Iran War Update: Who controls the clock? | 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 dpekclendershow 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. You're Iran war update for today. Let's see here, wrong page, wrong page, Here we go. Reports out of Iran that more than one hundred besiegs. Those are the street Thug division of the IRGC. They run the street checkpoints and stuff they whip up on ladies that have a strand of hair showing. One hundred besiegs have been hospital with severe illness and allegedly one has died. And their reports are that somebody poisoned their food. Okay, I don't know if it's true. These are reports out of Iran, but it could be a sign that the people are starting to. Target their oppressors. The US Department of War reports overnight US forces carried out a maritime interdiction and right a visit boarding of a sanctioned stateless vessel called the Majestic X and it was transporting oil from Iran in the Indian Ocean and apparently headed to China. The Department says we will continue global maritime enforcement to disrupt illicit networks and interdict vessels providing materials support to Iran wherever they operate. International waters cannot be used as a shield by sanctioned actors. The Department of War will continue to deny illicit actors and their vessel's freedom of maneuver in the maritime domain. Also, if you are keeping track, we are now on day fifty five of no Internet inside Iran. John Spencer with the Urban Warfare Institute put out a piece called from Epic Fury to the Indo Pacific Lessons on land power in joint operations, and in that piece he writes that Operation Epic Fury has objectively been a remarkable display of deep strike naval control and the rapid suppression of Iranian capabilities with air strikes and sea launched weapons. It's no surprise that the public narrative defines it as an air and maritime campaign, but that view is incomplete. The campaign demonstrates something more important about modern war. Even in a fight centered on air power and naval dominance, the joint force cannot succeed without land power. Not that he is advocating for ground forces. He's just pointing out that, like if you you know, essentially, if you want the regime to fall, usually you got to have boots on the ground. And as I've said from the beginning, boots on the ground should be the Iranians, whether it's their national army that overthrows the IRGC, or it's you know, just a strictly civilian revolt, whatever it may be. A meet Segall writing at he has a newsletter at substat called uh, It's noon in Israel, and this piece is called the Time War. He says, the war with Iran is no longer about oil or gas. It's a battle over a single resource time. The question that will determine the fate of the Middle East is who can controls the clock, who can afford to wait, and who is simply out of time. Currently, the Iatolas boast that their dictatorial regime will allow them to hold out indefinitely, while the closure of the Strait of hormas or moves imposes an expiration date on US aggression. That's their strategy here. Meanwhile, Trump claims to be in an equally comfortable position. Iranian ports are blockaded, some commercial ships are still navigating the strait despite the closure. They're sort of hugging the coastline, staying in territorial waters. But fresh US military assets are on the way. So the question is who's bluffing, and Siegal says the reality is they're both bluffing a little bit here, but Iran's position is significantly weaker. They're bleeding and estimated four hundred million dollars a day just on the blockade. The US military can cruiser around the area out of range, hanging out in the Arabian Sea, and they can intercept the occasional breakout vessel and then wait for economic isolation to do the work and the regime will fall. While Washington holds the front door closed, Tehran's most crucial ally is starting to push them harder from behind. Winnie the Pooh jijinping from China. He looks like Winnie the Pooh people, and he's very sensitive to it, like like they arrest people for posting images of Winnie the Pooh on their social media anyway, Jiji and Ping is fighting a clock of his own. Why, well they haven't. You know, they have an addiction to oil too, and they get a lot of their oil from Iran, and their reserves in China are dwindling. The New York Times reported earlier this month that Iran accepted the Pakistani mediated ceasefire following a last minute intervention by China, which asked Iran to quote, show flexibility and defuse tensions. But that was the rhetoric of a China that had an extra half month of oil reserves compared to today. And so as their oil reserves dwindled, do they start getting more forceful with their quote? Ally, the Iranians, they certainly believe the blockade is effective. Right. They compared the strategy to the bombing campaign and demanded it end, and they said that you got to end your blockade of our blockade, or else we're not even going to come. Talk to you. So they think it's working. They recognize it as very effective. He goes on to say, later, Tehran has another separate crisis that's draining its time reserves. As a senior Pakistani source confirmed to the US a significant rift has paralyzed the regime. This is why I remember the uh, the social media post from Donald Trump who was saying like, like, if we're gonna have another round of talks, you got to send somebody who can talk and who can make agreements, because they really Jade Vance realized very quickly that you guys don't have any power to sign any deal here. So uh, the to the the rift here, one side is the revolutionary guards and the you know, uh the military leadership over there, and they represent the uncompromising extreme. On the other side is sort of the civilian or civil political echelon, and that's led by the parliament speaker, Guy Gali bath right president sorry. Presiding above this fracture is the severely injured baby Ayatola, the Nepo Ayatola Mojaba Khameni, whom both sides defer to as the final of authority, but because of his grievous wounds and the constant threat of assassination, simply communicating with him has become a lengthy, complex, logistical nightmare. But you can't even like you can't go visit. Him, right, You got to like have six different transfers to avoid any kind of drone surveillance. I guess, can't call him, can't text him. So Tehran has four options to change the board, and Segall says none of them are particularly good. Here. Number one, they could renew the war, which was going so well for them before. Of course, that would include hitting the oil and gas facilities in the Gulf States, with the idea there being you make the energy crisis worse and then that forces those nations to pressure Washington to stop the war. Right, So that's one renew the war. Option Number two, tell all of your proxy terrorist groups to escalate now hasblah. They're yeah, they're they're getting hammered all right, So they're not in really any position to quote escalate. They are already fighting Israel, so they can't really escalate, and they're enjoying a ceasefire right now that Israel only agreed to because we told them you need to stop. So this way we can have the talks with Iran. Okay, because that's how the Israelis control us after all. Okay, but so who else are we talking about? Well, if you said Hoodi, you are correct. The hoodies and the Shia militias in Iraq. They can go after Arab Gulf nations and their oil facilities. They can shut down the the Bab al Mandeb Strait. The hoodies could There are two other options. I'll tell you what they are. None very good. You know. Story these are powerful. They help us make sense of things, to understand experiences. Stories connect us to the people of our past while transcending generations. 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I meet Seagall in his piece called the Time War, part of his newsletter It's Noon in Israel, highly recommend by the way. He's a journalist in Israel, and he lays out four options that Iran has right now because time is running out for them. They're losing four hundred to five hundred million dollars a day with this naval blockade. Their oil can't be pumped out. And once you once you have no more storage, which they're just about out of you, you have to start shutting down your wells, your pumps, and those are not easily brought back online, if possible at all in some cases. So they need to get the Straight opened. And they thought they had the checkmate move when they said we're going to disrupt the Straight And they even sent out a video yesterday. Have you seen this video that they. Published high quality a I mean video work, high quality video work shows a little speedboat and apparently they sent a whole camera crew along with this speedboat while it boarded. I'm using air quotes around that one boarded a ship, guns drawn. Yeah, they climbed up a ladder that was hanging down for them off the side of the ship. Which I'm curious why the ship. If like you don't want to be boarded, probably maybe don't drop a ladder, a rope ladder down for them to climb up. But whatever, they show them, you know, going up to the ladder, and then they show them climbing up the ladder. It's very odd too that some of the shots are taking because there's a camera guy with them. It's not like a GoPro or something. There's a camera guy holding a camera unless it's AI, but I'm sure, I'm sure they would never do something like that, but it shows from the camera guy apparently he breached the ship first because he was already inside to record the IRGC seals. I don't know what they're called, the pirates, right, the IRGC pirates. He was already on board filming them as they came up and then kicked indoors and stuff. I'm not sure how the camera guy got access. I guess you just request maybe a press credential or something. And then they also show them going into the bridge, like where you know where the captain is and all the crew while they drive the boat and all, and yeah, there was nobody in there. It's very weird. Also, it seemed like they boarded three different ships. They were different colors and different cargo on the deck some kind of but I'm sure it's like, this is what you do, right in order to instill fear, you send a camera crew in a separate boat and with a drone to record the whole operation. Now, the US military they posted a video of them boarding a ship and it was just a drone overhead with like a wide shot of the chopper hovering over the deck and the guys repelling down the ropes and then moving across the deck, and that was all we saw was the So our production value apparently did not include AI. Although I did get a video sent to me last night in response to the Iranian video that there may be sharks. They may have sharks, because there was a video of a shark jumping out of the water and eating one of our fighter jets. So yeah, I did not know the Iranians had a whole shark division, Okay, but apparently they do. I don't know how they avoid the minds either. But anyway, what are the options for Iran now as they are being strangled of their finances? First option was renew the war. Second option proxy escalation. Third option is capitulation. Tehran could swallow its pride and excuse me, return to the negotiating table in Islamabad while the naval blockade remains actively in place. While this is the safest option physically, it is devastating reputationally. It requires a massive public humiliation for a regime that swore it would never negotiate under blockade. Okay, So that's probably not going to happen, and if there is talk about it happening, that's going to increase the rift between the IRGC and the civil political wings, right, Okay, So what's the fourth option? Do nothing? They can do nothing. I mean, they just maintain the stalemate and hope that US polling numbers and the global energy squeeze forces Trump to soften his demands, in other words, to use US. That's their other option. They do nothing and rely on us. You me, are fellow Americans right to start clamoring for an end. He goes on to talk about, you know, the Israeli position regarding these options, Jerusalem. He says, can live with any of those four scenarios, but it prefers the first or the last either. Do nothing or renew the war. What they don't want to see happen is, you know, Trump taking some off ramp hastily signing some cruddy agreement with the Iranians again, and then that allows the Iranians to you know, get access to all of their sanctioned money, and that creates, you know, the funding for the reconstitution of their missile stockpiles, and they can restore the Houties and Hesbalah and Hamas, they can keep pumping money into those terrorist groups. He concludes this piece by saying, quote, Iran assumed it could exploit this Western impatience by closing the strait of hormones by holding the global economy hostage. Tehran believed it controlled the clock, but then Trump executed a stunning reversal. He blockaded the blockade. Now Tehran's time is running out, and the regime is simply hoping Washington will fall into old habits to win. All Trump needs to do is wait. And here's the thing too. In my mind, right like I still do these Iran updates almost every day for you. Right, I'm still following it all. There are little developments here and there, big news every now and again. But I don't know how many Americans that don't pay attention to current events. I don't know if they're paying attention to this anymore. Now. They will if something bad happens or something really good happens. Right, there's some major development. I think they will pay attention at that point. And if it's a really bad thing for America, then I suspect they're gonna they're gonna say, oh, we shouldn't be in there, we shouldn't have gone there, and all this. But as long as it's not moving, it's not doing anything. As long as it's just this waiting game, you know, we're just kind of just blockading and just letting them wither. I think patients among Americans would remain pretty high. But we shall see. I've been told I said that too much, but I can't help it. I have to just wait and see. Let me saunter on over to the text line. Here, see what folks are saying. What are you typing with your thumbs? Eddie says, I would love to hear if anybody knows exactly how the blockade is affecting China. Do you know? He also wants to know how big was the shark in the video. It was very big. It was big. It was bigger than a fighter jet. Very large shark. So as it relates to China, I I have found it difficult to get believable information from inside of the communist country, which is so like off brand for Kami's right, no, like this is the problem, Like they're not going to There are signs I have seen some you know, headlines and speculation about like this is going to be very bad for China. They need a lot of oil for their manufacturing and everything else, so. This is not good for them. And as I mentioned in that last piece from Amid Siegaal that they apparently leaned on Iran to get them to show up at the first round of talks. It was Jijinping that told the Iranians, you need to head over there. You need to diffuse this situation, you need to de escalate seven oh four numbers, Pete. I think the Iranians might just dump oil in the sea instead of shutting down the wells. That's a good, yeah, they could do that, just start pumping the oil into the water, although that does risk. Then the arrival of. Captain Greta, right, yeah, I mean then she would like swoop in on the flotilla and like lecture people, Eric says, Pete isn't the problem whether other countries want to wait it out when they are running short on oil, that is part of the time clock. Absolutely, and that's what that's what Iran is counting on. Iran is counting on other countries to pressure us to lift the blockade, to go home and let Iran take over the straight of horror moves. We'll pay the two million dollars tank or tax, the toll whatever to go through the strait, you know. In other words, surrender capitulate to the terrorist regime. That what a lot of people are advocating. Sure, because it does have the potential future. And by future I mean like within you. Know, six months, because America's pumping a lot of oil now, we just increased production and all those tankers that we're going into the Strait of Hormus and into the Persian Gulf, they all made a bee line for the Gulf of America and they've been loading up for the last few weeks. So we are gaining more market share dominance because of the safety right. You can get all this oil and you don't have to worry about you know, crazy terrorists or pirates, except if you get too close to one of the one of the exhibits down there at Disney. I think you may have to worry about Johnny Depp. But that's it, Like that's a very minimal risk in comparison, you know. Kevin says an oil blockade on Japan by the US was a contributing factor in Japan attacking Pearl Harbor. Blockades are an excellent tool to force compliance, but sometimes can have unintended consequences. But we shall see. He said that, Kevin said that. I didn't say that. Kevin said that, Yes, that is yeah. I mean that's why it is considered to be an active war. But also that's why the you know the UN uh you know law of the Sea, Like that's why we have international waterways, and that's why we do regular interdictions in international waters. We do that on a regular basis, not that we you know, capture boats or anything like that, but it's to remind everybody that you know, these waterways are free. For all passage. And if you start locking down waterways and you know, the freedom of navigation, yeah, that's a that is an active war. But then again, in this case, Iran already did it right. They announced their blockade first, and so we said, well, we can kind of see some boats still getting through. I mean they are your boats. But like, we'll help you out with your blockade. How about that, We'll make sure nobody gets out, including you. Todd says, oh, no, I got to get a new mouse. This roller's the the wheel. It doesn't roll smoothly, so it bounces all around an impenetrable wall, so to speak. Please don't use the words immersive experience when describing the Titanic exhibit. I will pass that on to the news department. It is This is David Strawm at hot air dot com. It's hard to say whether or not Trump is prepared to restart kinetic action or more strikes. Israel put out a statement, Actually, hang on a second, I have that right here. Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz says Israel is prepared to renew the war against Iran. The IDF is prepared for both defense and offense, and the targets are marked. We are waiting for the green light from the US because they totally control us first and foremost, to complete the elimination of the Comedy dynasty and to return Iran to the dark and Stone ages by destroying Iran's major energy and. Power facilities this time. I don't know if they will do this or not, but this is the threat, like, we can do this, and we say we are going to do this, And if you have any hopes of coming out of this on the other side somewhat intact and able to rebuild a society of some kind, then you have to stop acting like crazy people. You have to act like a normal nation. This time, he says, our strikes will be different and more deadly, and will deliver further devastating blows to the most painful places, which will shake and collapse the regime's foundations. So, as David Strom says, hard to say whether or not Trump is prepared to restart or continue this indefinite ceasefire indefinitely. Trump understands that war is an extension of politics and that military success relies as much on deception as good tactics. I agree with him. I think Trump recognizes that, and I think that's why he talks the way he talks and says a lot of the stuff that he has been saying. Deception is a key factor, back to David Strom's piece here at hotair dot com. Because Donald Trump engages in deception as a tact in this war. That's what makes it hard to predict what he's going to do on the military front. Trump's pivot to economic strangulation of the Iranian regime is the next step in the war. It even has its own name, Operation Economic Theory. The goal is to squeeze the regime where it hurts the most, its economic lifeline. The IRGC controls about thirty to fifty percent of the Iranian economy and uses the profits to fund its operations. Right, You've got to keep in mind the Iranian quote government, the society, the regime. It is corrupt at its core. I mean, the whole thing runs on grift and graft. Okay, much of that is already shut down, and pretty much all of it is at great risk. Everybody in Iran is keenly aware that the clock is ticking, not only because the entire oil industry is in danger of being permanently hurt by the closing of oil wells that'll be difficult or impossible to reopen. But also because people need to be paid, and there are reports now that soldiers and policemen are not being paid. That does not make them happy. And they have weapons. Operation economic fury has plenty of room to keep cranking up. The blockade of Iranian ships is one tool in the toolbox. There are a lot of others. For instance, there are plenty of kids associated with the Iranian regime living in the West. They can be sanctioned, right, not just kicked out of the country. We've been doing that to some of some of them. But how about their assets, right, most or all of their assets are tied to the regime, and we're at war with them, and we could freeze all their assets or seize them. That would sting at a very personal level for members of the regime. The US military has introduced also Ukrainian counter drone technology at a key air base in Saudi Arabia. According to five sources that we're familiar with the matter and they talk to Reuters, the deployment involved a Ukrainian command and control platform known as Skymap at Prince Sultan Airbase. The system is used by Ukraine's military to identify incoming drone threats, including Iranian developed Shahed drones, and then respond by deploying interceptor drones, which are way cheaper than the missiles or the rockets that we shoot to intercept. Those things cost a lot more money and they take a lot longer to produce. And what Ukraine like, that's the battlefield in Ukraine when Russia invaded, right Like, there's a reason it's at a stalemate and has been for the last several years, right because Ukraine was able to adapt and implement new technologies to thwart the Russian advances. And now Ukraine's been sending drones into Russian cities. So it's like it's a whole new chapter now in warfare that we first saw in Ukraine and now we're seeing in the Middle East. One thing to look out for is a response to Iran's attacks on civilian shipping. While Trump is clearly willing to tolerate Iran's temporary control over the Strait of Hormuz, I doubt he will tolerate continued attacks on shipping. I can't predict when or how Trump will fight back on that. But those speedboats are very vulnerable. Just ask the Narco terrorists from Venezuela. Yeah, we can see them, right, we can see them, and they have no real defenses. They are literally just like speedboats with like one little awning over the top. That's it. And you know four or five guys with masks shooting AI video. You know. Let me jump over to the text line again. And seven O four number says, I for one, am completely fed up. They know no better than to terrorize everybody but themselves. Sometimes they can even accomplish that. They have shown they're willing to They have shown they are not willing to change their ways. Option number six. What kind of a dog can bite you? All of them? What kind of a dog can't bite you? A dead one? Yeah, And I think there is a generational divide on this. We talked about this when it first started. If you are Gen X or older, you have lived with this Iranian regime, this ideology basically your entire life, right, and you saw it happen. It began while you were aware. I mean I was probably like five or six years old. I remember making jokes on the bus where you would you would say I walked, I jogged iran And when you would say each one of those sentences, you would lift a finger, so like I walked is the thumb, I jogged is the pointer finger, and iran is the middle finger. Get it? That was the joke. I mean, look, guys, I was in first grade, okay, but still like that was like we were making jokes. We had yellow ribbons around our trees in the front yard for a very long time, like we had to replace them because they got so weathered. Right, That's what I remember for people younger than gen X, Like you just know of the Iranian regime from the recent years. You know they're bad, but probably don't know like all of the history and how they you know, were behind the Beirut bombing that killed you know, a whole bunch of marines, the kidnapping of all of the embassy people holding them hostage. I mean, just the tanker wars in the eighties. I mean, there's just a lot of history there with Iran. They have been at war with us for almost fifty years, and we've been pretending that we're not right. And that's why you get this kind of sentiment, is that like, no, this had to This had to be done because of their actions over you know, half a century. Eric says, oh yeah. He asked me why doesn't Iran start printing money when they get low like we do? And I pointed out in a reply text to him that they have the sanctions devalued their currency so much that they're printing like these multimillion dollar notes and they're worth like seven bucks and inflation is like fifty percent. It's crazy. And so this is why time is not on their side. Right. They will eventually collapse economically, especially now with all of their oil cutoff. Somebody also asked me about OPEK, and uh, yeah, OPEK increased production in the opening week or two of the conflict. Tommy says, no one owns the water, right, it's international water. Kirk says, we didn't blockade Japan. We had an oil and steel in Bargo by not selling them the material of war. A little bit of a difference. Okay, Yeah, is this hurting OPEC seven oh four number one to know they've increased supply, But yeah, I mean everyone's gonna feel this until it's settled. 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 business 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.