B (4:52)

Okay, So I should say I wrote this based on what I thought was going to be the sort of reality right now, which is that the Strait of Hormuz would be closed and there would be in fact a ceasefire. The fact that the Strait of Hormuz at this hour, as we're recording this at 9:30am that it would be open. Right, yeah, which is what you said, closed.

A (5:11)

Which is an interesting.

B (5:12)

Sorry. Oh, no, not closed. I mean that it would be open. So, I mean, if, if, if this situation remains and it's not open, then obviously it's, it's not a deal. But if it is open as is, if the deal is as the Iranians and Trump described it, that you have two weeks where the strait is open. And I say, okay, well, what did the Iranians get? Well, it now appears the Iranians are at least, I mean, I don't know what Trump is saying, but the US and the Iranians are going to be collecting a toll on the strait. To me, it's more important that you reassure markets so that you avoid the potential for, you know, further delays in supply chains and a potential oil shock and all of the unattended consequences there. And in exchange for what Trump did not agree to the Iranian 10 point plan, which we should note is ridiculous and no one will ever, no American president, I don't even think Biden would ever agree to it. But, but what actually the agreement, as I understand it says, is that the 10 point plan and our 15 point plan are the basis of negotiations. Well, in other words, we've agreed to negotiate and you're going to shut down. You're going to open rather the Strait for two weeks. And in the meantime, you know, the Iranian leadership is going to wake up and they're going to say to themselves, they're going to finally kind of see the extent of the damage they're going to that has been done. And there are tangible hard power victories as a result of a five week campaign that cannot be undone. And the one piece of real leverage, as opposed to like narrative soft power leverage that the Iranians have was the Strait of Hormuz and the potential damage it could do to the global economy. And now that that seems to hopefully that'll be resolved in a few hours, then I consider that to be a victory because we have not committed to anything else. And I mean things that were really important in every nuclear deal before, John, like the promises on enrichment and everything like that. It's a little bit quaint right now because what are they going to enrich with? They don't have a nuclear program. The one thing we want are that 900 pounds of highly enriched uranium. Still they need to enrich it even more. But we'd like to get that and get that out of there. But other than that, they don't have a nuclear program. They don't have an industry capable of producing missiles. They don't have a navy, they don't have an air force, they don't have an air defense. They don't have a lot of, they don't have their most capable leaders. Those are real victories in terms of the goal of defanging Iran and making sure they don't have a conventional shield to rebuild their nuclear program.

A (7:51)

Okay, that's a great, don't take that away.

B (7:53)

Okay, now we now apparently gonna be open.

A (7:56)

Okay, so that's a great summary that the defanging that this war was intended to defang Iran. Okay, Noah, you and I talked to you like six minutes ago, called you on the phone and said you gotta come on and talk. And I said on a scale of 1 to 10, 1 being epic disaster and 10 being triumphant, you know, Japan, Germany, victory, where are you? And you were above five, you were six, seven, something like that. So you are, I think, I think tactically, let's say where, Eli, is that the tangible, actual material things that we have, the damage that we have inflicted on Iran has to be viewed in its own light and not as part of this grand design of regime change completely restructuring in the Middle East. You know, they cowtow they bend their knee to us and all of that. Do I have that right?

E (9:00)

I guess I don't want to. I Mean, for the most part, I don't want to step on our, you know, assessment of the flaws of this sort of situation. But, you know, there's a lot of.

A (9:09)

Go with that first and we'll get to that.

E (9:11)

Yeah, sure. I mean, just to set the table, then, you know, the President is out there saying, we're going to run an extortion racket with Iran, and a lot of people are taking that seriously. And if you are, you don't know what you're talking about. You need to sit down and do some more reading and listen to people who do. But I see a lot of people who are just jumping on board.

B (9:28)

Say it.

A (9:29)

He did say it.

E (9:30)

Says a lot of guys. Hey, guys, we're 10 years into this thing in which Trump says whatever he needs to say to get through the next 60 seconds. I can't believe this is news to you, but it seems like it really is for a lot of people. Listen, the Mosaic strategy, the autonomous field commanders here are still firing.

A (9:48)

That's in Iran. Hold on. The Mosaic strategy was that basically there was a decentralized, as the attack came to be, on the centralized command and control of the Iranian military, that they've gone to a Mosaic strategy in which basically everybody in the field gets to take their own independent shot.

E (10:10)

And they're still hitting even strategic targets. They're hitting oil transit networks in Saudi Arabia as we speak. That could imperil this ceasefire. However, the ceasefire didn't exactly come as a result of American military pressure alone, and certainly not Trump's threats alone. It came from the intervention of China. China imposed, apparently, according to reports, China imposed these conditions on Iranian leadership. Iranian leadership acquiesced and is subsequently attempting to filter that down to the communication networks that they have. Says A. The communication networks are severed, Iran's central nervous system is cut off, and also that its allies that it needs to perpetuate this regime. We're getting a little wobbly. I don't think that favorably contrasts with America's military posture, which is still there, which is still forward operating, which still to my mind, has the resolve to use this military. And Iran's demands changed, whereas ours did not. Over the course of the last two weeks, Iran's demands were for a permanent cessation of hostilities ratified by Congress, demonstrating the thumbless grasp of American politics that foreigners tend to have when they thought that Congress would do anything. A permanent ceasefire, non aggression agreement ratified by Congress and reparations for the damage absorbed by war got rid of all of that. We didn't change our posture at all. In fact, we just said, okay, we'll stop bombing. Even though we hold that threat in reserve. Iran put on the table its last point of leverage over the United States. And over the course of an hour or so, the epic generational damage that was done to the Middle Eastern oil infrastructure from which we would never recover. Literally never recover. All of a sudden, the prices collapsed, markets restored, Brent's under 100. West Texas Intermediate is around 80. And all of this stuff was not supposed to happen. So I'm wondering why it's happening if you were hanging on the President's every word. And I agree, it's really suboptimal to have an unreliable narrator as the president in this sort of situation. But once you accept that as a fact, you're capable of analyzing the actual situation on the ground. And the situation on the ground obviously favors the United States. Hostilities can still resume, but we're in a very favorable negotiating posture right now.

A (12:21)

It's interesting. My kids, something's going on with their sheets. Go to their beds. They're like half off. They roll around at night. Sheets are slipping off the corners. Also, pillows kind of look mushy and crappy and old. This is one of these things. I'm told most people actually keep their bedding way longer than they should. It wears down. You don't realize how much it's affecting your sleep and making your bed look ugly until you finally make the decision to replace it. And most people think they need a new mattress. But the biggest difference usually comes just from replacing what touches you every night. That's why you should upgrade your bed with bowl and branch. They make everything your bed needs signature organic cotton sheets, pillows, blankets and comforters, all designed to be breathable, incredibly soft. Get better over time. Most people start with the signature sheets and a lot of customers buy two sets so they can rotate them. They've also added the waffle blanket and now the whole bed just feels amazing. So upgrade your sleep with bowl and Branch. Get 15% off your first order plus free shipping at bowlandbranch.com commentary with code COMMENTARY that's Boland Branch B O L L A n d branch.com commentary code commentary to unlock 15% off. Exclusions apply. I'm going to tell you a quick story about my kids beds. One night I had to lie down on one of my kids mattresses and like my head went backward and I thought, boy, this is bad. And as it just so happened that week, Brooklyn Bedding decided that they wanted to try to advertise with commentary and they offered to send us a mattress so that we could test it to see if we were a good product for for them and they were a good product for us. Got one, put it on my son's bed. It was so fantastic that I got two more for each of my daughters. That's how committed I am to Brooklyn Bedding, a company that focuses on integrity and hard work. They built a mattress in the USA with high quality materials, real attention to detail. It's that classic American ethos. Do the job right, stand behind your product, build something that lasts. It uses Glaciotex covers, copper infused foams, temperature regulating materials to help keep you cool and comfortable all night long. And there's 120 night comfort trial. Love it. Or they'll help you return or swap it hassle free. So go to BrooklynBetting.com and use my promo code commentary at checkout to get 30% off site wide. This offer is not available anywhere else. That's BrooklynBetting.com and promo code COMMENTARY for 30 off site wide. Support our show and let them know we sent you after checkout. Brooklyn betting.com promo code commentary. Eliana, is there a deal by which I mean they got 10 points, we got 15 points. They're contradictory. Trump announced there was a deal. Noah says China visited, forced Iran to accept the deal. Where's the deal? Where's the term sheet? Where what points are we arguing? Are we arguing over our points which completely contradict Iran's points or are we arguing over Iran's points? I don't think all that happened is that the United States said we're going to stop dropping bombs on you. And the Iranians in the last 13 hours have bombed Tel Aviv, have hit Saudi Arabia, have hit Kuwait, have hit the uae. Now you can say they're not really doing it because of the Mosaic strategy, but that doesn't look like a ceasefire to me. It's a one sided ceasefire in which we're not bombing and they are and maybe that's a kind of long tail that, you know, has to burn itself out. I'm not saying that's not possible, but do you see a term sheet? Doesn't a deal involve a sheet where there's an agreed upon set of terms where when you use the word deal. He's a real estate guy. What's a real estate deal? It's a term sheet.

D (16:37)

Yeah, I'm more down on this than everybody else.

A (16:43)

Not the ME but we'll get to that.

D (16:44)

Okay, we went into this well, of course there's no deal. They said, we're going to spend two weeks trying to negotiate a deal. And these are people who are expert at drawing out negotiations. And we went into this war because these were not trustworthy negotiators and they were running rings around. Yeah, they were dishonestly negotiating with Witkoff and Kushner. We also went into this. The cause of the war was that Iran had to give up its nuclear capabilities. John, you're right that this does come down to whatever deal can be negotiated over the next two weeks, what's in it and how we verify it. My real concern is that Trump went into this with all the confidence of the success of Operation Midnight Hammer and Operation Epic Fury proved more difficult, and that he will be more reluctant to go back at this and restart military operations in two weeks than he was to get military operations underway six weeks ago. And it's hugely important that he finish the job if the Iranians, which they will give him the run around in negotiations over giving up what remains of their nuclear capabilities. That's my concern with this.

A (18:30)

Okay, so. And listening to Pete Hegseth this morning. Now, again, Pete Hegseth is not Trump. And as Noah says, he's an unreliable narrator. And he said we was going to destroy the civilization at 8am and at 8pm we're going to set a toll booth up with the Iranians. So, you know, this is a very.

D (18:48)

That's my other. That's my other qualm is they've shown that they can hold the world economy hostage, and leaving them with that capability, I take issue with.

A (19:03)

And not just that, but, no, I don't want to like Trump know.

D (19:06)

And this is not, by the way. I'd still rather, even if this is how it ends, I'd still, still rather have done it than not done.

A (19:13)

Right.

D (19:14)

Can we pull. This is not to look a gift horse in the mouth, but we really assume that this is going to, I put it at, like, you know, a three, not a six or a seven.

A (19:24)

Okay.

D (19:25)

I concede that they, they are not a regional power, a dominant regional power in the way that they were. But I have major concerns about this, and I was, I was hugely disappointed last night.

A (19:38)

No, I want to get to the geostrategic point you want to make about, about the blackmail and what it might mean elsewhere. But we got it. We got to sequence this. And Abe has not yet spoke, so. Abe speak.

C (19:52)

Yeah, here's where I stand on this. The ceasefire, I put at A one. I'm not I don't think the ceasefire is a good idea, but considering that I put the war at an 8 or a 9, how can I be upset? I didn't expect Midnight Hammer. That was terrific. I didn't expect Operation Epic Fury to set back the regime years in its nuclear program and its missile production and taking out the leadership. Like, we knew Trump wanted a short war. We never thought that this was going to be some stretched out investment here. So we kind of knew this was coming. We don't know what this deal in the making portends. We don't know whether. Look, I know Trump is not dying to go back in with bombers and jets and the rest of it, but if Iran doesn't stop hitting its neighbors by this afternoon, obviously we have a problem. Now, I don't know if, and I think the US will do something about it. We don't know. I've never seen a ceasefire where parties don't fire for a few hours after it's announced. So I'm not terribly shocked by this. We have to see where this all goes. I don't trust the regime. I don't want to make a deal. I don't trust them to make a deal at all. Trump still says we will get the highly enriched uranium out of that country. Again, we don't know if he means it. We don't know what his timeframe is.

A (21:54)

He doesn't just say, hold on. He didn't just say, we're going to go get it. He said, the Iranians agreed that we were going to go get it. He made that up. The Iranians have not agreed that we're going to go get the dust from under the dust. He just said it.

C (22:14)

And Hegset said, if they don't, we'll get it.

A (22:17)

Yeah, but that's not what Trump said. Trump said the agreement involved us going to get the dust. So there is no agreement. I agree. He's making things up out of whole cloth. Fine. As Noah would say, that's Trump. You gotta take Trump as it comes. Which also means, of course, that the ceasefire is conditional and all that. Except when you have a whitey, a whitey war, a mighty war machine functioning, and then you stop it in its tracks. I suppose pushing a button means you just get it started again. But he empowered the part of this administration that we know now from the Maggie Haberman, Jonathan Swan report in the New York Times about how the war started. He empowered the person in this administration who was opposed to the war to go negotiate the terms for the peace with Iran. And with the Pakistanis. So the person who made the deal that isn't a deal is the restrainer. And maybe he just ignores that, but that's a very telling thing that just happened. He didn't say, oh, Marco Rubio, your Secretary of State, you go negotiate the deal. Or even Steve Witkoff and Adam Bora, you've been negotiating stuff. You go negotiate this. He gave it to Vance. I don't know why he gave it to Vance. I think maybe the package was Iran

C (23:51)

wanted Vance as a negotiation.

A (23:52)

I know Iran wanted Vance. So I'm just saying he stopped the machine. Can he flick a switch and start the machine again? I guess. His own Secretary of War is certainly sounding like Johnny is coming marching home and we're going to have a big victory parade. And everything is done. The regime has been changed. The Iranian people have a bright new future with the totalitarian squad that was created by the mullahs that seems to be in charge now. This is a very weird moment of rhetoric. And again, here's what I would say, because I am Mr. Crushing Morosity here, and I'm at a one in terms of disaster. I don't mean that. I don't.

E (24:41)

If I were listening to what? If I was just hanging on every word that came out of the appointees and political officials in this administration, I too, would be despondent. Okay, so great at this. But I'm not listening just to what they're saying. I'm watching what they're doing.

A (24:55)

Well, what they're doing is that they're letting. They're letting Iran bomb Kuwait and do cluster munitions over Israel and destroy a pipeline in Saudi Arabia. And they're not responding. Trump is still saying, boy, what a great day this is.

E (25:07)

Yeah, that's what I'm seeing, some residual activity here. And they're giving some. Giving a lot of leash to Iranian commanders to get in line. And that's discomfiting. I'm perfectly willing to say that.

A (25:17)

Okay, but.

E (25:18)

And I hate doing this because I despise it when people impose graft logic onto the President's statement in order to, like, retroactively make it sound rational. But when he says things like completely unreassuring things like the straight will open up, naturally, I do kind of understand what he's saying, because the toll boost strategy is entirely unsustainable on its own terms. The bulk of Iran's sanctioned crude oil falls goes to China through the strait. Iran needs Beijing more than Beijing needs Iran in that sense. And Beijing put pressure on them. The International clientele for Saudi, Kuwaiti, Emirati, Qatari condensate and oil is not going to tolerate this strategy. And who's going to be paying, who are you paying this to? To whom? What are you getting from it? A lot of these straight, a lot of these tankers are just running the strait, turning off their responder, their transponders and going through the Omani Channel, just daring them to do this. It's already quite porous in that degree, in that sense. And yeah, I would agree that if this unsustainable status quo perpetuated forever, it would signal the end of America as the guarantor of free maritime navigation. It would certainly embolden China because the application of even no military force, like theoretical military force, to a contested waterway is clearly enough to shut it down. That all but guarantees a softer, a hard blockade of Taiwan. All that stuff is super bad. But I also don't see how it persists because this thing just cannot sustain itself. The Iranian regime has the capacity to make a coercive mechanism to enforce this toll strategy.

A (26:46)

Okay, so Eli wants to start, but I just want to say. So you're saying that everything's great because this ceasefire is Narskite and it's going to end as soon as you wish it to end. And I'm saying one thing that I don't like hearing.

E (26:58)

I will just say one thing that I don't like hearing is everything's great because I am being consistently accused of being Pollyanna Ash on this war, whereas I maintain that the conditions that make it overwhelming American victory are being ignored by those who hang on the president's words, which are discomforting.

A (27:13)

Okay, that's an important point. We'll get back to that. But, Eli, go ahead.

B (27:17)

I want to say two things. One, the IDF and the US Military could certainly use a break for maintenance of our aircraft and our vessels. But also just the humans fighting the war, the pilots themselves, that's a real thing, particularly for Israel, which is still going to be fighting in Lebanon, number two. And I just need to put this on the table, and I don't know if the panel agrees. I think it's a great thing that Trump did not follow through on his threats to bomb Ron into the Stone Age, because I still hold out hope for a color revolution end and a real strategic victory. And that would have extinguished hopes for that because Iranian people will not be able to rise up if they are there, if they are in need for the basic necessities of life. Also, I just don't think people Thought it through. If we had actually done this power plant strategy and millions of Iranians, you know, couldn't, you know, were in the dark, there would be a huge tidal wave of condemnation and censure for America and Israel. It would be politically much harder to.

D (28:29)

Oh, my gosh, I'm so glad we held that back. And there's no tidal wave of condemnation

B (28:35)

for American Israel, Eliana. It would be, I believe it would absolutely change it. Not just, I mean, forget globally in terms of domestic public opinion. I'm just saying that we are democracy. I think it would have made it impossible to continue the war had we followed through on the ridiculous threat.

A (28:54)

Can I just say did.

B (28:56)

Okay, okay.

A (28:57)

Here's my problem with what you just did there. Okay, okay. You took Trump seriously the minute that he said, I'm gonna destroy the power plants and it's power plant day and you're all gonna be in the dark and all that. That's when I said, elk, please. You wrote a very eloquent piece about why it's bad. People are going crazy. Yesterday on Twitter, you literally would have thought that Mephistopheles had risen from Gehenna and was going to spread cast darkness upon the earth. The 25th Amendment had to be invoked as a result of a threat in a tweet. And it was, to me, I'm sorry, self evident that that was like lunatic bluster and that he would never follow through on it. So I don't want to give him credit for not following through on the thing that he was never going to do in the first place. I'm willing to give him credit for everything that he's done in the six weeks before that. But having unilaterally decided to announce that if you don't do this by X, we're going to destroy your power plants and. And destroy your civilization, which wasn't gonna happen, he blew his own credibility a little bit. Because let's look at it this way. If yesterday morning he said, except it

B (30:18)

seemed to work, except someone believed him. I mean, what worked?

D (30:22)

What worked?

B (30:23)

Well, we got it. Okay, hold on, hold on.

A (30:25)

Let me get to. Let me get to my crushing morosity.

B (30:29)

All right, go ahead.

A (30:30)

What worked? We have declared a unilateral ceasefire. That he says is a two sided ceasefire so far. It ain't no two sided ceasefire. It's a one sided ceasefire in which we are not firing and in which we have apparently gotten Israel to agree not to fire. They're firing now. No one can say it's the long tail of you know, the Mosaic strategy. And they haven't gotten the word that they should stop firing the ones who are firing on Saudi Arabia.

E (30:59)

Well, that is the reporting. We don't have alternative reporters reporting.

A (31:05)

Let me finish.

B (31:06)

Okay, okay.

A (31:08)

Because I.

B (31:08)

Okay.

A (31:10)

He, he created a crisis by saying, Tuesday at 8, is it kaboom? Iran is wiped off the map. And then he had to be saved from his own crisis. Nobody told him to say, finish this up or I'm going to blow up your civilization. And from what I can tell, he didn't get anything for it. The Iranians are saying that their ten point plan is the basis for the negotiations. And you know who else said that? J.D. vance said it. And you know who else said it? Donald Trump said it. Well, then they said it's also the 15 point plan.

B (31:55)

Okay.

A (31:56)

You can't have both because they contradict each other.

C (31:59)

The 15.

B (32:01)

It's called how we're starting position. Yeah, but I want to get back to the other thing. I. Yeah, okay.

A (32:08)

I'm selling a house. If I'm selling a house, and here's the terms of my house, right? Terms are, I want $500,000 for my house pending an inspection, and I want to close in 60 days. And your terms are, I want you to give me the house and $3 million, no inspection, and I'm also going to have you pay me rent for the house that I've taken from you and the $3 million forever. Are those terms of negotiation? Those are not terms of negotiation. They will involve the same.

E (32:49)

Okay, but the metaphor breaks down because negotiations over real estate take place in a world with a constitution and courts. We're talking about the international environment, which is anarchic. This is a negotiation over a house where if you don't concede, I burn your house down without repercussion. That's how the international environment works.

A (33:05)

Okay, well, so if your term is, let's go into a deal where I'm going to do X and you're going to do Y, and X is we're both gonna do the same thing. And why is you're gonna do something and I'm not gonna do anything, and then we're both gonna agree that we both did something that's also not a deal.

C (33:28)

So I am, I agree with John. I, I, I. Look, okay, I think Trump wanted out that, I don't think we got anything.

A (33:37)

We don't know what he wanted out of. That's the, that's the problem. Right? We don't know. Does he want out of the War entirely, or did he want out of the. Did he want out of the ship? The marching band in National Lampoon's Animal House being marched straight into the brick wall when Stork takes the thing and then walks the marching band right down the alley into the brick wall. He wanted to be. Is that what he wanted? Cause, fine, he got that, and then he can restart the war tomorrow. Or does he want out of the war?

C (34:10)

I don't know.

A (34:10)

Because if he wants out of the war, no one can make him go back in.

B (34:14)

Okay.

C (34:15)

I don't know the answer, but I just.

B (34:16)

A couple points.

C (34:17)

I agree with John that I don't think his bluster got us anything. I was hoping to wake up today after his bluster to see that we had seized the straight or that we had actually done a more surgical strike on power plants and other infrastructure than the nonsense that he talked about. But instead, I found out last night that Trump is done for whatever period of time. So I agree that there's nothing good

A (34:53)

in this deal except what Eli talked about, which is ceasefires. If the ceasefire is a means of catching our breath, doing a damage assessment, sure. Which, by the way, is very hard while the war is going on. We also don't know quite exactly what we've destroyed. I mean, literally, you blow stuff up and then there's a lot of dust and your satellites can't see what happened under the dust and stuff like that. We need to do a damage assessment. Yes. Are these talking about Israel? The Israeli public has been going into bomb shelters every night for six weeks. You know, like, no one's getting any sleep aside from the military, and the military overstretch that Israel's going through civilian population. Israel is like, is. It has been harried and tortured and no one's at school and work isn't going and all of that. Could they use a breather? Yes. You know, sometimes In World War I, you know, there were sometimes Christmas ceasefires even as the war went on. So this is a thing that can happen. We're just now trying to, I think. Go ahead.

B (36:06)

Can I just add one more element to this? There's no ceasefire with the Mossad. They're still in Iran. There was always an Israeli conception of the war, that there would be phases of it. And, you know, let's just say it's a big black box. We don't know internally what's going on with the Iranian people. And I've heard different assessments from very smart people about this. But the bottom line is, is that whatever the case if in December 28th situation was bad enough that the bizaries who were least likely to join previous uprisings, started uprising because the real has been negated in value, then it's even worse now. If you wake up the next day and there's like less competent people in charge and all of the security, like the police, the base, everything else like that, these were taken out, though, that's like real damage done. And the Israelis have a capability of armed drones in big. In Tehran and other big cities that can take out these Basiji checkpoints. So what I'm saying is that, like, that's not gone and I still have my eye on that.

E (37:16)

No one has sworn off that strategy. Israel and the United States have not sworn off the strategy of fomenting insurrection. In fact, they've talked about infiltrating weapons and communications in, during the fighting into Iran to facilitate that very outcome. Everybody is saying that, well, obviously America, you know, the America's demands, or rather Iran's demands are America's demands on Iran are unacceptable to Iran. The giving up its nuclear material, getting rid of the ballistic missiles, cutting off its terrorist proxies, dismantling what's left of its nuclear program. Obviously Iran won't agree to that. Right. And yet everybody is still saying, well, clearly Trump is amenable to the notion that we would withdraw all forces from the Middle east, unfreeze all Iranian assets, full sanctions relief, accept Iranian indigenous enrichment capability. Obviously, he capitulated to that. Why? Why would they have reached to that conclusion unless they're evaluating this war not from the conditions on the ground, but based on their preconceptions about Donald Trump and their relationship to Donald Trump.

A (38:13)

Georgie is my dog. She's four years old. We got her during COVID for the kids. Two of my kids are now off in college. So Georgie is now my dog, my wife's dog. We love the dog. We were never going to get a dog. And now, of course, we can't think about life without her. And we worry about her health, we worry about problems with her, and we pay too much attention to her, to be frank. So now let me give you a quick message from today's sponsor, the ASPCA Pet Health Insurance Program. So she's part of our family. And vet bills are like any bill for any member of your family. They're necessary. You don't question them, but they can add up quicker than you can imagine, which is why it's worth checking out aspca Pet Health Insurance. Pet insurance can help manage the vet bills so you can focus on what really matters, making sure your pet gets the care she needs when she needs it. Oh, and there's a little bonus. There's a perk for enrolling. When you enroll in an ASPCA pet health insurance plan, you could get a 25Amazon gift card. It's a little treat for you when you're doing something great for your pet. The program offers customizable accident and illness plans, making it easier to get your pet the care they may need. To Explore coverage, visit aspcapetinsurance.com Commentary that's aspcapetinsurance.Com Commentary Eligibility restrictions apply. Visit aspcapetinsurance.COM AmazonTerms for more info. This is a paid advertisement. Insurance is underwritten by either Independence American Insurance Company or United States Fire Insurance Company and produced by PTZ Insurance Agency Ltd. The ASPCA is not an insurer and is not engaged in the business of insurance. It's interesting. My kids something's going on with their sheets. Go to their beds. They're like half off. They roll around at night. Sheets are slipping off the corners. Also, pillows kind of look mushy and crappy and old. This is one of these things. I'm told most people actually keep their bedding way longer than they should. It wears down. You don't realize how much it's affecting your sleep and making your bed look ugly until you finally make the decision to replace it. And most people think they need a new mattress. But the biggest difference usually comes just from replacing what touches you every night. That's why you should upgrade. Upgrade your bed with bowl and branch. They make everything your bed needs signature organic cotton sheets, pillows, blankets and comforters, all designed to be breathable, incredibly soft. Get better over time. Most people start with the signature sheets, and a lot of customers buy two sets so they can rotate them. They've also added the waffle blanket and now the whole bed just feels amazing. So upgrade your sleep with bowl and Branch. Get 415 off your first order, plus free shipping at bowlandbranch.com commentary with code COMMENTARY that's Boland Branch. B O L L A N D branch.com commentary code commentary to unlock 15 off exclusions apply.

B (41:44)

Okay, very well said.

A (41:46)

You guys are making very good, which

B (41:47)

is to say dynamic. John this is not the final end state right now. They might be collecting a toll right now. They might be, you know, crowing and saying how they won and everything like that. And then one other point to make Iran's really good at negotiations. They outfoxed Obama, they outfoxed Biden, they outfoxed Bush. But so far, when they negotiate with Trump, it's not gone as well as they'd like to. Trump, you know, stops negotiations and bombs them. And I don't see any particular reason why they're going to be better negotiators this time. I mean, I'm not so sure that we're going to lose everything at the negotiating table because like Obama.

A (42:30)

Yeah.

B (42:30)

You know, Trump doesn't bombing them yet.

A (42:34)

The question is, can I just ask you a question here?

D (42:37)

Yeah.

A (42:38)

Are we negotiating with Iran or are we negotiating with ourselves? Because if we're negotiating with Iran, I take Eli's point. I think we have the upper hand no matter what. If we're negotiating with ourselves, we're in a lot of trouble because the domestic situation is the war's unpopular. Republicans are panicking, had a very bad night last night in precursor elections to the midterms. Very bad all across the country, wild over performance in a congressional special loss of a judgeship in Wisconsin, huge Democratic numbers. Republicans are panicking. People may retire from the Senate, all of that. And Vance is in there in the and we saw again in this Maggie Haberman Johnson Swan piece, Vance is retailing the thing that he was the lone voice in the administration who said this war was a bad idea. And he's retailing that because he thinks it's a long term winner for him for it to be known that he is that person and so are we negotiating with ourselves.

D (43:53)

My concern about all of this was that up until this point, the president was growing more comfortable with using military force. He took out Soleimani in the first term. He struck Syria in the first term. He greenlit Operation Midnight Hammer. He took out Maduro. And he was really proud of those things. And then it seems to me he grew uncomfortable with how long this was going on. That may be wrong. We didn't get inside his head. It didn't seem to me we learned that much new actually in the New York Times piece, the Maggie Haberman Jonathan Swan piece, other than Trump makes his own decisions. He was receptive to and aligned with what Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu came here to say. We already knew JD Vance's point of view. It was the same point of view that he relayed when Trump decided to bomb the Houthis. We already knew Pete Hegseth's point of view. Again, it was the same point of view he relayed when Trump wanted to bomb the Houthis. Hegseth also supported that. But Trump makes his own decisions. And this war proved, I think, a bit trickier and more difficult than he anticipated. And so my concern, again, is with the midterm elections coming up, he will be more reluctant to go back at it if he does get the runaround from them in negotiations. And I think you see that with him saying we have regime change, which is patently, I think, untrue. You can't say that with the IRGC running around, although Trump does declare victory no matter what, and with him saying that just reaching the ceasefire is some great victory when we clearly haven't achieved the aims that we set out this war to achieve yet. I mean, the true thing to say is we're going to see what we get in two weeks and then we'll make a decision. And also, the final point is just that Iran closed the strait in order to stop the war. That's why they did it. And they've now achieved that. If they end with charging tolls to go through that strait, I consider that a catastrophe. And by the way, that will send the price of oil sky high. I mean, that will be passed on to consumers. So those are my concerns. And again, just to reiterate, like, I don't take for granted all that's been accomplished on the ground. I think it's fantastic. I don't think any other president would have done it. I give Trump enormous credit for that, for degrading the regime to this point.

A (47:03)

Abe.

D (47:04)

That's my ideal world. He would really see this through to the end. And he would, you know, he said unconditional surrender. That's my ideal,

A (47:14)

Abe. I mean, this is sort of what you were saying to me last night, that you, you don't want to not express the gratitude that you feel for the fact that an American President, finally, after 20 years, took on this monstrous regime that has sowed discord, killed Americans by the thousands, fomented terrorism, and been a bad actor and developing a nuclear bomb with the purpose of trying to destroy the Jewish state, that you still feel gratitude for what has been done over the past six weeks, Immense gratitude.

C (47:57)

And I don't want to give the Israel haters and anti Semites and whatever else a the neocons are mad moment, because I'm not. I've been thrilled for six weeks. I was thrilled back in June. I never expected to see Trump or any president set back this regime this far, this hard and open up that much further the possibility for regime change. So, yeah, it's, you know, we always knew that he wasn't going to dig in for an open ended period of time. We knew this was coming to some sort of close sometime soon.

A (48:47)

Yeah, And I don't think any of us believe that's a good strategy either, to be fair. Like.

C (48:53)

Right.

A (48:54)

You know, I don't mean the forever war stuff. I mean targeted, focused, concentrated campaign, at the end of which we can say. Which Eliana did sort of say. So maybe I should raise my number here in the 1 to 10 thing that Iran may be finished as a regional power. It no longer has the capacity to project. You know, Hamas is a shell of its former self. The Houthis have done a tiny little bit in this war against Israel, but hardly anything. Hezbollah is getting hammered in a way that it has not been hammered in 20 years by Israel. So all of its proxies.

B (49:38)

December 24th was pretty good or whatever.

E (49:41)

All of it.

A (49:42)

All of it's fair enough, but. Well, no, those were amazing. But I mean, then. But in terms of its assets inside Lebanon, its physical. Not only its armies, but its assets, including its missiles and its ballistic missiles and the stuff that it's buried. Okay, so Iran's ability to project power outside its borders may be unbelievably compromised. The only ability that it had to project power outside its borders was this threat to Hormuz. Right. And that's not even really. I mean, it's a military threat, but it's really like the squeegee men in New York. Literally a kind of bizarre internationalization of the squeegee man strategy, which is you stopped at a stoplight, a guy comes up to your window, he spits on your window, and he's got a rock in one hand and, and he. And a cloth in the other. And you rolled your window down and you give him a dollar and then he wipes the spit off the window because you don't know if he's gonna take the rock and smash it into your window.

E (50:39)

Well, to be fair, I love this metaphor, but to be fair, because having lived through that era, the squeegee men problem is that there's a very low but real possibility that they could try to kill you.

A (50:50)

Right.

E (50:50)

But for the most part, it's just annoying. And after a while, you'll learn to lock the doors, roll up the windows and drive on. And that is really an appropriate metaphor for what we're talking about in the Strait of Hormuz list. I share Eliana's concern about it. If this were to persist forever, then it would be not even A caveated American strategic failure, a real strategic failure. The markets do not believe it's going to persist forever. The markets are not acting like this is going to be the status quo in perpetuity. And as I've been saying for a while, and you know, say to the Houthis, do you think the Houthis wouldn't have intervened on its primary sponsor's behalf to close the other waterway as they did for two years over the course of this decade, if they didn't believe that they had to triage everything, just maintain husband their stewards or the husband their supply of missiles, because nothing else was coming for them?

A (51:36)

Okay, we should explain.

E (51:37)

And finally, one last point.

A (51:39)

You made a point about the waterway, the Houthi Waterway. Just to clarify, there are two paths for oil to come go east to west or west to east, and one of them is the stray of Hormuz, and the other is the body of water that is adjacent essentially to Yemen. And the Houthis were making sport out of that waterway. That was the last maritime crisis that we faced was the Houthis firing on ships there. And they did not. Right. They did not activate their game. I can't remember, what's it called? The water. I can't remember the name of the Bobbleman Strait. Thank you very much.

E (52:22)

Into the Red Sea. Which leads to his claim.

A (52:24)

Right, exactly. Okay, go ahead.

E (52:26)

So, yeah, and there was some reporting that there was contention among the leadership class. Some of them wanted to get into the war actively. Some of them were very afraid about it. So they settled on this. This is Bloomberg's reporting. They settled on this strategy of just launching like a handful of missiles at Israel to satisfy everybody, which satisfied nobody. But lastly, to this final point, and it's been something I've been saying for weeks, is that this war was always going to end in a way that looked to us like failure, because it was going to end with a negotiated ceasefire with somebody who could maintain some credible claim to represent the Iranian people, at which point we negotiate this insurrectionary strategy. That's what everybody's been saying. And they've been saying it would only begin when the bombing ends. And so it would look to us like the bombing ends without some sort of a climax, some really definitive, dramatic moment that looked like the end of this war, and we were never going to get that. So I was always anticipating this moment. But it's suboptimal right now, but it's by no means closed off to a much more advantageous conclusion.

B (53:24)

And just to add to Noah's Point, it was baked in, in part because from the very beginning, we knew that there was no way that Trump would send large numbers of ground forces to actually, you know, militarily achieve regime change, hold territory, et cetera. That's a good thing. I think we can all say that's good. A it was not politically sustainable. It was a non starter. No, I mean, that would have made the war instantly unpopular and that would have been a recipe for another forever war that would have been potentially like, you know, that there would have been all kinds of problems if we had a ground force component. So this is like, you know, so we did an air war and we did a pretty effective air war, given the fact that, you know, all the things that we took away from Iran in the air. And so I don't know, like, I can live with it now. I agree with you, Eliana, as well, that, like, if this is the status quo forever, that they get to collect a lot of money from the Strait of Hormuz and everybody has to coordinate with the Iranian military, that's a very bad outcome. But I also, I'm with. No, I don't necessarily think that's sustainable. And I think the main thing we have to look at right now is that this is now where we're heading in, hopefully to the day after where they all look around and they realize how much they've lost. And, you know, there are a lot of opportunities that open up at that point, hopefully.

A (54:44)

Listen, Trump's great triumph here would be for this to be a triumph. I just said something that's nonsense. But what I mean is the things that he is saying about how wonderful this is actually come true, by which I mean really literally, that somehow he's got an agreement, somehow that will lead us to go to, you know, if Sahan to dig this road into the basement that we're the highway that we would need to build, send people down there and take the nuclear materials out of Iran as the final exposure of the fact that when we said that they would never be allowed to get a nuclear weapon, we meant it and we took the material that they had and we are going to watch them forever to make sure that they don't reconstitute the program. If that were to happen, if the thing that he says they've agreed to, which I see no evidence that they've agreed to, and I think he made up, if that were to happen, then it doesn't matter whether it looks like a failure today. If that were to happen in three Months, it would be a colossal triumph. And if there is a regime change over the course of the next year, not now, not at the climax of the war, where the Italian people rise up and they hang Mussolini upside down and they pee on his head. Right. That's not gonna happen. But could a regime change happen over the course of the next year? That will be the result of what's happened here, because the regime will be exposed as hollow, failed, and its claims of extraordinary power revealed as incredibly hollow to the Iranian people themselves, who will lose their fear of it. Yeah. And then there will be a victory. But right now, I don't even know if it looks like a failure. Eliana said you wanted unconditional surrender. No one and Eli are saying there was never gonna be an unconditional surrender. So Trump saying he wanted that was probably a foolish thing to go for. But I think the real thing that I am afraid of, and maybe we can close on this discussion of this, is that he becomes defensive of the value and quality of the ceasefire, and that all exposure of the ceasefire's hollowness or foolishness or the fact that the Iranians aren't abiding by it, he ignores, because he's changed his line.

D (57:23)

That is exactly my point.

E (57:26)

Yeah.

A (57:28)

So how that would work is they'll keep hitting Israel. And by the way, that's a whole other thing we could talk about. Let's talk about that for a second. Say they keep hitting Israel. Trump has gotten Bibi to agree to, you know, abide by the ceasefire. This is very. What matters here is the American interest, but this is very dangerous for Israel. Israel's security crisis, modern security crisis, effectively began in 1991 when the country was attacked by Saddam Hussein's Scuds. Israel's military position was that it responded to all provocations with counteraction. George H.W. bush visited upon the Israelis the absolute necessity of letting the Scuds fall without response. He said, we're going to take care of it. You stay out of it. And Israel did not respond. 40 some odd people, many buildings were hit, people died. Israel was paralyzed. And you know what happened after that? This is not what Trump's going to do. What happened after that is Israel did what America wanted. And then America called a regional conference in Madrid. Madrid, great place for a regional conference now. And basically spent three days beating up on Israel and demanding that Israel give the Palestinians a state effectively for the get. For. For the fact that Israel had played ball, done what America wanted, and violated its own entire military strategic posture, which Is you hit us, we hit you. We don't care where, we don't care when we're going to hit you back. They didn't do it. Yitzhak Shamir had no choice. And things happen as a result of that boulder rolling down the hill that you could say almost inextricably led to October 7th. It's too complicated a story, and I don't want to be vulgar about this. If Israel is hit now by the Iranians, Bibi knows he has to strike. This is a moment of great danger because Israel is.

B (59:49)

Hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on. Can I counter with another narrative? Okay, good.

A (59:54)

Yeah.

B (59:54)

October 7th happens. One of the main motivations for Yahweh Sinwar was to scuttle the potential of the Saudis joining the Abraham Accords.

A (60:04)

Right.

B (60:06)

Two and a half years later, Israel is not only flying over Saudi airspace, but is effectively militarily aligned in a war against Iran, not just with Saudi, but now with Qatar. And even Qatar, which shares the biggest oil field, gas field in the world with Iran, is expelling Iranian diplomats and is hopefully in the process of making a strategic choice they should have made 20 years ago. Now, that right there is a massive strategic loss for Iran and the axis of resistance. So, I mean, add to that the

E (60:40)

UAE where it funnels sanctions really through. I had the same concern that you and Eliana John have about the President becoming too protective of a narrative that does not reflect what reality. But I had that concern after operation Midnight Hammer 2, that the President would be very protective of the notion that the Iranian nuclear program was obliterated, never to be seen again, and we should just wash our hands of it and walk away. And that did not happen.

D (61:02)

Except. Except that the Ayatollah tried to assassinate him. And I think he really had it out for the leadership of Iran.

A (61:11)

Well, that obviously, obviously, if the regime

E (61:15)

that hit order had been out on the first term.

A (61:18)

Right. But he held that in reserve. Okay. Both of these are very good points. And I think it is important, and it gets to Abe's point that this war has had very significant strategic benefit for the United States. As the dust settles, as the damage assessment is done, as the extent of whatever it is that constitutes Iran's military, as we come to see what it looks like now versus what it looked like on February 28th, that's going to be a very big moment. I'm not saying it's not, but here's the situation. Polling, of course, as everybody knows, has turned against Israel in the United States. Israel may be obliged because of its history, because of the fact that Bibi Netanyahu is running for prime minister again in the fall, because of Israel's own position. That is viewed, I think 90% of the public believes this. If Iran is firing missiles during this ceasefire period at Israel, Israel has to respond. And then come the leaks out from administration officials about how Israel is ruining the glorious ceasefire. Those won't come from Trump and they won't. They'll come from Vance, they'll come from the restrainers, they'll come from whoever it is. They'll come from Senator Chris Van Hollen, who will be referred to as a Washington official. They'll come from where they come from. And so Israel will now find. Israel could now be on a knife's edge in terms of not world opinion, because it's already, that's already done for. But it's an unfair, it's incredibly unfair position, if I'm right about this, for Israel to find itself in, because its interest at this moment will diverge from America's. If we're. First of all, America hasn't been fired on. So of course they're not going to fire. They got nothing to fire on. I mean, I guess they could fire at our military bases in, you know, in the Gulf, but. Or Diego Rivera. Where Diego Garcia. Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo. But, you know, Israel may have to make a choice that is going to make this a more complicated ceasefire if the ceasefire halt.

B (64:02)

You really think that? I mean, it seems to me like Trump and Netanyahu have a pretty close relationship. Yeah, they are in constant contact, according to everybody. Everything we know. Yeah, I thought it was an unfair frame on the. I'm not questioning the accuracy of that piece by Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan. But I mean, it was, it was, it was the framing of. It was done in such a way that it was going to provoke the reaction that we've seen. But that said, like, you know, this is the same Donald Trump who's saying he doesn't talk to fools like Tucker Carlson.

A (64:33)

Yeah.

B (64:34)

And I'm not so sure that, I mean, maybe Trump will just want to preserve, you know, his illusory ceasefire. But on the other hand, it's for two weeks. And second of all, like, I don't know that I'm not so sure about that. Trump understands.

A (64:51)

I'm only proposing this as a possible.

B (64:55)

Not James Baker. I mean, Donald Trump is not Barack Obama. Donald Trump is not Ben Rhodes.

A (65:03)

Right.

C (65:03)

So one more point regarding Israel and Iran here. Israel took a Lot of fire from Iran. And there were questions about running low on air defense batteries and so on for Israel in whatever follows. Israel's capacity to rebuild what it needs to defend itself compared to Iran's capacity to build up its missile stocks, again, is so imbalanced in Israel's favor from here on in.

A (65:50)

Well, okay, that's the danger in the next five years. Not now, but the next five years. Which is. Is that true? Because China is what is. Who will resupply Iran, China and Russia will resupply Iran. American public opinion is turning on Israel and a Democrat could be elected in 2029 on some kind of official, effective anti Israel platform. So right now what you're saying is true. I don't know that five years from now that's the case. And to close out on a dark

B (66:24)

note there, Israel makes technology that the entire world wants at this point.

A (66:30)

That's true. And that is where the Abraham Accords are important, because they're not just symbolic. Saudi Arabia wants what Israel can provide. Israel has cards to play on the planet Earth that have just been demonstrated over the last six weeks and were demonstrated in Midnight Hammer. And they're going to be a seductive partner for people in a way that they never were before. But, Noah, just to conclude on a crushing Morosity note, because you were here at the beginning when we did Crushing Morosity, you were concerned, right? Brand management, it's an old brand, but, you know, bring it back. It's like classic Coke. We need to bring it back. The Strait of Hormuz, if it is not properly opened, like, without any question, you're like, there is a potential strategic calamity in the Far East. Do you want to just lay out what that, what the world might learn from the United States effectively allowing this conditional reopening of the Strait of Hormuz because we were unwilling to go the final distance on taking Kharg or whatever.

E (67:48)

Well, a couple of very unsettling possibilities, none of which are set in stone, but are easy to envision. One, the United States cedes its role as the chief guarantor of free maritime navigation. And because no other country on the planet Earth can pick up that mantle, maybe China to a certain extent because it has a large navy, but even then, not ideal. And we certainly don't want to cede our interests to the management, you know, to the preservation, you know, of the beneficence of China. But nevertheless, you know, foreign countries will make their own deals. Spheres of influence will naturally reemerge. And when it comes to the Far east, in particular the Taiwan Strait. That has been. If this persists indefinitely, it's been proven now that even the. The theory of force, not even the application of overwhelming force, but the threat of it, can close a contested waterway indefinitely. And that would all but guarantee that China would test that press presumption, maybe even a hard blockade of Taiwan, in which, you know, you have ships everywhere that, you know conventionally what you think of as a blockade when, you know, around the country, not letting anything into their ports. But there's also the prospect of a soft blockade, which some theorists have been playing with now recently, which is, you know, not a conventional blockade of Taiwan, but anything that wants to get into Taiwan has to touch a mainland port first, to which every shipping interest would concede, every country would concede, and it would function.

A (69:11)

Taiwan, the internationalization of the Jones Act.

E (69:14)

Precisely. I mean, these are scenarios that you can envision and contemplate, but I'm not the only person to think of them. Everybody in the National Security Council is aware of this. Everybody in the Pentagon's aware of this. Everybody knows that this is a suboptimal status quo. And I just don't think it's going to persist. And, you know, the President does have faith that it will naturally break down. And I think he's right. But that doesn't mean we can allow that to persist without having any influence over the opening of the Strait. We need to have our fingerprints on it and demonstrate our capacity to compel this either through force of arms or overwhelming diplomatic pressure. We have a lot of options available to us to break this. But it's right now, as of this, as of we're talking right now, that is the status quo. And if it were to solidify into something that's more durable, then it would be very bad for the United States. And I wouldn't say, you know, a complete strategic disaster of this war, but certainly a major caveat that would limit our objectives to tactical victories rather than strategic victories.

A (70:14)

Okay, so we've set the table here for this ceasefire period, which again, is theoretically two weeks long. And I think if it lasts two weeks, the war will not restart. So my view is I could be wrong. What do I know? But, you know, if the Iranians somehow contain themselves for two weeks, Trump will declare victory and get out. If the Iranians can't restrain themselves from letting loose on Israel to begin with, then maybe the war will restart. And I think that's. But this is a very. This war is unprecedented. The situation that we're in Right now is unprecedented. There is really no way to game out, and Trump is far too big an improviser for us to have any sense of where this is going to go by 4:00 this afternoon. We're recording this right now. It's 10:30 Eastern. Who knows what he'll say at 5:00'.

B (71:15)

Clock?

E (71:16)

But I'm gonna say I don't like that you tricked me into going out on a low note.

A (71:20)

Okay, well, I want to go out. Okay, I want you to go out on a high note because I'm gonna make a recommendation and you're gonna like the recommendation, I think, and then you can. You can. You can join in. I'm gonna make two recommendations. One's a book, one's a movie. The book is Daniel Okrent's new short biography of Stephen Sondheim out from Yale University's Jewish Live series. Though, since there's about 45 words in the book about Sondheim as a Jew, it's interesting that it was published as such, since Sondheim has literally no identity as a Jew. But this is really a superb short biography of a very, very interesting figure. I've read every book ever published on Stephen Sondheim, and this is relies on more detailed, larger books. It is a perfect book about maybe the most important American cultural figure of the last 50 or 60 years in terms of his achievements and his production. I know, Noah.

B (72:25)

You not Kanye West, John.

A (72:29)

Yeah, well, Kanye West. Kanye west will appear in the Nazi Live series from the. From the American conservative press. Anyway, Noah, I don't know if you, as a musical comedy guy and a theater guy might have some Sondheim love.

E (72:53)

Not really. I kind of enjoy it. I enjoyed Company, but I don't even remember it, so.

A (72:59)

Okay, well, I thought I was gonna let you go out on a high note, but. So I'll skip that. And I'm gonna go to the movie.

E (73:04)

High note, high notice.

A (73:06)

I know I screwed up. I thought that was gonna be a high note. You would, like. You would talk about how wonderful Sinai was.

E (73:11)

Okay, so speaking of recommendation.

B (73:12)

Yeah.

E (73:12)

I am almost finished with paradise on your recommendation, which is.

B (73:15)

Okay.

A (73:16)

Paradise is the series on Hulu, just finished its second season. It is so meshuggah. There's never been a crazier television series ever. So if you like a crazy television series.

E (73:31)

No, I'm gonna. I'm gonna. I'm gonna go out on a high note on the ceasefire, which we're also down on.

A (73:36)

Okay.

E (73:36)

Iran's army is gone. Its navy is gone. Its air force is gone, its terror apparatus is gone. And when the Iranian people rise up again as they did in 2001-2009-2017-2018, 2019, 2022 and 2025, they will do so and they will confront a regime that is lacking the terror apparatus that has bedeviled this population for generations. And that is a better place to be.

A (74:00)

Well, there's a good recommendation, the Iran war. Thumbs up. Thumbs up even here. And let us hope those of us who are sitting here, though we're of course warmongering neocon monsters that we are, we have just achieved an intermission. It's an intermission. Everyone gets to go to the bathroom. You can get an orange drink for $10 in the lobby, get some candy, go back for, go back for act two. Noah, thank you so much for joining us, Eli, two days in a row because, because of your wisdom and for Eliana and Abe, I'm John Pothors. Keep the candle burning.