← The Majority Report with Sam Seder
The Majority Report with Sam Seder
3622 - What Orban's Loss Means for Anti-Fascists; Iran's Endgame w/ Jason Stanley, Mohammad Ali Shabani
01:31:24
Loading summary
Transcript171 lines
- [00:01]
Sam Cedar
Hey folks, 4 20, the International Cannabis Holiday is around the corner and our friends at Sunset Lake Saba Day, take it easy. Our friends at Sunset Lake Saba Day are celebrating with their biggest sale of the season. Now through April 22nd, when you check out the coat with code 420 you will save 30% site wide. That includes gummies, that includes tinctures, that includes coffee, that includes hemp flour, vapes and more. Even better, when you spend over 150 bucks they'll throw in a 40 count jar of their limited edition micro dose citrus vibe gummies for free. That has a little bit of taste there. Orders over $250. Get an additional free jar of Delta 9 TSA gummies. Here's the best part. As part of this 420 sale, Sunset Lake has donated $2,500 to the last Prisoner Project, which is a nonprofit organization dedicated to redressing the harms caused by our unjust cannabis laws. Last Prisoner Project provides commissary support for incarcerated folks and helps people get back on their feet once they're released from prison. Folks, I will tell you right now, those vibe gummies, they're perfect for a guy like me. I can't, you know, I got to stick around that 1mg of THC otherwise I start getting a little too loopy. But I love that stuff. It's fun. Friday night watch Celtics game maybe probably when they win through the playoffs. I'll be watching that a lot. All of their products are really great and I travel with my goodnight oil I because it gets me to sleep and a couple of of just Sabade gummies just in case I get a little bit anxious. Head over onto sunsetlakesabade.com use the coupon code 420. That's the numbers 420420 to save 30%. Site wide sale ends April 22nd at midnight Eastern time. See their site for additional terms and restrictions. And now time for the show the Majority Report with Sam Cedar. It is Tuesday, April 14, 2026. My name is Sam Cedar. This is the five time award winning Majority Report. We are broadcasting live steps from the industrially ravaged Gowanus Canal in the heartland of America, downtown Brooklyn, usa. On the program today, Jason Stanley, professor of philosophy at the University of Toronto, author and publisher of the Front Left newsletter on Substack and the rise and the fall of Orban and what it means for maga. Also on the program today, Muhammad Ali Shabani, journalist and editor of AMWAJ Media platform focusing on Iran, Iraq and the GCC countries with an update on what our blockade on the blockade really means. Meanwhile, Trump says the US Military has blockaded the Straits of Hormuz, Saudi Arabia, pressing Trump to drop the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz. And China may have already run through the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz.
- [03:48]
Emma Vigland
That's kind of symbolic for the 21st century.
- [03:52]
Sam Cedar
Meanwhile, I can't even remember his first name anymore. Swalwell. Eric Swalwell. Who cares to resign from Congress. And Garcia to follow. And maybe a new wave of expulsions from Congress. This as the House returns seeking to end the longest DHS shutdown ever. Meanwhile, Trump deletes Truth Post that claims he's and claims he's not. Jesus, he's just a doctor. Immigration judges fired after blocking deportation of pro Palestinian students. US Trying to quash the Inter American Human Rights Commission from its Caribbean boat targeting investigation. And the burgeoning anti data center movement oust four incumbents, four incumbent city council members in a small Missouri town. All this and more on today's Majority Report. Welcome, ladies and gentlemen. Thanks so much for joining us.
- [05:05]
Emma Vigland
It is News Day Tuesday, although Tuesday, Monday, we're breaking format. Yeah, sure, it doesn't rhyme, but it'll
- [05:13]
Muhammad Ali Shabani
still be breaking our strict format rules.
- [05:15]
Sam Cedar
Exactly, Exactly. Welcome, ladies and gentlemen. Thanks for joining us. We got a lot to get to. It's hard to say, but it's quite possible that J.D. vance might be the most sort of like beleaguered guy in the administration right now because one gets the sense that he is seeing his prospects to become the 46th president to be exclusively a function of Donald Trump's health. Now, I would imagine that's not a bad bet if you're JD Vance. But this guy has always, I think always probably growing up been a very unlikable guy and he's awkward around people. And it really does seem like somehow he got the short end of the stick. He was sent to negotiate with the Iranians. Who knows what he was willing to give them or not give them. But it was Donald Trump basically trying to figure out, like how he's going to get a taste of whatever money is going to flow in any direction. But here is J.D.
- [06:35]
Emma Vigland
vance accidentally admitting something that probably you shouldn't say out loud, I would imagine. Little guy called Freud on Fox News last night.
- [06:44]
Sam Cedar
Yeah. Here he is trying to, I don't know, backfill when it comes to weapons of war. What they have done is engage in this act of economic terrorism against the entire world. They basically Threatened any ship that's moving
- [07:02]
Muhammad Ali Shabani
through the Straits of Hormuz. Well, as the President of the United
- [07:04]
Sam Cedar
States showed, two can play at that game. And if the Iranians are going to try to engage in economic terrorism, we're going to abide by a simple principle that no Iranian ships are getting out either. We know that's a big deal to them. We know that applies additional economic leverage. And again, Brett, the President wants the
- [07:20]
Muhammad Ali Shabani
Iranian people to thrive and succeed.
- [07:23]
Sam Cedar
He has had his negotiation team put on the table a serious proposal. The ball is in Iran's court. Did we make progress? Yes. But we're going to find out from
- [07:32]
Muhammad Ali Shabani
the Iranians whether we can make that
- [07:34]
Sam Cedar
ultimate bit of progress that gets us to a big deal. In other words, if you're going to wreak havoc on the world's economy, we're going to wreak havoc on the world's economy. Two can play at that game.
- [07:47]
Emma Vigland
And I like how he admits that the if they engage in economic terrorism, we'll also engage in economic terrorism. You know, what is typically associated with terrorism is acts of violence on civilians. And you guys actually started off with the actual terrorism by bombing a girls school, killing over 160 girls, double tapping it, attacking their energy infrastructure.
- [08:09]
Sam Cedar
Terrorism.
- [08:10]
Emma Vigland
Exactly. Attacking their bridges because potentially some materials to make a weapons go over bridges on occasion and acting like that's not a war crime. You guys started with actual terrorism and they're responding with economic leverage.
- [08:24]
Muhammad Ali Shabani
Yeah, you've been doing the economic terrorism.
- [08:26]
Emma Vigland
And geographically, I'm pretty sure they have maps in the White House. They might have been able to foresee some of these things if they saw like geographically what the Strait of Hormuz actually looks like with Iran and to its north, the fact that there's the Caspian Sea, that there's no NATO presence over, nor no US Presence over where Russia can send them weapons in a pretty much unfettered fashion, making this much more difficult than Trump thought. Like, there's one thing to blockade Cuba, an island and try to starve that population. It's another thing to do it to a country with Iran that has a variety of different trade routes and is a country of 90 million people and it's highly mountainous and complicated and probably,
- [09:09]
Sam Cedar
I think it's safe to say, and. Well, there's a good question for Mohammed Al Shabani, who's going to be coming on later in the program. They've been planning for the potential of this. You know, none of this is going in a surprising fashion, except for apparently to the, to the Trump administration. But Iran has likely been preparing for this potential. I mean, this is the potential that they have probably been preparing for for decades, probably since the Iran Iraq war. This is, this is the one thing that they knew potentially could happen. It was the one place where they knew they had leverage. And it was the one response to this would be, we're not going to allow for your boats to get out and sell oil either. Now, CNN reported about two hours ago that a Chinese or boat, a Chinese tanker, has passed through the blockade, unclear where that Chinese tanker had filled up with oil, but theoretically they would have passed through the Iranian blockade and probably maybe paid them. But it remains to be seen.
- [10:34]
Muhammad Ali Shabani
CNN reported that from Dubai.
- [10:35]
Sam Cedar
But yeah, okay, so filled up from Dubai. And it's possible Iran did blockade that boat. But it doesn't seem the logic of what the Trump administration is doing is a little bit hard to follow. But again, we will see.
- [10:59]
Muhammad Ali Shabani
We're going to do the thing you've been doing, and I hope you're unprepared
- [11:03]
Sam Cedar
for it now, as the Trump administration sort of fumbles around and tries to figure out how they can justify any of this to their own base and to the own Trump voters who were, like you said you weren't going to do exactly this. This is exactly what you said you weren't going to do. The Republican Party, meanwhile, and let's also be clear, the Republican Party would be sweating this a lot more if the opposition party, if the leadership of the opposition party was not going on television and saying Trump's chickening out. He isn't. He isn't really fighting a good war against Iran. No, I'm such small portions. I mean, exactly, exactly. I mean, this is, the point, is that we have a leadership, the leadership of the opposition party is not opposed to a war against Iran. To the extent that he is making moves that are contrary to what Trump wants, it is because his entire party is largely against this war as well. And so Chuck Schumer is out there essentially, you know, he's playing the game, except for it's quite obvious that he's bet against his own team. But here are Republicans still scrambling even without having a. The leadership of the opposition party essentially put this burning tire around the necks of Republican lawmakers. They still, still can't figure out what they're supposed to say about this.
- [12:51]
Jason Stanley
How long do you think Americans will be willing to pay the higher energy
- [12:54]
Sam Cedar
costs while we are confronting Iran? I mean, obviously we know why we're
- [12:59]
Muhammad Ali Shabani
paying it, but how long do you
- [13:00]
Sam Cedar
think we're going to be willing to keep paying it? You know, that's an interesting question. I think back to my. My grandparents and their generation that served in World War II. Could you imagine, you know, trying to tell the president, look, you only got so many days to defeat Hitler or defeat Japan. We have to do it till it. Till we get the outcome that we want. I hope it's weeks and not months. But. But at the end of the day, Americans are going to be safe.
- [13:26]
Emma Vigland
There's a certain. And that's a senator, Republican senator. Like, invoking Hitler and World War II like, this is like, borderline Holocaust denial. Like, I mean, it really is just really shameless.
- [13:40]
Sam Cedar
Not just Holocaust denial. I mean, it's a world war denial.
- [13:44]
Emma Vigland
It's denying every single dynamic that gave rise to Nazis and fascism in Europe and inverting it as if we're not the bad guys going to war on behalf of the state, committing genocide, borrowing tactics from the Nazis. Proudly, we are Japan in this instance. If you want to go and turn around like that.
- [14:05]
Sam Cedar
If Chuck Schumer was not in favor of the Iran war in some fashion or another, he would come out and say, we've just had a sitting Republican senator saying that this war we're engaged in with Iran is equivalent to a war where the world lost 80 million people. 80 million people. Is that what we're going to do? We're going to wage this for three and a half years until 80 million people are dead? We killed Hitler. According to Trump, how many Hitlers are in Iran? Like, we killed all of their leadership and nothing changed. Does that mean, like, there's a whole wave of Hitlers?
- [14:49]
Muhammad Ali Shabani
Still more Hitlers there?
- [14:51]
Emma Vigland
They're all Hitlers, apparently. But he wants to liberate those Hitlers from being Hitler by killing them. But some of them can be liberated through just seeing killing, and then they'll no longer be Hitler.
- [15:02]
Sam Cedar
Do you remember when Iran bombed the United States to start this conflict?
- [15:08]
Emma Vigland
Oh, yeah.
- [15:08]
Sam Cedar
Back in 1941. I think it was in December 7th of 1941. I mean, this is. This is just like, these are knocking. You could knock these things down like ducks. If there was a leadership of the Democratic Party calling out like, this is a senator. This isn't some backbench, you know, Congressman. This is a senator.
- [15:35]
Emma Vigland
Yeah. And saying that people have to bear economic pain. When Trump came into office, saying he was going to fix the economy and no new wars, and now the message is, like, a year and a half later, the economy's gonna have to suffer because of the War that I've started.
- [15:51]
Muhammad Ali Shabani
Yeah.
- [15:52]
Sam Cedar
Be patriotic like me.
- [15:54]
Emma Vigland
Really says a lot of what Trump thinks of his own voters. I mean, do you remember in the
- [15:59]
Sam Cedar
early days of World War II, when FDR went to a boxing match, went to like a prize fight and partied with his Secretary of State during World War II? It's the same thing. It's the same thing. When does the rationing start? When are we going to start hoarding copper? And when are the pennies? I guess we're getting rid of the pennies so we can save there. But when do the, you know, when do we start getting all of the copper out of all of our coins?
- [16:29]
Emma Vigland
I mean, that's what those true social screeds are. Instead of the fireside chats, we have toilet truths from the mad king.
- [16:37]
Sam Cedar
Let's start with the draft. Unbelievable. These lunatics. In a moment, we're going to be talking to Jason Stanley. He's professor of philosophy at the University of Toronto, author and publisher of the Front Left newsletter on substack on the implications of and what we can learn from Orban's defeat in Hungary. And then we'll be talking to Mohammed Al Shabani, journalist and editor of Amwaj Media, a platform focusing on Iran, Iraq and the Gulf countries. First, a word from our sponsor. Delete Me makes it quick, easy and safe to remove your personal data online when a time when obviously surveillance and data breaches are common enough to make everyone vulnerable. I don't go through a day where I'm not getting some notice, like from some company. I had no idea they were subcontracted out. They had my Social Security number, they had my phone number, they had this and they had that. And, sorry, there was a data breach. And what happens with that stuff? It gets sold on the dark web. And then hackers, fishers, all sorts of malevolent people, then just go to a data broker, which you can go to online, you know, reverse yellow pages, look at whatever it is and find all sorts of other information for you to build, essentially a portfolio. If they want to spoof your identity or they want to launch a phishing attack, makes it much, much easier if that information is out there. And Delete me makes it easier than ever to get rid of that information. Your address, your phone number, your family members, names are hanging out on the Internet and that can have actual consequences in the real world. It makes everyone vulnerable. I mean, I've been using Delete me for over a decade now. I was using it because I just don't want my my personal information out there because, you know, largely because of the show and you know, what I was doing on radio. But it also has helped, I think in terms of like phishing things and probably kept members of my family safe. With Delete Me, you can protect your personal privacy or the privacy or business from doxing attacks before sensitive information can be exploited. Thanks to Delete Me for sponsoring the Majority report. Take control of your data. Keep your private life private by signing up for Delete Me now at a special discount for our audience. Get 20% off your delete Me plan. When you go to join deleteme.com majority, use the promo code Majority at checkout. The only way to get 20% off is is to go to JoinDeleteMe.com majority and enter the code majority at checkout. That's JoinDeleteMe.com majority code is majority. Gonna take a quick break in a moment. We'll be talking to Jason Stanley. Before we do, I just want to send out my condolences. We have lost a member of our Majority Report community who has been a member of this community for at least now 15 years. I think it's been at least Binder dad, Matt Binder's dad passed today. He would was a frequent immer obviously a huge supporter of his son when he was on the show and he chimed in with a lot of great comments and we would see him at any every live show that we did in Brooklyn and around here for years. He was a very fun guy and a nice guy. I just want to send condolences to Matt and his family and may his memory be a blessing and we're going to give him a shofar this to Binder that.
- [20:59]
Emma Vigland
Thinking of you, Matt Bender and the whole family. We're so sorry.
- [21:04]
Sam Cedar
All right. We're going to take a quick break and we'll be back in just a.
- [22:11]
Emma Vigland
Foreign.
- [22:21]
Sam Cedar
We are back. Sam Cedar, Emma Vigland on the Majority Report. It's a pleasure to welcome back to the program professor of philosophy at the University of Toronto, author and publisher of the Front Left newsletter on Substack, Jason Stanley. And I guess we had you on in 2019, but it seems like it was not that long ago but and you've written a piece and you've been like sort of involved in Hungary sort of pre Orban and watched the rise of his soft authoritarianism and it's sort of like running out of gas I guess in some way. But let's, I mean talk about for us your experience in Hungary prior to Orban.
- [23:12]
Jason Stanley
Yeah So I first came to Hungary, went to Hungary in 2009, when Budapest was like the new Berlin. It was the cosmopolitan, cool, cheap capital that everybody kind of was looking to as the next place of cool after Berlin. Not everybody, but a good number of people. Central European University was flourishing. It was a new university in the downtown Budapest. Beautiful new buildings. Academics from all over the world were coming there. Central European University, usually for a European university, was attracting faculty from all over the world. They recruited Tim Crane, a leading named chair in philosophy at Cambridge University, which is very unusual for a continental university. So it was really. They danced Sperbert, a top cognitive scientist, from. They were recruiting leading academics. And in this beautiful campus in downtown Budapest, and, you know, there were cool bars with LGBTQ nights and, you know, it was just like a cool place to be. And 1 felt like the future was Hungary. And then 2010 came. I returned. I was running a summer school at Central European University. Kind of everybody wanted to be involved in Central European University. And then I came back in 2010 to run another summer school after Orban won. And the mood was, like, entirely different. It was, like, somber. And he had just run this really anti Semitic campaign against George Soros. We forget now, but the whole world was shocked and revolted by Orban's campaign against George Soros, which was nakedly anti Semitic. This was back when people understood that when you railed against globalists, cosmopolitans, liberal humanitarian values, the LGBT community, this was mostly shorthand for antisemitism. This is when everyone knew this.
- [25:30]
Sam Cedar
What was it about what was going on there or what was embedded in Hungarian society that things could turn that quickly?
- [25:42]
Jason Stanley
Well, Hungary is a very. There's a rural urban divide in all of our countries, you know, that rural urban divide. We see it in the United States. You know, when people say about New York City, like the Saf, a city in the United States, oh, it's dangerous and, you know, decadent. And. And so that was very real in Hungary, that rural urban divide. The decadent, you know, it was the. But what it was, what Orban discovered was the formula of owning the legs. That's what he discovered. He discovered that you could get people to hand over their material future, you could get them to hand over their children's future, their jobs, their security, in order to make university professors sad. Like, you know, he discovered that cultural politics of, like, sacrificing the future of a country so that people could gain pleasure in watching, you know, quote, unquote, liberal elites, that is, you know, college professors making $40,000 a year. Liberal elites feel bad. So that's really what he discovered, is that like, let's, let's.
- [26:57]
Sam Cedar
Was there. I guess what I'm asking is, I mean, if someone was to ask me, like, how did we get Trump? I would say it's a combination of anemic growth after the financial crisis and the sort of like, maybe the sort of the offshoring of industry and the hollowing out of cities. And then I would also say commit mingling with a long history of racism in this country. And those two things sort of like came together and it ignited on some level and that got us Trump. I mean, you know, he didn't win with all the votes, but, you know, he had enough at that point. Was there other factors in Hungary?
- [27:49]
Jason Stanley
Yeah, no, I don't think there's. I don't think that those worldwide. I don't think there's one single explanation for the rise of global fascism. I think, you know, to tell that story of economic decline and failure of institutions globally, you'd have to explain the Sweden Democrats rise, the rise of the Swedish Fascist party, one of the first most, second most popular party in Sweden, by saying Sweden's economy failed or nothing like that happened in Sweden. So it's not the globe. There isn't one single global explanation. Hungary was a struggling Eastern European country that was in the EU and was rising slowly. So it wasn't like there was. Yes, the financial crisis hit, but I don't think that was a significant.
- [28:48]
Sam Cedar
Just general frustrations that Orban figured out. Here's how we exploit that.
- [28:57]
Jason Stanley
It was cultural politics and scapegoating. It was the attack on woke. It was latent antisemitism. It was telling people. It was treat. When I got there in 29 2010, it was all about like the loss of Greater Hungary. You know, so we talk about the Nazis rising with the Great Depression, but you got to remember that it was also the Treaty of Versailles and the Treaty of Versailles in the 2010 election was front and center. It was Trianon. It was the loss of Greater Hungary. That was. It was those very classic fascist themes. It was anti Semitism and Trianon and the loss of Greater Hungary. Those were the themes. And so it was, we're going to make Hungary great again. That's literally what he ran on. So it was literally the mythic past of fascism that we were once great and then immigration. Then he vilified. This was well before the Syrian war, but he vilified immigrants. He talked about white Christians being the most persecuted group on earth. He pioneered the cultural politics that is Trumpism.
- [30:25]
Emma Vigland
But isn't it also true that these ideas only have a salience with a certain population if there is a failure economically? And that's what history tells us. I would posit that, you know, well, we could go back and forth on that, but just where those issues become more politically powerful, it seems to me like in, you know, 2010, after the great Recession, there was a failure to adequately address class politics in general. So then you have a more simulated politics of keeping immigrants out. Even though Hungary never really had an immigration issue prior to this. You get a convenient scapegoat and Orban can go in there and rail against globalists, of course, with the anti Semitic undertones, but blame a economic gesture towards an economic system of kind of global cooperation or cooperation with other European countries as the failure, as opposed to, you know, say, broader capitalist forces being the failure?
- [31:37]
Jason Stanley
Yeah, I mean, I am, Emma, I'm very sympathetic to that explanation. In the United States, I would say it's some. I do think the financial crisis played a role in Hungary, without a doubt. But the EU was helping Hungary, so the globalist structures were. Hungary relies on EU money. And this isn't just 2010. This is four straight elections that Orban won with this politics, all while other European countries were economically rising and leaving Hungary way behind. And generally, I think Sweden is a good example to look at. I think, you know, sweet Swedish fascism rises because of sort of purely cultural vilification and racism. So. So Hungary, I think one can't, you know, I don't think one can turn away from the fact that Hungary has a deeply socially conservative Christian base that's rooted in the old right. And Horthy, remember, Orban is bringing back Hungarian sort of the structures of Hungarian far right nationalism very explicitly. So I don't think, you know, I'm not sure how much, you know, Hungary had a rich base for antisemitism. Hungary had a rich base for this cultural politics. And remember, Peter Meygar is right wings and conservative right.
- [33:16]
Sam Cedar
He's, he's, he's not, he's not like some type of progressive. I was just about to say, like, he. We replaced a sort of a fascist with like a just less fascist guy.
- [33:30]
Jason Stanley
On some level, he's a social conservative.
- [33:32]
Sam Cedar
Yeah.
- [33:33]
Jason Stanley
And so, so you have to, you know, you have to. And he ran completely on corruption, on saying, I'm dropping all the anti LGBTQ stuff, dropping all the Islamophobia and just saying, look at what that was covering up.
- [33:50]
Sam Cedar
And so, you know, I think that we have to accept that on some level, there is a percentage of. Of the population, at least in the West, I mean, probably everywhere, that is like, just really open to scapegoating segments of the population. Okay, when did Bannon. So Bannon sees this, and this is also the era in the years that follow before Trump runs, is the era that Breitbart, which Bannon was a partner of, with Breitbart goes international. And they start, like, trying to, like, they're adopting. In many respects, there's sort of like a symbiotic relationship going both ways with, I think Breitbart opened up in Europe and then, you know, all around the world in those, like, five years after, you know, from like 2010 maybe to 15 or something like that. And Bannon brings back these ideas. Is that right?
- [34:59]
Jason Stanley
Well, I think that Orban or Bond ran. If you look back at the 2010 campaign and you look at the world's reaction, which was horror, people were like, wow, this is, like, really explicitly fascist and anti Semitic. And now you look back at that campaign and you're like, wow, that's just Trumpism. So, you know, attacking Soros, going after private businesses for essentially dei, you know, pro LGBTQ policies, like Desantis did with Disney. So, but Hungary became Hungary. This inconsequential, small, poor European country becomes the kind of global center for the Bannon for the Global Fascist project. They used taxpayer money at the Danube Institute and government funded think tanks to bring in conservatives. Rod Dreher, journalists, right wing, far right intellectual.
- [36:02]
Sam Cedar
He was the crunchy. What was the crunchy conservative at one point? That guy? Rod Dreher.
- [36:09]
Jason Stanley
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So he moved to Budapest and, you know, as a fellow. So they were like, you know, Tucker Carlson, everyone's visiting and they're using government money to support this global network. And they're exporting Bannon's. They're exporting Orban's techniques. So what we're living through in the United States, and it's national humiliation for us because Hungary is not a country you want to emulate. Destroying the country using scapegoating and, you know, targeting, destroying universities, destroying all the great institutions, using anti wokeism as an excuse, and then pocketing profits while everyone is chortling over the suffering of the scapegoats and the cultural elites. So this was the buying of the media. So 80% of the Hungarian media is owned by Orban's allies. The government sort of forced that, this government pressure campaign on the media. That we're seeing in the United States, Larry Ellison buying the media. That's all the Orban's tactics and obviously the attack on universities.
- [37:33]
Sam Cedar
Can you make explicit this concept of soft authoritarianism? And why is some error? Why not? Why does soft authoritarianism always turn into hard authoritarianism? And why did some start at software and then go to hard as opposed to hard and hard?
- [37:57]
Jason Stanley
Great. I think the concept that is super useful here is my colleague Luke and Wei's concept of competitive authoritarianism, Steve Levitsky and Lukun's way concept of competitive authoritarianism. So they look at a country like Russia as just an authoritarian, hard authoritarian country. In your terminology. Competitive authoritarianism is when you've got gerrymandered seats, control of the media. Control of the media is so powerful in Hungary because Hungary is a much less educated country and most people just speak Hungarian. So if all the Hungarian media is owned by the Hungarian Orban's allies, then most of the population who only reads Hungarian can only read that. So it becomes really important to have presses outside the country who publish in Hungarian. For instance, my book How Fascism Works, that sold very well in Hungary, published in 2018, was translated into Hungarian and sold in Hungary, was published by a French press that translates Hungarian stuff, stuff into Hungarian and sells it in Hungary because it's harder for a Hungarian press to do that. So competitive authoritarianism do things like that. You buy up the media, you put pressure campaigns on presses so the elections are not free and fair democracy isn't just majority vote. The people of North Korea are going to vote for their leader every time because the press is not free. You need a free press to have a democracy. Competitive authoritarian system is when you don't have a free press, you have pressure on the election systems. The ruling party controls the election apparatus, but you still have elections. And so you can beat an autocrat in competitive authoritarianism, but you have to have an overwhelming win like we saw just now in Hungary. You can't beat an autocrat in competitive authoritarianism with a 2% or 3% win. You need a 10%, a 15% win. And that's what we saw in Hungary. A win so overwhelming that you know, Hungary would be ejected from the European Union if they tried to. To do anything about it. So that's what we need here.
- [40:19]
Sam Cedar
I want to ask as to. As to why that happened in a moment. But yesterday, I think, I think it was yesterday it was revealed by Peter Magyar, the, I guess the prime minister elect, that Hungary has been bankrolling CPAC Yes.
- [40:43]
Jason Stanley
Yeah, that's what I said. Hungary has been bank. That's what I referred to earlier, that Hungary has been the bank account for the global fascist. Right. That's why these far right journalists and intellectuals can go to Hungary and get paid. They've been using Hungarian taxpayer money. And remember, Orban is in Putin's pocket, so he explicitly is in Putin's pocket. So CPAC has been bankrolled by Putin's lackey.
- [41:17]
Sam Cedar
What's just stunning is we've spent the past couple of weeks mocking Dave Rubin. I don't know if you're familiar with these names. I hope you're not, just for your own sake, but Dave Rubin and Rob Schneider, maybe you know him as the copy guy from Saturday Night Live, all of whom would just return from, from Hungary. You know, also J.D. vance, you've heard of him. I mean, all of them going to Hungary ostensibly to sort of, I guess help Orban or just to visit or to, you know, I think it, I can't help but think like that also sort of like when Tucker Carlson went through that period of time where you sun your, your anus, red light under your testicles or something to that effect. All sort of like hardcore fashion.
- [42:09]
Jason Stanley
Hardcore fascist politics. Right, Hardcore fascist politics.
- [42:14]
Sam Cedar
So what? So, and I get the idea of like, you need to have a 10% or 12% win here. We have that same dynamic, you know, in various gerrymandered states across the country. And there's gonna be, you know, Trump is going to deploy more and more things that are gonna make it, make the actual will of the people muted in some fashion in the way it shows up in the votes. We don't know exactly how, but it might make it harder to vote in some places, might shut down certain polling places.
- [42:49]
Jason Stanley
I don't think they know exactly how yet. I think they're planning, in the planning stage now. They're trying to. They've moved so fast. I think they figured they think we're going to shut this midterms down in some way, but I don't think they've totally figured out how yet.
- [43:02]
Sam Cedar
What was it that, what was it that, that, that got that 10, 12% to vote against Orban? Was it just that they got tired of it? Is there a natural sort of like. Or was it that the nature of, of an Orban is so corrupt that their, that Orban's agenda doesn't really have time to placate the people because he's running out of time? He wants to live the good life? I guess after office. I mean, is that what it is? Because I feel like that's what's happening with Trump on some level.
- [43:39]
Jason Stanley
I mean, no, I don't think, I think Orban is going to continue because he has, he has stacked the courts. He has, you know, I think he might, he will try to come back and I don't think he's going to walk off into the distance. I might be wrong about that, but that's just my prediction. I think that it was, I think it was a 14% win. I think it was that finally. And Magyar was very effective here. People saw like Orban ran on, you know, it was all great replacement theory. We're going to build up the white race. Like white Christians are under threat. We're going to build up the Hungarian family. And Hungary collapsed. All these fascists like Trump is destroying the United States. They destroy their own countries. And the Hungarian birth rate was at its lowest ever last year and fewer live births than in modern history. I believe 20,000 less than when he was elected. So people saw, I think, and this is what Magyar just relentlessly focused on rather than his socially conservative beliefs, that all the scapegoating is just there to rob the nation, to build giant villas for Orban's family, to enrich himself, his family and his friends. And it just became more and more obvious that the cultural politics was just utter rubbish. That the cultural politics just was a meaningless way to. It was meant to sort of. People got sick of owning the libs. They finally saw through owning the libs. They're like, wait, maybe I actually want a country more than I want to see some, you know, lower middle class college professor squirm. You know, maybe I want a future for my children. It just became so obvious that Orban's kids and his son in law and family were packing their bank accounts with Hungarian taxpayer cash and state contracts. That people finally saw through it. They finally saw through that the cultural politics is just a smokescreen.
- [45:55]
Sam Cedar
It's really hard to imagine the leadership of their country, of a country's family profiting off of these things. I can't, I can't even imagine what that must be like to experience. Well, so there I imagine, I mean, I hope I know of a few people, but I would imagine that there is lessons to be taken here because I think socially speaking, Hungary is far more conservative than the United States. And so if Magyar was able to sort of like say that we're going to focus on material, material issues and corruption issues, we don't need to get bogged down. I mean, he's been, you know, at least in terms of that speech anyways, fairly, you know, relatively speaking, like, you know, live and let live.
- [46:55]
Jason Stanley
Absolutely. He put, he put it aside and that's what we're going to have to do. The fascists don't bicker among each other about, you know, I mean, they don't agree with each other. I mean, some of the support. Some Trump supporters, you know, hate immigrants, other hate Trump supporters, hate trans women. You know, they don't bicker amongst each other. They know they have differences. We're going to, you know, to defeat this billionaire, this movement that is meant that use scapegoats to enrich the billionaires. I mean, that's the only minority I really don't like. We're going to have to have that kind of solidarity. We're gonna have to say, okay, we disagree on some issues. And by solidarity, I don't mean kicking to the curb our trans fellow citizens or kicking to the curb our immigrant neighbors. No, Magyar didn't do that. Magyar didn't do like, you know, join in on the scapegoating. No, we're just going to have to put that aside, put our differences aside and focus on the real enemy, which is the billionaire class and the corrupt, the corrupt international cabal of tech fascists and the real international cabal that is using this scapegoat politics to destroy our countries and ruin our economic futures. And I don't think Magyar is out there saying. He hasn't been out there saying, you know, socially vilifying, you know, acting on his beliefs that alienate Hungarians who don't agree with him. He's been focusing on saying, let's get the rule of law back. Let's, you know, we need social conservatives to defeat the fascists. They have to recognize that they're being played.
- [48:53]
Sam Cedar
Jason Stanley, professor of philosophy at the University of Toronto, author and publisher of the Front Left newsletter on Substack. Thanks so much for your time. We've got to make it a shorter time until you're back because I have a feeling we're gonna, we're gonna be revisiting this topic in a myriad of ways. I really appreciate your time today.
- [49:12]
Jason Stanley
Thank you so much, you guys. It was a great discussion.
- [49:15]
Sam Cedar
All right, we're going to take a quick break. When we come back, Muhammad Ali Shabani, journalist and editor of Amwaj Media, a platform focusing on Iran, Iraq and the GCC countries will be talking about the blockade upon blockade that we have at the Strait of Hormuz. Thanks so much for your time. We are back. Sam Cedar, Emma Vigland on the Majority Report. It's a pleasure to welcome to the program Muhammad Ali Shabani, journalist, editor and editor, I should say, of Amwaj Media Platform focusing on Iran, Iraq and the GCC countries. Mohammed, welcome to the program. Where to start? There is a blockade and then there's a blockade, ostensibly blockading the blockade. And the latest report is that China was able to run, I don't know, both blockades or one blockade. Give us your sense of like where we're at at this point and then we'll talk about what supposedly happened during the talks.
- [51:40]
Muhammad Ali Shabani
Okay. So I think the number one thing to consider is what has Iran actually done in Hormuz? I think there's a lot of ambiguity about that. And we've seen this ambiguity also being expressed by President Trump. For instance, he himself is saying he's not quite sure whether Iran has actually mined the two main kind of lanes that run through it. So the one thing to consider is that Iran hasn't actually deployed major surface vessels in this maritime choke point, Right. So there's no major military being deployed telling ships don't move past it. Right. So Iran is mainly acting through threats and also through public messaging. The number one inhibitor of kind of maritime transit right now are actually insurance companies. Insurers are saying we're not going to insure ships passing through that under these conditions. No way. Trump administration tried to kind of preempt that by saying we're going to offer $20 billion worth of insurance cover. Right. That's not even near enough. Some economists have put the figure at 300 billion that they're saying no ship is going to move past that strait under these conditions.
- [52:47]
Sam Cedar
And who's going to think they're going to get paid by Trump? I mean, honestly, I mean, seriously, I mean, like anybody, I wouldn't bet a billion dollars that I'm going to get paid by Trump.
- [52:57]
Emma Vigland
Y and that was after he had offered for the navy to escort these ships, which would have been a death sentence to a bunch of US Personnel.
- [53:06]
Muhammad Ali Shabani
So again, the number one thing to consider is what has Iran actually done to blockade this strait? And the reality is that hasn't really done much, hasn't really deployed forces. There are no major surface vessels out there. It's just by saying basically insinuating that we have capabilities and those capabilities are fast attack boats, marine drones, mines. But you know, just the other day, again, Trump himself said that, you know, we have to kind of stop traffic through one of these lanes. Iran may or may not have mined this straight. Iran doesn't know where it left the mines. How much sense does that make? So, you know, there's a lot of ambiguity about what Iran has done. So that's number one.
- [53:45]
Sam Cedar
And we should say, we should say that ambiguity only helps from Iran's perspective because the insurance companies don't want ambiguity, of course.
- [53:57]
Muhammad Ali Shabani
I mean, uncertainty, I think is the number one enemy of any business. And I think Iran has caught up on that. And not to go kind of segue away from this, but essentially this is partly a consequence of the sanctions regime on Yibal, which has led many companies, insurers, bankers, et cetera, to over comply with regulations or to be over cautious. Right. So insurers, right now, they're saying there's no way in hell we're going to insure any major ship. What if there's a spill? What if there's an environmental degradation because of a ship being hit and we have to pick up the tap? We're not going to do that. We're not going to do anything. And it's not just the insurance companies kind of making that argument. We also seeing the same kind of line of reasoning from European governments. The UK Prime Minister just yesterday said essentially, yeah, we're going to have this conversation later this week with France, with other European governments. Going to be dozens of governments being represented, but none of them are going to do anything until the conflict is over. Right. So this is the kind of essence of it right now that Iran, we're not quite sure what Iran is actually doing. What is the blockade? How does it look like? To me, it's mostly invisible. We have some military bases coordinating the passage of some ships. We have reports about how some of them are paying tolls. Right. But what Iran is doing, again, is very ambiguous. So mindful of all of that, what has the United States done? What is the US Military doing? So they're saying, Ascentcom is coming out saying we have 10,000 forces, we have over a dozen surface vessels. We have all this aircraft that's going to patrol, make sure that nothing goes in or out of Iranian ports. Here's the reality. Iran's southern coastline is 1800 kilometers long. Now, how long that is? This is the size of Europe, size of Western Europe. And about 20% of the trade that goes through that coastline is already smuggling. It's outside state control, half of it controlled by irgc. Right. This huge amount of smuggling, a lot of these kind of Ports which facilitate trade is again, irregular. We don't really know what goes in or not half the time. What I mean by we is US Observers mindful of all of that. We also have third party actors like China, like India, like Russia, which have their own arrangements with other each and the Chinese have gone out and said essentially we have commitments to Iran, we're going to honor them. We don't care what other others say. We're not going to allow anybody to interfere in our commitments or prevent us from carrying them out. Right. So this notion that 10,000 forces are going to police a coastline that's the size of Western Europe is just to me, I think practically, if you look at it doesn't really make much sense. It's going to, you know, logistically, I'm sorry to interrupt you just going to say logistically, technically it's very difficult to enforce. That's all.
- [56:36]
Emma Vigland
No, I was going, I was interrupting you for a second because, you know, I've also been thinking a lot about the how Russia is able to still trade weapons with the Iranians via the Caspian Sea outside of the auspices of the west or their kind of surveillance or their ability to understand what's going on. Iran also, one, if you could actually reflect on that dynamic and expand on it a little bit more because I'm so curious about it. But two, Iran still hasn't played the other card that they have here, which is the Houthis in Yemen. Talk about coastline that is controlled. The Houthis have the control of a large swath of Yemen's coastline, which means that if they want to, they can choke off another trade route in the Red Sea. And Iran is still kind of sitting on that possibility as another leverage point against the United States.
- [57:40]
Muhammad Ali Shabani
Absolutely. That's one of the things that I think many experts in Iran have highlighted that apart from this issue with doing an eye to eye Strategy that if U.S. and Navy is going to basically blockade Iranian ports, that Iran will respond by attacking Gulf area ports. That's number one. Number two is this essence of third party actors like China coming in and putting pressure on the United States to basically back off when it comes to certain types of trade, that they're not going to allow the Trump administration to impede their own commitments or the fulfillment of their own commitments. The third part is what you're saying, which is about Yemen. And if we look at what happened last year, the Trump administration entered about two months of war with the Houthis. Right. And that stretch of coastline is less than a tenth of Iran's coastline, just for perspective, it's tiny compared to Iran. And Trump administration gave up on that after two months and basically said, we're going to sign a peace deal with the Houthis and get out. That's what happened last year. So, again, this notion that they're going to police coastline the size of Western Europe with 10,000 soldiers, you know, I'm just saying, good luck. Even before all of this, 20, 30% of the trade was irregular. It was smuggling. Only thing that's going to happen is basically legal trade is going to become illicit. That's number one. Number two, I think what's going to happen is that Iran, essentially, because of its geography, has over a dozen neighbors. Right. So Iran is not an island. It's surrounded by land. As he pointed out, Russia to the north through the Caspian. They also have overland route through the Central Asia through the Caucasus. They don't have a shortage of neighbors, so to speak. And what is the United States going to do about that? I think not really much. They already have tried their best over the past decades through secondary sanctions, try to go after banking, logistics, insurance. That hasn't really worked because clearly Iran still carries our trade. So
- [59:32]
Sam Cedar
what do you think the Trump administration thinks it's doing? I mean, like, the. It is. It seems so obvious that. That Iran has all the cards here. Like, they've lost already what there was for them to lose. It seems to me, like. Right. And so now they have really nothing else left to lose, per se. And the United States is not, you know, 10,000 troops, that we are blockading a blockade, and we're really unable to turn off the Iranian spigots, as it were, because they can go many other different directions. What is it that is your sense that the Trump administration thinks it's doing outside of, like, trying to bail water and keep the stock market from sinking too much?
- [60:38]
Muhammad Ali Shabani
I mean, there are two different ways of looking at it. Number one is that they want to apply more pressure. And it's driven by the same kind of mindset that we see not just since Trump took office a year ago, but also same thing. Under his first term, he pulled out from the 2015 Iran nuclear deal. When he took office in 2017, in 2018, he pulled out and he imposed what's called the maximum pressure campaign. So there is this notion that we can. United States can modify Iran's behavior by applying maximum economic pressure. Right. So I think that's kind of the backdrop, and we're seeing a continuation of that. First, he had maximum economic Sanctions that didn't really achieve the policy objectives they had. Then they went to war. They didn't achieve the policy objectives either. So now they're going to have maximum, maximum pressure economically to see if that works. Before that's even really been instituted, we're seeing some reports that Trump may resume bombings again. So it is kind of basically just trying out anything to try to achieve these political objectives which haven't been reached so far. That's one way of looking at it, which is just basically repetition of the same behavior, because humans, I think, are creatures of habit. The second thing is it could very well be that they're on the verge of signing a deal with you, Iran. And by announcing this blockade, knowing that this is not going to last, because again, what I explained logistically just so difficult. I didn't even bring up the transshipment part. For instance, if a ship were to go to, I don't know, Iraq and then go back to Iran and then back to you, how are you going to, how are you going to basically track all of that? It's impossible. You don't have enough resources to do that. But I think it could be that he wants to announce a major draconian kind of step, massive pressure tactic, and then knowing that it's not going to last, knowing that America's own Arab allies are opposed to it, because right now, nothing is going through Hormuz right now, right? No oil, not Iranian oil, not Arab oil, nothing. Right? That he may then turn around and say, you know what, we have a deal. And we have a deal because I pressured Iran because I took this extreme step and this is kind of his off ramp, his exit. We don't know. It could go that direction.
- [62:43]
Sam Cedar
The. What do you know about what? I mean, I suspect the option B makes the most sense, it seems to me. I mean the one sort of like, I guess it was sort of more of a rumor. But the, the idea that, and supposedly what I'm reading now is that in the negotiations that failed over the 21 hour marathon run the JD Vance did, one of the, one of the, the US demands was shared revenue from the toll that Iran would now institute for the Strait of Hormuz. And to me, the first thing I thought was like, okay, this is, this is the ask and the fallback is going to be okay, you keep all the money, but you have to have preference for Trump bitcoin, Trump crypto accepting those. Like I've seen that, that rumors that world financial crypto issues will be accepted by Iran as a Toll. And at the end of the day, like, the only thing that I can understand, the only thing that makes sense to me about this is that somehow Trump is putting money in his pocket. Pocket. Or Witkoff's pocket or Kushner's pocket, or their kids pocket, I mean, or all of their pockets. What's your sense of that relative to what is being reported as, you know, some of the demands by the US Of Iran?
- [64:19]
Muhammad Ali Shabani
So about the tolls in themselves, if we consider what's out there in the media, which is that Iran is looking at potentially instituting a toll of $1 a barrel, and $1 a barrel would be, considering that usually prior to the war, it was about 20 million barrels a day passing through that strait. So just basic math would indicate that the annual revenue would be about $7 billion. Right. And this has to be shared with Oman because Oman is the other. What do you call it, the other country that has ownership of this strait. So these waters are not international waters. They're shared by Oman. And. And Oman has made clear he doesn't want to charge any tolls. So just the toll in itself. It's a massive legal political headache for everybody involved. Right. I'm not quite sure whether it's going to hold, but Iran is, I think, is pitching it as a means to extract reparations because it knows there is no other way for Iran to receive reparations. There's very few ways. Already the Iranian government that estimated losses from this war at $270 billion. There are other estimates out there that put it way higher than that. So this has been very costly for you all. This hasn't been a cheap war at all. But what you bring up about this notion that Trump administration may want to cut in any kind of toll system that may be set up. Interestingly, I've heard some claims that supposedly one of the crypto companies linked to Witkoff's son somehow that he was involved in the payment of one toll. But then I actually checked with one usually very well informed regional security source, and he said, that's bogus. Alex Woodkop is not involved. His company is not involved in the kind of collection of a toll for obvious reasons. There are so many legal political risks. And also, keep in mind, sanctions are still in place. You don't want to run afoul of sanctions. Right, Right. So again, I think just looking at this toll system, I think even if it is instituted against the objections of Europe, against the objections of the Gulf Fire upstates, the actual revenue that will come from it is about $7 billion annually. And if you look at the scope of Iranian oil exports, if sanctions were to be lifted, it's 10, 20 times that. Iran's foreign exchange reserves around the world over $100 billion. So it's a kind of drop in the water. But the main value of those tolls, I would think is political. It's just a means for Iran to say that we managed to extract reparations. And why do I bring up reparations? It's just to argue for its public that we stood against the United States. We were not defeated. We also managed to get compensation. And apart from all of this, there was a bigger conflict in the Gulf about 30 years ago. It was the Iran Iraq War went on for eight years. Iraq was backed by the GCC countries. United States was backing Saddam in some ways. At certain points during the conflict, it caused up to $1 trillion in losses for Iran. Iran didn't manage to get a single century reparations. Not from Iraq, not from the gcc. And to add insult to injury, Iraq, a few years after the end of the Iran Iraq war in 1991, invaded Kuwait. Right. So Iraq has actually paid all of its reparations to Kuwait over $50 billion. And he finalized the final payment for those reparations last. So Kuwait got paid, Iran never got paid. He's been attacked now not just by the Iraqis, but also by the Israel, by the US he wants to have something to show for, right, to kind of say that we were attacked. We're the aggrieved party here, we were not the aggressor. We need to have some kind of compensation. This is, I think, mainly a domestic function.
- [67:57]
Emma Vigland
Do you have another follow up?
- [67:58]
Sam Cedar
Well, I just wanted to follow up on the other demands of the US around both the existing enriched uranium and the. It seems to be an argument about a timeline for how long Iran will not enrich uranium. I've seen like five and 20 years. What's your understanding of that aspect of it?
- [68:26]
Muhammad Ali Shabani
So much of what happened in Pakistan was a repetition of the negotiations in Geneva, which were held on the eve of the Israeli US attack. That was back in February. And during those negotiations, based on the reporting we did, Iran was willing to forego enrichment for a period of about five years. And the Trump administration, apparently Witkoff, he kind of went back and forth. According to Iranian sources, he first came up with seven years. And then Iran kind of showed a bit of flexibility on that. And then in the final session after a phone call with Trump, again, this is Based on what Iranian sources are saying, Buskov suddenly turned around and said 10 years. And at that point there was an explosion in the room. They didn't come to a deal. And Iran, apart from this argument about the extent of this enrichment freeze, also said essentially that they offered no stockpiling. What's meant by no stockpiling is that it doesn't matter how much you enrich for what period of time. If there's no accumulation. Right. Of nuclear material, there's nothing for you to make a bomb with. Right.
- [69:31]
Sam Cedar
That's what the Oman Foreign Minister had said the day, a couple of days after the start of the war, that, that, that Iran had put that on the table.
- [69:41]
Muhammad Ali Shabani
Yeah.
- [69:42]
Sam Cedar
You can't make a bomb if you don't stockpile. You only are using it in perhaps a nuclear reactor, I mean a nuclear power plant. Because it gets diminished as, as you go forward.
- [69:54]
Muhammad Ali Shabani
Yeah. So that was the kind of Iranian line and the US didn't think it was good enough and they attacked. So now here we are a month and a half later and the conversation they had in Islam about the sticking points, the way I've understood it from the sources I've spoken to is essentially, they are essentially the same. Number one is the timeline for this enrichment freeze. And keep in mind that Iran has not offered to freeze uranium enrichment for over two decades. The last time Iran agreed to something like that was in 2004 for a period of couple of months. So if Trump even gets five years of enrichment freeze, that's a massive upgrade compared to Obama's 2015 deal. Right. Just keep this in mind. But apparently there's pressure, I think, from Israel that even the 20 year timeline that they put forward in Islamabad is not good enough for Washington. There's really kind of pressure saying that no, we just want zero enrichment period and that's it. And the second sticking point is the fate of Iran's stockpiles of 60% enriched uranium. And it also has stockpiles of 20% enriched uranium. And this is quite technical, the 20% enriched uranium, basically it can be used for what's called the Tehran Research Reactor. Ironically, it is a US supplied facility that was provided by Washington under the time of the Shah. So it's a very old facility, about 67 years old. And the 20% enriched uranium would be used to fuel that facility for the coming kind of seven, eight years. And then there's a question of 60%. Iran is saying essentially we can address your grievances or your concern by down blending it. Right. Far lower than 60% purity. So 90% is what you need for a weapon. And they're saying, we can take it down. We can take it down to, I don't know, three and a half. And Trump administration is saying, no, you got to hand it over. And then in the middle of all of this, we have the Russians also coming now and repeating their offer, which is that we can hold on to it as a third party. Problem with the Russians is that nobody trusts, not Iran, not the U.S. so here we are kind of repeating Geneva, and the question arises, what was the purpose of this war? What was the purpose of this $270 billion worth of damage, thousands of people killed, all this disruption, inflation, gas price, what was the purpose of it? Right. I don't know. I think that's one of the questions that are kind of arising and many experts are having difficulty answering.
- [72:14]
Emma Vigland
Well, you mentioned Israel. I mean, like, we have to kind of talk about the colonial elephant in the room, I guess, like the Israeli lobby and their push for this war across presidencies finally getting what they wanted. There was a poll I saw from Hebrew University of Jerusalem that showed that two thirds of Israelis currently oppose the Iran cease fire, which is almost the same when you look at American public opinion in who opposes the war, but who's calling the shots here. In many ways, the Israeli government at least sold Trump on this war. And the reporting indicates that he was high on his own supply after Venezuela. And so Netanyahu comes in, tells him it's going to be easy, and there you go. But you're seeing here like this kind of moves into a question I have about Europe and what this could mean about Europe's relationship both with the United States and Israel, because they're being impacted disproportionately because the United States has its own kind of domestic capacity with oil and gas. Europe has been in dire straits in many ways because of this. And you see figures like Meloni criticizing Trump over the over the Pope thing and his criticisms of the war. And you also see different European leaders saying, we're not going to support this. NATO is not supporting the blockade, even though Trump is trying to bully them in public. Does this accelerate potentially a break from European military, both deference to the US And Israel and also dependence on it because they may look for more multilateral relationships that are a bit more stable?
- [74:13]
Muhammad Ali Shabani
That's a good question. I think Europe, as you say, rightly, has been one of the biggest losers in all of this. Its interests are not being considered, I think, by anybody. They don't have a seat at the table in Islamabad. We had a number of countries there which were not announced in the press. There are a number of countries from the region, Arab states which were in Pakistan and this was not publicized. Europeans were not there, to the best of my knowledge.
- [74:36]
Sam Cedar
Do you know which ones?
- [74:37]
Muhammad Ali Shabani
I know, but I can't go into that. But the Europeans, Europeans, to the best of my knowledge, were not there. They were not represented. One of the first things that happened because of this war was that Russian oil was unsanctioned. Right. So you have this situation, bizarre situation, where the Trump administration is bullying India for well over a year to get them to stop buying Russian oil and finally managed to do it. MODI finally signs off on it and says, okay, fine, I'll do what you want, get rid of these tariffs, these kind of penalty tariffs imposed on me because of this Russian oil. And then the Iran war begins. And I think it was about a week or two into it and suddenly I said, you know what? No, no, no, please, please, we would like you to buy Russian oil. Because if you don't buy Russian oil, we're going to have a huge problem in the market. We're going to have shortages because we have this shortage because this Iran war that we expected to take three days and now we have a problem. And that was the number one thing. I'm not even going to go into the fact that they also waived sanctions on Iranian oil. So Iran in effect has achieved more sanctions relief from this war than any negotiation in the past 10 years. That in itself is remarkable. But apart from. Yeah, it is what it is.
- [75:47]
Sam Cedar
Do you have a sense of where the GCC or any of the individual GCC countries or any of the, the countries in that region, maybe the ones who were in Islamabad where they, where they have been through the timeline of this war? Because, I mean, look, I think like it's quite clear that Netanyahu and Netanyahu's like long term desire to attack Iran played a part in this. But I don't know what made the Monday different from the Friday. It seems to me, I mean, I just have to believe that Trump is making money on this in some way or somebody who has influence with him in terms of his, his wallet said, now we're going to do this because it doesn't make any sense in any other way. I mean, he could convince, this is easy. But like all of these 180s don't make any sense other than like somebody said, like, oh, there's, there's a billion dollars for you in this. And then all of a sudden he's like, I don't care, whatever we've been doing, let's do it. But where? I'm just curious to the extent that there is any sort of like potential financial payoff for Trump. My best guess would be that it would come from one of those other states in the region. But what's your sense of where they have been on this attack through prior to the attack to now?
- [77:20]
Muhammad Ali Shabani
So I think first and foremost, GCC is not a monolith. It's not six different members. And I think prior to the war you had countries like Oman, countries like Qatar who were very much opposed to any kind of military confrontation. And we saw this in the fact that they try to mediate, they try to come up with a deal. Right. The interlocutor even in Geneva was in fact Oman as because Iran and the US were at least officially not speaking directly. I think the Saudis at that point try to have it both ways. They, I think wanted Iran to not get away with not being hit at the same time. They didn't want all out war. And then you had February 28th that Israel killed Iran's supreme leader. Massive, massive airstrikes. And the US also joined in. And I think Iran then had a choice. Either they're going to show rationality, pragmatism. And what do I mean by rationality and pragmatism? So the US military budget last year was $997 billion. The Israeli budget is 46 billion. So combined it's over a trillion dollars in military spending annually in part of these two countries. Iran's annual military spending is 8 billion. So you're out funded or outspent by a factor of 130. The rational thing to do is don't poke the bear, Take the hit. Cut a deal, cut your losses whenever you can and walk away. That's what usual, I think rationality would dictate. But I think Iran's rationality or giving away its rationality in recent years only invited more attack. I think that's the conclusions that the military leadership kind of came to. That the more we give away our rationality, the more we have to concede. So the most rational thing for us to do is to appear irrational. Now what is irrational is to attack six countries at the same time, knowing that your annual military spending is $8 billion. I'm going to attack them anyway. I don't care. So when this began, it wasn't just that Saudi Arabia was attacked. You also had attacks on Qatar because why? Qatar is home to the Forward headquarters of Centcom, U.S. central Command. It's the main military headquarters in the region. Even Oman, a mediator has come under limited attack. Of course, then you have Kuwait, UAE, etc. So after these attacks, and I should add a caveat which is that reporting indicates that there is a strong likelihood that US military use the territory of some of these states to attack Iran. So it's not just that they were completely innocent by saying this is not verified 100%, but there are reports out there, the New York Times has written about this. They pointed to for instance Kuwait or Bahrain as potential sites for where the United States carried out its initial strikes using land based ballistic missiles. But that's beside the point. What I'm trying to make essentially now, which is that in the aftermath of this war, even if you look at countries which were inclined to be less hawkish on Iran, if you talk to officials from those countries, countries like Oman, countries like Qatar, they're saying that relationship is not going to be the same after this war. And there are a number of reasons for that. You know, one of which is obviously they tried to mediate and they got hit. Right? That's the obvious one. Another thing is I think the intra Arab kind of dynamic where they just look bad. Imagine if you're Qatari now and basically all these years you tried to say to Saudi Arabia, to the uae, your rivals, that your approach towards Iran is wrong, we should be talking to Iran, we should be mediating. And then we got hit anyway. And it's not the first time they've been hit. They were also hit last June. Right. Iran attacked Qatar last June as well. And there's another country that attacked Qatar last year, which is Israel. So Israel bombed Qatar in September, ostensibly targeting Hamas negotiator in Doha. And that was a huge shock to the Gulf countries because it was the first time that they were bombed by Israel. Right. All this time Netanyahu was telling these Gulf Arab leaderships that no, no, I'm your friend, I can defend you against Iran, we should ally together. But no, no, it's like I'm going to bomb you now anyway. So that, that's caused a huge problem for them. That's why you saw steps like the sudden move towards finalizing this Saudi Pakistani bilateral defense pact. And then you also saw now again just to kind of conclude the kind of dynamic that we have right now in the aftermath of this war, I think that there's still going to be divisions within the gcc, because they're inherent, they have huge differences over a number of issues. Saudi UAE, Qatar UAE, etc. But I think when it comes to relations with Iran, it's not like they're going back to. They're going to go back to what they were. Out of these six countries, I think Oman is the most likely to try to resume a normalized relationship. But I think the others will find it difficult. And I think Iran knows this. It's going to cause damage to Iran under these sanctions. For instance, one of Iran's windows to the world economy has been the uae. It's going to be very difficult for Iran to replace the UAE as a conduit for the conduct of trade, for instance. So I think now the focus will be on the lifting of U.S. sanctions. And for that you do need a deal. You may not strike the deal this week or next week, but at some point this war has to end. And the ideal condition for Iran is to have a negotiated end to this deal, right, that results in a deal, ideally on better terms than what the United States offered in Geneva. Because again, what is the purpose of this war if you end up back to where you were in February? Right? You need to have something to show for.
- [82:58]
Emma Vigland
Iran's got to play the long game, right? So if perhaps this UAE relationship is not going to resume in the same way that it did before. But look at these other options that are opening up. I mean, with the United States looking like this belligerent party and with Iran exercising its leverage and finally kind of just being forced to be in a position where they can use their geography as leverage, I would imagine that they're thinking about long term trade relationships that they didn't think were possible before.
- [83:36]
Muhammad Ali Shabani
Of course, I think in the longer term it's not just about using geography, it's also about using technology, for instance, crypto. These are medium term, long term kind of shifts that we may be seeing down the line. But I think in the immediate term, given Iran's massive economic challenges even prior to this war, huge chronic inflation above 40%, high percentage of unemployment, sanctions were punishing the economy and add $300 billion worth of damage to that. We already seen reports about millions of job losses because of this war. Because it's not just that factories have been bombed, et cetera. The Internet's been shut down mostly for about five weeks now. And there are many online entrepreneurs in Iran. You'd be shocked, astounded by the number of people who make a living out of Instagram videos. So just the fact that they've been offline for five weeks, that's disrupted a lot of things in the economy. And to be able to plug all of these gaps, they would need sanctions relief. The most immediate remedy, I think would be the unfreezing of Iran's own assets abroad. As I mentioned, there's over $100 billion of Iranian foreign exchange reserves outside Iran. If Iran can leverage access to these reserves, it can be a short term kind of assistance to the economy. But I think in the longer term they do need to normalize banking relationships. And for that you do need a deal at some point.
- [84:57]
Sam Cedar
Well, let's hope that the scenario in which you expressed that Trump was blockading the blockade, as it were, as a way of providing him an exit ramp is correct. Mohamed Ali Shabani, the editor of Amwaj Media, we will link to that platform. Thank you so much. This has been incredibly enlightening and educational. Really appreciate it and look forward to talking to you again soon. But hopefully perhaps with this in the rear view mirror.
- [85:40]
Muhammad Ali Shabani
Thank you so much for having me. I appreciate it.
- [85:41]
Emma Vigland
Thank you.
- [85:41]
Muhammad Ali Shabani
Thank you so much.
- [85:43]
Sam Cedar
All right, folks, we're going to take quick break, head into the fun half of the program wherein we will have fun. I have to skedaddle for an appointment, but Emma will be non skedaddled and
- [85:58]
Emma Vigland
I will be seated.
- [85:59]
Sam Cedar
Yes. And there's a lot of stuff on that.
- [86:03]
Emma Vigland
The doordash grandma rolling last night. It's also kind of depressing but you know, hits on all of these different points about American society just so it's like a kaleidoscope of all of our societal ills in this country.
- [86:20]
Sam Cedar
Some folks have asked how they can send messages, condolences and support to Matt Binder, whose father, Allen, or Binder's dad as you may know him as, passed away today. You can head over to Matt's Patreon and support his work or you know, send a a note there and we'll put a link to that in the YouTube and podcast descriptions. And it's patreon.com backslash mattbender that makes it easy. Also, don't forget just coffee co op, fair trade coffee, hot chocolate. Use the coupon code, majority get 10% off. Matt. Yeah, left reckoning Clayton Tucker running for ag commissioner in Texas. A very interesting conversation, not just about farmers but also about how he can stand up to the rollout of data
- [87:23]
Muhammad Ali Shabani
centers with that elected position in Texas. So with the recent news of was it Missouri.
- [87:28]
Sam Cedar
Right. The the folks threw out a bunch
- [87:31]
Muhammad Ali Shabani
of data center supporters.
- [87:32]
Sam Cedar
Can do that in Texas. So check out this interview. And, yeah, this is coming up right after the show today, so in just about an hour. Okay, folks, see you in the fun half.
- [87:46]
Muhammad Ali Shabani
Okay.
- [87:46]
Sam Cedar
Emma, please.
- [87:47]
Emma Vigland
Well, I just. I feel that my voice is sorely lacking on the majority report.
- [87:51]
Sam Cedar
Wait, look.
- [87:53]
Jason Stanley
Sam is unpopular.
- [87:54]
Sam Cedar
I do deserve a vacation education at Disney World. So, ladies and gentlemen, it is my pleasure to welcome Emma to the show.
- [87:59]
Emma Vigland
It is Thursday.
- [88:03]
Sam Cedar
Yes, please, sir, I'm. I'm going to pause you right there. Wait, what? You can't encourage Emma to live like this, and I'll tell you why. Who was offered a tour? Sushi and poker with the boys. Tour sushi and poker with boys. Who was offered a tour? Sushi and poker with tooth boys. What? Twerk Sushi and poker.
- [88:25]
Emma Vigland
Tim's upset.
- [88:27]
Sam Cedar
Sushi and poker with tooth boys was offered with twerk Sushi and that's what we call biz. Twerk, sushi and poker with tooth boys.
- [88:36]
Emma Vigland
Right.
- [88:36]
Sam Cedar
Twerk sushi and we're gonna get demonetized. I just think that what you did to Tim Pool was mean.
- [88:43]
Emma Vigland
Free speech.
- [88:44]
Sam Cedar
That's not what we're about here. Look at how sad he's become now. You shouldn't even talk about him. I think you're responsible.
- [88:51]
Emma Vigland
I. I probably am in a certain way. But let's get to the meltdown here.
- [88:56]
Sam Cedar
Sushi and poker with the boys. Oh, my God.
- [88:59]
Muhammad Ali Shabani
Wow.
- [88:59]
Sam Cedar
Sushi. I'm sorry. I'm losing my mind. Someone's offered a tour. Yeah. Sushi and poker with boys. Logic. Sushi and poker. I think I'm like a little kid. Think I'm like a little kid. Think I'm like a kid. Twerk. I think I'm like a little kid. Think I'm like a little kid. Add this debate 7,000 time. A little kid. Think I'm like a little kid. I'm losing my mind. Some people just don't understand. So I'm not trying to be a dick right now, but, like, I absolutely think the US should be providing me with a life. And kids.
- [89:31]
Emma Vigland
That's not what we're talking about here, all right?
- [89:35]
Sam Cedar
It's not a fun job.
- [89:36]
Emma Vigland
Twerk.
- [89:37]
Sam Cedar
That's a real thing. That's got a real thing. Real thing. Willie Walker. That's a real thing. That's got a real thing. Real. That's a real thing. That's real thing. That's a real thing. That's offered to work. Ladies and gentlemen, Joe Rogan has done it again. That's a real thing. That's.
- [89:56]
Jason Stanley
I think he might be blowing it out of proportion.
- [89:58]
Sam Cedar
Real thing. That's got poker with the boys. That's a real thing. That's got poker. Let's go, Joey. Sushi and poker with boy. Take it easy. Sushi and poker. Things have really gotten out of hand. Sushi and poker. Sushi. You don't have a clue as to what's going on live YouTube.
- [90:19]
Emma Vigland
Sam has twice the weight of the
- [90:20]
Sam Cedar
world on his shoulders.
- [90:22]
Emma Vigland
Sam doesn't want to do this show anymore. It was so much easier when the majority report was just you.
- [90:29]
Sam Cedar
Let's change the subject.
- [90:31]
Jason Stanley
Rangers and Knicks are doing great.
- [90:33]
Sam Cedar
Shut it up.
- [90:34]
Emma Vigland
Don't want people saying reckless things on your program.
- [90:36]
Jason Stanley
That's one of the most difficult parts about this show.
- [90:39]
Emma Vigland
This is the pro killing podcast.
- [90:41]
Sam Cedar
I'm thinking maybe it's time we bury the hatchet.
- [90:43]
Emma Vigland
Left his best trump. Violet twerk.
- [90:45]
Sam Cedar
Don't be foolish and don't tweet at me. And don't.
- [90:49]
Jason Stanley
The way Emma has cucked all of these people. Love it.
- [90:52]
Emma Vigland
That's where my heart is. So I wrote my honors thesis about it.
- [90:57]
Jason Stanley
She wrote a lot of ste.
- [90:59]
Sam Cedar
Yes. I guess I should hand the main
- [91:01]
Jason Stanley
mic to you now. You are to the right of me.
- [91:04]
Sam Cedar
Unfort policy.
- [91:04]
Emma Vigland
We already found Israel.
- [91:06]
Jason Stanley
Dude.
- [91:06]
Emma Vigland
Are you against us?
- [91:07]
Sam Cedar
That's a tougher question I haven't answered. God.
- [91:14]
Jason Stanley
Incredible theme song.
- [91:15]
Emma Vigland
Hi, bumbler.
- [91:16]
Sam Cedar
Emma Viand.
- [91:17]
Jason Stanley
Absolutely one of my favorite people, actually.
- [91:20]
Sam Cedar
Not just in the game, like period.