Eddie Fishman: Understanding Iran

Trevor and Eugene sit down with Eddie Fishman– former State Department official, international sanctions expert, and author of Chokepoints– to unpack the hidden mechanics of global power. Using Iran as a lens, Eddie explains how economic sanctions became one of America's favorite foreign policy tools, why they're often seen as an alternative to war, and what happens when those plans collide with the realities of the world they're meant to change. Along the way, the trio explore unintended consequences, international hypocrisy, and the stubborn truth that people, countries, and history rarely cooperate with anyone's grand strategy.

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

• 0:04Speaker 00

  This is one of the, I think, honestly tragic lessons of recent history is, you know, the countries that have given up nuclear weapons, or that have developed some parts of a nuclear program, but then didn't cross the threshold, have actually fared a lot worse than the countries that have developed nuclear weapons.

• 0:19Trevor Noah?

  Damn, Eddie.

• 0:21Speaker 00

  It's bad.

• 0:21Trevor Noah?

  That's a crazy paradox when you think about it.

• 0:24Speaker 00

  Yeah, I think there's an incentive. I mean, if you look at Gaddafi, right? I mean, the Libyans-

• 0:27Trevor Noah?

  That's a crazy paradox when you think about it. Everyone who didn't get a nuke, look what happened to them. Look what happened. But you don't want them to get a nuke. But if you don't get a nuke,

• 0:37Trevor Noah?

  you might want to get a nuke, Eugene. It's going LinkedIn, man.

• 0:48Trevor Noah?

  This is What Now with Trevor Noah.

• 0:56Trevor Noah?

  This segment is brought to you by Google Pixel. You know what's really frustrating? Knowing the exact information you need is somewhere on your phone, but still ending up wasting your time digging through five different apps just to actually find it. Thankfully, Google Pixel 11 is designed with Gemini intelligence, so it can proactively find the information I need right when I need it. Like my flight info and travel days, or my calendar when Eugene texts me to hang out. Oh, sorry Eugene, I'm booked. Learn more about what Google Pixel 11 can do at googlestore.com. These AI features are available in select countries and languages for users 18 and over, and make sure to check responses.

• 1:41Trevor Noah?

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• 2:25Trevor Noah?

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• 3:03Speaker 00

  A little bit.

• 3:05Speaker 00

  Like, you know, go shopping for my kids.

• 3:08Speaker 02

  You go shopping for your kids?

• 3:10Speaker 00

  In Soho, yeah. My wife has like this, there's this like kids store there that we like, we walk to.

• 3:14Speaker 02

  You guys go together?

• 3:15Speaker 00

  Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

• 3:16Speaker 02

  Your children believe in close democracy?

• 3:19Speaker 00

  My, my, my wife likes to dress my, my kids in fashionable New York clothes. So, we go to a place in Soho. I think it's called Makie. M-A-K-I-E.

• 3:29Speaker 02

  And your kids choose what they like?

• 3:31Speaker 00

  No, no, no, no, no.

• 3:32Speaker 02

  Oh, they don't.

• 3:33Speaker 00

  They don't get to choose.

• 3:33Speaker 02

  That's what I meant. Also, they don't get to choose.

• 3:36Speaker 00

  Yeah. But it's hilarious, though. My, my kids look like very hip, like, you know, Manhattan. Two, a two-year and four-year-old.

• 3:43Speaker 02

  That's so cool.

• 3:43Speaker 00

  My wife is really into that.

• 3:45Speaker 02

  She likes dressing them up like, yeah, now.

• 3:46Speaker 00

  Yes, yeah.

• 3:49Speaker 02

  You know, when, when, when wives dress kids up, you're off the hook.

• 3:54Speaker 00

  That's true.

• 3:54Speaker 02

  Because she doesn't touch your fashion anymore. Because there's too much paperwork now. Because she has to worry about herself first.

• 3:59Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 4:00Speaker 02

  And then the kids.

• 4:01Speaker 00

  That's actually a good point.

• 4:02Speaker 02

  Because now you stop being a representation of her.

• 4:04Trevor Noah?

  Remember before you were a proxy, if she was dressed nicely and then you're not, then she's like, come on, this guy is making me look bad. Then she would focus on dressing you up. Now she's got two kids.

• 4:15Speaker 00

  Mm hmm. Here's the thing, though, that's true, but I have noticed, though, since we've had kids, I just don't get any new clothes anymore.

• 4:22Trevor Noah?

  Ah, I told you.

• 4:23Speaker 00

  Yeah, so I, I like all my clothes are like from like five, like,

• 4:26Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 4:26Speaker 00

  It's like this, this blazer I got when I was like twenty five and I've definitely gained like a solid fifteen pounds, so.

• 4:31Trevor Noah?

  But before she would have been like, if you allow Eugene, he'll end your marriage carefully. You're gonna expose things that you never wanted to know. She doesn't care. Honey, how was the podcast? I learned everything. I now know the truth. You don't care about me anymore.

• 4:47Speaker 00

  Yeah, I was wondering, I was like, where are my, my new clothes?

• 4:50Trevor Noah?

  No, it's over. It's over.

• 4:53Speaker 00

  Yeah, the one thing she has gotten me these really nice socks that are super comfy that I've like, because I've had to dress up more of all this book talks and stuff like that. And um, there's like a hole in one of them and I was like, can I have a new one? Because I loved it so much. And she was like, yeah, but it's like two months ago, I still haven't gotten it. And I was like, what's going on? She's like, well, Father's Day. She's waiting to give it to me. I was like, I need it now, like, you know, I need the sock.

• 5:14Trevor Noah?

  That's amazing.

• 5:15Speaker 00

  Need the sock.

• 5:16Trevor Noah?

  You know what she should do? She should give you the new socks now and then, but cut out the part that has the hole and fill, give you the whole filling part on Father's Day. Then you get new socks now, but the part you need to be filled on Father's Day.

• 5:29Speaker 00

  Why are you being like? I thought that was the problem.

• 5:32Trevor Noah?

  No, then you get like an upgrade. Again, oh, we're recording, we're all good. All right, let's do it. Eddie Fishman, welcome.

• 5:39Speaker 00

  Good to see you.

• 5:40Trevor Noah?

  Welcome to the podcast.

• 5:41Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 5:41Trevor Noah?

  And welcome at the best possible time to have you on because I've asked around and there are a few names that come up more when you, when you request the services of somebody who is adept at understanding statecraft, I believe it's called, uh, sanctions, uh, borders, geopolitical skirmishes. You worked for the State Department, that's correct, right?

• 6:06Speaker 00

  Right, yeah.

• 6:07Trevor Noah?

  Uh, you were instrumental in like, I guess, like guiding some of the policy around like, like the, the US's sanctions between China and Russia. So, I mean, I'm, I'm sitting next to the perfect person to ask. And because I don't like, not that I don't trust the internet anymore. I just don't know what to search for these days. It's easier for me to ask an actual expert in person.

• 6:27Speaker 02

  I thought you were gonna say, because the internet searches for you instead.

• 6:29Trevor Noah?

  No, no, I don't know what to search for.

• 6:31Speaker 02

  You think of a dog, and next thing you see, dog ads.

• 6:34Trevor Noah?

  You're not wrong, you're not wrong. But everyone has the same question, so I'm gonna ask it on behalf of many of us. What is actually happening in Iran?

• 6:46Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's a great question. Um, look, I started my career motivated by trying to come up with a solution to Iran's nuclear program that didn't involve fighting another war in the Middle East. Um, that's why I I honestly joined the government after I graduated college. Uh, Iran was building a nuclear program, the US was fighting a war in Afghanistan, another one in Iraq, and both of them were going terribly. And I thought to myself, there has to be a better way to try to non-violently coerce countries that are trying to do things that we don't want them to do, like seek nuclear weapons or support terrorist groups, to stop them from doing that. And that had been the US policy for a long time, right? That's what George W. Bush wanted to do in his second term. It's what Barack Obama did, famously, uh, with the Iran nuclear deal.

• 7:31Speaker 00

  Look, I think Donald Trump, in twenty eighteen, during his first term, he made a gamble. He's, he, he said, if only we'd imposed more sanctions on Iran. If we put them in more economic pain, I could get a deal that was even better than what Obama did, right? And he tried that through this so-called maximum pressure strategy, and it failed. You know, by the time he came back, uh, in his second term, so, you know, last year, Iran had enough nuclear material to build ten bombs, which is way more than they ever had, you know, before, uh, you know, before we actually had that deal in twenty fifteen. And so I think Trump was sort of confronting with this, confronting this massive failure, which was, he tried maximum pressure to stop Iran from getting a nuclear weapon. It hadn't worked.

• 8:13Speaker 00

  And so he could have theoretically tried a different approach, maybe pivoted to something more like what Obama did with diplomacy.

• 8:18Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 8:19Speaker 00

  But instead of changing his goals, he changed his means. He escalated from the use of economic warfare through sanctions and economic pressure to the use of military force. And I think, uh, we're now seeing why every president before him had been hesitant to attack Iran.

• 8:35Trevor Noah?

  So, so here's, here's what I hope we get to, um, in this conversation. I, I, I think. One, I'd love us to all be able to actually understand what's going on, not on the ground, but like, you know, behind closed doors with Iran and the US.

• 8:49Speaker 00

  Sure.

• 8:49Trevor Noah?

  Uh, two, I would love for us to all understand why you, I guess, sort of shouldn't mess with Iran lightly, alright? Uh, three, I would like us to even understand who sets the rules around who should and shouldn't have things, whether it's nuclear weapons, or who decides where a border should or shouldn't be enforced, or how you get to enforce that, um, what attack is, what defense is, and then understanding where America exists in the world now, as it pertains to China and Russia, who seem like the other major state players. So, let's, let's work from where we are now, right? Everything you laid out makes sense to me, but I'm just gonna ask like, the, the dumb

• 9:28Trevor Noah?

  question that, that lingers in my head, and that is, why is America so opposed to Iran building up your enriched uranium? And, and I'll, I'll, I'll, I'll say the, I'll ask the full question.

• 9:42Speaker 00

  Sure.

• 9:43Trevor Noah?

  Why is America so opposed to it, when Iran has constantly said, "We're not trying to make a nuclear weapon, we just want enriched uranium, because we have many other uses for it, we can use it for power plants, we can use it, you know, for our energy needs, as other countries have." So, explain, explain that part to me.

• 9:58Speaker 00

  Sure. So, look, there is this thing called the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, I think it was first agreed to in the 1960s, and basically, it, it regulates which countries can and can't have certain nuclear material.

• 10:10Trevor Noah?

  Okay.

• 10:11Speaker 00

  And basically, the bargain is, there, there are a few countries that legally can have nuclear weapons, right? The United States, China, Russia, the UK, and France.

• 10:18Trevor Noah?

  Why?

• 10:18Speaker 00

  It's, you know, basically, who is the most powerful countries after World War II, and were able to sort of make themselves permanent members of the UN Security Council?

• 10:26Trevor Noah?

  That's a great gig. We should decide, Eugene, who between us gets to own a gun? I'm gonna vote for you.

• 10:32Speaker 02

  I was gonna go more for Afrika.

• 10:38Speaker 00

  But look, I mean.

• 10:39Speaker 02

  You need to nonproliferate.

• 10:40Speaker 00

  Yeah, I mean, I do. I do think there's something, you know, there, which is, you know, at the sort of peak of the power of these countries. They sort of traded in some of that power in exchange to sort of, you know, legitimize their access to these weapons.

• 10:55Trevor Noah?

  So they so they made a deal with the rest of the world or with themselves?

• 10:58Speaker 00

  And with the rest of the world.

• 10:59Trevor Noah?

  Okay, okay.

• 11:00Speaker 00

  The vast majority of countries have signed on to this. And the bargain that they make is that they will not pursue nuclear weapons. But in exchange, they do have access to nuclear fuel, nuclear material, so that they can have nuclear power, which, by the way, we need, right? And I think, in fact, we should have more of now. It's part of the reason that we're not making more progress getting ourselves off of fossil fuels because we haven't built enough nuclear power. So Iran is a signatory to this nuclear nonproliferation treaty. The problem is that routinely, you know, as part of the, you know, being a signatory, you're inspected by the International Atomic Energy Agency. Routinely, Iran lied about what they were doing. They were enriching uranium to levels that exceeded what they were allowed to do under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.

• 11:41Speaker 00

  They had done research on actually producing nuclear weapons in the 90s. They had former Soviet scientists, by the way, who were probably, you know, looking for a job after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

• 11:53Trevor Noah?

  As many of them were.

• 11:54Speaker 00

  Yes, exactly. Who said, hey, I have something that, one really good marketable skill.

• 11:57Trevor Noah?

  Yes.

• 11:58Speaker 00

  And I can sell that to Iran.

• 11:59Trevor Noah?

  I will put my profile on LinkedIn and maybe somebody can hire me.

• 12:03Speaker 02

  You're hired.

• 12:04Trevor Noah?

  That's what one of them said.

• 12:05Speaker 00

  It's like, you know, looking for work on LinkedIn.

• 12:08Trevor Noah?

  He has experience working with extremely volatile materials. Will not mention which one. Wink, wink.

• 12:16Speaker 00

  It was a great business. I mean, it's how North Korea also built up their nuclear program.

• 12:20Trevor Noah?

  Oh, so this was, so basically, everyone who is sort of persona non grata in the geopolitical world, they got their scientists from Russia, really.

• 12:27Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah.

• 12:28Trevor Noah?

  Okay.

• 12:28Speaker 00

  It's like one of their main exports, pretty much.

• 12:30Speaker 02

  You guys got your scientists from NASA from Germany?

• 12:33Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah, the US, yeah. Exactly.

• 12:34Trevor Noah?

  Oh, I didn't know that.

• 12:35Speaker 00

  Yeah, Von Braun. And then, and then, of course, I mean, Einstein, you know, Oppenheimer, a lot of those guys were Jews who ironically, you know, the Nazis didn't like the Jews, and so they went to the US.

• 12:45Trevor Noah?

  They escaped.

• 12:46Speaker 00

  And then they built nuclear weapons. I mean, it's one of the all time great, you know, sort of ironies of history, right? That the Nazis picked on the Jews, the Jews went to the US, built nuclear weapons, and then won World War II.

• 12:56Trevor Noah?

  It feels like a perfect parable in a way.

• 12:58Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 12:59Trevor Noah?

  It's almost like people in trying to destroy someone, they then create their own end, you know? Do you get what I'm saying? So they go like, we have to stop them, but they're not doing anything. And then they go on to like, help the other people who then destroy you, basically, and your empire.

• 13:12Speaker 00

  Mm hmm. Yeah, hubris, man. I mean, it's as old as the Greek myths, and it still plays out.

• 13:16Trevor Noah?

  Yes, it is. It plays like a Greek tragedy, yeah, in many ways, yeah.

• 13:19Speaker 00

  So, look, Iran did cheat, and they did do a lot of things that suggested they really wanted a nuclear weapon. And just to address one important thing, because you're saying, why does the US not like what Iran's doing? The UN, so the entire UN Security Council on multiple times voted to condemn Iran and saying that Iran did have to stop enriching uranium.

• 13:39Trevor Noah?

  Got it, got it, got it.

• 13:40Speaker 00

  Because the whole international community was worried about what Iran was doing. And so that's also, I guess, one of the ironies of Trump's approach, is that leading up to the 2015 nuclear deal that Obama and a number of the other world powers signed with Iran, international law was on the US's side, right? The international law, which is what the UN provides, said that Iran should stop enriching uranium. Well, at this point, you know, the US has been the one that unilaterally pulled out of this deal in 2015, that imposed sanctions, re-imposed sanctions on Iran unilaterally, that now has attacked Iran twice in as many years without any international authorization. And so in some ways, for a long period of time, the US was sort of on the right side of international law.

• 14:25Speaker 00

  But after Trump pulled out of the 2015 nuclear deal, which he did in 2018, we've sort of been on the wrong side of international law.

• 14:31Trevor Noah?

  So, correct me if I'm wrong on this, because I've never worked in the State Department, nor do I have any qualifications. I've always felt like America just does what it wants. And then sometimes it's on the right sort of international law and then some. But it's not like America is trying to be on a side. America is just like, listen here, buddy. This is what I'm doing. And if it's on or not on your side of law, then that's your problem. But it seems like every time the U N, you know, like, like if we think of like weapons of mass destruction.

• 14:57Speaker 00

  Totally.

• 14:58Trevor Noah?

  You know, Saddam Hussein, all of that. America went against the U N, right? But America just did its thing. And then when something else is happening, America will do its thing. But it happens to be on the other side of the law. So am I misunderstanding this? Or is America just doing what it wants to do? And then sometimes it's for the law and sometimes it's against international law?

• 15:17Speaker 00

  I think probably in broad brushstrokes, you're, you're right. Although different presidents, I think, take this to, you know, further than others. And I will say, look, when I was in the U S government, in the Obama administration, one of the things I did was I went to other countries, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia.

• 15:34Trevor Noah?

  And sabotage their countries.

• 15:35Speaker 00

  Exactly.

• 15:36Trevor Noah?

  Say it, say it.

• 15:37Speaker 02

  Also, eat, eat noodles, Marat.

• 15:39Trevor Noah?

  You know, you, you, we need more people like you in the world, Eugene. You have goodness in your heart.

• 15:43Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 15:44Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, you're right. And eight noodles.

• 15:46Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 15:46Trevor Noah?

  No, no, I'm joking.

• 15:47Speaker 00

  That's a good person, yeah.

• 15:50Speaker 00

  Yeah, so basically what, what we would do, and this was when we were putting pressure on Iran in the early 2010s. We would say, look, if you keep buying oil from Iran, you know, you, a Singaporean company, we will cut you off from the U S dollar. We will use this key choke point in the global economy, which is the U S dollar, critical for all international business. And so it was, I mean, I didn't use quite the accent that you just used, Trevor. Although I probably should have, it would have made me more credible. And we did sort of give these folks sort of binary choices, which was like, look, if you don't stop buying oil from Iran, you're going to lose access to the world's most important currency, the U S dollar. What I will say, though, is when you deliver that message to a foreign businessman or diplomat, like,

• 16:34Speaker 00

  it doesn't usually go over well. They're like, what the hell are you doing here?

• 16:37Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 16:38Speaker 00

  And so what helped us in those days was to say, look. I'm just here because the UN, including your own country, has said that Iran shouldn't have a nuclear weapon. And guess what? Their oil sales are directly funding their nuclear program. So I'm just here to help you comply with your international obligations. And that may sound like, you know, glib or something like that, but it actually worked. And it made this, it made it much more likely for the person on the other side of the table to be like, "Look, we are being pressured by the US, but truly like this is accurate." It's a lot different if I just said that like, "Look, the whole international community disagrees with me. We shouldn't be doing this, but still you should stop doing business with Iran because I told you so." Which is, by the way, that has been what Trump has tried to do with a lot of different countries in recent years,

• 17:21Speaker 00

  saying like, "If you don't do X or Y, I'm just going to wallop your economy with tariffs or sanctions." And there's no sort of legitimization that helps it go down easier, which also means not only is it like a more awkward conversation, but like from a very practical, like self-interested perspective, that person on the other side of the table is way less likely to do what you want them to do. It's the same in like human relations, right? If you try to persuade your kid to do something that they don't want to do, they're much more likely to go along with it if they think that it's just. You're on the side of justice, but.

• 17:54Speaker 02

  They might just end up homeless as well.

• 17:55Speaker 00

  That's true. Or you kick them out.

• 17:57Speaker 02

  That's my petrodollar.

• 18:01Trevor Noah?

  It's to threaten them with homelessness. So you can do what daddy says, ne?

• 18:05Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 18:09Speaker 02

  They grab me, "Listen here, buddy."

• 18:12Speaker 00

  Yeah, you gotta use that accent. It works, it's much more effective.

• 18:14Trevor Noah?

  It really, it really works well. Okay, so, okay, so this is providing a lot of clarity. So you had a world where Iran, am I correct in assuming people don't want Iran to have a nuclear weapon because it gives them more power? Or it's not because they think they'll use it, right?

• 18:31Speaker 00

  It's a great, I mean, I'm glad you brought this up because there's really two perspectives on this. I think like the less common perspective, although some people have it, is that, you know, the Islamic Republic of Iran, like they are literally this messianic regime in which they are so committed to wiping Israel off the face of the earth that even if it means that they would destroy themselves. You know, in the process that they would go ahead and use that nuclear weapon. I'd say that's a minority opinion.

• 18:56Trevor Noah?

  Okay.

• 18:56Speaker 00

  The the more credible opinion amongst sort of national security experts is that Iran is the world's largest state sponsor of terrorism. So groups like Hezbollah and Hamas that have killed lots of innocent people around the world, including Americans, are on the payroll of Iran. Iran is basically trained and created a lot of these groups. And so even if Iran wouldn't use a nuclear weapon itself, what happens if it gave some high enriched uranium to Hezbollah? And Hezbollah said that-

• 19:26Trevor Noah?

  Okay, so that's the cause of, that's the real cause of concern.

• 19:28Speaker 00

  Yes. It is nuclear. I mean, it's weird. I mean, I don't know if you guys were in New York in like the 2000s. But when this, when this issue really came up, it was like mid 2000s, like 2005, 2006, 2007. And the big fear then was that we would have a nuclear 9/11. That the next terrorist group wouldn't just fly a plane into the World Trade Center. Like they would have like a bomb laced with enriched uranium.

• 19:57Speaker 00

  And it was a legitimate fear, right? Because Iran was hypercharging its nuclear program and supporting these terrorist groups.

• 20:02Trevor Noah?

  Well, this is, okay, this is an interesting question that I have actually then is.

• 20:07Trevor Noah?

  I like your phrasing. Was it a legitimate concern or was it a legitimate fear? Because sometimes a fear can be legitimate because you have a fear and I can say that is a legitimate fear. But was the concern actually like legitimate? As in, was this based on something that could happen? Or was it based on the idea that something could happen?

• 20:26Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 20:27Trevor Noah?

  Which I know seems like semantics, but do you understand what I'm saying? Sometimes people are afraid of something. Okay, here's an example. In America, people are terrified that their kids are going to get kidnapped.

• 20:36Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 20:37Trevor Noah?

  It just became a campaign in the United States at some point. Kids were going missing. They were on milk cartons. But as a percentage of the population-

• 20:45Speaker 02

  I've never understood that milk carton thing, but anyway.

• 20:47Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, but as a percentage of the population, it was huge, right? I mean, it was small, it was tiny. It was insignificant, not to the parents of those children and not to their communities. But in terms of how it made people feel, they started writing laws that said your kid could not go unattended at a park. They couldn't like walk home. If your child is found like by themselves, they'll take the child, sometimes away from the parents. But they created such a mass hysteria that now they've undermined the very existence of childhood. In my opinion, right?

• 21:19Speaker 02

  And the freedoms of it.

• 21:20Trevor Noah?

  The fear was real. But the thing that the fear was based on wasn't necessarily as real as people thought it was. So in that, was was it a real issue? Or was the fear the thing that people were focusing on?

• 21:33Speaker 00

  Yeah, I mean, I think it was a real issue, just given the stakes, right? Um, and given that nine eleven did happen, right?

• 21:40Trevor Noah?

  It had just happened, okay.

• 21:42Speaker 00

  So we had just experienced a terror, a massive, I mean, coordinated terrorist attack, you know, four planes that were hijacked.

• 21:49Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 21:49Speaker 00

  Yeah, right. So I do think it was legitimate. Um, and this is one thing that I'm conflicted about. It's also why I think um, hon- honestly evaluating foreign policy is so difficult. Is that you don't know the counterfactual, right? You don't know like, well, what what would have happened if we had not done this, right? And so like, if you look at the track record of US policy since nine eleven, I would say most people, including myself, would say we like over. We exaggerated the impact, like how big of a threat terrorism was. We like were scarred by nine eleven. It did take away a lot of our freedoms. You know, I remember as a kid, uh, you know, uh, the first time I flew alone, uh, my mom and dad taking me through security.

• 22:25Trevor Noah?

  All the way to the gates.

• 22:26Speaker 00

  To the gate. And so like, we have lost a lot of our of our freedoms. Um, at the same time, we have not had another nine eleven scale terrorist attack in the United States. And so it's it's I'm just I'm just being honest, like, I'm genuinely conflicted on this.

• 22:41Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, yeah, because you don't know.

• 22:42Speaker 00

  Because of government policy. And if you look at Europe, for instance, like, there have been these massive terrorist attacks, right? I mean, if you remember in the twenty teens and Paris, Barack Obama.

• 22:51Trevor Noah?

  Huge one.

• 22:52Speaker 00

  Yeah, and Charlie Hebdo and um, and there were ones in Brussels, you know, so um, yeah.

• 22:58Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, it it it really becomes difficult because on the one hand, you want to live in a world where. You don't allow isolated incidents to define how you live your daily life.

• 23:08Speaker 00

  Right.

• 23:09Trevor Noah?

  But on the other hand, you can't ignore them as if they never happened.

• 23:13Speaker 00

  Mm hmm.

• 23:13Trevor Noah?

  Do you know what I mean?

• 23:14Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 23:14Trevor Noah?

  So it's like you're in this weird place of like, how much do you preemptively act? And how much do you not? And how much? So it feels like America is in this place where it's going. We do not want to get to the place where we have to think about preemptively acting or not acting when it comes to uranium or nuclear weapons with Iran.

• 23:27Speaker 00

  That's right.

• 23:28Trevor Noah?

  That's essentially where it is. Just as a side note, does North Korea have nuclear weapons?

• 23:33Speaker 00

  Yeah, they've got a full suite of nuclear weapons.

• 23:36Trevor Noah?

  Oh, OK, but this is interesting. So if they have nuclear weapons, what are they doing with them?

• 23:42Speaker 00

  Yeah, I mean, they, so far, they've not used them, right? Thankfully, I think that they feel like they have a sense of impunity. So there's a fear that they could launch some sort of preemptive attack on South Korea. I know South Koreans are generally worried about that.

• 23:57Trevor Noah?

  All the time.

• 23:58Speaker 00

  All the time. I don't know if you guys have been there recently, but it's a, you know, Seoul is within, you know, within range of a lot of the artillery and whatnot from North Korea. So so far, the answer is they haven't used them. But there is a fear that it could embolden North Korea over time to act aggressively. So I think that's the other, the other part that's maybe a little bit more nuanced is even if in Iran or North Korea isn't going to use nuclear weapons, do they feel that by virtue of having nuclear weapons, that they can actually push the envelope a lot more below the use of nuclear weapons?

• 24:31Trevor Noah?

  Right.

• 24:32Speaker 00

  Right, so maybe North Korea wouldn't use a nuke against South Korea, but would they feel emboldened to attack South Korea?

• 24:37Trevor Noah?

  Because they have a nuke. Because they have a nuke.

• 24:39Speaker 00

  Right, and like, this is one of the, I think, honestly tragic lessons of recent history is, you know, the countries that have given up nuclear weapons or that have developed some parts of a nuclear program, but then didn't cross the threshold, have actually fared a lot worse than the countries that have developed nuclear weapons. Right, I mean, this is-

• 24:55Trevor Noah?

  Damn, Eddie.

• 24:57Speaker 00

  It's bad.

• 24:57Trevor Noah?

  It's a crazy paradox when you think about it.

• 24:59Speaker 00

  Hmm. Yeah, I think there's an incentive. I mean, if you look at Gaddafi, right? I mean, the Libyans-

• 25:03Trevor Noah?

  It's a crazy paradox when you think about it.

• 25:05Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 25:06Trevor Noah?

  Everyone who didn't get a nuke, look what happened to them. Look what happened. But you don't want them to get a nuke. But if you don't get a nuke,

• 25:13Trevor Noah?

  you might want to get a nuke, Jim. It's going LinkedIn, man.

• 25:19Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, but you see, this is what, this is, so this is what, this is what I love about, no, but, but Eddie, this is what I like about your brain and the way you, and the way you think and the way you write and the way you-

• 25:31Speaker 00

  I can't believe you did that to me. That was funny.

• 25:35Trevor Noah?

  No, you so I think what I've what I've always enjoyed about your work is that you grapple.

• 25:39Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 25:39Trevor Noah?

  Right?

• 25:41Trevor Noah?

  Grappling is is is necessary whenever whenever it comes to issues of state or anything large because it's not simple.

• 25:48Speaker 00

  Mm hmm.

• 25:49Trevor Noah?

  We want to act like it's simple, but it's really not simple because what you just said is the ultimate paradox. We would many people would argue that we don't want other countries to have nuclear weapons, let's say, all right, we don't want more nuclear weapons out there. But we also cannot deny all the countries that have the nuclear weapons. Seem like they're living a more chilled life. You know, if you have the nuke.

• 26:10Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 26:10Trevor Noah?

  Versus if you don't.

• 26:11Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 26:11Trevor Noah?

  And then the ones who have it aren't also aren't using it. So if you're working in the State Department and you're looking at this information, at what point does the paradigm shift or does it ever shift like do you have to game these things out and ask yourself if the idea you're working from is correct or incorrect?

• 26:29Speaker 00

  Yeah. It's a good I mean, it's a fair question and there are, I mean, it's an extremely heretical opinion. There are some scholars who believe that nuclear proliferation isn't actually as bad of a thing because it creates more stability, right? I mean, we we used to in the US talk about trying to do regime change in North Korea. We don't really talk about that anymore, right? I mean, there's a reason Iran was attacked, but North Korea wasn't right? And so I think my own view on that is that nuclear proliferation is very dangerous. I mean, if you look even at the history of nuclear incidents, when there's only a very small handful of countries that have nuclear weapons, we've come very close to accidental nuclear war.

• 27:09Trevor Noah?

  Right.

• 27:09Speaker 00

  On a number of occasions.

• 27:10Trevor Noah?

  Really?

• 27:10Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah.

• 27:11Trevor Noah?

  When?

• 27:11Speaker 00

  In the eighties, you know, I think even in the nineties during the Clinton administration, there was it was actually after the end of the Soviet Union, I think it was Russia during the Yeltsin period, their their radars picked up that there was an ICBM incoming.

• 27:26Trevor Noah?

  Flying over the North Pole.

• 27:27Speaker 00

  Right.

• 27:28Trevor Noah?

  Right?

• 27:28Speaker 00

  And I think thankfully Yeltsin was like, this doesn't make any sense.

• 27:31Trevor Noah?

  No, it wasn't Yeltsin, actually.

• 27:33Speaker 00

  I was not.

• 27:33Trevor Noah?

  It was crazy. No, it wasn't anyone in leadership.

• 27:36Speaker 00

  Who was it?

• 27:37Trevor Noah?

  There was one man who was tasked with doing the thing.

• 27:40Speaker 00

  Or pressing the button.

• 27:41Trevor Noah?

  Yo, the the the story went, this is like one of my favorite stories because I remember watching this and me like, wait, what happened? They saw the ICBM coming, I think it was like over the North Pole somewhere, they're like, it's coming for Russia. Top chain of command all goes, it's coming in, the bomb is coming in. What do we do? What do we do? Counter-strike? What do we? They agree, we are striking back, we're striking back, we're striking back. You know, everyone has to now send codes, send codes, all the codes, get your keys.

• 28:07Speaker 02

  Two keys, one, two, ah, you put it wrong, one, two, ah, on three!

• 28:11Trevor Noah?

  No, wait, are you gonna say three and then we do it?

• 28:14Speaker 02

  One, two.

• 28:15Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, no way, okay, okay, say three then.

• 28:17Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 28:18Trevor Noah?

  Why not say four then? Why not say on four?

• 28:20Speaker 02

  Okay, okay, one.

• 28:20Trevor Noah?

  One, two, three, four. Yeah, now we got it, you see, I don't know why they do that. So anyway, so what, what happened then was, the chain of command brings it down. It gets down to one man, who's in his bunker and the job is to launch. And then he went, doesn't make sense. He, just of his own volition went.

• 28:40Speaker 00

  Some random guy.

• 28:41Trevor Noah?

  He is like, it doesn't make sense.

• 28:42Speaker 02

  He went rogue under there.

• 28:43Trevor Noah?

  The guy said it doesn't make sense.

• 28:45Speaker 02

  He disobeyed an order.

• 28:46Trevor Noah?

  My man, the biggest order.

• 28:48Speaker 02

  To launch.

• 28:48Trevor Noah?

  The biggest order. And I, I forget what his reasoning was, it was something along the lines of him not understanding why there was only one. Or why they were launching the way they were, he just was like, it doesn't make sense.

• 28:59Speaker 02

  Something is not right.

• 29:00Trevor Noah?

  And then he didn't launch. And then after the point when it would have been too late. They realized that was a, a satellite or malfunction or something was causing the reading. And it wasn't, there was no bomb coming in at all. And then they phoned him back and they're like, ah, and he's like, I didn't launch. And then they were stuck, because now they had to choose between punishing him.

• 29:23Speaker 02

  Or?

• 29:24Trevor Noah?

  For disobeying instructions. Or applaud him for saving the world, arguably. He saved the world.

• 29:32Speaker 02

  Yes, he did.

• 29:33Speaker 00

  Man, give that guy the Nobel, Nobel Peace Prize.

• 29:35Trevor Noah?

  He should get it.

• 29:35Speaker 02

  Absolutely.

• 29:36Trevor Noah?

  He should, but then, they, they didn't punish him to the full extent.

• 29:40Speaker 02

  For disobeying an order, obviously.

• 29:42Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, but they, they disappeared him, and he's like a, he's like a folk hero in Russia. But they just disappeared him, but not like to a Gulag, he just, they were like, you just go away. Thank you, but go away.

• 29:52Speaker 00

  Wow, like a witness protection program.

• 29:54Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, in a way, in a way.

• 29:56Speaker 00

  That's wild.

• 29:57Trevor Noah?

  But I didn't know there was like multiple times.

• 29:58Speaker 00

  Oh yeah, but I mean, to, to, to like, that whole story, like, imagine. And that's only when you have two countries that have large nuclear arsenals. By the way, China now is in the process of making that three countries. But then, imagine if that was ten countries or twenty, right? I mean, the, just, uh, the, the risk goes up exponentially, the more players you have in this, in this really awful game.

• 30:21Speaker 02

  When did the world ever become scared of the damage that a nuclear bomb can do? Was it Hiroshima? Where people, do you think Hiroshima is actually a demonstration?

• 30:30Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah.

• 30:30Speaker 02

  Of what these weapons can be? You think it was necessary for it to happen, for people to go, these things are real? Because I think had that not happened, who would think maybe this is not real?

• 30:40Speaker 00

  I'm with you, by the way, and I think this is another sort of broad lesson of statecraft. I was mentioning, one is sort of counterfactuals are important. And you have to ask yourself, like, honestly, like, what would have happened had we not done X? Right? Another one is, you know, unfortunately, for weapons to be taken seriously, oftentimes they have to be used. You make the example of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which for sure, I mean, you would not, I mean, I don't think anyone believed the power of these weapons. You know, there's a very closely guarded US national secret before these attacks. I think this is actually relevant for today, too, because, you know, the Strait of Hormuz, right? Even going back to when I was in government, whenever you would sort of war game, what

• 31:24Speaker 00

  happens with a war against Iran, you'd be worried that they would close the Strait of Hormuz. Wouldn't this be so bad?

• 31:29Speaker 02

  That was in the war games.

• 31:30Speaker 00

  Oh, for sure. I mean, because it's like the key maritime choke point.

• 31:34Speaker 02

  Okay, so it's the most logical thing that they would do?

• 31:37Speaker 00

  Yes. Although I think one of the suppositions that military planners, strategists had for many years was that for Iran to close the Strait of Hormuz, they would have to use these sea mines, right? There's sort of the floating mines that just blow up if you hit them. They've got thousands of them. And the sort of, like, sort of the logic was, well, sea mines don't discriminate if you're a tanker carrying Saudi oil versus Iranian oil.

• 32:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, like the landmines in Mozambique, yeah.

• 32:04Speaker 00

  Right, yeah, they don't discriminate. And so this would be just as bad for Iran as it would be for all the other countries in the Gulf, because Iran also depends on the Strait of Hormuz to sell its own oil. So everyone was like, well, maybe they wouldn't do this because it would be like economically suicidal for them.

• 32:18Speaker 02

  For themselves, yeah.

• 32:19Speaker 00

  But what they did in, you know, February and March of this year, um, after the US and Israel struck Iran, they didn't use sea mines. They just used these drones and missiles that cost like twenty, thirty thousand dollars a pop. They struck like a dozen or so ships, not even that many. And then just for scale, uh, before the war, you had like a hundred and fifty ships going through the strait on a daily basis. All they struck was like a dozen ships. And that was enough then to get like the crews of these ships to be like, hell no, I'm not sailing through that strait, right? And this is like at a cost of like less than a couple hundred thousand dollars if you add it up. And so what they did was they completely confounded expectations. They showed that they could close the strait, A, at very low cost, and B, in a selective manner, right? In a manner where they could sell their oil.

• 33:03Trevor Noah?

  Yes.

• 33:03Speaker 00

  They could say like, your oil's good, your oil's bad, like your ship isn't going through, but like, we're gonna sell all of our oil. That was the surprise. But now that the world has seen that, that is like a killer, killer economic weapon. And like, you can't unsee it, right? That's just like a fact, uh, from here on out.

• 33:19Speaker 02

  And, and you know what? Also, it exposed the average person like myself, I do not understand how oil gets from one place to another in a steady stream. So when the strait of Humus was closed, because in my head, I imagine this, oil gets drilled, refined, gets taken into a tanker, then the tanker makes its way. And then when the tanker reaches that side, they're like, oh, we've got more that are coming. Then they send another one. But actually, they go out in almost like a straight line like this. Then it becomes a pipeline, but of ships.

• 33:46Speaker 00

  Oh.

• 33:46Speaker 02

  So if the strait closes, doesn't mean the oil does not reach, like it could take months before a country gets affected. Because now all of a sudden, the convoy, the caravan, as it were, gets disrupted.

• 33:58Trevor Noah?

  So we only, that's why we only noticed that it's delayed, the impact is delayed because the last ships already left and were on their way.

• 34:04Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 34:05Trevor Noah?

  So just to give him his props, Stanislav Petrov.

• 34:08Speaker 00

  Ah.

• 34:09Trevor Noah?

  We should, we should have a world Stanislav, Stanislav Petrov Day.

• 34:14Speaker 02

  We'll have soup in the.

• 34:15Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, he was a, he was a Russian lieutenant, uh, passed away in twenty seventeen, I believe. But this man was literally.

• 34:22Speaker 00

  No way.

• 34:22Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. He was, he was the one.

• 34:24Speaker 00

  Wow.

• 34:25Trevor Noah?

  He was a full on, uh, he was the commander of the, of the Soviet military protocol. Oh, no, he, he disobeyed the orders.

• 34:32Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 34:32Trevor Noah?

  Against Soviet military protocol. And this was shortly after there had been an attack on a plane, I guess. But he suspected a false alarm, decided to wait for confirmation that never came. That never came.

• 34:44Speaker 00

  Wow.

• 34:45Speaker 02

  I I I think he just.

• 34:47Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 34:47Speaker 02

  He he just leapfrogged for me Yuri Gagarin. He's he's up there now because he saved lives. He didn't go up a rocket and go hang out in space.

• 34:55Trevor Noah?

  So basically what he did was, just just so everyone has the full story correctly, what he actually did was, he got the message from the nuclear guys to be like, yo, the nuke's coming in, we've got to, we've got to fight. And then he just didn't tell his superiors because he's like, if they know, we're going to war.

• 35:08Speaker 00

  Oh, wow.

• 35:09Trevor Noah?

  That's actually what he did.

• 35:12Trevor Noah?

  And then he said, no.

• 35:13Speaker 02

  That's amazing.

• 35:14Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 35:14Speaker 02

  That's a hero. What's his name? Petrov?

• 35:16Trevor Noah?

  Yeah. That's that's that's the person we we mostly owe. There might not be life on earth if it weren't for this guy. Stanislav Petrov.

• 35:24Speaker 02

  But is that.

• 35:25Trevor Noah?

  Un- unspoken heroes.

• 35:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, until today.

• 35:28Trevor Noah?

  Huh?

• 35:29Speaker 02

  Because you just spoke him.

• 35:30Trevor Noah?

  Stanislav Petrov. We would just say his name all the time.

• 35:32Speaker 02

  You just ruined this cover in Miami now it's going, ah! I have to find the new castle.

• 35:40Speaker 02

  This domino effect, or is it just a myth? Any that if one country launches, another one launches, another one will launch, another one will launch, and there won't be life on earth?

• 35:49Speaker 00

  Um, yeah, I mean, I I think that it's more relevant in terms of like the US and Russia, just because we have these massive arsenals. That there's this concern that once, if the if Russia were to think that there were incoming nuclear ICBMs. If they didn't strike back before those ICBMs landed.

• 36:07Trevor Noah?

  ICBMs is intercontinental ballistic missile, right?

• 36:10Speaker 00

  Exactly. Yeah, so these are missiles that, you know, within fifteen, twenty minutes can go from the US to a target in Russia.

• 36:16Trevor Noah?

  As we called them in South Africa, express missiles, not local, all-station missiles. These are long-distance missiles. For New Yorkers, it's also the same thing on the subway.

• 36:24Speaker 00

  It's express line.

• 36:25Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, there's express missiles and then there's one-stop missiles.

• 36:31Speaker 00

  Yeah, I mean, I I think the concern is that if you didn't strike back, and it was a big enough strike, it could wipe out your ability to retaliate. And so, um, yeah. I mean, the the other, the the whole thing is confounded now too, because you also have nuclear submarines. So you've got these guys on on subs that theoretically, even if your entire country was destroyed, they could fire back.

• 36:49Trevor Noah?

  They're constantly just circling the globe, right? They're like hiding from each other. It's a game of hide and seek.

• 36:54Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 36:54Trevor Noah?

  There's nuclear submarines everywhere in the world all the time. Just hiding, waiting to get a call to shoot a nuke.

• 37:01Speaker 02

  And you see, that's another propaganda myth that keeps going around that nuclear submarines, you would think they're just nuclear powered submarines patrolling, but they're actually nuclear bombs.

• 37:10Speaker 00

  Well, they're both. Some of them.

• 37:11Trevor Noah?

  Some of them, some nukes, Eugene, not all. This guy hashtag all nukes. Eh eh, some nukes Eugene.

• 37:19Speaker 02

  Some nukes are better than others.

• 37:20Trevor Noah?

  Eugene is a nuke hater.

• 37:24Trevor Noah?

  But this, this, okay, this to me feels like a, it just feels precarious. It feels like we're living in a world where we are one madman or one wrong decision away from everyone being embroiled in a nuclear apocalypse or in a war that didn't even need to start.

• 37:43Speaker 00

  Yeah. I mean, I think that's, that is reality. Um, and I think maybe just another point. I mean, one, one of the things that's often guided my own decisions in life, like what to do is trying to demystify things, you know, what, what are, you know, topics or, uh, you know, industries that I think are interesting that I want to learn about.

• 38:01Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 38:01Speaker 00

  And I was, when I was in college, I really wanted to demystify like how national security decisions are made. Part of the reason I went into government too. I'm like, I will say to the majority of people who haven't sat in the Situation Room to see how these decisions are made, even in an administration where I really respected the leadership and the Obama administration, it was highly professional. Like, these are human beings, right? Like, they have good days, they have bad days, um, they're tired, they get sick, you know, like, people, like, it's, uh, it's not for the faint of heart. I think maybe that when you start realizing like the, the, the amount that can go wrong. And in some ways, it's a miracle that more doesn't go wrong. Yeah.

• 38:41Trevor Noah?

  We'll be right back after the short break.

• 38:46Trevor Noah?

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• 42:08Trevor Noah?

  Let's talk a little bit about the choke points of it all. You know, you famously wrote about choke points. And I think it was one of the most in-depth looks at how you can run the world with a new type of weapon. For a long time, people thought the best weapon to win a war with was one that, you know, made someone bleed. And then, over time, people started realizing, no, the real weapon you want to use is one that bleeds their wallets. Yep. You know? The US seems like it's in that place, or it has been in that place for a long time. And now we're starting to see either the cracks of that system or the beginning of a new system on America's side. Let's break it down into two parts.

• 42:52Trevor Noah?

  One, what do people misunderstand about the petrodollar? Because a lot of people talk about the petrodollar now. Everyone's like, oh, the petrodollar, the petrodollar, and Iran, and China's buying oil using the yuan. What do you think people misunderstand about the petrodollar?

• 43:05Speaker 00

  So the petrodollar is just sort of one part of the broader dollar system. I mean, it's an important part because if you just think about what a currency is, right? Yeah. It's used for payments. It's used for prices. We call it unit of account. Like if I'm going to sell you something, what price am I going to do it in? And it's also used for investments, right? When you think about payments, you know, something like 15% of global trade is just oil. It's by far the most traded good in the world. Wow. Not even just commodity, most traded thing. Good. Right, yeah. I mean, it's wild when you think about the scale. The fact that, you know, the most traded good in the world is priced in dollars and largely paid for in dollars means that there's more demand for dollars around the world.

• 43:50Speaker 00

  It's not the only factor about why the dollar is such an important currency. I mean, I think arguably now just as important is the fact that, you know, our stock market in the US is something like 80% of global equity market capitalization. What? So if you add up all the stock markets of the world, like US stock market. The US is 80%. Oh, yeah. I mean, I mean, you've got, you know, a couple of companies in the US that are bigger than most other countries. Damn, I didn't know it was that big, though. Yeah. So, I mean, and our bond market's the biggest. So generally, if you, no matter where you are in the world, if you're generating wealth, if you're a country, if you're an individual, if you're a company, you're generally investing it in the US. But, but look, what this all boils down to is that when money crosses borders and the sort of the best metric we have for that is what's called foreign exchange transactions.

• 44:36Speaker 00

  It's when you take one currency and exchange it for another. By far the biggest sort of market of them all, $7 trillion a day just gets swapped in foreign exchange markets. 90% of those transactions have the dollar on one side of or the other. No way. So like, I mean, you know, basically trying to travel the world with that or trying to do business across borders without access to the dollar is like trying to travel without a passport. You just can't do it, you know? So.

• 45:03Speaker 00

  The issue with the petrodollar would be, well, if China successfully takes this 15% of the trade that happens in the world and changes it from the dollar to the RMB, that could be sort of the first crack in this overall edifice that underpins the dollar. The dollar's central role in the global economy is absolutely imperative for our way of life in the United States. We run these giant budget deficits every single year because we can just borrow money overseas, and that's because there's basically infinite demand for US treasuries, our government debt. But then, to your point, Trevor, when it comes to economic warfare, which by the way, has become the central way that countries compete

• 45:44Speaker 00

  with each other today. Unlike nuclear weapons, you actually can use economic weapons. The key economic weapon that the United States has is the dollar.

• 45:54Trevor Noah?

  So they'll cut you off from the dollar. So then explain to me why the US didn't use that for Iran. Like, I don't understand why the US didn't cut Iran off, or were they not able to cut Iran off? Because what's happening right now, it seems messy, and the whole world is paying for it. Everywhere from South Africa through to, you know, Australia, people are paying more for their petrol, people are going to pay more for their gas, they're paying more for the average good. It's happening in America as well. You've seen gas, I mean, some places it's crazy, $9, $6 generally. Like, it feels like it's messy. When you run those games, I'm assuming not all of them are like war games. Are there other scenarios that the US could have pursued?

• 46:37Speaker 00

  Look, I mean, we did pursue economic warfare against Iran. That was the strategy that originated in the second term of George W. Bush. It was actually kind of interesting. His undersecretary of the Treasury for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, the guy who oversaw all the sanctions programs, he had heard Bush make this comment where Bush was like, sanctions have no utility against Iran, they're never going to work. And he sort of took that as a personal challenge. And one day, he was actually sitting in a hotel in Bahrain, flipping through the Financial Times, when he came across an article about a Swiss bank that had cut ties with Iran of its own volition. And kind of a light bulb went off with him whenever he was like, hold on a second. Like, maybe I don't need to persuade other governments to shun Iran. I could literally just go to bankers.

• 47:21Trevor Noah?

  Institutions, yeah.

• 47:21Speaker 00

  Yeah, bankers in London or Singapore or Frankfurt or wherever and persuade them not to do business with Iran of their own volition. And if they don't agree, you know, I could threaten to cut them off from the US dollar. This was a strategy that the US started in the second Bush administration in 2006. This guy, Stuart Levy, was reappointed by Obama, sort of quaint in 2026 America that a Republican would stay on into a Democratic administration. Yeah, exactly. And, and he pursued that strategy, handed it off to his successors in the Obama administration. And that was the key to getting the Iran nuclear deal, right? It was putting Iran under financial and economic pressure.

• 47:55Trevor Noah?

  Okay.

• 47:55Speaker 00

  That then got them to the table for the 2015 deal. And, you know, I think Trump didn't, it wasn't that he thought that the economic pressure wasn't working. It was that he thought if you only put more pressure on Iran, you've got an even better deal.

• 48:06Trevor Noah?

  Right.

• 48:07Speaker 00

  Didn't work. And so he tried, he tried to use military force instead. I think the irony of the current situation, though, is that what Iran is doing is they're basically taking a leaf from the US playbook. They're saying, well, hold on, the US has used its key choke point, which is the dollar, to try to pressure us. And so the way for us to fight back is to say, well, what, what choke point do we have? We have the Strait of Hormuz, the most important energy choke point in the world. 20% of global oil flowed through this narrow waterway every day.

• 48:36Trevor Noah?

  That's just oil. We're not even talking about sulfur.

• 48:38Speaker 00

  Yeah. Helium.

• 48:39Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, all the things that you need to grow crops around the world. We're talking about, yeah, fertilizers and, I mean, they really, they're, are they in a more powerful position than the world thought?

• 48:51Speaker 00

  Much more, yeah. I mean, I think that's one of the, like, what, but what we're seeing right now coming out of the war is that Iran may emerge from this war decimated militarily and economically, but strengthened strategically. Because they've shown the world that they can use this choke point to incredible effect.

• 49:08Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 49:08Speaker 00

  And something I, you know, it used to be that the US could, you know, like I said, I used to go to places like Singapore and Japan. And you said, well, look, if you keep doing businesses with Iran, we'll cut you off from the dollar.

• 49:19Trevor Noah?

  Right.

• 49:20Speaker 00

  Well, now what happens if Iran says to the Japanese, well, Unless you lift your sanctions on us, we won't allow your ships to go through the strait of Hormuz.

• 49:27Trevor Noah?

  Wow.

• 49:27Speaker 00

  And that's what they're doing. I mean, they're cutting deals on a bilateral basis, like with other countries saying, your ship can go through, your ship can't.

• 49:35Trevor Noah?

  But you have to lift assumptions.

• 49:36Speaker 00

  You know, yeah, totally. So I mean, I think what we've seen, because you're asking like, what's, what era is happening?

• 49:42Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 49:43Speaker 00

  The whole thesis of my book, Choke Points, is that we're living in an age of economic warfare. I think for the first fifteen or so years, or twenty years of that period, we were kind of in this unipolar world where it was like the US had all these economic weapons, but other countries didn't. Well, now we have China with rare earth elements where they completely shocked the United States last year by cutting off our access. We have Iran with the Strait of Hormuz.

• 50:06Trevor Noah?

  Because you need those for everything, phones, computers, cars, everything, right?

• 50:11Speaker 00

  They literally, they imposed an embargo on rare earth elements in April of last year on the US. And within weeks, Ford had to shut down its factory that makes the Explorer SUV. They just didn't have enough of these minerals. Within weeks. Literally, the factory closed. And so, I mean, other countries have choke points too. We're in an economic arms race right now where every country in the world is saying, well, what are the choke points that we have, that we could use against our rivals? And then what are the choke points that our rivals have over us that make us vulnerable? That is what's happening right now.

• 50:42Trevor Noah?

  Okay, now, at the risk of sounding like the Joker, why can't we all just get along? I don't understand why we're...

• 50:52Speaker 02

  I was hoping you don't say why so serious.

• 50:55Speaker 02

  I was like, travel is a serious issue. We've used words like embargo.

• 50:59Trevor Noah?

  No, we have, but I'm saying, okay, so, so hear me out, hear me out on this.

• 51:02Speaker 02

  Going hard, yeah.

• 51:03Trevor Noah?

  Hear me out on this, hear me out on this. This could be a very naive perspective and a very naive point of view. But it seems like we live in a world where there is, for the most part, mutually assured destruction now. You cannot just blow everything up everywhere. I mean, even looking at Russia and Ukraine.

• 51:21Trevor Noah?

  For all intents and purposes, Russia could blow up Ukraine, right?

• 51:26Speaker 00

  I mean, they could use a nuclear weapon.

• 51:28Trevor Noah?

  That's what I mean. So they have nukes, they're not using the nukes. They could also blow up all of Ukraine, technically.

• 51:34Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 51:34Trevor Noah?

  They have the capability, but they do not do it. Do you know why they do not do it?

• 51:40Speaker 00

  I think it would be the fastest way to unify the entire world against them.

• 51:45Trevor Noah?

  Okay.

• 51:45Speaker 00

  And also, I mean, they're close, but I mean, with nuclear weapons too, it's like they're, it's like if you nuke New Jersey, I think New York is gonna get the nuclear fallout.

• 51:52Trevor Noah?

  Okay, so they're close enough, so.

• 51:54Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah, I mean, they're right next door to Ukraine, so.

• 51:57Trevor Noah?

  Right, so, so they, so then they sort of can't use the nukes on Ukraine. And they also can't blow up all of Ukraine because then people will come for them. And then the world also can't blow up Russia because I guess the world just doesn't do that. It feels like, I don't know, I don't know why, it feels like there's a lot of unnecessary posturing going on.

• 52:20Trevor Noah?

  And things being blown up for no reason, or, or maybe the wrong reasons.

• 52:24Speaker 00

  Definitely the wrong reasons.

• 52:25Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 52:26Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, and I don't understand why.

• 52:28Speaker 02

  Sorry.

• 52:29Trevor Noah?

  No, no, no, go.

• 52:29Speaker 02

  I think it is necessary because if you look at the countries that have nuclear weapons, they have strong men that really get challenged during elections.

• 52:36Trevor Noah?

  Okay.

• 52:36Speaker 02

  So if you have a person that says, I'm the only person who can control this guard, this guard dog.

• 52:40Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 52:41Speaker 02

  I'm the one it listens to, I'm the one who feeds it. Do you really, really, really, every four years, want to change the person who's in charge of that guard dog? America, if you look at all of the countries that have nuclear weapons, is the only country that does that. And it just looks like the guy who's controlling the guard dog is going, do you think this is a good idea of changing me every four years? I think that's why he was able to make a comeback, right?

• 53:02Trevor Noah?

  You've actually, you've actually made me realize.

• 53:05Speaker 02

  To the strong man agenda.

• 53:05Trevor Noah?

  Maybe America should just elect its nuclear president separately.

• 53:08Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 53:09Trevor Noah?

  You, you should be like a Supreme Court thing, maybe for like ten, fifteen years, you just have one nu- nu- nuclear, nuclear president.

• 53:15Speaker 02

  NBA commissioner, yeah.

• 53:16Trevor Noah?

  You have nuclear president and you have president, president.

• 53:18Speaker 00

  You can have like a reality TV star as president and then just like an extremely boring lawyer as like a nuclear.

• 53:23Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, you have like a Jerome Powell, but of nuclear weapons.

• 53:26Speaker 00

  It's not a bad idea.

• 53:27Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, and you go like, you are just in charge of nukes, that's all you do. The war can, people can fight the war, but I'm, I'm the president of nukes.

• 53:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, because is there a country that has nuclear weapons, that has had free and fair democratic elections?

• 53:39Trevor Noah?

  Germany, no?

• 53:40Speaker 02

  Running over four years all the time.

• 53:41Speaker 00

  UK and France are the two.

• 53:43Trevor Noah?

  Do they, Germany not have nukes?

• 53:44Speaker 00

  No, Germany doesn't have nukes.

• 53:45Trevor Noah?

  Ah, of course, how could I forget?

• 53:47Speaker 02

  The France have nukes.

• 53:48Speaker 00

  Yeah, and India has, India has nukes. India illegally has nukes, but not part of the NPT.

• 53:54Speaker 02

  I don't see Modi going, Nahindra Modi going anywhere anytime soon.

• 53:57Speaker 00

  No, he's, he's, he seems like he's in there.

• 53:59Speaker 02

  So, let's count all the countries, do this for me.

• 54:01Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, who does have nukes? USA?

• 54:03Speaker 02

  And then, and then, out of all of them, show us which ones are most likely to be out of power or just came into power.

• 54:10Speaker 00

  So there are five, according to this treaty we talked about, the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, there are five countries that can have nukes.

• 54:15Trevor Noah?

  Okay, so the can haves?

• 54:16Speaker 00

  US, Russia, China, France, UK.

• 54:19Trevor Noah?

  Okay.

• 54:20Speaker 00

  There are a few countries that have nukes, they develop them outside of the bounds of international law, so technically illegal nuclear programs.

• 54:25Trevor Noah?

  Okay, got it.

• 54:26Speaker 00

  India, Pakistan, Israel, North Korea.

• 54:30Trevor Noah?

  Huh, okay, so what an interesting, wait, wait, wait, before you go on. I want to know about these countries who are illegally developing nukes. Can you explain this to me? Like, how did that happen?

• 54:41Speaker 00

  I mean, a lot of countries have sought to illegally develop nukes, including Iran, right? The question is how they've been able to be stopped.

• 54:47Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, but Eddie, you've confused me here, Eddie, forgive me, forgive me. You know, I play video games and I tell jokes, so Eddie, you've thrown my brain off.

• 54:55Speaker 00

  You're underselling yourself, man.

• 54:56Trevor Noah?

  You've thrown me off.

• 54:56Speaker 02

  What was it about, what was his name, Petrov or something?

• 54:58Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 55:00Speaker 02

  Stanislav, Stanislav.

• 55:01Speaker 00

  Stanislav.

• 55:02Trevor Noah?

  So, so.

• 55:03Speaker 02

  That was our Petrov.

• 55:04Trevor Noah?

  So, so, this is, okay, you, you've confused me here, you've confused me. We are saying that Iran is being bombed and has been sanctioned because it is illegally enriching uranium.

• 55:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 55:17Trevor Noah?

  Because it didn't agree to it in the terms of the, so what did it agree to in the terms of its contract, it hasn't adhered to, it keeps failing the inspections, right? Okay, but it doesn't have nuclear weapons. But then we are saying that India, Pakistan, Israel and?

• 55:32Speaker 00

  Uh, North Korea.

• 55:33Trevor Noah?

  And North Korea do have nuclear weapons and they develop those nuclear weapons.

• 55:38Speaker 02

  Outside of treaty.

• 55:39Trevor Noah?

  Illegally because they.

• 55:39Speaker 00

  They didn't sign, they're, they're not signatories.

• 55:41Trevor Noah?

  Or none of them sign.

• 55:42Speaker 02

  None of them sign the treaty, yeah.

• 55:43Trevor Noah?

  So if you don't sign, nothing can happen to you?

• 55:45Speaker 00

  I mean, no, the international community, to be clear, has tried to stop all four of those countries from developing nuclear weapons, but to our point earlier, once they cross the threshold, what are you going to do about it?

• 55:55Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, so then everyone should, no, no, now I'm on, not, let me put it this way, I understand where Iran is coming from, not as a leadership and not as a, I do not see the incentive to not have nuclear weapons, is what I'm saying.

• 56:09Trevor Noah?

  Do you understand?

• 56:09Speaker 02

  No, the incentive villa, yeah.

• 56:10Trevor Noah?

  I cannot understand. Cause you've just shown me, you've just shown me four countries that have nukes. And now no one can do anything about it. Then I'm like, well, then why wouldn't I get a nuke?

• 56:19Speaker 00

  Look, I think particularly, and to Eugene's point, particularly country authoritarian countries.

• 56:24Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 56:24Speaker 00

  There's clearly an incentive, right? Because you're worried that some other country may come and say, you know, you're illegitimate. We're going to overthrow you.

• 56:32Trevor Noah?

  Right.

• 56:32Speaker 00

  Um, so yeah, I mean, again, if you look at countries that have either given up their nukes or, you know, like Libya was sort of the classic case in the early 2000s. Gaddafi cut a deal with the US to give up his nuclear weapons.

• 56:45Trevor Noah?

  Boy, oh, boy, did he pay the price.

• 56:47Speaker 00

  You know, so I mean, look, I, I think Trevor, you're on to something here. It's, there's a reason why authoritarian regimes have pursued nuclear weapons. And I think another, this also gets us to another reason why there's fear about Iran getting a nuke, right?

• 56:59Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 56:59Speaker 00

  Let's say Iran did successfully get a nuclear weapon. Saudi Arabia, the UAE, all these other countries in, in the region, Turkey, who view themselves as potentially a rival to Iran.

• 57:12Trevor Noah?

  Right.

• 57:12Speaker 00

  They're going to get nukes. So you wind up getting what a sort of a cascade of nuclear proliferation.

• 57:17Trevor Noah?

  Okay, so now, now I understand what you're saying. You're saying the secondary effects of people getting nukes might be more dangerous than the primary ones in that more people having nukes means more opportunities for something to go wrong with a nuke, not, not even people necessarily launching them.

• 57:31Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 57:32Trevor Noah?

  So if everyone has a nuke and something goes wrong with a nuke or a nuclear facility or something.

• 57:37Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 57:38Trevor Noah?

  Then people are just, it's just because there were just more nukes out there. It's the same way if there are more guns in a society.

• 57:44Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 57:44Trevor Noah?

  It is more likely that someone will get shot, even if it's a child finding their dad's gun in like a closet or something.

• 57:50Speaker 00

  I think it's actually incredibly good analogy, right? You look at the US, like, are all these guns everywhere?

• 57:54Trevor Noah?

  Right, okay.

• 57:54Speaker 00

  Probably why we have such a ridiculous high rate of gun violence.

• 57:58Trevor Noah?

  And it doesn't mean that all guns are bad. It doesn't mean that all gun owners are bad, but it means that there's a higher likelihood.

• 58:03Speaker 00

  That something's going to go wrong.

• 58:04Trevor Noah?

  Something will go wrong with a gun.

• 58:05Speaker 00

  How many Stanislav's are we going to have, right? I mean, you're going to have one in every country, right?

• 58:09Trevor Noah?

  Right, okay.

• 58:10Speaker 00

  And, and given the stakes, right, with, with nuclear, a nuclear exchange, it's potentially existential for humanity, or at least for, certainly for individual countries or cities, right?

• 58:20Speaker 00

  You know, nuclear proliferation, I think is a bad thing.

• 58:22Speaker 02

  I like how you've, you've also phrased it, it's not a nuclear war, it's a nuclear exchange. Cause there won't be a war after the thing has happened.

• 58:27Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, there's nothing, there's nothing after that. There's nothing. Basically, nuclear war, Eugene, is like, it's a double block on WhatsApp. That's what it is.

• 58:36Speaker 02

  I was gonna say.

• 58:37Trevor Noah?

  It's like.

• 58:37Speaker 02

  Two people fart under the same duvet.

• 58:39Trevor Noah?

  It's when you, it's when you block me and then I block you and then it's finished now.

• 58:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, I, I was gonna use the fart.

• 58:45Trevor Noah?

  You're gonna go with farts?

• 58:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, cause there's a couple of farts all together at the same time.

• 58:48Trevor Noah?

  Under the duvet?

• 58:48Speaker 02

  And then no one knows who did what, but the crop dusting has happened and then the.

• 58:54Trevor Noah?

  But there, there can still be more conflict afterwards.

• 58:56Speaker 02

  Have you ever crop dusted anyone?

• 58:57Trevor Noah?

  No.

• 58:58Speaker 02

  My daughter taught me that term.

• 58:59Trevor Noah?

  I didn't know what it even mean.

• 59:00Speaker 02

  You don't know what crop dusting is?

• 59:02Trevor Noah?

  Tell me, enlighten me.

• 59:03Speaker 02

  When people are chilling at a park bench.

• 59:05Trevor Noah?

  Do you really want to give a state department person more weapons?

• 59:08Speaker 02

  You never know where, but need this information in a negotiation.

• 59:10Trevor Noah?

  This is true.

• 59:11Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, this is helpful.

• 59:12Speaker 02

  When people are chilling in a park and then you just walk past, but you fart and then you go.

• 59:16Speaker 00

  Okay, yeah. It's the only way to do it, right?

• 59:18Speaker 02

  You just look behind you and you see that.

• 59:19Trevor Noah?

  You're not wrong, Eddie.

• 59:20Speaker 02

  You've just crop dusted.

• 59:22Speaker 00

  No, wait, what is the alternative? It's like.

• 59:24Speaker 02

  No, there's two.

• 59:26Speaker 02

  It's one who fart, it's one who fart and hang out.

• 59:30Speaker 00

  Really?

• 59:30Speaker 02

  And then everyone is going, what's that? Now there's three Spider-Mans going.

• 59:37Speaker 02

  Crop dusting.

• 59:38Trevor Noah?

  If I ruled the country, that would be my, my, my number one law. Everyone who farts, you have to stand there where you farted.

• 59:44Speaker 02

  Now you sound like Saddam Hussein's son.

• 59:45Trevor Noah?

  Until the smell has dissipated.

• 59:49Trevor Noah?

  No, no, no, just so that, cause look, there's nothing wrong with farting.

• 59:52Speaker 02

  No, there's absolutely nothing wrong.

• 59:53Trevor Noah?

  We've also got to get rid of that in society.

• 59:55Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 59:55Trevor Noah?

  So just stand there so that there's no blame that goes around. Stand there and put your hand up.

• 1:00:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly.

• 1:00:01Trevor Noah?

  If you see someone standing somewhere and they've got their hand up, you know that they farted.

• 1:00:04Speaker 02

  And you know, the person who's guilty in a group of three or four people.

• 1:00:08Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:08Speaker 02

  That farts and doesn't acknowledge the fart is the one that did it. Because people who go, what's that, are the ones who know they didn't do anything.

• 1:00:16Trevor Noah?

  I disagree. I disagree. Some people are very good at acting.

• 1:00:18Speaker 02

  Wait, wait, wait.

• 1:00:19Trevor Noah?

  I've seen some people, some people.

• 1:00:20Speaker 02

  They dispense.

• 1:00:21Trevor Noah?

  Some people, some people fart.

• 1:00:22Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:00:23Trevor Noah?

  I've seen some people.

• 1:00:23Speaker 02

  And then the first person to go.

• 1:00:24Trevor Noah?

  And they're the ones to go, hmm, what is that? And then other people go, ah, and then they act like that's the oldest trick in the book. It's the oldest trick in the book. I'm sure there's even, I'm sure in history somewhere, people have done this on a, on a state level. What you do is you have a nuclear incident.

• 1:00:41Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:00:42Trevor Noah?

  Or you have something that goes wrong with like a chemical weapon.

• 1:00:45Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 1:00:45Trevor Noah?

  And then what you do is you go, guys, someone released a chemical weapon. Are you seeing this? And then everyone starts and they go like, you were the first to discover it, but you're the ones who actually dealt it.

• 1:00:55Speaker 02

  Or you were developing a virus in a lab.

• 1:00:58Trevor Noah?

  It's a trick.

• 1:00:58Speaker 02

  It leaked and then people were dying and then you're like, what is that?

• 1:01:01Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:02Speaker 00

  Well, no, whoever smelt it dealt it.

• 1:01:03Trevor Noah?

  Yes.

• 1:01:04Speaker 02

  And whoever denied it fried it.

• 1:01:09Speaker 02

  Let me, let me ask you this. Degenerated. Your LinkedIn is gonna be ruined after this interview.

• 1:01:14Speaker 00

  Dude, my career's over now.

• 1:01:17Trevor Noah?

  Um, but we'll solve the world. I'll tell you that, Eddie. We'll solve the world. Okay. Let me ask you some, about like some of the thinking that goes into the State Department or how, how world leaders try and remedy a conflict. Right? Okay. Donald Trump has chosen a specific way with his people. It seems like, and this is only by reports, it seems like many of his people internally said, do not do this.

• 1:01:40Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:01:40Trevor Noah?

  They're like, yo, man, don't do this.

• 1:01:41Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:01:42Trevor Noah?

  And then he was like pressured by Israel and they said, no, there's an imminent attack. So let's, let's start with the first part. How does the American government or any government for that matter, determine when something can be called defend, defense versus attack?

• 1:01:58Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:01:58Trevor Noah?

  Cause, cause when they go like, it's a preemptive strike, I understand the logic behind some of it. So if you're in the Wild West and someone's about to draw, I assume you cannot wait for them to draw before you fire because the time that it takes, you're dead. I get, I get that. I get that. Okay. So I understand the logic in, in striking preemptively to a certain extent, but then sometimes I go, how far can you take that back?

• 1:02:22Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:02:23Trevor Noah?

  Is it when the person has got their hands by their side? Is it after they've whistled?

• 1:02:29Trevor Noah?

  Is it that?

• 1:02:29Speaker 00

  Good whistler.

• 1:02:30Trevor Noah?

  Or is it the, or is it the pacing? Is it, is it after the 10 paces? Is it when they walk out of the saloon?

• 1:02:36Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:02:37Trevor Noah?

  Is it when they ride into town? I- is it when you meet them in the Wild West before we get to town? How, how, how far back can you go before you say that this is now attack versus like defense?

• 1:02:48Speaker 00

  Yeah, I mean, I think the, the, the honest truth is semantic and it doesn't really matter. I mean, the president is the commander in chief. Uh, he or she can decide when to use military force and there's really not much of a check on that, unfortunately. I mean, to, to your, your question though, I mean, Donald Trump has tried to portray the strike on Iran as preemptive, right? That they were about to get a nuclear weapon. And what I would say is, I mean, unless there is some classified uh, intelligence that has not been either leaked or declassified, which I consider pretty unlikely because you would think that if there was a smoking gun, there would be a high, a significant incentive for the White House to say, hey, well, look at this. I do not believe that there was a preemptive reason uh, to strike Iran.

• 1:03:32Speaker 00

  You could say that uh, they already did have uh, 10 bombs worth of nuclear material. So uranium enriched to a point where you could turn it into a bomb within a week or so. Um, but I would say those even now, despite this giant attack uh, by the United States and Israel in June of 2025, Operation Midnight Hammer that took out a lot of their nuclear facilities. Plus the war that has happened uh, in February, March, April, uh, uh, May of this year. They still have, Iran still has uh, that, you know, a thousand pounds of Heinrich uranium.

• 1:04:03Trevor Noah?

  Even after the bunker busters and all the jazz?

• 1:04:05Speaker 00

  They still got it. It's what I think Trump calls a nuclear dust. It is buried under this town called Isfahan in the middle of Iran and we haven't done anything about it.

• 1:04:14Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, but this is okay. Again, maybe I'm naive.

• 1:04:19Trevor Noah?

  But if Iran had ten bombs worth of uranium.

• 1:04:23Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:04:24Trevor Noah?

  Did not make one bomb.

• 1:04:26Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:04:27Trevor Noah?

  Never mind ten. They did not make a bomb. And then they get attacked. And you said in a week they could make a bomb.

• 1:04:32Speaker 00

  First threatened?

• 1:04:33Trevor Noah?

  Threatened, did not make a bomb.

• 1:04:34Speaker 00

  Nothing.

• 1:04:35Trevor Noah?

  Attacked, did not make a bomb. Still do not make a bomb. Then should we not assume that they do not want to make a bomb? Or is that foolish?

• 1:04:46Speaker 00

  So I think one other challenge, and look, I think it's hard not to. Sometimes we don't appreciate that societies can be complex, right? And we often anthropomorphize other countries and say like Iran did this or that, right? I think the truth is within Iran, you've had different factions. You have different people who said, we should have a nuclear bomb. Others who said, we should at least have the capability to build one quickly if we need it. Actually, Ayatollah Khomeini, the senior, the one who was killed, you know, a couple of months ago within an Israeli strike. He actually had put out a fatwa, sort of this dictum, saying that we should never have nuclear weapons.

• 1:05:20Trevor Noah?

  Yes.

• 1:05:20Speaker 00

  And so one theory, one sort of hypothesis is that this sort of aging supreme leader, I think it was eighty-six when he was killed and was had terminal cancer. So he's probably didn't have much long to live, even had Israel not oft him. I think there's this theory that he sort of didn't want to actually have nuclear weapons. But a lot of these sort of hardline, younger, young guns in Iran and the IRGC, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, did want nukes. And so I think another sort of double irony here is that in sort of taking out the Khomeini senior.

• 1:05:52Trevor Noah?

  They've now created the monster that they.

• 1:05:54Speaker 02

  You've radicalized the whole movement.

• 1:05:55Speaker 00

  You've handed over power to people who are even more hardline than him. And I think, look, I mean, we all, you know, Eugene, you live in New York, but we all.

• 1:06:05Trevor Noah?

  I live in South Africa.

• 1:06:06Speaker 00

  Okay. You're here hanging out with us. There are a lot of, look, there are a lot of.

• 1:06:15Speaker 00

  We all live in New York. There's a lot of, you know, the Iranian diaspora, you know, they're here. And I think there was a lot of hope in that community. Yeah, a lot of people. Earlier this year that, you know, this could be it. You could finally get change. Because I think it's important to note, like, the Islamic Republic of Iran, like, you're bad guys. Yeah. They killed tens of thousands of innocent protesters earlier this year. We would all be better off, principally Iranians, if they were gone, right? I think there was high hopes that, you know, there was change coming when Khomeini was sort of going to die from natural causes. You have an internal debate about succession. You might get a more liberal government. Well, guess what? The US and Israel took care of their succession problem for them, handed it over from Khomeini Senior to Khomeini Junior, who seems to be a puppet of these hardline IRGC generals.

• 1:06:59Speaker 00

  And so I do think that it seemed like Ayatollah Khomeini Senior, you know, deceased now, did not actually want to cross the nuclear threshold. Right. But it's clear that they did want to have the capability to weaponize. And now there's an even greater incentive for them to do so.

• 1:07:16Trevor Noah?

  Don't press anything. We've got more. What Now, after this.

• 1:07:22Speaker 03

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• 1:08:14Trevor Noah?

  When, you know, and I'm obviously only asking you from the US perspective because you worked in the government, I'm not, I'm not focusing on the US, but like, when a president or their trusted confidants are trying to figure out how to solve some of these most pressing issues, are there ever stories or have you ever encountered moments where a president tried to go the opposite way to the direction America seems to have always gone? So, and again, I'm using broad language, forgive me, but it seems like America's idea of how to solve an issue has often been send in the bombs and things will get fixed. So, how do we fix Saddam Hussein? We blow things up and it's done and it's like, oh,

• 1:08:59Trevor Noah?

  no, no, now you've got ISIS. And it's like, okay, that's not what we wanted. And it's like, all right, how do you fix Gaddafi? Okay, you blow up Libya, it's sorted. And it's like, no, now you've got like one of the worst slave trades in Africa and a hot bed of extremism. Time and time again, it feels like, you know, even Iran itself, it seems like America is dealing with its previous sins in helping to oust a leader that it didn't like, who for all intents and purposes seemed like a good leader for the people, maybe, maybe not the most perfect leader, but way better than the leaders that came afterwards. You see what I mean? Like, how, at what, like, is there ever a point where an American leader goes, let's try something completely different? And if they have thought

• 1:09:43Trevor Noah?

  that, has it worked or has it not worked?

• 1:09:45Speaker 00

  Yeah, I mean, there have certainly been examples. I would argue that the original approach toward Iran, which was to not use military force, to use economic pressure, to cut them off from this choke point that is the US dollar, originated during George W. Bush's term, I think it was frankly, George W. Bush being a little bit humbled after seeing what happened in Afghanistan and Iraq, right? Because I think there was sort of at the beginning of his term and after 9/11 particularly, a bit of a sort of rah rah attitude toward the use of military force. You know, the US kind of felt omnipotent. And then it became pretty clear after a couple of years of those wars, that they weren't going very well, even against these quite small countries. And so then- When a country right next to Iraq that was multiple times bigger than Iraq, more powerful than Iraq.

• 1:10:25Trevor Noah?

  Right.

• 1:10:25Speaker 00

  Namely Iran was actually developing, you know, nuclear weapons that, you know, wasn't something that Saddam Hussein even was developing, which made it even more ironic. George W. Bush did decide to try to use nonviolent pressure against Iran.

• 1:10:38Trevor Noah?

  Right.

• 1:10:38Speaker 00

  That was the baton he passed to President Obama. There have been other decisions. I mean, look, one of the decisions that I think Obama took most heat over was the Syria red line. If you remember.

• 1:10:48Trevor Noah?

  Oh, yes. When he said there's a red line in this, there's a sand, there's a line in the sand.

• 1:10:51Speaker 00

  Assad uses chemical weapons.

• 1:10:54Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:54Speaker 00

  We will attack. We will strike. And I think, you know, basically his whole administration was gearing up, ready to bomb Syria and sort of

• 1:11:06Speaker 00

  basically living up to Obama's red line. And then Obama sort of went for a walk in the backyard of the White House and said, you know what? I don't want to do this. And so there have been moments in history when, you know, presidents have sort of chosen to go the opposite way of their advisors for good and for ill. And I think to your point, I mean, we'll see when the sort of definitive history is written on Trump's decision to attack Iran, but it does seem, if you can trust some of the early reports, that Trump was sort of, sort of a lonely voice in terms of wanting to strike Iran in February of this year.

• 1:11:36Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:37Speaker 00

  And unfortunately, his voice is the one that that actually mattered.

• 1:11:41Trevor Noah?

  Has there ever been a case of the US, because you see, you showed us, or you just described two, two possible outcomes, but they seem to be, you know, completely diametrically opposed. Like one is like, go in and blow the thing up or ignore it completely. Have there been any instances where the US has tried to bring the other person in? And what I mean by this is like, I'm sure you've seen this because of the world you've been in. Many people argue that part of the reason the world has the Russia that it has today.

• 1:12:14Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:12:15Trevor Noah?

  Is because the US did a terrible job of bringing Russia into the fold post-World War II in and around NATO, the Cold War. The Americans just didn't do a good job of being like, hey, join us. Actually, you're part of this G, you know what I mean? You're part of the G20. You're part of this. Come in, come on, you're part of this. You, you actually have a McDonald's, let's do this thing. You know what I mean?

• 1:12:35Speaker 00

  So on Russia, I mean, it's something, it's an issue near and dear to my heart. I actually sort of was very interested in Russian history, Russian literature. My great grandparents immigrated to the United States from the former Russian Empire. Oh, wow. And, you know, spent a summer when I was in college, living in Russia, sort of before. Our relationship has gone sideways. I've now, by the way, been sanctioned by Russia, so I can never go back, unfortunately. Oh, I'm sorry. Which, by the way, I appreciate that. When I was sanctioned in 2022, a lot of people sent me these congratulatory notes. No, no, no. Anyone losing a piece of their home. Yeah, so I was like, hold on a second. Like, this is upsetting. You know, it's like weird when a place where you've had friends, where you've spent good times. It's taken away from you. It's taken away from you. So, so, look, I do think that US policy toward Russia

• 1:13:19Speaker 00

  in the 90s could have been significantly better, right? We could have given Russia more of a bear hug than we did, right? If you look at, you sort of juxtapose Russia with some of the other former communist countries, like Poland, or Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Hungary. I mean, all of those countries have generally become successful free societies. Yeah. You know, liberal democracies, even Hungary, right? Where we were sort of going in the, in the wrong direction for a long time. But still. They now got rid of Orban, and they're sort of back in the, in the fold. I do think we could have done a better job in the 1990s. But, look, I think there's also an element of just bad luck and historical contingency. You know, sort of the main successful Russian

• 1:14:03Speaker 00

  politician that a lot of people thought was going to succeed Boris Yeltsin, who, you know, sort of famously kind of a drunk, not a particularly effective leader, was this guy Boris Nemtsov. Oh. He's a very handsome sort of reformer. And Yeltsin, when he was sort of like, you know, very clearly, very sick and dying, he was like, who can I put in as my successor that's just not going to prosecute my family for corruption and like take away our resources? And so he elevated this relatively unknown deputy mayor of St. Petersburg, Vladimir Putin, into sort of the Kremlin, to be his sort of handpicked successor. And so Putin inherited the presidency from Yeltsin. He eventually won.

• 1:14:45Speaker 00

  You know, an election, but he inherited the presidency at the end of nineteen ninety nine from Yeltsin. Because Yeltsin was like, this is sort of, you know, the most innocuous successor. But like, if you think about it, had that not happened, right? If you had had, if you just had a free and fair election and before Putin had come in and sort of that role, you probably would have gotten a guy like Nemtsav. The other thing I'll say too, just to give, you know, some folks in the US government a little bit of credit here. Because I do think we could have done better policies and I can talk about those. But, you know, we did bring Russia, you said, you mentioned the G twenty. You know, we have this G seven, which is sort of like the close club of US allies.

• 1:15:22Trevor Noah?

  Oh, yeah, the G seven, sorry.

• 1:15:23Speaker 00

  The G eight, right? We brought them into the G eight and we brought Russia into the World Trade Organization. And actually, I, part of the reason I was sanctioned by Russia. In twenty fourteen, when Russia first invaded Ukraine and annexed Crimea, I was the Russia sanctions lead at the State Department. So I was the one designing the sanctions and negotiating them with the EU and the G seven to try to put sanctions on Russia back in twenty fourteen. And I remember at the State Department, my, a lot of my colleagues were like very against sanctioning Russia. And I think it was because they had just got Russia into the World Trade Organization like eighteen months before. And many of them, like career diplomats, had spent like a decade of their lives.

• 1:16:02Trevor Noah?

  Trying to make this happen.

• 1:16:02Speaker 00

  On the ground in Russia, like, working with them to like make sure that their laws were right and, you know, getting in place so they could join the World Trade Organization. And then like eighteen months after, like, the big project of their careers had culminated.

• 1:16:14Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:14Speaker 00

  We're like, actually, we're sanctioning Russia. And so there was a lot of like blood, sweat and tears poured out by US diplomats to try to bring Russia into the fold.

• 1:16:25Speaker 00

  But, yeah, I mean, I think unfortunately, history just didn't go our way.

• 1:16:29Trevor Noah?

  One of the things I've always wondered for, for people who work in, in your position or any position adjacent to it in a government is how much of yourself you have to keep and how much of your patriotism has to take over? Because I can only imagine it's, it's, it's a really complicated situation, right? On the one hand, you have your views as a human being. On the other hand, the country has its views and because you are of the country, you're meant to adopt some of, if not all of those views. But at times, your country is doing something wrong.

• 1:17:06Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 1:17:07Trevor Noah?

  How do you then find the the gap between yourself and the country without being seen? You know, because people will be quick to say, you're a traitor. Or, you know, it's treason, but it's like, yeah, but countries can do things wrong, as in like administrations.

• 1:17:23Trevor Noah?

  And we've seen people who will fight against their own country, or they were like from within the ranks. They will, there'll be a certain level of dissent, not physical fight. But they'll go, no, I don't think this is right. We must change this. And when it is changed, we'll go, ah, thank you for changing it. But if it doesn't get changed, that person will get punished for trying to change it. How do you, how do you grapple with that?

• 1:17:42Speaker 00

  Yeah, look, I think it's each individual has their own perspective, their own moral compass. I think it's interesting because for me, I think I would have a lot of trouble serving in an administration whose policies I disagreed with. And frankly, just to be totally candid, you know, I was a career diplomat at the State Department. I could have theoretically stayed and worked through the first Trump administration. And I decided not to. And in large part because, you know, I, I really did believe that what Russia was doing in Ukraine was morally objectionable, morally abhorrent. They were literally conquering their neighboring territory or neighboring country.

• 1:18:21Trevor Noah?

  Right.

• 1:18:21Speaker 00

  Right? Which is not something that I think many of us ever expected to see again in our lifetime, right? Something like that had not happened since World War Two, right? An actual military conquest occurring on European soil. And then you had Trump elected in 2016 with, you know, the Russian government actively assisting. I'm not saying that Trump was colluding, but certainly, I mean, you know, the Russian government did put its thumb on the scale. And then you had, I think, in the beginning of the first Trump administration, a real effort to say, well, maybe we should just excuse all of Russia's sins. We should, you know, let them have Ukraine. And that was not something I wanted to be a part of. And so that was a big reason why I decided to leave the government.

• 1:19:06Speaker 00

  At the same time, when I look at friends and colleagues who have stayed around, I'm extremely grateful, right? I'm grateful.

• 1:19:15Trevor Noah?

  Because they were bulwark in many ways.

• 1:19:17Speaker 00

  And it's not even that, you know, because I think a lot of them like, you know, it's hard. I think during Trump's first term, you were, you did see, you know, and Trump gets mad about this, right? That he is sort of the deep state was fighting against him. But I mean, even if you're not necessarily a bulwark, like I think having. Intelligent people in the room who have some experience, who can sort of, you know, the very least, put their their views out there, I think is so important.

• 1:19:40Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:40Speaker 00

  Um, and look, I think in the, one of the, the things that has done Trump a disservice in his second term.

• 1:19:46Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:47Speaker 00

  Is he does not have a high caliber of cabinet or advisors around him. He has a lot of people who really should not be anywhere near making decisions. There are a few people there, I think, are quite, they're good, they're credible, but it's a much, much lower caliber than you had in his first term.

• 1:20:02Trevor Noah?

  Hmm.

• 1:20:03Speaker 00

  And I think that's part of the reason you've had, frankly, a less successful policy.

• 1:20:08Trevor Noah?

  How do you, how do you think we find the balance between having expertise and getting stuck in an old way of doing things? Uh, I asked this because I, I remember hearing one story about how, um, when the Trump administration came into power first time around, he just told people around him to make calls.

• 1:20:28Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 1:20:29Trevor Noah?

  He was just like, almost on like a childlike level.

• 1:20:33Speaker 00

  Yeah, like, you know what's best, go ahead.

• 1:20:34Trevor Noah?

  Not even, he was like, uh, what's happening in South Africa? All right, Eugene, aren't you South Afri-, phone South Africa. And then it was like Rudy Giuliani, isn't that Italian? Phone Italy.

• 1:20:43Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:20:44Trevor Noah?

  And like, literally, I'm, I'm saying it in a very comical way, but apparently it was close to this. He just went, hey, man, do you know, you know something, I, didn't you go there once? Phone them. You phone them, you pho-, and people were just using like their normal phones.

• 1:20:57Speaker 00

  No way.

• 1:20:57Trevor Noah?

  That's how the story like sort of first leaked out, is that people were conducting state business on their, on, what do they call, unsecured devices.

• 1:21:05Speaker 00

  Unsecured lines, yeah.

• 1:21:05Trevor Noah?

  People were just phoning. But, and this is completely a, a story that I've heard, so I, I cannot fact check it or verify it. But apparently that was one of the reasons that the, like, the Saudis and the, I think the, the Emiratis were able to even like get to the table.

• 1:21:23Speaker 00

  Intercept calls.

• 1:21:23Trevor Noah?

  No, get to the table, having a conversation, was because Jared Kushner just didn't like know this stuff, and he was like, why, why don't you want to talk to them? And they were like, what are you talking about? We're not going, and he's like, well, we, why don't you talk to him? And then he was like, yeah, I'll phone him, and you just talk to him, and then the one person just talked to the other one on the phone, and they made progress that they, they otherwise would have never made if it had been contained within like the.

• 1:21:44Speaker 00

  The diplomatic channels of old.

• 1:21:45Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, the static, you know? Even things like, um, which country you phone first.

• 1:21:51Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:21:51Trevor Noah?

  I remember hearing.

• 1:21:54Trevor Noah?

  Many world leaders were frustrated with Biden's administration because they felt like there was no, there was no reaching out, there was no communication, there was no, and then Biden's team would say, no, we're very, we're choosing very carefully who we will call first.

• 1:22:10Speaker 02

  Protocol.

• 1:22:11Trevor Noah?

  Because it's protocol, right, which country we reach out to first. Apparently, bro, as soon as Trump came into power.

• 1:22:17Speaker 02

  What the?

• 1:22:17Trevor Noah?

  Every country was phoned, like, and I, when I say every country, I mean every, if you knew a country, the person, their job was just to phone someone there and just ask someone who asks someone who asks someone who asks someone, and then you would even like phone Trump's phone directly, it was.

• 1:22:32Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:22:33Trevor Noah?

  It was in many ways chaotic, I don't deny this. But it did give us an insight into the fact that some of the ways that we do things are a little so stiff, you know, and stayed that like, it holds us back. So how do, you know what I mean? How do we find that balance between the diplomatic protocols versus new ways to maybe make progress with countries that we disagree with?

• 1:22:56Speaker 00

  I, I couldn't agree more. I think that, you know, I, in the process of, of writing choke points, I spoke to thirty or forty people who were in the first Trump administration.

• 1:23:05Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:06Speaker 00

  And one thing I heard consistently was a feeling that it was actually exciting because there was a tolerance of risk, there was allowing people to sort of freelance a little bit more than you did, you know, in the Obama administration, it was extremely sort of, you know, orderly and you had a meeting, but then, you know, the process, you know, was, was followed to a T. And so I do think there's, there's something to that, right? And I, I think particularly also with diplomacy, like, it is helpful, frankly, to build rapport with other people, to have a relationship where people can just pick up the phone and call you. I mean, in my own experience, a lot of the, the progress I personally made was through

• 1:23:41Trevor Noah?

  Personal.

• 1:23:42Speaker 00

  Personal relationships, trusting relationships. So I think there's something there. I think when it comes to expertise, though, I don't think there's really a substitute for it. Like, I do think you, you do want people in the room who at least know something about the country you're talking to or about, right? You understand.

• 1:23:59Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:59Speaker 00

  Uh, their history, you know, some people there, their culture, maybe you've spent time there, and certainly like when you're talking about. The uses of power.

• 1:24:08Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:09Speaker 00

  Economic warfare. You should probably understand like, well, what might happen if we're going to sanction the Central Bank of Russia?

• 1:24:15Trevor Noah?

  Right, okay.

• 1:24:16Speaker 00

  Could that cause a financial crisis in Germany? What would that mean for us, right? Like, what would happen if you attack Iran? Would they cut off access to the Strait of Hormuz? Could they do that? What would that do to oil prices? What would that do to fertilizer? How about, could we have a famine in part of Africa? Right, because, like, and those are subjects that you need some level of knowledge. I think at the same time, like, I don't, having some sort of an ossified class of experts, I also think is not good either. Like, I think you should have people changing seats at the table. I think Biden, President Biden, by and large, took a lot of the senior people from the Obama administration and just like shuffled their chairs.

• 1:24:54Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:55Speaker 00

  And I don't think that did him much service, frankly. I think like, having some of those people back, for sure, right? Very good people, but also injecting some new ideas, some fresh perspectives, I think is really important.

• 1:25:06Trevor Noah?

  In a way, I think of it, it's sort of like, it's sort of like football in a way is, you have some football teams, soccer, some teams where the coach moves every single player on the pitch like a chessboard, and the team can become so stiff that they can't respond dynamically to changes in the game plan. And then you have other coaches who don't have a game plan, and then that's chaos. But then you have coaches who go, I spend all my time picking the right players and putting them in the right positions, and then I trust that when it's game time, everyone will know what they need to do.

• 1:25:40Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 1:25:41Trevor Noah?

  And in a way, it's like, I feel like that could be like a perfect balance is you find experts, because they've taken the time to become experts in these fields, but you also give them a little latitude to say, hey, go out there, make friends, make decisions, move the ball, like, switch things. Because I just think we take for granted how much the small interpersonal relations shape the big geopolitical relations.

• 1:26:05Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:26:06Trevor Noah?

  You know?

• 1:26:06Speaker 00

  Yeah, the big picture.

• 1:26:07Trevor Noah?

  One of the saddest stories I ever saw was the story of how the Israel-Palestine negotiations essentially didn't come together and then did just because Clinton forced the two leaders to be in the same room.

• 1:26:27Trevor Noah?

  Really? They didn't even wanna talk to each other. It was like, straight up like, I don't want to talk to them, and they don't wanna talk to me, we're enemies, this is this. And Clinton said, you're gonna sit in the same room. And he did it arguably for selfish reasons, but in a good way. He was like, I'm going to solve this issue. Mm hmm. You're gonna sit in the same room. And he was like, neither of you wants me as your enemy. We're gonna sit in this room, and we're gonna go, and they didn't, they refused to speak to each other for a long time. They just didn't speak to each other, they didn't speak to each other, they didn't speak to each other. And they would have meals, and everyone would meet up, and but they, and then one day. One day, the story goes, one of them just turns to the other and was like, how's your family?

• 1:27:05Trevor Noah?

  Literally, Palestinian leader, Israeli, yeah, one of them just turned to the other and said, how's your family? And the conversation evolved, and the conver, and then the next time they spoke more, and the next, and they never spoke about the actual issues. Yeah. Each time, each subsequent meeting, and then one day, one said to the other, do you actually wanna get into, do you wanna discuss this? And that's when they made the most inroads. No. That's when they made the mo, yeah, until that suicide bombing that happened. It looked like there was a path to a two-state solution. It looked like there was a moment in time where Israel-Palestine wasn't gonna be what it is today. But the biggest breakthrough for me came in the fact that two human beings. Interpersonal relation. Two human beings saw each other as human beings.

• 1:27:49Trevor Noah?

  And no longer as like, a country's name. And because of that, they began the journey. And like, it got ripped away from the world, I argue, but I even think about that when we, when we use like, words like, the Russians. Yeah, totally. I'm a little sad sometimes because I go, I have nothing against Russians. Mm hmm. I've been to Russia, I went there for the World Cup, I've met Russians everywhere in the world. Russian people, for, forget what they've given us in the world, like, you know, art and, and ballet and math and cha, like, lots of things. But as human beings, yo man, Russians are some of my favorite people I've ever, ever, ever met. Mm. But then we say the Russians as shorthand for the Russian government. Yes.

• 1:28:28Trevor Noah?

  And I think what we do is, we create the perfect propaganda for the Russian government to use on its citizens to say, look, the whole world hates us. Yep. And it's like, no, no, no, actually, we have nothing against the Russians. We have an issue with Vladimir Putin's government. Does that make sense? Mm hmm. And I I sometimes like, that's why people are like, hey, congrats, you got banned from Russia. And they're happy for you, because they don't realize that you knew human beings there.

• 1:28:53Speaker 02

  Totally.

• 1:28:55Trevor Noah?

  They think, they think that you're cut off from the government, but you didn't lose the government. You lost humans, you lost friends, you lost family members, you lost your history, you lost your culture. And that's, that's the thing that I think we forget sometimes when we're having these like geopolitical disputes in the world. Is even when people like the Iranians, eh, man, I know people from Iran. Some of the most fun you'll ever like, amazing human beings, you know what I mean?

• 1:29:16Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 1:29:17Trevor Noah?

  But we then go, the Iranians, and it's like, no, brah. I wish we were more specific about like the country and that administration in particular, the same way. No American wants to be tarnished by the Bush years, they call them the Bush years in particular.

• 1:29:32Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 1:29:33Trevor Noah?

  If you say to an American, ah, man, what you guys were doing in Iraq, they're like, oh, yeah, the Bush years. Then you're like, ah, the American years.

• 1:29:38Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 1:29:39Trevor Noah?

  Americans will be like, no, no, those were the Bush years. Because they want to separate themselves and America from that moment. You, you get what I'm saying?

• 1:29:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:29:48Trevor Noah?

  Like, I, I don't know, I feel like, there's like, there's like a world where we could try and like stitch the interpersonal just a little bit more.

• 1:29:54Speaker 02

  It almost feels like um. The propaganda machine needed a villain all the time.

• 1:30:01Trevor Noah?

  Oh, definitely.

• 1:30:02Speaker 02

  So I, I think when you look at the, I, I, I love, I love reading about the Vietnam War. When you look at the Vietnam War, there was no really, there was not really a, a villain that the Americans can look at in Vietnam. There was no name in Vietnam that people could say, Vietnam started becoming synonymous with the war that never ended, but there was no human.

• 1:30:21Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, you couldn't find the person.

• 1:30:23Speaker 02

  Right, but then when Iraq happened, then there was Saddam Hussein, there was, there was branding.

• 1:30:27Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:30:27Speaker 02

  Uh, when nine eleven happened, there was Osama bin Laden, you know, and obviously Africa becomes synonymous with dictatorships. So, but when you point the camera or the lens back at America and go, you could be going through a dictatorship yourself or Europe, and you go. The same what Idi Amin used to do to people not wanting to be voted out, elections that are prolonged, interference and whatsoever. Then it becomes difficult for people to, to kind of ingest in their own country, because it has become synonymous with something that happens over there.

• 1:30:56Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. It becomes, it becomes a part from the thing. I, I even wonder, actually, maybe, maybe you're best positioned to speak to this. Do you ever wonder if? No, no, no, no. Did you ever work in a state department?

• 1:31:07Speaker 02

  I'll sit this one out, you can take it.

• 1:31:08Trevor Noah?

  You've worked in departments, but not at the state.

• 1:31:10Speaker 02

  Department stores.

• 1:31:11Trevor Noah?

  Department stores. The vegetable department.

• 1:31:19Trevor Noah?

  Many departments, this guy. Traffic department. Hey, Eugene, many departments, not the state department.

• 1:31:28Trevor Noah?

  Do you ever wonder if America's propaganda has been too good? And what I mean by that is, is it possible that America's propaganda was so good? At a time when I argued it needed to be. Every country uses propaganda, so no judgment. This is just us looking at it as objectively as possible.

• 1:31:46Trevor Noah?

  Is it possible that America's propaganda was so good that it bred a generation of people who now had a complete inability to create new ideas of other countries because of the propaganda that they'd been fed? And I'll tell you where I bring this from.

• 1:32:02Trevor Noah?

  When you look at the Cold War and Russia and the US, it is fascinating to me that after, you know, World War II, the two nuclear bombs are dropped by the United States. The allied forces panic, go, what the hell has happened here? We didn't, as you said, it was a secret. We didn't know you guys had this bomb. What the hell is this? America goes, calm down. We've got the bomb, we'll protect you. The world's like, we're not comfortable with this. This is scary, right? Everyone starts to panic. Russia then says, America has this bomb, and we don't like that they're the only ones who have it. Maybe we should also try and make one. They then posture as if they sort of have a weapon, but they don't.

• 1:32:47Trevor Noah?

  America then says, Russia has a bomb. They then start acting like Russia has a bomb. Russia then goes like, yeah, yeah, we might have a bomb. America acts more like Russia has a bomb. And then they push Russia to have a bomb. And I'm not saying they forced Russia, you know what I mean? I'm not simplifying it to that extent, but. It feels like the the the the idea that you can have of another country can be so powerful that even subsequent generations who didn't realize that it was propaganda. You know, watching cartoons like Popeye or Superman or any of these. When you get into government, you're like, I don't trust the Russians. Why don't you trust them?

• 1:33:25Speaker 02

  Buy movies.

• 1:33:26Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, but why don't you trust them?

• 1:33:27Speaker 02

  The KGB.

• 1:33:28Trevor Noah?

  Because from the time you were a kid, you were taught not to trust the Russians as a whole. And I'm not saying you should just trust Russia, the country or the administration. But do you ever wonder if like that propaganda is so powerful? That it has limited America's ability to see beyond its own propaganda that it created?

• 1:33:45Speaker 00

  Yeah, I mean, I think also, you know, the United States, despite the fact that we are and have been for a long time, the world's most powerful country. We underwrite all of these international institutions. We've had sort of embassies all over the world. Our pop culture, as you say, is all over the world.

• 1:34:01Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:34:02Speaker 00

  We are relatively geographically isolated. And the vast majority of Americans don't travel overseas. They don't live in cities like New York where you have plenty of friends who are Russian.

• 1:34:12Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, yeah, anyone can walk by, yeah.

• 1:34:13Speaker 00

  Yeah, so it's very easy to caricature other, you know, people from other countries. And I think that oftentimes does us a disservice in foreign policy.

• 1:34:23Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, because it just limits your ability to.

• 1:34:27Trevor Noah?

  Like, I don't know how you negotiate with somebody if you don't see somebody to negotiate with, is what I mean. How how do you even begin that conversation? What do you, you know? You just give them a broad label and then and then you bomb away and then you hope for the best.

• 1:34:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, treat them like Uber East delivery guys. Take your goods and wish them well.

• 1:34:46Trevor Noah?

  I mean, that is definitely one way to think of it. Is that what you do? You should invite them in and, you know. Oh, really? Hit by the fire. Eddie's like, I'm sure you were wondering who the second set of fries were for.

• 1:34:58Speaker 00

  You are a really unfriendly guy. Did you, can you believe he does that with the Uber Eats guy?

• 1:35:03Trevor Noah?

  If I was a diplomat, this would be a dimashay. That would be like.

• 1:35:07Speaker 00

  That's rough, man.

• 1:35:10Speaker 00

  But look, I mean, honestly, you know, I wrote a book about economic warfare and been traveling the world, talking about it. And honestly, it's something I never expected. One of the countries where there's the most interest in economic warfare and choke points, where I've been going routinely over the last year plus is Canada. Because the Canadians are like, what is going on in the United States? Why are you hitting us with these massive tariffs? Why are you threatening to make us the 51st state? And I, and I go there and people are there looking at us and sort of to your point of like, you know, Bush era America. And they're like, are you the enemy? And I, and oftentimes the message I have there is like, hold, hold on, no, like we are still effectively the same, you know, cultural.

• 1:35:53Speaker 00

  And ultimately I am still very bullish on US Canadian relations over the long term. But you know, even very cosmopolitan, powerful people in Canada are like reassessing whether they can trust the United States. And I think that's because, you know, if you're in a place and all you really do is consume another country by virtue of what their political leader is saying, which by the way, is now how a lot of the world is consuming the United States, right? It's no longer, you know, Michael Jordan and the Backstreet Boys or whoever, you know, like in the 90s, right? It's like Donald Trump, like is like the, you know, like the avatar of the United States. I think it has changed a lot of perceptions. I mean, even, I don't know if you've had this experience, like when I've been to Europe in the last couple of years,

• 1:36:38Speaker 00

  or sorry, I guess the last year and a half since Trump came back. Like a lot of my friends like will be having dinner in like Berlin or something and they'll be like, are you okay? And I'm like, it's because like they're just like their only notion of American life right now is like seeing what's on the TV, which looks so chaotic. And like little do they know, like you can walk around the West Village or Soho or Brooklyn and be like, hold on.

• 1:37:01Trevor Noah?

  Cleveland, Ohio.

• 1:37:02Speaker 00

  Yeah, anywhere.

• 1:37:03Trevor Noah?

  Oklahoma, or you name it, like.

• 1:37:05Speaker 00

  Yeah, and like maybe in a way that's also troubling and that like your society can be taking a really dark turn. When on like an individual level and like a family level, you don't really experience it.

• 1:37:16Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:37:17Speaker 00

  But yeah, it's a, it is sort of like a mind bending experience when you see how even people who are very culturally similar to you, who are your friends in other countries, are perceiving the United States in this moment.

• 1:37:28Speaker 02

  Who'd expect to know better, in fact, yeah. So you can imagine what the other people think.

• 1:37:32Trevor Noah?

  It almost makes me wonder, just hearing you say that, if America was seeing America doing what America's doing, what would it do to America?

• 1:37:42Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:37:43Trevor Noah?

  Like, literally, if, if America was witnessing the United States doing what it's doing now, would it impose sanctions on it? Would it invade it?

• 1:37:54Speaker 00

  Regime change?

• 1:37:55Trevor Noah?

  Would it push for a regime change? Would, you know, that's a, it's an interesting way to think of it, because if your allies are saying to you, you are not yourself, it's almost the same as your friends calling you in for an intervention to be like, hey, you're not the person we knew you to be.

• 1:38:10Speaker 00

  Yeah. No, I think that's right. And, look, I mean, in, in some ways, Donald Trump, at least when it comes to economic warfare, is part of a consistent trend, where every US president in the 21st century, from Bush to Obama to Trump's first term, to Joe Biden to Trump's second term, has imposed sanctions at twice the rate of their predecessor.

• 1:38:36Trevor Noah?

  Really?

• 1:38:37Speaker 00

  So you've seen an exponential rise in the use of economic warfare across party lines. So in one sense, we should appreciate that he is sort of part of this trend. On the other hand, you know, previous presidents, including Trump during his first term, when they were using economic warfare, it was against Russia and Iran and North Korea and China. It was, it was a small group of countries that, for better or for worse, a lot of Americans view to sort of these pariah states.

• 1:39:02Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:39:03Speaker 00

  Right? Trump, during his second term, has waged economic warfare, not just against those countries, but against Canada, against Mexico, against India, against Japan, against the entire world.

• 1:39:13Speaker 02

  At some point threatened Lesotho.

• 1:39:15Speaker 00

  Right.

• 1:39:15Speaker 02

  I mean, who does that?

• 1:39:16Speaker 00

  Right.

• 1:39:17Speaker 02

  He did, right? I mean, they got hit with tariffs on Liberation Day.

• 1:39:20Trevor Noah?

  They've already been surrounded by South African guys.

• 1:39:23Speaker 00

  Right.

• 1:39:24Trevor Noah?

  I mean, what a...

• 1:39:25Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:39:26Trevor Noah?

  Talk about a choke point, right?

• 1:39:27Speaker 00

  That's a real choke point. Yeah, no, so I mean, like, that, yeah, I mean, that's not normal behavior. And I think it does have really long term consequences for the United States. Because if you go, we just sort of loop back to our conversation about the dollar. Like, after we imposed sanctions on Russia in 2014, and I was involved in this. It was actually in 2014, before we had any sanctions or export controls or tariffs on China, that Xi Jinping said, hold on a second. If this can happen to Russia, it can happen to us. So it was in 2014, a long, long time ago, that China started trying to build alternative payment systems to the dollar so that they could, you know, buy oil in RMB or, you know,

• 1:40:11Speaker 00

  clear their trade through programs that didn't, you know, go through the West. But it wasn't like Canada was doing that, or Japan, or South Korea, or France, right? It was like countries that saw themselves as potentially allied with Russia, or, you know, they might do something similar to Russia, right? I don't think anyone in France is right now thinking about an imperialist war in the, in sort of the way that, you know, Russia has invaded Ukraine, you know? So they don't see themselves like potentially the Russians. But now you do have like that shadow of a doubt all around the world, including in like the UK, you know, including in countries that are like are very close allies who are thinking, how do we build security against America?

• 1:40:51Trevor Noah?

  Damn.

• 1:40:53Speaker 02

  How do you create our unchokable points?

• 1:40:55Speaker 00

  Yeah, I mean, look, Canada, I mean, to the choke points, I mean, Canada is a petrostate, right? I mean, their, their, their vast majority of their exports are oil and gas. To your point about the convoys, right? Canada sells their oil largely via pipelines. And those pipelines are fixed infrastructure and they only go one direction. They go south. They sell all their oil and gas to the United States. And for a long time, that's been a very profitable business. They've got a very large market for their energy. Well, right now, they're like, hold on, what happens if the US, you know, sanctions us or puts tariffs on us? And so they're investing billions of dollars to build pipelines to the coasts so they can sell their oil and gas to China, to Europe, so that they can't be just dependent on the United States.

• 1:41:42Trevor Noah?

  What you what I'm hearing you say in this conversation is it's so interesting how history will repeat itself, but essentially, in trying to create a stranglehold on like every country and every leader and every moment, it feels like the US has done the exact opposite. You know, like an overbearing parent that tries to control every single aspect of their child's life. Now their child has a secret phone and has secret friends and has a secret life. It feels like that's sort of what's happening to the US now is now Canada's going, oh, can I build my own pipeline? Can I make new friends?

• 1:42:19Speaker 02

  Chinese pension systems.

• 1:42:20Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, and then Brazil is going, can we sell, you know, food to China? And China's going, can we buy food from these people? It it seems like it has, in some ways, created the thing, in the same way that you said with the Germans at the beginning of this conversation, they were like, oh, we're gonna go after all of these people. And those people, because they went after, went to America and created the machinery that then took down the German, do you get what I'm saying?

• 1:42:45Speaker 02

  Hundred percent.

• 1:42:46Trevor Noah?

  Wow. This has been fascinating. This is, I mean, because it's ongoing.

• 1:42:52Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:42:52Trevor Noah?

  Like, it's not, there's no, there's no, like, conclusion in your book. There's no, like, and then they lived happily ever after. That's what I mean. It's just, we're just there.

• 1:42:59Speaker 00

  There are two processes right now that I sort of see as like what's fundamentally reshaping the global economic system, the whole international order.

• 1:43:07Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:43:08Speaker 00

  You have an economic arms race in which countries are looking what the United States has done with choke points, with the dollar, with semiconductors, you know, that we've, you know, put an embargo on to China, and saying, well, what are the choke points we have that we can weaponize? Because economic warfare, it's a good way to compete, right? Compared with nuclear weapons, which you're never going to use, you actually can use choke points. And so they're doing that. And then the other thing they're doing is this scramble for economic security. It's what are the choke points that make us vulnerable to China, you know, that China could use against us? And it's why right now in the US, we're investing. Tens of billions of dollars in our domestic critical minerals industry because we don't want to be vulnerable to this China Chinese choke point on rare earths.

• 1:43:51Speaker 00

  But also now to the United States where we mentioned Canada, we mentioned China with the payment system in Europe. You know, they're now thinking, can they build alternative to cloud services? You know, Amazon, Google, Microsoft, they dominate the global internet. They build all the infrastructure that the internet runs through.

• 1:44:07Trevor Noah?

  And Europe wants their own now. They want something that they can rely on.

• 1:44:11Speaker 00

  Exactly. And so I think these two processes, the way I see it, are just going to keep playing out until we have a fundamentally reshaped global economy.

• 1:44:19Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:44:19Speaker 00

  Until globalization is something that we learn about in the history books.

• 1:44:23Trevor Noah?

  It's just a moment in time as opposed to the way things are.

• 1:44:26Speaker 00

  Exactly. I think that's what's happening right now. And there are different ways that could go, right? We don't know what the endpoint is, but I'm pretty confident that those two forces, this economic arms race and the scramble for economic security are going to continue to play out until we have a fundamentally new global economic order.

• 1:44:41Trevor Noah?

  Then Eddie, you're just going to keep coming back, my friend. We're just going to keep having you back on the podcast and we're just going to, we're just going to follow it step by step. This has been riveting.

• 1:44:50Speaker 00

  Thank you.

• 1:44:51Trevor Noah?

  Like really, this has been your insight, the way you, the way you share things, the way you grapple with them.

• 1:44:55Speaker 00

  The way you explain.

• 1:44:56Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, the way you explain. Can I tell you, keep doing that because I think we take for granted how many news stories people consume on a surface level, but we never actually get an understanding of. And I think you do a really good job of that. So thank you very much for joining us.

• 1:45:09Speaker 00

  It's my pleasure. I enjoyed hanging out with you guys.

• 1:45:10Trevor Noah?

  This was lots of fun, man.

• 1:45:11Speaker 00

  Good to see you.

• 1:45:14Speaker 00

  See you in the department.

• 1:45:19Trevor Noah?

  This segment is brought to you by Verizon. So Joe, most iconic World Cup moments ever.

• 1:45:30Trevor Noah?

  What has to be in the list?

• 1:45:31Speaker 02

  There's so many, but as a Messi fan, as someone who has.

• 1:45:36Speaker 04

  Been given so much joy by Messi. I think twenty twenty World Cup, seeing football finally give back to Messi. Something that has, he has wanted for so long and winning that World Cup.

• 1:45:47Trevor Noah?

  Let me know when I should pull out my violin, please.

• 1:45:50Speaker 04

  Look.

• 1:45:50Trevor Noah?

  Let me know when I should pull.

• 1:45:51Speaker 04

  Look, this man had come so close in twenty.

• 1:45:54Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, but it's not like the, is it the most iconic moment?

• 1:45:58Speaker 04

  It was seeing him.

• 1:45:59Trevor Noah?

  No, Joe, come on, come on.

• 1:46:01Speaker 04

  Messi, okay.

• 1:46:01Trevor Noah?

  Okay, I'll, I'll throw, I'll throw one at.

• 1:46:03Speaker 04

  Let me first go. Messi has been, has been hunting for this World Cup for forever.

• 1:46:07Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, this is just his story.

• 1:46:08Speaker 04

  Imagine you've been sliding into a girl's DM.

• 1:46:10Trevor Noah?

  Ask people.

• 1:46:11Speaker 04

  You've been sliding and sliding and sliding and finally she says hi back. That's what it felt like.

• 1:46:15Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, for you, no one else cares about your DMs. That's what I'm saying. I'm not saying no one cares about Messi's win. I'm just saying as an iconic moment.

• 1:46:22Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 1:46:23Trevor Noah?

  I'll throw one at you that I think is more iconic. Roberto Baggio missing his penalty.

• 1:46:29Speaker 04

  That was iconic, but it was also very traumatic for me. It's the first moment, it was the first moment, it was the first moment that I realized how high the highs in soccer can be.

• 1:46:39Trevor Noah?

  And how lows.

• 1:46:39Speaker 04

  How low the lows can be.

• 1:46:40Trevor Noah?

  You know what was crazy about, about the Baggio thing for me? Is how it connected us in a world that didn't even have social media.

• 1:46:49Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 1:46:49Trevor Noah?

  Right? No one had social media. I was in school.

• 1:46:52Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 1:46:53Trevor Noah?

  And kids were talking to each other. We, you know, we called it the Baggio from now on.

• 1:46:57Speaker 04

  Yes, yes.

• 1:46:57Trevor Noah?

  If you kicked the ball and you missed the crossbar, people, you called yourself Baggio when you did it.

• 1:47:02Speaker 04

  Yes, it was.

• 1:47:03Trevor Noah?

  You would kick and you'd be like, Baggio. He'd be, imagine being one of the greatest attacking players of your time.

• 1:47:10Speaker 04

  The best player in the world at the time.

• 1:47:12Trevor Noah?

  And then after one action.

• 1:47:14Speaker 04

  Defines you.

• 1:47:15Trevor Noah?

  Become, becoming the verb for missing a ball.

• 1:47:20Speaker 04

  It also, it also, it also, he was a player of the tournament. He had dragged Italy again, kicking and screaming to the final. He had fans over, Madonna had a crush on him.

• 1:47:29Trevor Noah?

  Maradona?

• 1:47:29Speaker 04

  Madonna.

• 1:47:30Trevor Noah?

  Oh, Madonna.

• 1:47:30Speaker 04

  Madonna, the material girl.

• 1:47:32Trevor Noah?

  No, no.

• 1:47:32Speaker 04

  The material girl herself. She had been photographed time and again.

• 1:47:36Trevor Noah?

  You're lying.

• 1:47:37Speaker 04

  Wearing his jersey at concerts, out jogging. So you know you're really, you've really made it when the material girl is objectifying you.

• 1:47:43Trevor Noah?

  She hasn't worn that shirt since.

• 1:47:45Speaker 04

  Yes, and then to go from that.

• 1:47:46Trevor Noah?

  She hasn't worn that shirt since.

• 1:47:49Speaker 04

  So I can give you.

• 1:47:50Trevor Noah?

  That's up there. That's, okay, okay, wait, here's another one that I think could be the greatest, the most iconic moment.

• 1:47:57Trevor Noah?

  Luis Suarez handball against Ghana, South Africa twenty ten World Cup.

• 1:48:02Speaker 04

  Yeah, I can see why you picked that. Home World Cup, but.

• 1:48:06Trevor Noah?

  No, forget home World Cup. Forget, take South Africa out.

• 1:48:08Speaker 04

  Okay, okay.

• 1:48:09Trevor Noah?

  I know I'm biased, take South Africa out. Picture the moment Ghana is on the cusp of doing what no African team has ever done before.

• 1:48:18Speaker 04

  Reached the semi-final of the.

• 1:48:19Trevor Noah?

  Reaching the semi-final of the World Cup. The whole world is now, like, we were all supporting Ghana.

• 1:48:25Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 1:48:25Trevor Noah?

  Right? If we're honest, the whole world.

• 1:48:27Speaker 04

  Yes, apart from Uruguay.

• 1:48:28Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, it was Uruguay on their own.

• 1:48:29Speaker 04

  Against the world, yeah.

• 1:48:30Trevor Noah?

  It was Uruguay and then the world was supporting, because Ghana was like a Cinderella team, right? So you had South Africans, you had Germans, you had, yeah, it was, and it was, it was Africa's, like Shakira said, it's time for Africa.

• 1:48:41Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 1:48:42Trevor Noah?

  Right? It was time for Africa. Ghana's in this cup.

• 1:48:45Speaker 04

  Ghana is the only remaining country.

• 1:48:46Trevor Noah?

  They are about to go through.

• 1:48:50Speaker 04

  A header comes in, bound for the net.

• 1:48:53Trevor Noah?

  And then the hand, not of the goalkeeper.

• 1:48:55Speaker 04

  Yes, the hand of Suarez.

• 1:48:56Trevor Noah?

  The hand of Suarez. And brother, the craziest thing was, I loved Luis Suarez.

• 1:49:02Speaker 04

  He didn't pretend, yes.

• 1:49:03Trevor Noah?

  He, he, that's another thing, he didn't, he didn't, he didn't lie. He just put his hand up, knocked the ball out.

• 1:49:09Speaker 04

  I'm taking one for the team.

• 1:49:10Trevor Noah?

  Takes the red card.

• 1:49:11Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 1:49:12Trevor Noah?

  Do you think he knew his goalkeeper had a chance of saving it?

• 1:49:14Speaker 04

  No, no, no, the goalkeeper was beaten.

• 1:49:15Trevor Noah?

  No, no, I'm saying, no, I'm saying the penalty.

• 1:49:17Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah, I think the thing is, if you're in the ninety-third minute and your country is on the verge of going out of the World Cup and the keeper is beaten and the goal, the ball is goal-bound, you're going like, you know what, I'm taking my chances and I'm hoping, I'm hoping. Because the thing is, if I stop it now, at least it doesn't go in.

• 1:49:35Trevor Noah?

  He is, he is an instinct player.

• 1:49:37Speaker 04

  Played, yeah, he played the advantages.

• 1:49:39Trevor Noah?

  Suarez, Suarez is an instinct player. I will, I think that's part of what made him great.

• 1:49:43Speaker 04

  I think, I think, I think most other players would have hesitated, and I think that's the thing you're saying.

• 1:49:48Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:49:48Speaker 04

  He was unapologetic, he didn't hesitate, and he knew the punishment that was coming, and he went like, you know what, I'm going to gamble and risk it.

• 1:49:55Trevor Noah?

  I wonder if he's ever been to Africa ever since.

• 1:49:57Speaker 04

  No, he is public enemy number one.

• 1:49:59Trevor Noah?

  He can't, dude.

• 1:49:59Speaker 04

  He is the entire Africa.

• 1:50:01Trevor Noah?

  He can't.

• 1:50:01Speaker 04

  Because what happened was.

• 1:50:02Trevor Noah?

  Suarez connected us in a way that no leader ever could.

• 1:50:05Speaker 04

  He didn't just connect. Connected the diaspora.

• 1:50:08Trevor Noah?

  That's what I'm saying, like everyone in the world.

• 1:50:09Speaker 04

  Everyone who was working, yes.

• 1:50:11Trevor Noah?

  Together against Luis Suarez. And the crazy thing is like, I still love him. He still, I loved him from Liverpool. I love him as a player. He was at Barcelona. So he's like, it's, he's this lovable villain.

• 1:50:22Speaker 04

  Love him when he is on your team especially.

• 1:50:23Trevor Noah?

  That's the best way to put it.

• 1:50:24Speaker 04

  Yeah, you'd always love him.

• 1:50:26Trevor Noah?

  If Suarez did that for your team.

• 1:50:28Speaker 04

  He's like Draymond Green if he was a bit more talented.

• 1:50:31Trevor Noah?

  I don't know who, this is a slam. Who was a bit more talented?

• 1:50:34Speaker 04

  Draymond Green.

• 1:50:35Trevor Noah?

  Damn.

• 1:50:36Speaker 04

  The talent of self-care.

• 1:50:38Trevor Noah?

  Fired. I don't know where Draymond Green is, but shots have been fired from Uganda all the way to Draymond Green.

• 1:50:43Speaker 04

  No, because what, what, what, what makes, what makes it even worse is so Suarez gambles.

• 1:50:48Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:50:48Speaker 04

  And then he wins.

• 1:50:49Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, he did.

• 1:50:50Speaker 04

  Because the penalty, you know, again.

• 1:50:51Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:50:51Speaker 04

  Asamoah Gian almost does a bagio. You know, he hits a crossbar, the penalty doesn't go in. So Ghana. The game goes into extra time. Ghana is eliminated in the penalties.

• 1:51:01Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:51:01Speaker 04

  But what made Suarez even more of a villain is when Asamoah Gian misses the penalty.

• 1:51:08Trevor Noah?

  The way he celebrates.

• 1:51:08Speaker 04

  They cut to him.

• 1:51:10Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:51:10Speaker 04

  On the sidelines, celebrating like crazy while the entire Africa was going through this trauma.

• 1:51:15Trevor Noah?

  You know, you know what it, what it also left me with is like.

• 1:51:19Trevor Noah?

  Everyone has, everyone says sportsmanship, but I always wonder if you do something that is. Part of the game and you're willing to take the punishment, is that not part of the game?

• 1:51:30Speaker 04

  It is.

• 1:51:31Trevor Noah?

  Cause it's not like Suarez shot someone.

• 1:51:32Speaker 04

  No, he didn't.

• 1:51:33Trevor Noah?

  Right.

• 1:51:33Speaker 04

  And the thing is, he was greeted in Uruguay as a national hero, obviously. But we also talked from when we were young that. Crime doesn't pay. Or the villain doesn't win. We were taught like Hollywood teaches us this, fairy tales teaches us this. And in this one moment, all that was turned upside down because Suarez actually did win. Crime actually did pay. Suarez missed the semifinal, which means they, actually it's part of this is why they lost to Holland. Cause Holland made the final in Spain. Suarez would have been the difference, but at least.

• 1:52:04Trevor Noah?

  Been the difference.

• 1:52:05Speaker 04

  Yes, but you could see in that moment, when Africa, when you talk to Africans about that moment, you can see them having flashbacks. I think.

• 1:52:12Trevor Noah?

  My friend, we are all, we are still.

• 1:52:14Speaker 04

  People still in therapy.

• 1:52:15Trevor Noah?

  That was our greatest hope, that moment. But maybe that's why we should be grateful to Suarez, right? As Africans, we've always needed things that connect us as people. We're always looking for moments that bring us together as a nation, right? South Africans have never felt more African than in that moment.

• 1:52:31Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 1:52:31Trevor Noah?

  Right? Which is what we need more than ever. So, in many ways, I would argue Suarez might have robbed Ghana, but what he did in Africa.

• 1:52:39Speaker 04

  Long time, yes.

• 1:52:40Trevor Noah?

  Long-term thinking.

• 1:52:41Speaker 04

  No, he united Africa more than, as you said, more than anyone. But also the funny thing about that.

• 1:52:45Trevor Noah?

  Luis Suarez, the Nelson Mandela of Africa.

• 1:52:48Speaker 04

  No, the funny thing, the funny thing about that moment, the funny, Nelson Mandela is funny. The funny thing about that moment is, in that particular World Cup, Sipio Shabala had scored the goal.

• 1:52:57Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:52:57Speaker 04

  That made, which, Shabala's goal felt like a moon landing for Africa, like one small kick for man, one giant kick for mankind, yes? And then Suarez brought us back down to earth. Same World Cup, two very contrasting emotions. And I think if you're talking about bringing together a continent, or bring, Shabala gave us the derium, and then Suarez gave us, like, the depth of despair.

• 1:53:21Trevor Noah?

  True despair. But man, he gave us one of the greatest moments of all time.

• 1:53:25Speaker 04

  What a moment to pick as an African.

• 1:53:27Trevor Noah?

  Ah, as an official sponsor of the FIFA World Cup 2026, Verizon is bringing once-in-a-lifetime experiences to their customers, including free tickets to matches and pitch-side access during gameplay. If you're not with Verizon, no sweat. Stop by a Verizon store to get in on the action and learn about their offers for new customers.

• 1:53:53Trevor Noah?

  What Now with Trevor Noah is produced by Day Zero Productions in partnership with Sirius XM. The show is executive produced by Trevor Noah, Sanaz Yamin, and Jess Hackel. Rebecca Chain is our producer. Our development researcher is Marcia Robiu. Music, mixing and mastering by Hannes Brown. Random other stuff by Ryan Parduth. Thank you so much for listening. Join me next week for another episode of What Now.