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- [00:00]
Public Investing Announcer
Support for the show comes from Public, the investing platform for those who take it seriously. On Public you can build a multi asset portfolio of stocks, bonds, options, crypto and now generated assets which allow you to turn any idea into an investable index with AI. It all starts with your prompt. From renewable energy companies with high free cash flow to semiconductor suppliers growing revenue over 20% year over year, you can literally type any prompt and put the AI to work. It screens thousands of stocks, builds a one of a kind index and lets you back test it against the S&P 500. Then you can invest in a few clicks. Generated assets are like ETFs with infinite possibilities, completely customizable and based on your thesis, not someone else's. Go to public.com podcast and earn an uncapped 1% bonus when you transfer your portfolio. That's public.com podcast paid for by Public Investing Brokerage Services by Open to the Public Investing Inc. Member FINRA and SIPC Advisory services by Public Advisors, llc. SEC Registered Advisor Generated Assets is an interactive analysis tool. Output is for informational purposes only and is not an investment recommendation or advice. Complete disclosures available@public.com disclosures if you're feeling
- [01:02]
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- [01:30]
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- [02:04]
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- [02:36]
Steve Yates
Welcome to Nation States with Yates. I'm Steve Yates, hoping to serve as your personal national security advisor to help you navigate the issues that matter to the White House, but more importantly to your house. You've seen the headlines, you've heard the talking points. We aim to kind of get past all of that straight through to some Main street common sense about the major issues of the day. Now, you might not think that you need a national security advisor, but my guess is that the world does affect your way of life. You know it. And I appreciate you joining us in this conversation and journey to talk through these major issues. Well, today we're gonna take up the issues surrounding the country of Iran, the major military operations that have been underway now for two months and the President's efforts to bring the major military elements of that conflict to a close. But on terms that work for the United States, probably also leaving some capabilities in region to do what I would call maintenance mode on this particular conflict. Well, today in the meat of our conversation, I'm going to feature a provocative essay written by good friend Fred Flitz of the America First Policy Institute where he argues the President should declare victory now in give an ultimatum to Iran and back up that ultimatum by force. I think it's a constructive and provocative formulation. Let's see what you think about it. Encourage you to check that out on americangreatness.com but no doubt the stakes are high this week as we look at these major issues in China and Iran. But today's episode, we're going to dive deep on the Iran parts. And after this short break, we welcome you back for the meat of today's conversation.
- [04:21]
Public Investing Announcer
Support for the show comes from Public, the investing platform for those who take it seriously. On public, you can build a multi asset portfolio of stocks, bonds, options, crypto and now generated assets which allow you to turn any idea into an investable index. With AI, it all starts with your prompt. From renewable energy companies with high free cash flow to semiconductor suppliers growing revenue over 20% year over year. You can literally type any prompt and put the AI to work. It screens thousands of stocks, builds a one of a kind index and lets you back test it against the S&P 500. Then you can invest in a few clicks. Generated assets are like ETFs with infinite possibilities, completely customizable and based on your thesis, not someone else's. Go to public.com podcast and earn an uncapped 1% bonus when you transfer your portfolio. That's public.com podcast paid for by Public Investing Brokerage Services by Open to the Public Investing Inc. Member FINRA and SIPC Advisory Services by Public Advisors, llc. SEC Registered Advisor. Generated Assets is an interactive analysis tool. Output is for informational purposes only and is not an investment recommendation or advice. Complete disclosures available@public.com disclosures if you're feeling
- [05:22]
Inner Balance Advertiser
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- [05:51]
Steve Yates
That's innerbalance.com welcome back to Nation States with Yates. Well, Iran certainly has been a major challenge for the Trump administration, but really for the United States ever since the late 1970s. And President Trump is the first president in two generations really to take some big risks to try to resolve this intractable problem. At the heart of this is the nature of the regime, a theocratic regime that is not what we would call moderate in any way, shape or form. But there's three different parts of that threat that the president has made a priority focus on. One is the nuclear capabilities. The Iranians have had decades of scientific and engineering efforts to build and secure facilities that could make the world's most dangerous weapons. They've had many different forms of negotiations. The United States have had directly with the Iranians, indirectly with the Iranians, by way of Europeans tried to go through the United nations tried to use sanctions. Everything in the quiver, every arrow has been fired. And yet the problem persisted. And so President Trump in last year decided to green light some decisive military actions where we had US and Israel efforts to have a strike on some of these facilities. But lo and behold, after making that decisive strike, which should have cowered a rational government, we ended up trying to continue negotiations with the theocratic regime there. And what did they tell our negotiators? They said, we're not going to give you by negotiation what you can't take from us militarily. That is a pretty big dare. Now some of you out there might say, well, so what if some crazy people out in the world want to give some bluster? This is them talking tough, but we're the big bad, the United States of America. We've got alliances. This is no real threat to us. I don't know. I beg to differ on that. I think that when you have scientific evidence that they've pursued these weapons for a very, very long time, the level of enrichment is completely inconsistent with pursuit of nuclear energy needs for your economy. And why does an oil rich country need nuclear energy anyway? It's pretty clear that they are seeking the world's ultimate deterrent because they want to impose their will on their neighbors and maybe even on the United States. And what is that will? Well, there's the slogan, death to America. Does that mean something to you when they say death to Israel, death to America. And they have in fact killed Americans over the years and they definitely have killed Israelis over the years. Well, again, people might say, well, this is bluster. I think this is bluster mixed with capability. And the President really didn't have a lot of good options because our allies who had said they wanted to stand with us and put pressure on Iran, were making deals with Iran. They're making deals with Iran's enablers like China and Russia. And so pressure wasn't working as we had hoped before. The deterrent against trying to pursue these kinds of weapons wasn't working. And yet the breakout threat seem to be approaching a point where we wouldn't want to wait until there's devastation caused by an irresponsible actor before trying to do something to neutralize that threat. Sort of like if you had a pack of rabid dogs outside your rural household, would you wait until they came and bit your kids before you take action against them? Or would you deal with this threat before it comes and, and hurts your family? Well, President is the big daddy of our family when it comes to national security. And so he chose to act. This point, key challenge is, what do we do now? Our military has performed amazingly. And just about every traditional military task that I, in my experience have ever seen assigned to the military was executed almost without a single error. We had one plane go down where a crew needed to be rescued, but even that rescue was darn near flawless. We've had thousands and thousands of targets hit, capabilities degraded significantly. If the war stopped now, Iran as it's currently constituted could still be a problem, but nowhere near the problem it was before this campaign began. So if that's true, what then should the President be choosing to do now as major military operations seem to be coming to a close. And yet there are remnants of a regime in place. We've had negotiations go back and forth before this campaign at the end of February began. And we've had the negotiations even continue in recent days with exchanges of letters talking about things that the remnants of this regime might commit to do, how we would know, how we would enforce to be determined, and what the United States would do by pulling back. We've had calls in the United States saying this is not our war and it's a travesty and we should get out of Iran. Well, I'd encourage you to use your Main street common sense to ask yourselves, how do we get out of a country we're not even in? Obviously, we, we're not in Iran. We are at its periphery. We are pinning them in on their ports with a blockade. We have overwhelming capability, ready, willing and able to strike with impunity, just asking for what target sets and at what risk for retaliation and otherwise. These are the things that a commander in chief has to look down the barrel of when trying to make calls on this. We also have some profound powers in place economically, of course, the embargo, but financial tools that the secretary of treasury has, and given that Iran irrationally, I would argue, hit its neighbors, a lot of those neighbors have opened up their financial system to give us access to regime accounts so that we're able to freeze more assets than we were before the conflict. And all of these things add up to comprehensive, I would argue nuclear level, economic pressure together with America is back level of superpower force that's in the region. But ultimately to do what? I have a friend, Fred Fleitz of the America First Policy Institute, who wrote a provocative article in American Greatness that I encourage you to go check out. It was published on May 8. The title is Trump should end the Iran war now with an ultimatum to Tehran, not negotiations. Key premise he leads with is the United States has achieved decisive victory in the conflict with Iran after months of targeted strikes over under Operation Epic Fury, Iran's nuclear program lies in ruins and its missile production capability has been destroyed. Iran's conventional military capabilities have been dismantled, its proxy networks are starved of support, and the regime is fragmented and reeling. President Trump delivered on his promise of short, decisive action without US Boots on the ground. Rather than another endless quagmire, now is the time to declare victory. Exit on our terms, lock in the gains. Well, I ask you, Middle America, does that sound like something that you want to choose by way of an option. My sense is the way Fred has framed this, this is exactly where a lot of Americans want to be recognized that the President was quite right to face this threat and his critics were quite wrong, that it wasn't imminent and it wasn't something worthy of the risks that were taken, that we're looking to stay out of Iran. We're not looking to be an occupying power. That comes with some risks. When you take off the option set invading, occupying and rutting a country that you've conquered. Something that we tried in Afghanistan and Iraq, and by most people's assessment, it didn't go so well and they don't want to repeat that. That's off the table and I would argue rightly so in this instance. Short of that, there was the Obama approach of buying the threat where we release funds that have been seized under sanctions as somewhat of a financial incentive to get compliance on an agreement to terms that we go through our negotiators to try to secure. That might involve inspecting suspicious facilities, having some kind of sanctions or penalties locked in so that if you find problems, then penalties occur. This was tried for years and years and years and that did not prove to work. We still had Iran rushing ahead with way too much enrichment capability in way too many places, but also married with increased capability to launch those dangerous capabilities at distance. During the course of this conflict, Iran launched a projectile that went deep into the Indian Ocean, a couple thousand miles, that is intercontinental ballistic missile range. Pairing the delivery at distance with these dangerous capabilities, that really is a clear and present danger for American troops, American allies, and in some ways, probably even for homeland America. If this kind of dangerous technology is married together with a porous border of the past and elements that may already be here, ready, willing and able to do things that we don't want to see in our headlines, much less in our neighborhood. So the President acted. We are at a decisive moment, somewhat in a pause. Some are saying it's a stalemate. But one of the great mistakes in trying to read the world in Trump 2.0 is drawing long term conclusions based on short term developments. We're in this period where we've had our blockade. The Iranians have frozen some shipments out of the Strait of Hormuz by threat more than what they're doing, it's what they're threatening. And the big insurers of the world, largely Lloyds of London out of England, and have priced the insurance for these commercial vessels that are worth hundreds of millions of dollars, way too high. So They've been frozen in place. So Fred's saying declare victory. Major military operations, mission accomplished. Avoid that banner because that was ruined during the Iraq conflict. But that theory, that ethos in place, we've done what the President set out to do, but we still have some unfinished business. There's uncertainty inside of Iran. There's political uncertainty about who's actually in charge. It's going to take some time to figure out can the people of Iran rise up and chart a different course. Are we really just trying to contain any kind of fallout that a degraded regime might try to engage in post major military operations? We've degraded their network around the region. We might need to still keep some presence in in the region to help reinforce that. But we really need a transition to allies playing their part. Fred argues very clearly and concisely that we, instead of trying to have an agreement that is enforced, which the President may choose to try to do, we should just give an ultimatum that we've done what we came to do. You shall not have a nuclear capability. If we detect that you are making progress at a time and a means at our choosing, whether America or or our allies, you will be hit again and say that we are not going to tolerate any further activities along the lines of resuscitating the means of delivery of the missiles that could hit the near abroad, including our bases. And we're going to basically, I would argue, change into what I would call mowing the lawn kind of maintenance. America has done all of the landscaping. We re engineered the landscaping of the broader Middle East. We re engineered the terms that Iran is able to engage with its near abroad and with us and even with some of what it thought were its friends. We've re engineered its ability to have any value for the People's Republic of China. We've re engineered what it thought it had by way of buying military technology from Russia and China that proved not up to the task of defending against America and its very capable allies. So with that reset, what Fred is arguing is declare victory now, reject the negotiations, issue an ultimatum, and then you enforce that ultimatum from time to time. It may not need to be with overwhelming force, but we reserve the right to have that. And we definitely want to make sure that the countries that are dependent on this vital region are doing their fair share to ensure freedom of navigation. And they're doing their part to make sure that Iran never is able to reconstitute the level of threat that predated this conflict. I think that those are some interesting terms. Some of What I have summarized in Fred's argument are Steve Yates interpretation of what Fred was arguing and I'd encourage you to have first contact with his article on americangreatness.com think for yourself. And if you agree with parts of it, then let the people that you talk to, among your elected representatives and among your friends and family, encourage them to engage in the discourse that supports the idea of this kind of a transition from what has been called war or major military operations to something that allows the economy and energy prices to go back to normal, that allows for a continuation of the rebalancing of that vital region in the broader Middle east that President Trump historically unleashed with the first Abraham Accords. And I would argue that that foundation now continues to serve a vital national security benefit to the United States and the world and to continue the fine, fine work of rebalancing America in being the resurgent superpower that is less dependent on the rest of the world for energy and supply chains, is more reliable as a partner because we are strong and we are committed to helping those who help themselves and work with America. I think we are in a much, much better place today in May of 2026 than we were in February of 2026, courtesy of, of our amazing military, a brave president and some amazing tools in the financial world in addition to the military and national security world. That has changed, I think the fundamentals of this in an important way, that's the stakes that are really in the crosshairs this week. Why does that matter to Main Street America, to your house, not just the White House? Well, of course, energy prices affect us all. And people need to remember that fossil fuels don't just run your car or heat your home. Fossil fuels are also in the clothes that you wear. A lot of the flex tec clothing that people wear when they work out or the stretchy fabrics they have in their washable suits, whatever they might be, those are based on these fuels. And global markets are what they are. Those prices affect what, what you're buying in a big box store or on Amazon just as much as the price you pay at the pump. So it's vital for the president to get to victory on this. And I think that the option is there. Fred has put some interesting guideposts down about where to move. And let's see, over the coming course of this week, whether we get there with the president resetting terms in Beijing with China and the negotiations hitting a wall in Iran, maybe this is actually a fortuitous pivot point to get to a defined end of our major military engagement there. With that, we're going to take a quick break before we come back with some closing thoughts.
- [22:45]
Public Investing Announcer
Support for the show comes from Public, the investing platform for those who take it seriously. On Public, you can build a multi asset portfolio of stocks, bonds, options, crypto and now generated assets which allow you to turn any idea into an investable index with AI. It all starts with your prompt. From renewable energy companies with high free cash flow to semiconductor suppliers growing revenue over 20% year over year, you can literally type any prompt and put the AI to work. It screens thousands of stocks, builds a one of a kind index and lets you back test it against the S&P 500. Then you can invest in a few clicks. Generated assets are like ETFs with infinite possibilities, completely customizable and based on your thesis, not someone else's. Go to public.com podcast and earn an uncapped 1% bonus when you transfer your portfolio. That's public.com podcast paid for by Public Investing Brokerage Services by Open to the Public Investing Inc. Member FINRA and SIPC Advisory Services by Public Advisors llc, SEC Registered Advisor Generated Assets is an interactive analysis tool. Output is for informational purposes only and is not an investment recommendation or advice. Complete disclosures available@public.com disclosures if you're feeling
- [23:46]
Inner Balance Advertiser
off fatigue, mood changes, skin shifts, yet your labs say everything's normal, you're not alone. Meet Oestra from Inner Balance, the first all in one prescription strength bioidentical hormone cream that's natural and effective and only takes one drop, 10 seconds a day. Oester replaces five to six products women typically use to treat symptoms and is third party tested to ensure the highest quality. Visit innerbalance.com today to start feeling like yourself again.
- [24:15]
Steve Yates
That's innerbalance.com welcome back to Nation States with Yates. Well, thank you for spending your time through the meat of our conversation and taking a deep dive on things related to the Iran conflict. I hope you found today's essay as provocative as I did, but also in a constructive way. Really interested in what you think about these kinds of ideas. How do we as a common sense nation get to a conclusion of a conflict, but also believe in the mission that the President launched us into? Believe in the success and capabilities of our military, not get overly moved by the pop and sizzle of the incident analysis that we can get buried under and basically see the broad fundamentals that have been changed by this. The key takeaways I would argue from today are don't make the mistake of getting too moved by short term developments when the long term fundamentals are really, really strong. And what the president's done to reset the broader Middle east on the Abraham Accords, to reset the broader world markets on energy, highlighting some key vulnerabilities. But the essential mission of freedom of navigation on the high seas and pressing our allies to do their fair share on that, that matters. And all of this, we will come back to you and your bottom line. If the president meets with success in this mission, finds a way to transition to a maintenance mode, gets the right support from allies and partners to make this hold up, those energy prices come down to more normal ranges. The products you're buying at the box stores, the price you're paying at the pump get back to normal. And America is humming along. We've done very, very well as an economy through this conflict, astonishingly so. The stock market is up. A lot of our growth figures are up. That's pretty remarkable when you go through a period of concern and somewhat chaos at a time of conflict. So kudos to those who stayed true. Let's see whether we get to that point of inflection and get to a defined victory. I think we should be proud of our troops, proud of what's been accomplished, recognizing it was a necessary thing to do. And now we get into the mode of keeping those gains and getting back to making America great here at home. With that, I'm Steve Yates, your host here at Nation States with Yates. I thank you very much for joining us. Each episode. Our next episode is going to take a look at a hot wash on the developments this week with the president going to China and seeing what comes of negotiations or military operations with Iran. So in our next episode, come on back and let's get some Main street talk about what's happening in this wide world. Thank you so much. Talk to you next time.
- [27:09]
Inner Balance Advertiser
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- [27:39]
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- [28:11]
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- [29:10]
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