Iran War Update: We're talking, oil is moving, sanctions are lifting | Hour 1

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, my daily show prep with all the links, become a patron, go to thepetecleanershow dot com. Make sure you hit the subscribe button. Get every episode for free right to your smartphone or tablet, And again, thank you so much for your support. So it was Quad Day in Bergenstock, the famed home of the leather sandals. Oh no, sorry, wrong, wrong city, wrong country, actually Bergenstock, Switzerland. We had the ever trust trustworthy qataris the even more ever trustworthy pakistanis sorry, focused on ease and the supremely trustworthy Ronians. They were meeting with. JD Vance and members of the negotiating team. I'm assuming Steve Witkoff, Jared Kushner maybe, but JD. Vance was the he was the face of this thing, and. They had what is called quadrilateral talks. Quadrilateral talks, which I have to tell you, I've been following the news for a long time. I've never seen quadrilateral talks before. Not sure why we needed both the Kataris and the Pakistani's not sure why we needed two middlemen operating here, and I don't trust either of them. Qatar has always been too close to Irn for my taste. So what came out of it? Well, first off, this from the Institute for the Stuffody of War and the Critical Threats Project at the American Enterprise Institute, which publishes daily updates at its website understandingwar dot org. And they have a series of I think there's seven here, yes, seven key takeaways, but I will focus on merely two. Iran and the United States held quadrilateral talks in Bergenstock, Switzerland. Iranian officials and media emphasized that the June twenty first talks only focused on pushing the US to implement Memorandum of Understanding clauses that the MoU States must be implemented before nuclear negotiations can begin. Okay, so you'll remember last week people were criticizing this deal because it seemed like we were giving all of this stuff to the Iranians upfront with the promise of discussing the nuclear issue after, and we were assured, no, no, no, that is not the case. We're reading it differently than the Iranians are. No, it's all part of a framework and everything else, and that turns out not to be the case. The Iranian propaganda was in fact correct on this. They are getting a bunch of stuff on the front end. I'm not sure. About the three hundred billion dollars and the frozen assets and such just yet. But the United States Treasury Office of Foreign Asset Control, or THEFAC whereas I call it the OPAC, has issued a sixty day waiver of US sanctions on all Iranian crude oil and associated products until August twenty first. The waiver allows Iran to sell oil to any way, to anyone, including the US, except except no to Cuba, no to North Korea, and no to the occupied areas of Ukraine. But everybody else can buy Iranian oil, okay. Javier blasts energy and commodities columnists at Bloomberg. He says it may only last sixty days. I doubt that it likely will become permanent. But this waiver is effectively rolling back forty years plus of American oil sanctions against Iran. So that's happening. Also Iran, during the negotiations the Quadrilateral talks. They attempted and apparently secured the front loading of the economic benefits from the MoU before addressing its nuclear file in negotiation. Iran likely seeks to acquire funds upfront in case negotiations collapse, and likely also seeks to reduce US leverage in later nuclear talks in order to make it more difficult for the United States to extract concessions from Iran, because if you give them all of this stuff up front, then they have less they have to worry about negotiating. Now, I guess the US could pull all of that stuff back. That's certainly true. This from open source Intel. The US and Iran sat in the same room in Switzerland over the weekend. After some awkward hugs, Vance offered a new leaf. Minutes later, Trump threatened to hit Iran only harder and take the straight of hord moves by force. He did that on truth Social Trey Yanst for Fox News reported quote President Trump tells Fox News he spoke with officials overnight and he said, quote, you close the straight and you won't have a country. By the way, I thought there was language in the MoU about not threatening actions against each other, but okay, He went on to tell these officials, you won't even make it back to your bleeping country. We'll we'll take over the rest of the country. Do the Iranians believe that, Well, they may believe the first part. They were very worried that the last time they flew for a meeting with the negotiating team. Remember we had the reports that they had split up and they took secret routes back to Iran because they were afraid they were going to get assassinated on the way home. I don't know, I'd be surprised if they thought that now, But I really don't believe that they think that we're going to quote take over the rest of the country. That would require a massive ground force invasion that the American public will not support and would not have any international support either. So the publication out of Iran Al Magadine reports that Tehran is demanding now a Trump apology for his threats and an Israeli withdrawal from southern Lebanon as conditions to return to the negotiating table. This is from over the weekend. They said this and then the talks resumed. So I don't know if Trump apologized or not. That would be very skeptical that he did. I don't think Trump has ever apologized for anything, so I doubt Iran got his first apology, but maybe they did. Iran US talks in Switzerland continued late into the evening. According to a US diplomat, quote, negotiations have been going in earnest all day. This was from yesterday. Robust discussions on all elements of the nuclear deal are ongoing, open source Intel reports. Iranian President Tezeskian said that Taran will not relinquish its right to enrich uranium. Quote. What is certain is that we will never give up our right to enrich uranium, and the other side will have no choice but to accept it. Which is weird because that was one of the key demands from the US. I mean, before we ever did anything right like that was It's been one of the red lines. But Jdvan said they had a good day. He spoke with reporters. I will let you hear from the Vice president in mere moments. All right, For over a year now, you've heard me talking about create a video. 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First, we wanted to build a mechanism for keeping the Straight of Horror Moves open. It is open. We've seen, of course, gas prices and oil prices come down, millions and millions of barrels of crude and natural gas flowing through the Straight of Horror Moose that weren't flowing before. But we also wanted to make sure that we actually set out the coordination mechanism so that we could demine the straits of Horror Moves so that when there are the conflicts that inevitably come up, we can make sure we work through them rather than that leading to escalation. And that is exactly what we did yesterday. Number Two, we also wanted to build a mechanism, a similar mechanism for deconfliction for the regional ceasefire. As the President of the United States has himself said, sometimes these ceasefires just mean you're shooting a little bit less. But we wanted to make sure that we had the proper coordination set up so that if there is shooting, if Hesbeala fires at Israel, or if Israel responds, if there are other conflicts that arise in the region, we're actually talking to each other and figuring out how to stop the shooting, how to make the region safer, our allies and everybody else. We set that up as well. Number Three, we and this is probably what we're most excited about as Americans. The Iranians have agreed to invite IAEA inspectors back into their country. That is a major milestone for the American people and the first step in permanently denuclearizing or permanently ending a nuclear weapons program in Iran. And that's exactly what we wanted to do. That's exactly what we asked to happen. We made a lot of great progress on other nuclear talks, and that leads me to the final thing that we wanted accomplish, which has actually set up the process for the technical negotiations that will follow. Our teams with the working with the Iranians, the Kataris, and the Pakistani's made great progress yesterday. They will continue to work at the technical level with the teams here in Bergenstock, and then those technical negotiations are going to continue over the weeks and days to come. We wanted to set up a structure for that so that you could have proper political oversight. But obviously, as much as this place is very beautiful, I can't stay here for the next sixty days. I'm about to go back home to the United States. But the technical teams are going to be working with proper oversight to make sure that we're accomplishing the objectives that matter for everybody. So those are the things that we wanted to accomplish. We came here, we did exactly that. The way that I think about it is very simple. We laid a very good foundation for a successful final deal. The final deal is the house we set the foundation we haven't built the House, but we've laid a successful foundation to get to a good place for the American people. I think it's important for all of us to appreciate how much was done. But honestly, there is still a lot to do, as we continue to make progress on the nuclear talks, on the economic talks, as we continue to d mine the straits and ensure that that flow of traffic continues to pick back up. A lot of progress, but still some work to do, and we're very committed to doing exactly that. All right. So that was Vice President vas from Burgenstock, Switzerland, just on the third point there where the Iranians have agreed to invite the IAEA inspectors back into their country. If I recall correctly, the IAEA has been there like doing their in spas as they went past the limits. They were there when like they went past the sixty percent or got to the sixty percent threshold. They were there like when midnight hammer hit. Like I'm not really sure. Again, I don't trust the Iranians on any of this stuff. So I mean, okay, take that win, I guess Iran International, says. US Vice President Vance said any future unfreezing of Iranian assets should take place under a controlled process to ensure the money benefits Iranians and does not fund terrorism. Not exactly sure how to do that, but okay, I think his name is Ed Shipley's. He's an attorney. He posts on Twitter under shipwrecked Crew. He represented a lot of J six defendants. He says there are three solutions to these straight of Hormu's problem, backed by US military but not reliant on it. Number One, the Gulf States have to have the courage to take on Iran as part of a coalition. No playing both sides of the fence via Cutter anymore. I have been talking about this for several weeks now. I have grown weary of the golf coalition countries telling us to keep hitting Iran and you got to do this, and don't do that and whatever, and when we stand with you, and yet they're not running any operations against Iran. They're not fully engaged. And this is like getting rid of Iran benefits you guys. You need to be lifting some fingers to help number one. Number two, he says, the Gulf States, rather than bribe Iran, need to pay for a mercenary army to occupy coastal Iran near the Strait. That's an interesting idea, right, Hire a bunch of militias, have them go in there, take over the whole coastline. No more rocket fire on merchant ships. And number three, he says, the Gulf States are going to need to bring their own heir assets into the fray and attack Iranian targets further inland. Iran has attacked them repeatedly. It's time for them to fight back. If they aren't going to use the fighters and attack helicopters for this, then what will they ever use them for. Well, I mean, obviously it's to use against their own people if their people have a rise up against them. That's another online commentary. Guy named Cenecal Publius worked in the administration. I believe as we contemplate the Iranian delegation storming out of the negotiations in Switzerland like a bunch of humiliated high school mean girls, consider the possibility that Trump signed the MoU for two reasons. Number one, to show the whole world that the Iranian Mullahs are incapable of operating in good faith. Well, I already knew that I did not need to have this MoU to show me that but yes, and number two to show the world that he has no choice but to once again bomb the crap out of them. David Strom at hotair dot com says he has a problem with this argument, which is that Trump said that he had to do the MoU in order to save the world economy. That's what Trump said. Now maybe Trump was lying about that. I don't know. Maybe that was partly true, right that it's not an either or situation. They can both be true. He wanted to stabilize the markets. I said it last week. I've been saying it for a long time. A lot of this appears to be stalling tactics by both parties. They both think that they can outlast the other, because war is a test of your enemy's will, right, who has the will to last outlast the other? And the Iranians think that they win just by surviving, and a lot of Westerners think that that's true. I don't know. We still haven't seen what's left of Iran because they've shut down their internet. Victor Davis Hansen has some thoughts on this. I'll play for you what he said in a podcast. In a moment, this your Iran Update. I will get to your messages as well over at floppingaces dot com. Trump is playing the board he actually has, not the one the hawks or the isolationists want to pretend exists. I think this is a very important point. You got people that are mad because they want Trump to keep going hit them hard, right. You got people who are mad because Trump did anything at all, and he's playing the board that exists. And yes, I'm discounting basically all of the never trumpers and the leftists and media. But I repeat myself because they're just going to attack Trump no matter what, and so anything that they are saying is in bad faith because they do not want him to be successful. They're just looking to dunk and score points. That's it. So I'm trying to look at and listen to people who are offering critiques on this stuff that are coming from a position of wanting success. Right. So, according to Victor Davis Hansen at The Daily Signal on the podcast, he said the decision to avoid a ground occupation in Iran while still hitting their nuclear infrastructure, that this was the correct rategic choice. I think a lot of people are missing a couple of premises. Number one, We don't know the extent of damage in Iran. No ground troops, no embedded reporters, no news, no internet there. Trump said a trillion dollars or two trillion, maybe even if it's a half trillion. It's a fifty year investment in military nuclear industrial complex and a lot of it's ruined. And they have been embargoed and they've been sanctioned. Their assets are frozen. They're losing four hundred million dollars a day in revenue, so they're in bad shape. We don't know how bad they are. That's number one. Number two, Iran is not a protector of the United States. It's ninety three million people. It's one and a half times the size of Texas, and we don't have a good record of going in on the ground and managing a country. We saw that in Afghanistan. We saw that rack seventy five hundred dead, two trillion dollars, and look at the Taliban is still in control. So we're not going to go in there and manage it. If you're not going to go in there and manage it, then your control over that regime is limited, especially when it has patrons that are nuclear like Russia and China and they want to get back in. So my point is simply this, can you stop them from enriching. Yes, you can say we're going to bomb the moment we see you tamper with Pickaxe Mountain or any of those areas. And can we stop them from closing the straits? Yes, you have to open the strait. So we're not going to lift the blockade. The key to all this memorandum of understanding is will he use force when they inevitably cheat. So a week from now, if they think, well, we got a lot of concessions, we're going to send three missiles into the hated UAE, and we're going to send a couple more in the Kuwait and have a big Shia rested population. And if Trump says, oh, that was just a love to, it won't work. He's got to say, Okay, you sent three, you're going to lose ten bridges. You sent three against Kuwait, You're going to lose a power grid. He hasn't done that yet. People forget there's a whole list of targets that Obama went after in Libya, and a whole typology that Clinton went after. We were in the same place in Serbia nineteen ninety nine. It was not working. After sixty days we limited and then all of a sudden, Clinton went wild. All the bridge has gone on the Danube, the grid. He I wouldn't do it. He hit museums, he has hospital, he hit everything. Anytime you heard they were using something that he thought he wouldn't hit, they hit, and that stopped him after seventy eight days. My point is they have a whole list of targets that we haven't even touched. But you can shut down that entire economy in two days if you hit them. You take out two big power plants and turn and you're in trouble, and you take out the power. Where's all these missile factories and every where are they getting their power? It's on the grid. You hit them and they're in trouble. So we can do that, and if he's going to do it, it doesn't really matter. All he has to say is we can't control what you do. But if we decide you're funding terrors that attack us, if we find that you're building missiles that are shoot launching, he doesn't have to have them in the memorandum of agreement. If you dare he can. He should have the nuclear in Richmond, and he should have the straits. Meanwhile, he's telling the UAE and the Israelis and the Turks, Hey, you guys, you all have avenues for pipelines. Get to it. So double your capacity, Saudi to ship out the Red Sea, double your triple your capacity. UAE, you're on the right side of the straight over our moves goes straight into the Persian Gulf, and double that. And then Turkey get along pipeline into the into the oil fields. You can do it. And Israel cut a deal and go right out of Haifa and do it now, so the next time they do it, we're not over a barrel. And I think they're doing that. Yeah, we talked about that a couple of weeks ago, that these nations are racing forward with their pipeline projects. From the text line, Oscar wants to know, does China help Iran with nukes? Yeah, well they help either. If not, well they definitely help indirectly by you know, loaning them money, getting repaid with the sanctioned oil through the ghost fleet, and you know, buying up and supplying the materials and that sort of stuff. So yeah, they're they're helping Iran and have been for a while because it helps to destabilize the region and it ties US up in the Middle East. That's Iran's play against US. Seven o four number says Trump has done what Noah, the president has that's all caps. That's why I read it like that. Why don't you wait and see where the ball lands? Oh that's me got you nailed it on that one seven oh four number. Yes, I'm I am notorious for racing in and telling you what exactly is going to happen in the future. Yeah. No, I've been. In fact, I've been criticized repeatedly over the last what four months now, since February twenty eighth, because I keep saying, we'll see, we'll see. Let Trump cook, Let's see what he's doing. I don't know, nobody does. He's a chaos agent and this is the way he negotiates. Nobody knows what's actually happening. They're all he's a juggler, right, He's got all these balls in the air, except they're not balls, they're grenades. I don't agree with Trump on everything, but I have learned to watch and wait for the outcome. Yeah, but that doesn't mean that I'm not going to give you the updates as to what is occurring. Richard says, has anybody, but he said, how many mines have been found in the Strait if any I have not seen that, Richard. I've not seen any accounting for the number of minds that were laid, believed to have been laid, or recovered. So not sure I've not seen it. All, right. Second clip from Victor Davis Hansen basically saying Iran is too large, too hostile, too well backed by Russia and China for the United States to occupy and administer without repeating the Afghanistan and Iraq disasters. By keeping the objectives narrow, no enrichment open, straight of Hormuz, Trump avoided turning a limited operation into a generational quagmire right before the midterms. That part is sound positioning. Where the position gets dangerous is what comes next. Hanson makes it clear that Iran now gets to decide how they test the new reality. Because Iran will probe they will calculate exactly how much they can get away with before triggering a response, and because Trump is operating under real political constraints like oil prices, control of the US House midterm elections. The historical pattern of the midterm losses right, the regime has every incentive to find out how serious he actually is. We don't care what the left says, because on one day's Hitler, in the next day's Neville Chamberlain. Hi, come, Jefferies, can't figure that out. Oh he's a chicken. He tacoed out. Trump always chickens out. The next day he's Nevild Chamberlain. Oh, this is not we didn't get anything. This was a useless preemptive war that was too you know, we're striking a school, you know, all this stuff. It's just whatever Trump's for that you don't pay any attention to it. But on the right, what they're doing is they're getting attacked in two places. So the Steve Bannon, Tucker, Candace Megan Kelly, podcasters and some politicians are angry that they did anything at all. So now it's like, we didn't want you to do anything, but now you haven't done anything. They've done a lot. They keep thinking that this is like the Obama deal when Iran was to send it convince it. Obama wouldn't lift a finger militarily and they had all this infrastructure. They're devastated. It's this they're not in twenty sixteen and Trump is in Obama. He's got a lot more assets at his disposal. He doesn't have some crazy idea that he's going to champion a Shia alternate crescent to rival the moderate Arab regimes in Israel and empower damasc Us Tehran, Gaza, Beirut. That was Obama Valerie Jarrett's Ben Rhodes idea. So there's a lot of assets, but people have to realize that he's under a lot of pressure if he loses the House, and the history says thirty eight out of the last forty one midterms, the end Party lost seats. If he loses the House, number one, they're going to impeach him on day one. I don't mean that literally, but it's going to start. Number two, they're going to call in the entire Trump family and they have the power of subpoena and they're going to tie him. So he's getting House members and they're saying to him, believe it or not. Believe it or not, mister president, given are redistricting, that we're going to beat these guys. The blue red is going to win. And given the racial jerrymandering is going to stop some of that. And given that no one likes this socialist agenda that they're radical, that they're radical candidates are promoting, and given that the price of oil is going down, seventy five five dollars a barrel, sixty five is break even. They're down to four dollars, a gap below four dollars. It was only I think three point thirty. They're saying to present, we can win, We have a chance of doing the incredible. We can win. But but but, but you can't stay in there too long. If you stay in there too long and you have to to and the price of oil goes up, we're dead. So cut a deal. And then if you have to do something, just do it a day or two at a time and keep the straight open. So he's under that pressure. And given the idea that we don't do well fighting their type of war on the ground, we're not going to do that, and you have to you have to try to do that. If you want to say we're going to inspect every missile silo, every launcher, we're not going to let you do this. You're not going to do that, you're going to have to say you're not going to do the big things, get a bomb and shut down world commerce out of the Strait. But we know you're going to do other stuff. But if we find that that other stuff is killing Americans or our allies, all bets are off. You're going to really regret it. But we're not going to tell you don't do that when we can't stop you from doing it without ground tube. So we can stop you, but it'll be our way in our time. Right. So, so what have I been saying for like the last few weeks. It's like this strikes me all as a stall tactic, and it's probably due to the midterms. This MoU runs sixty days. They can extend it if they want to, then they would spend another sixty days working on the final deal, right, and that puts you into late October. And if there are any extensions now you're past the midterms, and if Iran you know, doesn't get too squarely, then oil prices stay stable. The Strait is open, right, this issue is largely off the front page of the papers is sere Mark says, all we could do is hope for the best and expect the worst. I hope the Iranian people figure out that they can take their country back and make it whole again. Yeah. I mean that has always been part of the equation, is that the quote ground troops are the Iranian people and the Gulf nations. They're going to have to do something in their own defense. If they want the Strait of Hormuz to remain toll free, open and free from harassment and attacks by the IRGC, They're going to have to be the ones to step up. Trump had the same message for NATO, right, told them the same thing, and I think he's telling the golf countries this exact thing as well. Lisa says, let me see here, dude, to do we don't own the Straits of Hormuz. And frankly, after fifty years in the Middle East controlling oil and gas prices for our US drivers, isn't it time to get out as gracefully as possible? And when will Israel ever be satisfied enough to start annihilating houses, apartments, businesses and all things in Lebanon and Palestine? There's no Palestine. They've done this also since the nineteen seventies. But unless the world stops them. Israel will never stop. Okay, Lisa, you have it precisely backwards, precisely backwards. Israel has already entered into peace deals with several Arab nations. They want to do more peace deals with other Arab nations, but they can't do it because of the quote Muslim Street. But they want to. Some of these, like the Saudis, want to join the abraham Accords. They are attacking, not Lebanon. They're attacking Hesbelah because Lebanon is too afraid and too weak to take on Lebanon. And Hesbelah has somewhere in the neighborhood of one hundred and fifty thousand rockets and drones that they keep sending into Israel. No nation would allow themselves to be pummeled like that from a border nation. If Mexico or Canada started launching ballistic missiles into Texas or Montana, we would level them as any nation would. 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 thepetecallanershow dot com. Again, thank you so much for listening, and don't break anything while I'm gone.