0:01 President Trump has threatened to destroy any attack ships that the Iranian Navy may try and roll out in in defense of his blockade, which went into effect at 10:00 a.m. this morning. Uh, and we're going to see where this takes us here because the intent for for the White House is certainly to block off everything that's coming in or out of the Persian Gulf with the intent of harming the Iranian side, thinking that that's going to compel them to do what they couldn't get through negotiations over the weekend, which itself was to try compel what we couldn't get through six weeks of war before that. And I don't know that it's going to be any effective on the other side. Well, actually, I do. It's not. Uh, but that's that's not going to stop President Trump from trying something anyway. And to try and help us figure out where all this is going and what are the ramifications of
0:47 trying to do something that is very unlikely to work, we have back with us today John Mirsh, international relations theorist, professor of political science at the University of Chicago and big-time friend of our show. Uh, John, welcome back and glad to have you here today. >> And I'm glad to be here, Danny. >> Well, listen, let's just jump right into it. Let's let's actually start. We're at the kind of the hottest news right now which is the uh the aftermath of this Istanbul I'm sorry Islamabad negotiations that just happened. Uh sorry get that juxtaposed with this the other failed negotiations from 2022 that also started with how they should have worked. Uh but nevertheless here we are. So President JD Vance uh went down there the highest ranking delegation we've had since I think 1972 negotiations. Um, one would have I don't know why anybody
1:34 would have thought this, but normally if you're going to enter into negotiations, you're starting a process that you're trying to end a war. No one normally expects it to be over in 21 hours, but they kind of seem to did kind of set the stage here, Gary, if you can play that uh the one that the from the JD Vance. Uh, it's called Vance 2. Here's kind of where he laid out where things are are now. We just could not get to a situation where the Iranians were willing to accept our terms. I I think that we were quite flexible. We were quite accommodating. The president told us you need to come here in good faith and make your best effort to get a deal. We did that and unfortunately we weren't able to make um make any headway. Preston, >> Mr. Vice President, how often did you communicate with President Trump
2:19 throughout the negotiations? There were reports that there were multiple rounds uh where there were breaks in between negotiations. How often did you communicate with the president throughout those rounds and what was he saying as you were going through these negotiations that you said fell short? >> Yeah, obviously we were we were talking to the president consistently. Um I don't know how many times we talked to him, a half dozen times, a dozen times over the past 21 hours. We obviously also talked to Admiral Cooper, to Pete, to Marco, to the entire national security team. We talked to Scott Basson a number of times. So look, we we were constantly in communication with the team because we were negotiating in good faith and uh we leave here and we leave here with a very simple proposal, a method of understanding that is our final and best offer. We'll see if the Iranians accept it.
3:05 >> So he says it's very simple. Do what we tell you and everything will be fine. And if not, we're going to have a naval blockade and probably going to come back with more bombs. What do you say? >> Yeah, I mean this is what happened. Uh it looked uh before the negotiations like the Americans would be much more flexible. Uh it looked given the fact that the United States is actually losing this war uh that we would make some significant concessions uh to the Iranians to to to shut it down. Uh but if you look at what happened uh we made maximalist demands. You want to remember that there were two plans on the table. One was the 15-point plan, which was the American plan that
3:51 had all the maximalist demands in it. And then there was the 10-point plan, which was the Iranian plan, which had their maximalist demands in it. And when President Trump said that he was not going to obliterate Iran uh and that there was going to be a ceasefire, he said that we were going to negotiate on the basis of the 10point plan. That's the Iranian plan. That's what he said earlier in the week. And uh it appeared that that meant that President Trump was willing to make some concessions, some major concessions to the Iranians uh and the negotiations would take place on that basis. But if you look at what actually happened, uh what JD Vance did
4:37 was he presented the Iranians with our maximalist demands, basically the 15-point plan. Uh and he said, "You have no choice but to take it. we're in the driver's seat and uh you have to surrender. But there was a fundamental mistake in his thinking about this. We're not in the driver's seat. They're in the driver's seat. And the reason we had uh these meetings uh in Islamabad was because the Americans wanted them, not because the Iranians wanted them. And why did the Americans want them? Because we are in deep trouble. We recognize we're losing the war. and we recognize that the consequences for the international economy are potentially disastrous. So, we wanted to find an
5:24 off-ramp and President Trump appeared to be wise uh in the beginning when he said, "Let's negotiate on the basis of the 10-point plan." He said it would be a sound basis for moving forward. However, over the course of the week before the negotiation started, we apparently uh shifted gears and went to the 15point plan. And this, of course, was driven in large part by the Israelis. Uh it's interesting, but JD Vance mentioned that he talked to the national security team, including President Trump during the negotiations. He failed to tell uh the public that he also talked to Benjamin Netanyahu. You want to think about this? Benjamin Netanyahu is talking to JD Vance uh while he's negotiating. Vance that is on
6:11 uh on part for the United States. Uh it's hardly surprising what happened here. >> And and in fact I we we have a a clip there of not Vance but but Netanyahu himself saying about this. But notice at the first part of this clip, it's not just JD Vance he's talking to. See if you can find the other one. I spoke yesterday with Vice President JD Vance. He called me from his plane on the way back from Washington. He reported to me in detail as the people of this administration do every day on the development of the negotiations. In this case, the explosion in the negotiations. The explosion came from the American side which was not willing to tolerate the blatant violation of the agreement to enter negotiations by Iran. Essentially, the agreement was that there would be a ceasefire and Iran
6:56 would immediately open the crossings. They didn't do that. the Americans were not willing to accept it. >> He he said in there, not just JD Vance, but he said President Trump's national security team on a daily basis. I mean, that that seems really concerning to me. What do you think? >> Of course, it's concerning. It's also concerning that standing behind JD Vance were two Israeli assets, Jared Kushner, uh, and Steve Whit. These are passionate Zionists and they're there in part to monitor JD Vance. And JD Vance because he wants to run for president in 2028 understands full well that he better dance to the lobby's tune. Uh which is another way of saying he better dance to
7:42 Israel's tune or he'll never be a viable candidate. And of course the same logic applies to Marco Rubio. So, it's hardly surprising that when Vance went into the room to negotiate with the Iranians, he basically laid out the maximalist demands uh that Israel is in favor of. But I just want to say a word about the ceasefire. uh when the deal was worked out, when Pakistan negotiated the deal for a ceasefire uh between the United States uh on one side and the Iranians on the other side, it was agreed that as part of that ceasefire uh the Israelis would stop firing at Hezbollah and more generally at Lebanon where of course Hezbollah is located. When the Israelis
8:28 were told that that was part of the ceasefire arrangement, they refused to accept it and they fully understood that by slamming uh Hezbollah while the ceasefire uh was supposed to be in place, they would go to great lengths to undermine it and undermine the future negotiations. The Iranians of course were irate uh by the fact that President Trump went back on the agreement uh and they said that they would not open the straight as they had agreed to until Israel uh stopped bombing Hezbollah. But of course, Israel not only had no interest in bombing stopping the bombing of Hezbollah, but it went to even greater lengths to bomb civilian areas uh in Beirut and kill
9:16 more civilians than ever. Uh therefore, you know, working to undermine uh any meaningful ceasefire. And then of course you had the meetings uh Vance presented the maximalist demands with the Israeli support uh completely and uh here we are. >> So let me ask you something here. Let's just take a little bit of a of a detour off here and let's look at this Israeli situation because on the one hand you can say okay well that's kind of their interest. They want to keep going. So they want to sabotage any attempts to peace so that they can I don't know so that they can what? Because I mean anyone, even someone who's an ardent supporter of the Israeli side can see that after 6 weeks of non-stop bombing that we did not destroy Iran. We did not
10:01 destroy their ability to survive, to sustain, to continue to fire weapons into Israel and to our allies in the region as well as the United States. And we're running low of everything to include JASMs, to include the um uh the the Tomahawk cruise missiles, and of course multiple categories of interceptor missiles. both us and Israel, we cannot get into a sustained war here because we can't manufacture enough to replace or defend against what the Israelis do. So, it's not in anyone's interest, even the Israelis, to keep going this. And yet, by all accounts, they're doing everything they can in Lebanon, to make sure that the war continues to go on and everything they can to undermine President Trump to bring this one to an end. What is the Israeli objective here? What are they trying to get done?
10:47 I'm not sure they fully understand what the objective is at this point. Uh I'm I mean first of all we want to understand that for uh for Prime Minister Netanyahu uh Iran is his Moby Dick. He he's obsessed with defeating Iran and making sure it has no nuclear enrichment capability. And in fact what he'd like to do is he'd like to wreck Ukraine. he'd like to do to Ukraine what's been done to Syria. There's no question about that. But the problem is he's failed. Uh you know there was a comment by Ya Laid who is the principal opposition leader uh in Israel who said there has never been such a political disaster in all of
11:36 our history. Just think about that. He is saying there has never been such a political disaster in all of our history. Uh, and Netanyahu surely understands that this is where he's at. And what he's doing, much like President Trump, is he's flailing. He's he's trying to figure out how he can rescue the situation. And I think that in the Israeli mind, uh, certainly in Minister Netanyahu's mind, the only way you can do that is you can destroy UK, uh, you can destroy Iran as a functioning society. Uh and you want to remember that President Trump was threatening that uh a week ago today uh last Monday morning. He was threatening to destroy
12:21 uh Iran uh Iranian civilization uh drive it back to the stone age. I I think this is what the Israelis at this point in time would like to see happen. This is why a lot of people are very nervous about the possibility that the Israelis will turn to nuclear weapons. Uh because that's really the only way they can uh destroy Iranian civilization. I don't think President Trump is going to turn to nuclear weapons, but the Israelis might try to do that. But you want to understand what a dangerous situation we're in because the Israelis view Iran uh as an existential threat and they understand that we have been unable to defeat Iran and given even this blockade we're not going to defeat Iran. They surely understand that the Iranians are
13:08 not going to throw up their hands because of this blockade. So the question is what are the Israelis going to do? especially because they I'm sure recognize that Iran has been incentivized to acquire nuclear weapons and that of course is the ultimate nightmare for the Israelis. So the Israelis have really gotten themselves into a giant mess. And when those sorts of things happen, states pursue remarkably risky strategies uh in almost all cases. And again, this is what brings us back to the danger that when all said and done, the Israelis may think about using nuclear weapons. >> So let me just just ask you just categorically, has the United States already strategically lost or are we
13:54 just losing? Well, the war is still in progress. So, we are losing. The question you have to ask yourself is, can we reverse the tide and win? And that means achieving our political goals, and we had four political goals going into the war, none of which we've achieved. One was regime change. Two was putting an end to their long range ballistic missiles that threaten Israel. Three was ending once and for all their nuclear enrichment capability. And number four was getting Iran to stop supporting Houthi, the Houthis, Hamas, and Hezbollah. We failed on all four counts. Furthermore, the Iranians now control the straight of Hormuz, which they didn't control before
14:40 the war started. So actually, they're better off now than they were on February 27th, the day before the war started. So, it's obvious who is winning this war. Now, you say, "Can we turn it around?" I would simply say to you, Danny, I want you to tell me the story about how we turn it around. I've asked lots of smart people how they think we might be able to turn around, turn this war around, and rescue the situation. And I have yet to meet one person who can come up with a plausible scenario for how we ultimately win this war. So that leads me to conclude that we will in the end fail. >> Well, you you say this if you find one
15:26 you've yet to find one person who can plausibly lay out a path to win. Uh that doesn't mean that there are those who can implausibly lay this out and are uh because there's a lot of people who don't seem to agree with this. I'm going to show you a few here and just kind of I want you to give me your assessment of of what this means because what it's going to mean for policy was and and I think all the people I'm about to show you here, every one of them say that have or said recently that they can pick up the phone and talk to President Trump. So, he's listening to these people. These are not just pundits. This is not just somebody giving an opinion like I'm doing here for example. This is somebody that President Trump will pick up the phone if they call. And the first one is going to be his golfing buddy Lindsey Graham. and uh just
16:12 we we felt an obligation to do that. Um so here's this is what he's he has tweeted out. This is yesterday. He said, "Let it be said that President Trump and his team went the extra mile to find a peaceful solution regarding Iran's uh the largest sponsor of state terrorism, nuclear ambitions and beyond." He has to throw that pajorative in there. There is no such thing as a moderate lay layer to their regime. Uh they are intent on acquiring a nuclear weapon over time and I believe they will use one if they have it. President Trump's decision to blockade the strait and regain control of international waterways is the right move. It is time to finish the job when it comes to Iran's nuclear ambitions. Now the only way that you can quote finish the job is military means. You're not going to negotiate that away. I mean, if that there was any possibility
16:58 of that, it would have we'd have seen the outlines of it yesterday or in Islamabad, but we didn't see that. So, what do you make of the claim here that it's time to finish the job on someone that President Trump does listen to? >> Well, I make two points, Danny. First of all, he says that the Iranians are intent on inquiring nuclear weapons. This is simply not true. There's no evidence of that. They signed the JCPOA. They did not work walk away from the JCPOA. And all the evidence is that that in the negotiations before the war started in February 28th, they were willing to put a significant cap on their nuclear enrichment capability and there was zero evidence that they were interested in pursuing nuclear weapons. Uh so that's
17:45 simply not true. Uh and when he talks about finishing the job, you know, this is empty rhetoric. You and I have, you know, been in the national security business. We've been in the military. We know that empty phrases like that don't mean anything. If you're going to finish the job, please explain to us how you're going to finish the job. Tell us exactly what the objectives are and tell us what the tactics and the strategy especially are for achieving those goals. And nobody ever does that. They just make these, you know, fil statements about let's go in there and finish the job. What does that mean? Uh, and the reason they make fil statements and they don't tell you how to finish the job is because there's no way to finish the job. I guess you could finish the job by taking, you know, 15 nuclear weapons and
18:30 blowing Iran to smitherreens, but that's not a viable option. And I believe, by the way, the American military would not execute that order if it was given. Uh, the Israelis might do it. That's a different matter. But that that's the only way you can finish the job. Uh and short of that uh we lose. >> Yeah. And uh as as we've shown on some recent video released uh by uh the Iranian side as well as an analysis done by a third party, even nuclear weapons would not be able to take out some of these missile cities that are under the ground. So you can certainly kill a lot of people on the surface. No question about that. But in terms of militarily defeating Iran, even that I don't think would actually work. Now, it's one thing if you have a Senator Lindsey Graham who uh I think he used to be a colonel in
19:18 the uh the US Army uh reserve, I think it was as a as a lawyer, so he didn't exactly have a lot of military experience. So maybe you can say, well, his his enthusiasm is is understandable because he doesn't really understand all the things that you just did. But you can't say that about a retired four-star general, Jack Keane, who said this with Mark Levin yesterday. Galabuff and the guy that's running the IRGC, Ahmad Vahiti. They are from the same stripe. They are hardcore theoretic tyrannical brutal regimeists. And this guy Gallabove, you know whose best friend in life was growing up? Kasam Solommani. And they join the IRGC together. and they've been
20:04 helping each other throughout their careers until such time as Kasam Solommani was taken down by the Trump administration. We shouldn't be that surprised they're not taking a deal because they're hardliners and they expect us to fold our hand and we're not folding. And the good news is, I respect all the negotiators there, but our backs stop, who I'm confident they were talking to, is President Trump, and he's not going to take a bad deal here from these guys. >> See, he's okay. A couple things here. First of all, let's just look at the at the second part first because he's assuming that President Trump is quote not going to take a bad deal. that implies that there's a good deal that he could take or an alternative that will
20:49 accomplish the objectives that you just mentioned haven't been accomplished and he's a force general so he should say here's what he can do he didn't say that and I don't see one what does that tell you when he's somebody like this who's got the reputation straight out of central casting as Trump loves to say about these kind of guys because he certainly fits that bold but if if Trump believes him what does that tell you about what he may do policy-wise I don't know what General Keane can recommend to President Trump that will rescue the situation. I would imagine he was enthusiastic about the blockade. But as you and I both know, the blockade is not going to work. The blockade option that President Trump is now implementing
21:36 has been floating around for a long time. It's not like all of a sudden this magic formula appeared. President Trump saw it. he took advantage of it and now we're going to bring the Iranians to their knees. This option has been around for a long time. And the question is, why haven't we employed it earlier? And the answer is quite simple. It's a terrible option. Not only is it not going to get the Iranians to throw up their hands, furthermore, we're effectively shooting ourselves in the foot. Because you want to understand that the reason that we have allowed all of this Iranian oil to come through the straight and flow into the world oil market is we need to have all the oil we can possibly get put in the global
22:23 market. We need Iranian oil. That's why we lifted sanctions that allowed Iranian oil to come through the straight. We need Russian oil. That's why we lifted sanctions on Russian oil and are allowing Russian oil to flow into the global market. So if we cut off Iranian oil, uh there's no question that the Iranians will pay a certain price, but we will pay a huge price as well. we're effectively shooting ourselves in the foot because we need that Iranian oil in the global market. And again, to go back to my initial point, uh the Iranians are not going to throw up their hands and quit. These are really tough people, very nationalistic, and they face an
23:10 existential threat. You take a country like Iran facing an existential threat and take into account the fact that it's a highly nationalistic country. Do you really think pain inflicted on them is going to cause them to quit? I would not bet anything on that. But Danny, I have a simple question for you. If you went to war and you needed a general underneath you to execute the war, to plan and execute the war, who would you rather have, General Keane or General Solommani? I'd rather have General Doug McGregor, in fact, if I could choose one. But uh he he understands a lot of those things. Uh but >> you know you know who you'd rather have. >> Of course
23:55 >> you know that General K is the last person you'd want to go to war with. >> He is I I think a fresh second lieutenant out of officer candidate school might might have a better chance at succeeding because he would understand the constraints part of it which King doesn't. But what King does love to do though uh is a couple things that that I'd like your view on on how these mixed messages at this level and on this team is is confusing the situation. You remember President Trump a week or so ago in one of his truth socials u well he says you know now then that the the new Iranian leader is much more pliable now and he's much more reasonable. He's not as radical as the guy before after he assassinated uh Ali Kami. So no, number one, that's that wasn't true at the time, but that's what
24:40 President Trump is telling his supporters who were listening to this. Now then you hear see Jack King just demonized the negotiators and saying, "Oh my god, they knew custom Solommani." I mean, these are the guys here saying, "No matter what these guys talk about, we can't listen to any of them. And if we agree to them, we'll be bad and dumb because we can't do that." So he's trying to sabotage, in my view, any further chance diplomacy to make sure we don't agree to anything that Iran wants. But then if you're right, and I think you are, that this this uh this naval blockade is only going to cause us more problems and will not under any circumstances in a in a reasonable time frame compel Iran to to give into this, then where does that leave President Trump? It seems to me that he's constraining himself even further what
25:25 he can do, Danny. He is in a world of hurt. I I mean he he has no viable option other than to basically concede defeat. Uh again, he has not achieved we have not achieved we and the Israelis have not achieved any of the four principal goals that were set out before the operation started on February 28th. Furthermore, we've lost control of the straits to the Iranians. Those five factors are all a done deal. Uh and now the question is how do you negotiate an end to this? How do you come up with an armistice or some
26:11 sort of uh peace agreement? That that's the question. But you're not going to achieve your goals if you're President Trump. And if he continues to prolong the conflict, the damage that will be done to the international economy will be greater and greater. Uh, I mean, as I've said before, we're like the Titanic heading for the iceberg. And really, what President Trump is now doing with this new policy of blockade is he's speeding up the Titanic so that it'll hit the iceberg faster than it otherwise would have. >> Oh man. >> But, uh, you know, I mean, if you just think about it, we we don't have we lost. We we President Trump committed a profound blunder in allowing the
26:57 Israelis to convince him that we could win a quick and decisive victory. And once he was into a long war, it's the Iranians, not the Americans, who hold almost all the cards. And you know, General Keane, Lindsey Graham, and people of that sort can whisper in the president's ears from Natal Kingdom Come that, you know, uh, he's got to hang in there and that we can win this. But the problem is they can't provide him with a viable strategy for achieving that end. Uh unless they're telling him something in secret that uh we don't uh understand that we can't comprehend. I think that's highly unlikely. I think >> I think if there was a winning strategy here, Danny, you and I would know about
27:43 it and that's what the subject of our discussion would be. >> Exactly. Yeah. I I couldn't agree with you more. And in fact, let's take a look. You mentioned that we haven't achieved our goals. Well, let's look at what we have achieved. And that is it has the cost has expanded exponentially. One can argue in the fact that the before we chose this war, the straight of Hormuz was completely open and free and anyone could navigate it and traffic had coming in or around and all the things that had been going on for decades were and there was no reason to think that they should have. Now they aren't. And so, first you had the Iranians take control of anything coming in or out. And now Trump seems to be going, "Oh, yeah. Well, I could I can one up you on that. I'm going to keep you from coming in and out." So now you don't get to decide who's coming out.
28:28 Well, that's going to take even more oil off the global stage and it's going to put pressure on the the price to go up. Well, if this turns into a long blockade, this going to have obvious ramifications. And we'll just look first of all domestically at the pump for Americans. It's already more than a dollar above where it was at the start of this and it's got a lot of people uncomfortable. Well, President Trump was asked that uh by Maria Barto Roma over the weekend. What if it's still like this when it comes time for the midterms? >> So, do you believe the price of oil and gas will be lower before the midterm elections? >> I hope so. I mean, I think so. It could be. It could be or the same or maybe a little bit higher, but uh it should be around the same. I think this won't be that much longer. I mean that's that's a lot of optimism there and no fundamentals underneath
29:14 that either. What do you say to that? >> Again it's absolutely correct uh that there are no fundamentals underpinning that claim. Uh if anything, if this goes on, which it's likely to do, uh unless President Trump conceds defeat, then the price of gasoline, just inflation in general is going to go through the roof. Almost everybody understands that. Uh the situation only gets worse moving forward. We are, Danny, getting closer and closer to the iceberg. uh all you have to do is read about what the economic situation looks like in a place like South Korea at this point in time. You know, I've made the argument, excuse me, that u uh the South
30:01 Koreans are very upset about the fact that we are pivoting away from East Asia. In other words, we're taking Thads and Patriots uh out of South Korea and Japan and moving them to the Middle East. And one of these two marine expeditionary units that we've moved to the Middle East came out of Japan. So, we're weakening our defenses in East Asia. And this, of course, upsets the South Koreans greatly. But the truth is, Danny, they're even more upset about the economic consequences of what President Trump is doing. This is having disastrous effects on the economies in East Asia. uh and this includes you know countries like the Philippines, Indonesia, uh South Korea, Japan and India is
30:48 having a devil of a time as a consequence of this and the situation only gets worse with time because this you know this whole process is it it has a ripple effect. it's just growing and growing and uh now with this blockade put on uh the situation's going to get worse more rapidly. So, President Trump is just in a world of hurt and he has no way out. Uh if he did, we'd know about it. Um I want to make one other point to you very quickly before I forget. Danny, you want to understand that inside of Iran, there were two camps uh regarding the question of whether to go to Islamabad and the hardliners said don't do it. Don't go to Islamabad. Uh the
31:37 more dovish half of the security community inside of Iran carried the day and they went to Islamabad and we saw what happened. So you can rest assured when they came back uh to Islamabad, the hardliners said, "I told you so." And that means that the next time we want to have negotiations, not only will the Iranians be reluctant to go to go to Islam Abad, but I would be willing to bet they're more hard-nosed than ever. Uh making a deal that's semifable uh to us uh or contains a few favorable uh dimensions will be harder than ever.
32:23 Well, I want to take a look at and it's interesting you brought that topic up uh about the how the the Iranian side may be viewing this in in the split in their camp here. Uh because one would think that the the results of this negotiation and and now then the imposition of this blockade uh is going to give more power into the hands of the hardliners uh and and actually more confidence to them as well. There's one other thing that may add to some confidence of theirs and that is to look at how America's allies are reacting to this. Now already we've had uh a lot of requests for the Europeans to come and join us in this uh this blockade and we before that we'd wanted them to help escort people through. Uh Kier Star was the first one that jumped up and said, "Yeah, how about a no?" Um the guy who's always been reflexively pro-American, he's
33:09 leading the charge for the Europeans to say no. Uh and then President Trump apparently miffed by that. uh also I think on that same interview with Maria Bartto Romo uh kind of threw NATO uh and our Asian allies under the bus. >> One of the things that most amazes me though the straight is for Japan where they get 93% of their oil. You know that Japan uh South Korea gets 45% of its oil. These people haven't helped us. I say are you guys going to help? And you know, we have 45,000 soldiers and 50,000 respectively at those two places. 45 and 50,000 soldiers. We guard them and protect them. And when we want a little help, they don't help us. And when we wanted help from NATO, they don't help us. And
33:56 we paid I don't know if you saw 900 almost a trillion dollars toward NATO in a very short period of time. So, I mean, according to President Trump, and of course, the people who are watching this show are are just taking him at face value. You I didn't see Maria Bartono push back on any of this stuff. And so, according to us, man, you guys are cheating us, NATO. We've been helping you out all this time, and now all we're asking is a little help, as he put it there. A little help to to Where are your ships coming in that's going to help us? And by the way, Japan and and uh South Korea, you guys get all your stuff here. You should be the one leading up here on the way in here. Now, I I'm going to ask your opinion on this a second, but I'm thinking that the Iranian side is going, "Oh, this is nice." Because now I see them eating
34:42 themselves in the back here, and they know there's no military means of opening and forcing open the Straight of Hormuza, they would have already done it. And so, if we're eating ourselves now and angering our allies in both Asia and Europe, where is this war going? Well, the fact is, Danny, the United States Navy is by far the most powerful navy on the planet. And if we can't open the straits and settle this conflict by oursel, adding uh, you know, some naval ships from our allies in Europe and from East Asia uh, is not going to make any difference. It just doesn't matter. The other thing is just getting back the to the pivot away from Asia. Do you really want to take a large number of Japanese
35:27 uh and South Korean assets, military assets, and move them to the Middle East in addition to the THADs, the Patriots, and the Marine Expeditionary Unit? Uh, and then think about all of the high-end munitions uh and other weaponry that we're expending in the Gulf that won't be available for the purposes of containing China and East Asia. And you see what a disaster this is. And furthermore, in terms of our European allies, uh I don't think uh that we need our European allies to deter Russia from conquering Europe. I think this is poppyccock. But nevertheless, it would be I think in our advantage to have good relations with our European allies. Uh we oftentimes
36:14 need them. uh even if they can't open the straits with a magical wand, uh it would be good to have positive relations with the Europeans so that we can get them to help us out with China. But instead, what's happening is that Trump is going to great lengths to wreck our relationship with our European allies. He's doing significant damage to our relationship with our allies in the Middle East, especially in the GCC. and he's doing significant damage to our relationship with our allies uh in East Asia. I mean, do you really think if you're an ally of the United States that you can depend on us and the crunch? Uh do you really think that the United States is ruled by leaders who have good strategic judgment or just good judgment
37:00 at all? I think the answer is no. Uh I think just looking at what the United States is doing today uh it's hard to believe uh what's happened to this country and where President Trump is leading us and this is going to have huge consequences for us us meaning the United States uh in terms of our ability to project power around the world and to influence other countries whether we are attempting to deter them or contain them or whether we're attempting to woo them onto our Right. >> Well, so let let me ask you what is what do you think the impact of that? Because I think you just laid it out pretty pretty effectively and pretty powerfully. We are wrecking our own all alliances and our own support from Europe, from Asia, and from the Middle
37:48 East as well. And on the other side of this is the Iranian side, fresh off of I'm getting rockstar status when they when they showed up at Islamabad these meetings here. I mean, they were getting flowers and the international media was everywhere, paparazzi, all this stuff, smiles, big hugs going on all over the place. And then now then coming out of this, we don't look we come off looking pretty weak in the statements that we've made here. And then when they the Iranian side sees all this wreckage self inflicted going on around our allies, what is that going to do to them in their war effort and their ability to resist us? >> Well, the Iranians look like the adults at the table. Uh and it's not only the Iranians, you know what about the Chinese and the Russians? We have three
38:33 great powers in the system. The United States, uh China and Russia. And China and Russia look like responsible stakeholders. Does the United States look like a responsible stakeholder? It certainly does not. Now people or I should say leaders around the world are very careful about u criticizing the United States too much because the United States is so powerful uh and President Trump uh you know acts with a vengeance when he's crossed. So people go to great length, leaders go to great lengths not to provoke him. Uh but you can rest assured that in private those leaders think that uh he is positively
39:18 dangerous. Uh I mean we're in a situation where our allies probably fear him more than our adversaries do. Uh and this is a disastrous situation. As I say, it's going to have disastrous consequences for our ability to project power all over the world. If you're a global power, to put it in slightly different terms, if you're a superpower interested in projecting military might into East Asia, into the Middle East, and into Europe, and it's essential that you have allies, that you have good relations with those allies, that you have international institutions, formidable international institutions, and you pay heed to those institutions
40:04 and the rules that attend them, and that you pay attention to international law. This is the way we have behaved almost forever, right? We wrote the instit we wrote the international law. We wrote the rules that underpin the institutions. Uh and we wrote them in ways that favored us and we by and large obeyed those rules and obeyed those laws because it was in our national interest. Uh and we had allies and we treated those allies well because it was in our national interest. Along comes President Trump, the ultimate unilateralist uh on the planet, and he's interested in trashing international law, trashing international institutions, and treating allies as bad, if not worse, than adversaries. And the end result of this is we're in a well of a lot of trouble.
40:53 >> Yeah. Well, there's no question about that. Uh on on so many fronts. Um, I I want to I want to go down a little bit of a rabbit hole on on the Chinese side because I know that's one of your areas of expertise that you pay a lot of attention to. Now, I have for years said that if it would be a disaster for us to ever choose to go to war against China over Taiwan or anything else in the South China Sea. And I've listed out a bunch of reasons why in terms of our ability to our defense industrial bases compared to the Chinese industrial base and our inability to fight into an extended war of attrition like what's going on between Russia and Ukraine, uh, etc. The missiles, the distances from our logistic lines and the, you know, 100 miles for the Chinese side, etc. That was just kind of in concept. Well, to me now then it is more clear than
41:39 ever if we are running to the con limits of our power on Iran which has a fraction of the Chinese military capabilities then this shows everybody that we we are not going to come to Taiwan's aid or if we do it won't do it effectively and and I was wondering what your thoughts are by this recent uh activity between the Chinese and the Taiwanese opposition figure u who seem to be talking a lot for I don't know if polite's the right word, but an open-minded to the Chinese side. If you think that's related to this, and if not, even for the ruling party here, it seems to me that if you say, "Holy snap, if I've been counting on America to come help me before, and I see they can't even take care of Iran, then I better come up with another engagement strategy
42:24 with China, or I could be walking into suicide if I'm counting on the Americans to come over." How do you see that? I think it it's a logic that the logic that you just described is a logic that applies not just to Taiwan, but to Japan, South Korea, Australia, uh the Philippines. Um, as I said before, it's not simply a question of whether the United States will be there for you. Uh, and here you want to remember we are pivoting away from Asia. So there is reason to doubt whether the United States will be there for you. But there's also the question of whether you can trust American judgment. Do you think this is a country that operates in sophisticated ways when it comes to
43:10 formulating and executing military strategy? Uh and I think almost all the evidence at this point in time is that it does not uh it's not a very responsible ally. Uh and the question then is what do you do? What do you do if you're Taiwan and you're highly vulnerable? Um, and you know, we haven't talked about this, but what about nuclear weapons? If you're Japan and you're South Korea, how do you think about depending on the American nuclear umbrella? I mean, if you're a South Korean, not only do you have to worry about nuclear weapons in the context of China, but you have to worry about nuclear weapons in the context of North Korea, and you depend
43:58 on the United States for nuclear deterrence. The American nuclear shield is over your head. Well, when you see what's happening in the Middle East and that we're pivoting away from Asia, if you're South Korea, I think what happens is that you begin to think seriously about getting your own nuclear deterrent. And I'm sure that same logic applies to uh Japan. So, uh it's not only Taiwan that's beginning to hedge here. Uh, and given where we're at and given the fact that given where we're at in the Middle East and given that we have no solution on the horizon to the Iran war, uh, you really wonder where things are
44:44 going to go in East Asia. and and in the remainder of the time that we have left here, uh let's let's kind of ask a similar question in in uh Europe because the the limits of our ability to to strike against Iran also has to be viewed in the capabilities of could we come to European aid if there's a continentalwide war against against Russia. Now, you and I have talked many times that there's no evidence that Russia has any interest or intent or maybe even capacity to do so, but for the Europeans, I mean, it seems to me, and I've not seen this anybody anywhere written down or or or have talked to anyone, but it just seems logical to me if I'm a European leader. I'm looking at what you guys have been doing, the type of leadership you have, and it's not
45:29 just President Trump, but even you can go back to Biden before that, and the commentary you see coming out of the United States, but most importantly, what I see the limits of your capacity on the ground of the greatest military in the history of the world, etc. And I may need to say, okay, once we get this deal over with and let's focus on getting that done now. But as soon as this thing is wrapped up, however it gets wrapped up, I may say, do we need to change the way we do our continental wide security here? And does it need to pivot away from the United States? How do you see that? >> Well, the thing is, Danny, that the United States under President Trump is pivoting away from Europe. The Europeans want to be joined at the hip with us. They love us. They want to keep the American security umbrella over their
46:16 head. uh they want to keep NATO intact. Uh they have no animus against the United States. But President Trump has a deep-seated animus against the Europeans. He loathes NATO and as you know, he's been in power for about 15 months now and he's done enormous damage to the alliance. Uh, and the question you have to ask yourself is what's going to happen in the remaining two years and 9 months of his presidency. Uh, and it seems pretty clear to me that he's going to do a lot more damage and that what's left of NATO uh, assuming he lasts for all four years uh, is going to be
47:02 enormous. The damage he's going to do to NATO over those total four years will be enormous. I I don't see how it will be otherwise. And in the process, the Europeans are slowly but steadily figuring out that they have to come up with an alternative security architecture in Europe. They cannot depend on the United States anymore. They cannot depend on the American pacifier uh because President Trump is so hostile to Europe. So things are changing in fundamental ways. See, the difference between East Asia and Europe is we need the South Koreans and the Japanese to help contain China. We need those allies very much, but in Europe, there's no
47:48 Soviet Union. There's no real Russian threat. I mean, people can talk about the Russian threat, but there's no great Russian threat. So, it's easy for President Trump to slap around the Europeans and to talk about ending NATO and pulling American forces out of Europe or at least greatly reducing the American military footprint in Europe. He can do that because there's no Soviet Union. Uh there's no equivalent of the Chinese threat. There's Russia and Russia's having a devil of a time conquering the eastern 15th of Ukraine. The idea that it's a threat to reach the beaches at Dunkirk is a laughable argument. So Trump can treat the Europeans with contempt, which he's been doing. uh and that's going to fundamentally alter the relationship
48:36 uh across the Atlantic Ocean in ways that are hard to imagine for people like uh you and me who grew up uh during the Cold War and in the unipolar moment when transatlantic relations were actually excellent. >> Yeah, indeed they were. uh in in the last bit of time we have here uh just the last few minutes here given all of the the comments that we've made so far and given the fact that that Trump has now started this naval blockade we'll see how it actually plays out in time but since there's not a military solution to this and and we seem intent on trying to find one anyway where do you see this going and we'll just keep it narrow here maybe the next couple of weeks how is this going to play out in the near term >> well I think there are two sets of forces that are pushing Trump in
49:23 opposite directions. One of the Israelis and here we're talking about the lobby as well as Israel itself. And the Israelis and the lobby do not want any kind of agreement uh with Ukraine with Ukraine with Iran unless Iran throws up its hands and basically surrenders. That's one side. On the other side, there's the international economy. And the international economy is in terrible shape. And we are, as I say, on the Titanic heading for the iceberg. And you can rest assured that President Trump is under tremendous pressure from leaders all over the world to put an end to
50:10 this. uh and President Trump himself, I'm sure, is surrounded by advisors who fully understand that we are on the Titanic. So, the question is, will President Trump at some point before the Titanic hits the iceberg pull back and tell the Israelis that they're out of luck and that we don't care what they want us to do? We're cutting a deal because it's not only in our own interest, it's in the interest of every country around the world. And in that story, Israel loses and the rest of us win. Or is he so beholden to the lobby and to Israel? And all the evidence up to now is that he is incredibly beholden
50:55 to Israel and the lobby. The So, but the question is, will that continue? and will we because of Israel hit the iceberg? Uh, and that's how I see this playing out. And >> and how do you define in this context hitting the iceberg? What does that what does that look like? How does it manifest? >> I think that the economic damage is so great that we have a global depression that's as bad, if not worse, than what happened in the late 1920s. >> That's an iceberg. That's a That's a big one. And there's a lot more people on the ship. >> Yeah. And by the way, Danny, there are lots of economists who make the argument that if you don't shut this one down soon, uh that's what will happen. And there are many people who believe that even if you shut it down soon, if you
51:41 shut it down tomorrow, uh there's still going to be a huge amount of damage in the international economy. Uh and it's not just gas and oil, it's also all the fertilizer and uh what that means for planting crops and for the availability of food moving forward. Uh I mean the potential for disaster here is enormous. Again, this is why President Trump, not the Iranians, wanted the Islamabad meetings. You you want to think about the Islamabad meetings. The basic forces that were at play on President Trump were the same two forces I just described to you. Trump wanted the meeting in Islamabad because he
52:28 understood he is the captain of the Titanic and the iceberg is not too far away. However, the Israelis and the lobby then weighed in and told him he can't cut a deal where we lose. That he has to play hard ball in Islamabad and then if the Iranians don't surrender, he has to put a blockade or do something like that to coers the Iranians into surrendering. Those are the two forces that were at play before Islamabad and they're at play again. And as we move forward, the interesting question, it's an immensely consequential question, is whether or not Trump is going to have
53:14 the good sense to tell the Israelis to take a hike and uh put an end to this war and then immediately go to enormous lengths to try and fix the international economy as much as possible so we have as soft a landing as possible. It's not going to be a soft landing, but the softer but as soft a landing as possible is what we want. >> You know, we we actually had uh Professor Morandi uh from University of Tehran on the show this morning who was part of the Iranian delegation who was there and he made the comment that the the first couple of I don't know if Browns is the right word, first couple of iterations, sessions of the Islamabad meetings, they said that they were surprised it seemed to be moving in a
54:00 positive direction. They said they had reason to continue talking and then something happened after the second pause when Vance came back. All of a sudden he think he said things turned a lot darker and and categorical and then they they ended up in you knowing on a bad tone. So one wonders what information he was getting on these many phone calls that he made. I think you can probably guess one of those. And and by the way, to your point, also later this week, we're going to have Commodore Steve Jeremy on the show, uh, who was after he retired from the British Navy is actually focused on energy and global energy markets. Uh, and he's going to argue the same point you just made. He said that he thinks it's already uh probably about a 5% degradation in the global economy. He said we think it's already there's a a recession that's that's going to come already. He said if
54:45 this goes on another couple of months, then it could turn into a 1929 style depression. He's going to lay out the reasons why. So, he's one of those economists that you talked about that will be on the show later this week. Um, but in the meantime, we're going to have to keep on this uh iceberg watch that you mentioned here because that seems to be where we're heading next. And as always, we're incredibly grateful for having you on the show today. >> Thank you for having me, Danny. I enjoyed the conversation even though I must say and you recognize this, it was thoroughly depressing. >> That's that's exactly what Ambassador Freeman said after our last show almost. the same thing there. But that we we got to do what we we can to to call it out. It's the truth when people need to hear it because those other sound bites I showed you that Americans are hearing is not the truth and they're being fooled
55:31 into thinking that we're on a good path here when they need to know there's icebergs ahead. So, thank you for bringing that to everybody's attention. We really appreciate it. >> You're welcome, Danny. >> And we appreciate you guys, too. We got one more show. This has been a heavy hitter show today. We've got a lot, folks. Scott Ritter is going to be on with us today at 2 PM. uh and he's got some very unique positions or information to bring along that is different than what we've discussed so far and especially as it has to do with the Russian side. There's some interesting parallels there uh to what's been going on in the Russia Ukraine war. Do not miss that 2:00 today on the Daniel Davis deep dive. We'll see you then.
