943 - The Tehran Offensive feat. Séamus Malekafzali (6/16/25)

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All I wanna be is a jungle.

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Hello, everybody.

It's Monday, June 16th, and we've got some Shapo for you.

On today's episode, Felix and I are joined by our good friend, Seamus Malakovzeli, who is back.

And Seamus,

all I got to say is it's been quite a weekend, and we knew you were the first person we wanted to have on to talk about

war with Iran.

So I'd just like to start with Thursday evening, right after we got got done recording with Penteco time.

I checked the headlines and I was like, well,

that episode was certainly timely.

Let's just start with

Thursday evening.

Israel launched what they're calling a preemptive strike on Iran.

They targeted Tehran, a nuclear site.

And Seamus, what can we say about the events of Thursday night?

Like, what is your assessment of what happened on Thursday and then the aftermath?

I mean, nothing has been seen on this scale since the war with Saddam, since the war with Iraq.

And even then, nothing

like this happened during that war.

The idea that the entire top military brass could be taken out in just one go, I don't think was anticipated by many outside observers.

Even I didn't anticipate that they would go all out.

in that opening salvo.

I mean, they took out the chief of staff of the armed forces, the deputy chief of staff, the commander-in-chief of the IRGC,

multiple different nuclear scientists, and then killed more nuclear scientists yesterday in car bomb attacks that were

set off at the exact same time that there was a massive barrage of airstrikes against Tehran.

I think everybody knew that the Mossad had penetrated Iran.

greatly, even more so than any other country.

But to this extent, to the extent that there were, I mean, just yesterday, that the Mossad agents had a whole three-story building in Tehran where they were making drones that they could fire and sabotage Iranian military operations with.

It's immense.

It's very difficult to properly explain how devastating of a first strike this was and how uncertain things are at this current moment.

Just as a follow-up to that, and I want to get to

both the topic of of Mossad penetration into Iran and other groups and

as well as the assassinations and the incredibly undercovered car bombing story.

But I was curious about this because yeah, it was a very devastating first strike.

But the conventional knowledge I saw both from like FDD types and more

people who are more officially aligned with Israel or just, you know, Israeli media sources the conventional knowledge after that was at least in public that there will be the iranian response will be at most like the um very telegraphed drone and intercepted missile strike we saw last year

because uh but by their reasoning they said that anyone who would coordinate that response was killed I don't really believe that that was the Israeli calculation, but I mean, was there some expectation of that?

Like,

how much do you think they baked in the Iranian response in the following debt?

I think outside observers, the kinds of people that you're talking about, the people who really believe everything about what Israel says about itself, I think the person you're describing is Brett McGurk, the guy who said that everyone would coordinate.

the Iranian response is dead.

Now, obviously, that isn't the case.

I mean, this is a devastating attack against the Iranian military, but they immediately appointed replacements who are very experienced.

And obviously, they were able to coordinate a response very quickly.

So that's turned out to be true.

But I don't think, like, Israeli military officers, I don't want to give them a whole lot of credit, but they do understand

to a large degree what Iran's capabilities are, and Israel's leaders do as well.

And if the intent, as it has been clearly shown, is to bring America into this war against Iran and make it the major force that is attacking that country, you can't do that with the kinds of Iranian responses that were received before.

You have to invite a really devastating strike against a country and something that's sustained to the point where America has to intervene or else the suburbs of Tel Aviv are going to continue to be

have destruction visited upon it every night.

They did anticipate this, though, to the degree that uh iran has been um

i don't know what the right word is how much it's been able to successfully target certain israeli facilities like the haifa oil refinery like the ministry of defense i don't know if that part was was as well predicted that's my that's my personal observation yeah it's uh quite a notable inversion of the usual conventional wisdom about both these countries which you know if you have listened to like any Washington think tank or, you know,

Israeli lobbying arm since after 9-11, the conventional wisdom is, oh, Iran and just Shia in general, it doesn't matter what branch, they just love dying.

And in fact, they'll sacrifice their people because it's their favorite thing to do.

Which in this case, I mean,

willfully

letting your people get mayhem in support of some broader strategic goal, that is absolutely what Israel is doing.

Oh, for sure.

I mean, you can see from like the constant responses from people who were 100%,

you know, cheerleading the destruction of homes in Gaza, the destruction of all aspects of its society.

Now they're talking about how, oh, God, we have to be in bomb shelters.

Oh, my God.

Can you believe that they're firing things at civilian areas?

And this is the thing.

When Israel Katz, the defense minister, when Netanyahu is talking about, and the president of Israel are all talking about how evil this was, this was always the intent, right?

You can't just justify this war on the basis that they're attacking the Ministry of Defense or they're attacking

IDF bases like they did in the past.

during past strikes when they almost exclusively focused their strikes on air bases, which the attacks on Iran and assets have come from.

They needed this.

They needed civilians to be put in danger.

They needed these stories of anguish among the population of Tel Aviv, because otherwise there wouldn't be a moral centering to justify this war with.

I mean, it's also why they're trying to

instigate some sort of rebellion in Iran, and nobody at the moment is biting.

Because if this is solely against the nuclear program, then this becomes about the initial stuff about Iraq, the weapons of mass destruction which cannot be bunk.

But when that became about freeing the Iraqi people, then it became ennobled.

And this is the same way.

Khamenei is evil.

The Izag Republic is a force of evil.

It endangers everybody.

But we can free these people.

We can protect our people in Israel and we can secure a grand future for the people in Iran as long as America enters into this war.

That stuff, I feel like you know, the Iranian people are cheering on the strikes, all that bullshit, the thing where they'll take like videos from like Persian New Year celebration and be like, this is what people on the streets of Tehran were doing during the strikes.

It's, I think that is entirely for a Western audience, but I will get into it later, what like, like in Israel's ideal world, what, how this plays out.

But like that switch up from this is about the nuclear program to like think think how bad the mullahs are is

very noticeable.

Seamus.

So Thursday saw like the initial like strike on Tehran and other targets.

And funny, I noticed that like the way the Western media covers this is that Israel is hitting targets in Iran.

And then Iran retaliates, responds to the wave of missile attacks on their country with a wave of missile attacks on Tel Aviv and elsewhere in Israel.

And that is described as Iran is attacking Israel.

They're not selecting and hitting targets.

They're attacking Israel.

I mean, not exactly a false statement, but it's hard to tell because of media censorship and whatnot.

What do we know about the scope of Iran's retaliation to the wave of missiles that hit their country?

Because we've seen several waves of Iranian missiles targeting Tel Aviv and elsewhere in Israel.

What can we say about the scope and scale of Iran's response and how effective it has been?

They've been mostly focusing on strikes against Tel Aviv and Haifa for the moment.

In Tel Aviv,

most of them have been against the

most major parts of it have been the Ministry of Defense, but also, I mean, just buildings in the area.

Mostly, I think, most of the damage was suffered in southern Tel Aviv.

at least from the visits that Nenyahu and Isaac Herzog made to the area.

In Haifa, though, there seems to be the most particular targets.

The Haifa oil refinery, the power plant, the port itself.

Haifa's port is the most important port in Israel, and striking it was

a state of intention of the Houthis who tried to impose a siege from the air over it, though.

They weren't very successful at that.

They're trying to target the economic centers of Israel at the moment, right now.

Things that years and years ago, the weaknesses of Israel were pointed out by Iranian military stretches as the fact that it's a very small country area-wise.

So strikes on

one area or another have potential for really devastating effects in the rest of the country.

The port of Haifa is one of those choke points.

So focusing on that has the potential to really disrupt the Israeli economy.

So that's why they're focusing on that.

I saw an evacuation warning published by state TV for the Israeli city of B'nebrak, which is east of Tel Aviv, so they may focus on that tonight.

And as well, there was a

evacuation warning for Channel 12 and Channel 14 in Israel because the IDF just bombed the studios of Iran's national broadcaster today.

Though to the degree in which they'd be able to hit that, I'm not sure.

I have noticed, I mean, and you have to kind of take everything that anyone who has,

you know, open source intel in their bio with the fucking truckload of salt.

But I've seen it from enough people whose opinions and analysis on this, I respect, that there seems to be an Iranian emphasis on

SEA idea,

suppression of enemy air defenses.

Basically,

what people are from, as much as they can tell, Iran is using

their

you know older

generations of short-range ballistic missiles to hit

you know like fad batteries and iron gun batteries and then sending the more advanced missiles to

to hit actual targets I mean, obviously it's it just makes sense to do that, to take out things like FAD batteries that are A, incredibly expensive to replace, and B, in a year, America does not make enough of them to, you know, replace Israel's entire stock,

much less service the needs of our military and other paying clients.

But

does this suggest like a longer-term strategy?

Like,

is the hope with Iran that they can basically keep this up, that they can, that at a certain phase they'll be done with SEAID, and that they can hopefully inflict like a maximum amount of economic damage as you alluded to uh while still sort of

not not making it so that there there is like 9-11 type imagery that israel could exploit because that's sort of if i could if i could evince any a general strategy it seems to be that i'm a little bit less informed on the specific strategy of what missiles they're using.

I do know what you're referencing.

There was a video of the Iranian missiles, one of the barrages either last night or the night before, hitting air defenses, hitting air defenses in Tel Aviv directly.

The only direct evidence I know of someone stating that the strategy is to use older missiles against those was from Professor Mohamed Marandi, who said that they were using older missiles before they used the newer missiles.

And there does seem to be much more powerful missiles being used in these barracks.

I would advocate that any listener to this look up some of the videos from last night in particular.

The shock waves that you could see in the clouds, the size of the explosions, the warheads are very distinct from the ones that were being used in previous assaults.

The only thing that I would say makes me a bit skeptical of the idea that they're intentionally being able to hit anti-aircraft batteries is because

like buildings like the Ministry of Defense, these are large enough that a ballistic missile can be fired at them.

But the intentional targeting of anti-aircraft batteries was something that was really the purview of Hezbollah when they were on the border and they were very targeted missiles with cameras on them.

and they could really do pinpoint strikes in that way.

Ballistic missiles from that far away are a bit of a different thing.

But

as for the longer-term strategy of what they want, I think

they may be going toward

something

more sustainable, something maybe lower intensity to where they can

try to do consistently trigger alarms, force Israeli surveillance systems into states of alert while not needing to do hundreds of missiles at a time.

They're already getting smaller with each barrage.

A

thing similar to what you're talking about is the fact that Iran keeps firing

small amounts of drones at Israel that just keep moving around the country, forcing helicopters to go track them.

And just keep doing that for like hour after hour, day after day, even if it's not accompanied by missiles.

That's an example of that sort of strategy.

But in terms of a longer-term one, I'm not sure.

I don't speak about anything

with that kind of certainty.

Yeah, I mean,

I think we talked in private about the nature of making predictions as your thing.

And I don't want to corner you into that.

But yeah,

that is sort of the central question, though, right?

Like, how, to what extent can Iran,

how long can they make them pay, basically, if it's going to continue to be this, if it's going to continue to be like short-range ballistics fired at each other?

I will say this.

And,

you know, Iran's ballistic missile arsenal is thousands strong.

This is something that's agreed upon by both the statements of the Iranian military, but also the IDF.

That is an independent assessment.

But this kind of large-scale barrage that we've been seeing,

they can't keep it up.

And

the issue then comes to: okay, if they do a low-intensity thing, the IDF can run out of interceptor missiles.

It could have supply chain issues with getting new air defenses, getting more weapons.

We've seen examples of this kind of choking.

Even when it comes to Gaza and some misses, and that's a much smaller scope of things that they have to deal with.

But they still have the United States to constantly resupply them, and they have no issues with giving them whatever they want.

Iran doesn't have those kinds of relationships with different countries, Russia and China.

They're able to get weapons from abroad, but they don't have a benefactor quite like America does.

It's its own domestic manufacturing base, and that's being disrupted right now by all this Israeli assaults.

Right.

I've seen people kind of wishcasting about China replenishing them in that way.

But if America, like China, if America, in kind, one-third one-third of Iran's trade was with America, you know, I don't think we would, yeah, I don't think they would, you know, replenish Israel in kind.

And that is unfortunately the case with China.

It makes you really miss the USSR.

Seamus, to the question of Israel's benefactor.

Obviously, some sort of all-out war with Iran is something that Israel has been planning for and hoping for for decades.

But a key component of that is that they want America to lead it.

They want America to get involved.

And what do you make of the reaction of the Trump administration?

Because it's this very weird thing where like they have this like, this, this sense that, like, oh, uh, we, we, we weren't consulted, but we were.

Like, what do you make of this sort of the this weird contradiction in the Trump administration's reaction to Israel's preemptive strike on Iran?

I have to be honest, I haven't been able to quite quantify like the exact ways that Trump is thinking about this.

I mean, it does go back to the fact that Trump fundamentally is mentally declining.

Like, we shouldn't acknowledge this.

He is not doing as well as he was in his first term,

which already he was not doing as well as he was in most of his adult life.

I think to some degree, he was aware of the deception that was being offered up by the Israelis.

He was a willing participant in that.

I don't think he would have spoken in the way that he did about the attacks against Iran if he was not aware of that.

But also, I just think he acquiesced to this, even if he personally had objections to being a war with Iran president.

I mean, he did head off the prospect of another war back in January after Iraq retaliated for Soleimani, who he ordered assassinated.

He has that impulse within his head that's been demonstrated publicly.

But there's all these press, there's all this pressure on him from Israel, from like the other people in his administration who he has staffed, you know, these Iran hawks.

I just think he, there were Nenya who convinced him of the of the ability of Israel to do this, I'm sure, with the understanding that America probably wouldn't have had to get involved.

And now that the conversation is quickly going towards no, America, you have to get involved, Trump has so little ability to remember things or to really put up much of a fight against suggestibility that this is what it's going toward, that there is going to be military movement in that way.

Probably the best example of Trump's dotage on this issue comes courtesy of Sorab Amari, who posted this over the weekend.

He says, I spent an afternoon and early evening calling sources in and near the administration and also people on the other side, Dems, and their own sources on the inside.

They all rejected the notion that this was some genius coordinated dance between Trump and Israel.

All I had heard that Trump was agitated all around, and in a call with with BB told him not to, but also maybe you can.

One source described it as a green light and a red.

One source.

Doesn't even have a non-branding president?

Yeah, if you feel like that, sorry, it follows up.

It says, one source described it as a green light and a red light, and another called it a yellow light.

The overall impression was something far more chaotic and accidental than the Iran hawks suggested.

Numerous sources claim that Trump planned to disavow it if it went badly and to own it if it appeared successful.

The latter is for now his assessment.

So I don't know.

Was this successful?

Is he going to own it or distance himself from it?

He 100% sees it as successful.

He is getting,

I guarantee you, he is only getting positive assessments whenever he calls Nenyahu or Nenyo calls him or he speaks with American intelligence officials.

Because I think like in a...

in like a bare bones, like in a, like, I don't know if the right word is objective, but like if I tell you that Israel took out the, again, the top military brass of the Iranian military in one go and they're consistently airstrike Tehran, you would consider that

a measure of good progress on Israel's part, towards its objectives.

I mean, it's right now it's talking about achieving aerial superiority over Tehran, even though

that's an over-exaggeration.

I'll just say that much.

If you are

getting these assessments and you're not thinking about what happens a week from from now.

Like when Netyahu says, I mean, just as he said today, that if they assassinate Khamenei, they're already talking about this, that it'll end the conflict.

He's making that

sell to Trump when he says these things.

If we get the go-ahead to blow up Khamenei, or better yet, we get you to do it.

with

your bunker busters, which you have, your B-2 bombers, then this conflict could end.

Iran will surrender, and American lives would have to be sacrificed.

But obviously, that is not the case.

And Netanyahu's thinking,

what would American involvement in this war want?

What would be his blue sky ask?

Are we talking an invasion of Iran with U.S.

military troops or air support?

To what extent do they want America to get involved in this war?

What would that look like?

I was talking about something similar with this with Derek Davison,

great friend of the show, on American Prestige a little bit ago.

And I go back and forth about whether Netanyahu actually wants regime change totally.

But I think right now what it would want is something similar to the deal that was struck up about Yemen, in which Israel is being consistently attacked by Yemeni missiles.

Its shipping was being blocked by the Yemeni Navy.

But America did the vast majority of the strikes.

It took that burden off of the Israeli Air Force's hands and it allowed it to refocus on Gaza.

That would be of a great benefit to Israel because America has better intelligence about these things.

It has more access to weapons.

It doesn't need to filter it into the Israeli military.

It doesn't have to go through that

supply chain.

And it also leaves Israel to do the big stuff, like, for example, in Yemen, destroying the airport of Sama'a, for example, or bombing different ports along the coast.

That would be the ideal, though the way that they're talking about regime change right now, I do wonder if the intent is to make America invade Iran.

And then the burden is overwhelmingly offloaded onto the United States to do everything in this respect for Israel.

Installing a new regime, finding a new opposition move to take power, fighting off Iranian military assets, doing whatever.

In either case, the point is to not let Israel have to sacrifice very much in order to destroy the rest of the Middle East.

Okay.

Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, Gaza, and now Iran.

Like

the list continues to grow here.

Like

what do we make of this ever-expanding horizon of countries that Israel is allowed to bomb with impunity?

Like what does that say about the state of Israel as a political and military entity that like seemingly for their own security or as they claim, and their broader goals, involves this, like, endless list of other countries that have to be bombed and destabilized.

And, like, regime change, I don't know.

Like, I don't know if that's like if we can really bite that off.

But the thing is, just with bombing, I think they can go a long way to just de-develop Iran and just make it a basket case, like, uh, wreck, like they've done with Lebanon and Syria and, like, certainly Gaza, they've completely destroyed.

I think de-development is the best word to describe a situation.

I mean, even if Israel, maybe on some days, truly does want regime change, or maybe the Shah of Maryland goes back and takes power in Tehran.

I mean, what they really want is more than anything, is chaos.

In Lebanon, they can exploit the tensions between Christians and Shias.

They can make that an ethno-religious conflict.

And in Gaza, they're trying to, you know,

inspire divisions between people who, like the idea that Hamas are politically Iranian or politically Shia, because, you know, almost everyone in the strip is Sunni.

But in Iran, I mean,

that main cleavage is like people who are more irreligious and the religious governance.

So they're playing on that.

And you can see that now with the idea of issuing evacuation warnings for places that that are near both weapons manufacturing facilities, but also supportive institutions, which can mean fucking anything in terms of it's the state government.

It's the entire state, essentially.

That can be expanded out everywhere, as it was with Gaza.

I mean, right now, they've been bombing hospitals in Iran on the spurious accusations spread around by Twitter accounts that the IRGC has set up missile launches there.

It's the same

being done over and over and over again, but with different steps here.

I mean, all this accusations against hospitals being Hamas based in Gaza was adjusted for Lebanon that Hezbollah was hiding gold under hospitals in South Beirut, and now it's that IRGC are hiding ballistic missile launchers alongside hospitals in Iran.

It's the same thing over and over again, and the intent is to make these places distrustworthy amongst themselves, amongst the civilian populace, disdainful of uh resistance constantly afraid that they are near something that israel would target because it's somewhat related to the irgc or the iranian army it's it's a recipe for the reduction of these societies these countries into states that are not only not just a threat to israel but don't function as countries in any way shape or form and are fundamentally subjugated to the will of whatever Israel's intelligence chief decides that day.

Yeah, that is a very stark aspect of not just Israel's campaign of genocide in Gaza, but just their overall strategy for, I think, especially like the last, you know, 20, 30 years.

You know, people, people

always,

when they talk about, usually in line with people who talk about the Iraq war

as America,

you know, stumbling into conflict that we made an oopsie.

The rejoinder to that is, and then we ended up giving, you know, we ended up giving Iran this great big regional ally.

And, you know, that would, of course, mean that Netanyahu and a lot of other right-wing elements in Israel at the time who supported the Iraq war made this great strategic blunder.

But that's not really the case.

It's not that they never saw that coming.

It was they liked the idea of Iraq becoming this basket case that would have to fight a low-intensity civil war for maybe forever against aggrieved former former

empowered Sunnis.

And you see it with every time every time there is a new enemy on the horizon for Israel.

The first thing they do when they really get rolling is try to destroy any sense of a cohesive national identity and to destroy any sense of community.

In Gaza, what that looks like is these planned killings at aid sites,

the killing of the families of doctors.

And for Iran, this is what it looks like.

I mean, you can look to Syria.

to see what the results of this are.

I mean, people ask now, like, what is the end game?

Like, if they get everything they want and,

you know, this great enemy is reduced to a Libya-like basket case where there's three different capitals and there's just no hope of it ever ameliorating.

It would be like an entire region that is just like that.

It's just a bunch of like city-states and then all the gulf hotels where endless treaties that result in nothing are negotiated.

I should add on to that.

I mean,

we see this sort of talk in Gaza, in Lebanon, in Syria, and now in Iran, this talk is again

reared its head about

why can't we just make peace with Israel now?

This isn't working.

Let's make peace with Israel now.

We can end these conflicts and then we can become like Dubai.

That's often the common refrigerator or something along those lines.

But

let's take the sip step by step, right?

In Gaza, what is the offer on the table if Hamas decides to give up its arms and surrender?

Israel has openly talked about using the opportunity to expel the rest of the Palestinian population from the Strip.

That's the end goal.

There is no,

either it's death or expulsion.

That's not a deal.

That's not a peace deal being made for Gaza to become a better place.

It's a deal for you to continue to lose everything.

In Lebanon, this ceasefire

between Hezbollah and Israel, what is it eventually gotten in this ceasefire state?

Waves of airstrikes still on South Beirut, continuous airstrikes in the south of the country that prevent any sort of reconstruction from taking place.

There was an airstrike just today, an assassination strike on a Hezbollah member, a supposed Hezbollah member, and that's been happening every single day since the ceasefire was achieved last year.

Planes can no longer come from Tehran because Israel threatened to take down those planes if they came to Beirut airport.

So the airport is not controlled by a different country.

And in Iran, do you really think that they're going to suddenly stop controlling Iranian affairs if they decide that they don't want the smoke or whatever the hell it is?

No, they're going to use that opportunity to continue that subjugation, to continue using its influence, to make sure that Iran never gains any sort of military power whatsoever.

Just on I-24 News, an Israeli channel just before I got out here, they were talking about the fact that Israel should demand that Iran give up its missile-making capability, something that many sovereign states have to build missiles, period.

Like, they're not demanding you give up your nuclear program.

That's a ruse.

They want the whole thing.

They've always wanted the whole thing.

Yeah.

Yeah.

No, the end result always looks like Syria, where there is no way you can actually say that it's a sovereign state.

That is it.

It's just the end of sovereignty for anyone else in the region.

And then these Gulf modern Venices that are just hotels and nothing else.

You know, Felix, you brought it up a second ago,

but I do want to mention that this new front in this war has opened up at like the exact same time.

that Israel has like basically blacked out all communications coming out of the Gaza Strip.

And they have day after day massacred people at these quote-unquote humanitarian aid sites that are just firing squads.

20, 30, 100 people day after day.

And I guess like I bring this up just in the context of Israelis in bomb shelters saying nobody deserves to live like this.

This is inhuman.

This is awful.

And I guess like the scale of this violence is so indescribable and it just it gets worse and worse and now expands into another country of 90 million people and i guess like i i say this because is there the only hope to stop any of this is military action of some kind by these by the states and peoples being destroyed by israel right now so seamus like what would a a a victory or a like i don't know

effective response that could that could stop this like what would that look like that i'm very unsure about and i have to be completely honest um

I will say this for Iran.

They are treating it now like they should have been treating it months ago, if I can speak frankly, and that they are hitting Israel with all that they have.

They are, whenever Israel hits something of a certain sector in Iran, they hit Israel in that sector.

But they're still in that reactive position that they were before.

Right.

The only thing I can really say with some

degree of certainty, not with complete certainty, is that

there was, I think, a path to stopping Israel last year.

When Fuad Shukh

was assassinated in South Beirut, and that was quickly followed up by the assassination of Ismail Haniah in Tehran, there was a point, and we had discussed this on the show right after it happened, in which Yemeni strategists were talking about a combined response from the acts of resistance to

overwhelm Israeli defense capabilities and show what would happen if war came, war expanded, that they would work as

a unit and that they could make this a very difficult thing for Israel.

It wouldn't be able to do what it has been able to do up until this point.

And once Hezbollah and Iran decided to retaliate separately, they delayed and they delayed and they retaliated separately, that destroyed the entire deterrence capability of that group.

And it led to the assassination of Nasrullah, and it has led to what has happened here, I think.

There is

some level of that coordination being brought back up.

When

there were missile barrages fired by Iran,

I believe two nights ago, Yemen announced

there was a first barrage and then there was a second hypersonic missile fire just a few minutes after.

And Yemen announced that it had coordinated that operation with the Iranian military.

So this kind of coordination that it had wanted since the beginning was now finally happening, but after so much had already been lost.

If they can repair these lines, if they can get Hezbollah back in that fight, even though that seems very impossible, then maybe there is something.

But as long as Iran fights alone in this matter, even if Yemen is with them 100%,

that is an uncertain fight ahead.

Iran has more capability to defend itself than anyone else, but that's against Israel, against America, that's a very difficult thing.

Well, I mean, another huge aspect to this is the nuclear angle.

I mean, I know this is being justified based on the idea that Iran is like minutes away from having a nuclear arsenal.

I mean, I'm astonished that they don't have one already.

Oh, my God, dude.

I'm going nuts.

Forget Iran's

potential nuclear weapons program israel has an arsenal of several hundred nuclear weapons and second strike capability that is holding america and the entire region of the middle east hostage essentially because like i mean they could use them but like what what is your assessment like now that iran is now officially at war and under siege What is your assessment?

Like, are they going to test or build a nuclear weapon soon?

I don't think...

Yeah.

Because

if they are, I've been enriching uranium in my apartment and I have a little bit that I can lend them.

Yeah, no, if I could take the fucking limitless pill and learn all the scary math you need to do to make a thermonuclear bomb, I would get on a fucking Skype call with them right now.

I think

here's the thing.

There was a major general the IRGC, Mohsen Rezai, that went on state TV.

yesterday and was like, no, we're not really thinking of doing that right now.

President Pesesh Kian was in parliament today and said the same thing.

As long as Khamenei is alive, that fatwa against nuclear weapons is going to remain in place, I think.

I don't think he's going to change it.

I think that's very important to him and the rest of the Islamic Republic's establishment as like a point of dignity, like a point of ideological firmness, that if they were to break on that, then it would, I don't know, it would unravel something, though that's something I'm not entirely clear about.

But right now, I mean, nuclear scientists have been talking about the fact that they've had this kind of technology for years to make a nuclear weapon, but they've never been given the order to do so.

So it's just been sort of sitting in this holding pattern, the stasis where they're kind of just simmering below the surface, but they never.

I'm shameless.

I was thinking of that video you posted of a woman on the streets of Tehran

just shouting.

Give us an atomic bomb.

Where's our atom bomb?

And then the whole crowd starts yelling with her.

I love it.

Where's our atom bomb?

Like you've talked about it for years.

You're going to jump out or what?

You know, people, I think, are very, like, after the failure of the JCPOA, the Iran nuclear dude that Obama negotiated, there was an observable change in the public discourse about previously really not wanting to broach the idea of a nuclear weapon in public and public.

And now it's become a very regular topic of discussion.

And post the war, like the strikes against Iran, it has never been at this kind of fevered pitch before.

Right after the attacks happened, there was an Iranian MP who went on state TV and was positively begging the supreme leader to like change the fatwa and start building a new weapon.

And the hosts were trying to steer him away from that and be like, no, well, hold on.

This is a very serious issue.

Like, no, this is a fat, we're not going to do it.

And he's like, well, then we did all these retaliations.

Then what were they for what did they do we need this if how like how long are we going to allow our commanders to be killed and our children to be killed without the static problem

this is on the minds of many many people and the fact that they are discussing this at all that they're not going to change it means that this pressure is is continuing to build but again i don't think as long as kamene is alive that is going to change i mean If it wasn't clear before, it should be clear to everyone now.

If you're outside like the NATO EU aegis, there is no sovereignty without nuclear weapons.

It's just not, there's just the two concepts do not exist separately.

Like, let's just look at the history of this here, right?

Libya, when it gave up its nuclear program, what happened only several years later?

NATO intervened and now it's a complete failed state.

Syria had a nuclear program, not necessarily a nuclear weapons program, but just a nuclear program.

Israel bombed it.

They never pursued it again.

And then several years later, it was able to be utilized as a playground for foreign powers.

Like this, it continuously.

We see examples of nuclear programs that were voluntarily given up or voluntary or kept below a certain threshold or they were bombed out of existence and never re-established.

And the outcome of all of these options, of all of these, of all of these

destinies has been complete failure.

but look like i hate to use this as an example because north korea is not a favored state by a lot of people but you cannot deny that north korea no one's

with no one's no one's without korea there it is not an option seriously discussed by anyone they've talked about deluclearization but only if america leaves the peninsula and america isn't leaving the peninsula so guess what they're keeping their nukes and nobody is talking about invading it that's the point they they continue to exist because of those nuclear weapons.

As long as Iran doesn't have them, they will remain under this threat no matter what the outcome of this specific war is.

I believe that firmly.

I mean, especially in the case of Libya and Syria, those are crucial to bring up because also, in addition to giving up their nuclear programs, Both those countries cooperated with the West during the global war on terror.

Fat lot of fucking good it did them.

When they've got the beam on you, there's nothing you can actually do.

I've seen people go, oh, it's, you know, Iran and their obsession with Israel or Iran and their goddamn nuclear program.

Like they could do anything to stop this short of just declaring Iran is over as an entity.

Come here and make fucking...

you know, make the mecca for sex offenders at all types of nightclubs.

I will say this.

I've said this before, and I'll say it again, even though I have been accused of Houthi fetishism by many academics.

I'll hold that bag, Seamus, for you if you want to.

I got a Houthi fetish

and I need more missiles.

The Yemeni strategists, from the moment of the word go of this war, have consistently known what to do and they've consistently had, I think, the right approach to Western powers and their negotiators.

They understand that, like, the time in which America or Israel could be negotiated with, if they ever could be negotiated with, is over.

I mean, negotiations, they were at the table on Sunday.

You know?

Yeah, no, it's just like...

It's not real.

And now they're being asked to come back to the table.

The table's been blown up.

What are you talking about?

No.

Yeah, these people.

We're rabbit dogs.

These negotiators are dead.

There will be empty chairs at that table because you killed the people that were negotiating.

Like, Jesus Christ.

How could you even bring up that?

It just insult me to even bring up that fucking concept.

No, there is a reason why when Yemen, when they were approached for negotiations to separate the fronts, they were like, no.

Achieve a ceasefire in Gaza and we'll stop firing.

End of discussion.

We're not doing indirect negotiations.

We're not doing separate negotiations.

You either do this or you don't.

When it came to America coming to the table and saying we want to ceasefire, they said, okay, if you stop firing on us, we'll stop firing on you, but we're not stopping firing on Israel.

That's the deal.

End of discussion.

And then they took it.

That's the strategy that Iran should be taking, quite frankly.

And they're thankfully, they're understanding right now that these negotiations were always a fucking lie and a fucking charade, and they're not doing them anymore.

But if they trust America again on this, on this matter, if they're not firm, then I think the outcome is going to be very bad because there's nothing to indicate

that they're trustworthy in any way, shape, or form.

Seamus, a well-repeated chorus from Hawks in D.C.

and the foreign policy establishment in America and Europe that we've heard a lot over the last week or so,

since the weekend, is we hear it over is that the Iranian people yearn for freedom.

They want to overthrow the mullahs.

Like they are ready.

We stand with you, people of Iran, like as we're bombing you.

And like there's this idea that like the Iranian people, now is the time to rise up and like collapse the evil government of the Ayatollah.

I mean like from what you can tell of people in Iran, which is you know a country of 90 million people with a lot of diversity of opinion and very divided along social and political cultural lines, much like the managed pseudo-democracy of the United States of America is.

What is your best assessment of how the people in, let's say, Tehran and the rest of the country right now, are they directing their anger at their own government?

Or like, what is the possibility that they're going to rise up and overthrow because they're so happy to be bombed right now?

I think it's pretty low.

I'm going to be honest with you.

I've seen statements from like Israeli journalists saying they've received messages stating that they're very in favor of it.

Or there was a Washington Post article where they said that Felix was referencing about how people at Ayl al-Khadir, they were secretly celebrating the Israeli attacks against their country.

But I have not seen, there have been no protests.

There have been no real

expressions of support for Israel so far.

The primary support for Israel that I've seen is from Iranians abroad.

People who are already within the Iranian opposition axis, like Reza Pahlevi or Masih Ali Najad, people who are like on the State Department's

either prioritize the list or people who are literally on the State Department's payroll.

This is not a popular movement.

It was never a popular movement.

There are certainly people inside Iran who are supportive of Israel and hate Palestinians, but to the degree that they are a large section of the country, that has never been proven by any poll.

And even if the Islamic Republic, even if Islamic governance is not as popular as it was at the beginning of the Islamic Republic, that doesn't mean that you're automatically in favor of a mass

Dahiya doctrine assault on your capital city.

That's something that people are not going to support in large numbers.

Well, you know, the thing you have to consider here is that Persia is an ancient and proud people.

And because of that, they don't like it when their cities are bombed by foreign countries.

You know, we're only America is only a couple hundred years old, so I'd be okay with it personally.

Oh, God.

Yeah.

The Israeli journalists who I've see this too.

Just people saying, my phone is blowing up with messages from Irani and celebrating.

Anytime anyone tells you they're getting a bunch of supportive text messages for anything,

you are talking to an insane person.

Like, I'm used to seeing this move when someone like posts like something insane on Twitter.

So it's always someone who posts something like, I think we could solve the incel problem if we let them fuck dogs.

And then, you know, like, like, like everyone, everyone is like, what the fuck are you talking about?

Are you insane?

Like, stop saying this.

And they go, I'm actually getting a lot of text messages from dog owners and incels and say, this is awesome.

Actually, dogs are texting me.

And they, they never show.

And even if they did, who gives a fuck?

It is.

The second someone tells you they're receiving tons of supportive messages, stop listening to them.

Felix, you know, you can say that, but my phone has actually been blowing up with lots of text messages and phone calls from all my friends in Israel.

And they're all saying, please liberate us from the Netanyahu government.

We stand with the Islamic Republic.

I'm just kidding, folks.

I don't have any friends in Israel.

All my Israeli friends are saying, we want to be free from the grip of the council of rabbis.

I guess

to turn to maybe

the lighter side or perhaps a more humorous angle to

our impending apocalypse here.

Just from the domestic side of politics in this country, this is a question, not really a rhetorical question I've been sort of tossing around in my head this weekend.

Where does this all leave the America First movement in this country?

Because as best I can, like the best I can compare it to, MAGA America First is like the abundance movement for Republicans in so much as that they're like, they know all the things that they're planning to do and have always wanted to do are deeply unpopular, but they're like, how can we re-band this so that when we do the thing we always wanted to do,

it seems like it's something different?

I mean,

you know,

Hassan Nasrullah

had

a really clear-eyed assessment of the situation last year when he talked about the fact that Israel controlling America was something of conspiracy theory, more of an excuse to do nothing, that America controls Israel, that Biden has the ability to control whatever Israel does.

And to a certain extent, that's true.

If Trump said tomorrow that Israel needs to stop doing this, I think Israel would have to acquiesce to that request.

But the issue is that Trump is never going to do that in the near future.

Because it's kind of this process of,

I don't know if the right term is, I think it's a self-orientalization, right?

It's the kind of thing that happened happened with

Italian cuisine and tomatoes, right?

Italian cuisine.

It didn't, right?

Italian cuisine, really, really sucky cuisine back in the middle back in the medieval era.

But once they found tomatoes in the New World, that got brought back to them and it became a central part of their identity.

It's the same thing to a certain extent with Israel.

in that America exists without this country, but now that it's created this

bulwark of Western civilization out there, now it's become this kind of central part of America's identity.

It can't operate without the other.

And because of that, now Israel's decision-making becomes America's decision-making because of the nature of that relationship to the point to even granular things.

Like, did you guys see that video from the New York State Senator in the bomb shelter

in Jerusalem?

Yeah, he was like, Bye, bye, bye.

Voter for Soran Mandani.

Hi, everyone.

This is Sam Sutton sending you a video from the basement of the Imbal Hotel.

This is the second time today we've had to come to a shelter and there'll probably be one in the middle of the night like there has been for the last three nights.

Please, I'm begging you, make sure to vote in the primary this week.

Voting started today, Sunday, and goes early.

Voting will go through next Sunday.

Do not make a mistake and forget the vote.

And more importantly,

make sure Governor Cuomo, who has been a great friend of the Jewish people, will be our next mayor and not a person that doesn't believe the Jewish state has a right to exist.

We don't want to be in a situation like this in America.

Thank you.

He was like, my life is in danger right now.

We're cowering in a bomb shelter as Iranian missiles rain down on us.

Oh, and by the way, don't rank Zoran for mayor of New York City.

Could you imagine?

We can't afford free buses in New York.

Can you imagine this with anything?

I want to move to like Joplin, Missouri, but I spend, I'm running for city council in Joplin, Missouri.

I spend all my time in Azerbaijan.

All my attack ads about my opponent are about how he's Armenian.

He's never, he's never left, never left Missouri.

Just some Scots-Irish guy.

I'm in a bomb shelter in Baku.

This is what what we'll get if we elect Scott Krapp, the Armenian.

Everything about this has gotten so

disastrous and so like, I think

an animating belief of the left in America before October 7th was the idea that at some point in the future, Israel will become so much of a burden.

on American policymakers that they will be forced to reevaluate the relationship.

But what October 7th 7th showed

and how

earth-shattering of an assault on Western policy, of the Western control over the world, that meant that America was inextricably linked.

It was an essentially, I mean, one person compared it to an assault on Texas.

Like it was that central to the American fabric.

It doesn't matter if it's America first, if it's, you know, whatever, whatever.

It's treated as such.

There isn't a difference between America and Israel in those people's thinking.

One more thing in light of America First, Make America Great Again.

I don't know if you guys got a chance to watch Trump's military birthday parade over the weekend, but it really was one of those events that

just put such a nice,

I don't know, a nice shine on the events of a weekend that saw, like I said, continued massacres in a blacked out Gaza, Democratic lawmakers being assassinated in Minnesota, paramilitary federal law enforcement

rounding up people in Los Angeles from schools and parks, and then hundreds of thousands of other Americans protesting in the No Kings movement this weekend.

That all of this was like taking place at the exact same time that Donald Trump chose to have his military birthday parade in Washington, D.C.

And Seamus and Felix, I'm wondering if you guys, do you get a chance to watch any of this military parade?

parade?

Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

I'll put it this way.

This was the type of affair that Ron Donald caters for.

I expected to see Mr.

Donald pop out at any moment.

Like,

I can see the party down, like, episode intro font now.

Like the 250 annual Army birthday parade.

I feel like

the Ron Donald thing is so perfect because I was watching the live stream of this on PBLs and every time they would cut to the crowd, and by that I mean like the entire Trump administration sitting on the desk or just the people in the crowd watching tanks go by,

all I could think about was, are we having fun yet?

Are we having fun yet?

Because

everybody looked miserable.

And I got to say, the parade itself was one of the most

underwhelming things I've ever seen as a display of U.S.

imperial military prowess and competence.

If you showed this to the Yippies, they would be like, oh my God, we did it.

We levitated the Pentagon.

It worked.

This is what's left of the U.S.

military.

I have seen,

there are longer lines.

for live podcast shows.

Our live podcast shows.

They spend so much money on it and there was such a buildup for it.

I stupidly thought, I don't know why I thought this.

Oh, they're going to hire like, you know, 10,000 fucking extras or like they're going to find everyone who is ever in a Chris Brown music video because they'll at least have the coordination to march.

Felix, they weren't even marching.

I couldn't believe it.

How much of this, how much of this, the rhetoric around this was based upon the idea that like we were going to see like a Soviet style military parade that was going to be Nazi goose-stepping.

Clockwork precision.

Clockwork precision.

Tens of thousands of soldiers marching in like precision timing, huge steps, saluting dear leader.

This was like groups of like 10 or 15 guys.

I would say not so much a march as a coordinated Mosey

and a wave past our dear leader Trump.

A fucking Marine died training for this.

Can you fucking believe that?

What?

Died during the training for this.

They were mourned by Army High Command.

Like, what did you?

How did you die?

Did you, like, did a

like an APC go off the ramp and you just like fell under it, Austin Power style?

Like, how did this happen to you?

This is the fucking army that's going to invade Iran.

Like, what are you talking about?

Like, had he not walked anywhere in 12 years?

It's crazy.

I was watching, like I said, I was watching the live stream on PBS on my computer, and I just, I kept taking screenshots, and each one was funnier than the next.

And probably, like, Dano White looking like he just shit his pants, Marco Rubio yawning, Steve Witkoff looking at his phone, just like the dour, miserable faces of people in the crowd.

Like nobody could summon any enthusiasm for this bullshit.

It It was, it was, to use, to use Trump's language, it was a disgrace.

It was a disgrace.

There were like, like, you remember in 2018 when, like, you would see things on Twitter that were like, yo, everyone, school walkout to memorialize

on.

Like, all of those were like better organized and had better formations than this.

I will say this.

I posted about this when the parade was happening, and I re-watched the parade in full, almost in full later on.

There was a military parade in Pyongyang about two years ago, similarly for another anniversary of the army.

And you see the coordination they have, the lighting,

the camera angles, the national anthem being said, and all the soldiers know the words, and the singer is hitting these high notes, the editing, the fireworks.

It's like, that's how it should be done.

That was the thing from like that, like the

remnants of the Lincoln Project.

But they said, oh, the scenes you're seeing aren't from North Korea.

And it's like, yeah, clearly.

Yeah, yeah, no shit.

I wish.

I wish.

Yeah.

They would actually be merging right.

Oh, we're going to get smoked, man.

Possibly like the most crystal clear Paul Verhoeven moment in watching this was when they like the announcer broke away to say,

like,

as a, as a sort of a gaggle of like a dozen guys just sort of walked by in uniform.

They were like, we'd now like to take this opportunity to thank our sponsors at Coinbase.

So like, this is like,

the 250th anniversary of the U.S.

Army

was sponsored by Coinbase and the UFC.

Oh, my God.

Oh, wasn't Dana White in the audience?

Yeah, no, Dana White was on on the dais.

He was just sitting there.

Oh my God.

Dana White.

I've seen people more entertained by their kids'

music recital than him sitting there.

Oh, God.

We need, like, this is the thing about

there's no fascist movement in waiting.

It's just, it's just this.

This pathetic individualism.

Oh, God.

You know, I remember we talked about it a few years ago, how, like,

the rank and file, like

backbone of these early fascist movements in Europe, they were like these hardened World War I veterans who literally saw the world that they knew destroyed in front of them and came back dead-eyed and just ready to kill, not kid, like just throwing their bodies, everything into it because they did not care.

Conversely,

we have people, we have veterans of the Great Army Birthday Batch

and operation amazon prime after i saw that plane fall off the deck i knew i didn't even care about my life anymore i didn't give a fuck

this this is the one thing i i will finish with this this is the one thing that gives me like some amount of hope about how

an american like a war with iran would engage in like how they responded to the houthis

how they went about the aid pier in Gaza that also ended up killing people, U.S.

soldiers, and setting it up.

It's a fucking basket case.

This isn't an effective fighting force.

This is embarrassing.

This is humiliating.

This is a national disgrace.

Like,

if you're an American nationalist, if you're like an American fascist, like, how could you watch that bullshit and be like, hell yeah, I'm with this 100%?

This is what I voted for.

This is the Fourth Reich.

Hell yeah.

Yeah, embarrassing, humiliating.

Will we ever have a non-Brandon president?

Because that was the other thing I was thinking.

Like, this is perfect.

Like, Donald Trump ran on this idea that similar to Joe Biden before him, he was uniquely qualified to negotiate,

negotiate peaceful ends to ameliorate every conflict currently going on in the world.

And that no one could make a deal like him because of his experience and his swag.

And fast forward to today,

his strategy with Russia and Ukraine is just to tweet, please, come on, please, please, like, come on, come on, you know me.

And a new war has broken out that, like, I don't really know what to believe.

I don't imagine we'll really find out exactly what happened on Trump's end for a couple years.

But this idea that he was like,

do it or don't do it.

I don't know.

It sounds very much like him.

I mean, to think of it face value is him saying, oh, yeah, you can never trust anything that I will ever say if you're a foreign actor, which

who knows?

But it just...

Having such a public flop amidst all of this is just, it, I didn't think things could get more branded than Brandon.

And then I saw Kier Starmer, who is at 1.5 mega brandons.

But this,

this is like, we're breaking into two, two Brandons now.

Like the potential neck, whoever comes after this, right?

Whether it is JD Vance or like, you know, Pete Buttigiege.

I don't know who, who has the potential to be the biggest Brandon.

I think maybe JD.

JD has that hapless quality, but I just, we're never going to get out.

We're never going to, we're never going to leave behind the brandedness of it all.

Hyper brandonization.

We're Brandon.

We're Brandon.

That's who we are.

We're remembering the good times and saying only, we're the only ones who can do this job.

We take one step, our pants fall down.

You see the shit streak on our underwear.

A stork flies by and takes a shit on our head.

Oh, I actually planned that.

So the fact that you're making fun of it shows how little you know about strategy.

We are Brandon.

We will never lead this curse because we will never stop being Brandon.

Seamus, the last thing I want to ask you before we sign off for today,

is it true that Netanyahu and his cabinet are in Greece right now in like a bunker?

I hate to be a wet blanket.

I really do.

I really like the idea that he was in fucking Greece.

But I think his Wings of Zion plane, which is the equivalent of Air Force One,

got sent there for protection, which is what they've done a couple of other times during Iranian attacks.

He was in

Israel to

oversee the rescue efforts after the Iranian attack.

So, unfortunately, he was not in Greece.

I have to, I have to be the bear of bad news.

That's what I need to confirm.

I regret my previous reports that I had gotten from my sources that Netanyahu had gotten a UTI getting fucked by a British tourist

in Mykonos.

That was wrong.

We react that report.

Please were taking down the article.

There are things, there are things that my journalistic ethics cannot allow allow me to laugh at, but

I'm not a strong man.

All right.

Well,

before we degrade their journalistic ethics any further, let's wrap it up there for today's show.

Seamus Malakovzeli, thanks so much for spending some time with us today.

You got an article up at the intercept right now about this.

We'll link to the article in the show description.

I also have something up at Parapraxis Magazine just a few minutes ago, and you can find my writing at Seamus-Malikafs, hyphen malikfselite.com.

Links in the show description.

Seamus, thanks again so much.

Till next time, everybody.

Bye-bye.