Trump Team in CHAOS as Iran War Negotiations BACKFIRES BADLY

0:00 All right, let's start with Iran.

0:01 So, this US-Iran ceasefire is kind of holding, right?

0:04 But, there's 900 lb of highly enriched uranium still sitting in Iran.

0:07 Strait of Hormuz is closed.

0:09 Huge parts of the global economy are just paralyzed,

0:11 and there's seemingly no end in sight.

0:13 Other than that, it's good.

0:15 On Saturday, Trump canceled his negotiating team's trip to Pakistan.

0:19 We're going to listen to a clip from him explaining why.

0:21 Probably heard that we canceled the trip.

0:23 We have all the cards.

0:24 We're not going to spend 15 hours in airplanes all the time going

0:28 back and forth to be giving a document that was not good enough.

0:33 And so, we'll deal by telephone, and they can call us anytime they want.

0:39 Again, we have all the cards.

0:40 They have no military left, practically.

0:42 They have no leaders left.

0:44 We don't know who the leaders are.

0:46 Nobody knows who the leader I don't think

0:47 they know who the leaders are, very importantly.

0:49 We're not going to be traveling 15-16 hours to to have

0:52 a meeting with people that nobody ever heard of.

0:55 Traveling takes too long, too expensive.

0:57 I'm a very cost-conscious person.

0:59 They are fighting with each other.

1:01 There's tremendous infighting.

1:03 They're probably fighting for leadership in many cases.

1:07 I think they're fighting not to be the leader

1:09 because we knocked out two levels of leaders.

1:11 But, I'll deal with whoever we have to.

1:14 Interestingly, immediately when I canceled it,

1:17 within 10 minutes we got a new paper that was much better.

1:20 They offered a lot, but not enough.

1:21 I love this idea that the the cost we're all worried about is like J.D.

1:24 Vance's Ryanair ticket.

1:26 Yeah, [laughter] yeah.

1:26 To Islamabad.

1:27 Axios reported that Iran has offered a more limited deal.

1:30 Maybe that was referencing there.

1:31 They would reopen the Strait of Hormuz if

1:33 the US ends the blockade and ends the war.

1:35 It punts all the nuclear talks down the road.

1:38 That's nothing, yeah.

1:39 Feels like a problem.

1:41 I suspect this is kind of going to be

1:42 the kind of deal Trump ends up being forced to take.

1:45 But, interestingly, Secretary of State Marco Rubio

1:48 came out of his post-Iran war hiding,

1:52 wherever his witness protection program he's been in since

1:54 he went to the sticks on Capitol Hill,

1:56 and was like, "Israel made us do it." and then

1:57 ran away and then didn't speak again for a month.

1:59 Um but here he is on Fox News over the weekend

2:02 kind of on the kind of deal we just described.

2:04 Let's watch.

2:05 If what they mean by opening the straits is, yes,

2:07 the straits are open as long as you coordinate with Iran,

2:09 get our permission, or we'll blow you up, and you pay us.

2:12 That's not opening the straits.

2:14 Those are international waterways.

2:16 They cannot normalize, nor can we tolerate them trying to normalize

2:19 a system in which the Iranians decide who

2:22 gets to use an international waterway and how

2:24 much you have to pay them to use it.

2:26 The straits is basically the equivalent of an economic

2:29 nuclear weapon that they're trying to use against the world,

2:31 and they're bragging about it.

2:32 Yep.

2:32 That's exactly what's happening, Mark.

2:34 Yep.

2:34 Seems like they're doing it.

2:35 what?

2:35 They weren't doing that before the war.

2:37 Yep.

2:37 Also, it sounds like they have a lot of cards as described by Marco Rubio.

2:40 Um so, Ben, as we all know,

2:42 there's nothing in better in life than when you have like shitty plans,

2:45 like some shitty dinner, and it gets canceled.

2:47 So, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi,

2:49 he used that time he got back to fly to Russia.

2:51 He went to see Vladimir Putin.

2:52 He told Russian state media that Iran is,

2:54 quote, standing up to the world's greatest superpower,

2:56 and that the US has a request to talk because it has,

2:58 quote, not achieved a single one of their goals,

3:01 and that Iran is considering whatever they put forward.

3:03 Uh Putin said, quote, "We'll do everything that serves your interests

3:06 and the interests of all the people in the region

3:08 in order to ensure that this peace is achieved as soon as possible." Uh also,

3:12 I'm sure you caught, Ben,

3:12 the German Chancellor Friedrich Merz weighed in saying that, quote,

3:15 "An entire nation is being humiliated by the Iranian leadership,

3:18 especially by the so-called Revolutionary Guards." That nation being ours.

3:23 Yes.

3:23 Uh on Tuesday, Trump posted this weird message on Truth Social.

3:26 He said, quote, "Iran has just informed us that they are in a state of collapse.

3:29 They want us to open the Hormuz Strait as soon

3:31 as possible as they try to figure out their leadership situation,

3:34 which I believe they'll be able to do." I love

3:36 the idea of some Iranian official just calling Trump being like,

3:39 "Uncle sir, you did it.

3:40 You got us." Uh I think that message

3:42 was sent 1 minute before the stock market opened,

3:44 so congrats to everybody who had some uh futures trades uh put down.

3:48 So, Ben, um two things.

3:50 I'm curious what you make of Araqchi's trip to see Putin

3:52 and the Russian role like Russia could be trying to facilitate a deal.

3:56 Putin could be trying to sell some weapons.

3:58 Either way, he seems to be saying, "I'm here.

4:00 I'm a player in this.

4:01 Uh you got to deal with me, too." And then on the end game,

4:03 like the Trump administration seems to think that their leverage

4:07 is keeping the blockade in place long enough so that Iran

4:10 Iran runs out of storage for its oil and basically has

4:12 to shut down its wells and kill off its own industry.

4:16 Uh it's not clear how long that would take,

4:18 how much storage capacity they have left, and ultimately this is a game

4:20 of economic chicken that will crush Asian economies,

4:24 poor countries, the Iranian people,

4:26 but probably won't matter to the IRGC because

4:28 they will uh enforce their will at gunpoint.

4:31 So, I don't know.

4:31 I don't get it, but what do you make of this play?

4:34 I think it we just have to name, because sometimes our media is incapable

4:38 of doing this, what a complete abject failure,

4:41 catastrophic decision this was by Donald Trump,

4:44 and that he can't spin his way out of that.

4:46 On the eve of the war, he was talking about regime change and you know,

4:50 destruction of the nuclear program entirely

4:53 and getting Iranian people rising up.

4:56 None of these things have happened.

4:57 wanted to pick the next supreme leader.

4:59 He He said you know, Ghalibaf, the speaker of the parliament,

5:03 he Remember we were describing him as hot,

5:05 you know, just like America's hot, you know, like he's a hot option.

5:09 The The He He He clearly has decided

5:12 because he's been so humiliated and he's failed

5:15 so miserably and was led down a rabbit

5:18 hole by Bibi Netanyahu that was so destructive.

5:21 He's just trying to grasp This is a man, Donald Trump,

5:24 that like 10 days ago we did an emergency podcast

5:27 because he told the world that there was a deal

5:30 and that the straits were open forever and they were

5:32 going to get rid of the dust and all these things.

5:33 Right.

5:34 None of that was true.

5:35 Right.

5:35 And so like it's hard to even Now he's clearly decided that his narrative

5:39 is going to be their leadership is so disrupted they don't know who's IN CHARGE.

5:43 THE FOREIGN minister is the same foreign minister

5:46 that was meeting with Witkoff and Jared before the war.

5:49 And he's in the How is this guy saying that there was regime change when Abbas

5:53 Araghchi is literally the same guy showing up

5:56 representing the same regime with the supreme leader's son.

5:59 And then they start to dunk on how hurt he is.

6:02 Well, he's the supreme leader.

6:03 And and he's 30 years younger than his father was.

6:06 And then the IRGC is calling the shots.

6:08 And even little Marco has to acknowledge

6:09 that they're running the Strait of Hormuz.

6:11 So, we need to just create some space to just this is not sane.

6:16 This is failing, right?

6:17 Now, let's move on like what happens now?

6:20 I think you're right.

6:21 This is hurting everybody at this point.

6:22 Like it's hurting the United States.

6:25 Like it it it is hurting our economy.

6:27 It's hurting the Iranian people.

6:28 It's hurting the global Everybody wants out of this war.

6:32 And the question is who is just going to decide

6:35 that they can spin like Iran won this war.

6:37 Like the IRGC like like status quo ante now controls the Strait of Hormuz.

6:43 And if the big concession they have to make to end war

6:45 is opening up an international waterway that was open before the war,

6:49 like I think that they take that position.

6:51 Donald Trump is just trying to figure out how

6:52 to spin his way out of it that it's a win even if he doesn't get them to like

6:56 make a whole bunch of concessions at the negotiating table.

6:59 And if you look at Putin,

7:00 he can smell that this is a humiliation of the United States.

7:03 He's trying to insert himself into this.

7:05 He's trying to kind of play the role of peacemaker.

7:07 Trump is the crazy man who starts wars now.

7:09 He's the Russian some Russian superyacht worth like a half a billion

7:12 dollars just kind of cruise through the Strait of Hormuz this week.

7:15 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,

7:15 yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

7:16 No, IRGC left it alone.

7:17 Yeah.

7:18 Putin's flexing.

7:19 This is Putin and Xi are looking at this and they're

7:21 like this is going to have geopolitical reverberations for a generation.

7:25 The Gulf countries are splitting apart and hedging and going

7:28 to move in the direction of Russia and China.

7:30 The Iranians like they're you know,

7:33 their their closest ally in the region now controls the Strait.

7:36 That's a you know, Russia and China want that waterway open.

7:40 So, like I think they're probably telling the Iranians like hey,

7:42 can we wrap this thing up?

7:43 But at the at same time they're going to be

7:45 thinking about how can we take advantage of the fact

7:47 that the United States was just revealed to be

7:49 incapable of collapsing the Iranian regime with military power.

7:53 Yeah.

7:54 When your when your opponent shoots himself in the foot

7:55 it's a good time for a road race.

7:57 Yeah, so the Axios a couple of like data

7:59 points to back up what you were just saying.

8:00 Axios has a report out this week that Trump aides are concerned he's getting

8:03 drawn into a frozen conflict where the US will just be forced to keep

8:06 a ton of military assets in the Middle East to enforce this blockade

8:11 while the Strait of Hormuz stays closed for months and harms the global economy.

8:14 Like yeah guys, yeah that's what's happening.

8:16 Reuters had a report that the US intel agencies are studying

8:19 how Iran would respond if Trump just declared a unilateral victory.

8:23 I think what's going to happen.

8:24 Definitely what's going to happen.

8:24 And I think they want to know if like these guys will kind of walk

8:27 away and let it be or if they're going to dunk all over them.

8:29 I guess we'll find out.

8:30 Thanks for watching this excerpt to Pod Save the World,

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