0:00 So there are five scenarios in which the war could end because Trump is stupid enough to take on what Israel wanted to do, which was destroy Iran, but they've bitten off far more than they can chew. So scenario one is Iran destroys the Gulf power infrastructure. I think that's highly likely. And if that happens, then Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Dubai, they'll become uninhabitable. And then scenario two, Iran disables Israel's nukes. I hope that happens, but there's this one. And it scares the out of me. Professor Steve, I have so many questions. What is going on? >> So, this war is threatening everybody on the planet. And what Trump is doing at the moment is a pump and dump scheme. He's trying to drive up the oil price and exploiting it for his friends and for his own wealth in the process. So, people are focusing upon the price of this. But the really important point is this, the straight of Ham. So, oil,
0:46 fertilizer, helium all have to pass through the straight of Ham >> and Iran have blocked that gap. >> So, they can say you do or do not pass depending on your country's attitude towards our country. And that's quite terrifying because 20 to 30% of our fertilizer comes through at this point. But if this is not available, the globe has a famine. >> Do you think he will send ground troops in? >> Yes, I do. But I'd hate to be one of those troops because it's a suicide mission. They've got underground military units of weapons and troops, but we have no idea of the scale. >> Trump keeps saying that the war has been won. >> Yeah. >> What's going on there in your view? >> I think he's been fed propaganda to tell him that he's winning the war by his immediate advisers because you cannot tell a person like that that they've made a mistake. We'll talk about that as well. But you developed a bit of a reputation because you're very good at predicting things. So, which of these five outcomes do you think is most
1:32 probable to happen? >> Oh god, >> this is super interesting to me. My team given me this report to show me how many of you that watch this show subscribe and some of you have told us according to this that you are unsubscribed from the channel randomly. So, favor to ask all of you, please could you check right now if you've hit the subscribe button if you are a regular viewer of the show and you like what we do here. We're approaching quite a significant landmark on this show in terms of a subscriber number. So, if there was one simple free thing that you could do to help us, my team, everyone here to keep this show free, to keep it improving year over year and week over week, it is just to hit that subscribe button and to double check if you've hit it. Only thing I'll ever ask of you, do we have a deal? If you do it, I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll make sure every single week, every single month, we fight harder and harder and harder and harder to bring you the
2:18 guests and conversations that you want to hear. I've stayed true to that promise since the very beginning of the D ofio and I will not let you down. Please help us. Really appreciate it. Let's get on with the show. >> Professor Steven, who who are you? If you had to sort of distill it down to three areas of specialism, what would those be? history of economic thought, financial instability, so the what causes volatility in the in the economy and the dynamics of money and ironically it makes me a minority in economics because most economists ignore money completely. >> It's a strange thing to you. >> It's ridiculous but it's true. >> We'll talk about that as well today. I really want to focus on what's going on
3:04 in the world right now because there's so many questions. It's it's all quite confusing >> extremely >> and understanding the layers of motivation that you know Trump has, Iran have, Israel have is um it's a difficult jigsaw puzzle to put together. >> I guess the the question that I keep asking myself is like what is going on? >> You can't get away from the fact that we've basically elected a mafia dawn to president of the United States. You've got a guy who admires the mafia who's running the country. So what we're getting in some ways is a shakeddown rather than anything driven by any sense of political necessity. Okay. So that's that's a crazy element to begin with. And the American deep state as it's
3:50 called has been anti-Iran for 40 or 50 years. Israel has wanted to defeat Iran for that length of time. Trump is stupid enough but also cunning enough. It's a combination of the two to take on what Israel wanted to do, which was destroy Iran. They're now trying to do it and they're finding that they've they've bitten off far more than they can chew. >> Trump is someone who cares a lot about people's opinions of him and he must have known that this would be politically unpopular to target around at this moment in time. >> I don't think so. I had a relationship with somebody with narcissistic personality disorder. So that's something over and above what I learned academically that I when I think about his behavior and somebody like that, they want to be the center of attention at all times. They can't stand it when
4:38 somebody else is being spoken about. It's ridiculous, but it's it's a pathology. So he's interested in people's opinions so long as they're positive and they're about him. >> So you are you saying that he attacked Iran and started this war in part because he wanted attention? >> That's always something with somebody who's got that disorder. Yeah. >> I mean, what do you think about his rational? He's saying that he attacked Iran because they had nuclear weapons and they were there was an imminent threat. >> We still don't know whether Iran has nuclear weapons. Okay. We know that Israel has. If you're going to attack a country with you, you should attack Israel, not Iran. >> But you can't attack attack Israel, can you? Cuz >> I cannot make sense of what politicians all over the planet are doing these days. There's a huge gap between what politicians are saying about global politics and what people in the street
5:24 are saying about it. So people on the street have seen the Gaza genocide. They've seen all the conflicts Israel has started there. And I think the general sentiment in most countries in the world today is anti-Israel because of the way it's treating the Palestinians. And that's what people are thinking about. the top echelons like in this country as you know if I if I say free Palestine I say that outside on the street I can be arrested it's crazy what there's a huge divorce between what people are thinking and what the politicians are saying and I can't give any explanation for that divorce apart from believing that Israel has something over our political leaders >> what do you mean you think they have something over our political leaders >> I think there
6:11 We know about the whole Epstein. The the way that the Iranians refer to what's happening is they say they're fighting the Epstein class and there's belief that there's something where Epstein has been working for with the Israeli intelligence service and has blackmailed worthy material on a huge range of politicians. And that's the only way that I can explain the the sort of things that politicians are supporting when their populace is angry about those same policies. So you get demonstrations here, you know, free Palestine demonstrations, 80-year-old female vicers being arrested for saying this sort of stuff. You go back 40 years ago, there was a a a belief in the public and a belief amongst politicians that Israel had a right to exist and it was all pro-Israel. And now after 40 years, the
6:58 type of abuses that have happened in Palestine have hit individual ordinary people's attitudes to Israel. So ordinary people are saying Israel's the aggressor. Israel's making the mistakes. But the politicians are all saying it's a it's it's anti- um Seemitic to criticize Israel. >> If you had to give a a one-s sentence answer as to why this war started because we sort of hypothesized a few things there. What would that one sentence answer be? >> Again, this is trying to make sense of the senseless. I just think Israel wanted to destroy Iran. They thought they could do it and they thought they had an American president who would help them do it and they I drastically underestimated how prepared Iran was for
7:44 that conflict. >> Why would Israel want to destroy Iran? What's the context there? >> This goes back to religious elements. The Zionist state had the right to that whole region and there's an expansionist element to Israel's behavior for the last 40 years. And the major rival they saw themselves as having in that sense was Iran. They can invade Jordan. They could attack Lebanon. Uh they could do all these things. Of course they the 67 war. Uh they wiped out the is Arab invading Arabian armies in six days. They have this past history of being militarily dominant in the area and they they knew that Iran was too big for them to take on on their own. They thought they could get the Americans in there and I think they drastically
8:30 underestimated how prepared Iran was for this situation. >> When you say Iran were prepared for this situation and it somewhat surprised Israel and the US. What is that preparedness you're speaking about? Well, it's for a start the the fact that Iran witnessed that there were um decapitation attacks on other countries in the region going way way back not just the last 10 years but the last 40 or 50 years decapitation >> you take off the leader you kill the leaders and then with the leaders killed the armies in disarray and you can come in and invade and take over. So getting rid of Saddam Hussein that sort of thing you know wipe out Saddam Hussein's power base and then the whole system collapses. That was the Iraq story. But the Iranians observed that and they have broken their military into 31 divisions.
9:17 There are 31 provinces like 31 states in that sense inside Iran. Their military has broken into those 31 units. They've got their own fail safe system running in the background. They've got their own resources, their own missiles, production systems, all that sort of stuff. So you've got to take out the whole 31 and then they'd have that sub area. So the only way you can beat the country is by literally bombing it to back to the stone age >> which is appears to be what they've been trying to do >> trying to do. But the thing is it's a huge country. I mean look at you know the scale of around the map's always distort how large. So that is larger. That's more than half the size of Western Europe. It's got a population of 90 million about 1/3 or one quarter the population of Europe far more than Iraq. >> I mean it looks like it's double the
10:02 size of the UK or more >> or more than double. I mean you know one thing about the MA projection. >> No. What's that? >> Okay. It's that it's it makes the the northern hemisphere is twice as large as the southern and arounds in the northern hemisphere but not as far north as England. So the distortion gets amplified the further north you go. So it's bigger than France and Germany and Italy and Spain >> and possibly Poland in terms of area. And then if you even see just looking on the map itself you can see the corrugations there versus what you can see corrugation >> the what representing mountains. Okay. >> Okay. There's more mountains inside there. It's a hor it's a horrendous terrain to fight a war on. I think what Trump is doing at the moment is a pump and dump scheme. He's trying to drive up the oil price, tell friends beforehand that he's about to make his announcement
10:49 which will cause the price to fall and he's just oscillating this way up and down and exploiting it for his friends and for his own wealth in the process. >> Do you actually think that's the case? Because this must be make sense of this stuff. this must be hurting his friends economically because the this, you know, the stock market's going to take a dip if he's not careful and his friends are all shareholders in different big companies. So, you know, also if you know like the one of Kane's great lines was that there's no point in buying a stock which you think is going to increase in value over time if you think it's going to slump in the immediate future. So, he's making an announcement which causes oil markets to panic. So, the price goes up. We've given him control of the most powerful country on the planet. He knows if you make an announcement, it moves markets. He has
11:35 no compunction whatsoever in exploiting that to cause rises and falls in prices and try to exploit them himself and with his friends. >> I did. I mean, I did see that. I've got the data here on on the floor showing those graphs. I I generally looked at that and thought, yeah, you know, maybe, but it's also conceivable that Trump is quite a predictable character and he tweets at the same time every day. And it's also I think me and you both know that before the markets open on a Monday morning, he's going to want to say something really positive. >> He has a track record of doing that. So is it conceivable that they knew he was flying because it was tracked that he was going to be on this plane journey. There's going to be a press gaggle. We know he's going to give an interview. I actually think that was quite predictable. If I was a betting man, I would have gone Sunday night or Monday morning. I would have put a bet on oil prices coming down, the stock market
12:20 going up. >> Yeah. And like for example that one of the things he said most recently he talked about getting a present from Iran >> and then he finally let slip what the present was and was letting eight ships through the straight of Hmas. >> Oh those eight ships were not American. They were other allies. I think what he's thinking is these um that's going to mean the oil market gets calmed down. That means the price is going to fall. Uh so I can then do another pump and dump. >> Let's explain the straight of hormones. >> Oh god. Yeah. is if we had to explain it for 16 year olds because there's been lots of coverage on it and I think some people have kind of skipped past the importance of the region. What is the straight of hormones and why does it matter? >> Well, it's the choke point in the Persian Gulf to get through. You've got like 21 km. Okay, that's an incredibly
13:06 narrow gap for ships to pass through and that means that all the countries that pump not just oil but fertilizer, uh, helium, all these critical elements for the production system all have to pass through this point. And obviously that's well within reach of any weapons from Iran. So they can say you do or do not pass depending on whether we approve or don't approve of your political your country's attitude towards our country. >> You said fertilizer. >> Yeah. >> Oil and helium. >> Yeah. Helium. >> Where are they coming from? >> They're mainly coming from I think for mainly from the Saudi Arabian side. Saudi Arabia and like Iran will have the same things but Iran would keep it keep those for themselves but Saudi Arabia is the main source of gases and oils which are refined and as byproducts we get
13:52 sulfur dioxide and we get helium. This is the helium. >> Yeah. >> Okay. That's you know a couple of kilos of helium. But helium it's an element which there's no substitute. >> So helium is inert. >> What does that mean? It means it doesn't interact with other chemicals. You want to give it a try? >> I've never done it. >> I don't think there's any in here. >> Oh, what a pity. Okay. What I would have done to give it a try. You got any real helium? >> Oh, bloody hell. Helium balloon. >> Okay. >> Does it change your voice? >> I don't know. Has my voice changed? >> It did. I'll give my voice a try. Okay. >> Um Okay. I've never done this before, but I've heard it at parties. >> Okay. And now I think my voice has
14:39 changed somewhat from the fact you can do it. Oh my god. That is a riot. Okay. >> Where is helium coming from? >> It's coming from a gas field. So about 30% of the world's helium comes from a gas field which spans both Saudi Arabia and Iran. If you don't trap helium physically somehow it goes to outer space. That's the ultimate destination of the stuff. So it's trapped in the same things that trap oil. And then when you drill for oil, you also get helium coming out. And then helium is absolutely critical for the semiconductor industry. It didn't matter 100 years ago. >> And semiconductors are important for what? >> Everything. I mean you you know your you take the semiconductors out of that, you've got a brick. Okay. The the the
15:26 processors, the CPUs, the memory chips, they're all made. Helium is an essential element to make them >> for our iPhones, our tablets, >> everything. Everything electronic. If you need semiconductors, you need helium. So if you cut off 30% of the world's helium supply, you cut off the capacity to produce 30% of the world's semiconductors. >> And Iran have blocked that gap. >> And that means that we've suddenly lost 30% of the world's helium. >> I've got a quote from March 2026 from leading helium expert Phil Cornblutch. >> He said, "We're looking at a minimum 2 to 3 months shutdown of helium production with up to 6 months before supply gets back to normal." and he explained you can't stockpile helium because it leaks through containers. >> Y >> so once supply is cut off semiconductor production will stop entirely. South
16:13 Korea gets 65% of its helium from Qatar in that region and makes 2/3 of the world's memory chips. Their government has launched an emergency investigation into the shortage. Nobody's talking about this. >> I know. And this this is one reason it's quite terrifying about the scale of what we're going through cuz people just thinking it's going to be oil's going to be more expensive. That's the sort of mindset we have. But in fact, critical elements of the production system are being terminated by this conflict. You can't produce chips anymore. And you can't Well, you got hang on. You can't produce these chips either because the fertilizer is disappearing. >> So, you're holding a potato in your hand. >> Yeah. >> How are potato chips going to be impacted by the water? >> Because the fertilizer. If we don't have the fertilizer, we can't grow the potatoes. And it's not just potatoes.
16:58 It's a whole range of crops. We eat food, okay? We eat this green stuff. It actually starts as brown stuff because the fertilizer is an essential part of growing all the food we eat. And the fertilizer is produced by a process called the habber bosch process which takes petroleum and nitrogen and fixes them in such a way that you can put this on the on the field and your plants will grow courtesy of the fertilizer. If we didn't have fertilizer at all, guess how many billion people the planet could actually support? >> I don't know. >> Between one and two. And fertilizer comes from this region. >> Again, 20 to 30% of our fertilizer comes from that region. >> Through the straight of >> through the straight of Hamos. >> Where is it coming from? >> It's coming again from the the same gas field that's producing the helium produces a side effect of fertilizer.
17:46 And you need you need I'm not a chemist, okay? So I can get these things wrong, but you need sulfur. You need sulfuric acid as well as part of these production processes. 20% of the world's fertilizer, helium, sulfuric acid, all pass through that straight. And if you take them away, then you can't make microchips, which is what Korea is suffering from. You can't make fertilizer, which which everybody will suffer from. If we lost 20% of the world's fertilizer, we'd lose roughly 20% of the world's food. And it cause a global famine. We've never had this experience before. We've had localized famines. You know, countries like India have had famines in parts of Africa and so on. But if this is not available, the globe has a famine. >> And what's the last uh tanker you've got down there? There's one more on the floor. >> Oh my god. Okay.
18:32 Hey, that's pretty good. It was accidental, but that's that's petroleum. Okay. A petroleum tank. Obviously empty. 20 L. >> So that's oil. >> That's oil. >> Oil. Okay. And so if that that's what we're losing right now and people are focusing upon the price of this but the really important point and I can bring up one of my own charts here is the role of energy in production because if we don't have energy we can't produce goods and services and the link is incredibly tight. This is looking at change in energy and change in gross world product over the last 40 years. I'll throw this graph on the screen for people that are watching. >> Okay. So, what what you've got here is the annual percentage change in gross world product and the annual percentage change in gross energy consumption. And they're virtually lock step and they're the same magnitude.
19:18 >> So, when energy goes up, GDP goes up. >> And when energy goes down, GDP goes down. Now, we're losing 20% of the world's liquefied natural gas, a substantial proportion of its oil as well. We could see a 5 or 10% fall in energy. we will certainly see a 5 or 10% fall in global world gross world product. >> So explain that to me. So where is the oil in this region? >> It's everywhere. >> Okay. >> I mean this this is one of the accidents of history that the oil is a large part is concentrated here and a large part over here and a bit in Russia. >> So over here for people that can't see you're pointing at Iran, Saudi Arabia, >> Saudi Arabia, >> Iraq and then there's a lot in the United States and there's a lot >> you've got some in Russia as well. There was a small amount like the North Sea had a substantial amount of oil as well
20:04 at one stage. >> And the type of oil in this region I hear is quite important. >> It's very I mean oil there's no such thing as a homogeneous product. >> What does homogeneous mean? >> Me everything is the same everywhere. You can if you don't get it here you can substitute for something over here. That's a myth that economists actually unfortunately believe. They basically could persuade people to think that everything is homogeneous. In fact oil from Venezuela is almost like tar. oil from here is flows like water comparatively. You need different processing systems to to extract that oil than you need over here. Uh if we lose this, we can't replace it with something from over here. So once that goes then the production system of the planet is damaged. Uh this has been the shocking thing for me as a citizen has
20:51 been the fact that a war with one country could decapitate what 20 to 30% >> of global production >> global production of oil. >> Yeah. And food. >> That's a vulnerability if I've ever heard one. >> I know. And this is like one reason I'm a critic of mainstream economics is they trivialize all this stuff. They don't teach their students how critical this is. So most people are like you, even people who've done a PhD in economics, even worse in that sense than other people, they don't understand how critical and how fragile our production systems are. So people can talk about a war in Iraq and think, "Oh, that's a war in Iran and that's going to cut off our oil supply." No, it's going to cut off your food supply. >> And for the average person listening now, what will they start to experience if this war doesn't immediately end? 2
21:36 or 3 months India is going to run out of fertilizer and so there'll be a famine in India. Food production on the planet could fall 10 25%. And therefore the there simply won't be enough food for everyone on the planet and then it's a question of who's going to starve. Now you'd think the wealthy countries are going to be safe there. Look for Australia, my old home country has about 30 days oil supply. When it runs out it can't get food from the farm to the city anymore. So Australia is incredibly vulnerable. We're all far more vulnerable than we realize and this war is threatening everybody on the planet. >> I got in an Uber yesterday and I was with a a wonderful guy who was actually weirdly I sat to the Uber at 2 a.m. and I looked up on the screen and he was listening to the D of Sierra and then he
22:22 clocked he clocked me in the back of the car. We had a great chat and he was saying to me, listen this isn't actually my main job. It's my third job. I do this because of the cost of living and it really stayed with me. >> He's doing three jobs which I love. Yeah. three jobs and he picked me up at 2:00 a.m. He's got a family >> and he's working his butt off to keep the family alive. >> Yes. And you know, I'm going to say something which I probably um I don't say a lot which which came to mind which is um in the position I'm in now. I think it it it was a real reminder of my own personal privilege that I think is really important for someone like me that doesn't has an interview show because you've got to be like intellectually honest with yourself or just like honest with yourself generally that like as a as someone in my position who has been fortunate enough to be able to make significant money. I can
23:07 understand from having that conversation how detached >> you are >> I am >> from the world around you. >> Yes. You're you're a very unique soul because you I know like read a bit of your history of course and you've had that terrible period where you were you know unemployed and what the hell do I do >> shoplifting food and stuff and >> you were ambitious but you okay if you don't experience poverty you don't know what it's like >> yeah but even if you have >> you can forget it >> but you haven't yet >> well this is why it's so important for me to have those conversations because him saying I'm working three jobs and this is and picking me up at 2 a.m. in his Uber and him telling me he's doing that because of cost of living because he needs to pay the bills immediately made me think of ahead of this conversation today like oh my god if the
23:54 prices go up 20% for people >> he's out he's he can't work 24 hours a day >> can't work another he can't work more hours in the day and it was just one of those moments where you go hell Steve like man you need to stay close to the plight of uh of people that are >> on the bread line and so many people are these days in advanced countries not just third world countries but certainly like in America and the UK there are huge numbers of people who are basically living from hand to mouth at the current system. So if we have a breakdown they can't afford it and in that situation you can no longer use money as your way of deciding whether you can eat food or not. >> I wonder if politicians know this cuz part of the reason I say this is because you know Trump is a very wealthy man multi-billionaire reportedly >> and if the prices go up 20% at the pump
24:41 >> he makes profit. I mean he actually when he said he said he said in favor of the rising oil price we'll make a lot of money out of it. His immediate association rising price of something that I'm indirectly selling that's good. He doesn't say what about people buying it. The people who buy it can no longer afford it. >> You've got um some food there on the table which shows how these conflicts and the pressure they put on some of these scarce resources can impact our ability to go and buy food. I think you've got two bowls of potatoes. >> Well, let's actually make it fairer right now. Let's get the actual distribution correct initially. So, you are talking about someone who in your situation, you've got that local Uber's got this, and now you're
25:26 taking away the oil price. That's going to make Trump better off, but he's down to the stage where, you know, he's not too far from that happening. And that's what we've pushed ourselves into with this war. Do do wars typically make inequality worse? >> Very good question. I think wars are created when inequality is bad. If you go back to the Great Depression and see what caused World War II, it was largely the collapse of the German economy. Uh when they repaid their debt, their private debt to America or government private government debt to America that led to the rise of Hitler. Everybody thinks Hitler rose because of the VHimar inflation. That's what people normally think. In fact, the when when Hitler came to power in Germany, the rate of
26:13 inflation was minus 10%. It was deflation. Prices were falling. Unemployment rose from very low to 25% of the population. In that situation, people supported Hitler. He revived the economy. I'm happy to talk about how he did that later. But inequality leads to people being willing to elect demagogues to say we can save you. And then you get war coming out of it. What happened after the World War II is politicians realized that people had been through the Great Depression, which was horrific, and they'd been through World War II, which was horrific. And in that period, people in America were talking about either a fascist world or a communist world. So the Americans realized they had to improve the living standards of the average American
27:00 substantially to get away from that. And if you look at, you know, in 1950s and60s, that's what is called the golden age of capitalism because at that stage, you could be a single male supporting a wife and four kids and have a comfortable lifestyle at the time. That was where we started from. So the the war itself led to a focus upon equality, a focus upon fairness and getting as much as you can to the poorest in society. And then we've forgotten that over the last 80 years. And we've now got back to massive inequality once more. So I think inequality causes wars. Wars in the aftermath make people focus on equality not to allow that horror to happen once more. And then we forget and do the whole damn thing again. >> One of the um surprising things I
27:48 learned the other day was that the country that is estimated to have the biggest reserve of oil is Venezuela. >> Yep. The third country on this list that is estimated to have the biggest reserve of oil is Iran. >> Yeah. Yeah. >> Now, it doesn't take a genius. Funny enough, >> of two countries have added. Yeah. The second country being America. >> Well, it says Saudi Arabia. >> Saudi Arabia. Well, that's already an American vessel. Yeah. >> Yeah. That's already basically they're basically partners with America already. >> And funnily enough, the fourth one is Canada. And if you if you're listening a lot to Trump's rhetoric, he said he was going to take Canada and make it the 51st state or something. it doesn't feel that the countries that the US are invading their leaders are the country
28:33 that have the biggest supplies. And Trump has already said, you know, immediately he said after taking out Maduro in Venezuela, >> pulling him out of his bed with his wife and flying him back to the US, >> he already said that the oil's on the way back to America. >> Yeah. One might assume that much of the motivation here with Iran is when they were in negotiations with them, maybe they weren't playing boy ball with the oil. Maybe they were threatening something with the oil and maybe it's such an economic waste. >> Well, maybe most of Trump's friends, if he has them, are oil executives and they can see the benefit for them in controlling global oil and the one part they can't control is Iran. >> But I mean, it would it's backfired pretty horrifically. I think one of the great sayings in humanity is it's looked like a good idea at the time, then you
29:19 do it and you realize you underestimated your opponent. You have you don't realize how difficult it is. Like you mentioned, you know, talking about how being wealthy can make you dissociate from the problems that ordinary people have. It can also make you dissociate from reality in general. You don't realize how difficult it is to something do something you want to have done. So all these oil executives and people who Trump socializes with could have thought, take out Iran, America dominates the global oil thing. We're all going to be rich. Okay? But they don't realize that Iran's been aware of this possibility for 40 years. And they're prepared. They're far better prepared than the Americans and the Israelis thought. >> So you've got five scenarios laid out on these cards in front of you here that you think could happen next. I'm going to ask you to explain to me what the
30:05 five scenarios are and then tell me which one you think is most likely to occur. >> So, scenario one, which is the one that I think Trump is I think Israel wants this one, Iran has destroyed. Okay, if that happens, we're all gone because to destroy Iran, you're going to have to use nuclear weapons. Okay, you can't destroy it without obliterating it as nuclear weapons do. And that's the scariest. I don't think it's going to happen. My main hope here is that Iran realizes that possibility and they've got a way to neutralize not America's nuclear weapons, but Israel's. >> You think it's a possibility? >> It's a possibility and it's what scares the out of me because if this happens, then we're all dead. Obviously, a nuclear bomb doesn't just blow up an individual target. It everything within
30:52 reach gets exploded into the atmosphere. That's what led people to realize that you couldn't have a nuclear war back in the days when we had mutually assured destruction as the as the policy. If you attack a country, then you will also die. >> But can't they use narrow nuclear weapons? Is that not a thing? >> Well, um >> smaller nuclear weapons. >> Well, again, if the country is smaller, you're talking about destroying Europe. The weapons you'd need to make sure you got every last potential element of Iran neutralized. You're talking about bombing something which is, you know, virtually the size of Western Europe. The amount of weapons you got to drop to do that and you've got to if you if you don't get it right, then they're going to come at you with what they've got left. >> The world has dropped nuclear weapons
31:37 before and people survive. Other neighboring countries survived >> only twice and only small weapons. The weapons we're talking about in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, they're about equivalent to 20,000 tons of TNT. We're now talking weapons to 20 million tons of TNT, the biggest nuclear weapons. And if you wanted to hit a country the size of Iran and know you've neutralized it, so you destroy the whole thing, you're talking hundreds of those weapons. >> If you had to give a percentage probability of that outcome occurring, would it be less than 1%? If we didn't have a madman in Washington, yes, be less than 1%. Um, if we didn't have madman in Israel, less than 1%, I think probably 5%.
32:23 >> 5% probability that >> that's a possibility. I mean, again, you know, this is trying to make sense of the senseless. >> Okay. >> But I'd put it about less than 10% but still scary as a possibility. >> If we end up there, we're all gone. I mean, you know, I know very little about all these things, so that's the disclaimer. Um, I'd say that I don't think Israel would intentionally wipe out the rest of the world or cause a nuclear winter because that would obviously impact them as well. But I I I am quite scared of president's setting. And what I mean by that is if we establish it being okay to drop nuclear weapons on people you don't like, the sort of domino effect of that for people in Ukraine and other parts of the world where there's conflict might then lead
33:09 to, >> you know, mutually assured destruction. >> Yeah. It's the it's the last possibility you want to have happen. The fact that it's even possible to contemplate it is a terrifying prospect. >> Let us hope. >> Yeah. So scenario two is Iran destroys the Gulf power infrastructure. I think that's highly likely. >> Iran destroys Gulf power infrastructure. What does that mean? >> What it means is that Iran all the Gulf states have got their own power systems mainly based on burning oil for obvious reasons. Uh if you take out their power structure systems then those countries become uninhabitable. >> Is that what's happening already? Cuz I know Iran have attacked a few sort of power facilities in the region. There have been a couple of well there was one attack on a Saudi Arabian power systems and that took out two of the 14 units
33:55 that are critical for creating liqufied natural gas and apparently it'll take 5 years to rebuild them and there are only five companies on the planet that can actually do that rebuilding. One quarter of the world's liquid natural gas comes through the straight of Hamos. One tenth of that has been destroyed. It's like 2 and a half% of the world's energy supply is gone for the next 5 years until those are rebuilt. If Iran destroys the Gulf power infrastructure, then Saudi Arabia, Qatar, uh Dubai, they all become uninhabitable. >> And we're seeing that happen in parts. I mean, it sounds like this these attacks have slowed down a little bit, but it was interesting that Iran's strategy was to attack their neighboring sort of partners and specifically targeting a lot of their energy infrastructure. Is that in part to apply pressure?
34:41 >> Yeah. If I attack Dubai, the leaders of Dubai are going to call Trump and say, "Listen, cut this out." >> Oh, yeah. I mean, the pressure coming back from the Arabian states on America, I imagine, is quite immense right now, saying, "Don't do it." It's quite possible Israel could do it, like attack Iran and then Iran does a retribution attack. Trump, if you would have seen his tweet this morning, I think he's put it off to April the 6th before he says he starts attacking power infrastructure. if he attacks power infrastructure in Iran. Iran has said we will attack power infrastructure in the Gulf States. So we've got till you know what 8 days. I think he's bluffing. I hope he's bluffing. But if he does do the attack then Iran will respond by destroying either an equivalent component of the Gulf States or the whole infrastructure.
35:27 >> I don't think people quite realize how costly it is for regions like Dubai when Iran attack them. I was looking at some of the data. >> Yeah. >> And according to current estimates and historical risk assessments by Dubai officials, >> they lose a million per minute, which is 60 million per hour or 1.4 billion a day when there's an unplanned emergency shutdown just of their airport. >> Their airports, let alone their power systems. Yeah. >> As we probably saw on the news, Iran had flown it seemed like a couple of drones into Dubai's airport, which meant that it had to shut down. Yeah, >> they're losing a billion a day because that airport is closed. I think it's the biggest airport in the world. >> It is economic pressure
36:13 which will then trickle down to Trump and sort of force his hand. So, they've got a clear incentive to cause chaos. >> Yeah. >> And that partly what Iran is saying. It's it's like a game of bluff. You don't want to do this bluff. If that bluff happens then the Saudi Arabian peninsula becomes uninhabitable and therefore all the I mean that if if people have are forced out of there and most of the residents in those countries are not Saudis. They're third world workers from India and Pakistan and the Philippines and so on. They're being paid lousy wages to to work on all these systems. If they leave because the power is not there to support them anymore. they try to leave then we lose the entire energy contribution that that region makes to the global economy >> and and the figure screwed
36:58 >> and that figure I cited includes not just lost airport revenue but then the immediate impact on airlines cargo logistics and the missed opportunity cost of thousands of highv value business travelers attending the region that Dubai's GDP is roughly 30% dependent on the aviation and tourism sectors so when the airport closes it impacts tourism hospitality real estate investing global supply chains and everything so it's Um, it's quite remarkable specifically with Dubai >> because Dubai I think Dubai is a lovely place. I've been multiple times. I I I I love going there. >> But it felt really safe and so a lot of people >> It's not safe. Yeah. >> It's not safe. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. A lot of people had chosen to uproot their lives and move there and you'd almost kind of forgotten you were in the Middle East to some degree. >> Yeah. Yeah. >> But I think this is going to be a pretty traumatic reminder for a lot of people there
37:44 >> how fragile >> this area is and like that's the lesson we're learning. It's the fragility of the society we take for granted. >> So that was scenario number two. >> Okay. Scenario three. That's the one that really scares me because that is the Samson doctrine. You know the story of Samson. Yeah. Okay. Samson is a enormously strong individual who's strong because of his hair. And then he gets conned. This is an ancient story from the Bible. And the woman who's conned him shaves his hair. So he's weakened. And then they put him in a temple where he's standing between two pillars and his hair is gone. He's bald. He can't do a thing. They forget the fact that his hair is starting to grow. His hair gets to the stage where he's now got his strength back. He pushes
38:29 those pillars and the whole thing collapses and everybody dies. That's the Samson doctrine. And that involves Israel's nuclear weapons. If they realize that they are going to lose this war and it becomes existential for them then one of the things they have claimed that they do is unleash destruction on the rest of the world like Samson pushing the towers and the whole thing comes collapsing down. >> This is I mean going back to the situation with Iran and Israel. One of the things I was thinking a lot about from some commentary that I'd seen is Israel really have a motive to get rid of Iran because Iran have repeatedly threatened Israel. It's also because I mean Israel is trying to get rid of the Palestinians and in that sense Iran has been probably the major bulkwood
39:15 supporting the Palestinians say let the Palestinians survive. Let the Palestinian people continue existing. And the Israelis have been pushing and pushing and pushing the Palestinians out. You know, it's a hornets's nest. We've provoked a hornets's nest. Iran is responding right now, I think, in a very judicious way. But if the Israelis realize they're facing an existential defeat, that scenario, it would again mean uh civilization potentially gets destroyed. And just looking at some of the things that Iran have said about Israel, historically, the Supreme Leader of Iran stated in 2015 that Israel would not see the next 25 years. Other officials said things like, "The end is near." Um, >> and in March 2026, Iran's tone shifted
40:02 from ideological to purely retaliatory with the speaker of the Iranian Parliament, Muhammad, stating that Iran has officially declared that it considers all Israel energy, water, and IT infrastructure legitimate targets for irreversible destruction with zero restraint. If we think about this from a psychology perspective, you've got two neighbors. They're both either implying implicitly or explicitly that they want to wipe the other one out. >> Yeah. >> Trump is sort of this third party in in the arrangement who's not in the region, so he might be a little bit safer. >> Those two parties that are against each other, one of them has nuclear weapons and the other appears to be trying to make one. the neighbor that is Israel presumably cannot let that happen
40:48 because if it gets to a point where they both have nuclear weapons and they both want to wipe each other out. >> No, I I actually think that the old days of mutually assured destruction were a more stable time than what we're in now because if you realize that if you attack you also die, you don't attack. >> But what if you think of death as being a better thing than life? You you have to have a society continuing after you die. If you're going to be a martyr, there has to be people who are going to mourn your death. If you believe being a martyr means everybody else so so dies and you don't do it. >> So, do you think if Iran had nuclear weapons, it would be a safer world? >> I think it'd be safer because it would tell the Israelis, stop attacking your neighbors. >> I sat with um a few nuclear experts and one of the things that was shocking that
41:33 I learned is >> if the United States wanted to launch a nuclear weapon today, >> Yeah. It is one person's decision. >> I heard that. And that's what Trump can actually just make that decision. >> He can make the decision on his own. He doesn't need to consult Congress or anybody else. He has someone who walks around with a briefcase that has the nuclear codes in at any moment. They call it Yeah. And when I think about the same in this region, actually, you don't need a whole state to decide that they don't like their neighbor. All you need is one supreme leader >> or Netanyahu to say, "Do you know what? I'm near the end of my life and these people have really pissed me off." Yeah, that's right. And that's I mean I thought there was at least some control. I saw I saw that segment with Annie Jacobson. Yeah. >> I thought there was at least some control. He had to consult someone. >> But if and or they had to have
42:19 circumstances were justified not consulting someone. >> If he's got that right, then we it comes down to what's the behavior of the person who carries the nuclear football. Does he let Trump get hold of it? And like there there was another incident way way back I think in this 70s or 80s that the Russian early warning system reported that there was a nuclear attack on the way to Russia and there was one submarine commander or one element of a submarine command system and they had to have three people in the submarine who agreed to to launch an attack and this particular person refused. If he'd agreed with the other nuclear war at it,
43:04 even the Russian submarine had three people who had to make that decision. So, we didn't have a nuclear war. Now, we've got one maniac in this White House who could do it. I'll play Annie Jacobson's clip now where she talks about the idea of sole authority which I think is an important thing for people to understand because when we think about who we're electing to lead our nuclear capable countries >> you have to think about who you want to give sole authority to >> the United States president has sole presidential authority to launch a nuclear war >> what does that mean >> it's exactly like it sounds what's so interesting is a lot of this stuff this nomenclature that gets thrown at If you just break it down, it's sole solo presidential. He's the pus
43:50 authority. He doesn't have to ask anyone for permission. Not the SEC staff, not the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, not the Congress. I love the worried look on your face in this moment because it is once you know that you say well first you might Google is it really true and you will get for example on Reddit like that's not really true you'll get like hundreds of thousands of people you know coming in with their opinions about how that's not really true well it is really true it's absolutely true and in fact during the former President Trump administration Congress became so sort of I want to say motivated or alarmed by this issue meaning they were being asked questions
44:36 by the powers that be. Is this actually true that they released a report stating specifically and I quote in the book yes it is true as commanderin-chief the president has this sole authority. He doesn't need to ask anyone. >> So what is scenario four in your envelopes there? Iran disables Israel's nukes. Nobody can know. But I do believe that Iran has not developed nuclear weapons. >> So you're hoping Iran disables Israel's nuclear weapons? >> I am. I hope that happens because that takes out the nuclear option. Okay. We won't see nuclear war as a result of this. If the only nuclear weapons that we know exist in the Middle East are destroyed. >> But if Iran starts disabling Israel's nukes and attacking Israel that effectively, there's going to be an even
45:23 bigger problem. Well, not not if we're talking conventional weapons. If it's conventional weapons and ground trips, then you don't end up with nuclear winter and the death of everybody on the planet. >> Wait, so you're saying you hope Iran invades Israel and takes out their nuclear weapons? >> No, that's necessarily invasion. It could be the missiles they've got left. Again, we don't know how capable their missiles are. The level of planning that Iran has done in this war, I I had no idea of of the fact they had those 31 regions, for example, until the war began. My special is economics, not global military politics. But once I learned that, I thought they have really thought this through. They have wargamed what happens if they get attacked by America. And they've warmed it comprehensively. Now, I hope they've also wargamed if we start defeating
46:10 Israel and Israel realizes they're going to be wiped out, then the possibility for the Samson doctrine comes in. We have to disable that before it happens. How could they possib They They don't have a functioning military left in any sort of typical sense. They don't have ships left. They don't have planes left. >> They don't have ships. They don't have planes. But they have got missiles. And we don't know how many missiles they've got. We don't know where the missiles are. Certainly the Americans would have some intelligence. I think the word's got to be used with inverted commas these days, but some intelligence over where they are located in Iran. But if you listen to the Iranians talking about it, they say they've got hundreds of these facilities buried hundreds of meters below the ground. If the with the weapons they've developed, the the um advanced rocketry they've developed,
46:56 they can evade RIL's Iron Dome, maybe they can also get into and destroy Israel's launch capabilities. And if that happens, I think that's that would be the best possible outcome because we have a a rogue state in the Middle East which has nuclear weapons which will neither admit that it has or won't sign it. They're not part of the nuclear nonpol proliferation treaty. They won't sign that treaty. We should never have allowed that to happen. And if Iran gets rid of them, I think it's the world's a safer place. >> Israel are just going to make more nuclear weapons. >> They have the resources. Uh, you need a hell of a lot of technology and a hell of a lot of intelligent people to do that. You've already lost the war to >> How could Israel lose the war? >> You've got 90 a population of 90 million
47:41 in Iran and a population of less than 10 million in Israel. >> But they've got it's a sort of technological gulf. >> It's not as big as we thought it was. We're only realizing now the level of technology that Iran has. I mean the things which Iran are doing in this war so far have surprised everybody who's hasn't got the background of intelligence to tell them what's going on uh it's an educated sophisticated culture far more so than the caricature we've got from the west has been about it in the past so they >> they don't have near nearly the same level of resources and technology and uh and I would say maybe sort of sophisticated yeah advanced systems from a war perspective that Israel do.
48:27 >> We think we don't know. We're assuming >> even the intelligence services, even their like their planes and their missiles and their defense systems are like profoundly more advanced than Iran's. >> If that was the case, we wouldn't be having this conversation. It's 3 weeks after the war began or 4 weeks. You know, the original belief that Trump has to be over in one day. That's proved false. >> I think that's in part because of what you said because they've prepared for decapitation. If I was the supreme leader of Iran, yeah, that's the sort of approach I would have taken, which is you take me out and actually you've got a bigger problem because now you've got to negotiate with 41 or 31 different sort of submillitaries and that's an impossible task. >> Yeah. Yeah. And that's the Iranians were aware of that and they've got a, you know, a huge army. They've got they can
49:13 conscript far more people than Israel has. Um it's to me if it gets down to an conventional military then it's possible that you know Israel could lose that as well. >> On March 21 Trump threatened to obliterate Iran's power plants if they did not fully reopen the straight of Hormos within 48 hours. >> He then came out and said that he was pausing that because Iran were negotiating >> um and he says he he thinks he's negotiating with the right person. As of yesterday, Trump has announced a 10day pause until April 6th on destroying energy plants, claiming that indirect talks are going very well and that Iran is begging to make a deal according to the Guardian. So, what's going on there in your view?
49:58 >> I think he's gaming the markets. I really think he's using it to cause the OMI price to go up and down and gaming at either side. and somebody in his circle or people are making a fortune playing that's the case. >> Yeah, I do. I mean >> because there's lots of ways to make money that don't involve crashing the global economy, losing the midterms. >> Yeah, you'd think of that. You've got you've got ethics, you've got empathy, you've got morals. Trump has none of those things. >> Do you not think it's just it's just again if we look at Trump's pattern of behavior over time, even with the tariffs? >> Yeah. The same pattern of behavior occurred there where he would come out and say, "Every leader is calling me. They can't stop calling me. They all want to make a deal. I'm going to do a tariff on you 10%. Wait, no, I'm not. Pause. Call me." >> Yeah. >> It's the same pattern of behavior. It's
50:44 you you make a threat system. Yeah. >> You then >> blackmail the person to try and negotiate with you. when they don't, you hit them with the thing hard and eventually in the end of the day, you don't really do any of the stuff you threaten to do >> because you've sort of >> manipulated a person into getting your way. It's the same pattern of behavior. We're going to smash you if you don't call me. >> Yeah, >> they do or don't call. He announces to the world that they called. They're begging. Look, it says here, "They're begging me for a deal. I'm going to give them 10 more days." >> To me, it sounds like he's trying to build his golden bridge to get the out of there. What he's imagining is he's dealing with somebody like himself in Iran. Okay? He's he's projecting what how he would react to these things. He's obviously projecting his own behavior onto the system. And it's projection
51:30 rather than understanding. So if you decapitate, you know, if you took out Trump, the fear of being, you know, assassinated, yes, well bargain, what do you want me to do? He thinks that works in Iran. It doesn't. >> You can look at his behavior and sort of understand what he wants. He wants to win this war and he he want you know he wants to win the war and that's and get out of there because that's what he's been saying. We've won. We won. We've won every day. We've won. More missiles go in. We've won. So that's clearly what he wants to happen. The problem is winning here doesn't seem like a straightforward thing. >> No, it's not going to happen. >> No pun intended with a straight up. But it really doesn't seem like a straightforward thing. >> So I it's my opinion now that they are a little bit stuck because if you leave now you lose. >> Yeah. >> Iran start firing at Israel. Israel don't stop even though you tell them to. Yeah, >> they start firing at each other. The whole thing blows up. Oil, they keep the
52:17 straight of Horos closed. Oil prices go up. It looks terrible, terrible, terrible for Trump. We might get he might find himself in a Bush situation where his legacy, and I think that's such an important word, a man that can't be elected for a third term. His legacy is tarnished in the same way that Bush's legacy was tarnished by going to war in the Middle East. M >> I think his greatest fear, Trump's greatest fear, you think back through all of these moments over the last couple years where he talked about the Nobel Prize, >> I think he's trying to put himself on the Mount Rushmore of presidents. >> Yeah. >> In history's mind. >> And I think how this situation plays out now, the sole thing he's thinking about is his legacy. And right now, being stuck in a war and contemplating putting ground troops in is arguably the worst thing for one's legacy. Americans dead.
53:03 >> Yeah. And lots of Americans dead. These wars are like you think about Vietnam. These wars are never really won. >> No. Well, they did. America hasn't won a war since World War II and even World War II was won by the Russians more so than the Americans. So, we have this picture of America as being this, you know, invincible military power. But it lost in Vietnam. It lost in Iraq. It lost in Afghanistan. America's failed in all of these. This is another American failure, but on a scale far beyond what happened in Afghanistan and Vietnam. >> Do you think he will send ground troops in? Yes, I do. Uh, and like I've seen people talking about where the troops might land. And the only part of they can land is is right towards this edge here with Pakistan, where they might land to between 2 and 10,000 troops. I'd hate to be one of those troops because it's a suicide mission. again with those
53:49 31 provinces, the separated um military commands they've got, the weapons they've got hidden underground, the troops themselves who if if you know that there are Americans landing and you're Iranian and a soldier, you are going to attack them like nobody's business and not be afraid of your own death because you do think if you get martyed, it's the remaining people that you're defending. There will be people who recognize you as a martyr. It's it's horrific. If you had to give a sort of percentage probability of them putting ground troops in, >> I would say more than 50%. We're going to find out in the next couple of weeks. >> Much of the reason most people haven't posted content or built their personal brand is because it's hard and it's timeconuming and we're all very very busy and if you've never posted something before, there's so many
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56:08 it knows who Jack is in my life. This is saving me a huge amount of time. This company is growing like absolute crazy. And this is why I invested in the business and why they're now a sponsor of this show. And Whisflow is frankly becoming the worstkept secret in business productivity and entrepreneurship. Check it out now at Whisper Flow spelled w lw.ai/stephven. It will be a game changer for you. >> What is the best case scenario? The Americans have to realize they've lost. They've not going to negotiate the terms of reparation. And what Iran has proposed, when you look at Iran's terms, they're extremely reasonable. They're saying America leaves the whole Asian. America no longer comes back in this region. No military bases, no agreements. This becomes Iranian protectorate. That
56:54 becomes an Arabian Empire or not Arabian Iranian Empire because they're not they're not Arabs. They're Persians. Uh so this becomes like a Muslim part of the world that's you can actually take the whole region out to here it's all Muslim and what's been happening and this is part of the weird religious elements here you've got the Sunni sect and the Shiite sect which is a bit like the Protestants versus the Catholics go back 500 years and what we're seeing
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