"We just lit a FUSE against Iran" Something big is coming and Trump knows it | Redacted News

0:00 Well, NATO may have just took its last breath with the announcement

0:03 by President Trump that thousands of US

0:05 forces stationed in Germany would be removed.

0:07 More on that part of the story in a minute,

0:09 but first some breaking news to cover.

0:11 Over the last few hours, Iran struck multiple targets throughout the Middle East

0:15 including oil infrastructure in the United Arab Emirates.

0:19 Um and of course this is vital infrastructure to that region

0:24 and to the world and now a lot of it on fire.

0:28 Um different oil infrastructure um here in the UAE on fire.

0:32 Uh the US Navy also reportedly attacked um by Iranian ships.

0:38 Iran hit US Navy ships with a multiple missile strikes.

0:42 Now, the CENTCOM is saying that that didn't happen,

0:45 but Iran is saying yes, it absolutely did happen.

0:48 Uh here is the British news covering it.

0:50 Watch.

0:51 The state media that a US warship has turned

0:54 back from the area of the Strait of Hormuz

0:57 and that according to Iran's navy has prevented the entry

1:01 of US warships into the Hormuz area according to state television.

1:06 Going on to add that two missiles hit a US

1:11 warship uh near Jask Island after it ignored Iranian warnings.

1:16 Now, this is being reported by the Fars news agency.

1:18 That's state media in Iran.

1:20 I cannot at this moment independently verify that for you.

1:23 So, this is what we're hearing from the radio.

1:25 saying that this didn't happen,

1:26 but Iran is saying yes, it absolutely did happen.

1:28 didn't happen, but the Iranians saying it did.

1:31 So, we're at this sort of end pass now,

1:33 but uh things are deteriorating it seems quickly and Iran says,

1:38 "Look, we threatened you.

1:39 If you try to move through the Strait of Hormuz,

1:41 we will attack you." And that's uh by all assumptions,

1:44 that's exactly what happened.

1:46 Colonel Daniel Davis is the host of the Deep Dive with Dan Davis and he joins

1:50 us now to break down the NATO piece of this, uh US forces missing in Africa,

1:56 and what is happening right right now with the Strait of Hormuz.

1:59 Colonel, great to see you as always.

2:00 Welcome back to the show.

2:02 Always a delight to be here, Clayton.

2:03 Thanks for having me back.

2:05 Our pleasure as always.

2:06 I think we maybe should start with the NATO piece of this.

2:09 Um as we've been covering here for a couple of years,

2:12 it seems that NATO has been on its last legs.

2:15 Um now this move seems a straight affront to the NATO structure by moving

2:20 thousands of forces out of Germany and basically saying you're on your own.

2:25 What do you make of this latest move and is this just

2:28 the latest sort of death by a thousand cuts for NATO?

2:32 I It may It may just be the latest one a death by a thousand cuts.

2:35 It's just the next one in line, I suppose.

2:37 And And of course it's it came about like so many other things

2:40 that the Trump administration does as a knee-jerk

2:43 reaction to something because uh Friedrich Merz, the the chancellor of Germany,

2:49 uh came out and said the United States has no strategy.

2:52 They don't know what they're doing in the Iran war

2:53 just like they didn't in Afghanistan and the Iraq wars.

2:57 Uh and uh what is shock?

2:58 Trump didn't like that very much.

3:00 And so I I think within a day he, you know,

3:02 first of all said, "Oh, well, he's dumb." and whatever.

3:04 But then he said, you know,

3:05 "We're thinking about taking some troops out." And then

3:07 that seemed to pick up some some speed.

3:09 And then we said, you know, "Actually,

3:10 we're thinking about maybe taking 5,000 troops

3:12 out now." Now we'll see if that materializes.

3:15 I I've heard various reports uh uh connecting

3:18 to the Pentagon that it could take anywhere

3:19 from 6 to 12 months to actually pull that off anyway cuz it's a big issue.

3:24 I actually was part of uh two separate groups during my 6 years I

3:28 lived in Germany during my active duty days where I helped draw down some posts.

3:32 It's a long painful period uh process just to get the thing shut down

3:36 anyway unless you literally just don't care

3:38 and you just tell everybody to, you know, drive to the exits and leave.

3:41 But you have to move gear and equipment and that's got to be flown back.

3:44 It's a very, very time-consuming process anyway.

3:47 There's also request uh of the Pentagon not to take

3:51 those troops out of Germany and move them back home,

3:53 but to move them further east like into Romania or Poland,

3:57 possibly even there's some uh you know, they would love to have that.

4:00 They want to pick up whatever Germany may lose,

4:03 but I I doubt that we would do that because

4:06 I don't think that the point is to you know,

4:08 just spread them somewhere else in Europe

4:10 but to bring them back to the United States.

4:12 But it's if this was a coherent process, I'm for it.

4:17 I think that we should I think that we've

4:19 way out lived uh the life of NATO and it

4:21 it should come to a reasonable end and the nations

4:25 in Europe should be responsible for their own security.

4:27 They should pay all of it just like we pay all of our security.

4:30 Nothing special for them.

4:32 They're now this is no longer 1949 when they

4:34 were devastated from the Second World War and you know,

4:37 they didn't have the capacity.

4:38 They needed us and we were all together.

4:40 Made sense then.

4:41 I was 100% obviously I wasn't around then,

4:43 but in looking back I would have been 100% for that because

4:46 it did make sense and we all benefited from it to include us.

4:50 But not anymore.

4:51 Ever since the end of the 1992 when

4:53 the Soviet Union disbanded and then the Warsaw Pact disbanded,

4:57 the reason for NATO's existence disbanded, but we couldn't do that.

5:01 We tried to make it something it

5:02 wasn't cetera and that's led to the Russia-Ukraine

5:05 war and moving it closer to the border and all that went together.

5:07 It was a mess and it never did anything to improve our national security.

5:11 It was just a net drain and so it needs to go away.

5:14 But the problem is now how do you get that done?

5:18 And again, if it was done with a coherent plan,

5:20 that would be fine cuz they may not like it,

5:22 but if you do it in coordination and cooperation

5:24 with allies that we've been with for decades,

5:27 I think that we have an responsibility to do it the right way,

5:30 but it doesn't look like we are.

5:31 Looks like we're going to do it just

5:33 like so many other things in the Trump administration,

5:35 emotional driven and then forget about the consequences and just move out of it.

5:40 But I think to your bigger question and is NATO done?

5:43 I think it is done and I think it's going to be

5:45 replaced by something else and nobody knows what that's going to be yet,

5:48 but they're going to have to figure it out.

5:50 Now, you're talking about emotionally driven Over the weekend,

5:54 President Trump announced what he's now calling Project Freedom.

5:57 You think he would just stay away from a name

5:59 like that because it signals Orwellian mal intent.

6:03 But, what he's saying is, "Hey,

6:06 we can now" it's like a humanitarian effort to guide stuck ships through.

6:11 Before he said we would sort of rhino them through,

6:13 like we're the best, we're the greatest, we're going to guide you through.

6:15 When no one took us up on that, he's like, "Well,

6:17 then actually it's just like an a humanitarian guiding

6:21 service that we're offering." It's the same effing thing.

6:25 What How are we supposed to Like is there any difference?

6:28 He's still trying to do the same thing, just rebranding.

6:32 Well, yeah, I'll tell you, Natalie,

6:33 it's just it's even more weird than that because you you

6:36 had CENTCOM actually put out There's a lot of contradictory information.

6:42 Uh first of all, they're saying, "Well,

6:43 we're we're not escorting anything through there.

6:46 Let's be clear on that.

6:47 We don't have the ships for that." Uh but then they

6:49 separately put out this a post on X where they said,

6:53 "In support of this operation,

6:55 we have" I forget the number of ships that they have out there.

6:58 There's like a hundred aircraft, uh a bunch of other things that they said

7:01 was some other I can't remember the third category.

7:04 All this is in support of President's move there to get ships through, etc.

7:09 And then we then we want to go and we want

7:11 to brag and say that we got two American flagged vessels out.

7:13 So, one international, there were two.

7:16 That's disputed, too, because we claim two American flagged vessels came out.

7:21 The Iranian side says no vessels came out.

7:23 I have Maybe it's been out there,

7:24 I haven't seen in the last couple of hours, but earlier today when I looked,

7:27 I didn't see any independent confirmation like where people can track,

7:30 you know, a ship's tracker as it goes through.

7:32 Maybe Maybe it's true, I don't know.

7:34 But then also CENTCOM said that separately

7:37 or in different order that two American warships went through

7:43 the Strait of Hormuz and then allegedly backed out

7:46 of it and we're now in the Arabian Gulf,

7:49 but then that they didn't escort these tankers through.

7:52 So, it's like it's it's not clear what happened.

7:54 But no matter what you want to say,

7:56 look, there were two ships that allegedly went through.

8:00 There's about 2,000 of those ships of various

8:03 kinds that are stuck inside the Persian Gulf.

8:06 So, if you got two out, great.

8:07 Those are two American flag.

8:09 They're not anybody else's.

8:10 And there was at least one South Korean tanker that was attacked and a report

8:13 of one other by Iran because they tried to get out without their permission,

8:17 demonstrating that the Strait is still closed and that it's

8:21 still in the control of the Iranian side.

8:23 So, one has to wonder and this was by Barak Ravid in Axios

8:26 early this morning that there are those in the administration that are saying,

8:30 "We just want to set up something so that Iran

8:32 will then attack these ships and then we can say, 'Aha, see, they did it.

8:36 They were the ones who broke and now we

8:37 have to go and respond.'" That's in the news today.

8:40 That's not any sources that I have.

8:42 That's just published in Axios.

8:44 So, you have to look at what's actually happened and not just

8:47 what's said because that's the one thing that might make some sense.

8:50 We'll see what happens later on, though.

8:52 Yeah, using it as sort of a false flag.

8:54 You know, here we go.

8:55 See, we told you these ships are going to be going to be attacked.

8:59 Is it a false flag when you when you pick the flag up and go,

9:02 "Here's the flag I'm going to put.

9:03 It's false." You know what I mean?

9:06 It's really bad the way we're doing it, but I get your point.

9:09 Also, the oil infrastructure, you know, Iran Well,

9:12 we have this and you talk about CENTCOM,

9:14 this back and forth today with with CENTCOM saying,

9:16 "No, they you know, US Navy ship destroyer whatever not hit." Iran says,

9:21 "Yes, we did hit it.

9:22 Two two missiles." And they it was forced then to leave as a result and retreat.

9:27 Of course, in the United States media,

9:28 you probably won't hear anything about it.

9:30 People are sharing all sorts of old videos, fake videos, whatever.

9:34 So, don't fall for those videos that are

9:36 being shared online about this ship being attacked.

9:38 One of them I think was even from like video game footage.

9:41 So, I don't know, it's crazy.

9:43 The the lies that just you know, the fog of war.

9:46 Then that and then the attacks on oil infrastructure in the Gulf.

9:49 I mean, just at a high level it seems like this is escalating.

9:53 I thought we were I thought we were getting off of this.

9:56 Yeah, and the problem is and going back

9:58 to that Axios piece that President Trump is just

10:00 getting impatient and and that he's he's tired

10:03 of the situation of no war is it a war?

10:06 Is it a Is it a ceasefire?

10:07 Is it a pause?

10:08 What is it?

10:09 I want it to be solved.

10:10 So, he's trying apparently some kind of forcing

10:12 mechanism at least according to the reporting.

10:15 He initially actually wanted the Navy

10:17 to physically escort people through there but man,

10:20 hopefully and I presume it and the article

10:22 didn't address this but presumably either the Navy said,

10:25 "That's not going to work, sir.

10:27 Then we're going to get our ships hit and we

10:29 won't be able to defend with with that close range logistically.

10:34 There's 2,000 ships in there.

10:36 Are you going to like send American vessels?

10:38 Remember the last one that we did there in the Reagan administration

10:40 and it was in place for 9 months and we had more or less

10:44 something close to double or triple the number

10:46 of ships available for that and even

10:48 that was on select when when we weren't at war with Iran.

10:51 This time we are so it's radically different but you don't have

10:54 a fraction of the number of ships to do that and that wouldn't

10:57 work anyway because that's not how the Gulf is closed

11:00 and you'd just just be inevitable until we finally got them hit.

11:02 So, that's not a solution.

11:04 The only thing that is for is whether it's false flag or stupidity,

11:08 that's how you get things escalated because at some point you're

11:11 going to put a ship in there and it's going to get

11:13 hit and then of course we we have to respond then

11:16 and we're not going to let a warship get hit and do nothing.

11:18 I again it just really looks like

11:20 that somebody is hoping that happens so that they

11:23 can go back to fighting so that they

11:25 can prove there's no military solution then either.

11:29 All that's going to do is get

11:30 more oil infrastructure burned up throughout the region.

11:33 It's going to drive oil 250 or higher probably because now you're physically

11:38 taking the potential for even making more oil back on the international market,

11:44 pushing it back into 2027 probably in a best case scenario

11:47 because it'll take forever to get a lot of this stuff rebuilt.

11:50 And right now we're we're in a position to where within weeks we could be

11:55 seeing 150 175 dollar oil and you can't hide that with a paper price anymore.

12:00 Uh because of the the problems already built

12:03 in and naturally you can get the fertilizer,

12:04 the food production, the helium, aluminum, all kinds of stuff already.

12:09 So we have got we are really under the gun.

12:11 We have a very short period of time to get this fixed and off the table very

12:15 soon or the price is going to be

12:17 more than just a recession but maybe a depression.

12:21 Wow.

12:21 I want to ask you about Operation

12:23 African Lion because there are two missing soldiers, search and rescue underway.

12:27 It just feels like one of those times when

12:29 you're resisting something and you keep going towards it.

12:33 Like there's continuous egg on the face of the US military.

12:37 What do you make of this and what it costs us reputationally?

12:43 Listen, I I mean I've been asking this for years even when I was on active duty.

12:46 Why are we in Africa at all?

12:49 Why do we have and so many things have happened bad.

12:52 You know, we've had troops that have been killed there before.

12:56 Uh on whose benefit are we there for?

12:58 How is this an American national interest?

13:01 And and these kinds of things keep

13:02 periodically happening because all you can have

13:05 when you get into the hornet's nest is you're going to get stung periodically.

13:09 That's just how it works.

13:11 And I just for the life of me don't

13:12 understand why we want to keep going in there.

13:14 I mean we sent, you know,

13:15 the President Trump fired some missiles into Nigeria a few months back,

13:19 you know, because allegedly there was some you know,

13:21 attacks on some Christian churches there.

13:23 That that was legit.

13:23 There was.

13:24 But what was the point of it?

13:26 What are you taking to cuz those that was

13:28 basically something close to a civil war in Nigeria.

13:31 There are two big warring factions there.

13:33 Uh there's been a lot of Christians that were attacking

13:35 the Muslim groups and Muslim groups that were attacking the Christian groups.

13:38 It was more cultural than it was even religion.

13:41 They just happened to be in those religions,

13:42 but they were definitely going after each one of them.

13:44 And now that we went in there and threw a few cruise missiles in and then what?

13:48 What What What did that solve?

13:50 Did that solve the war itself?

13:52 Did that solve any of the fundamentals that were involved with it?

13:54 Or it is just kind of like, well,

13:56 that's what I did today and now I'm going to move

13:57 on cuz I got bored and I went off over here.

13:59 I mean, that's kind of how President Trump operates.

14:02 And and then we sent some troops in after

14:04 that to do what was never fully explained.

14:07 And this is just endemic across the whole African continent is

14:11 that we keep doing stuff like this that's just little bits and pieces.

14:14 And unfortunately, this is not just Trump.

14:16 This is all the administrations going back a long way.

14:19 I think Bush did some Obama did some certainly Biden did.

14:24 They're just We just have to have our fingers everywhere towards no

14:28 evident benefit to our country or even to our allies for that matter.

14:31 Right.

14:32 And it's it's not just a little bit here, a little bit there.

14:34 In Somalia, we've launched our 61st air strike.

14:38 Anti-war is keeping track of that and 61 air strikes

14:43 in Somalia since calendar year 2026 and we're in May.

14:48 What are we accomplishing?

14:49 What is that doing?

14:50 That is insane.

14:52 I mean, this goes back to the Clinton administration for crying out loud.

14:56 Nothing has ever been solved here.

14:57 What do we think is going to get solved this time?

14:59 I I mean, this this is just part of the sick mind.

15:02 I'm going to just going to call it what it is of many people.

15:05 This is not just a ding on Trump cuz this predates him by a large measure,

15:09 but it's those in the Pentagon and whoever is calling

15:12 the shots here and I don't even know for sure,

15:14 both policy makers and and military leaders,

15:17 they just have this obsession to doing something cuz we can.

15:20 And and you can see I mean,

15:22 I I had not seen those numbers for Somalia this year.

15:24 I've been obviously focused on all these the bigger wars here.

15:27 Uh and I have to admit that shocks me.

15:29 I did not know it was that many uh because

15:32 of it's been so many years of just languishing doing nothing.

15:35 And I have argued in the past about why are we in Somalia at all?

15:38 Because all you do is you can hit targets.

15:41 It's like Afghanistan.

15:42 All the time that I was in Afghanistan and was

15:44 studying it in the years in between my two combat deployments,

15:48 it was evident that you could have a combat operation

15:52 every other day and you could kill a quote bad guy.

15:54 You could find somebody to consider a bad guy

15:56 and you could have a tactical operation and we have

16:00 guys on the ground who are really good at what

16:01 they do and they can take out this target.

16:03 They can kill that person.

16:04 They can blow this thing up.

16:06 And what?

16:07 What did it accomplish?

16:09 Nothing except servicing a target and keeping

16:13 alive the flow of needing more money and more deployments and and of course

16:18 all these guys naturally they always do this.

16:20 It just drives me crazy.

16:22 All these like leaders, then they'll publish all this stuff about

16:24 look at all this thing we accomplished.

16:26 We attacked all this list of things and we killed all

16:28 these bad people and and then they'll show some pictures some happy

16:31 pictures of the Somalia side that we're whose side we're taking

16:34 and we're doing all this great stuff and they've even proved all this.

16:37 It's all fiction.

16:38 It's just all it doesn't mean anything.

16:41 One either the good stuff or the bad stuff cuz nothing changes.

16:44 And it's not going to because you can't solve

16:46 those problems with bombs and missiles and deployed ground troops.

16:50 All you can do is periodically get some killed uh and have some other things

16:54 that happen and that we Who knows what's

16:56 happened to these current two you're talking about,

16:58 but it's just the next two in line and it'll

17:00 continue happening until we withdraw those troops and let

17:04 the people of Somalia figure it out without

17:06 our keeping trying to keep a finger on the scale.

17:09 Mhm.

17:10 All right.

17:11 It's a world gone mad.

17:12 That's what I feel right now.

17:14 You know, the discussion right now about energy lockdowns,

17:17 number of experts coming forward saying we we're heading there.

17:20 We're heading for energy lockdowns, Colonel,

17:22 and it's like I feel like, you know,

17:24 you had Scott Benson on TV just a few minutes ago saying,

17:27 you know, short-term pain right now for everything that we're dealing with.

17:31 Uh gas prices will continue to go up.

17:33 It's it's you know, you and you're

17:34 starting to see some of these lockdown stocks.

17:36 This is concerning to me.

17:38 Things like Zoom starting to turn a corner in a big way

17:43 and all these investors are like flooding into some of these lockdown stocks.

17:46 Like I'm just watching the money flowing right now and it's terrifying.

17:49 It's terrifying.

17:50 $1.5 trillion for a military budget scattered around the world right now.

17:55 Lockdown stocks are starting to pop back.

17:57 I don't know.

17:57 I just you know, I don't want to go with emotion,

18:00 but I just feel like something something

18:02 big is coming and it's really really troubling.

18:04 this is not a conspiracy.

18:05 I mean, you just just look at the fundamentals,

18:08 the economic fundamentals, energy fundamentals.

18:11 I mean, I mean, unlike like the COVID time where you had government mandates

18:14 and this and that, maybe we'll get there some of this, but you know,

18:17 this this won't even be like that.

18:19 You don't even hardly have to have any of those if there's not fuel,

18:22 you're not driving anywhere.

18:24 If if there's not enough diesel,

18:26 you're not going to be able to do a sufficient amounts of farming.

18:29 If there's not the fertilizer,

18:30 you're not going to be able to grow sufficient amount of food

18:32 and we're going to be in a real world of hurt.

18:35 And right now our actions like what it looks to me

18:38 today that we may have lit the fuse back and I mean,

18:41 who knows as soon as tonight, tomorrow night, later this week,

18:44 we could be back into the hot phase

18:45 of this which is going to guarantee this energy is going

18:50 to this energy crisis will extend into next year

18:52 and this is going to be the biggest one in our history,

18:55 bigger than the 1970 1973 strikes

18:58 that have happened uh because they were short-term

19:00 and they were relatively small percentage of the oil that was off the market.

19:04 We're already beyond that and when you have these alleged smart

19:07 people like Scott Bessent saying this, he's not a dumb man.

19:10 So, that that almost guarantees he's lying because

19:13 he can't be can't be this stupid that he believes what he said that this is just

19:18 a short-term and everything is going to turn around.

19:20 Anyone with any kind of knowledge about

19:23 the system understands that that's not true,

19:25 that it's already baked into real trouble right now

19:28 and it should send off all the alarm bells to do

19:30 whatever you have to do to get this stupid war

19:33 of choice off the table now to limit the damage,

19:36 but instead it looks like they're ready to ramp up to additional damage,

19:40 which is going to make the pain later this fall, even into the summer, but man,

19:44 when you start getting into the fall and into the winter

19:46 and into the first part of next year, I mean,

19:48 we're going to be in a real world of hurt here and there's no obvious

19:51 answers to how do how do you

19:53 mitigate this further absent finding a diplomatic solution,

19:57 which will hate, but is much better than trying one more time with military,

20:02 which will bake in and and physically destroy infrastructure,

20:06 making it take now we're in the years with an S of trying

20:09 to get out of this and it's it's going to be a problem.

20:13 Yeah, I think lit the fuse is the right phrase to be sure.

20:15 Colonel Davis, always great to see you.

20:17 Host of the Deep Dive, check him out, of course,

20:19 on YouTube on X and follow him all places.

20:22 We love We love having the Colonel on.

20:23 Thank you so much.

20:24 Great to see you, Dan.

20:25 Always my pleasure.

20:26 Thanks, you guys.

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