Iran War Update: UAE strikes, Iran stalling, and a contest of wills | Hour 3

What's going on? Thank you so much for listening to this podcast. It is heard live every day from noon to three on WBT Radio in Charlotte. And if you want exclusive content like invitations to events, the weekly live stream I Daily Show prep with all the links, become a patron, go to dpeakclendershow dot com. Make sure you hit the subscribe button. Get every episode for free, write to your smartphone or tablet, and again, thank you so much for your support. Your Iran War update for the day. Iran International reports that Iran has filed a complaint against the United States at the Hague Court. Oh No. Yeah, over the military attacks on its nuclear facilities, its economic sanctions, and what Iran describes as threats of force. Also, Kuwait is accusing alleged Iran linked infiltrators for trying to reach Boobiyan Island uh Yes, the famous world renowned Boobiyan Island. This has drawn attention to the port project on Boobiyan Island, a project that China is involved in. According to an Associated Press report, Kuwaiti authorities said today that men detained after allegedly trying to enter the country. Box Cy admitted links to the. Iranian revolution or the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Core the IRGC. Okay, So, a bunch of guys affiliated with the IRGC on a bunch of boats tried to get onto Boobiyan Island and they were tasked with infiltrating the island to carry. Out hostile acts. Now, in case you are unaware, and as an American, it is your birthright to not know geography, so I will tell you. The Boobyan Island is in northeastern Kuwait, near the Iraqi border. It hosts the Mubarik al Kabir Port project, which China has backed as part of broader regional infrastructure investment. The China angle was highlighted by the Associated Press just as US President Donald Trump prepares to travel to Beijing for talks with Chinese President Xijinping. Who looks like Winnie the Pooh. Speaking of Donald Trump, he posted onto the Truth social platform two photos. One is a obviously these are fake photos. These are AI generated. There are two speed boats with Iranian flags on it. Both of them like taking missile fire, so they are exploding both of a mid explosion, and there's like this ridiculously oversized drone above them firing a rocket at one of the ships. And then the second picture sorry, so that one has the title of bye bye fast boats and fast boats is in quotes, get it because they're they're not too fast. They can't outrun the drone, I guess. And then he posted another picture of what looks like a US battleship with a laser shooting off of it and hitting an Iranian drone and the drone has like an Iranian flag on it and it says lasers bing bing gone, bing bing gone. This from inside Israel intel. One of the most important developments remains the public revelation that the UAE secretly struck Iranian assets earlier in the war, including the Levon Island refinery, So it wasn't just US and Israel. It was also the UAE. That suggests the coalition footprint against Iran was wider than publicly understood, and that Gulf states may already have crossed from passive alignment into direct action. That matters because Iran's strategy has depended on intimidation. To Ran assumed that threatening golf infrastructure and shipping and airspace would make Arab capitals more cautious, but instead the pressure appears to have pushed parts of the Gulf closer to the American and Israeli security architecture. That trend is reinforced by reports that Israel sent iron dome batteries and personnel to the UAE. This is confirmed by Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee, which I mean, just think about, like ten years ago, five years ago, the idea that the UAE would allow Israeli iron dome defense to be brought into their country. Now, a decade ago, Israeli air defense deployed to the Emirates would have been politically unthinkable. Today it's an operational answer to Iranian escalation, right, So the Iranians are pushing more and more of their regional neighbors into the American Israel orbit. Which is a good thing. A good thing, Black pillars, it's a good thing. The Strait of Hormuz remains the central economic battlefield. Lloyd's Lists or Lloyd's of London. Lloyd's List reporting continues to describe severe volatility in tanker markets, GPS interference, disruption to vessel movement, and major swings in shipping costs. Iran's insistence on quote management and sovereignty over the Strait has intensified concerns in the maritime market as Iran uses freedom of navigation as a bargaining chip, which at this point, considering the rejections of the latest Iranian proposal, which they said, like you have to agree to all these terms or else we're not even gonna talk, it's like, okay, talks are over, and we talked about this last week or maybe the week before that. The Iranian strategy at this point, or I should say the tactic at this point, is to just stall, right, delay, delay, stall, delay, because their strategy is simply to survive thanks to domestic pressure and international pressure applied to Trump. Right, So that's why they hit their their regional neighbors, was to try to get them like Saudi Arabia, uae Oman, to get those countries to pressure Trump to stop. And now it's to try to ride out as long as they can, hoping that the Democrats win the midterms. That's where they are. That's there, That's that's what they have to do, because they recognize the domestic support for the Iran war, right, they know what those numbers are and the polling and all that. They've got people monitoring all of our social media. They've got people monitoring the polling and such, and so they know that their best chance of survival is for Trump to get impeached. They are literally banking on Democrats to win. So if the Democrats win the midterms, Trump can get impeached and then maybe wind down the war against Iran. Right, That's that's the play. And then you write it out if even if Trump survives and doesn't get you know, tossed out, if he's convicted in the US Senate, which would be a very high bar, but at least you can like cut him off at the knees and undermine the operation and get him then to you know, turntail and run. Now. So to me, the only options now available are like to basically just keep the status quo as is with limited skirmishes and strikes and stuff, and then just hope the Iranian regime collapses at some point, Hope the Republicans win in the midterms, Hope there's no impeachment, and you just kind of keep going as we're going and bleed Iran of all of their funds or another round of strikes, and you just start hitting all of these other targets that you know that they've got lists, and Israel's got hit lists for the Iranian leadership as well. That's what it seems like to me now. The pressure is also visibly spreading beyond oil. Japan's largest snack maker is reportedly shifting some products to black and white packaging because shortages of petroleum derived ink ingredients tied to Hormuz disruptions are affecting industrial supply chains. This is part of iran strategy. It does not need to close the strait completely. It just needs to continue with enough disruption to make government markets, insurers, and manufacturers feel the war in their own economies. That's the game Iran is playing. We all know it. Will we let them win? That? That is up to us, That's our call. You know, stories are powerful. They help us make sense of things, to understand experiences. Stories connect us to the people of our past while transcending generations. They help us process the meaning of life, and our stories are told through images and videos. Preserve your stories with Creative Video. Started in nineteen ninety seven and Minhill, North Carolina. It was the first company to provide this valuable service, converting images, photos and videos into high quality produced slide shows, videos and albums. The trusted, talented and dedicated team at Creative Video will go over all of the details with you to create a perfect project. Satisfaction guaranteed. Drop them off in person or mail them. They'll be ready in a week or two. Memorial videos for your loved ones, videos for rehearsal, dinners, weddings, graduation, Christmas, family vacations, birthdays, or just your family stories, all told through images. That's what your photos and videos are. They are your life told through the eyes of everyone around you and all who came before you, and they will tell others to come who you are. Visit creative video dot com. So back to the Iran war update. Inside Israel, intel reports Trump is losing patients. Reportedly, the diplomatic track is still technically alive, but. It's on thinner ground. Yeah. Trump reportedly rejected Iran's latest proposal as unacceptable and described the ceasefire as being on life support. Multiple sources indicate he is now more seriously considering renewed military options than at any point in recent weeks. Now. One of the concerns or fears that some folks had was that, in search of a deal that the administration would just agree to anything. Right that that they want a deal more than Iran does. And especially somebody like Donald Trump who wants to be able to tout that he got this great deal, right, he totally defeated Iran and all of this. That if Iran just says no to everything, and they keep saying we have bombs, we have the nuclear material, like, we don't care. We can ride this out. That that Trump would make more and more concessions. So and that's good. I mean, that's has concerned the Israelis, It has concerned the other Gulf nations, right, they want they want Iran taken down. They all the neighbors want Iran take it. Well, except for like Pakistan, Like the Pakistani's I got a story on them in a minute here. I don't trust them. Far be it for me to suggest that we can trust a government that would allow Osama bin Laden to hide out in their country for as many years as he did. But I'm thinking they may not be the most trustworthy. Washington, meanwhile, is tightening the financial front. New sanctions targeted Iranian oil shipments to China through IRGC linked networks, including front companies in Hong Kong, the UAE, and Oman that combination is important. Military pressure is being kept available, but economic strangulation is still Trump's preferred instrument for now. For now. Also, and I will probably do more on this tomorrow. There was a new three hundred page Civil Commission study that was released. It found that sexual and gender based violence during the October seventh Hamas massacre was sustained, widespread, and a calculated component of the attack. The report documented rape, gang rape, sexual torture, mutilation, post mortem sex abuse, and attacks carried out in front of family members. This was based on four hundred and thirty interviews, testimonies, and meetings. October seventh was not merely a mass casualty attack. The study argues that sexual violence was used as a method of terror against Israeli society itself. While the confirmation of this information is likely not a revelation to Israeli society, it is key to the legal and moral framing of Hamasa's war in the rest of the world. Coincidentally, the New York Times, which had rejected access to this information for their own story. That's the reporting online is that the Civil Commission offered this to the Times. There was apparently an embargo date of today. New York Times rejected it. They turned this down and they ran their own story about how the Israelis were using rape dogs on Hamas prisoners. Yeah that somehow, I mean, well, I mean the Jews have space lasers, so I guess they're able to also train animals to rape humans. This is what Yeah, this is what they published in the New York Times today just before this report came out, which everybody can see. This was getting in front of this story because part of the part of the problem that the Hamas Holace defenders, part of the problem they have had since October seventh, is trying to whitewash the sexual crimes that Hamas committed because they like, you can diff you can defend like, oh, these were people just you know, breaking out of their open air prison. Right, you could defend that they were just freedom fighters, even though they were slaughtering you know, women, children, non military personnel. But then again, every Israeli has to go into the army, right, they were all conscripted at age whatever, eighteen or twenty, so really everybody's a military target, even the children. Well, I mean they're going to be conscripted at some point, so I guess so, yes, like they could make those arguments, but there was nothing they could do from a like a moral a morally defensible framework about all of the reported sexual assaults. Couldn't do it, So they denied it. That was what they said. Oh, maybe there was a. Few, I mean, men in battle, what are you going to do? You know, like they could they could kind of dismiss it like that, but it was so widespread, and it was a key component, and there was torture. And I've read through this report. It's horrific, absolutely horrific stuff. So that dropped today, As I said, we'll probably do more on that either tomorrow the day after. Over at the Institute of War US Iranian Negotiations, the IRGC Bagiya Toola Socio Sorry, baggie, okay, baggie Atola Baghee Atola Socio Cultural Headquarters Commander Major General Muhammad Ali Jafari said that Iran will not enter negotiations with the United States until the US accepts Iran's terms, which is I feel like that's not how negotiations actually work. I don't think that. I don't think that the like one of the parties dictates the terms before negotiation can begin, right, especially if you're the party that is sitting in rubble. You know, I kind of feel like anyway, these terms would fulfill Iran's war aims while stripping the US of its leverage in future negotiations. Iran has not provided any guarantees that it would engage in nuclear negotiations, let alone make nuclear concessions, even if the US accepted its terms. I also mentioned Trump is going to China to meet with Winnie the Pooh. There is an Iranian angle to that visit. Obviously, I have quoted zeneb Ribua frequently in these Iran war updates, and she has a short little write up about Trump's visit with China and their president. Winnie the Pooh. So, first off, keep in mind that Iran's foreign minister, Abbas Arakasi, he went to Beijing for talks with China's top diplomat, and now you know Trump is heading over there. She writes, losing Ron as a partner in the Middle East means a lot more than losing the discounted oil that China has been benefiting from. Okay, the loss takes away a coercive actor that has long acted as a forward disruptor of regional order. I've talked about this before. This is, you know, zoom out, look at the whole chess board, if you will, of the globe, which you know the president has to do. We hire a president in order to deal with international affairs. That's really only what the president should be focusing on, is like the external stuff. We now think that the president should be involved in all these domestic things, and that's usually the purview of the States, But of course over the last two hundred and fifty years that has eroded and the executive branch has gotten more and more powerful on domestic matters. But from an international standpoint, right, you have to look at the entire globe and you start looking at all of the choke points right through these straits that are key passageways for vessels to sail through. And that's why you know, freedom of the seas is international law, and it behooves every nation to agree to those terms because then you will be shut out. And it is one of the biggest stabilizers on the globe, right, because if you allow Iran to control the Strait of Hormuz or the Hooties. To control the. Bombar Bandhar or whatever it is, I forget if you allow them to disrupt, to be launching missiles and stuff, and they can then disrupt all of the shipping that then affects the global economy. China understands this. They have their own strait that they are looking at. Was at the Malacca Strait, right, So they also know that if they are going to do anything like move on tie and try to take them over militarily, then they need us not to be there, or need us not to be able to get there, and choke points become very important for that very reason, okay, And so them helping Iran advances that advantage for them. So if they were to do something, think about it, right, they're going to move on Taiwan, all they have to do call up Iran and say, hey, go after Israel, right, green light everything's ago, shut down the street right, start attacking Israel, start attacking all your neighbors. Do everything that basically we've been seeing them doing, right, except for they would have had. Way more ordinance to do it. That then would tie up resources, tie up military personnel and ships and aircraft and all of that. Not just hours, but anybody that could come to the defense of Taiwan. So that's why they did That's why they were doing it in Venezuela as well, right to try to create problems for US with these revolutionary Marxist and Islamo Marxist regimes. Back to Zenebrebua, she says, Iran has in fact given China three things at once. Cheap energy, a regime that can absorb sanctions pressure, which is important for China, to build a parallel financial system, and a network of militias and proxies that destabilize US aligned systems without putting Beijing on the front line. So much like Tehran uses Hesbalah and Hamas and the Hoodies, China uses Iran. But Operation Epic Fury is becoming a real embarrassment for Tehran. Number one. Militarily, Iran is not winning. The region is increasingly lining up against it. Number two. Economically, the situation is is pretty rough. Okay, Inflation very very high. It's in like the fifty sixty percent range. The currency is. Now at about one point nine million reaws to the dollar, which tells you. Everything about the pressure that the system is under. So Beijing is at risk of losing an actor that made life harder for the United States across the region. The fact that talks are happening should not be surprising, right, So this is why people are thinking Trump is going to lean on Xijinping aka Winnie the Pooh in order to get China to lean on Iran. Now I mentioned Pakistan, sorry, Buckistan, a Pakistan position sorry. As Pakistan positioned itself as a diplomatic conduit between Iran and Washington, CBS News reports Pakistan was also quietly allowing Iranian military aircraft to park on it airfields, potentially shielding them from American air strikes. Iran also sends civilian aircraft to park in neighboring Afghanistan. It was not clear if military aircraft were among those flights. Together, the movements reflected an apparent effort to insulate some of Iran's remaining military and aviation assets from the expanding conflict, even as officials publicly served as brokers for de escalation. Now, Pakistan says there's nothing wrong with any of this, Like, well, first they were like, we didn't do that, and then another one came out, like their foreign minister came out like yeah, we actually did. But that was so we would have planes to fly their diplomats for negotiations. I mean, obviously, if you're going to have talks and we're going to host them, then they need some planes. So we just had them park their planes here. I mean, yes, they were like intelligence and reconplanes, which aren't really conducive to like a diplomat gone to Raj but still like that's why we are allowing that the Iranian aircraft currently parked in Pakistan arrived during the ceasefire period and bear no linkage whatsoever to any military contingency or preservation arrangement. Assertions suggesting otherwise are speculative, misleading, and entirely detached from the factual context, said the Foreign Ministry in a statement. The agency went on to say, a number of aircraft from Iran. We're there to facilitate the movement of diplomatic personnel and security teams if further peace talks were scheduled. Right, although they have not resumed, senior level diplomatic exchanges have continued. See, so that's the only reason they are there, that's it. Okay, Well, we know where they are now to, so might want to just be on the line look out for a couple of drones. If these things go sideways, let me jump over to the text line. Stand says, the people and the media are going crazy over the price of a gallon of gas, which is four point fifteen per gallon in the Charlotte area today. Yet it was five dollars and one cent nationally per gallon in twenty twenty two under Biden. It's currently six point fifteen per gallon in California, both due to Democrat policies. Why is it okay for prices of gas to be high due to general economic Democrat rules and procedures, but not due to a war to stop a radical terrorist regime from obtaining nuclear weapons? Well, the okay, So there's a perfectly reasonable explanation for this is that it's different when Democrats do it. That's it. It's just it's different. Scott says, Pete, I really believe everything with iron it will change. After this meeting in China, President Trump is using Iran as a bargaining chip with the chi cooms. Well, I hope, so, I hope. So we'll see. Stacy says. Please make sure your listeners remember Kamala Harris's daughter, a self hating Jew, raised fourteen million dollars for the Palestinians and the money went to Hamas and seven oh four number says Obviously the IRGC does not know how American government works. Even if the Democrats win the House and manage to get the votes to impeach Trump, there's very little chance they would be able to convict and remove him. And even if there were votes to convict, it is unlikely JD Vance would alter Trump's strategy. Apparently they don't understand the individual is convicted, not the administrations. Impeachment and conviction will not get the cackling boozehound in the White House to help them. No, but I think the idea is to derail the Trump presidency in some manner, impeachment tied down in investigations, subpoenas, all of this stuff, right withhold funding for any kind of military operations in Iran. Right, that's what Iran is hoping Democrats will do for them. And I mean, honestly, like it's a pretty logical strategy, right considering the way Democrats have been behaving and the last Democrat administration with Obama. Like, if you're the Mullahs, who would you rather negotiate with right, Brandon says, Pete, have you seen the YouTube video of the test of a US Navy ship taking out a boat's motor with a laser? Pretty sweet? I have not seen that. I have not seen that, but now I am interested, all right. John Spencer, he is the executive director of the Urban Warfare in Sete, and he writes over on X that a lot of the domestic conversation about Iran focuses on whether the president wants a way out, whether he fears escalation, or he's worried about prices at gas pumps. Spencer says, I disagree. What is at stake is far bigger. Two pillars of global stability and American strength are on the line. Number one, freedom of navigation and number two nuclear non proliferation. That's what's at the heart of all of this. Freedom of navigation is the principle that no regime can be allowed to choke global commerce through coercion or force. That principle is what keeps the world economy functioning and has been a foundation of American power for decades. If Iran is allowed to control international waterways and weaponize a global trade point like the Strait of Hormuz, the consequences will not stop there. Every major maritime choke point, the Strait of Malacca, the bob El Mandab, the Suez Canal, all of them, they all become vulnerable to the same logic of coercion and extortion. That's why, in my opinion, like the inaction of the Europeans has been so shameful. Right, you may disagree with Trump, and you may disagree with this operation. However, there is a larger principle at play here. And if you are unwilling to even save yourselves and your economy and your citizens in defense of that principle of freedom of the navigable waters, then your society's already cooked. Also, the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty was built to stop the spread of nukes. Only nine countries in the world possessed them. We cannot allow a terrorist regime that sponsors militant proxies, threatens regional war, and violates international obligations to be the tenth. Allowing Iran to weaponize the straight up word moves or acquire a nuclear weapon would undermine both pillars and destabilize the global order. That's what's actually at stake here, all Right, That'll do. It for this episode. Thank you so much for listening. I could not do the show without your support and the support of the businesses that advertise on the podcast, so if you'd like, please support them too and tell them you heard it here. You can also become a patron at my Patreon page or go to thepetecleanershow dot com. Again, thank you so much for listening, and don't break anything while I'm gone.