Nova (2:22)

It's a beautiful idea. If only it were real. You know, we're just stuck with regular, boring old Switzerland. You know, nowhere I can invest my money, where I'm going to be put at risk of maybe like, the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, like, blow up my coke dealer.

Matt (2:40)

Yeah. I mean, the Kinahans. But yeah, it's the. It was the. It is the place where Instagram influencers meets real estate influencers meets crypto hustlers meets international drug kingpins.

Guest Commentator (2:52)

Yeah. And they all then interact with, like, every one of those friendship groups ends up just having, like, some British person from Milton Keynes. And you don't quite know what they do, but they are Just, like, hanging out.

Matt (3:02)

Mm. And like that all of this just empty wretchedness was all supposed to be because this was the place where politics never came. A glittering city on the straits of fucking Hormuz.

Nova (3:19)

I can't believe. I can't believe we started with the obituary for Dubai. But here's the thing, though, I think lots to talk about this week. Like what?

Guest Commentator (3:29)

Well, it's the end of the Labubu.

Nova (3:31)

It is, it is. And with the end of the Leboo comes the end of the 20th century.

Matt (3:36)

Sorry, I just need to interrupt. I was just pitching my new Switzerland idea. Has something happened?

Nova (3:42)

So here's the thing. You remember work from home.

Matt (3:46)

Yes.

Nova (3:47)

You remember how we all loved working from home because you didn't have to be in the office. Well, it turns out that in Iran, you know, they're sort of very innovative as a regime. They've established a good way to sort of, like, fuck up Dubai and the Gulf. But they've also discovered a new downside to making everybody come to an in person meeting.

Guest Commentator (4:08)

I like the idea of, like, the Domino meme where it begins with work from home and it ends with World War Three.

Nova (4:15)

I warned people this would happen.

Guest Commentator (4:17)

Well, I was going to say. I was going to say, like, there's probably, like, something in the running for some Telegraph columnist to just do that, but, like, Alastair Heath, if you're listening to this show, and I know that there's a chance you might be. Because you are, like, an insane person now, like, do the piece. Do the piece about how work from home caused World War Three.

Nova (4:33)

It's just the opposite. You want me to come to the office? The thing that killed Ayatollah Khamenei.

Guest Commentator (4:40)

Oh, that's so true. Yeah. If he. If he took a mental health day, he would. He would be alive, that is, literally,

Nova (4:45)

he would be on a peloton right now in, like, a bunker 70 miles underground, and he would be fine.

Guest Commentator (4:51)

Yeah, he loved. He loved going to the office. He loved. He loved the social interactions that came with being in that environment. And that's what killed him.

Nova (4:59)

Yeah.

Matt (4:59)

All of the potential Delsey's Rodriguez that the US has now apparently obliterated in its. I would say the next sort of gaping sort of hellmouth of imperialism opens under Iran. They all could have avoided that by just saying, yep, nothing from me, thanks. And then that's it.

Nova (5:17)

That would yourself. Yeah, I. The thing is, right, you remember how last time I got kind of frustrated because we were doing stuff out of order and I was like there's not going to be anything left for war episode. You remember how I said that immediately before the in person all hand meeting.

Matt (5:37)

Oh my God.

Nova (5:38)

Really changed the composition of the top levels of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Matt (5:42)

Yeah. So if you can't tell it's tf,

Nova (5:45)

we're talking it's war episode now. War episode arrives seldom when you expect

Matt (5:51)

necessarily later on in the episode we'll be talking with Matthew Petty about some of the, some of the international relations dimensions of the opening up of another maximalist, blood soaked forever war with unclear, largely impossible aims that is not even bothered to build any kind of consent

Nova (6:12)

for at home whisper it. But this might be our first non Ed Zitron episode of Is that Good?

Matt (6:19)

Is that Good? Has a guest host this week. So. But before we do that, I do want to, I want to talk a little bit more about Dubai.

Nova (6:28)

Yeah. Because it's not easy to find comedy podcast in World War 3 and so you have to take these things as you find them. And I think it is conceptually funny for the Revolutionary Guards to drop a UAV on Tom Skinner's fat sunburned head. I, I think that, you know, legally they're a prescribed organization. You're not allowed to express support for the. Maybe that was what they got Mandelson on. I don't know. But I think I'm allowed to say it would be funny if it happened.

Matt (7:04)

Or more specifically, I actually read what I think to be the funniest line here about this. This was an interview with a fund manager in the ft. He said, it's pretty scary. This is going to have some implications for some of my guys. The trade was that by moving to Dubai you were not getting exposed to geopolitics.

Nova (7:23)

I hope that was the same fund manager who said we can the R word now that Trump's been elected. Just the wrongest man in history. Being interviewed time and time again.

Guest Commentator (7:34)

Yeah, they keep promising that I can do things that belittle people and also not face any consequences. And I keep having to face consequences and I want my money back.

Nova (7:44)

Yeah, I think that like the flights, the first evacuation flights back from Dubai, they should have some kind of HMRC SWAT team waiting at the gate and you just get like tackled instantly.

Guest Commentator (7:58)

Well, how, how do you think they sort of like rank the sort of people of importance who get to leave? Because I guess it's like on one hand it's like, okay, is it based on the number of followers you have

Nova (8:08)

just grabbing an Emirati border guard, being like, no, you don't understand. I founded Brew Dog.

Guest Commentator (8:14)

Let me out.

Matt (8:17)

Yeah. And the piece goes on, sort of interviewing people in Dubai. Said one British expat to Dubai who said he witnessed an explosion in front of the airport on Sunday morning as a shahed drone for 50 meters overhead, said he would absolutely not leave. We're absolutely safe here.

Guest Commentator (8:32)

You know what? Yeah, fucking fair enough. Like, you know, I would rather face like, bombs dropping on my sort of shitty condo in like, on like Marina beach or whatever it's called than go back to Huddersfield.

Nova (8:44)

Fair enough. There's a. There's an interesting thing that's going on here where I. I've been guessing on Elon Musk's X.com the Everything app. French tweets. Because I speak enough French to like the occasional French twee and French Twitter. Absolutely in the same position with French people. Like French expats in Dubai. There is like, I saw a screenshot of a woman who's like, hey, so is like, Cafe de Paris safe? This is all in French, by the way. And someone said, no, it's not safe. It's all a war zone. You're getting rockets fired at you. And she said, even smoky beach. And I have had the phrase mem smoky beach in my head ever since I saw that. This is a pan European phenomenon, right?

Matt (9:29)

Like all of our worst people are all getting on, getting on Instagram live, like running outside for a few minutes to gloat about how safe they are. And they're all doing this all on the Palm Jumeirah, within a fucking hundred meters of one another in some cases. Andrew Tate from Samuel Leeds video.

Nova (9:50)

If you can like, airdrop the Iranian military, the capacity to make a missile that like, homes in on a DJI OSMO pocket vlogging camera, we would be an order of magnitude better off as a country.

Guest Commentator (10:05)

Yeah, well, look, I also, I wonder, where's David Guetta? What's he up to? Are we going to do a rooftop? Are we going to. Are we going to do like a rooftop set? Like an anti war set? Shout out to his family in reference to Khamenei. Yeah, like, let's go. You know, I was also thinking about like some of our sort of like esteemed British personalities who have moved to Dubai for various reasons. I know that in the notes you have referenced one Isabel Oakeshott.

Matt (10:31)

Yeah.

Guest Commentator (10:31)

Like, you know, she seems to be being quite. Being quite normal about it.

Nova (10:35)

Or do you think I could like, pass the Iranian military my ex landlord's details, the guy who was letting out his Flat to me while he lived in Saudi Arabia. Because previously my plan was to, like, you know, go to the Saudi Ministry of Interior and be like, yeah, I buy all my Bibles and alcohol from this gay guy. But, like, I'm thinking that now there might be an easier way to solve this problem.

Matt (11:04)

Going back to what you said you're saying about Isabel Oakeshott, I have a wonderful quote from her. Here is the spirit of Dubai in one act. My daughter has a severely disabled teacher who gives her lessons at weekends. He's wheelchair bound. Today we expected him to cancel, yet he's taking a special vehicle to get across town and get to her. That's just how we are.

Nova (11:21)

Yes, we, we, we here in Dubai. I had someone get mad at me for laughing about Dubai, and they said to me, well, you wouldn't be laughing if this was happening to Miami, I can assure you.

Matt (11:35)

I can promise you, like, pick any other city. We're absolutely safe here. One of the people interviewing the FT goes on, and residents are even antagonistic towards anyone considering leaving. The idea of leaving paradise of your own volition is just. Is so absurd. They're going to have to ship me out.

Nova (11:53)

They may have to. They may have to. And of course, we also, once again, we have to spare a thought for the people currently sheltering in, like, extremely segregated bomb shelters in Israel, because I have just seen a very funny photo of Quentin Tarantino in a bomb shelter, and I just. You never want to hand it to the theocracy, right? But, like, anything that inconveniences that man is a ton to the fucking soul.

Matt (12:25)

Now, just. Just before we move on to speak with Matthew. Right, yeah, before we.

Nova (12:29)

Before we get into the sort of, like, darker aspects, if we can find them, of the kind of, like, world conflagration.

Matt (12:35)

It's just like, we're going to talk a lot about the day after plan for Iran, but what the fuck is the day after plan for the, like, small Gulf monarchies where your whole thing, like Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, the uae. Your whole thing is absolute authority, absolute safety, and an ironclad social contract that guarantees an easy life for the small, pampered native populations, a pretty easy life for European, American and Australian expats, and then utter misery for sort of tens and hundreds of thousands of enslaved, basically enslaved guest workers. What are you gonna fucking do? Build a fucking SAM site on the Palm Jumeirah? That doesn't make any sense. It's contradictory.

Nova (13:20)

It's kind of holding for the moment in the sense that I believe the UAE is intercepting about 90% or more of everything that's being sort of fired at them. We'll see how that calculation changes. I don't want to make too much of magazine depth for Interceptors or anything, but I think Iran, I guess, has probably made the entirely correct calculation that these are the softest people in the world, like European expats in Dubai. And you only have to because at time of recording they hadn't done much because of that, you know, 90% plus interception rate. But they blew up the fucking Port Cochere at like a five star hotel, much like the, I feel like Halo master Chief guy. And maybe that will be enough. It's certainly enough to have people scurrying for the airports. You know what it looks like when they sort of like having to make difficult decisions about what to intercept? I have no idea. But like, I don't think the brewdog guy's staying for that. And I don't know if he's coming back.

Matt (14:22)

The whole point of these places, as you say, is that they sold a fantasy of paradise to some people.

Nova (14:29)

And there are plenty of other places that will do that. They are lining up to be like, hey, you should park your money with us instead.

Guest Commentator (14:36)

Yeah, There is like the sort of sell for like most. Not all of these places, but for most of these places was just like, especially to Westerners kind of being, you know, your countries and your sort of civilization is on the verge of collapse. And we have all the treats. And I think that's it. This is very much like they advertise themselves on the basis especially Dubai where it's like, we have all the treats. If you want to live a life that is sort of guided by treats and treats alone and is not involved in politics because like, you know, we're not democracies, you know, come over here and like the cell was basically good until it wasn't.

Nova (15:04)

Yeah. I mean, the funniest possible miscalculation of personal safety you could make is moving to Dubai because you got scared by an AI generated video of road men using a water park and moving to the flight path of an Iranian ballistic missile. Well, there's also.

Guest Commentator (15:23)

Yeah. And I was also thinking about this in terms of. And this is a very niche category, but still, nevertheless, I did chuckle a little bit, unfortunately, which is like the sort of like religious types of people who moved to Dubai because they wanted to get away from all like the woke LGBT stuff. Right. And like Dubai was the place to do that. And now I'm just sort of Wondering like, yeah, was, was like, was like the one small street in London where they have like a couple of gay clubs still. Like, was that you want to like, you know, was that really that bad?

Nova (15:48)

Getting, getting bombed by the Iranians who are also extremely homophobic is a great bit. The last frame of your life, the last sort of conscious visual information you process is a nose cone of an Iranian rocket which has a like homophobic slur spray painted on it and fuss.

Guest Commentator (16:08)

I don't want to be that person that's just like, oh, you know, you sort of get what you deserve, et cetera. Like, you know, this is, you know, I imagine it's like a very. I know people who like live in Dubai for various reasons and it is. We have family in Dubai and like, you know, they can hear bombs in the distance. And you know, also there's a lot of infrastructure that is just not there because guess the Gulf never really expected this to happen so soon. And so it is so crazy that

Matt (16:33)

they never expected it to happen.

Guest Commentator (16:35)

And so I imagine it's like, you know, it is a fairly pretty, pretty like scary situation if you are, if you happen to be there. And you know, there's. And also like, even if you are sort of like an expat, so to speak, like, you know, you are now in a position where, you know, I think something like this is also a real recognition of like where you stand in the society because, like, it's very easy when things were good in Dubai to be like, yeah, I'm an expat. I don't really have like citizenship. I don't have a passport. I don't really have like, you know, my existence here is precarious, but I sort of like, I'm a magnitude ahead of like, you know, the sort of foreign labor that live on the outskirts of Dubai who like make the city work. Right now it's very much a situation of like, oh, okay, you know, these bombings are happening, or like, you know, now I have to sort of face politics where I have to face like the reality of being sort of an individual within a historical context. And yeah, I'm in an incredibly precarious position where, you know, move comes to shove, like, I will not be saved. And it doesn't matter what type of like crypto adjacent job I came here for on like a seven, seven year like tourist visa.

Matt (17:36)

Yeah, ultimately, you know, this is, goes back to. This is reality intruding on the fantasy. And if you did move to Dubai because you were tired of being a landlord in a Country with so many tenants rights as the UK or because

Nova (17:53)

you don't worry, you can still do it from Dubai.

Matt (17:55)

Yeah, you. Or you were tired of, yeah, you were tired of scaring yourself with, as you say, Nova.

Nova (18:02)

You thought you were gonna get acid attacked and so you're like, no, this is fine, I'm just gonna, what I'm gonna do is I'm going to get a condominium that is going to get blown up instantly.

Matt (18:14)

You have an incredible view of the Iranian launch system. I assume it's, it's decorative. And you know what this is, this was. I mean, the whole place is built on fantasy. It's built on the fantasy of infinite hydrocarbons. It's built on the fantasy of high finance. It's built on the fantasy of fucking influencer glamour.

Nova (18:34)

It really is Britain.

Matt (18:35)

Yeah, it is. I mean, good God, that's why there are so many of us there. But it is this moment where the fantasy cannot sustain a crack in its facade. Because the whole point is about feeling like you can live a life free of anxiety, that people who you should think are beneath you won't frighten you or won't stand up to you or whatever. And guess what? You live in the real fucking world. And apparently that's on the Straits of Hormuz. So the other thing I want to talk about before we go into talking to Matthew just very quickly is we saw last week in the UK the kind of beginnings of an antidote to this sort of thing, of course, where we saw a by election in Gordon and Denton go very much our way, let's say.

Nova (19:24)

Yeah. Remember, remember all the shit we said about how if Matt Goodw 8 shit, he would still be an MP at the next election, but he would be seething for the rest of time. I'm enjoying, I'm enjoying it. I'm enjoying it a lot.

Matt (19:37)

Yeah, yeah. And you know, I want to bring up a few things before we, before we go on just that I think are relevant to this. Number one, Zach Polanski and as well the Spanish Prime Minister are two European politicians for examples of, of saying we should have nothing to do with this. This is probably the worst thing that could happen or one of the worst things that could happen. We should stand against it for the sake of, of international law, for the sake of not turning a nation of 90 million people into Syria. Times several. Like Syria in 2011, times several. It should be something that we stand against. And guess what? That guy, his profile was just raised and the domestic anti war politics is now I think probably more important than ever. And unlike in 2003, there appears to be a political party that is actually a national contender in lots of opinion polls for more than a few seats that actually seems to be so far standing against it.

Matthew Petty (20:38)

Yeah.

Nova (20:38)

Because it's crazy that reform have immediately gone. Yes, sir, Mr. Trump. Love the forever Wars. You know, may we have some more? And I think the other thing is I don't want people to kind of misread Starmer on this. Right. Because now we're involved. Right. It's, you know, formally. I think people are going to maybe suspect that we got dragged in by, you know, the IRGC sort of like, you know, blowing up like a porter cab in Akrotiri or whatever. I don't think that's true. I don't think that's true of other European leaders either. I think what you're looking at is an intervention that was so obviously stupid that only the Americans and the Israelis wanted in on it, but that everyone wanted to do.

Matt (21:22)

Right.

Nova (21:22)

And now there's enough of a pretext for Starmer and for other European leaders to be like, yeah, sure, absolutely, we will take a piece of the action here. So it's just something that needed that little bit extra sort of rationale to it, you know. So I don't want to give Stammer any credit whatsoever for withholding cooperation with the US until now.

Matt (21:49)

Yeah, it was inconvenient for him that he couldn't. Now he's been given his reason and, you know, as you say, going back to reform, you know, they are the. Fundamentally, they are like, Trump was always the war guy. The Democrats were the war people, too, but Trump was the war guy. Fucking Starmer's the war guy. Guess what? So is Farage. Because they all represent the same thing. And to get taken in time and

Nova (22:12)

again, do you want the war guy brackets pretending to be smart, or do you want the war guy brackets reveling in being dumb?

Matt (22:18)

Yeah. And, you know, just sort of going back to the campaign a little bit or the aftermath of the election a little bit. Before we talked to Matthew, the reaction on behalf of the. A sort of political mainstream from Starmer to Goodwin to Farage has essentially been to keep on saying the most frightening words they can. Sectarianism, family voting.

Nova (22:40)

Listen, every Muslim woman is being robotically controlled by her husband to vote Green. I guess that's the. That's the only reasonable, moderate conclusion.

Guest Commentator (22:50)

No, the other conclusion is, and I don't know why Matt Goodwin's complaining, like what? If you like have four wives. And you've told them that you should vote for Matt Goodwin.

Matt (22:57)

Right?

Nova (22:58)

Traditional values.

Guest Commentator (22:59)

Yeah, exactly. That's like Matt's part for not investing enough in the sort of. In the Muslim communities of which he is imagining entirely in his head.

Nova (23:11)

He should have been doing more kind of wife outreach.

Guest Commentator (23:15)

Look, you should have been debating your headmates and convincing them of your policy position. You cannot complain about it.

Nova (23:21)

Well, he is remedying that in that. I don't know if you saw the photo of him at the count where he, like, on his phone, sullen as he's been. I think like a man with two moods on his phone bracket, sort of like eyebrow waggingly provocative and on his phone, sullen rage.

Guest Commentator (23:38)

I think we have a sort of aspect of this, obviously. We know that all of these accusations of, like, family voting and Muslim blocs and stuff are all just like fucking bullshit. They've always been bullshit. But, like, on a very basic level, it's like a new form of whiny. It feels like a sort of new, incredibly whiny take when the sort of position is like, well, okay, you've basically built policy platform, are overtly anti Muslim on the grounds that you think that this is the type of populism that's going to get you elected, right? You spent a local election campaign talking about fucking birth rates and civilizational collapse and the sort of takeover of the Saracens and everything, and then you want them to still vote for you, right? I don't understand. Yeah, there might be a Muslim bloc vote, right? There could be a Muslim bloc vote, but that block vote isn't because it's being coordinated by fucking like, Zach Polanski in the Green hq. It's because you've been a fucking dick to them and obviously, obviously they're gonna vote against you. What are you talking about? On what position? In what universe would you think that running a fucking position that's like, I'm going to ban headscarves and I'm gonna basically close down the mosque. And they haven't sort of said that directly, but anyone with half a brain cell can sort of read between the lines. And also, just like Matt Goodwin has also very open, been quite Islamophobic. I don't think that's an unfair position to make because it was politically salient for him to do so. All the shit like, you saw the sort of, like, downfall of Christianity or whatever, it is very much embedded in that narrative if you sort of think about it for more than five seconds. Why do you think they would vote for you. I don't get it.

Nova (25:13)

It's just. It's just being mad that politics is happening.

Matt (25:16)

Hey, hey, I was a reform candidate. I was promised I was going to be immune from politics.

Guest Commentator (25:20)

Well, this is it, like. And it goes back to the stuff that we were talking about, like Dubai and like, the Brits that go there and the expats that go there, which is like, you know, they want to live in a world where they don't have to engage with any. Anyone other than in this sort of very transactional capacity in which they are sort of given deference and are sort of entitled to sort of permanent servitude by a lower class of people. Right. But like a basic level, they don't want to interact with anyone. They want the power and they want the privilege without having to actually reciprocate any of that. The reform. But we've spoken about this before. The reform platform, for the most part, has been like, we are not going to offer you anything that's going to improve your life, and you should be happy and you should just sort of accept that. And now, like, they are having to face this problem both on a party level and as an individual, like, in regards to Matt Goodwin, where it's like, no, you actually do have to talk to people and you do actually have to figure out, like, what kind of stuff they want. And you. Some of those people may not all. They may not be glued to their phone and they may not be on X like you are. And you. And you're gonna have to be okay with that, right? You're gonna. You're gonna have to get out of your echo chamber.

Matt (26:27)

Well, I think we're going to go talk to a different Matthew now, but to Matt Goodwin, a poster to the end, consigned to the dustbin of political history, like so much Paul Masonry. I hope this is the last we see of you.

Nova (26:41)

All right.

Matt (26:41)

All right, let's talk to Matthew. See you in a second, everyone. Hello, and welcome to the second half, where we have Matthew Petty, the assistant editor at Reason. Unusual poll for us, but go with it, who's covering national security policy, the Middle east, and has been pretty consistently right about the horror, evil and stupidity all being unleashed at once by the Epsteinist clique in charge of the White House. Matthew, welcome to the show.

Matthew Petty (27:20)

Thank you for having me.

Matt (27:22)

So, Nova, there was a quote from one of Matthew's articles that you read to me earlier that I found, I want to say, completely horrifying. Please, if you don't mind kicking US off.

Nova (27:31)

Yeah, absolutely. So this is sort of part of the broader question, I guess, of where is this going? What is the plan in Iran? And Matthew, you quoted Trump telling the New York Post, I don't have the yips with respect to boots on the ground, like every president says. I understand the yips here to be a golfing term for like nerves to be like in your own head. And it just struck me that between that and now watch this drive, we're at a sort of 20 year golfer hegemony of. Yes, yeah. Of a sort of golfing boomer walking us into war in the Middle east with not really a goal, let alone a plan. Do you think that sort of jives with what you've read?

Matthew Petty (28:29)

Yeah, I think, as I've said, it's not so much that they have like a specific end goal, but there's this animal instinct of like you bite into something like this weak enemy, you can bite into it and grab it. And I think maybe some factions of the administration have some idea of what they want. I think the American sort of military deep state wants what General Dan Kane said pretty much explicitly. He wants to make an Iran that cannot project power outside of its own borders, that can't challenge the US and Middle East. And then you have, I think the Israeli goal is much more of just like state collapse, of just like a sort of more extreme version of the American goal. Just like not only make it not be able to project power outside its own borders, but also within its own borders. And, and then you have like, you know, Iranian diaspora, opposition and various factions. The Trump administration maybe have these like delusions of grandeur that they are going to bring the monarchy back to power. Like I, you know, and I think all these people basically have maybe different goals or sort of inchoate goals or like they just sort of understand that they own together, think the US should take that big Hamm swing at Iran.

Matt (29:38)

And I think that's very telling. You know, if you the, the goal of swinging the hammer is to swing the hammer that the, the president, the US President has said. We are just sort of hoping that the Iranian people will spontaneously generate a liberal democracy that also is they basically hoping that there is some combination between Ahmed Al Shira and Nelson Mandela who's waiting to just take power and I don't know, get a spread in Monocle magazine, basically.

Matthew Petty (30:08)

I don' I don't think anyone really believes in the liberal democracy thing. I don't even think that the Iranian opposition who lobby the US believe in it. I think that Ahmed Al Shara is much closer to what they want than Nelson Mandela. Nobody wants. You know, they don't believe in this spreading democracy stuff. They believe on the American side that, yeah, we can just replace this government with something that's more amenable to our interests. And I think within the Iranian monarchist community, I mean, they're monarchists. They believe. Let's turn the clock back to 1978. So, yeah, he. Only anyone's serious. Democracy is sort of this byword for just like, yeah, like, vaguely pro United States, you know, socially liberal free market kind of thing. I don't think they're. They want democracy in the sense of, like, civil and political rights. Maybe some American doesn't believe in their heads that, like, okay, we'll get that. But I'm. I don't think that this is, like, the primary vision, even explicitly for a lot of these.

Nova (31:08)

It's very funny that, like, Pahlavi was sort of, like, asked about coming back to Iran, sort of wishcasting that, and he was like, well, I do it part time, and I think the idea of having a sort of king who's in the country part time to reduce Iran to the level of kind of like Persian Canada is just a really sort of, like, doomed endeavor. But, I mean, not to just, like, throw quotes at you, but there was a sort of brief bit on the BBC Life blog today that caught my eye that I think speaks to the kind of incoherence in Trump's own mind where it says, the President said it was projected the war would last four to five weeks, but that will take whatever time it takes. Referring to a suggestion he'd heard in the media that he might get bored, he said, there is nothing boring about this. There was then some nervous laughter in the room as he went off script and started praising the room's curtains, which he chose in his first term, and describing the ballroom he's constructing at the White House. So if that's Trump, right, and you have this kind of coalition of different interests lobbying around him. Him, you can kind of. Where does this lead then? Like, which one of them is sort of, like, likely to predominate in his. I guess we can call it thinking.

Matthew Petty (32:22)

I think we're past that point. I think we're past the point of, like, who's lobbying the President? I think, yeah, like, this war is a result of that. Now, I think we're frankly, at a point where dynamics on the ground just sort of take us where they take us, because, you know, I think Trump went to the Atlantic yesterday and said, the Iranians asked to talk to me and we're going to talk to them. What I heard heard and what the Israeli newspaper Yediyoth Ahernrot, which most people known as Ynet reported was actually was the other way around. It was that Trump called up the Iranian side and said, let's talk. And I think Iran was like, no. Or maybe theoretically, they were open to talking, but not to just ending the war quickly. I think that, yeah, right now it's just, unfortunately, it's like military dynamics. It's. It's a question of when both sides exhaust themselves. And I really don't know how long that'll be. I mean, I think the Gulf states, if they had any of Trump's ear, are probably screaming at him, like, stop, stop, stop. But, I mean, I think the Israelis are probably screaming at him, go, go, go. I don't know what the US Military wants in this, like, whether how. I think they have more endurance to keep going, but I don't know how much more. I'm a little bit surprised at how little markets seem to be taking this seriously. Like, there's a lot of very serious, immediate economic damage to the Gulf with. I mean, oil is the big, obvious one, but I've been kind of screaming this for a while. It's not just oil that's in the Gulf. There lot of capital in the Gulf. There's, like, a lot of, you know, finance capital tied up in the Gulf. There's a lot of money in Gulf real estate. There's fucking data centers and crypto and, like, a lot of all that stuff right now that's just on fire, literally. The Gulf is a major air travel hub that's going to be shut down indefinitely. A major transshipment hub. I mean, all that stuff is disrupted in very serious ways. And the stock market seems to just have taken this as like, oh, you know, Taco Trump, this is going to be over in two days. I don't think it's going to be over in two days, but I do think actually the market response is going to be part of the dynamic of, like, how far this goes. And then on the other side, it's like, how much does Iran cohere as a state? And, like, everybody's been talking about their interceptor stockpiles and how many missiles Iran can lob before the US And Israel and the Gulf run out of interceptors. But I think another clock that's running down is just like, how much damage can the US do to Iranian society? And As a whole before the government just falls apart.

Nova (34:48)

I was sort of wondering about that because I had this sense that Iran was in a sort of position where they had been forced to respond sort of maximally and quite messily in order to restore kind of anything like deterrence. But within that dynamic there was also the question, and this was something that Trump himself said of like, well, we thought we were going to do the sort of Venezuela thing and then we killed all of the Delsey Rodriguez's kind of like day one one. Do you have a sense which one of those is sort of predominating or is it just sort of both at the same time? You know, to what extent do they have the kind of capacity to decide that at this point?

Matthew Petty (35:26)

Oh, like, how coherent is Iran as a government? Yeah, I think Alijani is running the show. I don't think there's any. I think Iran does have a decentralized military command right now, but I think that's a lot more tactical than strategic. I think Iran is playing up how decentralized it is to like kind of scare the shit out of everyone. Mad dog kind of thing of like, I mean, they were talking to the Arab states, like, oh, sorry, we didn't mean to bomb you. It's just commanders on the ground. Ali Larijani is definitely in charge of the Iranian government. I mean, on paper they have a triumvirate supposed to have replaced the supreme leader. But I think that it's very clear that like Lari Johni, since before this war, since the protest movement, it's widely reported that he's running the show. The Iranian military is decentralized and the government has sort of played that up. They've told the Arab states, oh, I'm sorry, we can't, like, we, sorry, we didn't mean to attack you. It's just commanders on the ground taking initiative. I think there's some element of that tactically, but I don't think we're yet at a point where it's like strategically out of control, where they just have rogue warlords and stuff running around. I think this is still a coherent government, but we are in day three only of some pretty fucking heavy bombing and bombing that seems like intended to disrupt government functions. Like they're bombing police stations, courthouses, things like that. So I guess we'll see as this drags on. I mean, I've said a worst case scenario where nobody's happy is there's like a civil war in Iran. And then you do have this warlordism where they're, you know, some, every week or something, some warlord shoots a bunch of drones at an oil tanker. And so, but I don't think we're there yet. But yeah, I do think that's like sort of an open question of where that goes. But at the moment I do think that there's an Iranian government that's coherent and can issue orders. They just are not ready. I think Israel not even about restoring deterrence. I think people overuse that. I think it's just straight up, like they see they, it's about imposing enough of a cost on the US that this won't happen again in six months, which I think is not just deterrence. This is like compellence, this is like coercion. Like they're really trying to get the US to back off and they don't see any reason. They basically really do believe they're cornered, their back is to the wall.

Matt (37:43)

And I mean you talk about like getting the US to back off, I mean with the, with the people in charge, because it's tough to understand what exact it is they want other than to be doing this. Basically it's tough to understand what would make them back off. I mean, how, how many boots on the ground, how many more F15s have to crash into one another or whatever more American service members, let alone like all the girls killed in the, in the school bombing, in mine up, are going to have to sort of stack up before the US realizes that their goals are so maximalist and fantastical as to be unachiev without, I say like creating permanent chaos in the region or fail or failing entirely. And then Iran is just, let's just say it was proven right in its need to have a pretty significant conventional and non conventional deterrence program.

Matthew Petty (38:40)

That's a good question. I mean, I think this is where a really scary uncharted territory. I suspect on the American side there's two factors. One is again, if like the economy starts screaming, if the economy really internalize, like the market really internalizes of like this is not going to be over in two days, the global oil and gas supplies are really going to be constrained. A lot of the investments in the Gulf states literally go up in smoke. That might cause discontent where Trump has to pull back. Another thing is if the US military just straight up starts not being able to achieve what it sets out to achieve, we physically run out of interceptors or something and Iran can just keep bombing and bombing and bombing. That might also get them to back off. But I mean these are just, I'M just hazarding a guess. Like, I really don't know. I think to some extent it's up to us, like the American populace, which has been pretty indifferent because, you know, the wars that are over in a day and don't affect anything, to see if people actually, you know, if like the public in the political system actually does start to like impose a cost and pump brakes on this. But I really don't know. I really don't know how far they'll take this. I mean, it's possible they just keep pushing through until they break. The Iranian state, I think would be a horrible, I mean it would be a success in their eyes. It'd be a horrible outcome like morally, practically for the world. But I mean, it could be that there's literally impossible to impose a high enough cost to like take the boomers off this one track obsession with just destroying Iran as a civilization.

Matt (40:13)

Yeah, I mean, I have seen it written before that like Donald Trump is essentially trying to tie up the loose, every boomer loose end before he himself dies. Where he's going for Iran, he went for Venezuela, going to go for Cuba, is going for Iran to enormously, let's say, overstretch a quite strategically, like a morally repugnant but also strategically incoherent empire. And when you talk about strategic incoherence, it's sometimes difficult to talk about it as though you're saying they should be more strategically coherent. No, it should be, they should just not be there. But given that they are there, that they have this spread out military, they have been throwing like missile equivalent of Lamborghini at more or less every problem, whether that's in Ukraine, whether that's in Israel, even in Saudi, sort of countering the Houthis for years. And they have not decided to live in the world where that is actually not an effective way to pilot a globe striding bloodstained imperial colossus, where that is actually strategically self defeating, where that is ineffective except at, you know, maybe facilitating the causing of mass casualties and that at every turn there is sort of simply more quagmire, more horror. I mean, I think partly as well, this is influenced by the success of the operation to kidnap Maduro. And you just imagine that this will

Nova (41:40)

work again and Gaza as well.

Matt (41:42)

Yeah, of course.

Matthew Petty (41:43)

I mean, I think part of it is they're really setting out to prove that like we the restrainers are wrong, you guys are chicken shit and we can do whatever we want. Like all the things you warn about, it won't happen and it's worked a few times. I mean, people forget first term Trump, he killed Soleimani. Everyone expected a regional war and it didn't happen. So, yeah, I mean, I think part of it is like, they're setting out to prove that this is a good way to run an empire that you, you can throw caution to the wind and nobody's really stepped up to challenge them except for Iran. I kind of had a feeling right after Venezuela, I was like, the next thing, my wife thought I was crazy. She's like, come on, you can't predict this. I'm like, they are going to be really high on their own, so supply. The next thing they're going to do is attack Iran and they're going to step on a big rake and it's going to cause a big catastrophe. But even then, I mean, we don't know really if this is going to impose a high enough again, morally. This is already horrible, but we don't know if they're going to impose a high enough strategic cost where the US really is like, oh, that was a mistake, and this actually disrupts the functioning of the global empire. I suspect it will, but we haven't seen that yet and we haven't really seen other states, you know, take even if the US is in sort of like, in sort of absolute decline, we haven't seen other states, in relative terms, really take advantage of that. I mean, Russia tried to muscle Europe, as we saw three years ago, and it did four years ago now, and it really just like blew up in its face. So I guess the real question is, after the dust clears of this, would, would, would China actually do more? I mean, China has been pretty happy not to challenge the US and just sort of like, carve out its own sphere of influence. Its own, not even sphere of influence, just as sort of like own independent island in the world economy. But we'll see if, if, you know, the US seemingly stepping in a rake actually does disrupt the functioning empire. I mean, then again, I, I was pretty bearish on, on just generally the Trump administration actual. Like, I was thinking going into this, maybe they'll just get away with it, maybe nothing will happen. And now something has happened, so maybe that's the case. But I do think, like, you know, a lot of you can point out, like, yeah, this is strategically stupid, the cost benefit doesn't work. But I think in their minds it's like, no, we're trying to prove that these are costs we can absorb and that in the end this is like, sustainable. I think they're Going to have to pay the butcher' one way or another. But the question is how? Maybe I'm wrong, but also, how long will that take? Because Trump might die before it happens. Right. They might be. A lot of these guys might be comfortable knowing for the next 20 years until China finally takes Taiwan and the US finally has its pants around its ankles.

Nova (44:16)

It was interesting, all of the announcements among the sort of rightward end of the kind of natsack blow up of like, oh, blowback is over. We've actually finished it. It's fine.

Matthew Petty (44:27)

We're.

Nova (44:27)

When, you know, the kind of the Ukraine angle, the Taiwan angle, both interest me. Both. Because, you know, I said that, like, watching this in Taiwan must feel like being a Jehovah's Witness with appendicitis.

Matthew Petty (44:38)

Right.

Nova (44:40)

Like, watching this in Ukraine, watching the same Iranian drones that Russia is sort of like, has been using, you know, get sort of addressed. Sure. But for like, a fraction of the cost of the Interceptor. And just thinking, this has been going on for four years, years, and you didn't even, like, you were supplying the Interceptors and it didn't occur to you that this would happen. It's just bizarre. And I just wonder. Obviously, it's sort of like fools should try and predict this stuff, but I wonder whether the US Is going to like living in this world. It seems set on establishing where the first thing you do is, okay, yeah, you just do stuff, but the first thing you do is you start with the assassinations and then you just kind of go, all of the stuff that follows this isn't real.

Matthew Petty (45:22)

So I think there's a few thoughts on that. It's like, one is the blowback is overthink. Reminds me of that tweet that's like, rip to all those people killed by hubris. But I'm smarter than all of them, maybe even smarter than God.

Nova (45:35)

Like, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Matthew Petty (45:37)

And when we're talking about blowback, that's like a reference to, like, second order effects 20 years down the line. We're not even done with first order effect. We're not even like, we're just at the beginning of first order effects and we don't know how this is going to go. Oh, it seems pretty chaotic already. I mean, the sort of. Like, if you ever read the book the Short History of Bombing by Sven Lundqvist, a really good obscure book about, like, sort of the. It's, it's. It's a lot of things, but one of them is a sort of literary history of air power and how people thought about air Power. And a hundred years ago European empires had exactly the same idea of like oh, we don't have to expend any cost on governance, we can just bomb the shit out of them because we're in this invincible. And I think that goes to the second point you make of like oh, do we want to live in this world that we created? Because what ended that hubris was World War II and then the nuclear standoff and suddenly it's like oh wait, you know as, as what's his name? The British general Bomber Harris said the Germans entered the war under the rather childish notion that they would bomb people and not get bombed. The double irony to that is that Harris was a consummate colonialist who had actually had that exact same childish notion in his head that he can go bombed and not get bombed. And I think that like yeah, the minute China decides to actually exercise some hard power against the US is going to be a very scary moment indeed. But again, I mean maybe that doesn't happen for 20 years. I mean China doesn't seem in any rush to do this and the US isn't, I mean doesn't seems more satisfied not picking on people its own size. I think on the specific question of drones, I have a friend who's a Pentagon reporter, very sharp guy who pointed out like years ago there's a difference between known capabilities and demonstrated capabilities. I think the US military has a lot of very smart, well prepared professionals who had gamed out an Iranian war war and had basically out of all like made a million different possible scenarios, this being one of them of like Iran just successfully harassing the Gulf states with lots high volume of drones. But I think that like I don't think anyone in the political leadership internalized that. I think they all like sort of, you know, we are, we are human beings, we're all creatures of experience. And so they all had the experience of like the military people's warnings being you know, oh hey, so then I think they really weren't expecting because I remember Remember during the 12 Day War Drones had the Iranian shot head. Drones have been completely useless against Israel because they had to cross like five different other countries airspace and were easily shot down. But in this case it's just very different because the US bases in the Gulf are like right there drones do not have to cross much hostile airspace and Iran has a lot more of them than it does missiles. And the cost. I mean I think people are a little bit hung up on the dollar amount. The real problem with interceptors versus missiles is like the rate at which you can build. I think that like right now it's not like Iran is, can be building missiles quickly anyways. But drones are so cheap and easy, cheap in terms of like the resources and time and like facilities. You don't need these big factories with these big mixer mixing units, mixing fuel. Like you just. It's like a lawnmower engine or something that you solder onto a pair of wings.

Matt (48:46)

I want to talk a little bit as well about the intelligence leading to this activity. Right. You sort of, you alluded earlier to military planners, I think broadly realizing that this happening would be pretty much inevitable, not stopped by a decapitation strike and very undesirable for all the, all the reasons we talked about at the beginning. Right. Shutting down not just oil production, but effectively, you know, reducing say real estate values in the Gulf, which are a pretty significant asset class to nothing like that. This is not desirable. Pretty much inevitable. And that these briefings are just increasingly ignored by a sort of more insular, paranoid White House that just feeds the briefings that they want to. The senile guy, you know, the dying guy in charge, I mean that he just seems to have received these hyper optimistic reports that were prioritized for executive consumption by the people around us. And you can even, I think tell some of that by how he talks about it. For example, there is an interview with the New York Times where he gets so fixated on the concept that this will be a four week entanglement that I believe he says four weeks, five to six times in one brief exchange with a journalist.

Nova (49:56)

Yeah, it's sort of like this failure to sort of grasp the idea that Iran also has a vote in the war with Iran.

Matt (50:04)

And the other thing that strikes me as well is the intelligence being ignored in favor of, well, what feels good, what feels good for us to do, what would be satisfying.

Nova (50:15)

Right. You want to talk about vibe coding? They brought Claude along for this.

Matthew Petty (50:20)

Claude. I can imagine the air defense crews in Kuwait being like, Claude, what kind of fighter jet is that? And then Claude taking a long time. Oh, you're right, that was an F15.

Matt (50:34)

I promise not to do that again. What else do you want to talk about today?

Nova (50:38)

I promise not to do that for a fourth time. As of time of recording, the UK is now sort of participating on some larger level than it was, than it had been sort of withholding from the US before. And I think there's a lot of talk about the UK and Europe more generally getting dragged into the war with Iran or This being part of Iran's response, I've kind of been of the opinion, and I wonder if I'm right about this, that this is something that a lot of European policymakers had just been itching for a pretext to do anyway.

Matthew Petty (51:07)

Yeah, I mean, people talk about Europe getting dragged in. It's like they literally inserted themselves into it. There's no what is the drag in. They've thrown themselves on. Although they did seem to get a little bit spooked. I mean, Britain has sort of flip flopped on this, especially after Iran hit the base in Cyprus, the drone and Germany apparently walked back. Like there was a being like, we're not going to get involved in this war. But yeah, I mean, the European powers, I think part of it is like it was like the US turning against Europe with the whole Greenland thing spooked them, but it didn't spook them in the, like, I think what they internalized was not like, oh, like this. Like this world that we helped build can be turned against us. It was like, we shouldn't be treated like browns. We're a white country. We need like American Atlanticist white sovereignty. I mean, that was the whole Marco Rubio speech in Munich. Basically. Basically was, you know, segregation today, segregation tomorrow, or segregation forever on a global scale. And they always gave him a standing ovation because Europe gets included, unlike the like Steve Miller, J.D. vance, really psychotic version of that, where Europe also gets to be treated pushed around like a brown country. And I think Iran was just like the logical. I mean, I think it just made sense as a target for a of lot, lot of different factions in power. One of them was Europe. I mean, Europe has been pissed at Iran for supplying Russia with drones, which I think probably rightfully so. I mean, that was a very stupid decision of the Iranian government and that seems to have gotten them nothing from Russia.

Nova (52:34)

Yeah, I was struck by. There was a line from Lavrov a few years back where he said what. Sort of asked about cooperation with Iran on defense, he said, the sky's the limit. Which if you read that 100% literally is true today.

Matt (52:49)

But I think what you're, what you're describing to me, right, is again, this, that every, everybody involved, right, with the European, European states who want to get to live in the Atlanticist world that they're all familiar with, or the fucking crypto people in Dubai who are saying, you're going to have to carry me out of here in a stretcher whose house value that they own just might have taken a. Let's Say, have a little bit of a security impairment on its pricing now, or to the American imperial apparatus that is kicked into gear yet again, but in something in an engagement that significantly damage it, because it thinks that it will be as easy as Venezuela, which is nearby, where the relationship between the political authority was concentrated in a person. It was many ways vulnerable.

Nova (53:33)

And it had a Delsey Rodriguez waiting in the wings and that with the Iranian Delsey.

Matthew Petty (53:38)

You know, I think people expected Larry Johnny to be the Iranian Delsey because he is a more of a pragmatist. I mean, every. Everyone, everyone under Khamenei is more of a pragmatist than him. He's like some weird, weird literature head who, who's like, woman is flower. Like, sir, the country's on fire. He's like, woman is flower.

Nova (53:55)

You can't be a real romantic anymore. They'll kill you.

Matthew Petty (53:59)

But yeah, like, why are you telling me we're supposed to be Iranian Delsey? But this is just. The only point I'm making is what he. But the thing is, part of his pragmatism is not rolling over immediately and being like, oh, okay, they're trying to kill us.

Matt (54:10)

And I guess what I see is everybody who I'm talking about, whether it's European leaders who want to feel Atlanticist, property investors in Dubai who thought they were immune from politics. Politics, US Imperial planners who just figured this would be as easy as Venezuela. Everybody is living in their own fantasy world that does not engage with the idea that, as you say, Matthew, Iran does get a vote on how it reacts to being bombed.

Nova (54:38)

We're all living in the Dubai of the mind.

Matt (54:42)

Yeah, quite. You can't escape the mental palm Jumeirah that you are trapped in.

Matthew Petty (54:48)

Well, nothing has happened to them before. It's worked before. This is sort of the point I'm trying to make about demons versus known capabilities. Like, this is like, worked so many times. I mean, I don't even know if this is enough of a cost for them to say it's not working. It's certainly not working out like it, like they wanted it to, but it's just, yeah, they haven't really faced a real cost for this. And so it's like, okay, why should. Why should their mindset change?

Nova (55:09)

I guess I. Not to say that this is the sort of end point where it starts to matter, because it matters now and it mattered in Venezuela, but I guess we'll find out in Greenland. You know, I'm looking forward to, to sort of like dying face down in a ditch. And sort of like frozen like mud. That'll be cool.

Guest Commentator (55:26)

Yeah.

Matt (55:26)

Look, look, look. They've done it, what, like three times? What are they going to do again?

Nova (55:32)

Similar. Like great thinker of the American right once said, maybe I think it's in Heikle, maybe in Schilling. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me? Fool you. Can't. Can't go fooled again.

Matt (55:44)

That's right. I think that's all the time we have for today. But Matthew, I want to thank you very much for fight some ropey Wi fi connections to talk to us today.

Matthew Petty (55:54)

Thank you.

Nova (55:54)

And if the people want more, Matthew, where can they find you?

Matthew Petty (55:58)

I mean, God, are you going to let me do this? But I'll just say read Reason magazine. That's where I publish. And you could find me on substack and on Twitter. I don't use substack so often anymore. And my Twitter, I'm like, half the time I'm public, half the time I'm private. I'll never give anyone rhyme or reason for why, though. I have my reasons. But it was really fun actually to go into Twitter occultation right before I published the Epstein thing and then just cryptically tweet, I'm not suicidal, and then suddenly go public with like, I have obtained. This was just for context. Like basically before the Epstein files came out in like a big way, I had obtained some hacked emails between. Or I mean, I wasn't. Didn't exclusively obtain them. They were floating around. But I was the first person to report on this tranche of hacked emails between Jeffrey Epstein and his business partner, former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, last summer. And so, yeah, no, I went into a Twitter occult for like a couple weeks while just reporting it out and asking people for comment and stuff. And then, you know, as I said, just like, I'm not suicidal. And then boom, went public.

Guest Commentator (57:03)

So that was a fun.

Matthew Petty (57:04)

So follow me on Twitter. Maybe you get to get some fun adventures like this.

Matt (57:08)

Wonderful. Anyway, we will be back on the bonus episode later this week, but until

Nova (57:12)

then, until then, until then, always work from home.

Matt (57:15)

Yeah, perfect.

Matthew Petty (57:16)

Great.

Matt (57:16)

Thank you. Until then, work from home. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise. Otherwise it's not safe. Bye, everyone.

Matthew Petty (57:21)

Bye. Awesome, thanks so much.