I Identify As the Straits of Hormuz Being Open feat. Séamus Malekafzali

Summary

TRASHFUTURE — "I Identify As the Straits of Hormuz Being Open"
feat. Séamus Malekafzali (March 31, 2026)

---

Episode Overview

This episode of Trashfuture dives into the ongoing geopolitical fallout from the Iran-U.S. conflict — nicknamed "Operation Reddit Fury" — and its reverberations throughout the Middle East. The hosts, joined by returning guest Séamus Malekafzali, discuss the U.S.'s missteps, the collapse of Saudi mega-projects, the fracturing Gulf order, the evolving roles of Israel and Iran, and the uncertain futures of regional power and global finance, all filtered through the show's trademark wit, sarcasm, and irreverent analysis.

---

Key Discussion Points

1. Leaked Images, Diasporic Identity, and Kash Patel (00:16-04:48)

• The episode opens with a comedic riff on leaked photos of political figures (specifically Kash Patel), exploring the cringe and pathos of "trying too hard to be cool" as second-generation diaspora kids.
• Hussain highlights the pressure among diaspora youth (especially Gujarati) to assimilate and perform a certain type of "coolness," connecting to the wider theme of insecurity in powerbrokers.
• Quote: "I wasn't expecting the Skeleton Key to understand a great deal of international politics to be the Gujarati diaspora." — Riley (02:26)
• Parodies of statecraft and ‘information battle space’: hosts joke about U.S. and Russian approaches to information warfare (04:00).

---

2. America as a "Declining Empire" and Repeating Russian Mistakes (06:07-07:45)

• The team observes how the U.S. is replicating "Russia mistakes" in conflict management: costly wars, reliance on misinformed bravado, and loss of objective strategic goals.
• Riley: "This is the headline for me: America is Russia now." (06:07)
• They compare failed U.S. operations to Russian blunders in Ukraine, noting how the ‘goal’ of the operation keeps shifting.
• Séamus on shifting objectives: "The central goal is now…to open the Strait of Hormuz and to restore a stable price of oil, which was absolutely not an issue before this." (08:04)

---

3. MBS, the NEOM Ski Resort Catastrophe, and Illusions of Mega-development (08:29-18:14)

• Nova presents the “NEOM update”: Saudi Arabia’s Trojena ski resort project has collapsed after years of hype and partial construction. The scale-backs and conversions (into data centers) showcase failed mega-ambitions and wasted billions.
• Notable moment: Blowing up a mountain, changing concrete prices, and leaving a “Call of Duty 12” post-apocalyptic construction site.
• Quote: "I've never seen anyone create a, like, Call of Duty 12 level." — Nova (10:01)
• Move to discuss Kazakhstan's "more plausible" version of a planned city (Alatau), which stands in contrast to Saudi overreach — highlighting the spectrum from grandiosity to pragmatism in national vanity projects.
• Riley: "It would be funny for Britain to do that. We should like tank our GDP by... building a new planned capital." (15:06)
• Hosts riff on European parallels and the inherent comedy of overbuilt, under-planned utopian cities.

---

4. Israel's Lebanon Escalation and "Fighting On Multiple Fronts" (19:02-26:30)

• The conversation pivots to Israel expanding its war into southern Lebanon, seeking to create new ‘security zones’ potentially by depopulating villages and possibly Tyre itself.
• Séamus provides an in-depth summary of Israeli strategy, the IDF’s overextension, and the overconfident assumptions underlying their plans with U.S. support.
• Quote: "This war was supposed to not take this long... And now they're talking about it taking another month." — Seamus (22:51)
• Hosts note Israel’s difficulty in fighting Hezbollah, whose insurgency tactics have proven effective, and discuss U.S. resentment at being drawn further into a quagmire.
• Riley: “A victim of its own success... finally you're like walking into the trap that was set for you.” (23:10)

---

5. U.S. and Israeli Strategic Delusions, and Iranian Resilience (23:51-30:19)

• Séamus recounts how U.S. and Israeli planners failed to grasp their enemies’ capacity for rapid reconstitution and long-term resistance, referencing the "enemy gets a vote" doctrine.
• Iran’s regime proved robust after attempted decapitations — unlike the assumptions of American analysts who treated Iran as a “Venezuela-style” state.
• Mossad's inability to reignite Iranian protest movements is ridiculed; their "desperate" attempts include awkward, AI-generated content and ineffective Telegram/Twitter posts.
• Quote: "Mossad has all these immense capabilities... but their ability to re energize the protests has been [null]." — Seamus (27:21)
• The conversation shifts to U.S. victory declarations, media spin, and how both America and Israel are "postmodern" in narrative, while Iran wields "brute facts" of deterrent force.
• Standout comedic riff: "I actually identify as the strait being open." — Riley (29:53)

---

6. Gulf Power, Hormuz, and the Collapse of Petrodollar Certainty (30:19-44:57)

• U.S. military recruitment is getting desperate: age rises, criminal records allowed. Trump entertains wild “personal control of Hormuz” and other war “solutions.”
• Discussion on the (mis)understanding of the importance of Kharg Island, poor strategic thinking by U.S. hawks, and the folly of direct occupations.
• Riley lampoons Lindsey Graham as “Faghorn Leghorn,” noting the absurd spectacle of cable-news hawks advocating reckless interventions (34:03).
• Séamus points out Iranian capacity for protracted resistance and the logistical horrors any invading force would face.
• A key thread is the “uncertainty tax”: even if Iran doesn’t impose an outright toll or control Hormuz, the constant threat devalues dollar dominance and shifts economic power towards China and the renminbi.
• Nova: "The less the petrodollar is dominant... They're becoming British." (44:19) — Suggesting America is following Britain’s path of imperial overstretch and financial decline.
• Wall Street Journal draws Suez Crisis parallels with the U.S. position, symbolizing the collapse of Western hegemony.

---

7. What is the Iranian Endgame? Regional Hegemony and Gulf Disarray (45:08-65:59)

• The panel reflects on Iran's "accidental" achievements: Gulf states' strategic incoherence, American withdrawal, and deterrence through chaos.
• Nova: “Iran is fighting for survival and everybody else, while Iran is fighting for survival around them, is trying to figure out what they want.” (52:32)
• Seamus: Gulf states lack nationalist coherence and pain tolerance; they're less likely to endure sustained conflict. The UAE's reputation as a “warrior” state is dissected and dismissed.
• Paper militaries, lack of true coalition capability, and fragile economies make the Gulf poorly suited for confrontation with Iran.
• Seamus details the “paradigmatic shift” drones produce in regional warfare; traditional military power is losing relevance to low-cost, high-impact tech.

---

8. The Future of the Gulf and Global Power Shifts (65:59-End)

• Gulf states — especially UAE and Saudi — face existential threats if industrial infrastructure comes under sustained attack, lacking the resilience of states like Iran.
• U.S. retrenchment may mean moving bases into Israel, increasing vulnerability and further marginalizing Gulf "allies."
• Trashfuture signs off with references to Séamus’s podcast Turbulence, their continuing skepticism about world events, and a final, wry assessment about the limits of prediction amidst ongoing chaos.

---

Highlighted Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Riley, on U.S. repeating Russian mistakes:
  “America is Russia now. ... It didn’t have to be, because there was already a Russia.” (06:07)
• Nova, on NEOM’s collapse:
  “You can see things that look and feel like environmental storytelling. I’ve never seen anyone create a, like Call of Duty 12 level.” (10:01)
• Seamus, on Iranian resilience:
  “When the defense minister was killed... it had no effect at all. The decentralized structure allowed it to fire and fire wildly and maintain the ladder of escalation.” (25:23)
• Séamus, on Gulf power:
  “A lot of these Gulf states... do not have the level of nationalistic coherence that Iran has... and I also don’t think that any of these countries... would not be willing to just roll over and be humiliated if they needed to.” (49:52)
• Nova, on global decline of the petrodollar:
  “The less the petrodollar is dominant... they’re becoming British.” (44:19)
• Seamus, on UAE’s military reality:
  “...when the country you are fighting is very much not beset by civil war and is still capable of having air defenses and ballistic missiles... that kind of eliminates the mercenary killing field scenario.” (55:26)
• Nova, summarizing the new normal:
  “We are trying to predict the path of a storm from inside a thundercloud.” (66:33)

---

Timestamps for Major Segments

• 00:16—04:48: Diaspora cringe, leaked photos, introduction to Kash Patel and info war absurdities
• 06:07—07:45: America the “New Russia”, shifting war aims
• 08:29—18:14: NEOM & Trojena’s collapse, Kazakhstan’s Alatau, planned city jokes
• 19:02—26:30: Israel’s Lebanon operations, strategic overreach, Hezbollah’s effectiveness
• 27:04—30:06: Mossad’s failed social engineering, U.S./Israeli postmodern delusions
• 30:19—44:57: U.S. military desperation, Hormuz/Kharg strategies, petrodollar decline, global power-reshaping
• 45:08—65:59: Iranian endgame, Gulf state fragility, drone warfare paradigm
• 66:08—End: Looking forward, base re-positioning, economic futures, closing credits

---

Tone and Style

The episode delivers cutting-edge geopolitical commentary laced with British humor, heavy irony, and the group’s trademark irreverence. The hosts' personality-driven style — open, bantering, satirical — suffuses even dense topics, ensuring accessibility but never letting up on the depth or seriousness behind the jokes.

---

Further Reading & Listening

• Turbulence, the podcast and writings of Séamus Malekafzali: turbulencepod.substack.com
• As always, links to Séamus's work and recommended reading in the episode notes.

---

This summary should serve as both an efficient briefing and an enjoyable companion for anyone keen to understand Middle East geopolitics and the global order in flux — Trashfuture style.

Transcript

[Nova]

I like to think that if I was ever the target of like a state hacking group, that they wouldn't publish photos of me that indicated I had the most classic stupid person interests of all time.

[Riley]

I would like it if they published any photos that I'd taken of myself with other people instead of just like having a great time with my friends who are out of shots. If they published all of the saddest r solo travel photos of my vacation, because I think that could be really rewarding. But obviously that's a sort of maneuver in the information battle space to show us Kash Patel in Cuba just kind of hanging out, you know, getting into

[Nova]

cigars in the way that only the monumentally stupid are able to get into cigars.

[Riley]

Yeah, I'm kind of a cigar gu. I went to Cuba, you know. Cool, man.

[Hussain]

You know what? I have unique insight into this, right? Because me and Kash Patel and Zoran all hung out together. No, but like, we're all sort of like these kind of nerdy Gujarati kids who grew up in the west. And like, we were all sort of probably more influenced by kind of west coast hip hop music than we would like to admit. And we were like all bought into that gangster shit, right? And you know, I wasn't American. I didn't really have access to cigars. And so, you know, when we were like pretending that we, like me and my other two buddies, like, you know, pretending that we were into rap music, we were would try smoke those shitty cheap chip cigars that you can get from news agents. I can't remember what they're called.

[Riley]

Oh, no.

[Hussain]

Yeah, they tasted horrible.

[Riley]

But we thought cigarillos like in the Good, the Bad and the ugly.

[Hussain]

Yeah, we had like the fucking cigarillo.

[Riley]

I can't remember what the brand was.

[Hussain]

It tasted. It tasted disgusting. But yeah, did we think that we were sort of gangster hanging out in like suburban Kent, doing that? Absolutely. And when I saw Kash Patel with his like, cigars that he also probably doesn't really like very much like acting the way he does, I was just like, I recognize a fellow brother. I recognize someone who like, you know, is under like the immense pressure of kind of being from not a particularly cool diaspora group, but desperately wants to be and probably was influenced by Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle a lot more than they should have been at that time.

[Riley]

I wasn't expecting the Skeleton Key to understand a great deal of international politics to be the Gujarati diaspora.

[Hussain]

For his kids look just like with, you know, just very nerdy and very like Insecure about it. And you know, of all the people that sort of like, wanted to sort of really aspire to a particular form of like cool whiteness, like, very much, very much that type. And like, I've always seen it in Kash Battan when I saw what was in his Google Drive, like, I recognize a brother. That's all I'm going to say.

[Seamus]

I did especially like the photo of him, like in the chair going back with a cigar in his mouth. That is especially like I am smoking a cigar. It probably tastes really bad. I think what you're saying is probably true. It's probably not a great cigar. But he knows that he looks fucking awesome when he does it. Like, a lot of these photos remind me of those photos of Anjum Chowdhury before he went full Salafis. Like, okay, this man's gonna do some evil in some very, very, very soon.

[Nova]

Yeah, I think you're all sleeping on the number one Kash Patel photo, which is of course him just taking a P the fancy alcohol like it's a celebrity.

[Riley]

I think the running counter force strike here being two pronged. One, we're going to blow up one of the radar aircraft you've only got like a dozen of in the world, and then we're going to leak the kind of faintly depressing photos of the Director of the FBI. And we consider these to be kind of operationally of equal value. Is just another beautiful week in the development of Operation Reddit Fury.

[Nova]

Yeah, I mean, here's what I'd like to see of Kash Patel's dorm room posters. And how long did he have them? Did he have the Scarface poster? And when did he take it down, if at all?

[Riley]

It's still up there. It's in the office in the J. Hoover Building.

[Hussain]

Yeah, the bluestack is still fresh.

[Nova]

You know that when he's like holding his, like the $600 bottle of rum or whatever and he's got the cigar, you know, he's like, damn. I'm like, if Scarface was in the FBI.

[Seamus]

Yes, 100%. He has tried to do the Al Pacino Cuban accent in that office for sure.

[Nova]

You think he's cracking $100 rum.

[Riley]

Got me feeling like a Gujarati. Al Pacino.

[Nova]

That's right. Welcome to tf, everybody. We got Seamus back in the hot seat. Today we're going to be talking a little bit more about the developments of, as you call it, Nova Operation Reddit Fury. Colon. Two weeks into the four day special milit operation to dehumanify your own feeling good.

[Riley]

How is it going about monitoring the situation?

[Nova]

Seamus, you've been monitoring the situation. How's your situation monitoring been?

[Seamus]

The situation seems really bad, but thankfully it seems really bad for the Americans this time, which is a nice change of pace from the past two years of this shit.

[Riley]

Yeah, like I'm having a sort of, well, there's your problem thing of like, by the time this comes out, the economy may just be detonated forever. And we edit overnight. Yeah.

[Nova]

How about this? Whoever got the final review of this before it goes out? Oil is currently priced at a barrel.

[Riley]

What you need to do is drop in the 100 GEX. $1 million.

[Nova]

That's right. Okay, so we also have, and this is an idea I'm going to shamelessly steal from Nova because I want to bring it out earlier in the show. We have America also seemingly learning the lesson that you can do Hostomal Airport again if you just feed 8,000 troops into the meat grinder.

[Riley]

It's like, this is the headline for me is America is Russia now. It's crazy how it's Russia now. And it didn't have to be because there was already a Russia and it was called Russia. And it made all of these mistakes for what we naively at the time imagined to be Russian reasons. But now it turns out they were just kind of like global power reasons. And so now America's like, oh, shit. These guys with sort of like cheap drones and missiles can blow up our really high value planes on the tarmac. And you know, maybe it's a good idea to feed a bunch of special forces into a meat grinder for no reason on the basis that, like, these people won't resist us and they'll change their government when, when they, you know, see us. So it's, it's, it's Russia now. Russiagate, one of those kind of like orthogonally correct things when they were like, Trump is just a Russian asset. It's like in a sort of deeper, more spiritual way maybe.

[Nova]

Yeah, it's like you can even go, go bigger. And it's like it's declining empire shit. But where the US is trying to do Starmer Starmerism to Russia's plans in Ukraine, where they're like, no, we're going to do the same plans, but better because it's us. We're do a better job.

[Seamus]

Oh yeah. The whole thing was that the past wars were crackpoints because we had stupid presidents. That's what J.D. vance said. Like, really? They truly do believe this.

[Nova]

Yeah, they didn't have the showbiz guy who's gonna add a little bit of razzle dazzle.

[Riley]

So yeah, as, as we get into sort of, oh, Jesus Christ, like week two of the special military operation. The goal, as I understand it now. Right. Because there's not a plan, there's just a goal. And I understand the goal to be make the situation what we started the war. Which is also Russia.

[Seamus]

Yeah. Like right now. I mean, Marco Rubio did go on television today and said that there was apparently clear goals, which are goals that were now different than the clear goals that they had outlined at the very beginning. One of which was to destroy Iranian factories with no parameters on them. Just the factories.

[Nova]

Yeah, yeah.

[Seamus]

And the central goal is now. Yeah. To open the Strait of Hormuz and to restore a stable price of oil, which was absolutely not an issue before this. And now the Iranians are demanding full sovereignty over the Strait of Hormuz in any peace negotiation.

[Nova]

But before we get into Iran, there's one type of segment I like to save for Seamus, if I can. Look, we all know that the second most important story in the Middle east is currently what's going on in Iran.

[Riley]

Sort of like page two under the fold, right. Like after the like page and a

[Nova]

half of coverage of this most important is. And I, I need everybody to like unbook your tickets, put down your skis and accept that Trojena is now officially never happening. The Neom ski hill.

[Riley]

Breaking. Breaking a ski over my leg. Like I'm never going to be able to ski Saudi Arabia.

[Nova]

I can't believe that MBS's secret plan, which is to have a ski race for the rights to control the Straits of Hormuz with whoever the Ayatollah is at that time, is no longer going to be able to. Go ahead. No Saudi Arabia. We all know the line got canceled. It's going to be a data center now, apparently.

[Seamus]

I don't even know if you're kidding. That's true.

[Nova]

Nope, not kidding. It's going to be a big long data center.

[Seamus]

I have a stadium to do the World cup in though.

[Nova]

In Neom.

[Seamus]

Am I crazy? Yeah.

[Riley]

On top of the data center.

[Seamus]

I have a good idea.

[Riley]

Very warm underfoot.

[Seamus]

Yeah.

[Nova]

Yeah. Well, it's hot up top, but it's hot down below, so it cancels out, you know. This is from the Wall Street Journal. Unlike other parts of the neon master plan that were scaled back last year, before much physical building took place, Trojena was years into construction. Giant steel structures meant to hold hotels and A massive set of elevated ski runs have risen and was meant to be a ski village. They've created the. We always talk about, like, you can see things that look and feel like environmental storytelling. I've never seen anyone create a, like Call of Duty 12 level. Yeah.

[Riley]

The abandoned Saudi ski slope. Y Like.

[Seamus]

Like what I really not enjoyed because it's clearly like a structural deficiency. Like the idea of having like a water dam that goes outward in the design.

[Nova]

That's.

[Seamus]

That's fucking. That's crazy. They really thought that this was going to be like the thing.

[Nova]

The thing, the dam. Let me tell you that. Can I. Can I just hit you with the next paragraph? Just quickly. Engineers already blew up a big part of a large part of the mountain to make room for a hotel. Carved into the blasted stone wall, the dam, which was 30% complete. They actually. They meaningfully changed global concrete prices to do this shit. And they got 30% of the way

[Riley]

through decreeing 30% of my stately pleasure dome.

[Seamus]

Well, they cleared out all of the. I mean, I saw this when I went to the NEOM exhibition in Venice three years ago. They had cleared out all the land for the full extent of the line. They hadn't laid the foundation yet, but they had cleared out all of the things. Like so many fucking trucks doing this, this. And then they just don't do it. Don't have plans. Nothing. Absolutely nothing.

[Nova]

Yeah. Their plans are too hard. Oh, yeah. It turns out this was impossible.

[Riley]

To be fair, I did say at the time that building a ski resort and the line seemed pretty hard.

[Seamus]

Yeah.

[Nova]

You know what?

[Riley]

Should have listened to me, you know.

[Nova]

Yeah. You know, score notch another one up on our belt of pre. To be fair, that was like the tutorial island of predictions that was so easy to predict.

[Riley]

Yeah. Guess who just made $5 on polymarket.

[Nova]

So the dam, which is 30% complete, meant to be an architectural centerpiece bowing outward. And again, this is some Wall Street Journal wording right here. In defiance of standard engineering in which dams are inward, cost grew repeatedly with showing the price tag as well to $38 billion, double an estimate from two years earlier. Just two months ago, Trojena appeared to be one of the few projects at NEOM envisioned to hold 9 million people. That was proceeding even as other components of the site were facing cutbacks. Merely two weeks ago, we billed CEO Pietro Cellini sounded a note of cautious optimism when asked about cutback, saying production is progressing well. He said on March 13. So we build. Was the Italian contractor that was building Trojena. We build.

[Riley]

It's like being drowned out by Shahid engine. Like cautiously optimistic.

[Nova]

Okay, can somebody please do a photoshop of like, you know, the Republican Guard commander in Iraq, but it's an Italian construction CEO. There may be in the future some slowdown. We can't predict it, but a change in the scope of the project is not foreseen at the moment. Two weeks later, fully canceled.

[Seamus]

Yeah, Incredible.

[Nova]

Gone. Done.

[Seamus]

I, I remembered, I remembered like when they announced Trojena as the, the host place for the 2029 Asia Winter Games. Like the idea, like doing the World cup at Saudi Arabia. Okay, that's 2034, I think, right? 2020, 2030. Something that gives you enough time to build like a stadium or build like some part of the line. But the fact that they had to take the Winter Games away from Chojina, like not today, but like several months ago because they fucking knew this was not going to be anywhere complete and they gave it to fucking Kazakhstan because of course they would like.

[Nova]

Well, can I just, can I tell you, you know who's building Neom too? Kazakhstan.

[Riley]

What? Yeah, there's another one.

[Nova]

Yeah, there are neoms everywhere. For those with eyes to see Kazakh Neom. We're having Kazakh Neom. Alatau has been presented at a joint session of Kazakhstan's parliament. By the way, before I move on to that, also, the Malaysian steel company, when it comes to neom, the best place to really learn about what's going on is to like read about the top level color origin like the FT or the Wall Street Journal and then read like trade publications in like steel industry.

[Riley]

You're reading monthly. It's a day in steel.

[Nova]

Yeah, it's where you find the funniest details. Like the fact that the more than 60% of next year's order book for the Malaysian company that was providing all the steel for Trojena is now gone and that company is likely going to have to close.

[Riley]

Oh my God. Wow. How could you lose money building a ski resort in Saudi Arabia?

[Nova]

I'll be real.

[Hussain]

I tend to only read those magazines

[Riley]

for the cartoons I'm flipping through this week in steel to get to the sports section at the end.

[Nova]

Oh, personally I like shouts and girders at the end where it's just like fun stories from the steel industry. So details about the ambitious plans for Alatau city were presented to a joint session of Kazakhstan's parliament on March 20. Authorities are moving full speed ahead on the project to build a new city that could be home to 2 million people.

[Riley]

Will it have skiing? I need to ski. I have my arc' teryx jacket. Please let me ski.

[Nova]

Here's. Here's the problem, right? Is that.

[Riley]

Is it that Kazakhstan already has mountains?

[Nova]

Well, it's more like that Kazakh Neom. Elements of it seem to make a small amount of sense.

[Riley]

I don't love that. That's always funny to me.

[Nova]

Yeah. Hey, get out of here.

[Riley]

It's like looking at this project for

[Seamus]

the line and being like, we got

[Riley]

to get like 5% more plausible, you know, kind of.

[Nova]

It's one of these things where it's like they've decided to build a gleaming new capital just outside the old.

[Riley]

Another one of those. Okay, sure. It would be. It would be funny for Britain to do that. We should like tank our GDP by like putting the entire like. Because like we've got to move all the MPs out of parliament anyway because the building's falling down. Why don't we just build like a new planned capital on like a floodplain in Shropshire, you know, I think that would be great. Hey, I know we can get a deal on a bunch of cheap steel.

[Nova]

It's twice as much steel as was required to build the Empire State Building was going to go into trajectory.

[Riley]

Weirdly, all of the new buildings and new British capital of like, you know, Churchillier or whatever do have to be ski jump shaped. But I, you know, we'll work around it.

[Nova]

Well, that's Anglo futurism now. Yeah, I cannot wait for our perfect Anglo futurist. Brasilia. Let's go.

[Riley]

Keir Starmer announcing ski future. We are going to become an alpine country.

[Nova]

We're going to become an alpine powerhouse. No. So it's basically being built along the belt and road route. And it says it's going to have four junctions, green, growing golden and gate. The gate district will be the business

[Riley]

and financial area, et cetera, et cetera. Yeah, cool.

[Nova]

Gaslight girl bus.

[Riley]

If you're building this along like your sort of belt and road thing, you are also making an actual country with the capacity to build things responsible for it. Which means this may get built.

[Nova]

Yeah, it makes slightly more. There seem to be no glasses guys guys as of yet. The glasses guys are probably trying to get in like the, like the picnic at Neom is now done and too many of them have been squished. And so now all the glasses guys are going to flock to Kazakhstan to try to build this slightly more. But they, they all have like neon brain. So they're all going to be like, what if we Colorized the moon. And the Kazakhs like off? No, they also have the. An industrial logistics center, a recreational and tourist area. But like, again, unlike the stuff the Saudis do, it's not all recreational and tourist area. It seems to actually have a purpose.

[Riley]

When are they saying this will be done by. And have they done the Saudi thing of being like, we are committing to this within like three years because of the Asian Games or whatever, 2050.

[Nova]

And nothing is planned there.

[Seamus]

Honestly, that's far enough off.

[Riley]

You know, this is not entertaining to me. This is like watching an episode of Grand Designs where the couple have their shit together, right? Where it's like, oh, I'm an architect and my wife is a project manager. So we've basically kind of got this on lock. We've set aside like a commensurate amount of savings and our goals are modest. And you're watching this like, like, fuck off. No, that's not what it's about.

[Seamus]

It's like, that's like when Oman announced like those big new cities that they were building. And then you watch the CG videos and it's like, oh, this is like a reasonable. Like they're imposing height limits. Like there's really, like, there's good facilities. It's like, oh, oh, that's nice.

[Riley]

This is no, this is no good for me. This is. I may I make my money. I pay my rent with the hubris, you know?

[Nova]

Yeah, it just, it shows how novel it is to see a proposal that at first blush makes sense.

[Riley]

Look upon my work to you mighty, and it's like a pretty nice statue.

[Nova]

And you're like, look upon my works, ye mighty, and say, yeah, okay.

[Riley]

Yeah. It seems like a well executed project.

[Seamus]

Kind of a corny thing, but you know, corniness, corniness is not a sin.

[Nova]

Look upon my works, ye mighty, and say, good job.

[Riley]

Wow, it's still there.

[Nova]

Alatau City. I looked upon two vast and trunkless legs of stone. Then I looked up and I said, oh, there's the trunk. So Alatau City lies along the main road between the cities of Almaty and Konayev, the gambling capital of Kazakhstan.

[Riley]

A new place. I have to go, like as soon as possible. Unlocked.

[Nova]

You can't see it, listener, but November has just grabbed her passport and is clearly tabbing to a flight to an airline website. Good luck flying to Kazakhstan from London. I have no idea what route that would look like right now.

[Riley]

It's fine. We're going to be fine.

[Nova]

So anyway, that's the NEOM update that I Wanted, of course, to save for Seamus. I'm sorry that everyone in the world's ski plans have been canceled.

[Riley]

It's like you don't get to ski in Saudi Arabia. Consolation prize. You do get to gamble in Kazakhstan.

[Nova]

I want to go back to talking about Iran. Our main topic for today. America has now declared victory, what, like five to eight times. Hoping around that time, Iranians. I think their hope is that the Iranians will just be like, oh, you. Oh, you won. We didn't know. Okay, well, cool. I guess your demands are the demands. I suppose that's not what's happened. But before we get into that properly as well, I do want to talk about one of the other belligerents that we actually don't discuss quite as often as we're focused mostly on Iran, the Gulf and the us which is, of course, Israel, which is taking this moment of chaos to expand its war into southern Lebanon properly and is like bombing Beirut and seems like it intends to just fully permanently occupy southern Lebanon.

[Seamus]

Yeah, I mean, Netanyahu had announced a couple of days ago that they were going to further expand the security zone. There have been two estimates thrown around in the news media. One is the larger one that goes up to litany, and another is one that goes right up to the city of Suit, more commonly known in English as Tyre. In either of these scenarios, we're talking about whole villages being wiped off the map. The explicit model that they're talking about is a yellow line in Gaza where lots of villages, towns and cities were depopulated, then demolished. They're suggesting to fully do that in, at the very least, border villages in southern Lebanon, perhaps even the entire city of Tyre. If they go up to Lutan, to my understanding, they have not pushed in terribly far into the country. So far they have taken significant parts of Kiyem and Marouna Ross, but they have not gone up to litany yet. They have not surrounded Tyre yet. They are still bogged down in fighting with Hezbollah.

[Nova]

If you want to talk about, like, sort of one war is going great, so let's open another front. I mean, we're going to sort of ask some of the same questions about other belligerents later. But to what extent is Israel able to accomplish any of its actual. Given the new politics of the Middle east at large, I mean, it seems to be acting as though it's already won.

[Seamus]

No, no. There's an assumption that, okay, if America is backing us, if America has jointly entered this war against Iran, supplying all this firepower, theoretically sending its troops Thousands of them to die for Israeli objectives. What Israel wants out of this scenario, they're not sending Israeli special ops, they're not sending Israeli ground troops to any potential operation in Kharma or get the enriched Urinasfahan. And I think that created all of this impunity over decades and years like that builds up. And I think there was an assumption that, okay, if America is in this, maybe they'll even join in on some sort of bombing in Lebanon. Maybe they'll do maybe this, maybe they do that. And the shock of how this is actually gone is taking the military structure not by surprise. I'm sure they, they thought about this, but now they actually have to face it head on. And there is a crisis within that structure. Eyal Zamir, the, the commander of the idf, talked about how the military might collapse in on itself because of how many resources it is now tied up in. The number that I've been hearing throwing around of reservists they're going to call up is 400,000 just for Lebanon. And the number of reservists total in the IDF is less than 500,000. So that's just in Lebanon. If there is a new front potentially in Gaza, which they are talking about potentially doing, they were talking about potentially doing this month, several months ago ago, or in April, that might get pushed down a few months. But if that erupts, they could be fighting on multiple different fronts there. No, they, they do not like this particular scenario wherein Hezbollah is jointly attacking alongside Iran, firing their missiles and rockets at the exact same time. This war was supposed to not take this long, right when it initially started, it was supposed to be three to four weeks. And now we're just over 30 days in, and now they're talking about it taking another month. And interceptors are running low inside Israel now. Iran is able to hit with much more consistency than it did at the beginning of this. And it doesn't seem like America is terribly concerned by that bottleneck. It's basically going to think about itself at the moment.

[Riley]

It's also sort of like a victim of. It strikes me of its own success in both the US And Israel in a way that not to feel like everywhere is Russia, but if you see the kind of way that Russian opinion shifted after seizing crime, where it was like, oh, okay, we're not gonna face like meaningful resistance here. We've seen the sort of Hezbollah pendulum go from like washed and sort of like it's over all the way back to like, oh, we are having sort of like tanks get like bogged down in ambushes that they set like 15 years ago functionally, because finally, finally you're like walking into the trap that was set for you.

[Seamus]

You know, it's something like what I wrote about in the Nation a couple days idea that the enemy gets a vote. And America especially is not. It's totally forgotten this lesson from Vietnam in terms of its strategizing. So the idea that Hezbollah could be capable of reconstituting itself in any way, shape or form that was left out of Israeli strategic planning. Seemingly America convinced was it was totally. I mean, it did also claim that it had obliterated Iran's nuclear program and then it now has to go in to obliterate it again because it was about to reconstitute it or something along those lines. I think it truly believed what Israeli intelligence was telling it, that Iran's capabilities have been degraded over the past year from the 12 Day War, that it was on the verge of reconstituting it. But you know, this, this, you know, being able to neuter it, being able to destroy it would be a much easier task. And America especially believed that it could do something like Venezuela, that the Republican conservative conception of Iran as a Venezuela style republic where one person is at the top and is very powerful, but otherwise it's not an institutionalized state that it would fall the same way. Obviously that idea did not prove true. When Ali Khlomenei was assassinated in the first day of the war, what happened? They just elected his son and then it just proceeded as normal. There was no leadership crisis.

[Riley]

Doing a DPRK thing where it's like, these guys aren't real communists. You know, it's just a hereditary monarchy.

[Seamus]

No, it's, it's not like nothing. Like truly, there is no leadership cr. Like even in terms of the ability of the military to fight. When Hezbollah's leadership was decapitated in the last war in 2024, that had a severe effect on its ability to fight. Whereas when that happened in Iran, when the defense minister was killed, when, when lots of military officials were killed, it had no effect at all. The decentralized structure allowed it to fire and fire wildly and fire rapidly and maintain the ladder of escalation. And it has continued being coherent throughout all of this. That assumption that Iran would just capitulate immediately, it was going to be wrong. And now it is proven wrong, arguably more so than I anticipated before the war broke out.

[Nova]

It's a case of overlearning the lesson of the 12 Day War. Which is we can do anything.

[Riley]

Overconfidence. And I mean, it's not as if there haven't been serious threats to Iran that made it look like deeply unstable. The last time we spoke, Seamus, we were talking about it. Iran was in that situation of absolute kind of peril for the regime. And now, if anything, the US has sort of like vastly bolstered it.

[Seamus]

Exactly. I mean, this kind of thing happened during the 12 Day War as well, in which there was this rallying around the flag that happened. And now that both the US Is so directly involved in this, now that has really increased. And I mean, there have been these sorts of, I don't know, like the poking in of that protest base every so often. Like during the Nowruz holiday, there were people who had celebrations that they chanted of the Shah. During that, when Mujtaba Khomeini was appointed, there were chants inside Tehran from people's buildings where they said, you know, death the Khomeini.

[Nova]

But the whole thing, he's never published a really serious religious opinion.

[Riley]

It's not really helpful if both the, like, Mossad on your phone and Donald Trump are being like, yeah, you should probably like, go out into the streets. We're not going to help you, though. You should just get shot.

[Seamus]

Ideally, they absolutely want them to be massacred in this and then they can use that as an ideological cudgel. They don't actually want anything to happen. And I mean, this, this has been reported as such in the media. But, like, something that has really startled me is like, okay, the Mossad has all these immense capabilities. During the 12 Day War, they displayed those immense capabilities, like sabotaging missile launches before they were supposed to happen, infiltrating all of these levels of government, exposing their locations, this and that, the other. But their ability to re energize the protests has been. And it just did not happen. Like, I've been like, the Mossad has an official channel on Telegram and on Twitter. It does not have that for any other language. But what it has been just like posting as of late has been just completely desperate.

[Riley]

Been posting like Linda Yaccarina.

[Seamus]

Right.

[Riley]

I've seen some of these.

[Seamus]

I mean, like, yeah, like just this tweeting, like, Happy Norus. This time it's different. And then ruthless people eventually die. Like, these are the people who you're owing, like, all of your support to. Theoretically, if you're a pro Israel protester,

[Riley]

posting images and content on X.com is a great way to blaze your glory.

[Hussain]

That's right. Well, also, like, people have lower attention spans, and so, you know, you can't. You've got to, like, put some effort in.

[Riley]

Yeah. What if they must start open a short form video channel?

[Seamus]

They do. They post AI generated videos on their channels as well, showing, like, fake prisons that have been blown open or IRGC people defecting. Like, it's all boring. They're desperately trying everything and it's just not fundamentally working.

[Nova]

So if the Israeli reaction to oh, shit, we forgot they get a vote as to whether or not they're defeated is open up another front in Lebanon and then blast out messages being like, hey, maybe he'll just die. What if he just died? You can take over then. The American response appears to have been declare victory dozens of times.

[Riley]

We. We went all in on Jean Baudrillard. The Gulf War didn't happen, so this one isn't happening either.

[Nova]

Yeah, exactly.

[Riley]

Finally fought a war against an enemy with enough philosophy PhDs to make a counter argument, which is stuff happens in real life.

[Nova]

So what do we say? That America is postmodernism versus Iran, which is modernism?

[Riley]

Yeah, you could make the argument from the right of, like, actually, it's the Islamic Republic that's trad here. You know, Trump is doing standpoint epistemology on them, and they're holding resolute on the fact that there are some objective facts on the ground.

[Seamus]

Ground.

[Nova]

Yeah, look, this shahed drone is a brute fact.

[Riley]

I actually identify as the straight being open.

[Hussain]

Yeah, well, look, America represents luxury beliefs. And Iran, Iran is like steel and rational. Like, they have a rational philosophy, and that's why we should support them.

[Nova]

Excuse me. Oil is my comfort hydrocarbon. So the Department of Defense has announced that it would raise the army recruitment age from 34 to 42 and let people with certain drug felony convictions join.

[Riley]

All right, so I'm packing in the podcast. I got some stuff to do, you know, so see me on the FPV footage.

[Nova]

Just wait. Waving. Is that a. Like a boom?

[Riley]

Listen, if I am ever approached by an FPV drone, I will do my level best to hit the Charlie Kirk before I go ripping open the body armor to reveal the freedom T shirt and I just embrace it, you know,

[Nova]

leaping neck first into the path of

[Riley]

the drone, counting or not counting gang violence

[Nova]

when the shahed droid says something so neck phobic, you got to hit him with the Charlie Kirk stare. So Caroline Levitt also said President Trump is keeping all options on the table open when asking about sending ground troops or reinstating conscription, which could have just been a gaffe.

[Riley]

I mean, the ground troops that they're mobilizing as well. And this is the thing that's crazy. Crazy is they have it in them to take any of these islands. Right. And I believe at one point, one of the plans was to take these three small islands in the strait that they would then give to the Emirates. And the Emirates were like, no, we don't want those. So now it's maybe to take Hark. And I'm like, to do what with.

[Seamus]

Okay, this is the thing. This is the thing I'm wondering about, because. Okay, on a strategic level, I understand, okay, 80 to 90% of oil exports go through Kharg, the oil terminal Kharg. If you want to disrupt that, there is an obvious military incentive to taking Kharg. Right. But it's also what Trump seems to understand is that, okay, we can actually seize all the oil on this island. We can take the Iranian oil that way, even though they don't produce the oil on that island, it just goes through that island. The oil is produced on the mainland for the most part. So I think Trump has a misunderstanding about what Kharg precisely does. And my impression from the descriptions of what a operation to take the uranium in Isfahan would. Would comprise of.

[Riley]

Oh, my God, a disaster movie.

[Seamus]

Yeah. Like. Like fucking insane. My. What like Lindsey Graham has been saying is, like, you know, we can do. We did Iwo Jima. We can do this. Like, I think they think it's an easy step to force the capitulation of Iran, whereas what it will do, I think, is Iran will be obviously affected by it, but they can find other terminals to put their oil from. They have a lot of places to do that from. They have pipelines in order to bypass the strait entirely, even. But, I mean, thousands of Iranians are going to be placed under direct military occupation with no civilian administration to eventually transfer them into.

[Riley]

It's also that you then tie up a bunch of American troops who are getting bombed every day under direct.

[Seamus]

Potentially could be landmined around the island.

[Riley]

Yeah. And you have to be there for as long as it takes.

[Seamus]

And nobody knows how long this is going to fucking take. And Trump even said, like, they wouldn't be able to do a limited raid. They would have to stay there for a while. Like, all of these factors are running the gambit from just straight up evil in the amount of damage they would do to the Iranians living on that island, or just outright suicidal in terms of what the Americas would have to

[Riley]

deal with at Least Lindsey Graham is having a good time. You know, it's nice to know that one closeted gay guy with a stupid fucking accent can get on tv. And he's thrilled. You know, like, okay, a lot of American troops may die, but Faghorn Leghorn, he's having a great time. I can say it. I can say it.

[Nova]

I just.

[Seamus]

I heard it.

[Riley]

I was like, yes, yes. I called him Faghorn Leghorn. Yeah, she's still mad at you.

[Hussain]

I am shaking my head to show that I disagree.

[Riley]

Now, I'm just a simple.

[Nova]

But here's the thing. Are we ready for the episode title that finally gets us banned? Because I can't think of it better one. Oh, my God. Well, yeah, so Lindsey Graham. Lindsey Graham gets to. Gets to butch up a little bit.

[Seamus]

He does.

[Nova]

He does. We did Iwo Jima, but again, like, Iwo Jima, smaller island.

[Riley]

They hadn't invented FPV drones yet. They hadn't done that yet.

[Nova]

Well, they did. They were just. They were guys.

[Riley]

That's true. Yeah.

[Nova]

Yeah. But, like, that's way more expensive and difficult.

[Riley]

Flying a kamikaze plane onto the bridge of an aircraft carrier and the captain hits the Charlie Kirk. Exact.

[Nova]

Oh, wait, what would he. He did, like, the Father Cocklin, I guess.

[Riley]

I guess. Yeah.

[Nova]

So the day we control the island, the regime has been weakened, and we'll die on the vine.

[Riley]

Why, though? Why? I've never. Like, there's not a. And then, therefore, c. Like, it's January 6th.

[Nova]

Thinking it's January 6th. Thinking of just like, well, we just got to get to the place where the level ends. And that's where they keep. That's where they keep. The regime is in the order. Oil. And so if we take the oil, capital T, capital O, then the regime is ours, and then we get to do what we want. It is January six. Thinking they're just going to go there and mill around.

[Riley]

I would ask if Trump had ever, like, looked at a map of Iran, but I know that his daily briefing is they, like, cut together the footage of stuff they're blowing up and, like, show him a super cut. So, no, maybe he hasn't. Maybe he doesn't realize it's got, like, a hinterland.

[Nova]

On Monday, Trump riffed out some new ideas for ending the war, saying, you know, bad ideas and brainstorming that the Strait of Hormuz could be controlled jointly by the Ayatollah and me personally.

[Riley]

That's gonna be. That's gonna be an awkward meeting.

[Hussain]

You know, someone watched Heated Rivalry this

[Riley]

weekend There was also, yeah, Lindsey Graham. There was also a. There was also, I believe a proposal to have Pakistan mediate between them. But as far as I can tell, that's entirely aspirational at this point.

[Seamus]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, Mujtaba did put out a statement like thanking Pakistan in particular a couple days ago for its friendship. And I guess they're relying on like, okay, this state is friendly with both of these countries. Pakistan is on the board of peace. But no, it doesn't seem like it's entirely a one way process. These peace negotiations.

[Riley]

As best I understand it, the American demands, right, for any peace negotiation are open the strait the way it was before the war, abide by the jcpoa. And also we can go back on this and kill you anytime we want, including maybe while you're negotiating this.

[Seamus]

I mean, also, also eliminating its missile capabilities. I think. Five years, five years, they want no missiles. But also that's kind of a JCPOA thing, right? Like expanded out to conventional weapons. Because then we'd be talking about like breakout times and all of this. And then we'd be back in the exact same way. Started like, they still want the capitulation, but they're also still like, because the oil price at this book, they're still like moving in different ways. Like there was an Axis report about how they were thinking about like in terms of the reparations that Iran wants, that maybe they could unfreeze the sanctioned assets that Iran has abroad, which they have never done basically since the jcpoa. And they already unsanctioned Iranian oil on the water and claimed that it was jujitsu ing the Iranians. That's from the Treasury Secretary, Scott.

[Nova]

Brilliant.

[Seamus]

That's the exact word he used.

[Nova]

Like what exact hold was. What joint lock is that?

[Riley]

I'm doing a classic neck lock. You know, I get my neck around his arm and I just like, it's the jujitsu move.

[Hussain]

My teacher taught me one time when I was doing it, which hurts you more than it hurts your opponent, but you still like do it anyway, which

[Riley]

shows that you're willing to take more pain. Meanwhile, on the Iranian side, there is no plausible way that they can stop, stop doing this until they've restored something that looks like deterrence. And now the Americans have made them exercise the kind of veto over what goes through the strait. You have to keep it, right? You can't back down from that and go, actually, you know what, it's fine. We don't take an interest in that anymore. Unless I don't know what.

[Hussain]

Yeah. And also, you can't really, even if you were to sort of say, even if you were to sort of make these demands, I feel like it's sort of difficult when you have your fucking Secretary of War war, like basically declaring a crusade every time there's a press conference. And it's very much just like, yeah, we are, we are fighting a holy war against these, like, demonic, demonic peoples.

[Riley]

I mean, smart money is that Hexith gets Christy known sooner or later, right? Like when, when the sort of failure gets too much. But like, even then, like, even any kind of like, post war settlement for this. Explain to me how everything that goes through Hormuz doesn't now have an Iran tax on it forever?

[Seamus]

Well, I mean, rightly. And I on, I was on Chinese TV a couple, a couple days ago. What I said, well, the anchor, like, asked me, like, about that Ayatollah and me sharing thing. And I had to, like, conjure up an answer because I don't think even he has thought about it. Like, Trump himself, like, maybe something with the Board of Peace, it could be laundered through that. Like, what they came up with, like, how they laundered Trump's statement that he was going to own Gaza. They eventually found some sort of internationally compliant way of doing that. Maybe they could do something where Trump gets to say, ostensibly that controls the Strait of Hormuz, or the Strait of Trump as he started calling it. Like, like, it's this thing of, like, okay, you've got two forms of hubris right now. One is Iran trying to control the state of Hormuz in perpetuity. What I assume is entirely control it, even though Oman has territorial waters there. That I don't think is going to be able to happen in the way that Iran wants it. I don't think any of the Gulf states are going to try to extend, accept that. But Trump is so maximalist about this kind of stuff and also does not give a shit about what the Gulf states say or do or want from him. That, yeah, I think Iran's probably going to have the upper hand in this. Maybe not a $2 million tax like the kind that's being issued right now, but I cannot, at least at this juncture, imagine a scenario in which America is going to get what it wants out of this.

[Riley]

Not to just do homophobia for an hour and a half, but it is kind of crazy that Trump went. The new ayatollah is gay. I want to meet him.

[Nova]

Maybe if we had a project together

[Riley]

inviting the new Supreme Leader to come help design the ballroom.

[Nova]

Oh, it's enemies. They're doing enemies to lovers.

[Hussain]

Yeah, look, as I said, it's heated rivalry, baby.

[Riley]

Renovating the Trump Kennedy center together. Yeah, well, look.

[Hussain]

Yeah, and Trump's going to call Mujtaba and just be like, like, you know, tell me how you're feeling if you can't express it English, like. And then Mujtaboh will reply to him in like perfectly beautiful Persian poetry, which is a scene from heated rivalry, by the way.

[Nova]

Hussain, are you pitching an AO3 story?

[Hussain]

Yeah, yeah, I'm pitching an AO3 story and I'm sure that it's probably been done because it's actually probably not that original.

[Nova]

So I want to go back to this though, Right. Which is something November raised, which is Iran. If they're not going to be able to apply an Iran tax to the Straits of Hormuz forever, what clearly I think could be applied is an uncertainty tax to everything going through this trades of Hormuz because this stable deterrence. Yeah.

[Hussain]

An uncertainty tax, otherwise known as adhd.

[Nova]

Yeah. Well, that is now the stable deterrence that was established is no longer there because like Iran's whole thing, they held the gun. And a deterrence is a gun you can fire once. Just don't do anything or I'll do this. And for a long time as well, Iran was deterred and was only able to act through proxies. And it was stable in as much as it shifted. Slowly, Slowly.

[Riley]

Yeah. And this is part of how we got here is blasting through the guardrails of destroying all of those proxies. Yeah.

[Hussain]

And I imagine also just being like the guy that was the most cautious person you could sort of think of and the one who sort of is partly like, you know, lots of people are blaming him for kind of the situation that Iran is in. But the fact that you killed him and you then replaced him with someone who seemingly is far less cautious about defending the country is probably. That probably, probably also is a bit of a boo boo. Right?

[Nova]

Yeah. The chaos is now a permanent. Even if it's not an Iran tax where you pay $2 million in yuan, denominated in yuan, by the way, which is super important, which is crazy for the global economy. That that is like the petro renminbi

[Riley]

didn't get invented throwing riches at China's feet. Like, hey, do you want these? Do you want these? Do you want these? Do you want to take these?

[Nova]

Yes.

[Riley]

I'm going to wait until the pile gets bigger.

[Nova]

Yeah, trying to drown China and money.

[Riley]

What kind of martial arts move is that?

[Nova]

Yeah, I love jiu jitsu, but like the, that uncertainty tax seems to benefit China partly because it's paid in renminbi. And like this, this conflict didn't invent the petro renminbi that's been around since like 2015. It's been.

[Riley]

The Saudis were kind of poking at

[Nova]

it, you know, slowly growing in importance in settling. Settling oil transactions in renminbi. This seems to create a structural reason to do that a lot more. And also I'd like to point out in terms of dying empire speedruns, that the US is another kind of dying empire, which is, imagine you were a globe bestriding imperial colossus and you were militarily pretty omnipotent. For a while, your currency was the thing that everything else happened in. Right. But then you have a large complicated state to maintain and you have relatively high standards of living that you got from your imperial super profits. Right. But the only thing that allows that is that everyone else transacts in your currency, which means borrowing in your currency to fund stuff is really cheap. So what happens?

[Riley]

There's some historical parallels here, aren't there?

[Nova]

There's a little bit of Britain. There's a little bit of Britain creeping Russified America. Oh, I'm not saying, oh, it's all Russian to be like that. No, it's just decaying empire stuff. It's just further along shit.

[Riley]

Like, yeah, absolutely, they're further.

[Nova]

The Russians are just further along than the Americans. But that's also British. That means that America has become a bit more British. The less the petrodollar is dominant in the world, the less the Americans just have the entire global economy propping up deficit spending. They're becoming British.

[Seamus]

I just want to add on that you're very correct on this because there was an editorial in the Wall Street Journal, I think several days where they talked about if America, I want to say if America did not open the Strait of Hormuz, that it would be like the Suez crisis. Yeah, genuinely like. And that's a negative, but it's like, that sounds awesome for, for America to have its own Suez crisis that it just cannot wrestle its way back from.

[Riley]

It's crazy how Israel was in both of them. Yeah, back to back Suez crisis, sort of opposite of champs.

[Nova]

There's 0 and 2. I also want to talk about like ir endgame here because a lot of their losses seem to be unforced errors by their opponents. Right. They had, they had A certain kind of force. They had a certain kind of deterrence. They shot their deterrence gun. Their forces were degraded, but then they got reconstituted.

[Riley]

Yeah, I mean, we've kind of seen a long history of, like, Iranian fumbles. Right. And like, some of those, admittedly, you don't expect the guys to eat the chess pieces, but like, others, not so much.

[Nova]

You know, in this case, the guy eating the chess pieces seems finally to have choked on a chess piece.

[Riley]

Eventually it's gonna.

[Nova]

Yeah. And so what I'm. What I'm interested in, really, is, like, we talked about what the American endgame looks like for this, which is seemingly a humiliating defeat. The Israeli endgame, which is kind of the same thing, but a lot more violently lashing out at its neighbors. And it's like, subject population. What's the Iranian end game, I wonder? Because in a sense, you could say they kind of got everything they wanted sort of by accident. The Gulf security architecture is utterly fragmented, and, like, all of their neighbors are no longer able to offer stability as a service. Like Bahrain and the UAE and I

[Riley]

film a Fast and Furious movie there anymore.

[Nova]

Yeah, if you put. If you put Tom Cruise in the side of the Burj Al Arab, the Shahad's going to come, give him the Charlie Kirk and, you know, but you can't do stability. That was their whole post oil offering was, what if we offer political repression as a service? That's gone. The petrodollar has now been challenged like it never has. I'm not going to say it's dead, but it's been challenged like it never has before. Its nearby Arab neighbors themselves are completely reeling, understanding that the US Security umbrella was actually like the umbrella, if you look at. It was a target, basically. And they're in control of the Strait for the foreseeable future, and they still get to use that for deterrence because they can promise to let select ships through. And, you know, here's my favorite quote that sums up the whole thing before I hand back to you to talk about their end game. Atlantic Council's Josh Lipski said, of course, it's possible Iran could turn the Strait into a toll booth just from an operational and technical level, if countries are willing to pay. But I have a hard time believing the United States would abide that. Okay, abide it or not, it seems to be that from an operational and technical level, it's possible.

[Seamus]

Excuse me, I don't.

[Riley]

I don't abide.

[Nova]

That isn't someone you forgot to ask. And so, because it's now true and obviously true that what the US Abides and what the US can affect are two different things. What happens in a Middle Eastern politics where Iran actually is a regional hegemon, and can it consolidate that? Is there a state that can consolidate that power?

[Seamus]

This is a really good question, and I wish that I had, like, a more satisfying answer to it. Because when you talk about, like, strategy, the ability to strategy, strategize, I think the only faction that has properly strategized at every stage has been the Houthi movement in Yemen. Every single move they have done throughout this war has been, I think, the correct one, and it's paid off for them. They're undeniably much stronger now than they were before this war, more coherent, much more influential, much more regionally powerful just on every single parameter, every single, single sector. Despite losses within its military structure, I think the issue that Hezbollah ran into, if we can use that as an example, when it attempted to become a more conventional military formation, when it started extending its forces outside of its borders, the intervention in Syria, when it attempted to become an extraordinarily strong deterrent force in Lebanon, I think that worked against it. When Israel eventually came knocking in the way that it did, and now it's functioning, I think, much better than this time around because it is functioning much more like an insurgency, one that Israel is clearly having a lot less success against than it did in the early opening of the invasion of 2024. This is a thing about Iran and wanting more things for itself in order to recreate the deterrence that it lost in 2025 and 2024 to some extent. Could it theoretically impose a toll regime in the Strait of Hormuz? Yes, it has a military capabilities, and it's not terribly difficult to do that. But so much of this is this trajectory is reliant on its relationship with the Gulf states. That, you know, just as the Gulf states are stuck with Iran, Iran is stuck with those neighbors. And it's this open question is, what are the Gulf states going to possibly do about this? Because they keep inching toward, like, you know, we're ready to go in like this. This is the zero hour. We need to take out Iran's boasting missile capability, like the UAE in particular, talking about getting rid of their ballistic missiles, talking about maybe putting their navy into play, which is like 3,000 people and a couple of ships, but it's still something.

[Riley]

10,000 belts.

[Nova]

Yeah. Like, the UAE has no warrior spirit. You can't just, like, hire people from the Subcontinent to be your navy.

[Seamus]

Because this is the, this is the thing, this is the thing. Like if we were talking about countries, I'm going to limit, I promise. This is not coming out of a position of Iranian chauvinism. I know that it's easy to see that, but just bear with me here. A lot of these Gulf states, to varying degrees, do not have the level of nationalistic coherence that Iran has. I think that's reasonable to say. And these power brokers, like the UAE especially, have found it, I think, quite hard to rally their citizenry in the way that Iran has. And I also don't think that any of these countries, countries like I think Matthew Petty, another for Reason magazine, put it this way, I'm paraphrasing. If you looked at the Gulf states conduct over the years, why would you assume that they would not be willing to just roll over and be humiliated if they needed to? Something that I thought was very illustrative of this was the Foreign Minister of the UAE retweeted an op ed in an Emirati newspaper about how this British woman, I think she's British, talked about how she finally feels Emirati, like, this is my, my country. Now that there's a war happening. Like the idea that the vast majority of your population were non Emirati, 90 something percent would finally now think that this is your country. Once you've had a war basically thrown upon you, when there are billboards now saying that this is your country, when you have to insist on that fact, I think that means countering Iran as a coalition, as a singular nation, I think that becomes very difficult. And I don't think that it's easily solved unless you want to go whole hog into actually developing a national identity, which the UAE is not going to do because 90% of the population needs to be wage slaves for that country to function. I don't think, like, this would be a question that could probably be better answered a month from now. But for now, whatever hubristic objectives that Iran may have, the people that they're dealing with, like you said, they're choking on chess pieces here. Like you're dealing with people who don't know what to do. And if you have a semblance of knowing what to do, then you're, you're higher on that totem pole. It doesn't mean that you're strategic geniuses. We could talk like, like, as, as Nova said, like Iran has done a lot of strategic fumbles over the years. Strategic patience as a concept chief among them. But they still have something there. And the Gulf states just didn't want this to happen. And now they have to formulate like, I guess we're part of this international coalition and we have to stand strong. Like, I don't know, I don't know how, what, what the long term strategic outlook of that is that I think it's more important to this equation.

[Nova]

Yes, it's like ultimately, right, Iran is fighting for survival and everybody else, while Iran is fighting for survival around them is trying to figure out what they want.

[Seamus]

Figure out what they want. But, but, but also, like, maintain. You're talking about like, stability as a service. Like their existential nature is not threatened, but like Iran could take a lot in terms of damage to its, its economy. The UAE cannot do that. Qatar cannot do that. Bahrain cannot do that. Saudi Arabia cannot do that. It has a much lower pain tolerance than Iran does. And therefore, like destroying the idea of Dubai that Fraser keeps getting thrown around, that is something that I don't know if it's achievable necessarily, but I don't think you can deny that the image of the UAE and these countries in the way that we knew them, I think that's been very damaged. And there will always be hooting maniacs coming over from your country to the UAE in order to avoid taxes. I'm sure that's going to continue. But to the degree that it did before, I don't think so. And that's going to be something that Dubai, which doesn't rely on oil and it's very tourism based, I think they will have a lot of difficulty dealing with that.

[Nova]

So in effect, it sounds like if we want to sort of pull it back. To my question, it's that Iran doesn't need to consolidate its victories because in the chaos that is, it's now being created around them, like the Gulf states are almost consolidating their victory for them by just falling apart.

[Seamus]

I think that's what it's looking toward. I wouldn't say that's what's going on.

[Riley]

Slumping onto the chessboard. If we can keep the same metaphor going.

[Seamus]

Yeah, I think that's stuffing up pawns. I mean, Kaltan was talking about potentially retaliating, and now they've obviously backed off of that. Talking more about diplomacy in the same way that Oman was. The UAE is really the only state publicly gunning for some sort of military confrontation with Iran. Saudi Arabia isn't doing that in a clandestine way, but the UAE has been really public about it with editorials, interviews to this effect from major officials. But like, I do need to remind people what the UAE's military adventures have produced because they did that whole thing in the Yemen civil war where they openly backed those southern separatists against their own allies in Saudi Arabia and pissed them off so much with how much they were acting unilaterally without sense that as soon as Saudi Arabia got bombed, a singular emirate, Emirati weapons shipment, one of them, the UAE completely pulled out and the entire project collapsed. Which they invested millions upon millions of dollars in years of their life. Like, if they sense any sort of danger, they do not give a shit.

[Nova]

Oh, the Emirati way is exclusively to fight against people who can't fight back.

[Seamus]

Exactly.

[Riley]

Yeah. Or to find the kind of like worst mercenaries in the world to sort of like do a genocide on your behalf, whether that's in Syria or in Sudan or in Yemen or wherever. And that doesn't exist in Iran.

[Seamus]

No, no, no. When the country you are fighting is very much not beset by civil war and is still capable of having air defenses and ballistic missiles and cruise missiles that can fire at you. That kind of eliminates the mercenary killing field scenario that the UAE would want. No, no, no. I would need to see. Look, maybe the UAE can pull something out of. Of a hat here, you know, but I.

[Nova]

Very, very expensive hat.

[Seamus]

Very, very deeply expensive hat. When your selling point is still, when you're talking military capability, that you have a very high tech navy, but that you have like six ships. Not the actual number. Just like. Let's, let's be, let's be straight here. That can't. You're talking about escorting all of the tankers you're going to help out when the US won't even send one in. We need to. Let's, let's give it some more time before we. Yeah.

[Riley]

When a guy can sort of like step out of a cave in one of the most mountainous regions of the world 200km away and like hand launch basically. Or like rail launch a drone that is going to like knock an entire LNG carrier out. It doesn't work.

[Seamus]

No.

[Nova]

Well, I think one of the things that's happened is drones have created a paradigmatic shift in the balance of offense and defense where you know, suddenly like, because the, the aircraft carrier was like the pinnacle of offense, right? Which is we can put air base, we can park an air base right beside your country and then basically have a US base in your country. You. But now the like low cost, easy to operate drones.

[Riley]

It's Riley. Riley it's, that's not true. It's not aircraft carrier versus drone. It's aircraft carrier versus its own laundry system. Thank you. What we're sleeping on for the next great conflict is the role that the washing machines are going to play.

[Nova]

It's aircraft carriers, carrier versus spin cycle. Damn. Okay, but so what, what I think we've been grasping at, for these segments, what I think is beginning to emerge is this. Answer the question, what does a post war regional order look like for everybody involved? I think for Iran it looks like a, probably more, more bellicose because it's now fired its big deterrent gun and so it can't establish deterrence through threat. It has to do things, I imagine.

[Riley]

Yeah. And it's, it's learned the hard way for about, you know, 15 years at this point. Like the strategic patience is like extremely futile. In fact, any kind of patience is futile.

[Seamus]

Yeah.

[Nova]

And so they're probably, they've learned to be more bellicose. But also Iran's not a monolith like Mostabaz. Just like the current guy is not the, I've been, I've seen it written that he's sort of the IRGC's man.

[Riley]

Also, if we want to talk about like not just regional order, but world order.

[Nova]

Yeah.

[Riley]

If you're a European defense person or intelligence person, you're kind of, kind of thinking Trump is going to get his dick kicked in on Iran and is going to need a sort of flight back to a fantasy of power that's more danger for Greenland rather than less. Meanwhile, if you're in like, you know, East Asia at all, you're just like envisioning a big Chinese flag over the top of Taipei 101 without even that much of a fight at this point.

[Nova]

Like, like what I have written down here is like, what does this mean for the U.S. which is. Well, these guys haven't won a war against anybody serious since 1945. And what this means for China is them saying, hey, those guys haven't won a war against anybody serious since 1945.

[Riley]

I think about the Liaoning one, the like Chinese intelligent ship that's just kind of sitting in the middle of the strait, not being bothered by anyone, just kind of watching all of this, being like monitoring the situation.

[Hussain]

Yeah.

[Riley]

Learning a lot. One has to imagine it's the real

[Nova]

life version of what if our enemies just systematically dismantled their own power base out of a combination of spite and idiocy.

[Riley]

If you end up in a shooting war with the United States, circumstances will constrain them such that they will end up parking a bunch of shit that they can't afford to replace just in the open. And you can find it and you can hit it very precisely. And they don't really know what to do about that.

[Nova]

That's what it means for the sort of global balance of power as I think it's pretty. Unless something changes dramatically, it is swung pretty decisively against the US and in Iran, it's tough to say because Iran's not a monolith. You don't know who's going to consolidate power as time time goes on. Probably the rgc. Probably. What will the Guardian Council do? What will Pazashkan do? It's. I mean, Pezaskyan will probably do nothing. He'll say some things that'll get contradicted right away.

[Riley]

Riley, dear friend and co host of no Gods, no Mares, are you aware that Muhammad Fakir Halabak is a former mayor of Tehran?

[Nova]

Seamus, do you want to come on no Gods, no Mayors.

[Seamus]

Okay, all right, all right. I'm going to. I'm going to. I've been on here. I think I've constructed enough goodwill so I can, I can do a call out. Nova. Riley. I was told that I could come on no Gods, no Mayors. When it was first being constructed and then the offer disappeared.

[Riley]

I have adhd. I have. I'm neurodivergent. I'm sorry.

[Seamus]

I was so ready to talk about Ali Reza Zakhani, the current mayor of Tehran, and this was denied to me. But I could talk about Kaliwaf. I'll do it just because I have such affection for the show and the people on.

[Riley]

Thank you. Thank you. I appreciate it.

[Nova]

When we started no Gods, no Mayors, the stuff then kicked off. We started it in late, late 2024.

[Riley]

Basically. I would say as much insult as we may have offered to our guests and future guests, we did also kind of maybe cause the world to enter what I can only describe as a very municipal time. I don't think mayors have mattered as

[Seamus]

much for a long time, but now they're becoming important. And this is where, this is where I come.

[Nova]

We're entering a very municipal time in our lives. But so Iran, it's very difficult to say the wider Middle East, I mean Israel, like we say, it's responding by opening more fronts and calling up what percentage of his population is reservists to continue fighting. But also it's more. It's important to note that Iran hit Dimona. Iran hit the deniable nuclear, civilian nuclear research Station and gift shop, basically.

[Riley]

Oh, that old thing?

[Nova]

Yeah, they hit Israel's clandestine nuclear research facility and again, like the 12 Day War was meant to establish the opposite, which is that Israel can target Iran's nuclear infrastructure with impunity, but not, not vice versa. And you know, you can also ask, hey, why is Israel defending this civilian research station? So let's say vigorously. But so what it means for Israel is the deterrence that they had appears to have been completely disestablished. And then, you know, what does it mean for the Gulf, as you were sort of getting more into Seamus, like the fake militaries that they made largely as part of petrodollar recycling, like as ways to get those petrodollars back to countries that could then spend them again. Right. Was to build these high tech militaries that were super integrated with the us, the UK to a lesser extent, that relied on all these advisors and that also made defense ministers feel important, that made sort of the, the monarchs feel powerful. Right. But that they were all paper tigers because they're not, they're all they're about is fighting Iran and they were fighting the enemy that you fight with expensive stuff which at best would be one another at best. And so like there's no Arab NATO.

[Seamus]

Well, they were going to, they were going to try to construct one years ago under more ideal conditions than it would fucking work.

[Nova]

Yeah, it's always Egypt's idea as well,

[Seamus]

these kinds of things fucking far from anyone that could reasonably threaten them as they can possibly can. Yes,

[Nova]

it's wild. It's always Egypt. And partly that's because all of those militaries that the Gulf has primarily integrate via the United States or Britain, like they integrate via other military. Military. It's like there's no Saudi Qatari interoperability. It's not really what we're looking at. It's Saudi interoperability with the states or like Bahraini interoperability with the states and so on and so on. So I don't see them doing anything except having a drastic reduction in their imagined strategic importance and to be frank, budgets, because they're no longer able to operate as though they are unrealistically powerful compared to what they can actually do. Right.

[Seamus]

No, I think the difficulty in saying what the economic outlook is like, what their governance are going to be like is the big stuff has not quite happened yet. There is huge stuff that has happened but like if vital, if Kharg is hit and vital infrastructure in the Gulf starts to be hit, nuclear power plants, lots more Steel plants, solar plants, the industrial base, desalination. Desalination plants as well. Which, I mean there was one that was hit in Kuwait. Yeah. Yesterday, which, which caused a huge stir inside the Omani Foreign Ministry. Like when you are no longer able to fund the most basic parts of your industry, when you are going to take years to rebuild it. I don't just see, you know, a military de. Emphasis, you know, a drawdown there. I'm just talking about the whole damn thing. Like Iran, I mean when its steel factories were bombed, something like 70% of Iran Steel making capacity was born bombed by Israel a couple days ago. That's really significant. But Iran still has the ability to rebuild a lot of these things over

[Riley]

a period of years.

[Seamus]

And the entire national economy will not collapse. Whereas in the Gulf, so many of these industries have maybe not singular point of failures, but close to singular point of failures. And can you imagine what the purpose would be of these Gulf states to continue existing if they did not have these capabilities? If the data centers were being bombed, if, if the water that goes into these cities being bombed, if their petrochemical industry was being severely affected, like these investors would try to go elsewhere, at least for the moment. They don't have the ability to quickly rebuild and rebound. Especially if the people they have to rely on, the United States absolutely hates them. Like not in the sense of course they'll profess allyship, but they do not want to get involved in trying to actually protect them from military salsa Iran, they showed that they absolutely do not give a shit. They would only be interested in something that's going to make America in gargantuan amount of money. And so whatever terms they would set for that kind of rebuilding, they would be extraordinarily favorable to the Americans and much less favorable to the Gulf. I don't see good scenarios. Like regardless of, if I can't think of a specific scenario for the Gulf, I see very few good ones. Undeniably this is going to go very badly for them.

[Nova]

The entire wider world of American influence is learning that they are and always have been disposable vassals. Except for one. Except for one.

[Seamus]

And they're also thinking about like, I think there was an author on the table, I forget the source of this, where Israel was talking about maybe bringing the American bases that are going to inevitably leave the Gulf into Israel and just shove everything into there and make the Gulf seas even less relevant to America's security strategy.

[Nova]

Like sure, let's just put more big targets.

[Riley]

Sure, why not in like a country again. That's like five miles wide.

[Nova]

Yeah, great.

[Riley]

Cool.

[Nova]

Smart. Look, I think this is, this is as good of a look ahead as we can really get because we are trying to predict the path of a storm from inside a thundercloud. But as ever, Seamus, thank you very much for coming and helping us do that.

[Seamus]

Of course, Always a pleasure.

[Nova]

And of course, Seamus, if people like your voice, where can they hear more of that?

[Seamus]

They can go to turbulencepod.substack.com and I write at Seamus, I'll never catch on Turbulence.

[Nova]

Come on, name three sources.

[Seamus]

When I, when I, when I, when we first started that, I did tell Dylan, like, straight on, like, I think this is a terrible name. I think people are just gonna think it's about air travel. I am very thankful to have been wrong on that, on all fronts.

[Nova]

Yeah, catch Seamus on Turbulence. Catch him writing as well. We always link to his substack in the episode description and we will see you, the listener, in a few short days on the bonus. So thanks, everybody, and we'll see you soon.

[Riley]

By.

[Seamus]

Sam.