A Radical Reset

America First: Understanding Trump's Iran Strategy

Herby Season 1 Episode 32

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Trump is acting as the President of the United States first and foremost, not as the President of Israel, taking a measured approach to Iran while considering broader global implications. His careful deliberation demonstrates a chess player's strategic thinking rather than impulsiveness, focusing on preventing unintended consequences.

• Trump has ruled out US troops on the ground and nation-building
• "A people hire A people, but B people hire C people" - Trump has assembled an A-team cabinet
• Israel has established air superiority over Iran and is likely targeting the Ayatollah
• Iran poses an existential threat to both Israel and America with its nuclear program
• Trump is considering all scenarios, including regime collapse and regional power vacuums
• The situation connects to China's oil dependency and Russia's economic challenges
• Unlike previous administrations, Trump prioritizes strategic thinking over political grandstanding
• Trump's legacy depends on this critical decision about Iran's nuclear facilities

Remember that in complex international situations, there are no solutions—only trade-offs. Trump is carefully weighing these trade-offs to ensure American interests are protected.


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Speaker 1:

Happy Friday everybody. It's me, herbie K, your host on a Radical Reset, and today we're going to continue our discussion on what's going on in the Middle East, because how could we not? But at the same time, I'm going to perhaps share a little different perspective, which is that President Trump is acting like the president of the United States, not the president of Israel. Now let me explain what I'm saying, and, by the way, I couldn't agree more. Even though I am Jewish and a Zionist, I, like most American Jews, put the word American first and if push comes to shove, we're going to take America's side. Now, in this particular conflict, there is no side to take. America and Israel are on the same page, but not in the same position on the page, so understand this. First of all, let's go through some of the objections of people who I consider to be useful idiots of the Iranians, like Tucker Carlson. Tucker Carlson might be the king of the useful idiots for the Iranians and he makes the case that we're going to get drawn into another forever war and we're going to have to, you know, get involved and ultimately end up having to rebuild the country, et cetera, et cetera. You've heard this the forever wars. Now, those of you who have listened to me for any prolonged period of time know that nobody's been a bigger opponent of forever wars than me.

Speaker 1:

Nation building is an enormous mistake, but in this case, president Trump has already ruled that out. There will not be US troops on the ground. There's just no possibility of that. Okay, so there's not going to be any nation building. Unlike Iraq War Two, where we stupidly went into Iraq and tried to rebuild it from the ground up in a culture that we knew not next to nothing, absolutely nothing about, and created a mess. Unlike Afghanistan, where we did exactly the same thing. In this case, we are resisting the urge. There are no American troops on landing ships or anywhere else getting ready to land, nor are any European powers looking to line up troops. So let's take a look at the situation and let's just reject that as the useful, idiot argument.

Speaker 1:

So here's where President Trump is and here's why I think he laid down the two weeks that he said he's going to think about it and act. And the key word is he was going to act within two weeks, because President Trump is notorious for not telling people his plans before he does it, because only a moron would do that. You know, when the press asks things like when's the attack going to be, that's a moron question and President Trump's not going to answer it. Now, president Obama would have answered it and President Biden, the senile, would have answered it, because they were both incompetent. But one of the reasons, one of the ways to judge presidents and put aside whether you agree with them on the issues or not okay, there's an old management axiom I've used it before, I'm going to use it again in this context, and then I'm going to continue my thoughts which is A people hire A people, but B people hire C people.

Speaker 1:

When I say an A person, I mean a person secure in his or her own ego and so secure that they can surround themselves with advisors that are smarter than they are, or at least as smart as they are, and not feel threatened and their egos be you know, somehow overwhelmed. Now I know you Trump derangement. People are going to scream out that Trump's an egomaniac. But this is because you are stupid. Now remember the definition of stupidity that I've used. This doesn't mean you're unintelligent, it means you're stupid. Stupid means you're unwilling to consider any other piece of evidence except those that confirm your own inherent bias, which you've picked up by being a member of a group, in this case progressivism, and you're afraid to put your hand up, even if you know you're full of shit or even consider that you're full of shit, because you simply can't deviate from your group and you have lots of reasons why you don't want to destroy your career. Yada, yada, yada, whatever it might be, but the point is you're stupid. So when I say that Trump is an A person and is unthreatened by his ego, I'm basing it on evidence, not on hyperbole from the moron fringe. And the evidence, I say, is look at his cabinet.

Speaker 1:

Scott Pessant was one of the foremost finance managers and hedge fund managers in the world, respected by everybody on Wall Street, left and right, almost positive was a one-time Democrat, if not possibly still a Democrat I don't think he's a Democrat now, but I think he was but clearly a powerhouse. Marco Rubio, the senator from Florida, with a deep foreign policy background and certainly more experience than Donald Trump has in the area, and yet he still made him Secretary of State Okay. Howard Ludnick at Commerce Again a huge hedge fund manager from Wall Street. David Katz, who's the head of AI Okay. Again. Same thing, big guy from Silicon Valley, billionaire, extremely smart. Again, trump surrounds himself with it. Linda McMahon, again powerful woman, founder of an entire business empire in the fighting business, a real killer, and you couldn't be around her if you were weak of ego. Doug Burnham, major self-made billionaire, a former governor of North Dakota, now the Secretary of the Interior.

Speaker 1:

The point I make is that Trump surrounds himself with A-level people. Tulsi Gabbard, his national security advisor. She is anything but a wilting violet. All of these people have big egos and the reason it doesn't bounce off Trump or doesn't offend Trump is because he's an A person. A people hire A people, but B people hire C people. Now, before I go on to explain a B, because you're going to think I'm being partisan, I'll just name another A person, only this time a Democrat.

Speaker 1:

President Clinton was an A person. He surrounded himself with people like Robert Rubin, okay, and Robert Reich at Labor, who a lot of people don't like, but he's not a dummy by any stretch. Larry Summers, the Treasury after Robert Rubin, you know, was Larry Summers in that administration? I think he was. Anyway, these are former president of Harvard, yada, yada. President Clinton was anything but a shrinking violet. It's been a while so I can't remember the names of everyone in his cabinet, but it struck me at the time and it strikes me now that he was and is an A person. He is unthreatened by other egos. He was always the best and the brightest, and so surrounding himself with more best and brightest didn't threaten that in his mind. He's just a very, very secure guy, not necessarily the smartest guy, although very smart and President Trump is very smart, but not necessarily Albert Einstein, but unafraid to listen to people, especially with expertise in areas they don't have. Both the Democrat Clinton and the Republican President Trump.

Speaker 1:

Now, when you take a look at President Obama, who had a notoriously thin skin, he picked Joe Biden. Oh, that's another thing. President Trump picked JD Vance, who is anything but a B person. He's an A-plus person. But President Biden? President Obama picked the B person, which was Biden. Biden was a longtime mediocrity. He was a failed presidential candidate since the 70s. He was a lightweight intellectually, by all evidence, and he was just, and on top of that he's mean and corrupt. But that's who Obama picked because he knew he could dominate him. And then what he did is what most presidents do with their vice presidents is he shoved them off in a corner and forgot about them. In fact, it was Obama who once said never underestimate Joe's ability to fuck things up. Feel free to look that up. That is word for word, a quote from Barack Obama. But Obama then hired the C person and then the Democrats. Because they manipulated the system. The C guy gets nominated as president of the United States while senile.

Speaker 1:

I believe the greatest scandal in US history yet to unfold by the way slight digression, those of you who are wondering why Pam Bondi another A person at Attorney General has not yet filed charges against any of these people is that it takes at least a year to build up a strong case in court before you bring it. Patience, people, patience, grasshopper. The Trump administration's only been in office five months. Calm down, calm down, it's coming. Just be patient. Okay, so we get a C person. He hires a D person Kamala Harris as empty as, I'd say, a suit, but as empty a dress or dress whatever you want to call it that there's ever been. And of course, she manages to pick an F person Tim Walz is her vice president. Think about what I'm telling you. So Donald Trump is a very secure person who surrounds himself with other very, very bright and talented people, which is not to say he always gets it right, but he always gets the best advice possible.

Speaker 1:

Now, in this instance, he's acting again, as I said, as the president of the United States, not the president of Israel, and I, as an American, putting my Jewishness and my Zionism aside, find it reassuring that the president is taking his time to think this all the way through. Look, israel has established absolute air superiority over Iran. America doesn't have to attack today. It doesn't have to All the crazies who want to go out and attack immediately and haven't thought about the next step and are all playing checkers. I've told you before and I'll say it again Donald Trump plays chess, and what he's considering is, after we create the potentially by bombing a Fordo and taking out the nuclear program and with Israel consciously targeting the Ayatollah himself.

Speaker 1:

And Israel is going to kill the Ayatollah. He's a dead man walking. There's going to be a power vacuum, and so Donald Trump is taking his time to find out what the plan is on the part of Israel and the other Arab countries. Saudi Arabia, the UAE, oman God Almighty, I can never think of the name where the negotiations have been taking place, because everyone pronounces it differently Not Oman. Anyway, it'll come to me. All of these Arab countries that are part of the Abraham Accords Jordan, now Syria which Israel, by the way, has been flying over as friendly territory now that the Assad regime is gone, and that's how they're getting to Iran, in case any of you are curious, they're overflying Syria All of these countries are going to be involved in what happens if there's a power vacuum created by the fall of the Ayatollah.

Speaker 1:

So what Trump is looking at is what if the government, the regime, falls? And what if the regime doesn't fall, and what to expect next, because it's a much more complicated issue for the United States than Israel. Israel is concerned with an existential threat to the country itself and, to a lesser extent, iran is an existential threat to us. Because, folks, if you haven't thought it through and I'm speaking particularly again to the useful idiots like Tucker Carlson who say that Iran is not a threat to us because they're too far away you don't need a ballistic missile to attack with a nuclear weapon. You can sail a boat into New York Harbor and detonate. Now. A ground blast won't kill as many people as an air blast, but it'll still kill a million or two people, and that would be plenty bad enough. So please don't tell me that Iran is not a direct existential threat to the United States. If you say that again, you are a useful idiot for Iran.

Speaker 1:

Now Trump is considering all of that. If the regime doesn't fall, trump has to consider is their entire nuclear ability taken out? Will they have the ability to reform at least a crude nuclear warhead and will they try to detonate at New York Harbor or some other place where there are a lot of Americans? He has to consider that. What happens if the regime falls? What's likely to take its place? How will that fit into our negotiations?

Speaker 1:

For example, china gets 43% of its oil from Iran alone. It gets all of its oil from the Middle East. Well, not all of it. It gets some from Venezuela and some I don't think we sell to it. Do we sell oil to China? We might. I'm not positive, but I'm sure we're going to. Under the deal and that's the other element here the Chinese play into this. Not that they're going to come into the side of Iran, but this is heavily affecting their energy supply when their own economy is teetering on the brink.

Speaker 1:

Consequently, xi you'll notice, president Xi has not made any bellicose comments about Israel. He's issued a few lukewarm. We support Iran and we support negotiations, and he's supporting the negotiations that supposedly are going to go on today between the European Union and the Iranians in Oman. And that's fine, that's all theater. None of that is going to come to anything. The Iranians are playing a stall game. The Ayatollah can't possibly surrender on the nuclear issue. I don't think, because if he did, the regime would lose its credibility among its own people and would probably fall. But we don't really understand that culture. We just think we do. Trump is wise enough, not. He has made it crystal clear we are not going in there whatsoever. But that doesn't mean he's not concerned about what is going to go in and what is going to take the place of the regime, because it will directly affect, for example, as I just said, our negotiations with China. Okay, will the Iranian oil supply continue to be a reliable source of energy for China? And if not, will the United States want to negotiate to provide more oil to China from us and make more money on our side? And what are the ramifications of all of this? That's part one.

Speaker 1:

Part two is Russia. Now, if those of you who, again, I'm sure that everyone's been transfixed by this Middle Eastern thing. But the day before yesterday, the those of you who, again, I'm sure that everyone's been transfixed by this Middle Eastern thing. But the day before yesterday, the head of the Russian Central Bank came out and said in a very unusual statement that Russia is slipping into a recession. Now, russians don't usually admit that in public, so for that to be admitted. That explains why suddenly, if you haven't noticed, putin has become more reasonable. He said a couple of days ago that he's willing to negotiate with zelensky, even face to face, or any ukrainians. He's willing, he wants to, to start the negotiations as soon as possible. He's pushed this thing as far as he can go and he's in the country, is in terrible economic straits and trump, of course, wants to settle that war as well. Trump would like. Trump hates war. Anyone who understands donald trump has known for the last 20 or 30 years at least, he has been consistently anti-war, even during the so-called popular wars, when most people were falling for the joke of regime change. Donald Trump was even then saying stupid, stupid, stupid. So everybody needs to relax, including my fellow Jews, because he's acting in a responsible, thoughtful way as President of the United States, considering his options, listening to his A-list advisors before he makes a decision.

Speaker 1:

Now, ultimately, do I think we're going to take out the reactors? I'm positive we're going to take out the reactors, but will that mean take it out by missiles? Well, another possibility of this two-week delay is that we're moving special forces between Israel and the United States in to try to take it without sending in the missiles. What if we send in special forces, which is not the same as landing troops that do regime change? And what if we you know, israel has so completely infiltrated the Iranian regime? It is likely that they've infiltrated Fordo as well. What if they've got somebody on the inside who is going to and I'm speaking in the most simplistic of terms. I know there's more to it than what I'm about to say but what if someone's going to unlock the door and leave the front door open for the Israeli commandos to come in and take out the facility? Well, and then, of course, they could be certain of destruction.

Speaker 1:

One of the problems is that we've never actually used the 30,000 pound Moab bomb to take out a deep bunker like this before we blew up a mountain in Tora Bora and it fried the mountain, but there was nothing like the facility there that what's going on underneath Fordo. So we think we'll take it out by using multiple bombs, one after another, to get down to 300 feet and blow it up, but we're not 100% positive. However, if we did it by commando raid, it would be 100% positive because once inside they could evacuate everybody out of the structure, plant bombs, set the timer, walk out, close the door and, kaboom, that's the end of it. So that's another possibility. Everybody has got to stop speculating without any knowledge whatsoever. So my advice to everyone is take a deep breath, be happy that we have a president who's secure enough not to be forced into making a rash decision for political reasons, like I'll tell you, one of the most vile decisions of any president in my lifetime After Barack Obama was the president lucky enough that the intelligence people found Osama bin Laden and he gave the order to take him out and we captured all of that stuff.

Speaker 1:

Instead of keeping it a secret until after we had a chance to analyze the intelligence, he immediately announced it to the world, rendering all of that intelligence we collected completely worthless, because once al-Qaeda knew that we had it and that we had gotten bin Laden. We didn't even have a day to analyze it. Obama came out and crowed to the world I got him, I got him, we got him. Look how brave we are. Yeah, we got him. And then we flushed all the value of that intelligence right down the toilet and God only knows how many American lives that wasted. By the way, my background one of the many things I've done in my life is I worked at the National Security Agency as a Russian linguist and I have a strong background in intelligence and I know the first thing.

Speaker 1:

Rule number one is don't tell the enemy you've got their stuff. I mean, you've got to be out of your mind. You might as well just announce to the world we have your stuff and now it's useless because we told you. But that's what Barack Obama did. That's why he was a B person. He needed his ego stroke. He needed the approbation of knocking off Osama bin Laden.

Speaker 1:

But Trump is nothing like that at all and Trump is going to say yes, trump is hyperbolic. But, as I've told you guys, with Trump derangement, the man is an honest liar. He lies about stuff that is meaningless. He's hyperbolic. It was the biggest crowd. It was the biggest, the most important bill, it's the most people that ever loved me. I have the highest. That's all. Yeah, a lot of that's baloney, but it's all just hyperbole and it means it's unimportant. It's like it's. It's on the same level when you go over to someone's house and you're served dinner and it's absolutely vile, and yet you tell whoever cooked it the husband or the wife or both of you loved it and how delicious it was. I call that therapeutic lying. Trump does a lot of therapeutic lying, but it doesn't mean anything. It's just talk about anything that matters.

Speaker 1:

I can't think of a single instance where Trump has lied on a major issue and I invite you to email me if you can, but I'll save you a lot of time. He doesn't lie on anything that's remotely important. He's not a politician, he's an executive who happens to be in a political position and that's a very, very different thing. And his first term he was learning how to be political and now he knows and he had four years to plan for it and he's been extraordinarily effective, whether you love him or you hate him. And I don't agree with him on everything, as you guys know, on immigration, I have a strong disagreement on a lot of it, but overall the man acts prudently and has definitely got the A-team on board.

Speaker 1:

Just because I disagree with someone like, for example, tom Holman at ICE doesn't mean I think he's an idiot or a fool. I disagree with the way he goes about things. I don't think he's stupid and that's because I'm not deranged. Okay, there are people in the progressive wing that I'd like to say I don't think are stupid, but I think progressivism itself is stupid, because the objective evidence, regardless of the position they take, whether it's national healthcare, whether it's opening the border, whether it's all this multiple gender crap, it's all based on nonsense. There's no objective reality backing up progressivism. It's a philosophy of stupidity at its root. And then it's like progressives are like toddlers, sticking their fingers in the ear so they don't want to hear anything and going la la, la, la, la la la when they don't want to hear what their parents have to say. Okay, on the other hand, on the right, we have a very similar thing forming the Tucker Carlson moron wing of the Republican party.

Speaker 1:

I knew Tucker Carlson was a moron when he went to Russia and had to go on and on and on about how inexpensive and beautiful everything was in Russian stores, without informing his viewers that a lot of the the reason it's less expensive is the state subsidizes it, because the per capita income in russian in russia, pardon me is, uh, about 20 of what it is in the united states. You know, figures lie and liars figure. My friend and morons or stupids, I should call them lie stupidly. Tucker carlson is a stupid and he's an anti-Semite and that's all there is to it. But anyway, let's review the podcast and I will close for today and send you on your merry way for the weekend, and me too, trump, to my relief and approval, and reinforcing what I thought I already knew, to make me know that I already know it. Does that make any sense? That was a really bizarro sentence. Forgive me if that made no sense, but you get the drift of what I'm saying. He's reaffirmed to me that he's a thoughtful chess-playing man and he's playing chess here and he's thinking through the moves after the fall and that's just plain smart and it's in the US interest to do that, because our interests are far greater than Israel's interests worldwide, as I, as I said, I just say this in review, not that you don't remember it already, but the Chinese.

Speaker 1:

The Chinese and Russia's situation all links in with this for different reasons, and Trump is making sure that. Remember he's in his last term. This is this is his second term. He's not going to be able to run for re-election. This is about his legacy, too, and the world he leaves, and the decision that he makes in the next couple of days or so to take out that reactor and then from there go on or that facility, I should say and then go on from there and what's going to happen next will be the most important decision he has ever made in his life period. His entire legacy rests upon a correct decision, and the fact that he's taking a moment to do it is reassuring, and so all of you out there who are like me and are Zionists are wondering why doesn't he go? Why doesn't he go? This is not taco.

Speaker 1:

Trump doesn't always chicken out. Trump is playing chess while all the checkers players are yelling chicken, chicken, chicken. Because they would have acted, and then we would have done what we always do, which is create a mountain of unintended consequences that we never contemplated to begin with that end up causing more problems than the ones that we thought we solved, as Thomas Sowell has so famously said, and I've said it before and I'll say it again as Thomas Sowell has so famously said, and I've said it before and I'll say it again, there are no solutions, only trade-offs. So Trump is carefully weighing the trade-offs that we're about to undertake to make sure that, in the end, they are heavily weighted in favor of the United States. And so with that I close this podcast. I wish you a happy, happy weekend. God bless your family and God bless America. Talk to you next week.