How The Iran War is Becoming a World War

0:00 On the final day of February, Donald Trump decided to take the biggest gamble

0:04 of his political career and launched the biggest war

0:06 in the Middle East has seen in decades that is

0:08 radically and quickly changing the way our entire world works.

0:13 After months of build-up, the war was launched in coordination with Israel

0:16 on the 28th of February that immediately

0:19 involved heavy Israeli air strikes on the personal

0:21 compound of Iran's 86-year-old supreme leader,

0:24 the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, killing him in a sea of fire.

0:29 Multiple other opening Israeli air strikes

0:31 immediately targeted other senior Iranian leadership

0:34 in an attempt to decapitate as much of the country's ruling elites as possible,

0:38 which up to this video's production has included the Iranian defense minister,

0:41 the head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps,

0:43 or the IRGC, and dozens of others.

0:46 Within just the first 6 days of the war's start,

0:49 the US military already carried out more than 2,000 air strikes all across

0:53 Iran that have sunk nearly the entirety

0:56 of the Iranian navy's major service vessels,

0:58 while a separate US submarine strike on an Iranian

1:01 frigate thousands of miles away from Iran off

1:03 the coast of Sri Lanka represented the first US

1:06 submarine kill since the end of the Second World War.

1:09 America's Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff has claimed

1:12 that the opening day of the war involved nearly double the number

1:15 of American munitions dropped that were dropped on Saddam Hussein's Iraq

1:18 on the first day of the Shock and Awe campaign in 2003.

1:22 While the Israeli Air Forces claim they have been actively striking

1:25 around a thousand targets all across Iran every single day as well.

1:30 A pace of attacks that have been enabled by their newly gained ability

1:32 to fly over Syria and American aerial tankers refueling them in the sky.

1:37 Western-based human rights groups have already

1:39 reported that more than a thousand civilians

1:41 across Iran have already been killed by these American and Israeli air strikes.

1:45 Military casualties beyond the supreme leader within Iran due

1:48 to this overwhelming aerial war are so far unclear,

1:51 but the Israelis have been actively attempting

1:53 to strike every single IRGC headquarters across the country,

1:57 and even bomb the building that contained the senior

1:59 leadership responsible for selecting the next supreme leader.

2:03 A clear sign that Israel's military objective, at least,

2:06 is to grind down Iran's military capabilities and cause enough shock

2:10 to the system to induce the regime into collapse by whatever means necessary.

2:15 America and Trump's objectives for having started the war,

2:17 meanwhile, remain much less clear.

2:20 Trump himself has variously urged on the Iranian people

2:23 to rise up against the power of regime in a revolution,

2:26 suggesting it's about regime change,

2:28 while also saying that he would still be willing to talk

2:30 to the regime and cut some kind of a deal.

2:33 His Secretary of State, Marco Rubio,

2:35 has variously stated that America's war aims are

2:37 to destroy Iran's ballistic missile program and its navy.

2:41 While his Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth,

2:43 has added that it's also about finishing

2:45 off all of Iran's nuclear capabilities as well.

2:48 In justifying the attacks,

2:50 Trump and his administration officials have variously stated that it was

2:53 because Iran was supposedly too close to acquiring a nuclear weapon,

2:57 despite the strikes on Iran's nuclear program

2:59 last year that it supposedly obliterated their capabilities,

3:02 to a sense that Israel was going

3:04 to strike Iran regardless of what America wanted,

3:07 and so America had to attack Iran first in order

3:09 to destroy their ability to retaliate to that Israeli attack, [music]

3:13 to a feeling by Trump himself

3:15 that the Iranians were supposedly preparing to attack first,

3:18 and America had to preemptively strike them along with the Israelis.

3:22 It's all pretty vague, but the biggest reason is simply

3:26 the cold geopolitical calculus that the Americans

3:28 and Israelis felt that the Iranian regime was at its weakest point in decades.

3:33 Iran's water resources had dried up after years of mismanagement and drought.

3:38 Its economy and currency were both in active freefall,

3:41 while a large-scale popular uprising against

3:43 the regime in January was brutally suppressed

3:46 by the regime's Basij paramilitary units after

3:49 Khamenei ordered them to begin opening fire indiscriminately.

3:53 Sensing that these protests were an existential threat against the regime,

3:57 credible human rights organizations estimate that the besieged paramilitary

4:00 units massacred a minimum of 7,000 of the protesters,

4:05 while other estimates go up to as high as 30,000 deaths or even higher.

4:09 Representing by far the bloodiest crackdown

4:12 on protesters in modern Iranian history,

4:15 Trump threatened a clear red line that if

4:17 the regime began killing protesters on mass, he would intervene militarily.

4:22 And they crossed the red line anyway,

4:24 and he initially didn't do much of anything to retaliate.

4:26 The US military wasn't really in a good position to do so at the time,

4:30 without even any aircraft carrier strike groups present in the region at all.

4:34 In fact, Trump's threats may have given the regime

4:37 a perverse incentive to reestablish their control over their own

4:41 population at any cost before the US could actually

4:44 deploy their assets back to the region to respond.

4:48 But following the ruthless put down

4:49 of the protests and sensing the regime's lingering vulnerability,

4:53 the US began rapidly concentrating their assets back into the region

4:56 to the largest scale since the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

5:00 Began threatening the regime to negotiate on surrendering its

5:03 nuclear and ballistic missile programs or face the consequences.

5:07 And then, eventually, evidently decided to simply attack to force the regime

5:11 into submission or collapse through alternative means instead.

5:15 And now the war that he started risks exploding across the entire Middle East.

5:20 It risks massive destruction to the global economy,

5:24 and it risks rapidly devolving into a quagmire

5:26 whose outcome could end up being much,

5:29 much worse than the world we knew beforehand.

5:32 The Iranians have decided to retaliate against these existential American

5:35 and Israeli attacks by basically attacking everyone else around them.

5:39 Since the war began,

5:40 the Iranians have fired hundreds of ballistic missiles and thousands

5:44 of explosive kamikaze drones into the territories of Oman,

5:47 the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, Iraq,

5:51 Syria, Jordan, Israel, Cyprus, Turkey, and Azerbaijan so far.

5:56 On the opening day of the war alone,

5:58 Iran fired 180 ballistic missiles towards Israel,

6:02 and another 250 more in the various six Gulf countries.

6:06 Five days into the war, the UAE reported that Iran had fired

6:10 more than 189 ballistic missiles into its territory,

6:14 and 941 of their cheaper explosive kamikaze drones,

6:18 93% of which they reported were successfully intercepted by their air defenses.

6:22 Hundreds of additional projectiles have since been fired

6:24 by Iran all across Kuwait, Bahrain, and Qatar.

6:28 While smaller numbers of projectiles numbering in the dozens

6:30 have also been launched into Saudi Arabia and Oman.

6:33 And while most of the projectiles fired

6:35 at these countries have also been intercepted,

6:37 a few have broken through, and damage has been inflicted.

6:40 In Dubai, the fancy Fairmont Hotel on the Palm Jumeirah,

6:44 one of the city's famous reclaimed islands,

6:46 was lit ablaze on the very first day.

6:49 Debris from an intercepted missile rained down on the exterior

6:52 of the famous Burj Al Arab luxury seven-star hotel,

6:55 sparking a fire there as well.

6:58 While more debris impacted Dubai's huge international

7:00 airport and fell across residents' own backyards.

7:04 More notably, Iranian drones have deliberately struck three

7:07 of Amazon's data centers in the region as well.

7:10 Two impacted Amazon data centers in Dubai on the opening day of the war,

7:15 while a third impacted another Amazon data center in Bahrain a few days later,

7:19 representing the first times that critical AI-related

7:22 infrastructure have been attacked or damaged during wartime.

7:25 And all of this has been a major,

7:27 major shock to Dubai and the UAE's entire economic model,

7:31 which for decades has been based on presenting itself

7:34 as a supposed oasis of stability and calm in a dangerous

7:38 but geographically critical region that links East and West

7:41 for foreign businesses to set up their regional operations in.

7:45 It has appealed as a place of residence for wealthy foreigners for decades now.

7:49 From Arabs attempting to escape the strife in the rest of the region

7:52 to Europeans dodging their taxes

7:54 to Russians and Ukrainians fleeing military service.

7:57 Dubai has received more foreign direct investment, more AI related data centers,

8:01 and is home to more regional foreign offices than

8:04 any other city in its region because of this reputation,

8:08 which has led the city to be able

8:09 to grow fabulously wealthy with its glittering skyline.

8:13 Now, all of that is in jeopardy because of this war.

8:16 The hum of hundreds of ballistic missiles

8:18 and drones flying over the city and the thunder

8:21 of interceptors blowing them up in the sky and the roar of fighter jets

8:24 along with famous hotels and landmarks

8:26 and infrastructure going up in flames has shattered

8:30 the illusion of Dubai being this oasis of calm and stability in a sea of chaos.

8:35 Not since the Second World War has a city

8:38 as globally well-connected as Dubai been attacked so heavily during wartime.

8:43 Foreign residents and companies will inevitably

8:45 question their continued role in Dubai's

8:47 future following the conclusion of this war

8:49 as political risk insurance premiums rise.

8:52 And naturally, the UAE government is doing just about

8:56 everything they can to reassure everyone that everything is

8:59 perfectly under control in order to maintain the reputation

9:03 and economic model as best they can going forward.

9:06 Because of the sheer volume of fire that Iran unleashed upon

9:10 the Gulf States in the first few days of the war,

9:12 there is a palpable fear that the Gulf States might be running dangerously low

9:17 on the expensive interceptor missiles they require

9:20 to keep shooting down any further waves of attack.

9:23 Generally, air defenses will fire at least two interceptor missiles at each

9:27 one incoming enemy missile to guarantee a kill as much as possible.

9:31 Since the start of the war,

9:33 Iran has fired more than 400 ballistic missiles at the Gulf states collectively,

9:38 which implies that they've likely fired around 800

9:41 interceptor missiles in order to block most of them.

9:43 An incredibly fast burn rate that is more than five times as many interceptors

9:48 as the United States used against Saddam's army

9:51 throughout the entirety of the first Gulf War.

9:53 Critically, because all governments treat the numbers of interceptors they

9:57 have in their stockpiles as a closely guarded state secret,

10:00 there is no reliable information on how many of them the Gulf states actually

10:04 have before the war and [music] how

10:07 low their potential remaining stockpiles are now.

10:10 They're kept a secret because if an enemy

10:12 knew exactly how many interceptors an opponent had left,

10:15 they would know exactly how many missiles to fire in order to overwhelm them.

10:19 All we know is that the Gulf states

10:21 have expended an absolutely insane number of interceptors

10:25 since the war began and replacing them will

10:27 take years worth of production and billions of dollars.

10:31 If their stockpiles are truly on the lower end like many suspect,

10:34 the Gulf states might have to begin making painful decisions on how

10:38 to use whatever they have left if Iran fires further waves of strikes,

10:42 choosing which sites to defend and which sites to leave exposed,

10:46 possibly forcing them to eventually start pressuring

10:48 the Americans to put a stop to the war lest they have to risk their cities

10:52 and major infrastructure actually getting badly damaged.

10:56 And that, in essence, is why Iran decided to radically escalate the scope

11:01 of this war in retaliation by attacking basically everyone else around them,

11:05 even if they had nothing to do

11:07 with the US and Israeli attacks in the first place.

11:10 The US military maintains very large bases and presences in Qatar,

11:13 Bahrain, the UAE, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia, which Iran has used

11:17 as their justification for the retaliatory attacks on these countries.

11:21 But none of these countries actually permitted the US military

11:24 to utilize their bases for the attacks that were launched on Iran.

11:28 And they wouldn't even allow the US military to utilize their airspaces, either.

11:32 All of the American attacks came either from their aircraft carriers operating

11:35 in the Arabian Sea and the Eastern

11:37 Mediterranean or from their air bases in Jordan,

11:40 but none from the Gulf states directly.

11:42 Iran's real aim in attacking the Gulf states the way they

11:45 have is to try and cause as much damage to the global

11:48 economy as physically possible in an attempt to force Trump

11:52 to end the war under the pressure of even further pain.

11:55 In addition to the attacks on the cities

11:57 themselves and the terror they inflicted on residents,

12:00 consider the damage the attacks have already done

12:02 to the global oil and airline industries as well.

12:05 Iranian missiles and drones have bombarded Saudi Arabia's largest oil refinery

12:09 at Ras Tanura and Qatar's supermassive LNG facility at Ras Laffan,

12:13 shutting down production at both for an uncertain amount of time.

12:17 Meanwhile, Iran has also ordered the closure of the narrow Strait of Hormuz

12:21 and threatened to light a blaze any ship that dares to pass through.

12:25 For decades, this action has been the most feared

12:27 method of escalation that Iran has been capable of.

12:30 The Strait of Hormuz is the most critical maritime choke point

12:33 in the world since virtually all of the oil exports of Iraq, Kuwait, Iran,

12:37 and most of those of Saudi Arabia and the UAE have

12:40 no other choice but to pass through it towards the world market,

12:43 as well as all of Qatar's LNG exports.

12:46 As a result, 1/3 of all the world's seaborne crude oil and 1/5 of all

12:51 the world's LNG transit through the strait

12:53 on a daily basis under normal circumstances.

12:56 And even with the majority of its large surface fleet sunk,

12:59 Iran is believed to still have thousands of naval mines

13:02 at its disposal that it could use its large number

13:05 of much smaller motorboats to litter across the strait in addition

13:09 to attacks on cargo and tanker ships with drones and missiles.

13:13 The result has been that since the war began,

13:15 the strait has remained effectively closed,

13:17 choking off a massive amount of the global supply of oil and gas

13:21 with ships too reluctant to pass through

13:23 out of both fear and skyrocketing insurance costs.

13:27 Some 3,000 merchant vessels of all different kinds found themselves

13:31 stranded by the end of the first week of the war,

13:33 representing roughly 10% of the entire global container fleet.

13:38 Iraq has already begun running out of storage

13:40 space for crude oil that would normally be

13:42 loaded up on tankers and is being [music]

13:44 forced to shut off production at multiple major fields,

13:47 slicing production by billions of barrels a day.

13:50 And the other Gulf states remain in a dangerous race against the clock

13:54 to get the strait back open again or face closures of their own.

13:57 Kuwait has warned that they also might need to shut

14:00 down production shortly and the UAE soon after that.

14:03 While Saudi Arabia has the ability to export some

14:06 of their oil along pipelines out to the Red Sea coast,

14:09 they might have to eventually shutter the majority of their production as well,

14:12 since most of it also still has to go through Hormuz.

14:16 If the strait remains closed for a week, several weeks, or several months,

14:20 the consequences of all of this held up oil and gas blocked

14:23 from the world market will grow increasingly

14:25 painful for everyone in the world to bear.

14:28 As of my writing of this script, the price of a barrel of crude oil has

14:32 already jumped up more than 14% since the war began.

14:36 While the price of a megawatt hour of natural

14:38 gas in Europe has spiked more than 70%.

14:41 While Asia, who is the most critically affected since

14:43 they purchase most of their oil from the Persian Gulf,

14:46 has been the most negatively affected of all

14:48 by skyrocketing gas and jet fuel prices.

14:51 The longer the strait remains closed, the higher global energy prices will rise.

14:56 The higher global inflation rates will rise with them.

14:58 The lower global economic growth will sag

15:01 and the greater money that Russia will earn on their own oil and gas sales

15:05 that will benefit the Kremlin's war machine in Ukraine,

15:08 that Trump is also still ostensibly trying to put a stop to.

15:12 All of this, of course, is a massive gamble on the part of the Iranians.

15:16 On the one hand, attacking the Gulf states

15:18 like this and their energy resources puts huge pressure

15:21 on the United States to stop the war in order

15:24 to avoid inflation from growing too far out of control.

15:27 But, on the other hand,

15:28 doing this directly impacts China's primary source of oil that comes

15:32 from the Persian Gulf as well and pisses them off.

15:35 While it also pushes the Gulf states further away

15:38 into the Israeli camp and also invites retaliatory strikes

15:41 on their own oil and gas infrastructure and shipping

15:43 that they overwhelmingly rely on for their economy, too.

15:47 Then, consider the damage being inflicted to the global aviation industry.

15:51 The primary airports at major regional hubs like Dubai, Abu Dhabi,

15:55 and Doha have all been impacted and damaged by the war since it began.

15:59 With missiles, drones, and aircraft all streaking through their skies,

16:02 the airspaces were completely shut down across Iran,

16:05 Iraq, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, Israel, Oman, and Yemen.

16:09 With partial airspace closures enforced in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE.

16:14 At the end of week one of the war,

16:16 more than 18,000 flights to the Middle East region had been canceled.

16:20 Most of them to the major connecting hubs of Dubai, Abu Dhabi,

16:23 and Doha that are central hubs to global

16:25 air transportation between Europe, Asia, and Africa.

16:29 A gigantic hole in the map of global

16:31 airline routes has formed across the entire width

16:33 of the Middle East from Iran to the Mediterranean

16:36 as everyone avoids the active conflict zone.

16:38 And with Russia's airspace still blocked off

16:40 to Western airlines because of the ongoing Ukraine war,

16:43 there are basically only two narrow aerial highways

16:46 that have formed to connect flights between east and west.

16:49 One across the southern Caucasus and Central Asia,

16:52 and the other across Egypt and Central Saudi Arabia.

16:55 All of them longer routes than normal that are requiring more jet

16:58 fuel to fly at the same time as oil prices are spiking, too.

17:02 As I was writing this script, it was reported that Iran fired a missile

17:06 into the territory of Azerbaijan as well,

17:08 reportedly damaging the regional airport in Azerbaijan's autonomous

17:12 Nakhchivan exclave and wounding four people in the process.

17:16 Potentially representing a challenge to this northern

17:18 alternative air corridor as well,

17:19 that might even further constrain global airlines options,

17:22 and which has led Azerbaijan to also threaten retaliation against Iran.

17:27 A dangerous prospect for Iran to consider where there are millions

17:30 of ethnic Azeris who live just across the border within Iran.

17:34 Dubai, Abu Dhabi, and Doha, the airlines that serve them like Emirates,

17:37 Etihad, and Qatar Airways are based on a super connector business model,

17:42 flying in long haul passengers from all over the world

17:44 to them so that they can connect onto their final destination,

17:47 which also works well because of their central

17:49 location at the crossroads of Europe, Asia, and Africa.

17:53 But, as a result of this model

17:54 and the current airspace closures and airport attacks,

17:57 tens of thousands of airline passengers found themselves

18:00 suddenly trapped all around the world with no

18:02 ability to leave since there were no other flights to where they wanted to go.

18:06 And the longer the war continues,

18:08 the longer these passengers might remain stuck, especially in the Gulf region.

18:13 This is particularly frustrating because the US government

18:16 has also urged all of the roughly 1 million

18:19 American citizens who reside across the Middle East

18:22 to evacuate the region as soon as they can,

18:24 which for most of them is currently impossible since

18:27 there are no available flights for them to actually take.

18:30 Official US government policy for Americans in Israel,

18:33 currently as of this video's production,

18:35 is no joke to just take a bus over to Egypt

18:38 and then take flights back to the US from there.

18:40 Beyond passengers, the war is hugely

18:43 affecting global air freight volumes as well.

18:45 Roughly 12% of the world's global air freight by volume,

18:49 including roughly half of the air freight between Europe and China,

18:52 usually passes through the Middle East,

18:54 which is all practically ground to a complete halt since the start of the war,

18:58 inevitably snarling global supply chains at the same time as Trump's

19:02 tariffs and trade wars are also doing the same thing.

19:05 More frighteningly for the Gulf states, the war also stands to challenge

19:09 the long-standing business models of their airlines

19:11 and airports as major regional hubs

19:13 for transport between Europe, Asia, and Africa.

19:16 As airlines begin looking to more stable horizons

19:19 elsewhere nearby like Turkey and maybe even Ethiopia instead.

19:23 And despite how bad things might look right now,

19:25 Iran still wields the capacity to escalate even further.

19:29 If Iran is still holding some of its best ballistic missiles

19:32 in reserve and believes it has saturated the Gulf States' air defenses,

19:35 it could choose to go for the nuclear option

19:38 and target the Gulf States' water desalination plants and infrastructure,

19:42 which if successful will have catastrophic consequences.

19:45 90% of Kuwait's drinking water is supplied by desalination,

19:49 along with 86% of Oman's, 70% of Saudi Arabia's, and 42% of the UAE's.

19:55 In a leaked cable that dates back from 2009,

19:58 US diplomats wrote that they believed in the event

20:00 of a successful Iranian attack on Saudi Arabia's desalination plants,

20:04 the capital and largest city of Riyadh,

20:06 home to around 7 million people in the middle of the desert,

20:09 who rely on desalination water piped from the Gulf

20:12 for virtually all of their water supply,

20:15 would be forced to be completely evacuated within only a week.

20:18 No doubt, the Gulf States remain deeply paranoid

20:21 about Iran's willingness to escalate to this point,

20:23 which would be existential challenges to their entire civilizations.

20:28 And if the Iranian regime senses that everything is truly lost,

20:31 they might end up becoming desperate enough to actually give it a shot.

20:35 Because of how badly their economies have already been impacted

20:38 by this war and the potential

20:39 looming existential risks to their desalination infrastructure,

20:43 there is serious talk in several of the Gulf

20:45 States of actively joining the war now

20:47 on the side of the Americans and Israelis to destroy

20:50 whatever remains of Iran's ballistic missiles and drone arsenals.

20:54 Qatari air defenses have already shot down two

20:56 Iranian bombers that were apparently flying towards their airspace.

21:00 And they, the Saudis,

21:01 and Emiratis have all said that they fully reserve the right for self-defense.

21:05 They might choose to finally open up their air

21:07 spaces to the Americans for operations or allow

21:10 their air bases to be utilized as launching

21:12 off points for further US attacks and retaliation.

21:15 But, by doing so, they would also add to the density of assets

21:18 in their air spaces that could lead to further friendly fire incidents.

21:22 Already high-effort Kuwaiti air defenses mistakenly shot down

21:25 three American fighter jets early on in the war.

21:28 And European states are also being dragged

21:30 into the war whether they want to or not.

21:33 After the Iranian missile aimed at the British

21:35 military base on Cyprus was shot down,

21:37 the British government announced that they would begin allowing the US

21:39 to access their bases to attack Iran from as well,

21:42 including from the strategic Diego Garcia base in the Indian Ocean

21:46 to conserve as a forward operating

21:47 base for America's B-2 strategic bomber fleet.

21:51 While Greece agreed to deploy two F-16s and a frigate to Cyprus as well.

21:55 Another Iranian strike in Abu Dhabi impacted a French naval base there.

21:59 While the missile that was launched at Turkey, a member of NATO,

22:02 has even led to discussions on triggering

22:03 the alliance's Article 5 defense clause,

22:06 which would commit all 32 members of the alliance into joining the war as well.

22:10 Out on the peripheries of Iran, it is also being reported now that the CIA is

22:15 helping to arm ethnic Iranian Kurdish militias just across the border

22:18 in Iraqi Kurdistan and is urging them all to march

22:22 across the border into the ethnically Kurdish majority parts of Iran.

22:25 Thousands of Iranian Kurdish militiamen have

22:28 reportedly concentrated along the Iraqi border.

22:30 While US and Israeli air strikes on Iranian

22:33 military and IRGC infrastructure across the border

22:35 have potentially opened up a path for them to advance if they choose to do so.

22:41 [music]

22:40 This plan, in my view, is a particularly reckless one on Washington's part.

22:45 It would lose to commit ground forces of their own to an invasion

22:48 of Iran that would inevitably be very bloody and very unpopular.

22:52 The administration might be currently calculating that it

22:54 would be better to utilize Kurdish and other ethnic

22:57 minority militia groups to advance into Iran instead

23:00 to hopefully remove the regime from power that way.

23:03 If the Kurdish militias are successful

23:04 in taking over swaths of Iranian Kurdistan,

23:07 then other ethnic minorities might rise up next like the Azeris in the north,

23:11 the Arabs in the southwest, and the Baluchis in the southeast.

23:15 This [music] would be exceedingly dangerous.

23:17 Iran's population of 92 million people is roughly split between 60% who

23:23 are Persians and 40% who are a variety of other ethnic minorities.

23:27 There are plenty of Persians in the country

23:30 who understandably are furious with the current

23:32 regime over the bloody massacres of protesters they

23:35 perpetrated just a few months ago in January.

23:37 But if they come to view the only

23:39 alternative as ethnic militias demanding their independence,

23:42 risking the balkanization of the country in a dark spiral

23:46 into ethnic Yugoslav-style civil war like what also happened in Iraq,

23:49 Syria, and Lebanon, they might become pushed into rather

23:52 supporting the devil they know than the devil they don't,

23:55 potentially compromising the apparent American war goal

23:58 of inspiring Persians toward overthrowing their own government.

24:02 If the killings of more than a thousand

24:03 civilians during the bombings haven't already done that.

24:06 The civilian population remains generally unarmed relative to the regime,

24:10 and they likely still fear the regime's ruthless

24:13 repression and massacres of the last uprising in January,

24:16 which has no doubt all contributed to a lack of a popular uprising yet

24:20 forming despite the American and Israeli killings

24:22 of their leadership and bombings of their military.

24:25 There are undoubtedly many Persian Iranians who

24:28 would rather see the unity of their country under a regime they despise than

24:32 the complete collapse of their country altogether.

24:35 And while Israel almost certainly prefers the balkanization and collapse of Iran

24:39 along ethnic sectarian lines like what happened in Syria and Lebanon,

24:42 since it'll keep Iran from being a challenge and threat to them,

24:45 it is also without a doubt not

24:48 in either America or the Gulf countries' best interests.

24:51 An Iran collapsing into a failed state home to 92

24:55 million people whose water resources are already basically destroyed

24:59 will generate a level of chaos and instability

25:01 that the world has its seen since the Second World War.

25:05 Iraq and Syria's collapses of a failed state

25:08 in the 2010s after the Arab Spring were cataclysmic enough.

25:12 And yet, they had fractions of Iran's population

25:15 and fractions of Iran's governmental firepower and nuclear weapons components.

25:20 The scale of terrorism, bloodshed, refugees,

25:23 and weapons proliferation spilling far beyond

25:25 Iran's borders everywhere around it would

25:28 be an unbelievably terrible situation for the Gulf states Iraq and Turkey all

25:33 to have to contend with, leading to even further and potentially worse risks

25:37 towards the oil and airline industries in the Gulf that won't simply go away.

25:41 At the same time, the Gulf states also

25:43 now fear the survival of the Iranian regime,

25:46 who could emerge as a wounded but vengeful power after the end

25:49 of this who will eventually come back to them for revenge again.

25:53 Now that they're in this fight,

25:54 the Gulf states would ideally want to see the regime removed,

25:57 but without the entire country collapsing.

26:00 In many ways, the war is already escalated dramatically.

26:04 Iran's proxy in Lebanon, Hezbollah, has already joined the war and began

26:08 attacking Israel on its northern flank again,

26:10 prompting a renewed Israeli ground invasion

26:12 into southern Lebanon again that is ongoing

26:14 as of my writing this script that has

26:16 already resulted in the deaths of hundreds more people.

26:19 Iran has confirmed that Russian intelligence

26:21 have been aiding with their military targeting,

26:24 while Ukraine is offering their assistance to the Gulf states in shooting

26:26 down Iranian made drones that they'd gained plenty of experience in themselves.

26:31 The United States military has confirmed that it's

26:33 been hastily transferring some of its anti-air assets

26:36 from South Korea to the Middle East in order

26:38 to help defend against further Iranian air attacks,

26:41 potentially leaving South Korea momentarily

26:43 exposed to aggression from North Korea.

26:45 While talks within the US military have already

26:47 come out about a potential plan to seize Iran's Kharg Island in the Persian Gulf

26:52 as the next step along the escalation ladder.

26:55 Kharg Island is a small island that's only about a third the size of Manhattan.

26:58 It's about 25 km off of the southern

27:01 Iranian coast that many gamers are already going

27:04 to be very familiar with because it was used

27:06 as a map for online play in Battlefield 3.

27:09 But in real life, it's also the single

27:12 most important economic asset that Iran controls because

27:15 the oil terminal on the island accounts

27:17 for a whopping 90% of Iran's total crude oil exports

27:21 that overwhelmingly go towards China because the waters

27:25 around Kharg Island are actually deep enough to handle

27:27 modern super large tanker ships compared with the shallower

27:31 waters around the Iranian mainland that simply can't.

27:35 An operation to seize the island would place massive,

27:37 potentially even crippling economic leverage over Iran if it

27:41 were successful because it would enable an almost complete

27:44 shutdown of all of Iran's oil exports that fund

27:47 as much as 60% of the government's operating budget.

27:51 The idea in Washington might be that if the bombing campaign alone can't

27:55 overthrow the Islamic Republic or prevent it from blocking the Strait of Hormuz,

27:59 seizing Kharg Island and eliminating the majority

28:02 of the government's funding might instead

28:04 but without having to commit all the way to a massive ground invasion of Iran.

28:09 Seizing and controlling Kharg Island would

28:11 inevitably require American boots on the ground.

28:14 But it might only require a few thousand Marines to take and hold it as opposed

28:18 to the hundreds of thousands that would be

28:20 required to actually invade and occupy the whole country.

28:24 The problem, of course, is that seizing Kharg Island is still a very

28:28 geopolitically and militarily risky move with ultimately uncertain outcomes.

28:34 The US is struggling to get its warships through the Strait

28:37 of Hormuz right now because of Iranian missile and drone strikes,

28:40 which means that an operation to seize

28:42 Kharg Island would likely have to largely be

28:44 an airborne and limited amphibious operation launched

28:47 from staging grounds at US military bases from Kuwait.

28:51 And even though the US has been able

28:52 to maintain complete aerial supremacy in this war,

28:55 Kharg Island is still close enough to the Iranian

28:58 coast to be well within range of kamikaze drones.

29:02 They can make landing there, holding it,

29:04 and resupplying it all extremely costly.

29:08 Moreover, occupying and damaging Kharg Island would likely do its

29:11 intended purpose and knock out Iranian oil from the global market,

29:15 which stands to spike the price of oil even further as the Iranians continue

29:19 to bombard everything that moves they don't

29:21 like traveling through the Strait of Hormuz.

29:23 And even if the US is successful at taking Kharg Island,

29:26 it won't stop the Iranians from continuing to blockade

29:29 the Strait of Hormuz by keeping up their attack campaign there.

29:32 And the loss of their oil revenue

29:34 might only encourage them to continue escalating,

29:36 potentially by expanding their attacks against regional

29:38 desalination infrastructure or against oil and gas pipelines,

29:43 especially the Saudi and Emirati pipelines that can

29:45 reroute some of their oil away from Hormuz.

29:48 If those desalination plants and pipelines were damaged

29:51 in a tip-for-tat exchange for the loss of Kharg Island,

29:54 Saudi Arabia and the UAE might be forced with no other choice

29:58 but to join the war directly against Iran on the side of the Americans.

30:02 And the global economy would only continue suffering even worse.

30:06 Basically, Iran still will have the cards to play up

30:09 the escalation ladder even if they do end up losing Kharg.

30:13 And there's no guarantee that the loss

30:14 of Kharg will force them to the negotiating table.

30:17 The only way to stop their blockade of Hormuz at this point is to either

30:21 negotiate on terms that the regime will deem favorable or to remove the regime.

30:26 And thus, Trump himself is now caught in a deep hole of his own digging.

30:31 If he bows to the economic pressure that Iran is generating,

30:34 he will infuriate Israel and Netanyahu, who want to see this war through to its

30:38 ultimate conclusion in removing the Iranian regime from existence.

30:42 And he will undermine the Gulf States' trust in America after

30:45 the US dragged them into a war that they didn't want,

30:48 only to leave them with a vengeful Iran still standing.

30:51 If he abandons the war now over the pain it's causing,

30:54 it will also show to the Iranian regime that their strategy of pounding the Gulf

30:59 States with attacks is a successful one

31:01 that they'll inevitably just replicate again in the future,

31:04 which gives more impetus to the Gulf States to now see

31:07 the war through to the end now that it's already been started.

31:10 But on the other side,

31:11 the longer the Trump continues the war without removing the regime,

31:15 the more the global economic fallout will rise.

31:18 The more it will likely drag on his popularity

31:20 within the United States that was already struggling beforehand,

31:23 especially since YouGov polls have shown that only

31:26 27% of Americans supported this war to begin

31:30 with, and the more that some foreign countries may be

31:32 in pressuring for a ceasefire out of their own interests.

31:36 This is a difficult time in a difficult situation,

31:39 and one of those weeks where decades happen.

31:42 And figuring out how to get out of this mess

31:43 before it gets any worse will be a truly Herculean feat.

31:47 But something that is very much figured out, on the other hand,

31:50 is what you should watch next, or at least put on your list.

31:52 And that's my Mad King series.

31:55 Mad Kings is a Nebula original,

31:57 meaning that it exists only on the streaming service that myself

32:00 and a whole bunch of other creators put together called Nebula.

32:03 It's a show that explores the darker histories

32:05 of some of modern history's most well-known dictators,

32:08 including other recent historical figures who were overthrown through US

32:12 military interventions like Libya's Muammar Gaddafi and Iraq's Uday Hussein.

32:17 Along with episodes covering the reigns of North Korea's Kim Il Sung and Kim

32:20 Jong Il that explores how they were actually able to avoid a US intervention.

32:25 And then there's also my other series on Nebula called Modern Conflicts,

32:29 which explores modern wars, battles,

32:31 and conflicts in a level of depth and detail that would never

32:34 work out on YouTube without triggering

32:36 this site's demonetization and age restriction policies.

32:39 With episodes you can watch covering the Israel-Palestinian conflict,

32:42 Hamas' attack on Israel on October 7th,

32:45 the overthrow of the Assad regime in Syria, [music]

32:47 and Israel's invasion of the Gaza Strip

32:49 that all explain the crucial backstory information

32:52 that you need in order to understand what's

32:54 currently happening in the Middle East right now.

32:56 These are my own projects,

32:58 but there's also just so much other good stuff on Nebula

33:00 from other creators right now that you can watch, too.

33:03 There's Day Past hosted by Jason from Not Just Bikes,

33:05 which explores the world through the lens of public transit down on the ground.

33:09 If you wondered whatever happened to Liz Wheeler,

33:11 she's been making her usual documentaries on Nebula

33:13 for years now instead of on YouTube.

33:16 There's Patrick Willems' latest short film, The Dinner Plan,

33:18 featuring big names like Griffin Newman and Zack Cherry.

33:22 There's Abolish Everything,

33:23 our new comedy debate premise recorded live in New York.

33:26 Scav, a docu-series produced by the Wendover

33:28 Productions and Jetlag folks tracing the incredible drama

33:31 and unfoldings of the world's largest annual

33:33 scavenger hunt hosted at the University of Chicago.

33:37 And Oldest and Newest Places by Joe Scott,

33:39 a full-length documentary exploring where the oldest and newest rocks

33:42 on the planet are and what it takes to actually visit them.

33:46 I can honestly keep going and going, but just believe me when I say with every

33:50 month that goes by, the Nebula catalog keeps getting deeper,

33:54 making becoming a subscriber even better.

33:56 But we also need you to help keep this whole cycle going.

34:00 We have a great deal running right now that when

34:02 you use my link at nebula.tv/ Real Life Lore,

34:06 or by scanning the QR code here on your screen, or by clicking the button,

34:09 you'll get a whole 50% off of an annual Nebula subscription,

34:13 which will bring the cost for you down to just

34:15 $30 for the entire year or $2.50 per month,

34:19 a small fraction of the price of either YouTube Premium or Netflix.

34:23 As other streamers keep raising their prices, this is an awesome deal.

34:27 And if you want to sign up for a lifetime subscription

34:29 to Nebula and never deal with a monthly subscription ever again.

34:33 You can get one for 40% off right now for $300 as well.

34:37 So, give us a shot and thank you so much for supporting not only my own channel,

34:42 but all of the other creators who are

34:43 building Nebula with their own awesome content as well.

34:46 And as always, thank you so much for watching.