Is the U.S. Starting Another Illegal War? | EYES ON GEOPOLITICS

We break down the rising tensions with Iran, from the U. S. military buildup to the real strike options on the table and what escalation could look like. With Mick Mulroy, Marc Polymeropoulos, Andy Milburn, and Iran expert Jonathan Hackett, we examine the strategic, legal, and regional implications—and what it means for U. S. policy and the Iranian people. Jon Hackett's Book: https://a.co/d/082z28uY Montana Security Conference ⬇️ https://mi1.suitsandspooks.com/ Support the show on Patreon:⬇️ https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouse Subscribe to our new newsletter!!!! https://teamhousepodcast.kit.com/join New merch, patches, and stickers! ⬇️ https://theteamhouse-shop.fourthwall.com Check out Mick's new podcast here:⬇️ Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/at/podcast/pub-and-porch-applied-stoicism/id1836955475 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1k3QPmkAMwnGJxMLDwUSSd?si=n6piIu8XRcag1Z0K43A3bQ Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@UCd0Hq6QFk8CoTu5j-VU0Ong Find Mick Mulroy here: Fogbow ⬇️ https://fogbow.com/ Lobo Institute ⬇️ https://www.loboinstitute.org/ Twitter ⬇️ https://x.com/mickmulroy?s=21&t=-Ze3F_Ix2vlJ18KFvORTCA LinkedIn ⬇️ https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-patrick-mulroy-31198b52/ Bluesky ⬇️ https://bsky.app/profile/mickmulroy.bsky.social Mick’s publications ⬇️ https://www.loboinstitute.org/publications/publications-of-michael-mick-patrick-mulroy/ Find Marc P here: https://x.com/Mpolymer Find Andy Milburn here: Twitter ⬇️ https://twitter.com/i/flow/login?redirect_after_login=%2Fandymilburn8 LinkedIn ⬇️ https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrewmilburn2023 Substack ⬇️ https://amilburn.substack.com/ Andy’s book ⬇️ https://www.amazon.com/When-Tempest-Gathers-Mogadishu-Operations Bluesky ⬇️ https://bsky.app/profile/andy-milburn.bsky.social Find Jason Lyons here: LinkedIn ⬇️ https://www.linkedin.com/in/jason-lyons-666873316?u Bluesky ⬇️ https://bsky.app/profile/bgsilverback73.bsky.social "Karl Casey @ White Bat Audio" 0:00 — Start 01:00 — U. S. Military Buildup 04:30 — How Iran Thinks 10:00 — Geneva Talks & Regime Odds 12:20 — U. S. Strike Options 17:30 — Are Decapitation Strikes Legal? 23:00 — Iran’s Asymmetric Response 35:30 — Carrier Readiness & Limits 49:00 — Regime Change vs Deal 01:02:30 — What Comes Next Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=rss.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 1:07Speaker 02

  Hey, what's up, guys? This is Dee. Do us a favor and check out our Patreon page. It's patreon.com/the team house. You get both Team House episodes and Eyes on Geopolitics episodes completely ad-free. You get them early, too. You can ask us questions. You can also watch the Team House episodes live as we shoot them. So, and you help support the show and support what we're doing here. It's patreon.com/the team house. Those links are in the description, or if you're listening, it's in the show notes down below, so you can click it real quick and easy. And it helps us keep the lights on. So, we appreciate it, and we appreciate you guys listening. Thanks a bunch.

• 1:49Speaker 02

  Hey, everybody. Welcome to another episode of Eyes on Geopolitics. I'm here with Mick Mulroy, Mark Palimoropoulos, and Jonathan Hackett. I think Andy Milburn will be joining us soon. Lot happening. U.S. just beat Canada in the gold medal game in the Olympics in overtime. Incredible game. Yep.

• 2:08Speaker 03

  He is a communist. He was rooting against Americans.

• 2:10Speaker 02

  I wasn't rooting against America. I was more apathetic to the whole thing. That's, that's the best I'll give it to you. I mean, I gave a little, I didn't really fist pump when Jackie scored. But anyway, it was a really good game.

• 2:23Speaker 03

  Go down to the street, go see AOC and have your little latte with her.

• 2:27Speaker 02

  I would love to, to be honest. Uh, happy to buy Eric a latte. Lot happening as usual. Uh, we brought John on, of course, because John is like our resident expert in Iran and things seem to be heating up. We have a ton of, uh, assets in and around the area.

• 2:45Speaker 04

  See how we do that?

• 2:47Speaker 02

  That's beautiful, man.

• 2:48Speaker 04

  That's beautiful.

• 2:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. Check out John's book.

• 2:51Speaker 04

  And I have it ready. I just pull it out for them.

• 2:54Speaker 02

  Iran shot shadow weapons covert action, intelligence operations, unconventional warfare. It's out now. That link is in the description.

• 3:03Speaker 02

  Yeah. So a lot happening. We have a ton of assets in the, in the Gulf, in and around the area, in and around Iran. Um, as much as we've had in 20 years, but outside of the ground forces. Um, so we really are showing the stick. Uh, I don't know. There is a meeting planned on Thursday with, um, Iranian Foreign Minister and Whitkoff and Jared Kushner. I don't know if that's like for a new hotel or anything, or actually this Iran deal. But yeah, that's pretty much what's happening. Obviously everything else in the world is exploding as well, but that's what's, you know, dominating the headlines. So guys, welcome and you guys can mud wrestle for who wants to go first.

• 3:48Speaker 04

  Well, I gotta jump early, unfortunately. So, well, um, where to start? You, you, I think you were right. We have probably as much air power, uh, arrayed for this as we did and maybe even surpassed, um, the 2003 invasion of Iraq, which me and Mark were intimately involved with, not the air power. Uh, and a considerable amount of naval force, right? So this looks like it's headed either to force Iran into an agreement, although it seems unlikely if we maintain the maximal position of having to zero enrichment, including significant restrictions on the ballistic missile program, maybe even proxy force support.

• 4:32Speaker 04

  If they do not accept that, and they haven't accepted that, and according to some, they haven't even acknowledged the red lines that we have. Um, even though, as Mark just pointed out, the meeting is on Thursday, that might be to hear if they have come along to our side.

• 4:51Speaker 04

  And and want to avoid what looks like to be a fairly significant military confrontation between the US and Iran. If they do not, I do not see the US just simply turning tail and going home. I just don't see that happening. So unless they agree with, it has to be way better than the JCPOA politically for President Trump to accept it.

• 5:14Speaker 04

  It's going to be significant. Now, the question is going to be, is it going to be focused just on the nuclear sites? There's some indication that they've started rebuilding and reinforcing those sites. Uh, and the ballistic missile launch sites and manufacturing centers? Or is it also going to include direct targeting of the regime? And there's a lot, I don't know. It's hard to keep up with the stuff that's accurate, not accurate, but there's a lot of information, I should say, that they have started basically continuity of regime planning, meaning that they've started dispersing their leadership. They've started uh, having every key leader pick four successive leaders.

• 5:55Speaker 04

  Um, so it's clear that Iran, that indicates to me that they think it's going to happen, which means they know they're not going to go on Thursday and agree to what the United States is. So I will stop there thinking that potentially I'd like to see, as I hope everybody would, a diplomatic resolution to this, but it doesn't look like it's happening.

• 6:13Speaker 03

  Hey, John, can I ask you a question? It's actually great to have Iran experts here because, you know, Mick and I play them on TV. Um, and we're actually not really Iran experts. And and one of the things I think we have to have a little bit of humility on this. Um, but the the key question that I'm kind of really grappling with, and then perhaps you can shed some light, has to do with not US decision making, but Iranian decision making. And and I think it's just the notion, and but that does kind of reflect back to how does the US kind of grapple with the notion of if the Supreme Leader, if the Iranian leadership actually has made the calculation that that, you know, the military, a strike on them is actually worth it for regime survival? How can there actually be an agreement at that point?

• 6:54Speaker 03

  Um, and you know, so and I've been kind of mulling this and kind of contemplating this to see, you know, is there really a diplomatic opening here? Because if you go with that line of thinking that I was reading some former Israeli intelligence officials saying that that's the case, then how do you get out of this right now? Or is this a conflict just inevitable? If the Iranians really say like, hey, we're not going to back down to pressure, this is too much pride for us. And the US kind of holds that maximalist line, you know, where do we go from here now other than in a week or so ago, in the future, when these things are kind of go round and round again? We have this enormous force package ready to go. What are your thoughts, John?

• 7:35Speaker 05

  Yeah, so I'm thinking back to, I think it was 2006, when the Mossad director, Mer Dagan, said that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is not our rational, but he's rational, like within his own worldview, the things he's doing make sense to him. And I think this is the best way to think about how the regime is calculating what it's doing. There's two precedents for what's happening right now. The first is 1988, when the Iran-Iraq war was negotiated to end, and the previous Ayatollah said that this is a poison chalice that they have to drink from to end the war after a million people had just died on both sides. But that meant that they had to get to the point where a million people had died on both sides before drinking from that poison chalice, according to them. And then, of course, the other was the 2015 JCPOA, which was an imperfect agreement, but

• 8:19Speaker 05

  to them was a necessary agreement to get what they wanted after a very long time of pressure to reach that point, including the Stuxnet attack on their nuclear facilities and other things that really crippled the regime, not as publicly as people have seen, but did have effects on the regime. The point there is that they don't get there until it seems like everything else has been exhausted and there's no other choice for survival. And right now, they may not be calculating that they're at that point. True, they see all these forces arrayed against them, but there has been restraint, I guess you could call it, shown against Venezuela, for example, and also back in June last year, where the US didn't push beyond a certain strategic endpoint.

• 9:02Speaker 05

  Similar to 1991, when George Bush Senior decided not to push into Baghdad after Desert Storm, Desert Shield, there was a decision made to stop. I think the regime may be looking at those historic precedents and hoping within their own worldview that there's more to be squeezed out of this. And if we look at the JCPOA, you know, it was imperfect for one reason, that was because proxies were not included in that agreement to the West. And perhaps the West would like that now, but I feel like the proxies are so weakened and so destroyed that it's almost a throwaway that could be added to it that wouldn't really have a true effect in reality. Because Hezbollah is so crippled, Qatari Hezbollah is crippled, the Iraqi other PMF groups are so crippled. So you have to wonder, is it just two tracks?

• 9:44Speaker 05

  Is it nuclear and ICBM or MRBM missile limitations that are going to be built into this agreement? Or is it not even an agreement at all that the regime is looking for? Perhaps they're looking for a safe exit out of Iran into maybe Moscow or some country where they could be safe. And this is a facade where they're just looking like they're negotiating these things that are familiar to everyone. But instead, it could be actually they're trying to negotiate for their own survival, whatever that survival might look like.

• 10:07Speaker 03

  Do you think the United States, though, understands this? I mean, one of the worries, and I think, you know, we've talked about this on the show before, is, you know, there has been a howling out of Iran expertise in the US government. You know, the National Security Council staff, I don't think operates as it did in the past. And we have seen both at CIA and the State Department, kind of, you know, a lot of exodus of really smart folks. Do you think there are people around, you know, Kushner and Whitkoff and the administration who know what they're doing on this? I don't know the answer to that. I'm curious if you have confidence that they are being given this kind of analysis and advice that you just kind of put forward?

• 10:45Speaker 05

  I think they're not. And I think it's not necessarily because they don't want that. I think it's because it's not organic right now. Like, if you look back at 2015 and the years leading up to the JCPOA, you had kind of a concert of things happening together that it was organic. For example, John Kerry and Jawad Zareef walking together in Geneva, having private conversations. You had other people like Robert Malley. And in college in 1979, new members of the future regime as college students in the United States, they've had these relationships that had been built over decades. And it just doesn't organically exist in the current group of folks who are in Switzerland doing these negotiations.

• 11:26Speaker 03

  Andy, greetings. Good to see you guys.

• 11:32Speaker 03

  Any comments on the kind of current status of where we are? There was just an announcement on social media that Thursday might be a day in which Kushner and Whitkoff meet the Iranian Foreign Minister in Geneva. But it looks like there's one kind of one last gasp effort to avoid conflict.

• 11:49Speaker 06

  Yeah, I mean, are we, have we started a bet on this?

• 11:56Speaker 05

  On holy market, it's a 75% bet that by December 31st will be a new regime in Iran.

• 12:02Speaker 06

  Really?

• 12:03Speaker 04

  Well, I mean, isn't the guy, isn't that the chances of guys just gonna die? Isn't he like 84, right? Yeah. So there'll be a new regime. I don't know why you take that bet.

• 12:15Speaker 02

  You know, somebody in the NSC probably put some money on it.

• 12:20Speaker 04

  That's a big issue now. People betting on stuff they know.

• 12:27Speaker 06

  So, so almost for a moment I've had a loss for words because Mark, I, you know, if you're asking me what my prediction is, I, I just, I don't, I don't have one anymore. And, and here's why I'm not sure. I, I, if you were to ask senior members of the administration right now, this isn't necessarily a criticism, what is going to happen? I don't think anyone knows. I think it's, I think this could go, this could act out on a whim right up to the last minute. You know, we talked about the fact that this is, you know, we hate to use the term unprecedented. In fact, we try and avoid using that term on this show, but this is, this is a buildup in

• 13:12Speaker 06

  the Middle East that I think I'm, I think I'm correct in saying hasn't occurred since the earliest part of, you know, the century, right? I mean, not the early part of the century around the, around the beginning of the Iraq war. So to back down now or to find a compromise and then have to reposition all of these assets could definitely be seen as a credibility blow. You know, whether it's painted that way or not, we, you know, you and I, and probably I think a lot of people who listen to the show know how things work in the Middle East. And regardless how it is painted, it does appear, you know, we've been saying banging the drum, we're going to do this, we're going to do this, we're going to strike. Yeah.

• 13:57Speaker 06

  And then we don't. What is, what are the repercussions from that?

• 14:02Speaker 03

  Mick, I want to get before you, I know Mick, you gotta, you gotta go, but there's something that's been bugging me. I sent you a note the other day in our chat on this too. And that's the idea of, it seems like the administration, you know, keeps leaking their, their potential strike options. And then John, I want your take on this too. But Mick, the strike options, it's like, it's like, you know, going to a New Jersey diner. You know, you want to go, you know, order some, some, you know, fried eggs or a burger. And one of them has to do with, we're going to assassinate the leadership. And, you know, and to me that, first of all, there's a little humility there involved. I don't know if the United States has that level of granularity in terms of intelligence collection to do so. We're not the Israelis. But number two, and Mick, this goes to things you and I did in the past. You know, there are, there is international law on this.

• 14:45Speaker 03

  I don't know, you know, we are not at armed conflict with Iran. Under LOAC, we're not supposed to be able to do this until we are at conflict with them. And then there's the executive order 12333, which bans the assassination of foreign leaders. And I see nothing in the press about this, but for you and I, and Andy, I'll throw you in there too, for, you know, for practice and Jonathan, I mean, everybody, Dee, we're going to throw you in as well. You're coming on the covert action. Like this kind of stuff is what, how we don't go to jail. Like there is, I mean, you, you know, so it's not like a bunch of CIA and Marines are like, hey, let's go waxing people. Like there actually are rules behind this. There are lawyers attached to your hip everywhere. And so Mick, your, your thoughts that there's no debate on this. I mean, to me, I mean, you sat in that, that job as the, as the DAS D, I believe.

• 15:30Speaker 03

  You know, I mean, you don't just go assassinate, you know, you remember when, when Trump said, hey, I want to go kill Bashar al-Assad, it was written about in Bob Woodward's book. And I think the national security world was like, yeah, we really can't do that. Anyway, your thoughts on that, that menu option with the lack of any kind of legal underpinning. And of course I will throw out that Mick also is, went to law school. So this matters to you.

• 15:51Speaker 04

  There is that. So there's not a lot of debate on any of it, right? That's kind of surprising. Normally, you'd think that there'd be a lot of discussion, the president talking about it with the American people of why this is important, because it's, you know, the enemy gets a vote on this. This this might not just be surgical strikes and then it's over. This could be, you know, aircraft carriers that are struck by a missile. It could be, you know, soldiers, US soldiers that are killed sitting at a base somewhere. It could be clandestine ops against our, you know, soft targets and diplomats, right? It could be all the above. And, you know, Jonathan should talk about all their capabilities that they have that he lays out in this book. So there should be a discussion

• 16:33Speaker 04

  before we even have, I think, a direct confrontation. And folks that watch the show know that I supported this, the strikes against the nuclear facilities. So I'm not dovish on this. But there needs to be buy-in, because this might not go as smoothly as Venezuela, right? This could go sideways. We could have, you know, in addition to everything I just referenced, we could have pilots shot down, etc.

• 16:56Speaker 03

  Is it a decapitation strike on leadership? Is that legal? What is your view on that? As a former agent, pending unofficial and lawyer?

• 17:03Speaker 04

  Yeah, so it is. It is not legal to take out a leader of a country that we're not at war with, right? What's we're at war, which would be the same with us, right? So they would be essentially legal to try to take out our commander in chief. But we're not at war with them. We're we're doing this because, you know, at least what I think is we're trying to mitigate the threat of them acquiring nuclear weapon, which we, through multiple administrations, said is unacceptable. But to go after the leadership, even as despotic as it is, is another step, right? So we have no authority, we, you know, the executive branch and the DOD, to go to war with Iran. And we are taking that one step further, at

• 17:48Speaker 04

  least in the press, with debating whether we're going to take out the leadership. So there's a legal issue with it, but there's also a practical, like, okay, so say we do take out the leadership, who's going to take over? To be more amenable to joining an agreement with the United States, potentially not. The IRGC has historically been even more hawkish when it comes to acquiring a nuclear weapon than the Supreme Leader. So there is the legal legality, and then there's the actual practical effect of taking out the leadership, which might not be putting the United States in a better position. And certainly, it could destabilize the entire region, which is why I think so many countries are really concerned about what happens next. I would only add one more thing and then toss it to you guys.

• 18:34Speaker 04

  President Trump keeps saying limited.

• 18:38Speaker 04

  The way I'm reading that, and I could be wrong, is normally, as everybody in the military knows, you present a low, medium, and high threshold. Same thing in the agency, right? If you're saying limited, at least it indicates to me he's talking on the low end. And I don't think taking out the Supreme Leader would be considered the low end. So I don't know if it's legitimate that they're talking about this as one of the courses of action they're considering or not. Because, you know, I just wouldn't see that as a limited course of action.

• 19:08Speaker 03

  Jonathan, what do you think about that, that kind of assassination, you know, a regime decapitation strike as an opening? Legal? Isn't it smart as well? Is it smart?

• 19:21Speaker 05

  Yeah, I mean, I'm thinking back to the Qassem Soleimani assassination back in 2020, January 8th. And they're up before January 8th, and there's what is legal and what's possible. And with the assassination of Soleimani, they used the authorization for use of military force that was approved for war in Iraq. Like back to that 2003 buildup we were just talking about, that's what that was for. Nowhere in there does it mention Iran. You know, there's lots of, obviously, debate about and discussion about how that was like patently unlawful, according to international law, and according to our own law, because of who that person was and what he represented, as far as a political figure and a military figure from a sovereign country. But does that matter in terms of US decision making?

• 20:03Speaker 05

  Because like the Melian Dialogue for Thucydides, you know, the strong do what they can, the weak do what they must. And if the US is the major power, what relevance does the law have to that power? And that's like a moral ethical question. But when you have a National Security Council who's making decisions based on a single individual's direction, sometimes moral and ethical decision making is not put into there. And so thinking about the attorneys they have making these things, I don't remember John Yu put out the torture memo back in the early 2000s for Rumsfeld. I mean, the attorneys that are there are making opinions that have been kind of predetermined by the policy setter.

• 20:45Speaker 05

  So they say, we want a legal opinion that justifies this action and that legal opinion will justify that action, even if it's a very flimsy or tenuous connection to the moral, ethical and legal things behind it. And I wouldn't be surprised if a memo was being drafted in the past few weeks or memos very similar in structure where they basically just say, here are A, B and C reasons why this is lawful. And if an outside observer analyzes that, they would say, that's clearly not right. But the president's not interested in that analysis. He's looking for a legal justification because that's how international law works. There isn't, you know, a common law of international law. There's this thing that we agree to and that we uphold. And that's why we respond to the pressures of international outcry and hide behind our memos,

• 21:30Speaker 05

  regardless of how lawful they look. With Venezuela, you know, we had a thin justification for that. We've had thin justifications for invading Iraq. Remember, holding up the photograph at the UN Security Council showing the refrigerator trucks of chemical weapons and all that, despite those things not being true. And I think that's what the US will produce in this case, no matter what the option is, whether it's just striking nuclear facilities again, or if it's decapitating the regime, there will again be some small, thin justification made to hide behind in the international community, despite the US doing it no matter what.

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• 25:00Speaker 03

  All right, let's let's just switch to to one topic that I think, again, has not been covered a lot. If Jonathan's going to really help out with this, but I want to go to Andy just for his thoughts on it. And that has to do with potential kind of asymmetric or any kind of Iranian response. Again, I think we've gotten so enamored with the power and the might of the US military, particularly with successful operations and the Maduro op being one. You know, it always, I think, in essence, we've gotten lucky in some points that it hasn't ended in US casualties. But I don't think we're talking enough about in the cost benefit of this is what the potential Iranian response. So Andy, and we'll go to Jonathan in a sec because I think he's, you know, he's written a book. And is an expert on this, but Andy, I want to get your your sense on this as well.

• 25:41Speaker 03

  As someone who's a veteran of, you know, decades of being in the Middle East and frankly, going up against the Iranians and their proxies. And so I think those of us who have done that do have a, you know, there's no hubris. There's no, you know, there's a sense of humility that this is not an adversary that might just fold. And we might, you know, take some hits on this. And let me just, let me close this by a conversation Jonathan mentioned, Mir Dagon. When I worked with the Israelis in the past, particularly in the early 2000s, when when they would be considering operations like this, they would do a cost benefit analysis and say, and I remember Dagon saying this to us personally, saying, you know, if we take this course of action, we might lose an embassy. Okay, got it. And everyone's kind of shocked and they said, but we're willing to take that risk. And that certainly to me is not being done in the United States now.

• 26:26Speaker 03

  So Andy, what are your thoughts on that in terms of potential Iranian response? And are we, are we not talking about this enough in terms of what the American people might, you know, be seeing in the next couple of days or weeks?

• 26:38Speaker 06

  Yeah, and I'm glad you brought this up because I think I think it's fair to say that pretty much everyone in this in our august group of co-hosts for this show now has been involved with this particular problem set in the past. You know, enough said, but my point is that we've all been focused on Iran's malign influence in the region, right? And and I think, again, I can't speak for you guys, but if we could go back, you know, the Jijikpoa offered a couple of positive things. It offered access. It offered some level of transparency. I said some level, not total transparency, but it offered a better level than we have now, right?

• 27:22Speaker 06

  We went from scrapping a Jijikpoa to a penis. But the big, the big problem with the Jijikpoa was that it didn't even address proxies. And I think, I think what we're going to look at, again, I said I wouldn't predict, but I think what we're going to look at again is a default to the easy button, which is a focus on nuclear enrichment and kind of a hand wave towards proxies. And and I think one of the problems here that we've all wrestled with is the problem of monitoring. So if Iran said, okay, hey, we're out of proxy business, okay, we would know, hey, that Iran's lying, because just like ballistic missiles, they're not going to de-invest. But secondly, how is that monitored?

• 28:06Speaker 06

  You know, and how do we, do we do this by by conducting MEOs and taking ships over and trying to prove the smoking gun connected with Iran? I mean, it's not an easy, you can't just say, hey, Iran's not going to suddenly say, hey, I'm going to open up all shipments from Iranian ports to inspection so you can ensure we're not transporting lethal aid to our proxies. We know that's not going to happen. And what, but what measures short of that can that even, that problem even be monitored? That is... I think that, purely from my point of view, that's one of the biggest problems with the discussions now. You either make it relatively uncomplex and you focus on nuclear enrichment,

• 28:50Speaker 06

  or you get to what is really the issue for the US, really is the issue, not an issue that appears existential because Israel convinces us that it is. But that problem of destabilizing the region, which is, I would say, the primary reason, and ballistic missiles, but to a lesser extent. I don't see this conversation going there. And the last thing I'll say, you know, we've been talking about what will the strikes, you know, what sort of strikes they will be. And of course, we begin with, well, what are they intended to accomplish? I would say one or two things. One is a mowing the grass type return to nuclear facilities that perhaps sets the program back six months to a year.

• 29:33Speaker 06

  And the other is retribution, right? I said I was gonna do this, so I'm gonna do it. At least 7,000 people have died. You know, at least, probably many, many more in the Iranian, latest Iranian revolution. The president did say that if the killing went on, he was gonna intervene. The killing did go on after he said that. So we may be facing a, hey, I've gotta do this. And that, if we're following that rationale, that leads me to say, only under those conditions, I think, would we go after leaders of the Basij or the IRGC and say, hey, this was justice for what they did

• 30:17Speaker 06

  in terms of meeting out punishment to the protesters. Very last thing I'll say is, I don't think anyone, I would hope no one harbors any real thought that by taking leaders out of any organization within Iran, we are really enabling a democratic takeover by any opposition group. Because we're not, that's a huge gap, as we all know.

• 30:43Speaker 03

  Jonathan, what's the Iranian response likely to be in your mind? And I think go in terms of, you know, high, medium, or low confidence on this. You know, so, you know, and also throw in the notion, I think in the past, there's been some kind of tacit understandings in order to avoid escalation between the US and Iran. But, but the asymmetric capabilities and what Iran could do in terms of damage to US interests, US facilities overseas, just to Americans, what are your thoughts on that? Because again, I don't think that's really been discussed enough, particularly in the US national security media from Congress or the American people. Everyone thinks this is so antiseptic, but it might not be. So what are your thoughts on Iranian capabilities to inflict some harm on us?

• 31:24Speaker 05

  So a lot of the responses we've seen over the past 25 years from Iran against the West are not the full response option that the regime has. And I think that that has kind of convinced some observers that perhaps the regime is so weak that it can't actually respond. But if you look at Farsi language discussions from the regime to their own audience, they use this term heroic restraint all the time when they're talking about what they've done. Like when Qasem Soleimani was assassinated, that was like huge groundbreaking moment where like this guy was untouchable. And like the thought was if he dies, the whole thing is going to be like there's massive war going to happen. And there wasn't. And the Ayatollah himself said that they're exercising heroic restraint. Like, what does that mean? Right?

• 32:07Speaker 05

  And if you look at what their actual military doctrine is, it's called the mosaic doctrine, where they have this very high emphasis on dispersal of not just forces, but also decision making, which is part of the reason why the airline was shot down in January after Soleimani was killed, because decision making was so decentralized that people that should have been looking at these missile systems were not looking at them because of their way that they're doing their command and control. It's designed so that if leaders get taken out, the war still happens. Right? And that's actually from the German military in World War II called Offstrog tactic, which is mission command, which the US also uses, but Iran has really pushed it down to the ground force level. And why I'm saying that, when we think about the negotiations and including proxies into

• 32:50Speaker 05

  those negotiations to remove Iran's connection to proxies, this is an unrealistic request that I, I hope that negotiators understand why. When we look at, for example, the Marine Corps, we have the Marine-Air-Ground Task Force concept where the air and the ground component work together and they're both necessary components of the success of those operating forces. The proxies are also like this within the Mosaic doctrine. If you remove the proxies, the doctrine falls apart because part of that rapidly decentralized command and control is the fact that the proxies can operate on their own without regime coordination in the moment. And this is a huge difference between Arab militaries and Iranian's military, not just the ARTESH, which is their regular conventional forces, but also the IRGC.

• 33:33Speaker 05

  They're designed to operate independently if they must. They're designed to operate without any connection back to some C2 node somewhere else. And I think that when we're thinking about how do they actually respond without heroic restraint, this is the real scenario we should be looking at, rather than looking at the past 25 years and saying, well, how did they react when we did X, Y, and Z? Because that's likely not what they're going to do this time because I think they understand this is an existential threat for real. And you can see that not in their rhetoric, but in their actions. For example, on January 31st, the IRGC dispersed a bunch of ground force units to all of their intercontinental ballistic missile sites and their medium range ballistic missile sites, which they've never done before. And they did this to protect those sites from ground force incursions, which means they expect there could be boots in the ground that might attack those facilities.

• 34:18Speaker 05

  They've never done that before since 1988, right? Another example is sending out NOTAMs for live fire over the Persian Gulf, warning mariners to stay away and actually firing live munitions across the water, which they haven't done in a long time. Additionally, they have Russia there with them doing those maritime exercises, which is obviously a deterrent effect, which changes the US decision calculus about what type of attacks they might take because they don't want to hit Russian forces, or maybe if they do, they have to change how they think about that. 80% of their oil goes to China. That means China has to be part of this decision-making calculus as well, and Iran knows that. So they're probably thinking about how do we, how do we use those assets we have, which are foreign assets, Chinese and Russian assets, and how do we disperse decision-making as far down as possible so that even if the US does strike us, we'll be able to, to do things to not just them,

• 35:03Speaker 05

  but to Israel, to UAE, to Bahrain, to Saudi Arabia. I mean, these, these, these are the things that are in their minds as they're thinking about what they do. And I would Imagine that these decisions have already been made long ago. Right? So it's not like they're they're deciding it now and they're disseminating the information now about what to do. Instead, this is part of their doctrine has been built in since two thousand two. When the mosaic doctrine was made part of their military doctrine. At their basically equivalent of their war college. All of the officers who have been trained in the IRGC since two thousand two have been trained on this doctrine. Just like the Marine Air Ground Task Force concept we have in Marine Corps. Very similar, you know, at every echelon of rank. They're exposed to a higher level of this concept. And that is their doctrine that that we've just never seen it before used one hundred percent. And that's what I would be concerned.

• 35:49Speaker 03

  Do you think the administration has this level of granularity again that that you're describing, whether it's NSC staff or input from the state or or the agency or from DIA? I mean, it's because I would I would think that this is actually important again in a normal working administration. You have a course of action, there'd be National Security Council meetings, it's staffed up and down. And there would be, you know, and you do go through this cost benefit calculation. But do you think anyone's actually, you know, in an Oval Office meeting with with the president saying? Hey, this is what could happen, and this is why exactly this scenario you laid out. And then, of course, it affects the negotiators, because if if we're putting proxies on the table, but you're saying? This is non-negotiable, then, you know, what are we doing?

• 36:28Speaker 05

  Right? And I think I think you're right that probably there is not the level of granularity that you would hope. And it's not that it doesn't exist, it does. For example, the DIA puts out an unclassified report every year called Iran Iran's Military Power. And it's it's like a hundred fifty page document that anyone can download and read. And it has a lot of this information about how their order of battle looks and how they disperse forces and etc. Is that information making it to the Oval Office? Probably not. And and I I remember even during my time when I was in the Middle East, most recently at the embassy over there. We had the President's Daily Brief getting put together all the time. And it wasn't getting read. So even if if the President's Daily Brief is not getting read, and that is the most important piece of material that we produce as an intelligence community. If that's not getting read, then that other report's definitely not getting read.

• 37:12Speaker 05

  Right? And and that means it's not just not getting read by the president, it's not being absorbed by the decision makers that are there that could go tell the president that this is perhaps, you know, option A might be preferable to option B. Because of this granularity that we have. And I don't think that that exists right now.

• 37:29Speaker 03

  Andy, quick question for you. You know, there's been reports, the Wall Street Journal wrote an article, and I find it interesting because, you know, we've all been out there for extended periods of times and get cranky, but that there is some issues with, I think it was the Ford, the carrier battle group, especially the carrier that's being extended now, and the deployment, I think it's going to be the longest deployment of a carrier since Vietnam, and, you know, sailors, you know, airmen or pilots or whatever are getting cranky, there's problems with the toilet, I mean, it sounds, you know, it sounds a little bit kind of into the weeds, but do you think any of that matters? And it's not necessarily for morale, but also, you know, shit starts breaking. You and Jonathan certainly know that, but Andy, what are your thoughts on, on kind of this extended deployment? And does that cause you any concern? You see a lot on social media, people are saying,

• 38:14Speaker 03

  suck it up. I'm not sure that's really the right response. Of course, Commander Chief calls you to do something, you do it. But, you know, should we be concerned about this extended deployment? And then, you know, and what, really, an immense amount of firepower with that carrier battle group, what they can bring?

• 38:31Speaker 06

  Yeah, so a couple of things. I think that's a really good point. And, you know, the Marine in me is, you know, shut the fuck up. What are you talking about? But on the other hand, look, it's a, we keep saying this, and it's progressively true and true. It's a, it's an all-volunteer force, and the all-volunteer force, the demographics within that all-volunteer force change repeatedly. So, you know, you can't, and I would argue that social media access makes it even worse, right? People think that, oh, hey, people can, can communicate better with their families. Well, they can to a point, but it also heightens

• 39:16Speaker 06

  that sense of proximity and the proximity of all their concerns at home. Where I'm heading on this is, yeah, I think you're definitely seeing cracks. The Navy is notoriously closed-mouthed. I think John will agree with that when it comes to releasing information about morale or about leadership, and when they relieve people, it's always... Loss of trust and confidence and records not much better. My point is, there's always kind of this opaque thing. But if you look between the lines, you've got, you know, you've got a lot of churn in social media about reduced readiness of these carrier groups. That's, that's a pragmatic reason.

• 39:57Speaker 06

  It's not that you, you know, we're giving in to, to, to feeling overly compassionate to whatever generation this is. You've got a record of, of mishaps on the, it was on the Roosevelt, right? Recently, I forget how many aircraft they lost overboard. They shot one of their own aircraft down. Some of these mistakes were, when you, when you watch them on video, it's just incomprehensible. How does a train crew do those things? I don't know what the investigations have revealed. The Navy haven't released those investigations, but I would, maybe fatigue is part of it, right? Either way, something's going wrong. And we saw this in the, in the Pacific, in the Seventh Fleet.

• 40:43Speaker 06

  I remember back in, you know, about ten, fifteen years ago, culminating in a couple of fatal collisions.

• 40:52Speaker 03

  Jonathan, what are your thoughts on that too? Because, and think about it from a leadership perspective, if you, if you want to address it that way. Because I think the idea of, you know, the suck it up is not going to work if you're the captain of the carrier. I mean, you do care about your crew.

• 41:04Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 41:05Speaker 03

  And so, and, and of course, then there's the notion too of, of readiness and, and being able to carry out critical, you know, tasks in combat in which people are going to be asked to put in twenty hour days.

• 41:17Speaker 05

  Yeah, you've got a real dilemma because of the way our fleets are designed. You can't just send another aircraft carrier that hasn't been spun up yet. You know, it takes so many months to get ready to go. So your only option is to chop a ship from Seventh Fleet to Fifth Fleet, for example, and extend its deployment. And now you're asking for every person participating on that thing to extend their life and. I mentioning social media, actually, I've seen posts on Facebook and other places where spouses are complaining about how much time their husbands are out there. Which is a problem first from an OPSEC perspective, because we're not the only ones looking at that, you know, and when morale gets affected like that, there are leaks like this. That can then be used to exploit the, not just the, the information environment, but also the actual combat effectiveness of those individuals, because it helps the other side understand things.

• 42:02Speaker 05

  And I also mentioned, actually, the regime is taking advantage of exactly what you're talking about right now. I just saw, I'm at Yale Law School right now, and we have a veterans community. And there was a veterans community message put out requesting a petition to be signed by that combat veterans. To protest against the US going to war against Iran. I looked into where that thing came from, and it came from the Quincy Institute, which is a regime connected. Think tank, because they want veterans to basically say this statement, and then the regime can say, look, American veterans don't support this war. So we have, we cannot forget that information environment that is attached to and integral to these combat deployments of actual ships sitting out there at sea.

• 42:40Speaker 05

  At the same time, because it's the same world, right? We can't just think about the naval dimension or the air dimension, they're all connected together. And I'll also mention too, that the UK just disallowed the US from using Diego Garcia, which is a massive difference from the past. And it's extremely important because last year in April, when we were also doing a lot of deterrent buildup with our, our lancers. We use Diego Garcia to preposition those lancers, because we, we need a certain area and distance to put those aircraft for them to be effective. Not just to be used once, but to use over and over in, in combat. And Diego Garcia is kind of that special place to do that, where we have access basing it over flight. Well, the, the UK just disallowed us from doing that, not only in Diego Garcia, but also in mainland UK.

• 43:25Speaker 05

  So that changes the calculus and it pushes a lot of pressure onto the Navy, because that means the Navy is now the go-to place to launch from sea rather than launching from land. And of course, there are a couple of places we can use, like Jordan, for example, and, and Qatar to launch air assets, but those are so close and inside the engagement zone. That kind of puts them at risk in a way where we still need further out rings of, of aircraft. And the only way to do that now, because the UK is prohibiting us from using those locations, is aircraft carriers. Which again, puts further pressure on those forces that are going to be deployed there, because if we launch a strike and it lasts for more than a day. Those aircraft carriers have to remain even longer than they have remained now.

• 44:07Speaker 03

  Right.

• 44:07Speaker 05

  And what does that mean? I mean, do we bring another aircraft carrier from another fleet? And if we do that, we lose our our force projection in those areas where we've removed those carriers. So these are all things I'm thinking about when I'm seeing what's going on, especially with the Mediterranean deployment and then the fifth fleet deployments ramping up.

• 44:25Speaker 03

  I would just add that, you know, there's been obviously a lot of controversy over the UK denial of of Diego Garcia, but you know, this is what happens when we treat allies like shit. It was in the UK when the kind of explosion of anger about President Trump's statements about about NATO forces and their performance in Afghanistan, the whole Greenland issue and the anger in the UK. This is not just the general public, but also with current and former, at least intelligence officials that I know, was was something I'd never seen before. And so this is the the result. I mean, Keir Starmer, the prime minister, who who would never, I mean, no British prime minister would do this, except if he had the the support of the public, and he does. There's no, the political controversy in the UK is not, is has a lot to do with, you know, with the Epstein files.

• 45:08Speaker 03

  It has very little to do with Starmer's move here, because I think it's popular because of we've treated our allies like like crap. Let me just flip something to Dee. I'm going to put you on the spot here.

• 45:20Speaker 02

  Great.

• 45:21Speaker 03

  I was, no, I was joking before about your your love of AOC, and I'm totally kidding on this. And you know, this is a apolitical podcast usually, but I think, but but AOC did make the news because she started, you know, sending out on social media, you know, no war in Iran. And I guess the the question I would have for you is, you know, what is a smart strategy from the Democrats? Presumably, they're the ones or or select Republicans as well, who are not in favor of military action. And would it be just kind of a statement like that, which which in some ways I think is not helpful? Or would it be better to say, hey, you know, what we do need is congressional authorization? We need we need another AUMF, authorized use of military force. We need at least the president to address the American people, congressional hearings.

• 46:05Speaker 03

  I mean, these are things that are supposed to happen. So if you're coming from the Democrat's side, you know, is it effective just with these little slogans, no war in Iran? Or would it be smarter to actually be a little more nuanced? Hey, make, hey, President Trump, make the case, let Congress vote if you you go through the war powers resolution and things like that, or even just tell us what the end state, what the goals are.

• 46:26Speaker 02

  I think it depends what your goal is, right? Is your goal messaging, right? Cause messaging a 10-word statement goes viral a lot more than, you know, we should really have a sit-down congressional meeting and a hearing about this and like, lay out your plan and give us the X's and O's. Also, I think the seal's kind of been broken with Venezuela and the drug boats in terms of international law and like where Congress sits. Does Congress have any authority? Do they, do they, they have authority, but do they want to use their authority?

• 46:58Speaker 02

  Also, the other problem is

• 47:01Speaker 02

  most Democrats are

• 47:06Speaker 02

  kind of for this, right? They, they, we've hated Iran for a long time. We, even Democrats, it's not just a republic thing, cozy up with Israel and AIPAC. I mean, if you want to talk nuts and bolts, I think that's why AOC goes that way where it's like,

• 47:22Speaker 02

  put it on a fucking poster or a T-shirt because it's like easy for people to understand. Like the majority of the American public doesn't give a fuck about Iran. Well, doesn't want us spending more and more money on a foreign war, even if it's three-week engagement where we're just blowing the shit out of them. And frankly, there is no plan, right? Like I saw a couple of people tweet who are like experts or national security analysts saying that the move is, oh, it's good because we don't have a huge ground force there. It's just a buildup of a navy and, and, and air force assets. We'll have a two, three-week, four-week aerial bombardment and we'll negotiate with the remnants. It's like, that's the fucking plan here?

• 48:03Speaker 02

  Like to me, as the layman, that makes absolutely no fucking sense whatsoever. Because we've talked about it before that more than likely Iran's not going to come out of this and, and bring the show in on a fucking white horse, driving, you know, heading down Main Street to take control, or they're not going to become some liberal democracy that's ready for. AI and and modernization and being part of the the global economy like an IRGC faction is going to take over and probably be even more brutal than the Ayatollah is and that's who we're going to negotiate with. Like, I think it's just wishful thinking, frankly, and I

• 48:44Speaker 02

  always heard from other CIA folks that like wishful thinking is the worst thing to have. And I just and I'm just still reeling from the fact that more than likely there isn't somebody with a granular kind of look at what's going on in the Oval Office advising the President and his advisors or the Cabinet or Pete Hegseth or whoever. To me, that's like a complete dereliction of duty. You don't have some smart guy in there. I got one on a fucking podcast today on Sunday. What are we talking about? You can't get one in the fucking Oval Office? Like, to me, that's a fucking joke. I'm done. Thank you, Mark.

• 49:16Speaker 03

  Well, we'll get we'll get Jonathan to walk down to 1600 Pennsylvania.

• 49:20Speaker 02

  Please let him in, guys.

• 49:21Speaker 03

  Let me but for Jonathan and Andy, I want to throw something in it's a that on a on a personal level. And so I struggle with this sometimes. I'm not a fan of this administration. It's not a surprise on this podcast. Dee gets a lot of hate mail. But where I agree with kind of the overall premises, you know, and you know, if you've if you've been at the tip of the spear, which we have, you know, we have friends who've been killed by by the Iranians, in essence, the EFPs in Iraq, the Iranian support to Shia groups there. I mean, in my entire adult life of 26 years at CIA, you know, a lot of it was focused on Iran or her proxies, and none of it was just a struggle for influence. It was kinetic. It was down and dirty. I do not like this regime, and I would love to

• 50:04Speaker 03

  see regime change. We also seem to forget that the Iranians were trying to kill, you know, President Trump and John Bolton and Mike Pompeo and others. And so there's a side of me on the just the personal side is, yeah, you know, if we could if we could, you know, get this regime out of there, I'm all for it. Sometimes, though, I struggle just with the mechanics of it and what I think is a is an administration that doesn't have the competence to do this, right? So with that all in mind, think just from a personal standpoint, you are both former Marines, you both have been, you know, actively in the fight against the Iranians. What does your gut tell you on this? I mean, is there something that gnaws on you? So right now, we're doing we're saying a lot of things the administration is not doing right on this. But again, I sometimes I'd sit back

• 50:47Speaker 03

  and I say, you know what, but I'm actually for the notion of regime change. And in particular, I'm absolutely for supporting the Iranian people who rose up.

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• 52:51Speaker 03

  You could do that's $10,000 or $30,000 killed. It was a debacle. And so Jonathan, let's start with you. From your gut, what's your, I miss your personal, you know, your personal experiences?

• 53:02Speaker 05

  You know, my thought being involved in this stuff over these, you know, past 25 years, I'm the first one to say like, war is not good and like, we should try to do everything we can to avoid violence. And I think we have done almost everything we could to avoid violence in this case. I mean, over years and years. And the other thing that I think about is there's our strategic end states, but there's also the strategic end states of the Iranian people that are suffering under this regime. And that's 90% of the country, maybe more than that, that want this regime gone and have wanted this regime gone more and more over the past 47 years, right? And especially in the past two months, January 8th and 9th, if you do the math on it, they were on the low end, they were killing five

• 53:44Speaker 05

  human beings per minute, every minute for 48 hours. On the high end, you're talking in excess of 20 to 30 people per minute for 48 hours. That's insane. And that's, and all the complaints we had about the war in Gaza, that was over two years and Israel killed almost the same amount of people in two years that the regime killed in two to three days. Where, where is the outcry from the West against that? That's, that's how I'm looking at that. And especially because you're talking about a country of almost 90 million people suffering not just violence and death and rape and destruction, which it's beyond what most people understand. If you see the videos and what's going on there, it's utterly disgusting that there are these animals doing this to people who

• 54:24Speaker 05

  just want to be free. And with that in mind, regime change is not, it's not great, but what if that could be freedom for people at some point? And it won't be freedom tomorrow. And that's, that's the thing to think about. There's a cost. If there is regime change, just like the French Revolution and even the American Revolution, when there's regime change, there's a moment of absolute like violence. And it doesn't matter if the Shah comes in on a white horse, well, he's got to get there first. And while he's getting there, there is lawlessness, there is violence. I mean, we remember in Baghdad, when we came in there, there was absolute unrest because there's no government, there's no sovereignty, there's no police, there's no trash, there's no sewer, like the things that keep society together for a moment, it just evaporates. And that is going

• 55:09Speaker 05

  to be a really tragic moment. I've spoken to Iranians who are in Iran right now. They want that. They're willing to pay that cost and they're even willing to die for that right now. And that's, that's something to remember that when our interests align and the interests of those people align, that's the moment to act. And I think that moment is now.

• 55:28Speaker 03

  So, you know, I was in Europe recently and I just, I was lucky to be involved with a group who received a briefing from one of the, you know, the Shahs or the Crown Prince's senior advisers. And it wasn't a rah rah speech of this has to be done, but it was much more of, of kind of the state of where the Iranian people are. And it was, it was a pretty compelling argument that, you know, the regime is on its last dying days at some point. That could, that might mean one year or five years. But I do think that what I come back to as well is, again, is I hope we do this right, but it's the Iranian people and the idea of a, of a new future. And, you know, everybody, I mean, I'm going to say this, I live in the DC area, so we have a zillion Iranian friends who are all mesmerized by this and certainly want to see change. Andy, what are your thoughts on that?

• 56:12Speaker 03

  Again, as someone who is kind of up against the Iranians for, for some time. And, and, you know, perhaps a critic as, as I am of, of, you know, the, the mechanics of how the Trump administration is doing this, but does this gnaw at you as well? Like, you know, hold on a second, like, the right side of history is going to be regime change.

• 56:28Speaker 06

  Yeah, I, I absolutely agree. And yes, we can, you know, quite rightfully, we, we talked about where you can't rush into, you can't force regime change from the air, et cetera, et cetera. But there are, as everyone here knows, things that could be taking place right now that are focused on practical, long-term goals. And so one of which, and it is kind of the messaging to the US domestic public that, you know, there's been very little of that, right? I mean, this would be a good opportunity for the administration to give the case for intervention in Iran, based on, based on what the Iranian regime has done.

• 57:12Speaker 06

  You know, make, make absolutely open the cruelty, the scale of, of death on, you know, that has occurred and, and all these other things, myriad things that they're doing, you know, blinding, using munitions deliberately to blind people in the crowd. I mean, all of these things.

• 57:31Speaker 06

  That, that as far as, do I, in the long term, do I think American popular opinion pays, plays a big role in foreign policy? No, absolutely not. But it's, but it's certainly something the administration, you know, if they're looking for reelection and building a case domestically, they start on that. And then the second part, as everyone here knows, we wouldn't be reading about or seeing about which are developing covert options, which I'm sure are happening. And it's again, I mean, those of us who work with resistance groups in Mosul, for instance, know it's easier said than done. But I'm sure there's two parts of that, right? There is the assessment piece upfront, which are the

• 58:12Speaker 06

  legitimate groups, which ones are likely to be able to bear a burden, and which ones do we want to bear a burden in, in, in, in insurgency, whether it be long term or short term? How do we enable them? Should we enable them? You know, all these are complex questions that takes a while on the ground to be able to understand. I would imagine that we are looking at those things as well as other non kinetic options focused as kind of foreign movement in consonance with our support for an insurgent group within Iran. In other words, planning a campaign that's focused on perhaps covert operations to parallel

• 58:53Speaker 06

  what is happening out in the open. And the last piece, you know, I would say, yeah, I think strikes are going to happen. I think they're going to be a little bit of a mowing the grass option. Unless we start seeing domestically this, this case for intervention to support the insurgency, unless we see that openly, I think that the follow on the strikes are going to, are going to be going off the nuclear facilities, which as we know is, is an imperfect, short term solution.

• 59:28Speaker 06

  But that is all. Yeah, I would, I mean, I would absolutely think that there are covert steps taking place now, as long as we don't undermine those covert steps by announcing, "Hey, we have just taken these covert steps," right?

• 59:43Speaker 03

  Wait, yeah, probably the Israelis, you know, the Israelis have done a pretty remarkable job in terms of, you know, recruiting assets and principal agent networks amongst the kind of the ethnic minorities in Iran. So I would imagine there's some of that going on. Before we close, I want to, I want to kind of throw out a subject. This just came to me, and it's something that you guys, actually, Andy and Jonathan, you are perfect for this. One of the things that I've found really interesting over the last couple of years, as I kind of make the rounds and give some guest lectures at universities, is teaching about ethics and morality in conflict. And, you know, I've given this talk, I went down to the Citadel, I did it, I did it at Catholic University, and, you know, this was, this were groups that actually think about this stuff. And so this is what's, what I think

• 1:00:26Speaker 03

  is gnawing at me a little bit, and I want to get your, your take on that. If there was to be an agreement that, that avoids war, it's going to be an agreement around the nuclear program. But in essence, what that does is it allows the regime to survive. And then we go back to the ethics and morality of Presidents Trump several weeks ago, that help was on the way. And again, the conversation we just had was, what appeals to me, maybe to us, is that, you know, that's, that's something that actually matters, you know, that the Iranian people actually stayed out in the streets because they, they thought the US was coming. And so on that ethics piece of it, the morality piece of it, actually an agreement, a nuclear agreement, that would avoid war, has a unethical component to that, which means the regime survives. And that's what's, it's actually keeping me, it's

• 1:01:11Speaker 03

  keeping me up at night, it's driving me crazy a little bit. So Jonathan, what are your, what are your thoughts on that? Because look, I mean, the one thing, and I, you know, I know Mick certainly much better than Andy than I do you, we've known each other for a couple of years, Jonathan, we just met. But, you know, Mick, who, you know, US military, Marine Corps lawyer, is one of the most ethical people I've ever met. And I think that's, that's not based on his training at CIA, it's based on his training with the Marine Corps. And again, so Jonathan, off to you on that ethics piece of this. An agreement to stave off war in some ways is unethical because of our promises made.

• 1:01:43Speaker 05

  Yeah, I completely agree. I mean, being a world leader has the word leader in it. That means you have to lead and leading is not easy, right? And if you're going to say, if you're the president and you're going to say the help's on the way, it has to be on the way.

• 1:01:56Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:01:56Speaker 05

  You know, and I'm thinking about like the Berlin airlift when we went and saved all those people in Berlin. That was at a great risk to us and a great risk to the people in Berlin. And we did it because we said we're going to do it, right? Even things like the Lend-Lease program and all these other things in World War II where we like huge risk to do. And there was a lot of repercussions that could have come from it, but we didn't negotiate with the other, with the enemy to, to stay back and allow things to continue. And the status quo in Iran has not worked for anybody. Not even for, for the regime. I mean, for anybody since 1979. And if, if we continue to, to put on life support, like what are we accomplishing? Just to say that we had an agreement. There's really nothing that comes this because everybody knows that if the regime comes to this agreement, they're going to get some concessions for themselves too, that are positive for the regime beyond the agreement itself.

• 1:02:41Speaker 05

  Do we really want to be again, keeping them on life support just so that this will happen again? I mean, even today and yesterday, this was 40 days since the actual protest killings, the major day eight and nine happened. People were out there protesting at Sharif University, beating up Basijis. That's again, a perfect opportunity to do something and coming to this agreement betrays those people who even today are out there protesting because they believe that this world power, who said they're going to help, will come to help. You know, and, and there's a, we could have chosen to say nothing. That's different, but we didn't say nothing. We said something and now we need to do something.

• 1:03:16Speaker 03

  You know, this reminds me Andy of, and you've talked about it before, and this, this is not a new subject that I've raised, but you know, in my career, working with the Iraqi Kurds, the Syrian opposition, running one of our bases in Afghanistan, um, with our Afghan indige, you know, we don't have a great track record of keeping our promises. And so that's the, you know, that's what kind of gnaws at me about this idea of war avoidance might mean regime survival. And then we betray the actual protesters on the streets. Uh, what do you think of that?

• 1:03:45Speaker 06

  Yeah, a hundred, a hundred percent. In fact, after we withdrew or announced we were going to withdraw, the reality wasn't quite the same on the ground from Syria. Do you remember that? It was in 2019, right?

• 1:03:58Speaker 03

  Trump did it after a call with the Turkish, uh,

• 1:04:00Speaker 06

  Yeah, that's right.

• 1:04:02Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:04:02Speaker 06

  And

• 1:04:02Speaker 03

  He's the United States leader.

• 1:04:04Speaker 06

  And so I did a interview with MSNBC, what it was called then, Ken Delaney and, um,

• 1:04:12Speaker 06

  You know, just basically not saying anything controversial, except that, hey, they, this is, you know, I explaining what the SDF had done for us, explaining the fact that when we just kind of throw our allies to the wolves after they have done things where our interests align is not a good precedent because there are pragmatic reasons, right? But, but even so, I was beaten up for my emotional argument. So I think there's a, there's just a lack of understanding about this, that the solid pragmatic reason that we all understand as former SOF or IC practitioners is that you can't,

• 1:04:53Speaker 06

  you can't betray people and then expect other people to trust you. It's number one. And number two, when, when we're just using the intelligence community and we're just using SOF, our record of using proxies is actually really, really good. You know, I mean, whether it be the SDF or looking back and things like Plan Colombia or in El Salvador, when we're not putting massive amounts of troops on the ground, when we're just using proxies, we, we have a pretty good success rate. Um, so we don't want to violate that, right? We don't want to betray that trust. That's a good, you know, that's a good enough reason. I think all of us, it goes far deeper than that.

• 1:05:35Speaker 06

  Uh, and, and I don't think we have to feel apologetic about talking about American values and what those really are. And all of us understand, I think, I mean, the reason why we served our country in different forms wasn't because we thought that our country set, made the best deals possible, right? It was because our country represented certain values that went beyond track transactional negotiations and those values were persistent, right? And those were things regardless of administration that we were willing to risk our lives for. So that is important for all of us who wore the uniform.

• 1:06:13Speaker 03

  Agreed. And so let's see what happens. Again, it's a, you know, the, the irony is that if there's a deal that avoids war, it's going to give the Iranian regime, you know, life to, to fight another day. That's going to be hard for some of us to stomach. Dee, I'm going to throw it back to you. Um, I'm going to give you one more opportunity, Dee, to acknowledge you're happy the US won the gold medal.

• 1:06:31Speaker 02

  I am happy the US won the gold medal.

• 1:06:33Speaker 03

  You're a hockey, you're a hockey fan?

• 1:06:35Speaker 02

  I am. Yes, I am a hockey fan.

• 1:06:37Speaker 03

  K T Miller, Trocheck, come on. Gold medals. This is a big deal.

• 1:06:40Speaker 02

  I'm a Ranger fan. The Rangers stink. So I'm a little bit angry about that. But yeah, no, I am. I mean, I'm fine with it. Honestly. Gotta be honest. You guys can call me a commie all you want. I don't know. Blow me. That's for the, for the audience. We just had an incredible nuanced conversation about the Iraq, uh, possible Iranian war. And now it's like devolved into hockey talk and I'm telling everybody to blow me. Sorry. I'm leaving it in too. It was a great game, obviously, and I enjoyed watching it. And I am happy. I am happy the US won.

• 1:07:12Speaker 03

  All right. So.

• 1:07:13Speaker 02

  Are you happy now?

• 1:07:14Speaker 03

  Uh, I'm, I'm, I'm placated.

• 1:07:16Speaker 02

  Getting there? Okay.

• 1:07:17Speaker 03

  A little bit, a little bit, a little swaged by your, uh, non-communist leanings at this point, but you can go back to, give you a little coffee shop in Brooklyn.

• 1:07:24Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 1:07:25Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 1:07:27Speaker 06

  When did, uh, when did Russia, when did the Soviet Union annex the, uh, Czechoslovakia? For, I mean, really, and it's 1968, right? So Hungary was 56 and I think Czechoslovakia was, was 68. And there was a, a Winter Olympics, I want to say, the next Winter Olympics, Czechoslovakia played the Soviet Union in ice hockey and you can still find copies of that match, but it was, it was blood laden, as you can imagine. They pretty much ignored the, the puck throughout. I'm not comparing that to the United States versus Canada.

• 1:08:07Speaker 03

  It was a pretty, pretty rough game.

• 1:08:09Speaker 02

  It was pretty rough. And the only problem with it was also like you can't fight, they can't have fights or they're kicked out of the game during the Olympics, which isn't the same as regular NHL. So there weren't any like real, you know, fistfights. They were just some scr- uh, scrums.

• 1:08:23Speaker 03

  Awesome game.

• 1:08:26Speaker 02

  Incredible game. Guys.

• 1:08:27Speaker 03

  Gotcha. Thanks.

• 1:08:28Speaker 02

  I want everyone to do me a favor. I want everyone to check out, uh, John's book. Um, I can't remember. Iran Shadows, Iran's Shadow Weapons. It's on, um, Amazon right now. The link is in the description down below. Andy Milburn's got a great book, When the Tempest Gathers. Check that out, Mark as well. All the links are down in the description and we have the Whitefish Security Summit coming in April, April 2nd to the 4th. Check that out. The links are down in the description. The keynote speaker is General Stanley McChrystal. So it should be a good one and Mick's gonna be there. Maybe Izan will be there. We're trying to figure that out. I have a phone call with the organizer later.

• 1:09:12Speaker 02

  We'll see if they meet our price. Yeah. So.

• 1:09:15Speaker 03

  And by the way, business class travel only.

• 1:09:17Speaker 02

  I mean, that's the only way to go. That's the only way to go, dude. Check that out. That link is in the description as well. And of course, if you want to help support the show, patreon.com slash the team house. You get both team house and Izan episodes ad free, early. And you can ask us questions, do all that. It's a little bit more access to us. And if you have any questions for the guys on Izan, hit, uh, send them over on Patreon. I'll make sure everyone gets them. Jonathan, as always, a pleasure. We gotta have you on more and more because I feel like you're the smartest guy in the room. Um, and I'm still freaking out about the fact that it's 50 50 that there is a person in the, not in the Oval Office talking about these things while they're, uh,

• 1:10:01Speaker 02

  drawing up a plan to, that's crazy. That freaks me the fuck out. Because if I can get a guy for a podcast, they could definitely get somebody in the Oval Office to brief the President or the NSA or whoever they need to brief.

• 1:10:15Speaker 05

  It's a choice.

• 1:10:17Speaker 03

  It's a war on expertise. So.

• 1:10:20Speaker 02

  All right, guys. That's it. I love you. Thank you.

• 1:10:23Speaker 05

  Thanks, guys.

• 1:10:24Speaker 03

  Bye, guys.

• 1:10:27Jack Murphy?

  I want to tell all of you today about a new newsletter that we're launching that encompasses both the Team House Podcast, the Eyes On Podcast, and the High Side News Outlet, which I run with Shawn Naylor. The newsletter is going to be once a week. It's going to come into your inbox, and you're going to get the most current podcasts on Eyes On and the Team House and whatever's topical or current on the High Side. So it's another way for us to get the information out to you, as social media algorithms are pretty iffy, and you never really know what you're going to get. So this is a once a week email. It'll slide into your inbox, and it will have, you know, the greatest hits of that week. It's really good. Checking it out.

• 1:11:10Jack Murphy?

  The website for it is teamhousepodcast.kit.com/join. Teamhousepodcast.kit.com/join. Go there, and you enter into your email list, or you enter your email into the little thing on the website, and you're good to go. And that'll be it. So we really appreciate your support, and hope you'll consider signing up. Where's the link? The link will also be down in the description, if you're looking for it there. And that's teamhousepodcast.

• 1:11:42Speaker 01

  Hi, I'm Jenna Oshkowitz. You might know me from Glee. This is At the Table, the food allergy podcast, a show about food, connection, and what it really looks like to live with food allergies. Each episode, we hear stories from real people like Daniel. People would always think I was lactose intolerant, so I just kind of shortened my explanation to I'm deathly allergic, in a big way that defined a lot of my childhood. And while there are challenges, there are moments that remind you you're not alone. One of the best guys that I dated, he made a point to memorize all my food allergies. So join us and hear their stories and more. Because living with food allergies isn't just about what you can't eat. It's about still having your seat at the table.

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  Hi, I'm Jenna Oshkowitz. You might know me from Glee. This is At the Table, the food allergy podcast, a show about food, connection, and what it really looks like to live with food allergies. Each episode, we hear stories from real people like Daniel. People would always think I was lactose intolerant, so I just kind of shortened my explanation to I'm deathly allergic, in a big way that defined a lot of my childhood. And while there are challenges, there are moments that remind you you're not alone. One of the best guys that I dated, he made a point to memorize all my food allergies. So join us and hear their stories and more, because living with food allergies isn't just about what you can't eat. It's about still having your seat at the table.

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• 1:18:25Speaker 01

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  Hi, I'm Jenna Oshkowitz. You might know me from Glee. This is At the Table, the food allergy podcast, a show about food, connection, and what it really looks like to live with food allergies. Each episode, we hear stories from real people like Daniel. People would always think I was lactose intolerant, so I just kind of shortened my explanation to I'm deathly allergic. In a big way that defined a lot of my childhood. And while there are challenges, there are moments that remind you you're not alone. One of the best guys that I dated, he made a point to memorize all my food allergies. So join us and hear their stories and more because living with food allergies isn't just about what you can't eat. It's about still having your seat at the table.

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  Hi, I'm Jenna Oshkowitz. You might know me from Glee. This is At the Table, the food allergy podcast, a show about food, connection, and what it really looks like to live with food allergies. Each episode, we hear stories from real people like Daniel. People would always think I was lactose intolerant, so I just kind of shortened my explanation to I'm deathly allergic in a big way that defined a lot of my childhood. And while there are challenges, there are moments that remind you you're not alone. One of the best guys that I dated, he made a point to memorize all my food allergies. So join us and hear their stories and more. Because living with food allergies isn't just about what you can't eat. It's about still having your seat at the table.

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• 1:24:24Speaker 01

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  She's been thinking about this sleepover all week, but I think about her food allergies all the time. Fortunately, her doctor prescribed Zolair, omalizumab. It's proven to significantly reduce allergic reactions if a food allergy accident happens.

• 1:25:47Speaker 04

  Zolair 150mg is a prescription medication used to treat food allergy in people one year of age and older to reduce allergic reactions due to accidental exposure to one or more foods. While taking Zolair, you should continue to avoid all foods to which you are allergic. Don't use if you are allergic to Zolair. Zolair may cause a severe, life-threatening allergic reaction called anaphylaxis. Tell your doctor if you ever had anaphylaxis. Get help right away if you have trouble breathing or if you have swelling of your throat or tongue. Zolair should not be used for the emergency treatment of allergic reactions, including anaphylaxis. Zolair is for maintenance use to reduce allergic reactions, including anaphylaxis, while avoiding food allergens. Serious side effects such as cancer, fever, muscle aches and rash, parasitic infection, or heart and circulation problems have been reported. Please see zolair.com for full prescribing information. Ask an allergist about Zolair.

• 1:26:30Speaker 04

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• 1:27:15Speaker 04

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