The Iran Situation Is Bigger Than The Media Is Telling You

Is the world sleepwalking into a larger war?

Former Navy JAG officer, federal prosecutor, and former national security advisor Don Brown joins The MiddleGround Mic for one of the most intense conversations we’ve had yet — breaking down Iran, the Strait of Hormuz blockade, sleeper cell fears, Europe’s growing instability, and why global leaders may be closer to a breaking point than the public realizes.

We discuss:

• Iran’s collapsing military posture
• Why the Strait of Hormuz matters to YOUR wallet
• Sleeper cell concerns inside the United States
• Europe’s “no-go zone” reality
• Why Trump’s strategy looks more like Reagan than Iraq
• The hidden geopolitical risks nobody in media wants to explain
• Missile threats, oil shocks, EMP fears, and the race against escalation

This isn’t partisan panic.
This is geopolitical reality explained without the corporate media filter.

WATCH BEFORE THE NEXT HEADLINE HITS.

👇 COMMENT BELOW:
Do you think this ends in diplomacy… or escalation?

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:12

Good afternoon, everybody. Welcome to the Grand Mike. You know, right now there's a blockade going on in the Strait of Harmoos off Iran's oil. You know, a fragile ceasefire is trickling down. The global shipping to the Strait of Hermoose is hanging by a thread. You know, are we looking at a diplomatic breakthrough or the countdown to a massive regional war? That is the question on everybody's mind. And we got a great guest today's former Navy JAG officer, former, I don't know, former current federal prosecutor, a NASA security advisor. Don, welcome to the show.

SPEAKER_01 0:43

Joe, it's good to be here. Thanks for having me on. I've been looking forward to this.

SPEAKER_00 0:47

Yeah, you know, the the the naval blockade and the shirt of her moose, you know, it's that's that's quite a thing. And I've had a couple people on to talk about the Iran situation and to to learn a lot about it has been kind of eye-opening in the fact that some of these things have been kind of going on in the background for a lot longer than people realize.

SPEAKER_01 1:06

Sure. And with the naval background, I think it's, I mean, the blockade, excuse me, I think it's important to, you know, to re-emphasize that the block this is not a United States blockade of international shipping. In fact, the blockade is to to reopen the purpose of it to reopen the straits uh to commercial shipping, especially the oil tankers, but the blockade is against Iranian assets primarily, and also to prevent any ships passing through that have been paying homage to Iran. In other words, the administration doesn't want Iran to violate international law anymore and to try to charge a toll for moving through a uh an open open water strait. In other words, a strait that connects two bodies of open water is under international law is right of passage for all vessels. And so it is the blockade to shut access to Iranian ports such as Bandas and Bar and others, and those along the Persian Gulf beyond the strait itself. So that's the purpose, and hopefully it will it will help to to serve to get that strait open so that we can stabilize the price of oil a little bit more here. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 2:11

Yeah, I mean, and that's that's key. What's really helping the United States, from what I had learned, was is that I believe we're now the biggest producer of oil in the world. I believe currently.

SPEAKER_01 2:22

Yes, and that happened at one point during the first Trump administration as well. We have lots of oil, a lot more natural gas. It's interesting. I saw, you know, you see these satellite photos showing the transponders where ships are going. A lot of ships were diverted to what they call now the Gulf of America, you know, coming in there to pick up American oil, which is uh there's no reason we should not be an exporter of oil with the oil that we have. There's the age-old battle between the the environmentalists and the green movement and the need to get oil out. But uh, that's a step in the right direction, and the more we produce, of course, the better it's going to be for prices.

SPEAKER_00 2:57

Yeah, I you know, I believe their onshore oil capacity in Iran's, from what I'm gathering, is only about 13 days-ish, you know, meaning the blockade is a ticking time bomb for their economy, and their economy is already pretty much on the deep end.

SPEAKER_01 3:14

Yeah, I think the blockade is probably has been, at least a threat of it, if it hasn't fully taken effect yet, more effective than any of the previous economic sanctions put on by the Indian administration, whether, you know, we haven't been putting sanctions on Iran really by multiple administrations in one form or the other since 1979 after the the debacle with the hostages under Jimmy Carter. But you know, like you say, you cut their ability to sell their oil and you choke them out. And of course, there's a threat also of military action against Carg Island hanging there as well. But it is interesting because, you know, they sent their, they sent um, they're they're sending guys to speak at these uh these negotiating forums who aren't wearing hijabs or or all the Muslim, you know, Sharia Shiite gear. They're not sending the mullahs to negotiate, they're sending folks who are appear to be a little bit more moderate. Of course, with Iran, the question and the problem with them has been their track record. Someone said they are the master manipulator of you know, arguing for ceasefires and then going behind your back and violating the terms. They're very, very good at that. But I do think that that this blockade is going to be a tremendous potential economic choke point. So the question is, how rational are they? That's been the you know, when you look at you look at Saudi Arabia and the Sunni nations here on the you know, in the Persian Gulf, yes, they may have funded terror. Most of the 9-11 terrorists were Saudi, but they'll work with you, they'll look you in the face and shake your hand and work with you economically. You're not, they're not leaving with death to America, as the Iranians have done, or at least the the Shia uh Ayatollah type leadership there has done. So can they can they be relied upon to strike a deal with it? I mean, and ultimately, I mean, I think the president wants that weapons grade uranium put on an American ship and and sailed out of there. And if if and when that happens, we'll know that we've got a deal that we can live with, and that's really going to be the ultimate litmus test, in my opinion.

SPEAKER_00 5:13

Oh, I it most definitely. Are are we under as a country or as a world, are we underestimating the ripple effect that this could really have in the region with oil just in glob in the geopolitics of the Middle East? Because that's, I mean, you know, one person looks the wrong way over there and everything just seems to ignite. Yeah, I mean, you're asking, you're asking a very good question.

SPEAKER_01 5:35

Uh Iran right now is a a lot more barked than they are a bike, given the fact that their navy has been basically put at the bottom of the sea. Their Air Force is not operational, their army, same thing. There are, you know, dangerous, dangerous in certain degrees. You know, think about these mines that you can put in the street of four moves and other everywhere, other other places. You can from 1,500 to 10,000 bucks, you can get a very dangerous mine and floated out in the ocean. It's it's a poor man and a terrorist dream in some ways, just like the notion of a dirty bomb or even the notion of biological weapons. They're cheaper to deploy. And so Iran is dangerous. But what they don't have at this point is the present ability to deliver a long-range nuke, which is, of course, everyone's nightmare. Uh, nor do they have the ability really to inflict uh sustained military damage on uh their neighbors other than launching missiles, which can cause damage, of course, and and through drones, they don't have an army, they don't have a navy, don't have an air force. So from a conventional standpoint, they've been defanged. Um you know, they are probably you know in a least dangerous uh posture than they've been for years. One of the unknowns that has continued to concern concern me is what kind of sleeper cells do they have here and elsewhere. They have sleeper cells that they can activate. You know, the uh the borders were wide open for four years, and um we are we know that uh you know, Iranians came across the border, we know that we had radicals coming across the border. The sleeper cell scenario is the type of scenario that has to be most concert, disconcerting, I should use that word. Uh in my judgment, hopefully the FBI is on top of it and we know where they are, where some of them are, I mean, already, and I hope we've got an eye on them, but that's the real concern I've got. One of the um one of the concerns that you have if you're able to put together a nuke or a nuclear ability is is the threat of ENP. And ENP is something that I've been preaching on for some years, and there's been no uh real realistic attempt to harden our power infrastructure. Uh, and that need we need to pay attention to that because you uh you can put a put a nuke up over you know 30 miles up in the air and blow it, and then theoretically you and I wouldn't be having this conversation because we're able to use Zoom and other types of. I guess we're on a different uh riverside today, we're on a different type of uh you know platform. But the point of the matter is these platforms and this technology that we that we take advantage of is largely it's satellite driven and um and microchip driven, and uh that is a real danger that you've got to always be aware of. Right now, I don't know that they have the ability to deliver that type of a blow. Some nations will, but we've got to pay attention to that as well, in terms of national security standpoint.

SPEAKER_00 8:24

Yeah, you know, and that's it that goes right back into what I was gonna say next. You know, the the U.S. and Iran are attempting the peace talks, you know, but we're at least, you know, they've fallen off, you know, then they're supposedly back on, you know, then this or that. You know, from what I've heard is is that the Iranian leadership is completely fractured on whether to make a deal or walk away.

SPEAKER_01 8:47

Well, they're probably fractured because there's a smaller percentage of the Shia radicals that are alive as opposed to on you know March 1st, really at 3 a.m. Eastern with this thing kind of kicked off. But you're right, it's interesting because when you look at the history of warfare, and you and I wrote a book called Last Fighter Pilot. Uh it was a it was a uh true story of the last known combat mission of World War II flown by P-51 pilot, Captain Jerry Yellen and his wingman, Lieutenant Phil Schlomberg, off of uh Iwo Jima on the day that Emperor surrendered. And what folks don't realize, we dropped a bomb on Japan and August 6th, told them to surrender. They didn't surrender, dropped another bomb August 9th. And then by the 15th or the 14th, we should say we recognized the J Day as August 14th. It was the 15th there. Truman ordered the you know, the bombing campaign to start again. And part of the reason was there was a there was a there was a divide within Japan between the younger officers and the older officers on whether to continue to fight or to negotiate a peace. And while this isn't Japan and this isn't World War II, and we haven't dropped the bomb, there's a very similar, apparently, type of divide going on uh within Iran. You know, the the the Persian Empire has been one of the great empires in the history of the world. And even prior to the radical takeover by the by the Ayatollahs, uh, even in the days of the Shah, it still was. And there is still that potential there. I mean, I know Iranians myself who come here, they're some of the greatest people you can meet. And uh there's so much potential there that if you could just bring them into the find a way to bring them into the uh to the family of civilized nations, it will be better for everyone. But the fact that there is an internal debate going on, I think I take that as a positive side. And in Japan, of course, finally there there were surrender papers and they realized there was nowhere to go. And thank goodness for us, we would have lost a million men if we had to invade. We didn't have a lot of bombs left. And uh, but I'm hoping that we're gonna see some sort of breakthrough here at sooner rather than later.

SPEAKER_00 10:46

You know, something I had mentioned on a couple of my uh my previous shows is you know, and this is what brings me to this point, the treasury's refusing to renew sanction waivers. You know, they're preparing to enforce secondary sanctions on Iranian oil buyers, particularly China. And and this is just coming from a completely outsider's perspective, right? You know, I'm I was a big fan of Ronald Reagan, you know, and kind of like and you know, reina's book. It seems, it feels to me, anyways, very mirroring of what he did to kind of cripple the Soviet Union is what we're trying to do with Iran, Venezuela, like, you know, like crippling aspects of China's economic growth.

SPEAKER_01 12:19

Well, there's a very another very good historical comparison, the drawback, and Santiana, of course, said those who are ignorant of history or doomed to repeat it. Churchill made that language a little more colorful. But um, Reagan basically brought the Soviet Union down through an arms wrest, if you think about it. I mean, we were the United We are the greatest superpower of the world. They they contrived tried to match us dollar for dollar when Reagan initiated the rebuild of the United States military from day one of his taking office in 1981. And of course, the Star Wars, the whole threat of Star Wars was as effective. Star Wars was never built to a full extent as Reagan wanted it, but the very threat of it uh forced them spent they spent it into oblivion. And what you have is you have a powerful, robust capitalistic economy in the United States versus essentially what was a you know um an ineffective communist economy, and eventually they fracture. And Iran has, of course, flourished because of its ability to export oil. Of course, I think the notion the president is threatening to blow up their refineries and blow up their infrastructure, which we have the ability to do it. I don't think he wants to do it. I think if we if we ramped up uh you know the next the next military step, nobody wants to do that because the fact of the matter is Iranian oil is needed in the international marketplace to stabilize prices everywhere. So nobody really wants to do that. I think you know you could you could easily seize control of Carg Island, as you mentioned a moment ago, most of their oil is not coming from the mainland, but you cut that off and you basically have choked them to death. And that that is doable. And it's doable, I think, and you're gonna have to put boots on the ground there, but because it is a contained area, uh it's a doable proposition. I hope we don't have to get that far, but um I they've got to understand if they have any semblance of rationality, that's something that we could do. And and my guess is the president would consider doing. I think the president was looking for an off-ramp. You know, his legacy with regard, you know, I was you know, his legacy as commander-in-chief has been a quick strike and then and then uh and then leak once submission is accomplished, as opposed to long-term, you know, uh endless wars, as uh the phrase has been used with more frequency in recent years. And I think he would like that sort of situation as well. But one thing you can say about President Trump is that you know he doesn't he doesn't wield idle threats, you know. And I think they think the Iranians know that. And so we'll see how it's gonna play out. Um the next two to three weeks is gonna be really uh interesting because we're continuing to monitor the success of the blockade, and we're seeing a few more ships coming through now because of the U.S. naval blockade. You know, you look, I've studied uh the you know the recent history of the States of Hormuz, and we we lost the Samuel B. Roberts. We didn't lose Samuel B. Roberts in 1988, though, it hit a mine during the Iraq Iranian. Iraq and Iran were going at it, remember, in the late 80s, almost lost a ship. We had a couple of Navy naval vessels strike mines that had been put in the Strait of Hormuz uh a few years later uh during the uh during Desert Storm. And you know, that's uh that's that's the really the biggest threat. So that you know you might not have a lot of mines out there, but like Trump says you got a billion dollar ship. You don't want to run the risk, you know, running that ship through there unless you know it's gonna be pretty clean and clear. Right now, they're not able to get access. They mean the Iranians aren't able to get access out there to add to whatever danger they put out there. And we have very sophisticated minesweeping capabilities. I hear the Brits are gonna send the mine sweeper too, thank goodness, finally. But um, we've got it, we've got the ability to largely sweep that straight. You know, when you look at it, it's 21 miles across at its narrowest. And then you look at the shipping lanes. So the shipping lanes, you have two miles, you have two miles going east to west, two miles going west to east, and then you have a center buffer with buffer zone. So you gotta basically make sure that six miles, a six-mile highway, so to speak, nautical highway is clear, but you've got to make sure that you don't have stuff floating into those channels as well. So we've got a work cut out for us, but um uh, you know, so far there's some positive signs here. We'll just have to take it. And like I say, we talk again in the next three weeks, it'd be interesting to see where we are then.

SPEAKER_00 16:42

Yeah, I I mean, you know, you've analyzed regime behaviors for years. And something that I noticed compared to the invasion of Iraq, things of this nature is the Iranian people seem to be a lot more in tune with what we're doing and a little bit more supportive. And I'm not knocking any Iraqis or anything, but this seems to be a little bit more backing of a resistance for change than we had back then. Does that continue to impact our future with this?

SPEAKER_01 17:13

I think we go back to a point we were discussing earlier that the Persian Empire and its its progeny is a sophisticated people. And, you know, when you go back what happened in even in January with the mass massacres that were going on by the by these uh the Somullah regime, and even they were bringing in elements of Hezbollah to help. They were doing that because it was clear to me they were having some problems within their own guard. They're bringing in outsider forces, and the people see that. And it's very, very clear that they're dealing with a jack-booted, tyrannical, Sharia Islamic dictatorship. And uh, you know, you can't do that forever. People understand that. They want freedom. And this is remember, this is a civilization that is unlike, you know, you go back and you look at the the the Russians going back to the czarist days and before then, they've had a little taste of modern, westernized, you know, freedom even up until 1979 under Shah. So there is more of an institutional, you know, national bearing to what the other side is like than there are in some places. And uh so I think, again, even more so than you would see in the Sunni world right there in the Persi around the Persian Gulf, you've got a you're gonna have, I think, the possibility for a collapse in the regime, and there can be internal resistance. We've seen it before, we could see it again, and uh, I think it's ripe. Uh so but again, uh, we started this show discussing the potential effectiveness of this blockade. And I think blockade, it's not like when President Kennedy blockaded Cuba in 62, we're blocking it's a little bit different. We're blocking Soviet ships coming in. Actually, we call it a quarantine to technically avoid the phrase blockade, which is an act of war, but nonetheless, um, this is a bit different because we are again, we're the ultimate purpose is to encourage international flow of ships. You know, you have a you know a hundred tankers a day flowing through, that's 3,000 tankers a month. And the other thing to think about is, you know, U.S. Navy, and I'm a Navy guy, but uh when I was in the Navy under Secretary John Layman, we had a vision that Layman had a vision of a 600 ship navy with what we call strategic home porting. We put the where you put your ships at different ports around the country to avoid another Pearl Harbor scenario. Now we're down to 300, about 200 and 280. The Chinese have a larger Navy than we do. And so you got 280 ships, about you know, 70 destroyers, got a missile destroyers, which are going to be running these blockades. We don't have, you think about it, we don't have enough destroyers to to escort every ship. You know, you think about it, because yes, we we've got a number under CENTCOM command in the in the Raven Sea and the gun to the Persian Gulf. We've got to have them elsewhere as well. So, which is which underscores the need to have an international acceptance of responsibility here to a large degree, which is one of the things Trump has been has been arguing, and I think correctly so. Of course, nobody's really broken down. We we have the second largest Navy in the world, yet we aren't nearly as large as we have been in the past. And I know that what you're as a military guy and as a Navy guy, you know, we we gotta have the most formidable Navy in the world. You can see at this particular um military action, and many have been initiated by the U.S. Navy. They're able, because most of the world's population lives around the coast, and we're able to get our Navy anywhere, even before we can get the Air Force in a lot of cases. And so we gotta we gotta we got a lot of work to do in terms of rebuilding our ships, our you know, our ship capacity, not just for the U.S. Navy, but for commercial shipping and merchant marine as well. But it's one of those things that uh we've let slip over the years, which is why you've got to have a coalition if you can get it to try to fully enforce. And with our Navy, we certainly can blockade Iran successfully. But I'm talking about in terms of trying to escort tankers, we just don't have enough enough ships to do that for every tanker.

SPEAKER_00 21:09

Do you see um because from what I have seen is I believe a lot of Europeans, with the exception of the UK, I don't know if they've changed their mind recently, are starting to kind of come around. I believe Japan has as well, to aiding us with the blockade and kind of starting to contribute a little bit more to the situation.

SPEAKER_01 21:30

Any civilized nation that doesn't understand that the Iranian regime has been a rogue actor since 79 is just living in blonders. Now, I understand there is not a strong taste uh for wanting to engage in military action. I can understand that. I can also understand that after all those years from 2001 till we finally pulled out over 20 years in Afghanistan and Iraq, there is not there's not a taste for additional military action. I get that. But you and and part of what you may have been seeing with European nations, part of it is that part of it also is frankly, they have had tremendous. You're there in Michigan, you see what's happening, you know, in certain areas there, Dearborn and others. Europe has had a huge Islamic influence. Matter of fact, it's interesting, I was in I was in Paris, I've told this story a few times, but on uh inauguration night of 2017, I I had been invited to go with the American delegation to speak at Hotel Orleans at the invitation of the uh Nationalist Front Party, Maria Penn. And I got on that list and he said, Why would a red net like Don Brown be on the list? Well, they were so excited. The Nationalist Front Party was so excited about Trump's election because of what they felt that it would mean for international boundary protection. They wanted an American delegation. So they wanted two military general flag officers, and they wanted a U.S. congressman, and they wanted a Trump biographer. And I was selected by the the late Admiral E. James H. Lyons. Former four-star commander of Pacific Fleet to be his flag aid, so to speak. I'm a lieutenant commander. He's a four-star admiral, so I was going to go with him. General Paul Valley was there. You may remember Congressman Mike Flanagan, famous for knocking off Ross Dentowski, was part of that group. Admiral Lyon's wife became ill, and I didn't think I was going. He asked me to go anyway. I'll never forget this. We were at the Hotel Orleans, right there across from the Paris Art Museum. It's a five-star swanky affair. And the general and the congressman and I were watching. We were in this ante-room watching the president, new president, being giving his inaugural address, President Trump and uh 2017. He's at the national capital. We're in Paris, getting dark. I'll never forget this. The president says, from this point on, it's going to be America first. And in that moment, I'm going, holy smokes, how is this going to go in France? I'm going to tell you, the room burst out into applause. If I ever get a chance to tell the president personally about this, I'll do. They burst out into applause. And uh I wasn't yet getting it. And I realized that you know these nationalist front conservatives in France are hungry for border control. And uh I was giving the Admiral Lyons' speech, and I asked my friend Tom Trendle, I read it to him before I left. He said, Don, if you read that speech, you could get arrested. I said, What do you mean? I said, Well, they don't have a First Amendment in France, and they have hate crimes. And I thought, golly, but I decided, hey, four-star admiral asked me to read a speech, I'm going to do it, get arrested or not. This whole affair was being broadcast on I-24, which, as you may know, broadcast in Europe and uh and Israel. And I'll never forget, I started to read the Admiral's words, this full room in the Hotel Orleans. The chief of staff of the French Air Force were there. We had many members of the of the uh Nationalist Front Party who were members of the European Parliament and the French Parliament. And the speech opened, ladies and gentlemen, uh 20 minutes ago, America's long national nightmare with Barack Obama came to an end. And the first advice I would give to the new president, reading Admiral Lyon's advice, is to declare the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization. And I'm gonna tell you, Joe, that room broke out into applause. And it opened my eyes. The next day, the American delegation is taken out to uh in a van to the uh Cathedral Saint-Denis. It is the is the French version of Westminster Abbey, where Napoleon uh is buried, House of Bourbon is buried there. We we met, they have a uh an annual mass, a funeral mass for uh for Marie Antoinette and Louis uh to sell to remember their beheading in the French Revolution. We're sitting there, next thing you know, they bring the American delegation up to the front of this cathedral, and it's freezing cold in there. It's an ancient cathedral. And we look over to the right, the paparazzi comes in, they're going, shh, shh, what is this? Well, it was it was uh Prince Louis and Princess uh Margarita, first cousins of Juan Carlos, who will be in line for the French crown. So we go through this mass, this Catholic mass takes about an hour, and then we go in, they take us the American delegation and have lunch with the prince and the princes, and we're sitting there chatting for a bit. It's a good afternoon. Next thing you know, their security takes them out. Well, we're trying to get out to get back to our hotel, and we can't get Uber to come in there, we can't get uh, you know, anybody to come pick us up, no cab, no bus, no nothing. And one of the one of the nuns tells us you're in a no-go zone. And next thing you know, we're here in Caudrayer. And uh you're hearing it right there, and I've seen it in my own eyes. And so, you know, I can speak a little French with a redneck accent, but our translator says, don't speak English. We we we made our way back, but it, you know, it it slaps you in the face. And I think that um that you know we we're dealing with a lot of of that now in terms of what are we dealing with with the Iranian influence. And so I don't even know how I got off under that, but it's uh it all is part of the desire. There is a strong desire within you're talking about the Europeans either contributing or not contributing to that, but the large Islamic influence, the most popular boy's name in London and Paris is Mohammed and Brussels as well, I believe. And so part of the reluctance may be related to that. I can't say for sure, but it's uh it's a problem they've got over there, and we're gonna have that problem too if we don't get a hold of our immigration situation a little bit.

SPEAKER_00 27:38

I did not, I was not aware of that. I mean, when you're kind of going based off of that, right? So some of the intelligence assessments that I I've seen be released publicly, I should say, that roughly half of the Iran's missile launchers are still operational. I've heard that's what I've heard.

SPEAKER_01 27:55

Yeah. What I'm hearing is we'll destroy them, they go back and repair. And you know, the intelligence is vague, but but clearly, you know, they took down an F-15. And what a heroic effort to get those guys out. But they took down an F-15. They've not had a lot of success. I mean, you look at the number of sorties we've flown, their anti-aircraft capability has been largely non-existent. But when you're talking about, here's the thing about it. They took they took out um a Warthog with the with shoulder shoulder-fired, either a shoulder-fired SAM or a uh or an RPG. You know, and there are a lot of those around. You know, we lost 20,000 man pads in Libya after Hillary went in and the bomb went in and started to take out the Dafi. We had man pads that disappeared. These are shoulder-fired weapons. And so it goes back to a kind of a point that I made earlier about these mines and even these drones being relatively cheap, but still highly dangerous. You can get a shoulder-fired uh, you know, rocket launcher and lock on to a low-fying aircraft, and you have missile batteries as well. And it appears that the F-15 was hit by a missile battery, and that the the Warthog was hit um by a uh by a shoulder launched either missile or a or a uh RPG, we don't know, probably a missile. Um they they are rebuilding. And I made a point earlier, it appears that they don't they don't have long-range capabilities, at least not to the extent they were, but they were still getting missiles in Israel. And some of those missiles, of course, may have been fired, you know, from northern Lebanon and they're coming in. It's not really clear. We'll watch Fox, whoever watching, and there's you know, they're saying we got missiles coming in, you know, the alarms are going off. Where are the missiles coming from? We don't know. Could be anywhere in the Middle East, could be the Houthis, could be from Iran. But yeah, they're rebuilding, and I don't know whether they have it's 50% or what it may be, because we hear all kinds of numbers, but they aren't totally fangless yet. I mean, they they can't match us, but they aren't totally fangless, and they are still dangerous. Fortunately, you know, they're still American lives that could be lost.

SPEAKER_00 30:00

No, I mean that's that is very cute. I love that you said that because, you know, let's talk about what happens if this diplomacy seems to fail. Because, like you were saying when we started talking, is Iran's they can be unpredictable. You know, we are currently in a ceasefire, but you know, the satellite imagery shows that they're using this pause to dig out their missile bases and trying to rebuild their offensive capabilities.

SPEAKER_01 30:26

Yeah, and you really, if you're going to have a ceasefire, part of the provisions or you don't start rebuilding that stuff back, you know, because then you arrive back at square one. And Trump doesn't want to be in a position politically where he's back at square one. Now, listen, here's the thing. You know, Trump, Trump's an interesting guy to study. You know what I mean? He's unlike anybody we ever had, but he has been consistent. On the one hand, he was he came out and criticized moving into Iran and into Iraq and questioned the presidents of WND weapons of mass destruction when wasn't popular to do that. It turns out he's largely correct. Now, technically, I don't mean to be technical about this. Saddam did have chemical weapons. We look at NBC nuclear biological chemical, that's weapon mass destruction. But we there's been no evidence of atomic or nuclear weapons. And uh so Trump was right about that. But Trump also has been consistent. And you go back years and years and years about not about knocking the hell out of Iran, as he would say, and not ever letting have nuclear weapons. So he's not been inconsistent. Some there are some critics who say, well, you promised no endless wars, but yet here we are again. What's happening is not inconsistent with Trump's, you know, with his with what he has said. But at the same time, I think, I don't think he's trying to be inconsistent with his call for no endless war versus his desire to defame Iran militarily. But, you know, you go back in, are they going to be well they will they rebuild their missile capabilities to the point they make it impossible for him to pull out when he might want to pull out because now they're hitting Israel again or hitting UAE or hitting some of our Sunni allies over there, or even hitting some of our assets. And, you know, if they they hit one of our ships or something like that, it could be a real problem. Um there they don't have any subs that are operational, we don't believe, at this point. You know, if you read, if you ever read uh, I think it was Red Storm Rising, I can't remember which one it was, where you had the Clancy writes about the Iranian sub that sneaks out and sings the hypothetical carrier USS Thomas Jefferson. Iran doesn't have the ability to do that, but they can inflict some damage. And if there were to hit one of our ships that took a ship out, ship sunk, then you're looking, that's why that is the danger of a hair trigger being ignited from which there's a point of no return. So, you know, so what do you do? If you're Trump, you want the uranium, you want uranium, you you, and you want the Gulf open, and you want a more moderate regime, even though Pete and and the president have said it's not about regime change, you really want that, whether you say it's about it or not. I think we all would like to see that. So it goes back, again, hearkening to what we say, the next three weeks are going to be crucial. They can re maybe they rebuild their missiles, but if you take out their, you know, if you if you totally choke them down, going hearkening back to a point you made about what the President Reagan did with the Soviets, if you totally choke them economically, no matter what missiles they got. I mean, the Soviet Union continue continued to be dangerous with more nukes than anybody, even when they fell apart economically. So if you choke them down economically by continuing the blockade and maybe even by seizing control of CARG, you know, you might bring them to their knees that way as well. No one has done that. I mean, we basically even the most severe sanctions have been relative slaps on the wrist. They have still managed to sell a lot of oil to China. Russia's somewhat self-sufficient, but China's the largest consumer of crude oil in the world. So they've been able to sell a lot of oil there and maintain their ability to remain financially solid. Tell China to buy the oil from us, we'll give them a better deal. But so it's there's a lot that's still up in the in the air, Joe, on which way this could go.

SPEAKER_00 34:10

Yeah, I do it. Does our government, or at least it seems like, or not it seems like, does it seem in any capacity that we may have a blind spot to the ceasefire in what maybe the general public isn't seeing what our government's doing in terms of, hey, this could be something that could come out of left field that nobody's really thinking about.

SPEAKER_01 34:33

Well, I mean, do we have a blind spot to Iran's track record? Yeah. I mean, I I mean, I would certainly hope the Trump administration doesn't have a blind spot to Iran's track record. But I think I think Trump wants out. Listen, here's the thing about it. Uh I think he he wants to accomplish his objectives, but Trump is in some ways you might call him a political genius. He's like nothing we've ever seen. Uh you know, even when you go back to 2016, 2015 and 2016, uh, leading up to the uh election 2015, he was laughing at him, you know, and laughing him off. I remember the the famous film clip of Ann Colker saying he would be the nominee, they laugh laughed her off. He's got a unique ability to connect with his base in a way that we've never seen from any president. So he has a base he can connect with who are going to defend him, come hell or high order. And, you know, that may be 70 million folks, who knows what the number is. But at the same time, he doesn't want to undergo tremendous defeat in the midterms. And uh, you know, because if the Democrats take control of Congress, they they're gonna impeach, regardless of whether they have a high crime or misdemeanor as the Constitution requires. That doesn't matter, they'll make something up. We've seen they make things up. And so he, you know, he's got to at some point pivot back to the economy. And right now, um, I'm looking at gas lead prices here, they're probably cheaper here than they are in Michigan. I'm looking across the way uh at$379 at a marathon station. You know, yeah, we're about the same. But you know, that was$279, you know, back during the holidays. But you know, so it's gone up a dollar, and of course, there's still residual inflation from a number of other things that have gone on as well. It took forever to get the price of bacon down, you know, and it still isn't fully down. You have you have kitchen table issues that are going that will allow the Democrats to, you know, to pick up the ball and and run to the end zone. And so I say all that to say I think Trump is looking, he's kind of in a predicament, he's looking for a way out, a face-saving way out, because uh I don't think he can afford to be fully engaged, you know, after it. You know, traditionally, you know, the midterms or the fall election season starts, or it used to start around Labor Day. Now it's I guess already started to agree. But I've I've said that he's got to be out by June, you know, and I I'm just thinking in terms of political calculus, not necessarily militarily, but in terms of political political calculus, if he's out by noon and by June, he still has time to claim victory if he can achieve something that appears to be an empirical victory and give the price of gasoline an opportunity to come back down, which will bring other prices and stabilize those as well. So he's gonna he's kind of ticking against the clock, which is another factor here that we've got to kind of look at. Because I'm I'm guaranteeing he's got his eyes on the uh on the Congress. And there was a Cook political report that came out. Maybe you saw it just yesterday or day before. Uh four uh you know Democrat you know, Republican seats, including the one that I ran for here in North Carolina, who came in second to my buddy Mike Watley. The North Carolina seat is one of four that Cook is saying is now leading leaning Democrat, and that's in the state here in North Carolina. Trump was won three times, uh, that has a Republican General Assembly, that has a Republican Supreme Court, Democrat governor, unfortunately, Democrat Attorney General, and and a couple of other offices. But he can't afford to lose those seats, and he especially can't afford to lose a majority in the House of Representatives, because if we spend the last two years of the second Trump administration dealing with impeachment again, you know, all we're gonna do is have weakness in Gredlock, and it's gonna it's gonna take attention away from more important things.

SPEAKER_00 38:17

Yes, no, I mean the the the country just we cannot handle going through two years of that. Whether you like the president or you don't, that we just got too much going on to be stuck in that malarkey because that was just it was such a distraction from everything else we had going on. And we might have been able to get ahead of some of the problems that we've had as a nation if we weren't so focused on that. Exactly you know, and that's and that's kind of where that goes. And I, you know, and that's that's part of the reason why why I have the middle ground, right? Because it's, you know, like I tell everybody, we got to be able to talk to one another, like, you know, 30 years, 40 years ago, yeah, your neighbor might have been a Democrat or Republican, but you could sit there and have a cup of coffee with them and go, Yeah, Johnny's kind of weird, but he's a good guy, takes care of his family, and goes to work. You know, and now you you can't do that anymore. So it's you know, sometimes somebody could go the sky's blue and you're gonna have a ride saying it's green.

SPEAKER_01 39:10

And that's that's that's by design, unfortunately.

SPEAKER_00 39:14

It is 1000%. And that's where I think a lot of people are nervous about Iran, right? They're like, is this by design? And from just my knowledge, obviously, a lot more closer to it is is this has been something that's been bubbling for a long time. And this is just kind of and it it just things kind of just hit ahead with where it's at, and that's kind of why we're at where we're at. And who knows if this would have happened, but with another president, I think it would have, regardless. You know, we just have a president that was willing to go that extra further step, and I don't think sometimes the news does an accurate job of portraying how happy a lot of the Iranian people are with what's going on. I follow a uh well, she's 40, but a young lady named uh Goldie Gamari. And, you know, she's uh Canadian, she's Canadian, but her parents are from Iran, she's from there, and she talks about how everybody she knows there is so happy about our actions there.

SPEAKER_01 40:15

This appears to be the case. Everything we've seen, there's a there's an underground swell of support. Yeah, you know, you go back and Obama gives them billions of dollars on a tarmac, and now they're they're seeing, seeing, they're hoping to see glimpses of freedom. And uh and we wish that for them. But you, you know, uh as I've said, somebody said, well, what would you advise the president to do? I've I've I've had that question. Yeah, I used to have a uh you know classified clearance uh back in my Navy days, and on anymore. And so that my first response is I haven't seen, I don't know what all classified types of information the president's looking at. Right, that's bold, right? Yeah, it happened fast.

SPEAKER_00 40:56

Very, very fast. Yeah, right. Uh you know, as we as we wind down here, is there anything that to you that the media just seems to completely miss the point on, right? They it just goes whoop right over their head that the American public should know. Right, right. Yeah, you know, and and that's the kind of clarity you only get from someone that's been in these situations. You know, former Navy JAG officer, you know, federal prosecutor, national security advisor. Where can people follow your work and stay up to speed on everything that you're tracking? You know, that's uh that's it, we're all on the internet these days. Uh, you know, do you have to tell everybody about I believe you have a book that is out there right now as well? Yeah, no, everybody needs a good book. I I love reading them. You know, folks, if this conversation hit different for you, share it, send it to someone who needs to understand what is actually happening with Iran right now. Because this is just not background crazy stuff. This is the story that can reshape the global economy, the Middle East, and U.S. foreign policy for the next decade, or who knows how long to be, you know. So we will stay on this, and I'll see you next time. Don, I really thank you for coming on and joining the show. It's been a pleasure to have you. Yeah, I would love it. All right, thank you everybody for tuning in, and we'll see you all again next time.