The Iran Con: War Threats, Market Swings, Trump is Trapped | Kharg Island Reality

G'day legends. I hope you are having a fantastic day and so far a brilliant end to your week. Today we're going to be talking about Iran. We're going to look at Trump's announcement that the war is over, that we are on the absolute precipice, we have an imminent negotiated settlement, or a memorandum of understanding. I know that this is different from a negotiation but once again saying that the war is done, that we have won, everything has been destroyed. But how many times have we heard that and how many times have we seen strikes at the beginning of the week and then announcements of victory at the end of the week. And we see of course the market react both positively and negatively to that and if you've got information that this is coming well you can make a lot of money. So yesterday I did say that today I was going to speak on Ukraine and I have limited time today, not enough time, to actually put together that video. There's a lot happening in Ukraine. Of course those mid-range Ukrainian strikes, strikes on bridges connecting Crimea and mainland Ukraine, of course Konstantinivka, other areas really in dire straits, other offensives, rumored limited geolocations. But today I just don't have the time. That video will be coming tomorrow. So today's video we need to go over what Trump has been saying. Talking about taking Karg Island, we know that this has been rumored, it's been spoken about. Is it militarily doable? Maybe. Is it holdable? Well, seas and holding terrain, this is different. We'll talk about that, the consequences, the considerations. And then on that diplomatic front, the announcement once again that right on the edge, the bleeding edge of an imminent settlement. But how many times have we heard this? We'll go over that and where there's different levers being pulled. Levers in Washington, levers in Megha, levers in Israel, levers in Iran. And try to read between the lines. Also look at tactically what it would take to take Karg Island, Qeshm Island, of course, the iron sitting in Strait of Hormuz. And we will talk about that. So Trump's truth social, of course, truth social, well, we'll say maybe insider trading social. But he said this, the United States will be hitting Iran, whose Navy, Air Force, radar, anti-aircraft and other forms of defense together with most of its offensive capability are gone. So this was last night. He's walked back on this since. But they're going to hit them very hard, all this offensive capability is gone. Don't think about ships and Apache being struck, missiles, drones and F-14 and MiG-29 in the sky. It's all gone. But we've heard that since the first days of the war, that it's all gone a thousand percent over and over and over. At some point in the not too distant future, we'll be taking Karg Island and other oil infrastructure points and will assume total control of their oil gas markets, much like we have done with Venezuela, which is working out brilliantly for both Venezuela and the United States. And once again, what we will see is conditional application of law, ethic, morals, customs, traditions, whatever, when we see rhetoric like this coming from the US or even softer rhetoric coming from other parties. And if we're going to take this and steal all of your oil. Now, we'll come back to that slide. But if you don't know what we're talking about, wherever you be, but of course we have the Gulf of Oman. We come through the Strait of Hormuz, which has become very, very famous into the Persian Gulf. And right up here, this is where we have Karg Island, where a lot of Iran's oil, not all of it, but a vast amount of it comes under the sea to here, offloaded onto ships. And then of course, out onto areas around the world. One of the biggest clients of that oil, of course, being China. And for a long time we've spoken about what would it take to actually occupy Karg Island. And what I've said is America does have the capacity to seize this island and it will be at some cost. Holding it is a very different story because of the location, the proximity to Iran actual. So if we get this measuring tape right here and draw out, we're talking maybe 30 kilometers. So you're going to be in range of a lot of drones, missiles, underwater and on surface drones as well, which we know Iran operate a lot of. Not only getting to, not only, sorry, once you want to seize it or occupying it, is that going to be very difficult? It's getting the amount of forces there. Are you coming by boat and you've got to come from Kuwait or Saudi Arabia? How will they feel about that? Come from helicopter, that's a long range. And helicopters, as we've seen with the Apache, these are very vulnerable. And Apache is far less vulnerable than something like a Blackhawk or a Chuk, a Chinook. And if you're going to have a more amphibious landing, well, you're going to have to move these warships through this very narrow strait. And then you've got to get them back out at some point. And then where are you landing? Once you've landed on here, where are you going? Of course, you can see all the oil facilities. And if you come down on the 3D map, you can see you're going to be getting struck from Karkho Island as well, and likely from the mainland. And the mainland is flat off the shore and then very quickly steps into very large mountainous regions. And this is what I've said about Kashem Island, this one over here, right in the strait and the other islands around it, is when there's talk of, we need to occupy this island, remove Iran's toll, and that will give us control over the strait. Now, I agree with that in theory, but in practice, well, if you land on here, and let's just say then you've seized this island, well, you're going to be getting hit by all sorts of things from mortars, close range, through to drones, et cetera, from anywhere in these then mountain regions. And what's going to occur is you're going to have creep. So you're going to go, yep, okay, we've got the island. Okay, ----, we're getting hit from the shoreline. We need to take the shoreline. And then it will be impossible to take the shoreline without pushing into the mountains. And next thing, and next thing, and next thing, you're on and on and on. But Trump wanting to take that oil, basically that oil island. But what we are seeing is a return to the law of the jungle. Why do I use that specific phrasing? Well, that is the phrasing that China's foreign minister, Wang Jie, used at the Munich Security Conference. We can't return to the law of the jungle. Talk about that just might is right, that it is back to just hard realism, that of just power. Forget laws, and customs, and rules, that it is just power, that we can't have a return to this. And that's where you have the friction in China, in Beijing, in the party, between the legalists, more of the realists, and the Confucianists, more of the liberals. And this is what we see, is this is getting then pursued by America in an attempt to maintain the power and their influence, the status quo that they have had since the fall of the Soviet Union. This is where if we take what Wang Jie, the foreign minister, said about we can't return to the law of the jungle, then you take what Xi Jinping said recently meeting with Trump about the Thucydides trap, to try and maintain your status as there is a rise in power, that you end up in conflict, and that you can't have no rules, no laws, and it's just jungle law. This is where Mearsheim would push back and go, well, there are no laws, the world is anarchic, and realism is just everything on the offensive. Everyone's trying to increase their power. That is true, but when we have market trade and a global economy and everything's intertwined, well, a lot of this matters a lot, especially when we talk about responsibility and reliability of how states are seen in that global economy. And this is where Trump, he's ushering in a new power or force-driven real politic, but his own sort of meagerism here, whilst he is then simultaneously sanctioning, tariffing, and fighting any state who may even be pursuing less aggressive actions or may pose any risk, or someone who's not just completely bending over to the US will just impose this, even if they're friends, and all of this is to try and maintain the US power. But what I'll say is it seems the more and more and more he's trying to save this power, the more it is actually eroding from where I am standing. What we've seen though, this language change for those neocons, is at one point at least this was hidden, it was obfuscated behind liberal rhetoric, or at least just more clean rhetoric about, oh, this is spreading democracy, we're freeing the people. And this is what the Iran war started with. We are removing a theocratic dictator, we're changing the regime, we're freeing 90 million people, this, that, and now it's just changed and descended and eroded into, we're just going to steal your stuff. And that's what Venezuela moved into. And now, and we've seen that Trump started that and thought, well, my ideologue followers, they don't actually mind if I just say, we're just going to bomb the ---- out of them. We're going to devastate, we're going to end the state. A civilization will end, to quote Trump. They don't mind if they just say that. If anything, they don't actually want that. If anything, your Laura Loomy, your Mark Levine, your Netanyahu, they want far more action than we are seeing. They think that end of the civilization is maybe the starting point. And that's that change. It used to be obfuscated behind this rhetoric. Now, it is just flat out real, yep, we're taking everything. And you'll occasionally see, trying, oh, it's in self-defense, but that's just gone out the window because to claim self-defense here, well, it's a bit rich, isn't it? But this is the drones we've been talking about. This was a photograph from a couple of months back said to be on Carlisle by someone in the IRGC. And what you can see is a fiber optic drone here in front of the AK. And of course, what we have seen is these drones are incredibly deadly. And what you would think is that your proxy would have less amount of force on these systems than you do actual, like an export variant. And this is what we're seeing. This is Hezbollah in then Southern Lebanon. And Northern Israel has been creating a massive problem for the Israeli forces occupying into Southern Lebanon. These FPVs, especially the fiber optics, have been striking everything from close calls with Blackhawks to troops, to command centers, to Macavas, to IFVs. It's been a hell of a lot of it, even Iron Dome systems. Now, anyone could have predicted this looking at the war in Ukraine and how effective and efficient and lethal those systems are, but it seemingly was wholly unprepared. And as I said, with that cargo, I have no doubt that America could, with massive aerial munitions, standoff munitions and special forces, take Karg Island. Beyond that, well, this is where you have considerations and consequences. Any Kazak is going to be very difficult. It may be very, very costly, but holding the island, that's going to be a huge consideration also. And this is where it goes then from the tactical to the political is, is it worth taking for a photo opportunity there and destroying it with forces there when you could destroy it from the air? Why then forces there? And does that political grandstand actually outweigh just destroying it, if that's what you want to do? But if you do then just destroy it, what is stopping Iran just going balls to the wall on everything? Also, this is where China gets a hell of a lot of its oil. They do not want that tap being turned off and it will involve them more directly. Well, if you think that that is a consideration, well, surprise, surprise, Trump has walked back on this. He's tweeted a few hours following this, based on the fact that discussions with the Islamic Republic of Iran have been brought to the highest level of Iranian leadership and approved. I have, the President of the United States of America, cancelled and scheduled strikes and bombings against Iran this evening. So they've cancelled the scheduled strikes. Discussions and final points have been in both concept and great detail approved, approved by all parties involved, including United States, Israel, Saudi, other states involved here, including Turkey. The naval blockade will remain in force and effect until this transaction is finalized. Time and place of the signing will be announced shortly. What is worth mentioning here is Trump has claimed an imminent deal 38 times. Declaration of victories, of winning, of obliteration, of destruction, of peace, that many times. And it comes like clockwork. You could set your time to it. What we see is Thursday evening, Friday morning, when this came out, we see in the days previously, everything's, we're going to take out everything. And then when the markets are going to close over the weekend, well, we do see that suddenly a peace is imminent. And this can happen in the beginning of the week, bombing, end of the week. But again, if you're in on it, you're in on it. Do I have any confidence that this time is more legitimate than the other times? No, I don't. Maybe it will be. But at this point in time, it seems like the boy who cries wolf. And what we see is Trump's ceasefire tends to be, you ceasefire and we will continue firing. And that's, excuse me, nothing more than a euphemism for then a reduced pace reloading. And what we see then is that ceasefire to reload, to just have a bit of a pause, slow down. And then the fabrication of ordeal is about to be signed or has been signed. A great deal, the greatest deal has ever been. I am the best dealmaker. I know the most about everything that has been said. Meanwhile, all this market manipulation is moving on in the background, but the SEC absolutely silent sitting on their hands. Well, at this point in time, it's impossible not to have an inkling that the SEC must be in on this. If you or I did it with $5,000, we'd be fined or go to jail. You do it with a billion dollars. No one blinks an eye. And I'm beginning to think that my mate on day one of this was right when he messaged me and said, Willie, this has nothing to do with nuclear material, missiles, regime change, the people, nothing to do with this. It's all to manipulate the market to try and make a ---- load of money and then attempt to then increase and bolster the American oligarch class, try and reduce some debt. And then he said, you should invest in, gave a ticker number. And at this point, I wish that I did because so far, well, it seems he's been correct. Now, this is where the rubber will meet the road at some point. The SEC is a useless embarrassment. The growing American oligarchy, they seem to not understand that the very system that is enriching them beyond belief is the system whose credibility is also being shattered. Although if you're a billionaire, I don't think that you believe it really matters because you can diversify outside of the USD or into gold, into farmland, into data centers to replace the class and further enrich the elites to have cheaper labor. Again, you know that I'm very against any aerial strategic strike targetings, but if someone said we're going to start striking data centers, I'm probably in for that. That's how much of a danger I see that it really is. I heard someone the other day say, what's the effect of, with new technology, we're promised that it will do the hard labor and we will be the ones creating art. Well, now it seems like it's AI creating art and us back in the blue collar workers and the elites benefiting off this with Musk about to become a trillionaire. Of course, oh, SpaceX is a rocket company. No, it's obfuscated behind glistening images of Mars and rockets and it's just a AI company through X, AI and some other ---- he will talk up. But all this trading is just a club that you and I are not in. And when you look at the files with which all these guys tend to be involved in, obviously a blackmailing operation. It's a club that we can't be in because we have morals and that we aren't compromised pulling the strings to drop bombs. So this is what Trump is saying, right on the precipice of negotiation. Well, Prime Minister of Israel, of course, Netanyahu has said this. President Trump spoke this evening with Netanyahu regarding the emerging memorandum of understanding, the MOU with Iran to enter into negotiations. Even though Israel is not a party to the memorandum of understanding, if America is a party, Israel is a party, the Prime Minister expressed his appreciation of Trump's commitment that the final agreement and the conclusion of negotiations will include removal of enriched material, the dismantling of enriched infrastructure, limits on missile production, and the cessation of Iran's support for its terrorist proxies in the region. Now there's a lot in this. What I've said firstly is even if Iran got wiped off the map, those groups, your H-guys in Gaza, your H-guys in Lebanon, even your H-guys down in Yemen, they will still exist. It will have a decrease in their lethality, but I don't know how much it will actually be. They have other networks to gain money and things now like weapons, it's actually less black market than it used to be. Because of drones, you can just order that ---- online and it's basically impossible to stop. So that's not just going to collapse them straight away, at least from what I am seeing. Now, what I see that this is, where I see Israel acting in this, and even Trump to agree, is just poison pill diplomacy. Netanyahu, the remaining mega cultists such as Mark Levine, Luma, Shapiro, whatever, who I don't see as influencers, I see them as foreign actors, they will make demands that they know that Iran will not agree with on purpose to draw the US back into a hot war because their goals have not been reached. And ending like it is looking at the moment, if Trump was just to walk away, would actually end up in a worse position in time for Israel in the Middle East. And you need to understand, you need to look and go, why at this point in time would Iran agree to limit their missiles, limit their underground facilities, or destroy the underground facilities, given exactly the actions that have been placed and they're sitting there going, and this is the reason why. Then we have this from Iran's parliament speaker and chief negotiator, wrong strategies and impulsive decisions will reset the entire board for the worse, explode any energy infrastructure and markets and create an endless quagmire that you'll be stuck in for years. You will see a different Iran. And this is hard to get a reading exactly what he's meaning here. But if you go after our infrastructure, cargine, you explode this, you destroy the markets, you will be stuck in this for years. And it does appear that if America doesn't find a way to jettison themselves from this, put Netanyahu and Israel and the on some sort of leash or sell a victory that this will be going for years. Now, the reports are that a draft was finalized with the Iranians and a Qatari delegation in Tehran in the hours prior and the day prior to then the renewed US bombing following the downing of that Apache helicopter, which we've got very few details on yet. And final slide from Axios and we'll talk a bit in this. Trump has claimed agreement was close multiple times before, not multiple times, as far as I'm aware, 38 times. He's let us claim that there's been no final decision. However, sources briefed on the talks, Axios, that key gaps are narrowed during the talks with Iranian officials and Qatari mediators on Wednesday. And then we saw targeting beyond that. Iran's Fars news agency denied any deal had been agreed, but there's a possibility Tehran would consider signing off. Trump told reporters in the Oval Office that his understanding was the Iranian Supreme Leader, Khamenei, had given his approval. Can you see how no one's speaking about regime change anymore? It's just old Khamenei now with young Khamenei in power. What? Okay. So no one's even speaking to that anymore. But that is still crucial, I believe, to Israel's center goal here. They want Iran destroyed. So there's no, not only intent, but then there's no capability either. It's not just intent. They want to have no capability. And the best way to do that is just have an absolute destroyed Libya-style state. While the MOU under negotiation is intended to open the strait and lift U.S. blockade, any agreements on Iran's nuclear program lifting U.S. sanctions would require further negotiation. And what Scott Assent, the U.S. treasurer, has said today is, any damage done by Iran is going to be deducted off their frozen assets, and America is frozen, sanctioned. I would say, I believe Iran never thinks they're going to get this back. But if you start dipping into that, and they go, well, we do want it back, and that's our point of negotiation, you may end up footing the bill. This was always the danger with the cessation of the frozen Russian assets. If then there's negotiated settlement between Ukraine and Russia, and Russia goes, yep, okay, we will freeze it here, but we want those assets back, and you've spent them to send arms, your taxpayer is going to be footing the bill on that, let alone the legal ramifications and the credibility ramifications upon the euro. Farz, a semi-official news agency affiliated with the IRGC, quoted an informed source close to Iran's negotiating team saying there was no text for a preliminary memorandum of understanding with the U.S. that has been approved. But later report claimed the U.S. had accepted Iran's foreign ministry spokesman said an agreement hasn't been finalized. Most of the text has already been finalized, but the Americans keep changing their positions. Or they keep also bombing stuff that we're getting somewhere, but everything keeps changing. Goalposts have been shifting. And what have we seen? Look at the first interviews or press conferences with guys like Hegseth and Trump and Vance and Rubio, and these goalposts are shifting bloody everywhere. Iran has demonstrated that it does not compromise on what is defined as red lines. Iran has not yet reached a final decision regarding an agreement. So my read on this is, again, it's once again Trump looking in the mirror going, I'm negotiating. There's definitely talks happening, but it seems there's an intractable gulf between them and that there keeps being a shift on position or strikes. One who I'll say's position I don't believe has changed at all from day one is Israel's position. Israel's position I think has been set in stone that this state must be basically eliminated off the chessboard of the Middle East. Regardless of intent, it can't have any capability to ever pose a threat either. And that's going to be a hard one for Trump to actually maneuver around because there's probably some hard drive somewhere that he doesn't want released. Now, what I do believe is that Trump and his advisors, they are desperate to find something. Yep, we've won. People believe it. If not, they can then believe it themselves. It's not a lie if you believe it, Jerry. And end the quagmire that they have entered. No new wars, no long wars. Trump, I believe today said, I would have ended Vietnam in a few months. Okay. Well, I think they're looking for an ejection handle, F-15 ejection handle to get out of what they're stuck in. And Trump though, seemingly as he would critique, but seemingly he is just like his European counterparts that does not understand that in negotiations, it must involve all parties. It must recognize their position, their security concerns or considerations. It must understand their limits and understand the cards they hold. That does not mean, therefore you are agreeing with it. It doesn't mean you acquiesce to it, but it means you have at least some recognition of it to place yourself there and go, how are they seeing this? And where can we get negotiated compromise? Because you are not walking away from this with a complete victory surrender. And this is where we've seen, this is why I bring up the part of this. This is where Europe's negotiation and their teams, they've included Ukraine negotiations, but not Russia, not China. Remember in Switzerland, everyone stayed at that five-star resort for negotiations of the, and Russia and China weren't there. US didn't even send a high level representative to this. And it was completely void of any consideration for the other party's position, whether tactically, strategically, or politically. Not only the position of which they may hold, but the position of how they're also seeing it. And that is exactly where I see Trump in this at the moment, something of which he has criticized and got in a blue with Zelensky over. And Trump's negotiating and his tactic, it's very telling. It's just telling you, it's screaming at you, it's demanding. It's not negotiating, it's demanding. And this has worked against weak, incompetent, and partners that are reliant on the US. It has worked, but I highly doubt that Iran is going to just capitulate, roll over, acquiesce, surrender to Trump's demands. Why? Because so far we have seen Iran calling the US bluff and the US saying, well, they begged for a surrender so we wouldn't drop bombs on them again. And at this point in time, it's hard not to see that each time they were basically fabricated or you've come to something and you've changed the goalposts. And this is where the problem sits for America. It's much like the war in Ukraine. Why are negotiations so difficult there? Is the center of gravity of decision-making. So if there is to be a negotiation in Ukraine, Moscow has negotiating autonomy, that within Moscow, Putin, his advisors, his team, they can be making the decisions. Where Kiev, for Ukraine, it's different. Although they may send the team there, they are beholden to European, US support, funding demands. So they, of course, have a large say in how this goes. If Zelensky said just tomorrow, I want to go and meet Putin and negotiate an end to this, Putin may be able to just say yes with his advisors, whereas Zelensky, he's going to be beholden to a hell of a lot of other peoples. And what we've said is Ukraine's Schwerpunkt, the center of gravity, does not sit in Kiev. This was seen in 2022 negotiations in Turkey. There was a real settlement and then the UK stepped in under Boris Johnson and that got jettisoned and destroyed. And this is where I see the US is in a similar position with Israel. I believe that the US and Iran, given their goals, their concerns, could actually find a deal. I actually think the US and Iran could find a deal. But that deal, which is going to be acceptable to both parties, negotiation, remember, I think a lot of people need a thesaurus to look up the definition of a lot of these words and try and change your mind about this, is the definition of negotiation is compromise between these parties. That's going to be unacceptable for Israel. Israel will not agree to that. And what we'll see is, well, America so far has been very beholden to Israeli demands. And also, we need to understand Iran is not going to leave themselves naked to further attacks, not going to leave themselves with no ability to ever have standoff munitions, a military, even then if they seek other goals, maybe drone boats, continue to have the ability to close the strait if needed, nuclear enrichment. Well, that has actually been on the table for a decade. This is where we've seen the US, it was obvious they did not want to enter the 12 day war last year. Israel started the bombing campaign of which they did not have the systems or the planes to finish. The US is not going to leave Israel to be picked apart by Iranian drones, missiles. So eventually America stepped in with its B-2 bombers in Midnight Hammer. So this is where when you've got a third party who has a lot of levers, if not the levers, it becomes very difficult. It's hard for Ukraine to negotiate because they've got all this outside support and influence. And it's hard for America to negotiate because Israel's goals have not been met. And the remaining support base for Trump, the remaining support base, that their loyalty to Israel's goals is unquestionable. So it's a very, very rock and a hard place for Trump. But it's a cult. People just believe anything that he says. People also just hate anything he says. And Trump derangement syndrome is a thing. But there's also Trump utopian syndrome. They just believe whatever he says. Both are stupid. The deeper your echo chamber, the shallower the man. Legends, have a great day and I'll speak to you tomorrow. Thank you. Bye-bye.