6/9/26: US Helicopter Downed In Strait Of Hormuz, Prof Pape On Axis Of Resistance, North Korea Economy Surges

This is an I Heart podcast. Guaranteed human. Hey guys, Sagar and Crystal here. Independent media just played a truly massive role in this election and we are so excited about what that means for the future of this show. This is the only place where you can find honest perspectives from the left and the right that simply does not exist anywhere else. So if that is something that's important to you, please go to breakingpoints.com, become a member today and you'll get access to our full shows, unedited, ad free, and all put together for you every morning in your inbox. We need your help to build the future of independent news media and we hope to see you at breakingpoints.com. Good morning everybody, happy Tuesday. I have an amazing show for everybody today. What do we have, Crystal? Indeed we do. So a lot of Iran updates for you. A US Apache helicopter went down under mysterious circumstances near the Strait of Hormuz. So we'll try to figure out what's going on there. It all now also appears that Trump did give Israel kind of a green light to strike Iran. We're gonna have Robert Payton on to help us sort through all of that. Couple of articles that are pretty fascinating about how North Korea economically is thriving. This comes as a Presentia of China is making an important state visit there. So we will do a bit of a deep dive into what's going on in North Korea. Trump showed up at the next game last night, the NBA finals game and apparently cursed him. Fans had a very difficult time getting in, a lot of chaos, a lot of booze, although he is an apparent denial over that. So we'll update you there. We also have another sports story for you. Texas tech quarterback, Brendan Swarsby, has had his suspension for gambling overturned very significant development in the NCAA that Sauer has been following closely. And Chris Rabb, who is now the Democratic nominee and presumed next representative for Pennsylvania's third congressional district. It's one of the most democratic in the country. Is going to join me to talk to all of us about the future of the Democratic party. And probably get him to weigh in on this whole Graham Platner situation, especially since John Federman, his soon to be colleague, there from Pennsylvania, has been exchanging words with Graham, so that'll be interesting as well. Yeah, that's right. Thank you to everybody who's been subscribing to the show breakingpoints.com, helping support our journalism, our work over here. And we do still have some big announcements that are coming later on for our premium subscription. Get in on the ground floor, breakingpoints.com. If you're watching this on YouTube, please hit subscribe to our YouTube channel. If you're listening to this podcast, please share an episode with a friend. But as Crystal said, let's go ahead and start with the conflicts with Iran. Trump making some very revealing comments around midnight last night on his way back from Madison Square Garden, claiming actual, first of all, revealing that there was a soft green light of Israeli attacks, trying to save face after he told Israel and Iran this quote stopped shooting and both of them did anyways, let's take a listen. What do you think of Prime Minister Netanyahu? We had a very good conversation and he was hit and he hit back and I can't blame him for that, but he was hit, he hit back and now they've called it quits. So they're gonna just leave each other alone for another week or something. It's been going on for a long time. You could say about 3,000 years if you really want, but certainly it's been going on for 47 years. But no, he hit back, they were going back and forth and now they both agreed through me to stop and we're in the final throws of what will be a very, very good deal that will not allow in any way, shape, or form nuclear weapons, et cetera. And then it straight will open up right away. It'll open up immediately upon signing, which could be in two or three days. Two or three days, heard that one before. Apparently there's been 37 times since the conflict began and Trump said that a deal was imminent. So you can take that with what you will. But the more significant comment there, Crystal, is him trying to downplay the obvious fact that he said that Israel shouldn't strike and they did anyways. Now look, as now being revealed, I think through a lot of the reporting that pretty much wasn't true. In fact, we could put A1 up here on the screen where it reports a phone call that happened between Donald Trump and BB Netanyahu and even their headline, Trump struggled to reign in Netanyahu's strikes on Iran, climbed down in phone call with Israeli leaders shows President's diminishing control over fighting. And what they make clear is that Trump had immediately come out and said Israel should not retaliate. He said that to Barak Ravid, to multiple other reporters. However, when it came time to actually talk to BB on the phone, BB was like, well, I have to do something. And Trump was like, okay, go ahead and do it. So a lot of this that was in public about how he shouldn't respond or any of that, it was basically kayfabe. It's completely fake for the cameras and maybe for the Iranians to try to say, oh, I actually am trying to rein them in. When in reality, all he actually did was rein in their retaliation to the retaliation where allegedly, according to some of the inside reports, you know, the pilots were in the cockpits. They were ready to go for a massive attack on Iran, which absolutely would have restarted the war. But he did allow in green light some of this tit for tat, which as I laid out, I think pretty extensively yesterday, really undermines any faith in a potential deal which is predicated on Trump being able to restrain Israeli action. And as even the journal, these neocon publications and all of them are using these headlines, Trump struggles to rein in. It's either struggles, it's incompetence or it's tacit agreement. None of those get you closer to a deal in two to three days. Yeah, and Netanyahu is under his own domestic political pressure because the supposed moderates in Israel are also attacking him for not being tough enough and hawkish enough vis-a-vis Iran. And of course, the right-wing zealots, fascists in his own party, terrorists in his own party, are pushing for an even more aggressive response. So he is under domestic political pressure. He also is self-interested in continuing this war for his own political and ideological purposes. So it all sort of dovetails together. I think it's possible that Trump did want him to not respond at all, but he probably persuaded him that, number one, I got to do something for my own domestic political concerns. And number two, he may have tried to persuade him that, oh, you'll soften them up if we respond, if we just allow them to attack and we don't do anything in response, then that's going to make it more difficult for you to negotiate a deal because Trump has fallen prey to this idiotic logic previously that somehow if we attack Iran or if we let Israel attack Iran, that is going to make them more inclined to strike a deal. It has not worked so far. They've been pretty resolute in what their demands are and relatively concrete and clear-cut. However, he may have once again been persuaded by that type of logic. I just a small digression because it drives me crazy. He always makes these comments about how this conflict has been going on 3,000 years. And I hate it so much because it's a lie. And I think it's so counterproductive to frame this in terms of some intractable, millennia-old blood feud, which is not at all. But he always goes back to this and I think is persuaded by that idea. It partly probably fuels his interest in being involved in this conflict because then he can imagine himself as this great man that did something that no one's been able to do in 3,000 years, blah, blah, blah. We've seen where that's gotten us. But in any case, it really drives me insane when he does that because it does fuel this notion of this being some religious blood feud, which is very common view in Israel, very common view with some of the leadership here in America as well, including with the president of the United States. But to your point, Sabar, about the ability of Iran and the US to come to some sort of deal and how damaging this ultimately is, I'm looking at a headline right now on Haaretz that says Israeli strikes kill 14 in South Lebanon. I mean, this is one of the things that Iran has had as a major question mark in their minds. Is the US willing and capable of restraining Israel? And the answer that comes from this whole exchange is no. We're either unwilling or unable, and now Israel is going right back to striking in South Lebanon and demanding the evacuation of an entire city. Very, very important flag there. Yeah, it's like every time we do the show, it's breaking news. Israel is striking Lebanon. We also do have to report a very significant event happening this morning. Let's put a eight up here on the screen. We do not know a lot of details. A crew has been rescued after a US attack helicopter went down near the Strait of Hormuz. Now, according to SENTCOM, a US Army Apache helicopter gunship went down off the coast of Oman while patrolling regional waters on Monday. It is, quote, not immediately clear whether the Apache was shot down by Iranian fire, experienced mechanical failure, or encountered some other problem. What we do know is that both of the crew have been rescued apparently by a US Navy surface water drone, which I did not even know was a thing that a drone could actually rescue two downed airmen or airwomen who were as part of the crew. So that's pretty crazy. But what's crazier on top of it is we have had numerous instances of aircraft just mysteriously going down throughout this conflict. And when I say mysterious, you can read between the lines in terms of what the official line has been and what actually happened. The fact that SENTCOM is not immediately offering some explanation, potentially we can look into that. We also compare it with A7, some military escalation that happened yesterday. The US forces actually fired, quote, on a non-compliant oil tanker in the Gulf of Oman, quote, disabled a Palau flagged Maravex as it transited international waters toward Iran. An FAA team super hornet from the USS Abraham Lincoln fired a precision munition into the ships, engineering and steering spaces after the crew failed to comply with directions from US forces. This is actually pretty significant because while it was a Palau flagged vessel, it appears that all of the crew were actually Indian nationals. And so obviously, you know, their lives were in danger, could have significantly, you know, could have really kicked off a major international crisis if you were going to kill a significant number of Indian crewmen while they're aboard this tanker, which according to SENTCOM was trying to circumvent the blockade. Bringing it back, as you said, to BB and to Donald Trump. I know it sounds like a broken record, but the internal tick-tock of all of this as the events catch up really do matter. Let's do A2, please, up here on the screen. Barak Ravid, the official behind the scenes, how Israel and Iran nearly pulled Trump back to war. What he writes is that it, quote, underscores the risk of the US once again becoming ensnared in major combat operations, despite President Trump clearly wanting out. Trump told Axios in a phone interview he had warned the Israeli Prime Minister if he went back to war with Iran he might find himself fighting alone. The escalation had started on Sunday morning, but from that point he says things escalated quickly. Trump had called him and asked him not to retaliate. Trump argued that he would either get a deal with Iran in a few days that would make the strikes unnecessary, or he wouldn't, in which case he might lead the strikes on Iran. Two US officials in a third Israeli source said that the call was much calmer than the one a few days earlier where Trump allegedly called Netanyahu fucking crazy, and one even described the call as polite. So it doesn't actually seem to have been some major screaming match where he tells him don't go and he did go. It's pretty obvious that he soft greenlit these strikes and then tried to stop some sort of spiral. But there's only one so many times that that's going to work. You know, you can only do it if you're actually willing to withhold military aid. And let's put A4 up here on the screen just to also belie this new recent White House narrative. Initially, the Pentagon came out and said, Israel's claim that the US intercepted its missiles were not true. This was despite Israeli sources immediately, as I mentioned on our show yesterday, saying, yeah, the US shot it down. Well, here we have update. The US did fire interceptors in response to recent Iranian missile attacks, though it was not immediately clear if the attempted intercepts were successful. The US officials are still working to assess who hit what in the aftermath. The only thing worse than us depleting our stockpiles to defend Israel is depleting the stockpile and then not actually shooting the missile down further, showing the incompetence of the math behind this entire nightmare. But you can see that immediately the White House was trying to spin a narrative. I think for the Iranian's sake to say, hey, we really didn't have any part of this. Put A5 up here on the screen. This is from CBS News. This was immediately in the morning yesterday. They said the US military didn't take part in the Israeli attacks on Iran the first since the ceasefire. And Trump admin didn't order any US defensive action from incoming Iranian missiles. We now know that is unequivocally not true because SENTCOM helped with the interceptions. We also know that there were multiple US air refueling aircraft that were in the air. We know that the Israeli military, many of their strike packages and others are developed from the Pentagon. Pre-cleared. We're currently going through this whole NDA craziness where we're trying to fuse the two of our military's intelligence gathering, despite the fact that the Pentagon, as we updated everyone just yesterday, has updated Israel's spying on the US to a quote, critical threat level. All of this demonstrates that Trump has not pulled the plug in any way whatsoever. We're still shooting down their missiles for them. In many cases, remember, we shot our missiles even when they had some to protect their stockpiles. We're still providing them with intelligence. We still have all these military assets that are on the ground at Ben-Gurion International Airport inside of Israel. None of this indicates whatsoever that Trump's threat of you may be on your own isn't any way substantive. And that's the only way any of this is going to stop. Because otherwise, every single time we start our show, because I guess it's right around afternoon time, we can report to everyone as we can right now, Israeli forces are striking in southern Lebanon, ordering evacuations, and of course, we can also see Hezbollah FPV drones, which have been pounding northern Israel and continue to do so. No signs of any of it stopping. I guess maybe one sign would be that they withdraw from Lebanon, but so far, the Trump administration won't even make a demand that they do so. Yep. Yep, that's exactly right. And I think there's a pretty clear dynamic at play here, in my opinion, which is Trump genuinely thought this war would be over in like two days. I know. That they would take out the Ayatollah and the whole thing would come crashing down. He ignored the advice of whoever it was that was saying this isn't going to work the way that you think it is, decided that he believed after being high on his own supply from Venezuela and hearing from the Israelis, etc. that it was going to genuinely be that quick. And ever since it did not go according to plan, he has been lost. He has been lost. He doesn't know what to do. He doesn't want to go back to a hot war because he knows that is not going to help anything and putting troops on the ground would be an utter disaster. He does not want to come to the deal that is on the table because that would be humiliating. So he is just being buffeted by forces that are he is allowed to be out of his control. When you have no plan and no real ideology, you are going to be defeated by the people in your coalition who do have a plan and do have an ideology. And that is the neocons and that is the Israelis. So that's why every time you get into one of these situations where Trump is really almost try to do a deal and let's figure something out. I know it's not going to be ideal, but we're coming towards something and some positive tweet goes out and at least something to Barak, Revead. Then you get the Israelis attacking Lebanon or in this instance, retaliating against Iran, even though Trump didn't want them to, etc. Because since they have a very clear cut, hardened position that they are committed to, they're going to be able to persuade him and push him in this direction. And that's why this continues to happen. From the Iranian perspective, we can put a six up on the screen about how they're thinking about all of this. They say, look, the US is not seeking a ceasefire where they're not seeking dialogue. Iran should respond decisively to defend the rights of the Iranian people. This is according to Ghalibov Iran's parliamentary speaker, who of course has been leading the negotiations. He says, we do not want to move forward with commitment or sloganeering, but rather we must seek an engineered victory with Iranian authority and rationality. The military field, the diplomatic field, the field of public presence and the field of serving the people are the threads and fibers of a single fabric. If we consider diplomacy to be merely dialogue in closed rooms and diplomatic smiles, we will fail from the very beginning. So, you know, they do not think that Trump is serious about doing what would be required to come to some sort of a deal or even really officially a memo of understanding that would enable the next steps towards achieving a deal. They don't think he's serious. And why should they? Because when it comes down to it and push comes to shove, the number one way he could demonstrate some sort of commitment towards ending this conflict would be to fully restrain Israel. And he has never been willing or able to do it. So they just can look at reality, ignore his words, ignore his tweets, ignore the propaganda from Barack Reveed and everybody else and see the reality that greets them. That clearly Trump is not yet serious about doing what it takes to actually come to some sort of a deal. Absolutely. And I do think we should really remind everyone. Remember Iran's message yesterday, the IRGC message did not say that if Israel strikes Beirut that they would flare up again. They said Southern Lebanon and literally right now they are bombing Southern Lebanon, towns and villages across Southern Lebanon. At least eight people have been killed and tire, dozens more wounded. The latest attacks show Lebanon major wedge issue in this entire thing. Hezbollah has rejected any ceasefire as of right now with Israel continues to fire from its positions inside of Southern Lebanon. Israel has now occupied basically all of it in terms of Southern Lebanon and they are just refusing to stop. It tire apparently is one of the largest cities in the entire region. And they are calling for the full scale evacuation, including as of this morning for the first time, the Christian quarter of the ancient port city, which I'm sure will go over well with the Christian population there in Lebanon. And, you know, every once in a while when IDF soldiers attack a Christian village, you know, goes viral here in the United States just to show really that they don't really care about any of that. They care about their own ambition, especially with that recent conquest of the castle. I wish we could spend our show kicking off with literally anything else, but this is deciding the fate of all of us. And, you know, even still looking at the gas price, still above four dollars a gallon nationally, I think yesterday marked a hundred days since the war has begun over three months now of the conflict. And nobody can say with confidence that we're not going to have at least three more months of something like this back and forth. Even if they did sign some memorandum of understanding, that would be 60 days in which they would have to actually get it full JCPOA style deal, which took two and a half years to negotiate the last time around. I just want to remind everybody. We had much more competent and knowledgeable people involved with it, who, you know, I'm not going to say they had like the trust of the Iranians, but there was such a certainly much better working relationship at that point because we hadn't used negotiations as a pretext to like murder their leaders at that point. And we hadn't bombed them and killed them and killed their leader and killed all their military echelon. In fact, many of the people behind that deal are now dead inside of Iran. So what message would that send you? If you if you went to a negotiation is successfully concluded and then somebody killed you, would you go into your next negotiation thinking, yeah, this one, it's definitely going to work out. And this time let's do it. These people are committed to peace. Yeah. Okay. All right. Makes a lot of sense. All right. Let's get to Professor Robert Pape standing by. Very excited now to be joined by our great friend of the show, Professor Robert Pape of the University of Chicago. It's good to see you, sir. Thanks for coming back. Thank you so much for having me. Absolutely. Let's go ahead and start with B1. This really caught our interest, Professor. Curious for your reaction, the commander of the IRGC Codes Force issued a very interesting statement yesterday. He said that they would establish a new security belt of resistance that from the Strait of Hormuz to the Babal-Mendab Strait off of Yemen and then to the Gulf of Tahrir. To the Red Sea, according to these new comments by state media, they are now using the term resistance or axis of resistance to refer to Iranian allies in the region from Hezbollah to Yemen's Houthis. What do you make of this new term of the axis of resistance, this security belt comment in the context of everything that's been happening here in this war? This is more evidence for the new stage of the war that we've entered into. We just passed day 100 of the Iran War. There is no end in sight. We are not at the end. We are in the middle game. And in the middle game, the most distinctive feature, which has happened for weeks, and this, what you just showed is strong evidence of it, is that Iran has moved from survival to ambition. Let me say that again. Iran is no longer just considering how does it survive. Iran is moving from survival to ambition. You see that in its behavior. You see that a week ago, it responds to relatively minor strikes here by the US by upping the ante to put pressure on Kuwait and Bahrain. They are not just doing tit for tat. They are using a version of their own escalation dominance to put pressure on those Gulf States to withdraw American forces from their territory. Almost the same time they threaten Israel. You attack Hezbollah's strongholds in Beirut. That's Iran's key ally. And Iran is going to punish, going to retaliate. This is part of that new red line that you just showed. They are extending an umbrella. They are not just worrying about survival in Tehran. They're extending an umbrella, a new architecture. That is a new ambition. And then last week, right at the end of last week, the senior advisor to the Supreme Leader made a statement almost identical to what you just showed, except did not define the umbrella area so clearly. He used the same geographic space, by the way, but not that clear set of red lines. So what you are seeing is that Iran has gained power in the opening stage. That's like the opening in chess. It has gained power. And in the middle game, it's not just happy going for a draw. It's going to extend that power in a more ambitious way. And that middle game with this new security architecture, and I'm glad to say a bit more about that, but this middle game, this is going to go on, folks, through the summer. We are almost surely now going to have the new crisis in the world economy based on Iran's behavior and rhetoric. This is almost locked in. The world may not fully expect it, but this is what you would expect. This is what the direction of the modeling for the 20 years would expect. And then I'm sorry to also say this is not just going to end on Labor Day. Donald Trump extended the Naval Bacchets of Labor Day as if this is going to be over by Labor Day, which, of course, is very convenient for him with the midterms. However, that's not where Iran's thinking is. If Iran can hurt its opponents through the midterms as the United States and also Israel Netanyahu has elections coming, it's going to take advantage of that. So we need to expect that this middle game is going to go on through the summer, through the new economic crisis, into the fall and midterms and probably into January. That's the true middle game. We are facing. So if that's where Iran is, they've moved from survival to ambition. What is Trump's perspective? What are his thoughts? Because we've been tracking on the show how you had the situation where Israel was struck by Iran. Trump tells a bunch of reporters, I don't want Israel to retaliate. Then Israel retaliates anyway. He's now saying, oh, well, I understand that they had to do that limited strike. But now they're done. But of course, this morning we see headlines that they continue to strike inside of Lebanon. So in any case, what do you think is going on in terms of Trump's calculus and how all of that unfolded? Yeah. So what Trump is doing, first, let's just explain. As Iran has gained power, America has lost strategic position. These are a direct trade-off of each other. Trump's rhetoric and phone calls and statements are as if he was still the dominant power. He is acting as if he is still in control. In fact, he has been saying, I am in control. Well, the fact is Trump is losing control as his strategic position has declined. And control is not defined by what the actor, President Trump says, I have control. It's defined by how others are reacting. So point number one, the Iranians have said, and this is what the advisor to the Supreme Leader said late last week, that they're just going to ignore what Trump says about negotiations. It's not they're going to respond to it tit for tat. They're just ignoring him. They don't think it has any reality, and they've laid out their demands in public, which means they're digging their heels in, and they don't really care what President Trump says anymore. At least that's what they've said, and their behavior would reflect that. Israel also, they're still taking, Netanyahu is still taking President Trump's calls. OK, so I'm not saying that they've gone that far and not taking the call. They're taking the call. But Netanyahu did not follow Trump's orders. Trump tried to order Netanyahu not to retaliate. And what happened? Netanyahu launched airstrikes on Iran in Western and Central Iran against some key targets. So this is the opposite of listening to President Trump. President Trump is losing control because his behavior and rhetoric has been as if he had not lost that strategic position. Right. Well, in war, the realities dictate everything. You can try to have your happy talk, and that's what President Trump is doing. But this is being ignored because the happy talk is irrelevant. We all see the realities, and that's true in much of the American public. That's true in the leadership. And that is why President Trump's words seem to have no reality to them. It's because there is no reality to his words. And we know this. How long has it been? Let me just ask you. And the listeners should ask, how long has it been that they have heard President Trump say that their negotiations with Iran are just about to be settled? Well, I went back before we came on. I just thought I would just check for myself. And this could be a game that listeners could do on Google. I found it goes back to March 29. So that's 72 days of this. Now, if your listeners can beat the professor, maybe I missed one before March 29. So just let me know if they found one going back earlier than March 29. But that's 72 days of almost every day or every other day hearing. We're only days away from the deal with Iran. So you could see as Iran's ambitions grow, as it extends its umbrella, it's spreading its wings. Why he would be losing control? Professor, you had a prediction here. Or just a statement on our show many months ago. You said Iran has become a new regional world power. I put that clip out. I got quite a lot of criticism mostly from the Israeli lobby. And what I found fascinating actually is watching some of this proof out. And so yesterday, when we saw Iran enforce its red line of strikes on Lebanon for the first time, in its modern history, to actually use that as a pretext explicitly to enforce regional action, how did that prove out that original statement that you made? To watch such a change in their own strategic behavior? Yeah, so to be clear, I made that public statement in a New York Times piece on April 4, where I said Iran is emerging as the fourth center of world power. And also to be clear, I didn't say that that would happen in a day. I said it would take about 18 months. They were on a trajectory to do that. And I didn't say they would become stronger than the United States. So some people, when you get in these debates, they kind of straw man it a little bit to say over. But Iran would be the fourth center of world power. Now, what did I mean by that? The United States is the strongest state in the world, and it's a hegemon in its region of the world, the Western Hemisphere. China is the second strongest, and it wants to be, and almost is, a hegemon in Asia. Russia is the third strongest, and it is vying to become the hegemon in Eastern Europe. That's what's happening with the battle with Ukraine. And who else is a hegemon? There's no other regional hegemon. Iran would be the fourth regional hegemon in the Gulf. That is the dominant state in the Gulf. And what does that look like? That looks like a state which has a sphere of influence, not just worrying about its own narrow protection. And that's what's true of all those other three states. And also, I believe this will also mean that it will protect its allies. And that's exactly what you are seeing here. So this is, we're used to thinking of Hezbollah as like the puppet or the pawn that is expendable to support Iran. This is the other way around. This is Iran establishing a sphere of influence, and it's also extending to the Houthis. So there's a whole sphere here that is being defined. And that's a sphere of influence, and it is acting to do. And by the way, it's gaining success because its threats, its stronger power, compelled President Trump to make those phone calls to put pressure on Israel to pull back. And the fact is, without Iran gaining power, Donald Trump would never have made those phone calls on the behavior, just because Iran was making a threat. So you are seeing reality to that prediction I made two months ago. And this will go on over time. I believe Iran's position as the fourth center of world power will emerge drip by drip by drip over the summer. This will get even stronger because as the crisis hits the world's economy, basically end of June to July, we don't know the exact date, but we know that it's coming. This will strengthen Iran's position in the region and also in the world. So you are seeing the emergence of a fourth center of world power right in front of our eyes. I'm not surprised people were skeptical of this argument because we haven't seen that in our lifetime. When was the last time you saw the emergence of a fourth center of world power? Not in our lifetime. That China happens very, very slowly and was already a pretty powerful state. You have to go to back history. This is like Prussia in the 19th century to really kind of put this in some historical perspective. So it's not truly unique. And it's a function of not just the economy of Iran. That's how we often measure power, just raw economy. It's the geography. It is the geography plus the technology. That's what helped Prussia. So this is a little bit different calculus. We have seen bits of this before. But I am not surprised there was some pushback. And I believe this is going to be one of the gigantic outcomes. It's going to reshape the world coming out of this war. This war is not like the Greenland issue. It's not like Venezuela. This is a different animal. It's always going to be a different animal. And I really appreciate the fact that I've been able to talk about this on your show. I also appreciate the New York Times taking the risk. Because they got hammered for. Everybody said, what are you talking about? But now you're seeing the reality. And by the way, that's just another prediction that's coming out of all this modeling, thinking about the bombing of Iran. This would not be happening had President Trump not bombed Iran. Well, it's fascinating because it's really attributable to this combination of modern military tech with the drones, et cetera, and also sort of old school just geographic position in the world. So it really is this very unique. You know, if I could just make a suggestion for your listeners, because a lot of your listeners love, they should go and look at a piece by Halford MacKinder called the Geographic Pivot of History, 1904. British geographer. And they will see that, yes, it's not always been true. We've measured great power simply by raw GDP. Because that's how he explained what was happening to Britain as pressure was consolidating and why that geography mattered so much. Well, one thing I wanted to ask you about is how this changed the game for Israel. You know, they have obviously they have our support. They've bombed something like seven countries over the past several years. If de facto annexed parts of Syria, have de facto annexed most of Gaza, taken complete control over the West Bank, have now invaded and taken control over parts of Lebanon and have been able to do all of this basically with impunity. You'd have to think that this new reality would constrain them quite significantly in ways that they aren't used to in recent years. That's it's going to and it's going to constrain them more over time. And I'll be writing pieces about this on the on the substack, by the way, because it is it's part of the new emerging reality. But don't think that it's going to stop all at once, but you're seeing the beginning of this change now. So what you can expect over time is as that new security architecture becomes solidified and it's only in its early stages as it becomes solidified, Israel's position is going to get weaker and weaker and weaker. Now that's going to happen for two reasons, not just one reason. Reason number one is Israel's strategic position is a function very heavily of America's strategic position. So as America's strategic position weakens in the Middle East and the Persian Gulf, and it is weakening at now, this inherently weakens Israel's position. But number two, what's going to happen very as time goes on is you will see evolutions with the drone and missile capability of Iran's proxy. So the it's we already know that Hezbollah and the Houthis have missile and drone capability. That's that's not the change. The change and you're starting to see it just in the last 24 hours is much more sophisticated, concerted effort with those missiles and drones to think in a calibrated way how to weaken Israel. And so what you see is that we had the issue, of course, with Israel, Lebanon, everybody's focused on that. But I have been watching the Red Sea and the Houthis and what and I haven't been surprised by what I found what we saw in the last 24 hours, which is that the Houthis have stepped into this part, this issue. And what they have done is they are threatening any Israeli related traffic around the Red Sea, that choke point. Well, that is now an expansion to that new theater. Think of it as a new part of the of the theater here. A new area that is now expanding in a coherent way, just as your opening quote suggested, and that is going to weaken Israel over time because those drones, those missiles can be used in a much more concerted way. And this is just the beginning for Israel. And notice that if America and Israel together couldn't root out all the drones and missiles here as America gets weaker and its position gets weaker in the Middle East, Israel on its own is not going to do that either. So so this is this is a picture of a grand strategic not not quite collapsed, but kind of reduction here, a decline for Israel over time. And but you're just seeing the early stages of this. And this trajectory is likely to go on as far as the eye can see. As always, thought provoking and usually correct on a long timeline. So thank you very much, Sarah. We appreciate your time. Thank you so much for having me. So we wanted to take a bit of a look at what is going on in North Korea. And there are a number of reasons to do this. So first of all, let's put C3 up on the screen. Xi Jinping actually visited North Korea on Monday. This was a very significant visit. It's been quite a while since the Chinese leader has traveled to North Korea and comes at a pivotal moment for obviously both China, but also for North Korea. Let's have several articles in major newspapers about what exactly is going on in that country. And perhaps surprisingly, to a lot of American or Western viewers, they are economically doing quite well at the moment. So we can put C1 up on the screen. This was an article from the Wall Street Journal about the world's most surprising economic success story in North Korea. Effectively, what they lay out here is how the country was really struggling under the dueling challenges of COVID and also US sanctions, of course, which are fairly devastating to the economy. And during COVID, they instituted a severe lockdown, really close the borders. There was limited ability to get media in and know what's going on. There were some dissidents who left and were able to sort of tell the world about what was going on there. But by all accounts, a pretty severe crackdown that also entailed a crackdown on the black market sale of smuggled in goods as they look to transition the country to really focusing on and requiring that all goods that were sold internally would be through state sanctioned channels. And of course, in the immediate term, that caused a lot of hardship. But now what North Korea has done is they have partnered up with they've long you know, had this partnership with China and China continues to be sort of their most important ally and you know, providing them with a lot of trade goods and also aid. But they have now this very important partnership with Russia. They saw that there was a huge opportunity with Russia's war in Ukraine, and they not only sent troops as mercenaries to go and fight for Russia, many of whom died, but you know, the state received payment for the fact that they sent these these troops over on behalf of Russia. But they also have spun up factories and production to supply Russia with billions of dollars in munitions and have become very important to that war effort. They've taken that money that they've made through their partnership with Russia, and they have plowed that back into their own economy through major construction projects, through building out factories, not just in Pyongyang, but throughout the countryside that was much less developed. And apparently this whole direction saga is really bearing a lot of fruits. And over the past several years, GDP growth has been quite strong. You know, it's still a country that suffers with a lot of poverty and also inequality between the leadership and between everybody else. But there are much more, much more wealth going around, much more economic prosperity and the ability to build out these resorts and other projects that bring a quality of life improvement to the population as well. Yeah, I think the most fascinating part of the whole story, which belies everything, is the inability of the United States to continue to enforce serious global sanctions, because the story of North Korea, which effectively economically was crushed both by the United States and the rest of the world, all up until they're obtaining a nuclear weapon. Even then, after they obtained a full blown ICBM nuclear weapon capable of hitting the United States, they still were not prosperous or even relatively prosperous or in some sort of an upward trajectory. Russia enters the war in Ukraine, the United States and the West throws everything we have at the Russian economy. The Russian economy continues to thrive. The Chinese banking system, the Russian banking system, all of these circumventing actions and infrastructure is created. Then North Korea, because as one of the largest standing armies in the world and weapons production, because that's what their entire focus was on, is able to both use its people and send weapons, manufacturing all these other things over to Russia, which then they're obviously paid for. So now they go from being a Chinese facile state to actually having something that another country wants, Russia, of who it has some reasonable relations. And in the meantime, China is also able to not only backstop their economy, but they're also able to bring in some goods and actually purchase some other types of goods and bootstrap some other industry inside of the country. The single most interesting part of the Wall Street Journal story is about housing. About how Pyongyang and North Korea has been able to build more new housing in a few in a few year period than Los Angeles and Chicago. Just to demonstrate, by the way, what you can do if you want to do it, if you have the will to build, as they say. And so they're abundance piled over there. It's your hard time as a client. Right. And this is this is the country, which, you know, for years, they said even had declining population because of malnutrition and famine. And poverty. And when they have a little bit of money, they build. They're also they're saying on the streets of North Korea, you're seeing BMWs, BYD, Chinese vehicles. But I think that the dual story of both Russia and China able to prop up their economy and actually make it not entirely miserable and fake in terms of the way that the, you know, everybody remembers what the vice guide to North Korea that came out in 2006, 2007. I remember watching it when I was a, you know, that was genuinely creepy. This is under Kim Jong-il. This is, you know, fake hotels, no guests. That's just not the case anymore. I mean, we have some of these images that are coming out of Pyongyang. And I mean, look, not the Pyongyang that we remember from the propaganda reels and others, even with the tightly controlled propaganda that they had on North Korea. It is pretty obvious that there has been a major increase in the, you know, in the quality of life on the street. And that is in no way diminishing the malnutrition, the starvation, and all of the other insanity that goes on inside of North Korea. But I just think it's actually a major story of U.S. sanctions and something I emphasize here on the show all the time is if you have guns and you have, if you have bullets and if you have oil or in this case, you can sell bullets for oil or some sort of energy. You can survive a lot actually. And nuclear weapons, obviously, on top of that. If you had those three or two out of those three, you're going to be at least somebody to be reckoned with. And Kim Jong-un, the only way he's going out, the only way he's going out is if he dies of obesity related injury, you know, obesity related disease. No U.S. aircraft carrier, Delta Force team is going into North Korea to go and kidnap him. He's going to die in his own bed whenever he wants to. And that is the singular, look, it shows the singular vision of obtaining a nuclear weapon, being willing to starve your own people to destroy your own economy if you must. But in the long run, it will be the most important decision that they ever made, which is sending a very strong strategic signal to the rest of the world. That's why I think the Iran situation and Venezuela combined are actually going to prove the North Korean model out, as well as the Ukraine situation in terms of throwing all those sanctions and it just not working. Yeah. And the partnership with Russia has obviously, I mean, it's provided them with a lot of money so that they can invest in housing, in infrastructure, in factories, in even, you know, like, like resorts and, you know, leisure activities for their people. But it also has provided them with the ability to build out their military and, you know, for Russian technology to help them shore up some of the places where they were more vulnerable and less developed. I want to read a little bit of this Wall Street Journal piece to people, because I think just for a lot of Americans, this is kind of mind blowing stuff. So they talk about this Australian tour operator who visits North Korea regularly. And it says after more than 100 visits to North Korea, Rowan Beard had come to expect long waits for a taxi under the Kim Jong-un regime. But on a recent visit to Pyongyang, his first in years of vehicle arrived in minutes. His North Korean interpreter had whipped on a smartphone, opened an app called Samhung, and hailed a ride with a service akin to Uber. The two tracked the taxi's movements in real time. This was all totally new, said Beard, an Australian tour operator. My mind was blown. It goes on to say that in Pyongyang, restaurants serve up brick oven pizza and chicken wings. Diners can pay through a mobile QR code system. Chinese electric vehicles whizz through the streets. Pyongyang has new pet stores and internet gaming cafe and car dealerships selling BMWs. Kim has initiated a nationwide construction boom last year. And this is what you're referring to, Soggyr. North Korea built 10,000 new homes in Pyongyang, more than either LA or Chicago. As I mentioned before, he's also had a focus outside of Pyongyang, building out as well, trying to alleviate some of the disparity between the city and the countryside. And we can put up, you can see by satellite, this is one of the ways, since it's such a reclusive government and very difficult for foreigners to gain access, we can put C1B up on the screen. You can see the differences in the light map from 2019 to 2025. So you can see that there's been massive development, also just more reliable electricity in order for lights to be lit and to be able to get these satellite images. So this is one of the key markers that has long been used to track how things are going in sort of the side of North Korea. And according to this, they are going much better than they were in the past. New York Times had a similar report, I can put C2 up on the screen, tracking the country's development over the past number of years. They spend a lot of time in this piece, which is important as well, talking about the extreme crackdown during COVID, both locking the borders and also really cracking down on any sort of dissent, any sort of distribution of foreign media, including K-pop or any sort of South Korean dramas, any of that was met with execution. So heavy, heavy crackdown on that and on the economic, on the black markets there that a lot of people were reliant on just to be able to live. So it was, by all reports, a very difficult time, and the policies were extremely authoritarian. But now here, and not to say the policies aren't still authoritarian, but in terms of the economic life of the country, things seem to have dramatically improved. And so now as Xi visits North Korea, they're a little bit worried about North Korea becoming too close to Russia and sort of forgetting about their benefactors over in China, because North Korea is important for China in terms of their geostrategic interest of balancing on the Korean Peninsula. So this is probably the first time that a Chinese leader and a North Korean leader visit in this manner for many years, where the North Korean leader really has some leverage here in terms of the type of deals that they could strike. By all reports too, Sager, Trump has wanted to do another meeting with Kim Jong-un and try to revisit the nuclear issue. And they're like, well, we're good. Yeah, they don't care. No, thanks. We're not interested. It really does show the power of what a nuclear weapon can give you. I think the story is fascinating. Look, it's sad too, because a lot of people died. And it's like we're not trying to wash it. We're talking about a country where they execute you for listening to K-pop, right? And they have all kinds of insane internal repression whenever they want to and have now, for decades, basically an entire systematized like Gulag type system. But it does really, I think, just show the diminishing power of US sanctions and of US power. And it also, with China and Russia, they're able, or now not feuding, but both trying to bolster their status there with North Korea. It's turned itself into a real power with the ability to exchange not just goods with China. It's original client-to-client state, but actually have some leverage. And of course, it poses a huge threat to our own ally, South Korea. So it remains a very, very important geopolitical part of the globe. And to watch this happen over five years just shows how quickly the world has changed. Unimaginable story even 10 years ago. Absolutely unimaginable to talk about the streets of Pyongyang in this way. And now here we are. It's crazy. This is an I Heart podcast. Guaranteed human.