3/11/26: Trump Freaks Over Strait Of Hormuz, Mearsheimer Says US Losing War, Iran To Hit Israel Hard

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All right, good Wednesday morning and welcome to Breaking Points. If you're new here, I'm not Crystal. She's not Saugger. We mix it up a little bit. And you're not Saugger. I'm definitely not Saugger. I'm not Krista. Okay. We've got that covered. So if you're, if you know anybody that you think might like this show, we're doing one month free. It's BP Free 26. Go to breaking points.com. Put in that promo code and you can get the premium version free. Now, everything we do, basically, except for a little, you know, a few things on the side. is free to the public anyway, but you get it earlier, you get it ad-free, you get it all in kind of one, you know, alert in your inbox so that you don't have to keep, you know, fighting with YouTube about what they're going to recommend that you watch after. It's really, it's the way the show's meant to be watched. We got some flow going, so, yeah. If you don't like a segment, you just skip right past it. This is the last one. I think I'm going on a little long. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You could just scrub, yep. Yeah. But this is the last week to claim the trial. So BP-Free26, free the BP-26. We don't know who they are, but BP-Free-26. Make sure you go over there this week, claim that. We appreciate everyone being here. Second half the Friday shows, those are for premium subs only. Welcome, really. We're so happy to see so many new faces, and we have a lot to talk about today. So we're going to start with updates from Iran and the broader Middle East. Just basically. Secretary Higaz said yesterday, this is going to be the most intense day of the war, and that proved, unsurprisingly, to be true. Yeah, from both sides. My dropside colleague, Jeremy Scahill, will be joining us to talk about some of the reporting that he's done. He was supposed to be here last week. He bumped us for an interview he was doing with the Deputy Foreign Minister. It was fair. Luckily, we had two people scheduled, so it was okay, fine, Jeremy. We'll let you go this time. I think if you've been following Jeremy's reporting, you have known ahead of time, sometimes by weeks, you know, where this is going. So we're going to talk to him about what he's been seeing the last few days and what he sees coming over the next few days, particularly as in Washington, you're starting to see Republicans suggest that we declare a victory and wrap this up. Tom Cotton said that yesterday, whereas Democrats kind of fitting with the reporting that we've been doing previously. are very critical of the war, but don't seem to be doing anything to stop it. Now they're talking about we need to have hearings about the purpose of the war. What? That should do it. How about we end the war? And then we could talk about it. But like... It feels like they like the fact that it's hurting Republicans so much. They love it. They love it. I liked the idea that Thomas Massie had to actually just put a declaration of war on the floor that he would vote against to see who would vote at the end of the day for it or against it. Anybody feel like voting on this? It's just a thought. Lots going on in that region, obviously, that we're going to get to some new sound bites from John Meersheimer that are really worth thinking about taking some time to pause. And we're almost, what are we two? Well, we can happen to this thing right now. And it's true, as Ryan said, the chatter is now, should we, from Republicans, just declare victory. Trump is certainly talking that way. And you see perception, history.

being written in real time. So important to kind of stop on that point. We're going to talk about some of the tactical questions too, Ryan. Yes. And then CNN in the New York Times, we're calling this Block Tapper, have absolutely lost their minds over a combination of the way that they're approaching this war and the fact that Zohran Mamdani, I guess, refuses to resign. I don't know exactly what their problem is, but... They have gone so far overboard. It's utterly insane to the point where we actually, I think, have to talk about it. Also, we did some, our own polling. We put a poll out into the field. Drop site, Zateo. Drop site and Zateo put this into the field. We're going to have some exclusive results from that. As you can imagine, we did not ask the kinds of polling questions that the mainstream media. would have asked. One of them we asked was, do you believe that Donald Trump was motivated, at least in part, to go to war with Iran to cover up the Jeffrey Epstein scandal? If you're watching this program, you won't be, you might be pleasantly surprised that you are in the majority of the country in believing that, yes, he did. So it's not just people who watch this program. Like the average American believes that that's the case. We'll unpack that, get into the precise numbers, and a lot of other interesting questions that we asked too. You guys asked, on a scale of 10 to 10, how much do you love this war? I thought that was a creative one. Yeah, have you exercised your right to the BP-free 26? Breaking Points.com premium subscription. And the results? Not enough Americans yet have. Stay tuned. Make sure you do that. And we're going to talk about some of the podcasters who, for whom this is a breaking point. Like, jeez. Like they cannot. abide anymore. Rogan among them. For whom it is not a breaking point, Bill Maher. Bill Maher. He's fine with this. So we have some dueling clips. We have Rogan Marr and we're going to dive in to all of it. So let's start now with we call it Straightgate, Ryan. The Strait of Hermuz where there was some conflicting reports about what the hell is going on in the Strait of Hermes yesterday, Ryan. critical question, not helpful when there's muddled information about what's happening in the Strait of Hormuz. So let's start with A1. We can put this up on the screen, a report from CBS News, Jennifer Jacobs, who said U.S. intelligence assets have begun to see indications Iran is taking steps to deploy...

Democrats are saying... Who thinks that's what the Trump administration? That's what the sources close to the administration were telling Politico this morning. Also, that once we're still political, they were surprised when they saw that $120 barrel spike that caught them off guard. So it sort of goes to what Chris Murphy is saying here, which is that there wasn't quite a plan and there was a lack of understanding or diligence about understanding. exactly what was going to happen in the Strait of her moves after the strikes initially. Yeah, and we have some strategic petroleum reserve that we can release, that G7 have their own emergency kind of global reserve that they're planning on releasing. And so there's that option. The other option is for the U.S. to start accompanying ships. protecting them as they move through the Strait of Hormuz. And you had an absolutely incredible moment yesterday in the financial markets where the U.S. Energy Secretary, we can put up this next element, Chris Wright, he comes out and he announces that the U.S. Navy has successfully escorted a tanker through the strait. So if you knew that he was about to announce that, or if you knew that that had happened, and you... bought oil futures, you made an enormous amount of money over the next five minutes. As, well, sorry, you lost an enormous amount of money if you owned or if you were short oil, you did great because the... I thought you're going to say if you were like specific on polymarket. Right. But may, well, that too. But so oil prices crashed because it's like, oh, amazing. So the Navy successfully escorted a tanker through the Strait of Hormuz. The cavalry has arrived. The battle is saved. The world oil supply is secured. Five minutes later, he deletes the tweet. Imagine being the traitor who's like refreshing that tweet. It's like, tweet has been deleted. You're like, oh, God. Because, as it turns out, it was either a lie. or it was untrue. We need to get to the bottom of this. Yeah. Many, many, many millions of dollars changed hands and the U.S. lost whatever little tiny credibility it had left. So, Leavitt, Karoline Leavitt was asked about this. And let's get her response. I was made aware of this post. I haven't had a chance to talk to the energy secretary about it directly. However, I know the post was taken down pretty quickly, and I can confirm that the U.S. Navy has not escorted a tanker or vessel at this time. Though, of course, that's an option the president has said he will absolutely utilize if and when necessary at the appropriate time. Okay. So, never mind. That did not happen. This is a cabinet secretary. This is the energy secretary. Energy secretary. It'd be one thing of the HUD secretary. Yes. Like heard a little gossip and tweeted that. Right. The energy secretary. Yeah. That's the... That's the guy who would know that. Also the umbrella nuclear policy organization. So not looking great if you're just firing off tweets and deleting them about fragile geopolitical questions. And we're going to talk later with Jeremy about the...

either the lack of a strategy or the way that the strategy is unfolding, but for a glimpse into how completely bankrupt the U.S. approach is right now, you've got Fox and Friends buddies just throwing out random plays. Let's take an island and then control the oil. Let's play A5 here. Love to see him take Karg Island, that oil island. He'd be just like Venezuela. We control their oil. 90% of their oil goes to this little island. The president talked about it in 1988 into year. And I think he should grab it. And I think that gets to the folly that was at the heart of this entire Operation Epstein Fury to begin with, which was. It's going to be like Venezuela. And so it went great. We went in. We got Maduro. And then they just handed us the oil. And it was amazing. And so they keep trying to reconfigure what is obviously a completely different situation into that. And I think they're looking for something that they can do and then declare victory. Yeah, I think that's right. But doing that will be that. I mean, do you have any thoughts on that? That would be a bloodbath. Holding it would be, like, quite difficult. Yeah. I don't think it's serious, but I haven't thought that was serious. Any of this was serious, and they're, and they've tried to do it anyway. I thought I was totally serious from Brian Kilmeade. Oh, he's being serious, but like. Right. Right. But that's to your point. Like, if you don't think certain, it's hard to tell what's serious when it's being like tossed out between Fox and Friends and the president. We just put the president's tweet about the true social about the minds up on the screen. He's like, if for any reason the mind, like you never know what he knows and what he's serious about, what he's not serious about. So you have no choice but to take it all seriously. And I think that's exactly what the right. the right position is. So, oh, he's joking. Well, we're in war and people are dying. So take him seriously. I agree with you. I think that would be a nightmare. And the long term, what does that look like if they're trying to come up with some type of deal about the future? What is the long term? prospect of holding oil island as Brian Kilmeade put what is the what is the plan for a year from now for 10 years from now if you're holding oil island how is that going to make things significantly better how is it going to make the situation less tense I mean it just none of it makes sense Yeah, I just think that it would be very difficult from to actually hold it. Right, exactly. Yeah. And so going to the question of, because this is... It's basically putting, since we're talking about mines, it's putting like a trip wire. Yeah, right in the middle of the whole... Yes, exactly. And so the question really is, you know, can Iran withstand the bombardment that they're taking and continue to fire their own ballistic missiles longer than the U.S.?

can withstand the cracking of the foundations of the global economy. And that's the key question. And the question underneath that is, what happens to the oil flow through the Strait of Hormuz? So we have some actual data that's emerging that sheds a little light on this. I don't think would give comfort necessarily to either side, but it's important to have the facts here. So you can put up this drop site post from Twitter. The point they're making here is that about 35% of the oil that normally goes through the Strait of Hermuz is still going through. But let's break that down a little bit. So normally you were averaging about 15 million barrels per day. Now, of that, 1.2 million was Iranian. And that is still getting through. And it's mostly going to China. So you're actually, what you're concerned about is about 13.8 million barrels per day. So what's going on with that? So according to that, 5.5 million is still moving. Now, you'd want to subtract the 1.2 from there to get what actually matters because the oil that Iran is shipping to China is not... is not foundational to the Western kind of capital markets. So that gets you down to what? So that's 3.3 million barrels a day still going through. So what's happening is that Saudi Arabia is trying to move. a lot of their oil through a pipeline and then out the Red Sea. So they're saying more than 2 million barrels per day are currently moving toward the Red Sea. So if they can't get it out through the Strait of Hormuz, they're going to move it that way. The UAE is trying to use the Fujera pipeline to move about 1.8 million barrels per day. And then there's about... 500,000 barrels per day from tankers that are turning off their trackers and kind of sneaking through so 500,000 it's not much like that's not That's not enough to service the global economy. But if they can move many millions through these pipelines, now the problem sets in, you can hit a pipeline. If we go up the escalation ladder to those kinds of strikes, you can certainly hit a pipeline and take that right offline. And the Houthis have not really gotten involved yet. So if the Houthis said, no, actually, you're not doing this anymore. Which is interesting because remember, again, we're telling you the truth here. We've told you from the beginning that the Houthis are supported by Iran, but are independent actors. They make their own decisions. In the U.S., the Western Press, they're just the panmaids of Iran. They do exactly what Iran tells them. Right. This moment confirms it. Like, if they did exactly what Iran...

wants them to do, would they not be like launching tons of ballistic missiles at their allies and shutting the Red Sea down? And they're not yet. They're talking about, no, they're strategizing. We may see them enter the fray, but they haven't. It's also, though, interesting because what is Iran right now? Like, what is the government of Iran? Is it acting in total concert? Is there – it's hard to know what would be getting telegraphed. But no, I mean, I see what you're saying. I just also – So if they come in and shut down the Red Sea, then you're talking about a whole different ballgame. But if they don't, you might be able – and they don't hit these pipelines, you may be able to trickle through enough oil to keep prices. at a place where the global population can continue to stomach the attack? Maybe, right. And I don't know, it's just with this Trump administration now talking about how they think they have a three to four week. like landing strip basically, it does go to why we start hearing them chirp now about declaring mission accomplished and victory. They're obviously very, very, very nervous about this and they should be because of everything that was just laid out. Hey, it's Ryan Reynolds here for MintMobil. Now, I was looking for fun ways to tell you that Mint's offer of unlimited premium wireless for $15 a month is back. So I thought it would be fun if we made $15 bills. But it turns out that's very illegal. So there goes my big idea for the commercial. Give it a try at mintmobile.com slash switch. Up front payment of $45 for three months, $90 for six months, or $180 for 12-month plan required, $15 per month equivalent. Taxes and bees extra. Initial term only greater than 50 gigabytes may slow when network is busy. See terms. Buy it into a stack sandwich made with hero bread or a fully loaded bagel. And the only thing you'll think is. Delicious. You won't think it's up to 19 grams of protein, but it is. You wouldn't believe it has 11 to 32 grams of fiber, but it does. Hero Bread makes loaves, buns, tortillas, bagels, and noodles hacked with taste, but without all the net carbs. We're talking 0 to 5 grams net carbs per serving. With Hero Bread, there are no compromises. Just flavor. There's none of the stiff baked goods you'd expect from Better for You Brands. There's just the soft, fluffy bread you crave. Plus, small batch drops of indulgent favorites, like the popular 2 gram net carb hero croissant and 3 gram net carb hero pan of chocolate. And right now, hero bread is offering 10% off your order. Go to hero.co and use code iHeart at checkout. That's code iHeart at hr.o.co.

All figures per serving of Hero Bread, see Nutrition Facts on Hero.co. Doja Cat. My V World Tour. Live in concert. With special guest Lotto. I have done it out. Feel like shot it low. Left hit to the pain. But she's not a talk. Doja Cat. Live across North America in 2020. Get tickets now at dojicad.com. Let's get to Mearsheimer. Let's do it. Let's talk about Professor John Meersheimer's recent remarks about, as we were just saying, who's really winning? What does winning look like? Crystal flagged this moment for us. A bunch of senators, by the way, went into a briefing yesterday on the war. That's where Chris Murphy came out and put out the tweet that he referred to in the last block. We were discussing the Strait of Hormuz. We have some audio and video of Senator Richard Blumenthal also emerging from that briefing before we get to it. Let's take a listen here to John Mearsheimer to sort of set the table as to what's been accomplished, quote unquote, accomplished so far B1. It's quite clear that the war is not going well for the United States and that President Trump, I think, would like to put an end to it. And the problem that he faces is he can't find an off ramp. I think nobody can tell a plausible story about how this war ends. If we had decisively defeated Iran, the way we decisively defeated both Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan in World War II, then you can say the war is over with. We are the winner and we're going to impose terms on the loser. But that's not what's happened here. They haven't won anything approximating a decisive victory. And in a very important way, the Iranians have an incentive. to continue the war, to turn it into a protracted war of attrition, and they have the means to do that. So obviously definitions of what that means have been floating around from this administration itself. Last week, Karoline Leavitt had to come out and enumerate the list of objectives that the administration had in Iran because so many different things were floating around from different members of the administration, which is normal enough on a day that ends in Y, a lot more egregious when you are at war, obviously. So Donald Trump has said he wants unconditional surrender, Ryan. He said it's about missiles, it's about nukes. So some of the challenge here politically for the administration, but also just for a normal American trying to determine why seven lives have already been lost. We're looking at new numbers.

about how many people have been injured. Actually, why don't we just go ahead and roll B3 here? I'm going to jump ahead because we have some new information about this. B3. Reuters has reported that about 150 U.S. service members have been injured so far. Can you confirm that number and elaborate on that? I can't confirm the exact number. I know it's within that ballpark, but I would defer you to the Pentagon for a specific number of wounded or injured thus far. So as people are trying to determine, what the United States is doing, why, what is being sacrificed, why. Here is Richard Blumenthal B2 talking about what he took from a briefing on Capitol Hill yesterday for senators. My questions have been unanswered, and I will demand answers because the American people deserve to know. And I guess I am most concerned about the threat to American lives of potentially deploying our sons and daughters on the ground in Iran. We seem to be on a path toward deploying American troops on the ground in Iran to accomplish any of the potential objectives here.

There is also, as disturbingly as anything else, the specter of active Russian aid to Iran putting in danger American lives. Literally, Russia seems to be aiding our enemy actively and intensively with intelligence and perhaps with other means, and China also may be assisting. Iran. So Richard Blumenthal's a Russia Hawk. We'll get to that point in just a moment, but this is ran the multiple layers here of the politics and the substance. And you have a senator coming out a briefing saying any of the potential objectives, not even able to zero in on like one of the administration's objectives because we're overall objective because the messaging has been all over the place, but saying, you know, here's my interpretation of Iran. We're at an inflection point where either the administration decides to cut bait and define down. what the objectives were, what victory looks like, or put, as Richard Blumenthal said, troops on the ground in Iran to actually tackle substantively, whether it's the nuclear question, the missile question. I mean, I was talking to Brian Dean Wright. He's a former CIA guy on my show the other day, and he was like, well, you could put special forces on the ground to pull the nuclear material out of the dirt. Well, that's boots on the ground. That's boots on the ground. So it does feel like an inflection point right now. Yes. And so Senator Chris Murphy also came out of that meeting and did a Twitter thread that would maybe add some of this in post. And he said that, you know, he said that like. It's totally incoherent what they're hearing internally and what they're hearing in these classified briefings. And it contradicts and conflicts with the rationales that were given to the extent that any were given at all ahead of the war. So one of the things he said, the war goals do not involve destroying Iran's nuclear program. You're like, what? He writes, this is surprising since Trump says over and over, this is a key goal. So behind the scenes. Planners are saying, no, it's not actually about the nuclear program. Second, he says, they confirmed, quote, regime change is also not on the list. So that was the other thing that we were told explicitly. was an objective here. So then he's the way he frames it was. So they're going to spend hundreds of billions of your taxpayer dollars, get a whole bunch of Americans killed, and a hardline regime, probably a more anti-American hardline regime, will still be in charge. Then he says, okay, so what are the goals? He says, it seems primarily destroying lots of missiles and boats and drone factories. But the question that stumped them, what happens when you stop bombing and they restart production?

They hinted, this is the planners, they hinted at more bombing, which is, of course, as he says, endless war. And then on the Strait of Hermuz, as we talked about in the last segment, they had no plan. So that does. That does actually fit with what we've been thinking about as the actual strategy in place here, which is not to liberate the Iranian people, has nothing to do with the nuclear program. We're not doing nation building anymore because the public has said we don't want to do quote unquote nation building anymore. So we're just going to do nation destruction. We're going to nation unbuild this thing. We're going to try to cause as much damage as we possibly can. Then we're going to stop. And the second that they try to start rebuilding anything, we're going to attack them again. That explains why the Iranians feel like they have to take a huge cost from us so that we don't think... that that's actually an okay thing to do to another country. To just keep mowing the lawn. To just kill them whenever we feel like it for as long as we feel like it. By the way, also not a strategy that is going to fly with the American people in the long term. I mean, well, let's say it may be electorally palatable because people are suffering at home and have a million different priorities, but it's not the priority of the American people. It's so expensive too. It's so expensive, but to be bogged down in a never-ending conflict because of a policy choice. No. Yes. Most people would, if you explain that, most people would be like, why are we doing this? Why are we doing this? After the last 20, 30 years, why are we doing this? Yeah. And so Pete Hegseth, our war secretary, as he calls himself. Again, much more accurate. You heard it here first. There you go. Not a declaration of war. He's our military operations secretary, I guess. The Department of Military Operations, saying that we are only intensifying the attacks. Let's roll Pete Hegseth. For example, today will be yet again our most intense day of strikes inside Iran. The most fighters, the most bombers, the most strikes, intelligence more refined and better than ever. So that's on one hand. On the other hand, the last 24 hours have seen Iran fire the lowest number of missiles they've been capable of firing yet. Just the bifurcation, just the trend lines that we talked about on our first briefing.

Steve Witkoff was asked about the claims that Russia is helping Iran. Let's roll some Steve Witkoff here. Yesterday on the call with the president, the Russians said that they have not been sharing. That's what they said. So, you know, we can take them at their word, but they did say that. And yesterday morning, and yesterday morning independently, Jared and I had a call with Ushikov, who reiterated the same. I, you know, that's a better question for the intel people, but let's hope that they're not sharing. So how do you see this ending, this war? I don't know, Sarah. I know this, that President Trump is the wrong guy to go up against. That's what I know. All right. We've got Jeremy Scahill standing by, and so let's ask him a little bit more about, you know, how the back and forth is going, because Tel Aviv is also getting absolutely hammered overnight last night. Yeah, I mean, Hague says prediction proved to be true that it would be the most intense day. That's why, again, The transition from Secretary of Defense to Secretary of War, much more accurate, came at the perfect time because the entire lie of this being a defensive war only. This is exclusively about national defense has been exposed in a pretty obvious, flamboyant way. And if we're supplying the intel for the Ukrainian strikes on Russia right now, We're just, Steve Witkoff is now having these conversations about whether Russia is cooperating with Iran and intelligence sharing. The entire approach to this has been. I don't need to continue saying it, but it's so obviously a disaster. Yes. And we didn't have time. Seed your pants. Yes, totally. And we didn't have time to get into a full block on Sudan today, but I did want to update people. And if you've been following our coverage of it, you know that the RSF, which has been on a kind of genocidal rampage throughout Sudan, is backed to the hilt by the UAE. And the U.S. has been... being pressured to put some pressure on the UAE to then withdraw its support from the RSF in order to bring this conflict to a final resolution. Instead, now that the U.S. is kind of deeply indebted to the Emirates, we get the opposite. The U.S. put out a statement yesterday saying that they are designating the Sudanese Muslim Brotherhood as a specially designated global terrorist group, which they have not done to the RSF. This is a huge boon to the RSF. So basically, you can imagine what happened. Mohammed bin's eyes, like, telling Trump, like, you want my cooperation here? Like, what I need from you, I need your help in Sudan. Get off my back about the RSF. And in fact, I want you going after the RSF's enemies. And Trump, it's like...

What does he? I don't care. Fine. Whatever. So we'll have more on that at a further date as the implications of the war kind of spill out into Sudan. But let's bring in next, Jeremy Scahill. Bite into a stacked sandwich made with Hero Bread or a fully loaded bagel. And the only thing you'll think is... Delicious! You won't think it's up to 19 grams of protein, but it is. You wouldn't believe it has 11 to 32 grams of fiber, but it does. Hero Bread makes loaves, buns, tortillas, bagels, and noodles hacked with taste, but without all the net carbs. We're talking zero to five grams net carbs per serving. With Hero Bread, there are no compromises. Just flavor. There's none of the stiff baked goods you'd expect from Better for You Brands. There's just the soft, fluffy bread you crave. Plus, small batch drops of indulgent favorites, like the popular 2 gram net carb hero croissant and 3 gram net carb hero pan of chocolate. And right now, Hero Bread is offering 10% off your order. Go to hero.co and use code iHeart at checkout. That's code iHeart at hr.co.co. All figures per serving of hero bread, see nutrition facts on hero.com. Co. Doja Cat. My V world tour. Live in concert. With special guest Lotto. Doja Cat. Live across North America in 2026. Get tickets now at Doja Cat.

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Secretary of War Pete Hegseth said that last night would be the most ferocious attacks by the U.S. and Israel on Iran. But on the other side, the Gulf states and Israel are facing increasingly difficult nights as well. We're getting very little footage, either from phones or from news broadcasts as Israel and the Gulf states are clamping down on the ability of the public or the media to... to share what's going on. But we did get an interesting kind of clip through Fox News. It kind of gives you an indication of both of those elements. Let's roll this one. We have sirens in Tel Aviv. Let's go back to correspondent Nate Foy, who is on the ground there. Hi, Nate. Hey, Martha. So, yeah, as you can hear, the sirens are going off here in Tel Aviv, something that we've seen several times throughout the entire day. And what we could see here momentarily are interceptor missiles fired off. We have seen it right over my shoulder several different times. Again, Iran continues to show an offensive capability launching missiles at Central Israel. We have one interceptor over my shoulder right now. We can't show you because we can't show landmarks, Martha. But something that has really changed here over the past couple days is the use of these cluster munitions by Iran, where the warhead breaks up into several different bomblets. And that's really important because not only does it spread the damage, but it makes it more difficult to defend against. Joining us now is my colleague over at DropSight, Jeremy Scahill. Jeremy, thanks for being here. Thanks for having me. I'm going to play the role of Tim Dillon in this segment. Yes. Jeremy and I were on Tim Dillon. Do not miss that. There are a lot of jokes we can make about that. We're just going to skip those. So I want to put up the article that you wrote with Maz yesterday, the headline here, Trump might want to end the war. Iran won't do it on his terms. So. What are you guys hearing from Iranian officials about the overtures, whether they actually exist from the United States, and how Iranian officials are feeling about kind of re-engaging them? Well, I mean, first on this issue of, you know, negotiations or talk of a ceasefire, my understanding from speaking to senior Iranian officials is that there have been periodic periods of outreach from.

third countries to Iran asking about the possibility of a resumption of negotiations, and the Iranians have rejected those. The United States, you know, Trump and other officials have said, oh, the Iranians are desperate to talk to us. They want this to end. Iran is saying that's a total lie. And that, in fact, it seems to be the United States that through intermediaries is trying to gauge Iran's interest. You see, what we're engaged in here or what we're watching is asymmetric warfare. You have a much more powerful, larger attack force, the United States and Israel. And there's no doubt they have massive military superiority. And, you know, the so-called war secretary Pete Hegseth loves to get up every day, like a drinking buddy bragging about his exploits from the last weekend and talk about everything. that they're bombing and how they're decimating Iran. And they're trying to convince the public that just by showing cool stuff blowing up, that somehow that means that the United States and Israel are decisively winning this war. But the reality is that for the less powerful military force to achieve quote unquote victory, they don't have to win militarily. They have to elevate the costs to such a degree. that the stronger attacking party decides that it's not worth it anymore. But it's not just that. And this is what we're hearing from Iranian officials. Iran doesn't just want to stop the military onslaught by Israel and the United States. Iran wants to keep fighting so that the entire world, including the United States, understands that if you think you can do this to Iran every four months, pretend you're negotiating and then do surprise attacks. that you have another thing coming. And so that's why the Iranians now, in response to Trump, making threats about the Strait of Hormuz, have started to be more aggressive. IRGC naval vessels. Trump said that their entire Navy was wiped out. Well, we now understand that the IRGC Navy is giving warnings to ship, and if ships and if they don't heed them, they're stopping or attacking those ships. So what we're seeing here is that the Iranians are not just trying to... inflict damage or continue to strike in Tel Aviv and elsewhere in Israel or to continue to strike U.S. military bases in the region. They're also saying, we're not interested in a ceasefire on Trump's terms. And we think that they dramatically underestimated Iran's will to fight, overestimated the potential for a domestic uprising and dramatically underestimated. Iran's weapons capacity. The Iranians are going into what they call a second phase of this war. They feel they have softened U.S. defenses in the region, so they don't need to fire as many rockets and that they can continue to do damage with more powerful ballistic missiles, but with less frequent or less intense attacks. And obviously the calculus of sharing intelligence that led to the killing of Tom Homan with Israel was that you would decimate the command structure. I mean, we've heard people talking about this in the government right now and thus create a mess and a power vacuum that's easier for the Kurds or whomever else to resapolavi to step into and change the regime or alter the regime as they discovered they could do with Dalsi Rodriguez in Venezuela. So, Jeremy, what?

Is the command structure like right now in terms of you're having these conversations with officials about how they see their strategy? Did the United States severely hamper their ability to organize as the IRGC or as the Iranian government? What does that look like right now? What is the sort of coherence organization strategically look like of the Iranian government as they are? fighting back against the United States. Well, you know, the United States has not fought a modern nation state since really the end of World War II or the Korean War. And so I think there was a radical underestimation of how solid Iran's bureaucratic structure is, both on a civilian level and a military level. I mean, this is a government that has been building horizontal institutions since the 1979 Islamic Revolution. And in fact, We reported even before the bombs started hitting on February 28th for weeks ahead of this, we were saying that the Iranians were very clear. that they expected decapitation strikes. They attempted that there would be an attempt that was likely to succeed in assassinating the supreme leader and the rest of the country's official top leadership. And so they created what they called a mosaic defense system. So in advance of the United States attacking Emily, what Iran did was they started to delegate further down the chain of command authority to launch attacks. And they had. a predetermined bank of targets throughout the Persian Gulf and in Israel, that if the United States and Israel attacked, they would be activated. And so what I'm told by Iranian officials who have access to the planning process in Iran is that in those first 72 hours or so after the U.S. and Israel began attacking. Things were essentially on autopilot when it came to the IRGC's aerospace division, which is overseeing the launching of ballistic missiles and attack drones, of which Iran has many because they have their own domestic industry. And then once there was a sort of clearing of the dust that the reality was a full-scale existential war was on, that's how Iran saw it. They started to then return to a more centralized strategic operation, and that allowed them to sort of call audibles, I guess, you could say. They would assess the damage that was being done in places like Kuwait, in Qatar, in the United Arab Emirates, in Saudi Arabia. They knocked out a very expensive vital piece of radar equipment in Jim Jordan, another one in the Persian Gulf. That quite significantly damaged the ability of the United States to have early warning detection. They took out two of the most important radars that are essentially the kind of artery of the defensive operations for the United States in the region. And by incapacitating those, you started to see more successful hits that set in.

on a political level, I think that the United States messaging on this has evolved. Trump has gone from saying, rise up, dear Iranian people, to saying, yeah, I would take a religious leader. I mean, it could be somebody who's internal and eternal, was the phrase that he used the other day. And so I think, you know, a little bit of reality pie is being served right now to the United States. That's not to say that they're not doing massive damage to Iran on a military level and on a civilian level. But it does seem like their calculations were way, way off. Yeah. One thing that has struck me about this is that despite the fact that the U.S. spends billions upon billions of dollars on intelligence and analysis. And also that the U.S. has, you know, I would assume the most well-funded kind of media apparatus in the world. It's certainly in the Western world. They seemed to have been caught off guard by almost everything that has come along. Even though Emily wasn't, for instance. Like, you know, you knew that... Even Emily. Like, Emily does not have a multi-billion dollar intelligence and analysis operation, but you knew that... Iran's plan was to turn this into a regional war and to and was to close the Strait of Hormuz because they said so publicly. And Jeremy has reported that, you know, repeatedly. To the question of the Gulf states, I want to ask you about your other piece that you had recently. We can put up what is a C2. This goes to the question, too. So you're reporting publicly, and the U.S. government is welcome to read the article or not if, you know, they want to have any idea what's going on, is that Iran weighs tactical shift in Persian Gulf strikes while intensifying attacks on Israel. So you reported here that the Iranian assessment was that they had done that in some ways, I don't want to put words in their mouth, you know, mission was accomplished in a lot of these Gulf states, that they had sufficiently deterred and degraded the U.S. capacity there. But that there were two countries, two Gulf countries where that assessment was not met and they were going to continue hitting them. But otherwise they were going to back off some of these Gulf countries. focused more on kind of pummeling, pumbling Israel and on, you know, restricting traffic through the Strait of Firmuz. Since you've reported that, what have you seen kind of unfold? And is there anything you can add to that from your sources since then? You know, the other day, also the Iranian foreign minister retweeted a sentcom picture showing missiles being launched from the desert of one of those countries. And he said, thank you for confirming that you are using the territory of some of these countries that claim that they weren't going to allow their territory to be used. We've seen a pretty substantial decrease, though, in the number and volume of strikes that have been unleashed against the Persian Gulf. Yes, they're still happening, particularly in Bahrain, which I had guessed was one of the countries that the Iranians were referring to when they told me that. It's the headquarters.

of the Fifth Fleet. and is, you know, one of the main countries whose infrastructure is being used to launch these attacks from, both its coastal waters and its territory. And you do still see some strikes happening. But, you know, my sense from speaking to Iranian officials is that they feel that they've sent a message, that they've softened it, that they're going to require the U.S. to replenish its interceptors. In fact, we saw images yesterday of the U.S. actually moving some of its defensive missile capacity away from South Korea. to try to transfer it to the Middle East, to try to make up for the damage that the Iranians had done. I think also there is a propaganda component to this in the information war, which is that I think that these Gulf states that have cozyed up to Trump, that have lucrative business deals with the Trump family, including Jared Kushner, I think they were totally and completely shocked. by what happened. I think they knew there were going to be attacks. I think that they had dramatically underestimated the capacity of Iran to just cause panic and terror to rip through their societies. And they're watching as the United States has effectively just allowed it to happen while pouring and emergency rushing as many interceptors and other defensive missile capacity to Israel as possible. There is, I understand. backdoor diplomacy going on between these Gulf countries and Iran. You know, Pete Hegseth said something yesterday that I've heard from officials in some of these Gulf countries just caused, you know, fury, which is he said that Gulf countries far from running away from this are now going on the offensive. And he said, and they're giving us access rights and overflight rights. This was from the beginning, even before February 28th and the start of this. All these countries were yelling to anyone who would listen. No access rights, no use of our territory, no, overflight, no, no, no, no use of our airspace. And then Pete Hegseth yesterday is boasting. And he says, oh, no, no, no, no. Iran's actions in the region have caused them to go to our side. This is the total opposite of the messaging coming from the Gulf. Yes, the Gulf states are portraying Iran as the aggressor. And they're saying almost nothing whatsoever. critical of the United States or Israel. That's becoming a problem among their domestic population. And so if Iran is basically able to say to those countries, look, we understand that there was some civilian stuff that was hit, and we apologize for that. But. overwhelmingly we've been attacking the U.S. military infrastructure in your country. I think the Iranians are calculating that the public relations component of this, the killing of civilians, the idea that you're serving Zionism by supporting this in Arab Muslim countries, that they're going to sort of be able to drive the wedge that the U.S. and Israel thought they were succeeding and driving at the beginning of this. That's what I think is the strategy in part. I want to get your reaction to some updates here, Jeremy. We can put this.

next piece of video up on the screen. This is C3. IDF says it eliminated Hezbollah commander in an airstrike on the town in southern Lebanon. And he had already taken command after his predecessor was killed in 2024. According to the military, this is what open source Intel posted on X. Also, we have video here that DropSite posted. This is from the Iranian side. This is our next element we can put up on the screen. This is video released by Iranian media of missiles being launched during the 36th wave of Operation True Promise 4. Drop site rights. Iran once again warned that U.S. and Israeli attacks on Iranian infrastructure and civilians, quote, will not go unanswered. Now their days and nights are limited to siren sounds, fleeing and shelters. We will not let them go. So, Jeremy, all of this in roughly the last 24 hours, what does this tell us about as... We're starting to see chatter from Republicans about just going on the ship doing the mission accomplished banner, more like an arrested development sketch, actually. But they're ready to do it. What does that all tell us about the plausibility or their ability to sell that to the public? Yeah, I mean, this is quite rapidly becoming a quagmire for Trump on multiple fronts. But also, Emily, remember. Israel assassinated the Secretary General of Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrullah. They did the Pager bomb plot. Since the November 2024, so-called ceasefire, Israel has just continued to bomb Lebanon and claiming that they're even further degrading Hezbollah's capacity. I mean, Israel and the United States basically said that Hezbollah was largely incapacitated and massively damaged. When Hezbollah, you know, last week, entered this war. Israel was completely caught off guard by how ferocious the attacks were and how intact Hezbollah's military capacity actually seems to be. In some ways, you know, Hezbollah's entry into this. Pose is the wild card because they have the high ground. They've already inflicted casualties on the Israelis. They are repelling attempted Israeli invasions right now. It's becoming a very serious problem. Israel has had to evacuate settlers and other Israelis from the northern border with Lebanon. It's becoming a very real problem. And Iran's saying, you know, we have 10 times the targets. What Iran has said from the beginning is that they're going to respond proportionately, meaning that if their civilian infrastructure starts to get targeted by the U.S. and Israel, then they're going to go after the similar infrastructure in the region. There's been talk of them also going after tech companies that are servicing this war like Google and others and some of their outposts in the region. And so, you know, we've seen desalination plants hit in Iranian territory. The Iranians then responding in kind. You could see a massive expansion of this. And if the war drags on... And Iran continues to show that it's not just, you know, sort of propaganda, their claims about their enduring capacity. It's going to tilt very heavily in favor of the smaller side. It's ultimately what caused the U.S. to withdraw from Afghanistan. It's why the United States militarily lost the Vietnam War. It's also to an extent why the U.S. had to leave Iraq, which is that if you're fighting insurgents in a guerrilla war,

And it goes on, it becomes a war of attrition. And your own population starts to see body bags and tin coffins coming home. And economic impact starts hitting ordinary Americans at the pump, at the grocery store. And then all of your friends, and in the case of Trump, including those that are linked up with your son-in-law's business and other family business stuff, if they start saying, you are ruining the entire project. They're in big trouble. And so then that's why the Iranians say, this doesn't end on Trump's terms. It ends on ours. And the Iranians are obsessed with this idea. We will not allow them to think that they can end this without a clear guarantee that they don't believe they can keep doing this every four months. And the only way the Iranians believe they can do that is by sending a message to the region and to Americans, ordinary Americans, that when you do this, everything becomes miserable and more expensive for you. From your conversations with them, have they made any attempts to kind of define what that looks like, or is it more of a, we'll know it when we see it? Like, how do they, how do Iranian officials assess that Israel and the U.S. governments have paid a sufficient cost such that they will not want to pay it easily again? You know, it's interesting because I have talked about this. And, you know, at the very beginning of it, there was a lot of disdain for the role of the United Nations. And they pointed to, this is Iranian officials, and they pointed to what happened with Trump's so-called Board of Peace in Gaza and saying that, you know, there is no actual international guarantor of all of this. In recent days, I've been starting to hear Iranian officials talk more about a United Nations Security Council. process and other international guarantees. China also doesn't like this. Trump's going to is scheduled to go to China soon. Russia, of course, is certainly assisting Iran with intelligence and maybe in other ways as well. I think the Iranians don't want to replay what they saw as the Gaza scenario where Trump creates this sort of fictitious path and it allows a colonial agenda to remain in place. So I don't think that there's any reasonable guarantee. in a world where the U.S. is acting as it is under Trump, where the Iranians can say this agreement is worth something. I think what they're more looking at is inflicting enough pain and damage so that that is the motivating factor to any political framework that they will want to also include long-term guarantees and a long-term established internationally certified agreement. But they're not going to accept the ceasefire like they did in the so-called 12-day war in June, which, by the way, U.S. and Israel asked for, not Iran. All right, well, interesting stuff. And again, Jeremy, her reporting has been so helpful throughout this. If you really wanted to know what Iranian officials were thinking, which you would think if you're an American war planner, you would want to know that. You'd be wrong, but it would be a fair assumption that you'd want to know what the other side is thinking. Your reporting would be the place to find it. DropsiteNews.com is where you can find the latest piece. Thanks so much for joining us. Thank you, guys.

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