Ukraine, Iran & America’s Strategy Problem | Eyes On Geopolitics

We break down the delayed Patriot sale to Ukraine, Washington’s increasingly contradictory Russia policy, and what that dysfunction looks like to U. S. allies and partners. We also examine the possible paths forward with Iran, including renewed strikes, economic pressure, negotiations, the risks of retaliation, and why no option offers an easy route to victory. VAER Watches ⬇️ https://www.vaerwatches.com/theteamhouse get a free watch roll with your purchase. 20% for active duty, veteran, leo, & first responders Support the show on Patreon:⬇️ https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouse Jack's news outlet:⬇️ https://thehighside.substack.com/ Find Jon Hackett here:⬇️ Jon's Twitter: https://x.com/jonathanhackett Jon's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thejonathanhackett Jon's books: https://www.amazon.com/stores/author/B0C5L659N5?ccs_id=e11a2062-f8d3-498e-bfd7-7d2f3869caf6 Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thejonathanhackett Twitter: https://x.com/jonathanhackett 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 00:00 – Start 00:37 – Patriot Missiles for Ukraine… in 2030? 01:30 – Why the Announcement Does Nothing for Ukraine This Winter 03:02 – Is the Patriot Deal Really About U. S. Domestic Politics? 04:07 – Europe, Canada & Norway Help Fund the Sale 05:00 – Russia Escalates Attacks on Ukraine’s Energy Infrastructure 05:30 – U. S. Diesel Deals With Russia & Sanctions Waivers 06:27 – Washington Pressures Ukraine to Stop Striking Russian Oil 07:00 – Starlink & Starshield Disruptions 08:27 – Is U. S. Policy Quietly Shifting Toward Russia? 09:00 – CIA Targeting Support vs. White House Policy 10:09 – Why the National Security Process Is Breaking Down 12:04 – America’s Grand Strategy Problem 12:35 – The National Security Council Isn’t Working 14:09 – What U. S. Policy Confusion Looks Like to Our Allies 15:00 – How Ukrainian Troops View Washington 16:19 – Why Britain Is Seen Differently in Ukraine 17:00 – The Importance of Consistent Support to Allies 18:00 – What Saudi Arabia Is Seeing From the U. S. 19:05 – America’s Relationship With Arab Partners 20:19 – Marc’s Story About the Kurds & U. S. Betrayal 21:34 – Turning Our Back on the SDF 22:21 – Why Allies Compare Their Support to Israel’s 23:33 – Is This Specifically a Trump Administration Problem? 24:38 – Iran War Depletes U. S. Air Defense Stockpiles 24:47 – Shifting to Iran 25:53 – Five Possible U. S. Courses of Action Against Iran 27:31 – Are U. S.-Iran Negotiations Actually Different This Time? 28:39 – Economic Pressure vs. Renewed Military Action 29:25 – The Escalation Ladder With Iran 30:16 – The Missing Question: What Is the Objective? 32:07 – Why Escalation Without an End State Is Dangerous 33:26 – The NSC’s Binary Approach to Iran 34:07 – Option 1: Make a Deal 34:30 – Option 2: Continue Economic Warfare 35:00 – Option 3: Limited Strikes Around Hormuz 35:30 – Option 4: Major Strikes on Iran 36:01 – Can Another Air Campaign Actually Change Iran’s Position? 36:30 – Option 5: Strikes Aimed at Regime Collapse 37:40 – Predictions: What Happens After the Midterms? 38:04 – Jonathan Predicts Broader Infrastructure Strikes 38:56 – Andy Predicts a Short, Sharp Campaign 39:36 – Could Election Results Push Trump Toward Escalation? 41:30 – Is a Deal With Iran Still Possible? 41:59 – What Would Jim Mattis Tell Trump? 42:20 – Iranian Retaliation & Risks to U. S. Forces 42:57 – What Has the War Actually Achieved? 44:00 – The Doomsday Prepping Panic 45:13 – Costco Runs, Generators & Cyberattack Fears 46:11 – Why Dee Didn’t Prep 46:46 – Why Oil Is Still So Expensive 47:03 – Risk Premiums, Insurance & Shipping Through Hormuz 48:55 – Why Brent Crude Doesn’t Reflect Today’s Conditions 50:01 – What’s Going on in Poland? 50:09 – Poland’s Political Crisis Explained 51:33 – Midterm Election Predictions 52:09 – What Would Dee Buy for Doomsday Prepping? 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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• 1:28Speaker 03

  This episode is presented by Ver watches. Go to vaerwatches.com/the team house. Hey, guys, we're back. Eyes on geopolitics. I'm here with Mark Polimeropoulos, Jonathan Hackett, Andy Milburn. Lot happening as usual. Happy Sunday, happy November 1st. Kalomina, like we say in Greek, which means have a good month. What's going on? You guys tell me, what are we tracking? I know, Mark, you sent in a bunch of stuff, which I found very interesting. The first one was that bullshit announcement about us selling 500 Pac-3 Patriots to Ukraine that are supposed to be delivered in 2030, which is like, what the fuck's gonna happen? Who knows what's gonna happen by 2030?

• 2:12Speaker 03

  The guys, they need them now. Let's kick off with that one. Let me get your take on that.

• 2:18Speaker 04

  So first of all, I appreciate the invite yesterday, the book show. Oh, wait a second.

• 2:22Speaker 03

  Whoops.

• 2:23Speaker 04

  I didn't get it.

• 2:24Speaker 03

  I thought I emailed you, my bad.

• 2:26Speaker 04

  No, awesome show. I love this stuff.

• 2:28Speaker 05

  He always does that. Oh, I thought, oh, man, I thought I invited you to whatever it is.

• 2:32Speaker 04

  But I'm, actually, I'm kidding. Because actually, I love the concept of the show. I'm gonna go back and watch it because just the idea of, for all of us here, I'm sure every time you go out and you talk about stuff, people always ask you, what books are you reading? What books do you like? So it's, that's an awesome idea.

• 2:47Speaker 03

  You'll be on for the next one. I promise.

• 2:49Speaker 04

  I don't know if I'm gonna accept the invitation. You know, I'm Greek. I hold grudges for a long time, like thousands of years.

• 2:54Speaker 03

  You, no way.

• 2:56Speaker 04

  Thousands of years.

• 2:56Speaker 03

  I don't believe it.

• 2:57Speaker 04

  So Dee, great point, bringing up, so a big announcement by the State Department. We're gonna, you know, we're gonna, we're gonna sell stuff to Ukrainians that they absolutely need because they're getting pounded right now and they're gonna come in three years. And so, you know, so there's two ways to look at this. One is, of course, long term, this is a good thing if this is going to be part of the strategic relationship between the United States and Ukraine. Short term, it does nothing and Ukrainians are facing a really tough winter where, you know, the Russians are committing, you know, atrocities and war crimes. And so my worry on this, when Ukrainians need this right now, is that, you know, there's a notion of, oh, the US is coming to the rescue, you know, the cavalry's coming, except they're not this, this, this winter. And, you know, there's always the idea

• 3:40Speaker 04

  that we do need to have other countries step in. The US, I think we have to accept the US is not going to do it now. So Europe and others have to step in. And I worry an announcement like this without understanding the nuances of the crap's not on the way means people aren't gonna do anything. And so, you know, it's a, the most cynical part of this, and look forward to everybody else's take, is that, you know, this is not gonna ever happen. And this is kind of the Rubio and other crowd to kind, you know, so trying to look reasonable when it comes to Ukraine, but really not doing anything tangible. But, you know, it's funny because on social media, it was announced and so there's some plausible, some, some very, you know, smart voices who said, oh, this is great, until they realized that it's not coming for several years.

• 4:23Speaker 04

  So not, not, not something that should necessarily be celebrated as a way that we're gonna save lives this, this, this winter. And it's gonna be pretty gruesome.

• 4:34Speaker 06

  Typically, the further off in time an announcement is about a foreign policy thing, the more likely it is to be a domestic statement, a domestic oriented statement, you know? And the closer in time to the announcement, to the action occurring, the more likely it is to be a true foreign policy action. And I think that's right now an example of what we're seeing where 2030 is a long way away. And it has a lot of reminiscence to the departure from Afghanistan announcement during Trump I, where it was sequenced so that it would occur in the next presidency, not in the current presidency, which here, this would be two years after the next presidency in the middle of a midterm, by the way, again. So it seems to be carefully timed for domestic political reasons. And maybe there will be some political will to give them weapons, but that's not like, to me, the primary purpose of that announcement,

• 5:18Speaker 06

  especially three days before our own elections here in the US, which means it might have been a concession to some of the more moderate Republicans, the more, the more Ukraine-focused Republicans to say, look, we're still thinking about Ukraine. We still care. Been a lot of negative press about us with Russia, but don't worry, we've got some plans in the future for Ukraine. So please make sure you go to the polls. That's, that's what it sounds like to me.

• 5:39Speaker 05

  Yeah, I mean, you know, and when you look at the terms of the agreement, worth about 2.1 billion, but as we said, they're not gonna be fielded until the 2030s. And Canada, Germany, and Norway are helping fund the sale, are picking up, you know, the, the cost of these. It's not like they've been given to Ukraine alongside EU-backed loans. And, and, and, you know, meanwhile, Russia escalates attacks on cities and energy infrastructure. I, you know, the, the good news to come out of all of this is Ukraine is standing pretty well by its, on its own. We've talked about this and we, the whole world can learn from, for instance, what Ukraine has learned

• 6:24Speaker 05

  about air defense. I'm here in Saudi Arabia and open source. You know, there's a Ukrainian team here helping the Saudis with their air defense. But I think too, to put this in perspective, you know, as you guys know, we need to take a step back and look what has happened since the beginning of this month. I mean, Trump announced a deal with Russia right to supply more than 300,000 tons of diesel immediately, saying there's, you know, another half a million or so tons would follow in November, and then a million tons, and eventually 3 million tons, right? And meanwhile, the Treasury's waiving sanctions on Russia's energy sector to make all of this possible,

• 7:07Speaker 05

  while, while we're threatening and beefing up threats, tariffs on, on hostile countries, really our real enemies like Canada. And, and so, you know, the Treasury waiving sanctions on Russia conflicts with, what was it? The Lindsey Graham sanctions law, right? Which Trent, Trump signed in September. You know, I mean, and then, and then you've got the rhetoric, you know, it's time for Ukraine to get a new president. Zelensky could have many more deals and from some reason have made many deals, but for some reason he, he chooses not to. You know, it's as though Ukraine is the aggressor, right?

• 7:52Speaker 05

  And then, and then, right, to, we take, just to take the effing biscuit, we press Kiev to stop striking Russian oil infrastructure because it's working, all right? We threatened to cut early warning intelligence reportedly. I mean, Putin said the strikes cost Russia about 1% of GDP. That, that, that's, that's probably among Kiev's most effective levers, right? To counteract what, what's being done to its own energy infrastructure right here at the beginning of winter. And, you know, fortunately, I mean, Ukraine continues the strikes. The thing most recently was in a petro,

• 8:36Speaker 05

  massive petrochemical plant. I mean, these are deep strikes using long-range drones against things that we can, we can learn from that. They're striking the right balance between, you know, all the high-end sophisticated Ferrari drones that we have, that we cannot afford to lose, and blue-collar drones that are sophisticated enough and be mass-produced enough to do the job. And Ukrainians are doing, doing a great job there. And then, and then we've got the Starlink disruption, right? SpaceX, no surprise here, restricting Starlink. And what's it, Star Shield, right? For, for over a week. And, and that didn't, you know, there was talk at the time,

• 9:20Speaker 05

  oh, this disrupted Ukrainian deep strikes. But actually, it also interrupted, as we talked about before, the interceptor drones that Ukraine relies on to, to go after the Shah heads and the other drones hitting their cities.

• 9:40Speaker 05

  And, uh, you know, I mean, then we denied responsibility for that. And now, now we say, oh, look at this. We've, we've approved this sale of Patriot missiles. Meanwhile, Witkoff is calling Putin a humanitarian.

• 9:59Speaker 04

  So, so one quick thing on that, and, and let me ask Jonathan, because you're sitting at a school of excellence in the United States. So you will certainly understand the foreign policy nuances, or I would call it dysfunction. But what Andy just laid out is this bizarre policy in which US, you actually, overall US policy seems very much to have shifted towards, towards Russia, towards Putin. Mind numbing for all of us. I think we've talked about it a lot, and Andy just laid out all the things that we have done that have certainly benefited Moscow. At the same, and we have the President of the United States complaining about Ukrainian strikes against Russian energy infrastructure. What's happening behind the scenes, though, is the CIA, my old outfit, and this is all per open source, is providing the Ukrainians

• 10:43Speaker 04

  targeting assistance to hit what? Russian energy infrastructure. That's a good thing. We want that to happen. But so, so I'm glad that my old outfit is still doing that. But it also shows to me the incredible policy dysfunction. And this is the definition of a country that does not use a policy process. The National Security Council, I assume, is irrelevant now, because, you know, if you take a look at the kind of the history of our, of our country, of our diplomatic foreign policy relationships, things go really astray when you have, you know, military, economic, political, you know, spheres all going in the wrong direction. This is classic. It just, I mean, nothing of this makes sense. And, and so, you know, the, you just, you have this kind of really bizarre situation

• 11:28Speaker 04

  in which the President and all of his advisors are complaining about something that we are actually doing. Comment on that, Jonathan, as sitting at Yale University, the center of the history of diplomacy in the United States.

• 11:41Speaker 06

  For better or worse. Yeah, I think back to like 1987, the Goldwater-Nichols Act that integrated the Joint Chiefs of Staff into the way that it is now, that created the National Security Council into a kind of new shape that it is now, post 1947 National Security Act. There were a lot, a lot of legislation that happened in the late eighties because of failures of policy, like you just described, similar types of failures. For example, the Iran-Contra affair, which was a result of a type of national security policy planning happening kind of behind the curtain without actual executive input, the way it should have worked. Congress saw that, and they said, we need to have a new way of doing this. That's what Goldwater-Nichols in part did, and also created the requirement for a national security strategy that each president would have to put out. So President Reagan,

• 12:25Speaker 06

  in his second presidency, that was the first time we had a national security strategy, which I've mentioned before, is kind of mind blowing, that since World War II, we'd never had a national security strategy until 1987. But it's, it's not something that works automatically, and it kind of requires care and feeding. And if you look at our national security strategies from, let's say, 2017 till now, you can see a massive shift. At first, 2017, it was the great power competition was our big focus, you know, focus away from counterterrorism toward China as our pacing threat. That was what Mattis put in there in the national defense strategy, which is subordinate to the national security strategy and the national military strategy. Then that kind of changed over the years, the last few years. Suddenly, the threats that we used to think were threats as far as policy is concerned are no longer

• 13:10Speaker 06

  in that document. And I think that reflects the dysfunction that you're describing, Mark, where we don't have a unified strategy. And this has always been a discussion within, like, academia in the US, that the US lacks grand strategy. We don't do grand strategy well, if we do it at all. Even here, like John Lewis Gaddis, who's still teaching at Yale, teaches a class on grand strategy, and basically, the, the point of that class is that we don't have grand strategy, right? So like, it's kind of understood in academia that we lack that. But it's something that requires kind of these enlightened leaders in a National Security Council to help shepherd ideas into some kind of pipeline, even if it's not perfect, to make it so that they're all oriented toward the same objective. So that if we have several different operations at the same time, they're kind of all moving

• 13:53Speaker 06

  in the same way. They may not be perfectly orchestrated, but they're at least kind of, there's some thought, some, some string kind of wrapped around them, keeping them together a little bit.

• 14:01Speaker 04

  This, this one is radically opposed to each other. I mean, it's wild. I've never, I've never, I've actually never seen anything like this.

• 14:07Speaker 06

  It's indicative of exactly that system not working or being used. So we don't have the string wrapped around. We don't have the shepherd standing there, which would be Mark Rubio in this case. We don't have him saying, hey, let's get that operation a little bit over here. Let's put the funding a little bit over there. You also don't have congressional input the way that you used to have. Like, the Gang of Eight, for example, used to have quite a bit of oversight and input onto a lot of this national security activity. They would be notified ahead of time for certain things, sensitive things. There would be covert action information going back and forth between the presidency and a presidential finding. After the finding goes, they would give updates as required by law under Title 50. A lot of those updates aren't happening the way they're supposed to. So you have a Congress that's not informed, and also not enforcing things that they've passed as laws. The laws that are there, they're just not being enforced as far as national

• 14:52Speaker 06

  security policy is concerned. And then on the National Security Council side, you have individuals with little fiefdoms or islands that are actually working at cross purposes in some ways. You know, you have these unelected officials like Witkoff, for example, going from place to place in the Middle East to Europe, two areas that require deep policy understanding. You can't have both, I don't think. I don't think you can be the same person to have the level of depth required for both of those theaters. And he's trying to do that, so he's spread thin anyway. So even if he was a perfectly good actor and perfectly informed, he would already be at a disadvantage because he's a single individual solving two different problems at the national security strategy level. So there's a lot of this dysfunction as a result of a National Security Council that's not working the way it's supposed to by law. And people could ask, why not? How do we

• 15:36Speaker 06

  fix it? And I think it has a lot to do with Congress needs to step up and actually enforce its laws that already exist. It's not like we need new laws. Yeah, exactly. And that's what Tuesday is. It's a referendum on this policy problem.

• 15:47Speaker 04

  Hey, Andy, one quick, one quick thing on this. I, I think this will be great for the, the listeners and viewers. So, you know, your, your role in special operations, everyone knows your extremely distinguished career. And one of the key parts of this is the ability to work with, understand, partner up with, with, you know, our friendly liaison services, our, our friendly partners around the world. If you take a look at the, exactly what Jonathan laid out, this kind of bizarre dysfunction, let's put yourself in a position, you obviously were in Ukraine for a while, but even back when you were in the, in the SOF world. What was, what would it be like right now, you know, doing a side by side with Ukrainian SOF? When you see the President all over the place, yet intel still flows for deep

• 16:29Speaker 04

  strikes? I mean, is that, is that a difficult personal dynamic that you have to, have to manage?

• 16:34Speaker 05

  Undoubtedly. I mean, the Ukrainians, you'll find, you'll, you'll find that, that most, in most professional militaries overseas, the average soldier pays more attention to politics than geopolitics than perhaps in the US military, right? And the Ukrainians have covered it very, very closely. And so even, you know, even when I was there, remember, I mean, it was under the Biden administration, but remember all the drip feeding of assets? Remember HIMARS and those hemming and hawing?

• 17:10Speaker 04

  Tacums.

• 17:10Speaker 05

  There was, there was escholophobia affecting every single decision. So we would give the Ukraine, oh, here's five HIMARS, and then we're gonna wait, and then now here's 12. We're gonna wait until the Russians understand the capabilities, can jam them, and can use good countermeasures, and then maybe we'll give you some more. You know, I mean, it was ridiculous. And so, you know, the average, or at least the guys we met, we dealt with, they understood all that. And they didn't take out hostility on us because we were there. But they, you know, it's very clearly evident to them. And contrast that with their attitude to the Brits. You know, Boris Johnson, who I know is a very

• 17:55Speaker 05

  divisive figure in British politics, and I'm not here to praise him, but he's a hero there, right? Because, you know, I mean, because the Brits have always, the Brits have always been 100% in, in support of the Ukrainians. I mean, right behind the Baltic countries, they've been, you know, they've been incredibly consistent. I mean, they emptied out their, their inventories of breaching gear for the offensive in 2003. They, they emptied out their inventory of Storm Shadow missiles. They had no qualms about giving long-range precision strike capability en masse to the Ukrainians. So, sorry, I, I'm, yeah, it makes it, it does make it very difficult, because, you know, we like to think, well,

• 18:39Speaker 05

  soldiers don't care about politics. That may be true of our soldiers. And, I mean, it just is. It's not just our soldiers. Our soldiers are represented, Marines are representative of society. Americans generally don't care about geopolitics unless it, it hits their pocketbook. But our, our foreign countries' partners definitely do, and they know what's going on. And, and, and so your role as a, an advisor is always affected by the geopolitical climate to some extent. Yeah, end of the day, it's personal relationships, but it really helps if your country's on the right side when it comes to dealing with that country.

• 19:20Speaker 05

  And I, you know, I mean, honestly, I'm, we, as US guys in Saudi Arabia, now we're dealing with this now a little bit, as you can imagine. I can't talk about it in depth. I mean, the Saudis have been very gracious and courteous to us. But it's a little embarrassing, you know? It's a little embarrassing to be in a, in a, in a country that the US appears to have turned its back on. I mean, there are, there is a, there are Patriot launches coming out to the Middle East now, at a time when Patriots are in short supply. And where are they going? To Israel. And do you think that's not covered in the local media? Of course it is. You know, the one country, the one country in the Middle East that can rely on the US, no matter what, no matter what, right or wrong, is Israel. And that

• 20:05Speaker 05

  is noted too. And, you know, you have to, I mean, I, who, who, who would have thought I would ever quote Richard Nixon? I'm not, I'm paraphrasing him. But, you know, during the, the aftermath of the Yom Kippur War, where of course the US came in to help Israel. I mean, Nixon, in, in some of these records now that have been released since, expressed a lot of concern about the fact that we were now seen as being just simply allied to Israel and have deserted our, our, our Arab partners in the region. And I think, I think we're in danger of being seen to do that now. And, you know, I mean, all of us who have been

• 20:50Speaker 05

  in SOF have worked closely with

• 20:55Speaker 05

  Our partners in the region, you know, Jordan, you know, aside from our time in, in conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq, Jordan is a, you know, a huge partner of ours and all of us have worked with Jordanian soft and to a lesser extent, you know, and Maradi stuff, you, you name it.

• 21:16Speaker 05

  And it's, uh, yeah, it, it, you know, before I get into, to rambling, yeah, it's a very, it, it's, to say the least, it's disappointing. And, and you know, the last part about this is you talk to the average soft guy and they, they understand, you know, whatever their political views, whatever their political views, you assign them to a partner nation role and they will dive in and learn the culture.

• 21:45Jack Murphy?

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• 26:34Speaker 06

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• 26:39Speaker 04

  One, one quick fun story on this, because I think all of us have been involved in the betrayal of allies. It's just unfortunately something that we do. Um, uh, you know, whether it's Afghans or Syrians or Kurds or the Saudis now, the, the, you know, in, in our, our brother here, uh, who's not on the pod right now, um, Mick Mulroy, when him and I were up living with the Kurds in Northern Iraq in, in December 2002, I remember, you know, I was a pretty young case officer and I, I had my speech all ready for a very senior PUK official. And I was like, America's gonna come to you, Abe, we're gonna kick Saddam's ass, blah, blah. And he stopped me. He was very senior in, in PUK intelligence. He stopped me. He said, Mark, stop. He said, we've been betrayed by you. We've been betrayed by Iran. We've

• 27:22Speaker 04

  been betrayed by the Saudis and the Israelis. We've been betrayed by everybody in the region. So, you know, save your speech, kind of, you know, we're, we're friends right now. But, you know, you know, we, we understand the game. And, and I felt a little stupid. But then later on, uh, as I reflected, uh, over the years, I think the Kurds are the one state, nation state, whatever you want to say, who do understand that the US at some point is probably gonna high tail it out of there. And that's just, I, I've never, I never forgot that. And I never gave a ridiculous speech like that again.

• 27:54Speaker 05

  Yes, certainly. I mean, uh, that's a great example, the SDF. Um, we, you know, we've, we've already, you know, we have since turned our backs on them. And, and this isn't about emotion. It's to our own peril, right? I mean, the Islamic State didn't go away, right? The, the conditions that nurtured the Islamic State didn't go away. When all this focus is on the war with Iran, undoubtedly, bad things are simmering away there in, in the Syrian hinterland. And we no longer have the means to affect them. Um, I'm not Chicken Little, but you guys know, I mean, we, we haven't learned from our mistakes,

• 28:39Speaker 05

  have we?

• 28:41Speaker 06

  And also the way our partners look at us, you know, we mentioned the, the missiles for Ukraine being delayed by years and so on. But then these states, our partners, look at Israel, and they see that we give them $6 billion a year, no strings attached since 1979 because of the Camp David Accords. And they're like, why can't we have something like that? I mean, Israel currently is fighting offensive operations outside of its borders, you know, with Iran, for example. Ukraine is fighting a domestic war, and they just need air defense systems. And they're saying, well, why, why can't we just have air defense systems? You know, I mean, the early relationship with the US and Israel was when John F. Kennedy gave Hawk missiles to Israel for the very first time. That was the very first foreign military sale to Israel. I think it was 1961. I could be mistaken on the year. But since then, we've just given them whatever they asked for, and actually increased sometimes

• 29:26Speaker 06

  more than they asked for. And then we have allies and partners in Europe that have suffered side by side with us, both in Europe and outside of Europe, especially with Article Five in Afghanistan. And they're asking for help. And we're kind of giving them this little drip, like you mentioned, Andy, the little drip in a hamster cage of help, if we give them anything. Meanwhile, Israel's getting whatever it wants. And it's got to cause some consternation in those allies and partners in their ministries of defense when they need help from us.

• 29:53Speaker 04

  One, one quick thing on that. You know, I, I attribute this not to, look, the US is always going to support the Israelis. That's just the way foreign policy goes here. But this is the Trump administration. I think President Biden would have sent Patriot interceptors to Ukraine. Let's just be very clear on that. This is Trump's just absolute personal animosity and hostility towards Ukraine. So, um, I, I think it has a lot to do with just the notion of the US moving away from helping Ukrainians. Because I think in a different administration, the US would have found a way to provide air defense to Ukraine right now. They would have done the same for Israel, but we would have found a way. Um, I, I put this square on the shoulders of, of the Trump administration, who just, you know, and look, Trump hates Zelensky and hates the Ukrainians. We know that. Um, and

• 30:36Speaker 04

  this is his, this is a very cynical and awful way, um, in which we try to push a peace settlement by letting Ukrainians get pounded. Um, I think it's going to go down in the, you know, in the history of US foreign policy is, is pretty, um, you know, immoral and unethical. But I think if a different administration would have found a way, um, to get, to get more air defense to Ukraine.

• 30:58Speaker 03

  A different administration probably wouldn't have started a war with Iran.

• 31:02Speaker 04

  Well, there's that too.

• 31:03Speaker 03

  To like deplete our stockpile of patriots.

• 31:06Speaker 04

  Dee, that's a segue. Let's shift to Iran.

• 31:09Speaker 03

  As I told you guys, I was professional. I sometimes show it like a broken clocks twice, uh, right twice a day. All right. So that, um, that link you showed us, uh, the tweet from Aaron McLean, who was, uh, you know, I want to get it right. Um, he has a podcast called School of War Pod and he's a national security analyst for CBS News.

• 31:29Speaker 04

  Former Marine.

• 31:30Speaker 03

  Former Marine, shout out. All right, cool.

• 31:32Speaker 06

  I was on his podcast last year.

• 31:34Speaker 04

  There you go.

• 31:35Speaker 03

  There you go.

• 31:37Speaker 04

  I met him, I met him in, uh, in, uh, in Sweden a couple of months ago. Super smart guy. So I thought when he, when he laid out those multiple scenarios, it was worth us discussing.

• 31:46Speaker 03

  For sure. I'm gonna get them up right there. See that, guys?

• 31:51Speaker 03

  Beautiful, right? Um, uh, Mark, you're a, you're a TV guy. Why don't you read this and go ahead?

• 31:58Speaker 04

  I can't read anything there, but, uh,

• 32:00Speaker 05

  I mean, Dee, rather than read it by road, I mean, we've read the, we've read the tweet. Let's just talk about his point.

• 32:06Speaker 03

  Well, I want folks who are listening and watching to be able to understand it too. So, I mean, it's on the, it's on the screen so they could check it out.

• 32:13Speaker 05

  Yeah. I mean, his first point basically is, he says, you know, public positions between Iraq and Iran and the US are irreconcilable, right? Short of an Iranian surrender, um, a deal is gonna mean ceding the straight to Iran with catastrophic consequences for US power, right? I mean, he's, he's kind of a pessimist there. I mean, on his first point, I'd agree with most of what he says, but I, I can't help thinking he's too pessimistic. I mean, given potentially, so I mean, some of this week's reporting, I'm, you know, I'm not jumping to the silver lining, but, uh, you know, the negotiations, yeah, there's not direct talks, but we've seen some

• 32:58Speaker 05

  weakening of positions this week. We've seen on the US side, discussions that, uh, that they're willing to see a, you know, an agreement whereby Iran keeps a nuclear program, just doesn't develop a weapon, right? And on the Iranian side, um, we're seeing, uh, you know, we're seeing similar kind of agreement, um, and, and agreement to open Hormuz, um,

• 33:31Speaker 05

  in exchange for sanctions or, I mean, in, in exchange for lifting the blockade, in exchange for sanctions relief, but without the US, remember that before the, the idea was the US would do things and Iran would do things. So there seems to be, you know, there seems to be some giveaway or some room for negotiation now.

• 33:51Speaker 04

  Andy, why is that? I mean, we've seen that before. I mean, all these things that have talked about the, I mean, literally it's like, it's like Barack Ravid and the Qataris and the pack. It's like the entire negotiation, everything is happening. We've seen before. I'm not disagreeing with you. I'm saying, why would it be different now?

• 34:07Speaker 05

  I, I mean, I agree.

• 34:08Speaker 04

  That's my only question because that was one of the courses of action that Aaron's talking about. So that would be negotiated. But why do you think that we would do something now that we didn't do before?

• 34:17Speaker 05

  Why would we? Yeah. I mean, I, I think, I, well, I can't answer whether this is going to result in anything. But, but we're seeing, we're seeing on the US side, some ground giving that wasn't there before, right? It's no longer no nuclear program. Now it's, well, you know, if we can find an agreement not to reach nuclear weapon. I mean, who, you know, that's coming from, that's coming from Rubio. Who knows the, you know, exactly what the stance is. I don't, I'm not even sure. I'm not even sure the president knows, you know?

• 34:52Speaker 04

  Back to the dysfunction. We don't know what that actually means.

• 34:54Speaker 05

  I mean, I, I, I'm not screwing with you. I'm just saying that.

• 34:57Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 34:57Speaker 05

  Um, but it's, it's definitely not in this administration's interest to go back to war. You know, as, as McLean points out, I mean, one of the definitions of badness, right? Is doing the same thing and expecting a different result. Um, and

• 35:19Speaker 05

  you know, and they, I, I think, but anyway, that's the only part where I disagree with him. I mean, I agree. Stay the course on economic warfare. Um, he points out blockade's doing real damage. Um, you know, escorts have restored oil transits to, you know, at times to pre-war levels. It's, so, yeah, stay the course. It's, it's the least risky option and, but he points at himself. It's slow and Iran isn't gonna just sit still, right?

• 35:47Speaker 04

  One, one quick thing. So what, why I like this five courses of action, Jonathan, maybe kind of jump in because it's not, you know, it's not binary. It's not stay the, it's not, so it's, it's agreement, you know, full on this diplomatic agreement, which, you know, Andy just went over. Um, but then when you go to, it's kind of a gradual level of, of, uh, uh, uh, increasing military pressure because there is um, possibilities of limited military strikes. And then it gets to be much more significant if you're going after Pickaxe Mountain. And then you, then you start going after infrastructure targets, which means, you know, potential, you know, US committing war crimes in the eyes of many. So Jonathan, go over those other kind of courses of action and what you think about them. Cause I think it's, it's just not, you know, all of a sudden,

• 36:27Speaker 04

  you know, we're hearing, okay, uh, Tuesday's the election, Wednesday, the president might decide to go back to kinetic operations, but it, there are various degrees of that, aren't there?

• 36:36Speaker 06

  Yeah. I mean, even looking at this thing overall, what this looks like to me is one scenario of the failure of diplomacy. And it's an escalation in the scenario up to a point of like turning a dial all the way up to military action. And the important thing here is like, this is one channel of activity, kind of all connected to each other. These are not the only scenarios though. And something in game theory, you know, there's the idea that sometimes the only way to win is not to play. And so you have to also think about what if we didn't do this thing at all? What if there was a separate, completely different way of approaching this? And for example, I'm, I'm reading through these escalation steps and I'm not seeing intelligence operations. I'm not seeing covert action.

• 37:15Speaker 06

  I'm not seeing allies and partners being used as the tip of the spear, which sounds kind of anathema to the way our foreign policy has been going, but that's an important scenario to consider. Because depending on what our objective is, we might have to put our differences with our allies aside and at least secretly work together to get some out, outcome. And I also don't see an objective here. I see escalation without a purpose. And that's, that's kind of dangerous because, you know, you see here like major military activity, mowing the grass as, as we increase the, the dial, but for what? And I think that should be mentioned first in any discussion of a scenario, because we need to think, we need to problem frame first. Okay. What are we trying to achieve here? And what, what steps in the dial increasing will we have to turn to get to that desired end state?

• 37:58Speaker 06

  Instead, we just see a dial turning. It's like baking a cake and not knowing how many minutes it's supposed to bake for, what the consistency of the cake is supposed to be. Once it's baked, we just turn the temperature up and go check on it every 30 minutes. We're gonna come back to a cake that's, you can't eat it. And this is kind of the same situation here where you're just turning the dial for the sake of turning the dial without an actual end state in mind. And that's, that's concerning to me. Not, not a hit on Aaron's analysis, but I think generally the way we're thinking about this is, okay, there's gonna be escalation after the midterms. What does escalation look like? But the question we should actually be asking is, what do we hope to achieve?

• 38:32Speaker 04

  Right. That's the, that's the why. I mean, the thing that I keep finding, having, you know, spoken over the last couple of weeks with a whole bunch of, you know, current and former senior military officials, um, who, this is not, you know, the, the kind of the progressive left wing crowd of, you know, war is terrible. But it's just, you know, what is the desire, you know, why, why would we do this? What's the desired effects here? There's, you don't see that tied to a, a, a strategy, but um, you know, Trump thinks in this kind of fashion, I would, I would think. And so, so ultimately this might be the menu that Chairman, you know, Dan Kane, Chairman of Joint Chiefs is presenting him. You know, I, I certainly don't see this National Security Council, this president, Jonathan, president, um, kind of going through, you know, game theory

• 39:13Speaker 04

  uh, in a Yale classroom. I mean, they should. In the old days, you would want to have the smartest people on the planet in such positions of national security, you know, you know, uh, roles, but I don't know. I, I, I can't even think as they sit around the oval on a napkin, planning the next steps that, you know, do you think really Secretary of Defense Hegseth could even say anything that you just enunciated?

• 39:34Speaker 06

  No, I think actually it's instead like, his thought process is like, why aren't they listening to me? Let's do more, then they'll listen. And that's kind of the way that it's going. And it's like, just throw more and more until they listen to, to us.

• 39:46Speaker 05

  It's a very, it's a very binary approach, isn't it? Military option, economic, in military. And, you know, where are the guys with the green eye shades in, in the NSC? Who are talking strategy, right? And I think that's, so that's why I think, you know, I agree with you, Mark. I like McLean's five options. And I mean, just to talk through them, because Dee wanted us, because I'm, I'm subservient to Dee's wishes in almost every way.

• 40:12Speaker 03

  Thank you, sir.

• 40:13Speaker 05

  You know, to talk through them, that's why they, you know, I mean, it's, it's not particularly inspired, but it's at least he's a guy who's sat down and thought about it. And you hope that in the NSC, there's a group of people who are coming up with these options. You know, it was make a deal, right? And he's got like low probability of that. Stay the course on economic warfare, because it's doing real damage. Downside of that, Iraq's not sitting, Iran not sitting still. You know, Brent's above one hundred and seventeen dollars. There was some Limpet mine attack the other day. So waiting is costly. And for the global economy as well as Iran, right? That's number two.

• 40:54Speaker 05

  And then the third one, which Mark, I think you just touched on, and John, you too, was economic warfare plus limited strikes to kind of mow the grass to round Hormuz.

• 41:08Speaker 05

  You know, limited strikes would be, I mean, it's the most defensible military option, right? Would be IRGC, fast boats, mine lane capability, coastal missile sites, and observation posts, right? So protecting the shipping, supporting the blockade, and then keeping up the economic pressure. And then he talks, where are we? The fourth option, right? Major strikes to change Iran's negotiating position. So kind of a return to the March, April campaign, but shorter and sharper, focused on, again, missiles. He talked specifically about nuclear sites, Pickaxe Mountain.

• 41:50Speaker 05

  We have talked on this show about the problems now of reaching centrifuges in Pickaxe Mountain. They've been, they've been dug deeper, probably out of range, right? Of the, of the, you know, the, the most penetrative bomb that we have that gets much play in the media. Which, by the way, is different than the mother of all bombs, which has been a total red herring in this discussion.

• 42:21Speaker 05

  You know, I, I mean, so the administration could probably argue, hey, this time it could work because the economy, it's, the strikes are landing on an economy that's already under pressure. There's already an electricity crisis. And, and now you're matching it with economic pressure, right? And then, all right, this is Netanyahu's favorite, the fifth, major strikes to hasten regime collapse. Notice that Netanyahu, around his election time, has had, just before, he started talking about regime change as the goal, right, in Iran.

• 43:05Speaker 05

  You know, I, I would guess that this is not something that we would articulate, I would hope or nothing, that, you know, this would be hit everything, right? To include oil, gas fields, refineries, export terminals, industry, you know, power grid.

• 43:25Speaker 05

  And, but the risk there of retaliation is very high. And the retaliation would come against the Gulf states, right?

• 43:35Speaker 04

  The Gulf, our Gulf allies would go crazy with this.

• 43:37Speaker 05

  Yeah, Iran's already explicitly threatened.

• 43:40Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 43:40Speaker 05

  Gulf energy desalination plants, which we've talked about, are a huge deal in the country where I am now, in most countries in the Middle East, right?

• 43:51Speaker 05

  So, you know, I mean, I, one would hope that option five is not something that's seriously been considered, but you never know, do you?

• 44:00Speaker 04

  Hey Dee, how about we do an unscientific poll right now amongst the four of us? What do you, what Dee, what do you think is going to happen?

• 44:07Speaker 03

  I think we're definitely gonna, it's gonna be back to the same limited strikes that we were doing probably during February. Not limited, but pretty intensive strikes. Right, when the, you know, they call the midterm elections. And this next two months are, you know, in limbo.

• 44:24Speaker 06

  I think there'll be strikes on infrastructure that are more broad than they were previously. For example, some, in the previous strikes, there was like dual use credibility there, where, you know, this could be used for military operations. I think there'll be more punishing or punitive type strikes on non-military infrastructure. Let's say water for cities and things like that, to try to force internal dissonance to make people rise up against the regime again. Which is not a good, a good thing, the way that that would be designed, but that might happen, because they don't understand how that works. So it's possible that could occur. And I would not be surprised if those things fail. The next step would be trying to seize the islands inside the Straits of Hormuz, to try to push up to Abidhan off of Keshm Island and Kharg Island,

• 45:05Speaker 06

  and hold a little bit of territory and use those as kind of like close-in targeting positions into deeper Iranian target sets. Which, again, not a wise move, but could happen.

• 45:15Speaker 04

  Andy?

• 45:16Speaker 05

  Yeah, I think, I think, you know, a short, sharp campaign after the midterms, perhaps not immediately after midterms, but within a week or so, somewhere between McLean's options three and four. So it would hit, you know, Iran's anti-shipping forces, missiles, the nuclear sites, possibly. But I think you're gonna see continued efforts indirectly for the Doha talks for pressure to close a deal, because, you know, we've all seen, even this administration cannot be impervious to public opinion when it comes to this war, right? I mean, it's unpopular.

• 45:59Speaker 04

  With that, so there was, there was an article, I don't know, I think it was in the Washington Post this morning, and it was actually incredible. There was some, some administration officials say, if the Democrats actually take the House and Senate, and Trump is so pissed, it might cause him to further go down the road of, because he's angry at, at, at military escalation, which is insane, of course. Then you have kind of this narcissistic, sociopathic mentality of, of just because you're pissed, you, you kind of go do this. But with the, with the, with the public opinion so kind of vehemently against any kind of military activity, and the Gulf states now just pleading with the administration to give, you know, give more time for negotiations, even, even though the chances are low.

• 46:41Speaker 04

  You know, there's one thing that, that, and my thinking may have, may have been influenced a little bit by just the talks I've had over the last several weeks is, but I, I can't see, it is, it goes down to Dan, Chairman of Joint Chiefs Dan Kane and CENTCOM Chief Admiral Cooper. And how they go down in history on this, because there is no conceivable military reason to do this. It's not going to work. And so it's that, that, that's answering the question, why? So, I don't know, maybe I'm saying that, that maybe there's nothing gonna happen. Maybe we just continue on this kind of economic strangulation campaign, hoping that military advice, much more than just options, you know, the, what McLean did is gave options. I would be hoping that, that senior military officials in the United States, if they want to have the correct legacy,

• 47:26Speaker 04

  are, are, are kind of answering the question, you know, why are we doing this? And the answer is, there's no particular reason to. So I'm gonna go with nothing's gonna happen, other than continued economic pressure campaign that the Secretary of Treasury and others have certainly advocated for, like, you know, why? Why, why go down that road? But I'm doing so with the, with the hope that, that senior officers in the US military will be able to get to the president.

• 47:49Speaker 05

  Yeah, I'm, I'm, you know, I mean, hoping that advisors to the president point out that a deal is still possible, because Washington has softened its nuclear demand. And, and according to kind of the Doha structure that's been discussed now,

• 48:07Speaker 05

  you know, Iran makes the first moves, right? So there, there, there seems to be concessions. But I mean, I agree with you totally, and I agree with McLean when he says at the end, right? He says none of these options offer a clear route to victory. And.

• 48:21Speaker 04

  Do you think Jim Mattis would have, would have just told Trump, there's no reason to do this?

• 48:26Speaker 06

  Yeah, one hundred percent.

• 48:27Speaker 05

  Yeah, I mean, I would, I would, I would hope that, I mean, I, I can't speak for Mattis. I would hope he'd point out that, you know, the American people need a clearer explanation of the strategy and the cost, right?

• 48:40Speaker 04

  And by the way, there's one other thing on this too. So you're not only putting US forces at risk, you know, there's men and women who are gonna be flying aircraft into harm's way. There's sailors on ships and Marines on ships who could get hit by kind of Iranian reprisals. It's also, Iran has a, you know, has a vote in this. And, and we haven't even talked about yet, you know, the, the potential, any of these courses of action means an increase in, in, in Iranian retaliation, which could be asymmetric attacks. It could be cyber attacks, it could be a, a host of different things.

• 49:07Speaker 05

  Absolutely.

• 49:07Speaker 04

  And so there could be, you know, this is, this might not be pain free.

• 49:11Speaker 05

  I mean, the wars already cost, what, forty-seven billion? And we keep talking about American lives? Look, I mean, I, of course, I, I mean, of course, that's important. Twenty-three military lives, it's not insignificant. I mean, but, you know, counterpoint could be, well, that's pretty, you know, low cost for a war. But the, the point is for what? I mean, we have not, there's been no strategic gains at all. We're in a worse position than we were in February. I don't see how anyone could argue that, except for the idiot who says, hey, you know, I only used to be able to fit fifty bucks in my trunk. Now I can get a hundred and thirty bucks of gas in, you know, it's a miracle. It's, yeah, I, I mean, I, I, the optimistic side of me.

• 49:59Speaker 05

  Says to myself that, you know, they going back to full escalation options, four and five in particular is not good for the United States. It's not even good for the administration. It's, I mean, it's, they're all disastrous choices.

• 50:20Speaker 04

  Right. Hey, D, one quick question. Do you got a question?

• 50:23Speaker 05

  Sorry, go ahead. No, no, no.

• 50:24Speaker 04

  We haven't, we haven't talked. So I was, I was busy last week. I started getting hit up by all these folks. Even my wife, she's like, we need to buy a generator. I said, what's going on? There was like this hysteria over this like doomsday prepping thing. Um, I don't know if you all followed that, but I came back and my wife has several cases of water and we got canned tuna fish everywhere. And now I, now I, I want to buy a generator, but now I get to go out and buy a generator. What the hell happened last week with this kind of doomsday scenario?

• 50:49Speaker 05

  Something happened. Yeah. I, you know, I, I wonder if it's, um, I wonder if it's bleed over from Bonham suffice to the British public, which is long, you know, but that's been longstanding. I mean, the, uh, resilience, uh, resilience of the, of infrastructure, resilience of households, uh, has long been a discussion in the UK, preceding the war with Iran. And if you look at, um, the government advisories in the UK, they don't, they're not talking about war with Iran. Necessarily they're talking about weather, all sorts of things, but it seems that somehow that has bled over.

• 51:26Speaker 04

  Crazy, dude.

• 51:27Speaker 05

  And I asked someone the other day in America, and so why, why are you advising your family to go out to the grocery store and buy, you know, as though it's COVID again and buy,

• 51:37Speaker 04

  Right.

• 51:37Speaker 05

  um, 100,000 rolls of toilet paper?

• 51:40Speaker 04

  It was chaos at Costco, I heard. Costco was a mess.

• 51:43Speaker 05

  I mean, it's come on.

• 51:44Speaker 04

  You would have gotten your ass run over by these crazy people. It was terrifying.

• 51:47Speaker 05

  Iran doesn't need to try and, and, and, you know, and you hear bullshit answers like a mass cyber attack. Yeah. I, I mean, Iran doesn't need to go after a hard target like United States. Um, and even if, even if it did, it could decided to, it would be very, they, they would be narrow at strikes. I mean, cyber attacks are like jamming, right? You, you can't, you, you can't do a blanket countrywide cyber attack that shuts down everything. Um, but there's no need to, you know, there, there are much softer targets here in the Gulf. Much softer ways of hurting the United States.

• 52:29Speaker 04

  D, did you prep?

• 52:31Speaker 03

  No, I did not. Um, I, I kind of saw that in the news. I was, I was, I didn't really pay much mind to it. I mean, I think also what the information that got picked up and disseminated was like about the thing being sent out to embassies about being able to operate for 90 days on their own and stuff like that. I think that also helped kind of stir, stir the pot a little bit. Um, but I want to ask before we go, I want to hit in a couple of topics. Number one, actually it's a financial topic having to do with the price of oil. I'm going to ask John this because he's smartest. He knows what the financial stuff is. He's a secret billionaire. John, in McLean's thing, it mentioned, uh, that Hormuz's oil,

• 53:13Speaker 03

  uh, exports were kind of close to what it was before the war. I don't know if that's accurate or completely accurate, but why is Brent crude still above a hundred bucks?

• 53:22Speaker 06

  The thing is risk, right? Risk has a price. So even if they're literally, and we've mentioned this on the show before, even if literally everything returned to normal on the ground, insurance companies and private entities who have something to do with this oil, whether they're the shipping companies, the recipients, the purchasers, the factories that use the crude pellets to make plastics. All of them are looking at this and they're like, I hear you saying that, but I don't trust that. Or I hear you saying that, but it's too risky for me to buy it at the lower price. I have to be at a higher risk profile right now to participate in this market. And that's, that's multiple actors on different sides of the transaction. And that's causing these increases to stay high because it's actually, yes, there are

• 54:03Speaker 06

  uh, in some areas, returns to quote unquote normalcy for some of the Gulf states in import exports, because of the, the intense amount of expenditure the US is putting right now. They have 24 hour air sorties going on. They have jets in the air all the time, trying to prevent Iran from interfering with the US-supported import export activity and to prevent Iran from exceeding its blockade. So you have this intense US activity going on, and if the US decided tomorrow to stop that, it would not be safe anymore. Right? And as Andy mentioned, there was a limp at mine placed on a ship this week. That was the first time since 2019 that Iran placed a limp at mine on a commercial vessel. That's a big deal and you only need one limp at mine to make shipping companies go through the roof in concern.

• 54:46Speaker 06

  Because it just takes one explosion to lose $400 million worth of oil into the Gulf. And then the company is responsible for cleanup environmentally. So like now you have an additional cost built into that. And all this is in the actuarial sense, being built into the insurance policies attached to these vessels. Right? So this is driving prices up. And remember Brent crude comes from Norway. It's the most stable crude oil in the world. So we use that benchmark because it's least sensitive to volatility in the world market. If we were using Saudi crude, for example, the price would be all way more volatile. But still, over a smooth average, it would actually be quite correlated to the, the Brent crude. So you're not going to see Brent crude go down until those shipping companies, like the private individuals are sure

• 55:30Speaker 06

  that the risk is really mitigated in a way that's long-term, because remember these are futures contracts. That's not the price of oil to buy it now. That was somebody last month or last six months ago, or whatever time purchasing that futures contract at a time when it was uncertain what things would be like today. That's the price you're seeing on the Brent crude. That's how futures contracts works. So it's kind of fascinating with these commodities where it's not reflective of today's risk. It's reflective of whose mind was in action on that contract months ago, weeks ago, days ago, thinking about how things might be today. Of course, it's unpredictable and it's not perfect. So that unpredictability and that imperfection and the time value of money, these things are all layered into that price of oil and some other factors too, which is kind of fascinating because it has nothing to do with what's happening right now.

• 56:13Speaker 06

  It has everything to do with what was happening the day that that contract was purchased and then perhaps resold.

• 56:21Speaker 03

  Very interesting. Another quick question before we get out of here. What the fuck's going on with Poland? John?

• 56:29Speaker 06

  Yeah. So big picture in Poland, you have a president and a prime minister. So it's a parliamentary system. The prime minister is pro European Union. The president is pro Trump. This is causing divisions. The crux of the issue this week is that the constitutional court is having some issues in choosing justices or judges. And there's supposed to be a process where these judges get brought in, right? So if you think about, there's the independent judiciary, there's the parliament. There's a conflict between these two entities within their government, in their, their top level of government. And what you see, it's not really a coup. It's, it's called a coup by one side and it's called the correct thing by the other side. Right? Because the way the constitution is supposed to be working is that these justices are brought in by parliament.

• 57:13Speaker 06

  However, they're being rejected. So there's a little bit of a conflict there between the independence of the judiciary, which is like the main thing. And the vulnerability here is how can Russia exploit this? Right? Because Poland is kind of the gateway to Europe as far as a Russian invasion is concerned, in addition to the Baltic states. But Poland is a major issue and has been for centuries. And so I think that is why the EU is so concerned about it because they think what happens if that pro-Trump president wins on this challenge, Trump is already pro Russia in their eyes. This could be a concern for Europeans further west of Poland.

• 57:52Speaker 03

  Beautiful. Guys, I want predictions for the midterms. What's going to happen? Mark P. Go first.

• 57:59Speaker 04

  Both houses go to the Democrats. The blue wave is, uh, is, is, uh, is here.

• 58:04Speaker 03

  Colonel?

• 58:06Speaker 05

  Yeah, I agree with Mark.

• 58:08Speaker 03

  John?

• 58:09Speaker 06

  Yeah, I think the Senate will be tight, maybe two or three seats over the majority, but the House will be a lot more, uh, in favor of Democrats.

• 58:18Speaker 03

  So not enough votes to convict on impeachment. God damn it. Uh, all right, boys. A pleasure. Anything else before we go? Please, the floor is yours.

• 58:29Speaker 04

  I want you to be prepping. I want to see D do his doomsday, doomsday prepping. If you had to prep, what would you buy?

• 58:35Speaker 03

  Non-perishable food.

• 58:37Speaker 04

  What kind of food?

• 58:38Speaker 03

  Beans. I don't know.

• 58:39Speaker 06

  Tuna.

• 58:40Speaker 03

  Tuna.

• 58:40Speaker 04

  Tuna.

• 58:42Speaker 03

  Gas, I guess, and, uh, water.

• 58:49Speaker 03

  See, I can make it. I would make it through to your school. Um, guys, check, if you guys want to follow the, anybody listening wants to follow the guys, check the links in the description. Of course, Mark's Twitter and everything else down in the description, John's books. Of course, Iran's shadow weapons and the theory of a regular war down in the description. Of course, Andy Milburn, one of my favorite biographies I've read, When the Tempest Gathers. Links are in the description. Looking forward to his next book coming out soon about the, uh, Israel Gaza war or Israel Hamas war. Uh, do us a favor, buy a watch, number one, vaerwatches.com/the team house.

• 59:25Speaker 03

  And also check out our Patreon, patreon.com/the team house to help support the show.

• 59:29Speaker 06

  I listened to our book talk yesterday.

• 59:31Speaker 03

  Yeah, that link, it's on our, it's on our, um, it's on our YouTube page, not going to be available on audio. We did it live. It was a lot of fun. So check that out. And, uh, that's all I got. Thank you, guys.

• 59:44Speaker 05

  Bye, guys. See you next week.

• 59:49Speaker 03

  Hello, everyone. If you're hearing this, uh, you are not a member of the Patreon. You can get your hands on ad-free episodes that come out early and you can ask us questions. Maybe we'll answer them. You can also watch the Team House podcast completely ad-free and early, and you can also watch it live as we interview our guests.

• 1:00:10Speaker 03

  And it's the best way to support the channel. So if you can, if you're open to it, you can go to patreon.com/the team house. That link is in the description. Uh, we appreciate the supporters and we hope you would consider being one. So it's patreon.com/the team house. Thanks, guys.

• 1:00:30Speaker 00

  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.

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  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.

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  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. Brought to you by Genentech and Novartis. Listen to At The Table, the food allergy podcast on America's number one podcast network, iHeart. Follow At The Table and start listening on the free iHeart radio app today. OnDeck is built to back small businesses like yours. Whether you're buying equipment, expanding your team, or bridging cash flow gaps, OnDeck's loans up to $400,000 help make it happen fast.

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  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.

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  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. Brought to you by Genentech and Novartis. Listen to At the Table, the food allergy podcast on America's number one podcast network, iHeart. Follow At the Table and start listening on the free iHeart radio app today.

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  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. Brought to you by Genentech and Novartis. Listen to At the Table, the food allergy podcast on America's number one podcast network, iHeart. Follow At the Table and start listening on the free iHeart radio app today.

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