, religious ideology to justify their warfare all across the Middle east.

[A]

That was three minutes 35. Are you done, Myron?

[C]

And then there was one other thing, Dinesh, you mentioned something about peaceful peace in the Middle East. Oh, another thing. Trump and Marco Rubio have been giving even more money than the Biden administration when it comes to peace. I would argue he's done less for peace than Biden because he gave them 2,000 pound bombs, he allowed them to continue the war, didn't put any type of barriers on them. In Gaza, yes, he was able to negotiate some type of peace as he came into the office, but I think that was more diplomatic posturing because as soon as that ceasefire ended in March or so, about 2025, and the starvation really started to hit, he didn't really do much to support the Palestinians. And until we solve the Palestine question, we're never going to have peace in the Middle East. And enabling and supporting the Israelis is only going to make things worse in this regard, until we solve the Palestine question, we're never going to have peace. And Trump's Abraham Accords and his catastrophic pulling out of the JCPOA and labeling the IRGC as a terrorist organization alongside Mike Pompeo has also led to a lot of the problems that we have as well. So I'll kind of just land it there though, are we?

[A]

Yeah, 15 seconds left, but yeah, okay,

[C]

I'll end it there then.

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I think in

[B]

order to get a grasp of this and there's a lot of detail here and I'm happy to go into, into really all of it, but I want to stay initially at least on the big picture a little bit because radical Islam comes out of the deserts of Arabia in the seventh century. It is extremely violent. It takes basically the whole of the Middle east, most of which by the way, was Christian by force. Islamic armies move north into Europe. They move east into Asia, they move south into Africa. They create multiple Islamic empires, many times four to five empires at the same times. The Umayya, the Abbasid, the Mamluk Sultans of Egypt, the Mughal empire in India, obviously, ultimately the Ottoman Empire in Turkey. The crisis of Islam comes when the Ottoman Empire collapses because it's the last caliphate. And you'll notice that the Muslim Brotherhood is formed right after that, 1928. That's when Hassan Al Banna, an Egyptian schoolteacher, forms what is now the most powerful organization of radical Islam in the world. Notice that nothing is going on in Israel. The don't have a state. Israel is not even going to be founded for another 20 years. This is long before World War II. And so radical Islam is already mobilizing to sort of restore its lost glory starting in the 1920s. Now let's fast forward to Iran. I want to talk for a moment about what Myron talked about in the 1950s. First of all, Muhammad Mossadegh was not democratically elected. The Iranian people did not vote for him. He was not. He didn't get any kind of majority. He was selected by the. The majli, by the parliament. He was ultimately appointed by the Shah. So this is how Mosaddegh came to power. Now, true, when he came to power, he sort of changed his stripes. He declared himself a socialist. He essentially suspended the very parliament that had named him. And so he was an autocrat. Yes, the US and the CIA and the British intelligence agencies did push him out. That's true. But let's say the Iranian revolution did not immediately follow that at all. That was 1953. We have to go all the way now to 1979 when Jimmy Carter came to power. Jimmy Carter was sort of A human rights guy. And Jimmy Carter said, listen, the Shah has a secret police. He's an autocrat. I'm going to pull the Persian rug out from under him. And we did. We ultimately forced the Shah to abdicate, which he did. This strengthened the hand of the mullahs. They were also, by the way, being helped by France. And when Khomeini came in, he didn't say one word about Israel. He came in on a revolutionary ideology, a global revolutionary ideology outlined in hundreds of his sermons, outlined in a book that I have, that's a collection of his sermons. And it's very clear that he says ultimately what he's saying is radical Islam has finally got a hold of a major state. This is what we've always wanted. We have been ragtag groups of activists and terrorists and this and that. But Iran is an important country. Undeniably we have it and we're going to use it as a beachhead for global jihad. And that is in fact. So this is declared out of Iran from the beginning. It's not just some kind of leftist slogan that they learned at Colombia, sort of like, hey, hey, ho, ho, Western Civ has got to go. This is the sort of founding charter of Iran. They take our hostages. They bomb the Beirut embassy in 1982. So the hostility begins really early on. Israel is a part of it, but Israel is only a part of it because Israel is in that neighborhood. And I would argue that really the basis for America's alliance with Israel. I mean, it's absolutely laughable that a country of 10 million Israel can somehow control a country of 350 million that is bigger, richer and stronger and tentacles all over the world. It makes no sense to say that Lithuania can control the Soviet Union. And it's equally absurd to Somehow think that 10 million Jews can control the entire United States. The reason the United States is allied with Israel is really simple. The Israelis are living in that bad neighborhood. They understand the various species of terrorists and thugs and bad guys in that neighborhood. It's kind of like if I have a friend who lives downtown and in Houston, he knows which streets not to go down, he knows which alleys he should avoid. He knows when to look over his shoulder. He knows what to do if somebody comes up right from aside him and tells him to open his car door. If I live in the suburbs, I might not have as good an experience of all that.

[A]

10 seconds to the point of it

[B]

is Israel is a very valuable ally to have in that neighborhood. Because the truth of it is, Israel knows How to fight radical Islam 20 times better than the United States.

[A]

Time? Perfect. Myron, five minutes.

[C]

Yeah. So just to go here. So number one, Mossadegh was democratically elected by the Majis in the Parliament. He had been elected multiple times in the parliament, so he was democratically elected next when it comes to radical Islam, because I understand that Dinesh is a big critic of radical Islam. Look, I don't have a problem with being critical of radical Islam, but I just find it interesting how we're so quick to point out radical Islam, but we never talk about radical Judaism. You know, let's go ahead and compare it. A lot of people like to say that the Iranian regime is, you know, reckless, crazy religious zealots that want to kill and end the world or whatever. Right, well, let's go ahead and go through this. So on October 7th, roughly 1200 people were killed. 400 of them were military. So that leaves US with about 800 people. Those military individuals are fair game under international law, unfortunately. Obviously the loss of life is always horrible. But let's be very candid here. They're fair targets for Hamas. Right? That leaves us with about 800 people after that. Right? 800 people were killed and we don't even know who from them were. You know, idf, off duty, reserve. And we also know that the Hannibal Directive was activated on that day, which is basically the extermination of their own people when there's a conflict going on for, you know, to avoid having hostages. But let's go ahead and be terrible here and let's say that 800 were killed and it was all by Hamas. We, let's just say the 400 enemy combatants, that's fine, they're IDF. Let's say the 800 were all completely innocent people, etc. Well, how did Israel respond to that? They responded by invading and or bombing seven different countries all across the region. They conducted a genocide that we all witnessed in 1080p. They led to the blockade and the starvation of tens of thousands of Palestinians. When this is all said and done, we're probably going to have somewhere between 100,000 to 500, 300 to 500,000, who knows? But it's going to be hundreds of thousands dead by the time we go through the rubble and actually calculate all the people that were killed. It was systemic bombing for many years in Gaza. Now let's compare that to the Iranian response, their attack during this 12 day war. What do they do? They bomb Israel back. They hit them back with missiles and show their ballistic missile capabilities. And their drones. And then when the United States came in and bombed them and destroyed all their nuclear bases, how did they respond? With a symbolic strike back where they told the United States that they were going to do it and they hit the Al U dead base and they let them know beforehand. So I would argue that the Iranians are a far more measured and responsible government than the Israelis are. The problem with the Israelis is that the Israelis are able to do whatever they want to do because they know that they have the United States backing them. They're not a good ally of ours because they drag us into wars just like they did now with this catastrophic strategic failure of a quagmire that were in Iran. Marco Rubio admitted this. Hey, if we had to get involved in this conflict because we knew the Israelis were going to attack, an attack on the Israelis was going to be an attack by the Israelis would be looked at as an attack by the United States. And we have to get involved there so that we can kind of hedge the damage that might come our way. And that dragged us into the current conflict that we're in. So I would argue that Israel is a huge liability. They're reckless. They're a rogue state. They are the real terrorists. It's not necessarily the Iranian regime. Now, let me be clear here. I'm not saying that the regime doesn't do evil things. They don't kill people. I'm not saying that. But I do find it incredible that they have the nerve to sit there and say that these guys are terrorists and that these guys aren't responsible or not measured and shouldn't have a nuclear weapon, when in reality Israel has a nuclear weapon. Israel is not a part of the npt. Israel got their nuclear weapon illegally. Israel just got done doing a genocide. Israel literally is trying to build a Temple Mount with radical sh T to destroy a mosque. No one ever points to the radical Judaism that runs this country. Because as much as we want to complain about radical Islamic, which I can, I agree with you. Dinesh can be a problem. Let's be honest here. Do radical Islamists control America? No. But radical do, because these support the Temple Institute and radical Zionists as well, which has led to a lot of problems that we have in the Middle East. So if we're going to talk about, you know, religious zealots that are creating issues, let's talk about radical Judaism. But no one. No one wants to have that conversation.

[A]

One minute left. Myron, do you want it?

[C]

Okay. Since I got another minute, I'll talk about how, like, for example, Ben GVIR was celebrating, you know, passing a law to hang Palestinians, which is the first law put in place, by the way, to exterminate a group of people based on their. To kill a group of people based on their race. And that assumes that Israel actually has some type of fair process and due fair process, and they don't. I mean, this is a group of people that complained and got mad when someone got. The Palestinian prisoner, got r ped at the tenement. And the people that did it got arrested, and they literally took to the streets and said, we have the right to. We have the right to. We have the right. This is a group of people that are far worse than the Iranians. But Western media never covers this. They never talk about all the crazy stuff that goes on over there, and all the people that are being held without charge.

[A]

20 seconds.

[C]

I can end it there.

[A]

Okay, Dinesh.

[B]

Well, I got to start out with what I think is one point that Myron makes that borders on the. On the conical, and that is the idea that Iran's reaction was measured due to moral restraint. No, Iran's reaction was measured because they had no other reaction to do. It's kind of like saying, if I step into the ring and I get so badly pummeled that I'm flat on the ground, and therefore I'm flailing from the ground. You can't say, oh, look at that guy. He's being so restrained. He's only flailing from the ground. The truth of it is, he can't get up. That's why he's flailing from the ground. If he could get up. If Iran had vastly greater capacities, military capacities, of an active Navy and active air force, you don't think that they would be completely strafing and bombing Israel. You don't think that they'd be sending jets to hit US Bases. You don't think that they would try to activate, for example, their connections in Venezuela to try to hit Miami. They would be doing all of these things. The reason they can't do it is they're like the guy in Monty Python who's lost his arms and his legs. So their restraint is fake. It's not restraint. It's actually genuine weakness that has been imposed on them on the losing side of a military campaign. And even Myron admitted that they are losing this militarily. Now, turning to Israel in a kind of fundamental way, I want to go to the root of the matter by saying quite simply that, first of all, the Palestinians are not native to Gaza, right. If you go back to ancient times, the Jews were in Israel, but the people who were in Gaza were what the Bible calls the Philistines. And the Philistines are actually Europeans. These are people from Greece. They came from places like Cyprus and they occupied Gaza. So the Palestinians are not native to Gaza. That's not quote, their land. It's certainly not their land going back to ancient times. They are not the original inhabitants of that land at all. Nevertheless, Israel said All right, everyone keeps talking about a two state solution. Well let's have one. Why don't we let the people in Gaza choose their own government and in early 2000s they elected Hamas and Hamas

[A]

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[A]

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[B]

became the legitimate representative of Gaza. Now, I admit that they didn't have subsequent elections putting their legitimacy in question, but the truth of it is they had built deep roots in Gaza. And So when the October 7th attacks occurred, and I think, you know, Myron has done a lot to try to minimize those things, the simple truth of it is when somebody else attacks you first in this way, you are not bound by any rules of so called proportionality. It's sort of like saying if someone does a home invasion on me, let's just say rapes my wife, kills my kids and then he runs off and he's got nine kids of his own, he jumps in a car, he's trying to make a getaway and he goes, hey, listen, I want to make sure that your response is proportional to what I did. I want to make sure that you don't do anything to me that's worse than what I did to you unprovoked. So the truth of it is, in every example of warfare that I'm familiar with, Pearl harbor comes to mind. I understand. If I recall correctly, there was something like 2000 US casualties in Pearl Harbor. Very low levels of casualties. In fact, who could argue that Pearl harbor was the military target? And yet the United States goes to war with Japan. In fact, not only that declares war, also begins not not only on the Pacific front, but also on the European front levels. Essentially the nation of Japan with ultimately two atomic bombs. And so if you try to measure the original provocation and the US response, I would argue the US response was disproportionate But Japan started it, and the United States had every right to finish it. Now, no one can deny that October 7th was not merely a Hamas operation. It was an operation that was cooked up. Yes, it involved the Hamas guys, but many of the Hamas guys were in Qatar.

[A]

One minute.

[B]

Iran was involved, Turkey was involved. The Sudan was involved. This was a carefully planned operation over a long period of time. And so Israel has every right to say that we are striking back, not just against the operatives from Gaza who launched the immediate attack, but we have every right to strike back at the planners of October 7th. Will Iran publicly deny that it was involved in the planning of October 7th? No. In fact, the mullahs take credit for it. They're very proud of it. They see it as part of the global Islamic Jihad that they're part of. And so 20 seconds. I would argue that Israel has every right to respond in the way that it did. And a kind of Miran headcount of what the. What Hamas did doesn't impose limitations on what Israel can do to immobilize the future threat posed by Hamas.

[A]

Time. Okay, Myron.

[C]

Yeah. So you said that they're not restrained because they can't get up. That's actually false because during the 12 Day War, they absolutely demolished Israel. It's just that Israel had very strong censorship policies in place so that people would not be able to record all of the damage. And it was actually the Israelis that asked for a ceasefire from Trump and why we got involved in the first place, because they were running out of interceptors and they would not be able to continue to sustain the damage that they were sustaining. And keep in mind, that was the first time that Iran directly attacked them in that manner, so significantly, in a sense. Also, I think it's important to say that, you know, when you said fake restraint or whatever, the thing is, is that they were restrained because, let's be honest, the Israelis had done many different things to agitate. They bombed their embassy in Damascus, they assassinated Ishmael Hanaya in Iran. I mean, bombing a embassy as a act of war. And they did not respond as heavily as they could have if the Iranians wanted. They can launch all their missiles and absolutely level Israel and Tel Aviv, but they're not doing that. So I would argue that they are being restrained because they do have the capability of actually destroying Israel, especially when it comes to their ability to launch ballistic missiles that go against the Iron Dome, and they don't have enough interceptors to deal with their capabilities. Also, you mentioned that proportionality doesn't matter. Well, it actually does because that goes to show the restraint of the. Of said country. I find it interesting how they lost pretty much identical numbers on October 7th. The Israelis lost somewhere, we'll say, to be simple, a thousand. And during the 12 Day War, the Iranians lost a thousand. Well, one responded by conducting a genocide and bombing all their neighbors and invading other countries. The other one responded by bombing Israel, not bombing everybody else, and then doing a ceasefire after, and then even responding to the United States after we bombed them with a symbolic strike where they didn't kill anyone, and they gave a notification before they did so. So as much as people want to say that the mullahs aren't as restrained or as pragmatic, et cetera, I would argue that they absolutely are, and far more than the Israelis. And that's because I agree with you on this. They understand that they don't have the backing of the United States like the Israelis do. So it is the backing of the United States which allows the Israelis to behave the way that they do and then not ne. And then not exercise proportionality. And this is why the entire international community has been condemning Israel and they've lost so much support, because it's not just me that's saying this. The whole world saw how they reacted after October 7th. So proportionality is absolutely important to see the measuredness and the rationale of a government when they're retaliating in a war. Getting attacked on October 7 and losing a thousand people does not justify genocide. And when Iran lost the same exact amount of people when they were attacked on top of all the other escalations that the Israelis have done, that I mentioned before, whether it's assassinating a diplomat, assassinating a political figure in their country and causing great embarrassment, bombing the embassy in Damascus, doing all the false flags that they do, assassinating nuclear scientists, killing generals, all this other stuff. The Iranians, I would argue, have been far more measured given the fact that Israel's been attacking them for a very long time. What else? Here?

[A]

Two minutes left.

[C]

Two minutes left. So, yeah, I mean, I think that's. I think if we're going to talk about proportionality, it's. It's definitely a required thing to talk about. And you're saying it doesn't matter? I think it absolutely does matter, because when the Israelis act as reckless as they do, we end up footing the bill for a lot of their problems. We end up looking like the idiots backing them, running security for them at the un, Funding their bullshit. And that Obviously undermines our position in the region and makes it harder for other countries in the region to want to work with us. And we're losing some of that influence right now, as a matter of fact, because what we've effectively demonstrated is that as these Gulf states are getting bombed, where are we putting our parties? We're putting our parties in protecting Israel. Hell, even our bases got demolished. So, and the Iranians could have done this a while ago. They could have demolished our bases. And it took us attacking them directly, killing their supreme leader and initiating an all out war while we're in the middle of peace talks, by the way, for them to finally say, you know what, enough is enough. Then they close the Strait of H. They've been bought, they destroyed all of our bases in the region. For the most part, they're attacking Israel back. They could have done this a long time ago, but they didn't. So I would argue them in acting way more rational and measured than the Israelis.

[A]

40 seconds. You want to mine?

[C]

We can end it there.

[A]

Okay, Dinesh.

[B]

When Myron first brought up this issue of Iran's moral restraint, I thought he was using it just as a kind of throwaway line. But he's dug in on it so much that I think it, it deserves to be scrutinized and perhaps even even mocked a little bit. Because look, Iran, I admit, has built up a tremendous force not just in Iran, but not just in the region of the Middle east with surrogates like Hezbollah, but also projected its power beyond the Middle East. Iran has had a very powerful presence. My wife is Venezuelan. Powerful presence in Venezuela. Iranians in the Venezuelan parliament, military material coming into the Venezuelan airports from Iran on a daily basis on a private terminal, all of this has been going on now. So Iran was trying to create a beachhead on the Americas where it could project its power. Not just in South America, but of course you're now a couple of thousand miles from Miami. So this is a very aggressive, powerful society with 90 million people, as I mentioned earlier. Second, Iran has shown the ability to have unbelievably bloodthirsty wars that impose hundreds of thousands of casualties. Think back, for example. One of the memorable experiences politically for me was just watching the absolute carnage of the Iran Iraq war. Remember the Iran Iraq war. You just have mass slaughter going on on both sides. Hundreds of thousands of casualties on both sides. Essentially the two countries bleeding each other into the ground. So the idea that somehow Iran is this kind of rational, measured guy that, you know, even though they're taking A tremendous beating. Hey, we got no army. Hey, we have no air force. Hey, we got no navy. But guess what? We're not gonna strike back. And we're not gonna strike back. Not because we can't. Not because little Israel with 10 million people is kicking our butts. Not because this little country that is the size of New Jersey has been able to pistol whip the Arab countries of the Middle east, including Iran, going back to the 48 war, the 67 war, the 73 war. I mean, it's a major embarrassment and it's a major embarrassment now that Israel in 12 days can basically put Iran on its knees. So I think it's very tempting for a guy like Myron. It's very hard for him to accept that a powerful country like Iran is getting this kind of a horse whipping from Israel, which he obviously hates. And so he's like, listen, it's gotta be that the Iranians have these like secret powers that nobody is aware of that they could use. Oh, sure, they could level Tel Aviv tomorrow. They could level Jerusalem the next day, they could level the Hazor the day after that. They're just not doing it because they're super nice guys. I mean, to me, this is just laughable. It's absurd. Any country that has been pummeled in the way that Iran has is going to use what it can. Now, I think Iran has been trying to do that. They were able to get one missile off to Diego Garcia, but guess what? I don't know if it even killed a couple of cows. It certainly didn't kill anybody. It was disarmed. And while they have had some strikes in Israel, the damage has been almost comically minimal. And I say this because, see, normally when powerful countries fight, you actually have serious damage on both sides. I mean, I think of the civil war, you know, the Northern Armies lose 3000. Robert E. Lee loses 1500. And it's a great victory for Robert E. Lee, man. He only lost 1500. He lost only half the number of people that the Union army did. And so he's a genius. He's a military strategic genius. In this case, you can almost count on like two hands the number of casualties on the American Israeli side and the Iranian casualties are much greater. And the damage to Iran is huge. So an immensely powerful country has been leveled by the combined operations, highly successful military operations. And look, at the end of the day, you can say, you know, we're losing, we're losing diplomatically, you know, we're losing reputationally, we're losing blah Blah, blah. At the end of the day, the guy who wins the war always wins everything else in the end. I mean, there was a lot of Southern propaganda against Lincoln, but when Lincoln won the war and the country was unified, that was it. And the Republican Party then ruled the United States for the next 50 years. So if we get a peaceful, prosperous, pro American Iran out of this, it's gonna be great news for the Iranian people, great news for the region. Great news for UAE and Bahrain and Oman and Qatar and Saudi Arab. These Muslim countries are going to be cheering, not to mention Israel. And it's also great news for the United States.

[A]

Okay, Myron.

[C]

Yeah. So first you started talking about Dinesh, Hezbollah and proxies, etc. Let's be clear here. These proxies and Hezbollah, etc, these were all created from Israeli aggression. Let's not forget that the creation of Hezbollah came in 1982 after Israel invaded Lebanon looking for the PLO and trying to kill Yasser Arafat. So same thing with Hamas, same thing with the irgc. All of these organizations or these terrorist organizations that people talk about were created because of Israeli aggression in the region and the fact that we backed them. Next, you made a comment saying that Iran is a bloodthirsty country with wars. That's not true. Saddam Hussein actually invaded Iran. He failed. And who backed him? We did, as well as the Israelis, because at the time we wanted to support and get rid of the Shiites and, and we supported him in invading them. They ended up losing and ended up being a war that lasted almost a decade with almost nothing to show for it. And then this actually is what led to Saddam Hussein's aggression after the fact with invading Kuwait and everything else like that, because that war put him in an enormous amount of debt. So our backing, as usual, typically leads to a lot of the problems that we cause. Right. So this is another reason why intervention creates so many problems. Also, you mentioned that Iran was put on their knees during the 12 Day War, but that's not true because we don't. Well, hold on, let me rephrase. They were absolutely attacked and hurt quite a bit from the 12 Day War. I'm not disputing the fact that they took some significant losses. A bunch of their generals were killed. It was a. It was, you know, literally a genius operation by the Mossad. I've always given credit to the Israeli intelligence capabilities, like whether it be the pager attack or whatever. But let's be very honest here and understand that that 12 day attack led to them getting hit back very hard in a manner that they've never been hit before. And that's what had them reeling and saying, we need to end this war. Begging Trump for a ceasefire. So though Iran did take a significant amount of damage, and I agree with you on that, I'm not disputing that Israel did as well. This is why they had a censorship ban where you couldn't actually document any of the damage going on. You couldn't document anything going on in the country strategically. And some people were actually being arrested for this because. So. But the Iranians absolutely were able to hit the Israelis back very hard with the ballistic missile program. I would argue they hit them back so hard that this is a big reason why the Israelis attacked them this time or had to attack them again this time in early 2026, because they figured, figured out that their ballistic missile program was so sophisticated and now they're kind of paying for it because Israel's been getting bombed. They're having. They're getting Chinese and Russian intelligence. They've been far more accurate. But it was because of the 12 Day War and Iran's retaliation that made Israel realize, oh, we really got to get a regime change to get these guys out of here, because they do have the capability to actually destroy us, and they didn't. So I would argue that shows even more so proportionality and the ability to be reasoned in military responses, whereas Israel's not. Because when we compare the numbers, and there's a reason why I was using those numbers, when Israel loses a thousand, they do a genocide and attack all their neighbors. Iran loses a thousand and they respond with a measured response back towards the aggressor, Israel. And then obviously the Lu dead base where they notified them and no Americans were killed.

[A]

Two minutes.

[C]

And then also you mentioned that the casualties are low and laughable by Iran. I would agree with you on that. We have somewhere between, thank God, only 13 to 15 US soldiers that were killed, which, you know, obviously, as someone who's an American and is America first, I don't want soldiers to die, which is why I oppose this war so much. But let's not. And, and obviously the US And Israel as being fairly successful from a military standpoint. But let's not lose sight of, you know, the entire war. Strategically, we have not really accomplished any of our goals. You know, Trump and Marco Rubio have been running around saying, oh, yeah, we destroyed their navy. We destroyed their air force. They never had an air force. These guys had jets from, like, the 1970s. Okay, their navy, they have Boats from the World War II era, like their navy and their air force, is not the reason why we joined the Israelis in attacking them. That is not the main reason why the Israelis attacked them. They might sit there and say, the nuclear bomb, that's just a ruse to build up political appreciation here stateside for the war. The real reason was the ballistic missile program, which is heavily safeguarded and dispersed all across the place with their mosaic defense. And they're deep underground, and there's hundreds of them all across the country. We haven't been able to destroy them all. Why? Because the Iranians have been able to do almost 100 different waves of attacks. So to say, oh, well, we are killing them more, we have less casualties and more casualties, well, that's fine, but we're losing this war economically, diplomatically, politically. For Trump, in way of the midterms, this war has been catastrophic. So just because we're winning militarily doesn't mean anything. And the casualties don't really indicate anything either, because I would argue that we've actually made Iran stronger with this conflict. Now they've closed the straight of Hormuz, they've 20 seconds income source. We've been displaced out of the region. This opens up the door for China, Russia and other countries to potentially create a foothold in the region, including Iran. I would agree with Dr. Robert Pape's assessment that after this conflict is done, they are probably going to end up becoming a fourth world power because we are going to be able to effectuate the regime change that we want to effectuate. You said five seconds.

[A]

Five minutes. Yeah. That was time. Final point. You could wrap up. I'll give Dinesh an extra 10 seconds if he wants.

[C]

And then the last thing I'll say here is when it comes, because you mentioned, you know, doing a regime change and inserting a democracy, let's just be honest here, that's not going to happen. Trump and Hexith have pissed that away by making the comments that they've made about blasting back to the Stone Age, Trump talking about killing a civilization. It's just not going to happen. If anything, our rhetoric and our. The way we've been behaving, bombing them, etcetera, Alongside the Israelis, it's made them rally around the flag even more. So the only people that think that we're still going to have some type of democracy or monarchy are retarded Iranian monarchists that, quite frankly, are out of touch.

[A]

Okay, that was 5:40, Dinesh. So I'll give you equal time. We'll do one more round each and then closing statements. All good, Dinesh.

[B]

I think that Iran had the opportunity early on to try to rally the Muslim countries in the region the way the Palestinians have and make this seem like a war against Islam. Iran was so dumb that they didn't do that. They actually began to attack bases and assets in these countries, thus making it really easy for really rich and powerful Muslim countries to go far beyond what they have done before. Not merely to denounce Iran, but freeze Iranian assets, limit Iranian access, even talk about joining the US And Israeli initiative if the attacks continue. So Iran has done something, I think monumentally stupid and that it has alienated its other potential allies in the Muslim world, even in the Middle East. Forget about Muslims in Pakistan and Indonesia. I'm just talking about Muslims in the region. This, I think, was a catastrophic blunder. Now, with regard to the regime change, here is my view. Trump did not sell this expedition as a regime change war, and I don't think that for him it is. Trump would be very happy to immobilize the Iranian ballistic defense ballistic missile program, incapacitate Iran as a potential destructive terrorist power in the region, and finally have commercial traffic flowing freely through and around the Strait of Hormuz. Very interestingly, Myron said, hey, these Iranians, they don't even have any ships. They don't have a navy. And then two minutes later, they're controlling the Strait of Hormuz. Well, how do you control the Strait of Hormuz if you don't have any ships and you don't have any navy? The truth of it is Iran has been trying to have a kind of cordon, a circle around the Strait of Hormuz. By the way, you know, if you build the Panama Canal, and it's very expensive to operate the canal, you can charge tolls to people who go through the canal because this is an asset that you've created. The Strait of Hormuz is not like that. It's just an opening where the oil goes through. Iran doesn't do anything, but they're like, just. They want to control it for the same reason the Mafia wanted to control Canal Street. And Trump is sort of outsmarted them. He's like, okay, you build a circle around the Strait of Hormuz will build a bigger circle around you and control the ships that go to Iranian ports. And so Trump has, in a way, checkmated Iran, even in the one kind of final remaining card, what the Iranians thought was their trump card, if I can use that term. And Trump has sort of outsmarted them. Now, Israel, I think, does want regime change in Iran, and maybe the Israelis want to keep going even after the United States has completed its mission. This shows that American and Israeli interests are not identical. We do what we need to do, America first, and then we're done. And if the Israelis want to keep going, that's up to them. In my opinion, you cannot do regime change without a land invasion, without going door to door. You can't do it. And so what that means is not that regime change cannot happen, but if regime change does happen, it has to be done in the end by the Iranian people themselves. Remember at the end of the Cold War, when the people themselves of the Poland, Czechoslovakia, which is now the Czech Republic, Romania, Eastern Europe, Berlin, these are people who took back their own countries themselves. They pulled down the Berlin Wall, they went into the Romanian palace and grabbed Ceausescu and pulled him out of his office or his home. So, in other words, in the end, I think that people have to fight for their own freedom. I don't think that we can assure regime change to Iran, much as I would like to see that happen. I think we can create the conditions for it. Maybe Israel can create the conditions for it as well. But in the end, it's up to the Iranian people. Now, if Myron is right and that the Iranian people are really happy living under this autocratic rule of the mullahs for 50 years, and there are very few of them that actually support freedom, support democracy, support any different regime, any kind of replacement for the mullahs, he has nothing to worry about, because the Iranian people are going to be very content. But I don't think that they are content. In fact, there were a lot of them who were on the street and many of them who were killed by the mullahs not that long ago. So, quite clearly, there's a powerful movement of dissent in Iran. And ultimately, I'm counting on those people, not the people who have been killed, obviously, but people like them, to take back their own country.

[A]

You got some time left? You want to.

[B]

I'm good.

[A]

Okay, Myron, final five minutes, and then we'll get into closing statements.

[C]

Okay. So you mentioned a couple of things. Number one, you mentioned that Iran has alienated their Muslim neighbors in the region. Yeah, you can make that argument to a degree. They pissed off the Saudis in some of the Gulf states or whatever. But let's be honest here. Who have they hurt more, their reputation with them or the United States? I would argue they hurt the United States more, because what they've done is exposed that we cannot guarantee them the security from which we claim and justify the usage and the creation of our bases and placement of our military bases in their area. Keep in mind, these countries only allowed us to have military bases there in exchange for protecting them. And what they're seeing now is that we not only have led to them getting attacked, but we can't even hold up our end of the bargain and protect them. So this is the issue when it comes to that. So, yes. Has Iran alienated their Muslim neighbors? To a degree, absolutely. But I would argue that we're taking a way bigger hit from this because now our bases are destroyed. And quite frankly, unless there's a regime change, they're not going to allow us to rebuild those bases. So, yes, they hurt themselves in the process, but they've hurt us way more and showed that we could be a paper tiger when it comes to maintaining our military bases in the region. And more than likely, we will not have the same foothold in the region because of this. Next, you mentioned that Trump didn't sell this as a regime change. That's laughable. At February 28th, as he was in, as he was invading and bombing, not invading, but bombing. He literally said at the end of his speech, hey, Iranian people, rise up. Take your government. You know, it's yours to take. We're going to help you guys with bombing them, etc. The problem is that Trump grossly miscalculated the amount of people that would be willing to go against the government by getting bad intelligence from Mossad and Netanyahu who claimed, oh, yeah, we're going to be able to go ahead and get a regime change. Once we go ahead and kill Khamenei and kill these individuals on opening day, is it going to create instability? They're not going to straight the close the straight room loose. They're not going to have the balls to attack their neighbors. All of that was a lie. And all that ended up happening. And not only did we kill Khamenei, we went ahead and put his son into power, who's a bigger hardliner. And as we continue to kill different layers of the Iranian leadership, number one, it's irrelevant because they have a mosaic defense and they're able to attack with or without a supreme leader in place. Anyway, they figured this out after the 12 Day War, and they've always had this set up. But we've also. But by assassinating Khamenei, the guy who didn't want nuclear weapons who had a fatwa in place. We put his son in. Who wants nuclear weapons. Who's going to say, fuck the west, we're going to go ahead and hit these guys. We can't trust them because we attacked them, what, two or three times now at this point, while we're in the middle of negotiations. So Trump absolutely wanted a regime change. He's just walking it back now because he's realizing that he can't get the regime change. How else do I know this? Well, Scott Bessant crashed the Riel on purpose in 2026. They had Mossad riots, smuggled in a bunch of starlink. They smuggled in a bunch of weapons. Trump admitted to this a couple of days ago, that they smuggled weapons in trying to cause some type of uprise and it all fell flat on his face. And if anything, all we did was rally the people even more. So again, let me be clear about this. I am not saying that the Iranians love their government. I'm not saying that. And I'm not saying that the government's good. I hate the fact that I even have to defend these fucking guys. But there is so much information of propaganda in the west that I have to come out and tell the truth here. The reality is, as much as they might hate their government, as much as they might hate the Supreme Leader or the Parliament or Prazeskin, etcetera, they're going to side with their government when a foreign invader like the United States and Israel are bombing them non stop. And then the fact that Trump made this true social post he made about killing a civilization or destroying their power plants or, you know, bombing them back to the Stone Age, all of this has made the Iranians realize, yo, these guys don't care about actually helping us, they just want to destroy us. So we've made them rally around the flag 10 times more. So to the point where there's several videos where people are protesting in the streets and they get bombed. And as they get bombed by US and Israeli assets, what are they doing? THEY CHEER oh, fuck the United States. Fuck Israel. We've made them even more extreme in their want for revenge. And the Mossad was obviously behind a lot of these different riots. Pompeo admitted this on Twitter, saying, a Mossad agent walks amongst you. You know, we. Trump admitted that he had smuggled the guns. We know that the Starlinks being smuggled in were funded by also the CIA. That's why the Chinese and the Russians got involved with shutting down the Starlinks as They were trying to go ahead and get these riots going on. So that's one thing. And then also, you mentioned the Iran controls the straighter Hormuz, or they don't just control the straighter Hormuz. The thing is this, they don't have to actually control the straight of Hormuz. And you mentioned that they destroyed their navy. Well, isn't that kind of funny how we destroyed their navy? Yet the Strait of Hormuz is still pretty much closed to ships that they don't want to go through. And that's because the Iranians, all they needed to do was project the ability to destroy strips that go through. They don't actually have to do it. All they got to do is make it where the insurance companies don't want to insure the vessels and then trade stops. And that's. And they've been able to do that effectively. They don't actually have to bomb anybody. And I find it comical that 20 seconds, Rubio and Hexeth say all the time, oh, yeah, we destroyed their navy. Well, how's the straighter humu? Still closed. And then the last thing I'll finish up on here is you mentioned that there's the blockade. We've basically done a blockade of their blockade. That's also comical because vessels have already went through. We've seen this. The Chinese vessel has been able to go through, and they're not going to be able to maintain this for much longer. That is why Trump pushed to get another ceasefire going on. And they're more than likely going to add another 10 days, because Trump knows that these destroyers are going to get destroyed if they continue to do what they're doing. And doing a blockade as an act of war. So this is just a catastrophe all around, but sorry, I went over there.

[A]

All good. Okay, so that's a wrap there. Closing statements, guys. We'll start with Dinesh. Five minutes. Whenever you start, Dinesh, I said the

[B]

Trump did not sell this as a regime change war. And you, Myron, seem to disagree with me by quoting Trump telling the Iranian people, this country is yours to take back for yourselves. Now, you notice that this quote, far from undermining what I said, actually agrees with it, because what is Trump saying? He's telling the Iranian people, listen, I'm not going to give you back your country. You need to take it back. So I might create the conditions for it to happen, but you're going to have to do it. Now, I want to address, I think, the bit of the elephant in the room that we haven't addressed, at least not fully today. And that is this issue of Iraq and Afghanistan that Myron brought up at the very beginning. And I think that we have learned some lessons from those wars, but we have also learned some bad lessons, some wrong lessons. The lesson of Afghanistan and Iraq is not that the regime change was bad. In fact, let's say, let's start with Afghanistan, right? The Taliban loan out the monkey bars for the terrorists to come in from Saudi Arabia, from Egypt, from Pakistan, to launch 9 11. So the Taliban is directly responsible for 9 11. They are the host country of 9 11. The United States has every right in the world to bomb Kabul, to oust the Taliban, to chase them away from power. The regime change was fantastic. It was, by the way, all done with great, speedy effectiveness. The problems began after that when people like Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice began to say, if you break it, you own it. We now have to create a nanny state over there. We've got to instruct the tribes about what to eat and how to organize their tribal councils and what they should educate their children with. And we need to create democracy and sway the hearts and all of this gobbledygook and nonsense when the truth of the matter is, when you have a country that does this to you, you pulverize them. You let their rivals come to power. You make sure that their rivals are pro American, and you get the heck out of there. That's what we should have done in Afghanistan. And right now we would probably have the Northern alliance and a bunch of ruthless tribes that would be running it now. And they probably would have killed off most of the Taliban a long time ago. But instead, we tried to sort of run this parliamentary democracy Western style. That was the mistake, creating a nanny state in Afghanistan. And by the way, this kind of the same. The same mistake in Iraq. Regime change, by the way, has a great and glorious history which many people are not familiar with, since their knowledge of history generally extends only about 20 years. Think of it. The American Revolution was regime change. We got rid of a really bad regime, and it was a really great thing. The Civil War was regime change. The Confederacy had established a separate nation. That nation was overthrown. Regime change. The Mexican war in the nineteen, in the 1840s was regime change. Texas was an independent republic. They went to war with Mexico. They won that war with American assistance. They joined the United States. Regime change. The Cold War. You had regime change in dozens of countries, and all for the better. And so regime change actually has a very. I'm not even talking about World War II, where of course, there was regime change in Japan, in Germany, by the way, in Italy, all the points that Myron is making could be made about Mussolini. Hey, listen, don't attack Italy because it's going to make hardliners come to power. The United States attacked Italy. The Allies attacked Italy. What happened is that the Italian people themselves, themselves captured Mussolini, executed him, switched sides from the Nazi side over to the Allied side. And all of this because the power of Italy had been pulverized and powerful figures inside of Italy realized, hey, it's beneficial for us to switch sides. Something like that is very likely, very possible in Iran where you have powerful people in the military who realize, guess what, the equation is shifting. The mullahs are tottering, things could change. They could be out. We may want to make some new friends with the Saudis and new friends with uae. We could be the next rulers of Iran. All kinds of things can happen. And I think it's very short sighted to just declare a priori that it's a mistake because somehow Iran is going to emerge magically stronger than ever, more virtuous than ever, with more friends than ever. This may be the way that Myron wants it to be. It's like wishful looking for what he's hoping the world will look like, but it's not an actual description of the world.

[A]

Okay, Myron, final closing statement.

[C]

So you said that Trump telling the people to rise up is not a regime change. That's false because that is by definition what a regime change is. If the people get rise up and take over the government, that's going to lead to a regime change. And that's what he was trying to do. The problem is that Trump got a little too drunk on the Kool Aid after getting regime change in Venezuela with relatively very little effort. And what ended up happening was it completely backfired. He thought he'd be able to get in there in a couple of days and get out, especially against his intelligence agencies telling him, hey, this isn't going to work. All you're going to do is build their resolve. Killing the Khomeini and killing the top people in the military as the top people in the government. Is it going to really do much? And you know, we're seeing that the agencies were right. All of his top advisors told him this was a bad idea. But he listened to the Mossad, he listened to Netanyahu, he listened to their analysis and thought that the regime change would actually work. That is what they pushed for so telling the people to rise up and actually supporting it by sending in weapons, starlinks, getting agitators, having, working with foreign intelligence agencies to try to destabilize the country. This is regime change. It's just that he tried to do it the easy way without putting boots on the ground. Now, when we talk about regime change, regime change is not good. I know you're saying you believe regime change is good. I think regime change is not good, especially in the Middle east, and I'll tell you why. Every single time that we've tried to effectuate regime change in the Middle east, it's created problems. Or after we got rid of Saddam and toppled him, the country. Iraq's been destabilized, we got rid of Gaddafi. Libya now has slavery. Sudan has literally a civil war. Regime change simply does not work in the Middle East. And the reason why is because these people, right, these Muslims, a lot of times, number one, they're very devout to their religion and they're not afraid to die. So these, these guys are not going to fall under the same types of, you know, examples you gave, like with Italy and Mussolini, etc. You cannot kill an ideology. And they're going to continue to resist. They're going to continue to fight until we solve the Palestine question. We cannot just keep putting a band aid on this really big leak and continue to let Israel protect the. Sorry. Project the power the way that they do and be aggressive towards their neighbors. And they're never going to have peace in the region until we solve this problem. So regime change does not work. You also mentioned Afghanistan. Well, who's in power right now in Afghanistan? The Taliban. So we went in there, we won every single battle. We left, and then who's back in power again? The Taliban. And we have nothing to show for it. We have trillions of dollars of debt. We have dead soldiers and dead servicemen. And even Nick Irving, right, the reaper, he even admitted, yeah, I don't know why we're in Afghanistan. This was a guy that was one of the top snipers, worked with Special Forces, Army Ranger. And even he's like, yeah, I lost all my friends. I suffered so much. And who's in power right now in Afghanistan? Who did you bleed for? Oh, well, to fight the Taliban. Well, they're back in power now. So regime change does not work. And this is why foreign intervention doesn't work. The problem is that we get engaged in this foreign intervention because we're run by another country who runs our foreign policy, who have an enormous amount of representation. I know that you said that it's comical that a country of only 9 million can control a country of 300 million. Well, that's not so comical because the problem is that, let's be honest, a lot of the people that are in positions of power are Zionist. And what they say goes when someone like Amira Adelson gives Trump $100 million to keep him out of prison and win his win the election, well, he's going to have to, he's going to have to listen to and or make good on some of the things that she's asking for. And one of the things that a lot of these Zionists Israelis donate to Trump for and or supported for is for having a more pro Israel stance. So though the country is small and the representation in the United States might be small, these people have big influence. That's the big issue there. Now, to wrap up based on not just off what you were saying, but to wrap up a generally. How much more time do I have?

[A]

A minute 15.

[C]

And in closing, I'll say that this war has been a quagmire and a catastrophe in every single way. Diplomatically, we're losing, as I said before, by, you know, alienating our partners in NATO, alienating our partners in the Gulf. We've had our military bases destroyed. That's going to lead to an open door for potentially the Chinese or the Russians to come in because I don't see that we'll be able to have the same type of presence in the Middle east because we're going to def. We're not going to be able to do the regime change in Iran like we want because we're not going to put the boots on the ground. They tried with the riots, they tried with crash in real. It didn't work. The only way now is boots on the ground and that's going to be catastrophic from a casualty standpoint. So we're not going to do that. So the Gulf states are going to have to basically not allow us to maintain bases there because they don't want to keep getting bombed and having the straight room loose closed. We're losing economically because we have the biggest energy crisis ever. Militarily though, we might be destroying their army, their navy and their air force. That's irrelevant because their ballistic missile program is what's causing a lot of the damage. And we can't effectively destroy that because it's dispersed. It's a mosaic defense. There's hundreds of places across Iran. And then lastly, politically, we're losing because this war is extremely unfavorable with people on both sides of the spectrum. And Trump has just put himself in a horrible position with the midterms thanks to this war.

[A]

Ok, that's a wrap. Thanks for your time, gentlemen. Kept it very civil. Made my job easy. Thank you.

[C]

Absolutely. Dinesh talking with you.

[B]

I enjoyed it. Thank you very much.

[A]

Awesome. Thanks for staying all the way to the end, guys. It means a lot to me. If you could please leave a review on Apple that helps us climb the charts, it helps us get way more guests, and it helps us continue growing the podcast and the team. So it would mean a lot to me if you left a review on Apple or wherever else you're listening. Thanks so much.