Geopolitics and Leadership in Iran

In this episode, we delve into Israel's recent offensive against Iran, dubbed Operation Rising Lion. Discussing its strategic objectives, we explore the significant shift in modern warfare tactics and Iran's outdated response strategies. We highlight the intricate geopolitical implications, examining why Western nations, despite their recent criticisms of Israel, have uniformly supported this action. The conversation covers Iran's weakened state, the impact of toppling key military figures, and the broader effects on regional alliances. We also touch upon the moral complexities and potential future scenarios in the Middle East.

Malcolm Collins: In effect, Israel's offensive against Iran achieved what years of Gaza fighting could, not a broad realignment of Western support behind Israel,

Simone Collins: well, what stands out to me is that , this is really the solidification of a clear trend, which is the nature of warfare it's officially changed. What you see too is Iran's reaction is extremely old school. It's, we will send our missiles from our war chest and it's,

Malcolm Collins: we will get our regional players to attack you even though they have no technology or real power. Yeah. And I'll also say here that to me the biggest thing that this changes that the Ukraine situation didn't change is Iran was operating off of Cold War logic. It was build up less economically, less technologically developed regional allies. Mm-hmm. And if you have enough of these that they will be able to assist you when you go to war right. And what is Israel is showing is. Those sorts of allies don't matter one lick. Mm-hmm.

Would you like to know more?

Malcolm Collins: Hello Simone. Today we are going to be asking the question, why did Israel decide to attack Iran right now? We are going to be looking at this within a few interesting contexts. One is, is. When they did this attack, I was certain because of how negative all the western countries have been on them for the Gaza situation that they've been generally almost unanimously positive about them, at least at the government level.

Now, I'm not talking about the wokes. The wokes are gonna screech no matter what, but at the government level, it's been a, a really surprising degree of like, yeah, just do your thing. We're not gonna interrupt, you know, whatever. Especially when the you know, inciting event was maybe less direct and less visceral.

If you're talking about reaching the public now, when you're talking about reaching the government and what all their secret services know they had reason to be like, okay, maybe somebody else needs to handle this. The other thing that we're gonna be talking about is what exactly they accomplished.

With this, we're gonna be talking about who they took out, how they took them out, and what was the collateral damage of all this. Because I'm beginning to realize about this channel. Is that nobody else ever covers things as deeply as we do. Like I, I'm always shocked, like I cannot find a single, we just yesterday did the Gaza article and I was like, it was on the, the, and I've never, and I learned

Simone Collins: so much from it on the march on Gaza, March to Gaza.

Yes. That was amazing.

Malcolm Collins: Why, why is it the news to, why did there some news source I can go to that'll just have a good summary of everything. Right. But that's what we're gonna be going over here because you know, it is important,

especially in the context of what we just covered around Gaza. Alright. So to give you an idea, because I think this is emblematic of where things are.

Simone Collins: Yes,

Malcolm Collins: please. So a few days ago, the Iranian wartime chief of staff was killed as a result of this. And so they replaced him with alini. He was killed four days after his appointment. Ooh. And then after that, the Israeli like, I don't know, one of their, their talking voices for like, the government came up and, and they said we don't know who is under consideration next with a very, like, the guy next to 'em gave a, like a smile after that.

Like, because you'd be dead if we did.

Simone Collins: And this sounds like the beginning of one of your isaka fiction books Yeah. That I write where it's like, well, we, you're the fourth person. We're bringing in all the, the

Malcolm Collins: previous three died. Then they go, we would advise them not to take the job, but if they do, we advise them to be extremely cautious.

Simone Collins: Well, I can only imagine that Mossad knows in general enough to know who would be the logical next pick for a couple rungs down the ladder. Right.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. But I also understand waiting until they take the job, just as they de thing Sure. To not

Simone Collins: be a jerk. Yeah. To, you know, yeah. Have some courtesy. But I, I imagine the, the more important thing is you have to know all these things ahead of time because you have to know where they live.

You have to know how to target their apartment. Like all these, this homework has been done which is what I find even more impressive. So let's

Malcolm Collins: start with the homework. You know, we're talk Yes. Fic. I'm so curious. Israel's decapitation strike on Iran's military leadership.

Israel's surprise offensive wiped out a significant portion of Iran's military high command in the early hours of June 13th. Israel launched Operation Rising Lion, over 200 , Israeli jets struck at least 100 targets across Iran in five waves.

Among those killed were major General Mohammed Bagari, the Chief of staff of Iran's armed Forces and General Hassi salami commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the IRGC. This is like their core other, it'd be like if, if they killed the head of the Navy and the head of the Army and the head of the, you know, Marines all in one day is, is what the equivalent is here.

These two were Iran's most senior military officers. Bagari effectively the second most powerful figure in Iran's military hierarchy. And Sami, the head of the elite IRGC. The strikes also eliminated other top commanders, general Gal Rashad, deputy of the Armed Forces Commander General Amar Ali Hasday, head of the IRGC Aerospace Force, and at least four additional senior IRGC leaders in total Israeli attacks killed at least 20 Iranian military commanders.

A quote unquote stunning decapitation of Iran's defense leadership, and by the way, that stunning decapitation came from routers, which is otherwise a fairly progressive outlet. Even a, a Reuters.

Simone Collins: Yes. Okay.

Malcolm Collins: Even a close advisor to Iran's Supreme leader . Ali Shaka Manni was reportedly caught in a strike on Tehran's apartment block and gravely injured.

The coordinated assassination campaign. Effectively gutted Iran's military leadership mirroring Israeli's previous elimination of Hezbollah's top command in Lebanon. The year prior, teran swiftly appointed replacements. For example, IRGC, GE General Ahad Vadi was named a successor to salami, but the loss of so many seasoned leaders with a severe blow.

And even since then, many of the successors have been killed. So the degree of, like, you can't imagine, like imagine if in the United States, like every top leader across every top department was gone. Right in one day. And people can be like, I, I've seen people be like, I'm not pro assassinations. Well, what are you prolonged drawn out wars?

Like, are you, you would rather, instead of the generals who effed up and let it get to this point, be the ones who are disproportionately bearing the brunt of this, have it be the foot soldiers and if seriously you're about Iran, the foot soldiers don't even want this that much. Like no, I, Iran is one of the most westernized in terms of the average belief system of the population of the major Islamic countries.

They do not have at the, the level of the average citizen the beliefs of their leadership.

Simone Collins: Exactly.

Malcolm Collins: I mean,

Simone Collins: people have all often fantasized about wars boiling down to. Hand-to-hand combat between leaders like this is, this is as close to the dream as I think practically we can get. Right?

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Well, and I, I, I, I think Iran is also like one of those countries.

I, I wouldn't say it's like fully westernized, I think it's more like your average Turkish citizen or something. Like they're Muslim, but they're not like, you know, Wahabiists, they're not like a, a gazen, they're not like an Egyptian they're, they're more like moderated. So I would say like Iran is a very, if you, if you wanna understand what the country is actually like, it's an interesting situation where it's almost as if you have a pseudo democracy that is under the control of a theocratic Islamic government was a moderate population.

And if you want to get an understanding of how moderate that population Right. Might be. You can look at our episode called I, I think it's something like Iran, the secular theocracy when we talk about how common secular beliefs are was in Iran and how common anti even Islamic beliefs are was in Iran.

Simone Collins: Right. That was a while ago, but it was good.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And this is why I'm saying like, I, I, the funny thing about all this is, is that the Jews may save the Iranian people from a fascist dictatorship. That, that would be effing wild if that happened.

Simone Collins: Well, and it does seem, I mean, even when you just look at their inability to improve.

Birth rates, the, the Iranian government is failing. Its people systematically. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: It's completely fate.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah. Like a, a regime change, which kind of is the major upside of this. I, if like Israel gets, its its reach goal, you know, like that would be good for them too,

Malcolm Collins: would work there. I think that they should probably revert back to the old monarchy and the old you know, the, the, the rightful king right now has been talking a lot on this.

He said that the ayatollah ran to his caves like a rat. People need to come up and retake their, their, you know, country. We have words,

Simone Collins: we have spicy words.

Malcolm Collins: Well, no, I mean, I think that was in different regions with different cultural proclivities. In some regions, monarchies work better or in some regions democracies work better.

I don't, no, absolutely.

Simone Collins: Well, and also I think when, when you're in, in a region experiencing crisis, sometimes going from crisis to democracy. Doesn't work out that well.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah,

Simone Collins: right away.

Malcolm Collins: But we'll, we'll get into the monarchy and all this history and everything as well, because a lot, one mistake that I've heard from a lot of people that just says a complete ignorance of the situation is is this actually from Asma Gold?

I'll get into this a lot later. He says that he didn't think that I ran, would still hate America, of America, wasn't allied with Israel. And I'm like, actually, buddy based on the evidence we have, Iran hate Israel because Israel is allied with America and America is allied with Saudi Arabia. And that they have repeatedly shown openness to normalizing relationships with Israel, if only America would turn against Saudi Arabia. But we'll get to that. I know I was talking to an AI about this and he goes, well, you've gotta remember that they're a theocratic government. And I'm like, yeah, but their form of Islam is not as conservative as Bahaism.

And apparently the Saudis can find a way to normalize things with Israel. And it's like, actually that's a really good point. Probably not for theological reasons. But we'll get into the geopolitics of the region in a bit later. I wanna get into the facts. The reason I'm getting into geopolitics later is if like you're broadly educated, you know, this geopolitics stuff.

Mm-hmm. I want to start with the stuff that I wouldn't know because the news is not covering this comprehensively.

Simone Collins: Right.

Malcolm Collins: Extensive strikes on nuclear and military sites beyond personnel. I,. Israel Strikes aimed a cripple Iran strategic capabilities, the raid targeted key nuclear facilities, most notably the natas.

Uranium enrichment complex, Iran's largest nuclear site, multiple explosions, rocketed naans and satellite imagery confirmed heavy damage to critical infrastructure. The electrical power substation was destroyed and an above ground centrifuge was blasted. The UN nuclear watchdog chief, Rafael Gazi informed the UN Security Council that naans above-ground pilot enrichment plant had been quote unquote destroyed.

And again, that's from routers. Though Iran's underground enrichment halls remained intact. Israel also struck the deep underground farter woe enrichment facility causing limited damage as Israel lacks the bunker busters to crack the mountain. Mm-hmm. And nuclear research center is fun. Keep this in man. Ha on. In addition, Israeli missiles hit Iran's ballistic missile infrastructure. For example, an underground missile depot in Han near the Iraq border was bombed missile production and launch site such as Bid Kahani complex and air defense batteries were also targeted.

So a lot of the missiles you're seeing now come out of Iran

and prematurely. A lot of these were taken out. So you're already seeing a fairly limited capacity. And one of the things we're gonna look at is why did Iran's missile output decline so quickly?

Simone Collins: So in other words, what you're saying, it's not only is, is Israel like, okay, we're gonna end. This progress toward nukes, which has just hit this, this point of

Malcolm Collins: we're gonna kill anyone involved in this.

Anyone involved in your military? Yes. Well, and also

Simone Collins: we're gonna, we're gonna anticipate retaliatory attacks and try to undermine the infrastructure associated with that. Exactly. Yeah. Okay.

Malcolm Collins: In Tarran itself, dozens of sites were struck, including military installations and even the defense military headquarters.

By the third day of operations, Israeli claimed over 80 targets in Tarran alone had been hit from nuclear weapons project labs to fuel depots, triggering massive fireballs at fuel storage facility in Sham district. These widespread strikes across Iran's geography demonstrated Israel's intent to dismantle Iran's nuclear program and missile arsenal comprehensively, not just deliver a symbolic blow. And I think that this is really important. What's happening here isn't this, they are like, we are going to cut your balls off.

We are going to completely neuter you so you can't do anything for 20 years. That, that was the goal of this. And they might have achieved that. We'll discuss the extent of the damage and the ex and Iran's current situation right now.

Simone Collins: Mm.

Malcolm Collins: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed the campaign would continue for as many days as it takes to remove this threat, framing it as, as essential to Israel's survival.

A note here that wasn't mentioned here. Another way that Israel has done as attacks is actually very similar to what Ukraine did with the drones.

Simone Collins: Right? Like moving things in piecemeal, like in suitcases, in in trucks. Yes. There's

Malcolm Collins: been a lot of drones. I, I think hundreds of thousands of drones moved in piecemeal into Iran.

Mm-hmm. In suitcases in parts that have been reconstructed within the country and have been used in these attacks to keep things very targeted. Now I should note, Israel doesn't do targeted in the way the US does targeted. When the US does targeted, they mean we're gonna try to not kill any civilians.

When Israel does targeted, it means we don't really. Care that much about killing civilians, but we won't kill any unnecessary people in terms of killing the exact people we wanna kill. But like, if they're at their apartment, you know, that apartment's gone. You know, if they're, if they're at a whatever that's gone, like, we don't care.

Right. And I actually think that in the long run, this will lead to lower civilian casualties. Because if you look at you know, what things like Hamas has ended up doing is, is, you know, putting babies, putting daycares, putting kids right next to sites because they think that they can use that to deter Israel.

And it has led to a lot of these people dying. And I think that's really horrible. And if you just learned that that's, that Israel doesn't care about that, then you're not gonna play that gambit anymore.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Civilian toll and collateral damage in Iran. A firefighter calls out for colleagues at the site of a blast in Iran residential compound.

After an Israeli strike on June 13th, 2025. Dozens of civilians were killed when missiles hit an apartment block during the strikes, and that's from the Guardian. Mm-hmm. Despite Israel's focus on military targets, the offensive has inflicted heavy civilian toll in Iran. Iranian authority said the first day strike killed at least 80 people in Wounded 320.

But again, that's Iranian authorities and that's Al Jazeera. And if they're saying, and I, I would note how small that is compared to what Israel accomplished, killed 80 people. This is Al Jazeera, an anti-Israel newspaper. Keep in mind it's by Qatar, a cutter. Right. They're.

Simone Collins: Go for the higher range of damage

Malcolm Collins: in this case?

Well, no. They will intentionally manipulate. Qatar is the primary donor even more than Iran, to Hamas. Iran is only a larger donor if you include the cost of goods like weapons and stuff that they're sent. Well, like

Simone Collins: training weapons, it's, well, I mean that's a lot. Yeah. Al Jazeera

Malcolm Collins: is their mouthpiece.

Okay. They are firmly Allied was, Iran was in this against the Saudi Arabian power structure in the UAE and everything like that. Mm-hmm. We'll get to all this in a little bit. The point being is a source that is basically Iranian state tv. Al Jazeera mixed was the Iranian government said only 80 civilians died on the first day.

Simone Collins: Yeah, is really impressive.

Malcolm Collins: Astonishing.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: And I would say that. Okay, well then what's the real number? Probably 20. And if I go is okay if the real number is probably 20, because I'm just saying like, how much would a state newspaper lie? You're talking about like North Korea style state newspapers here.

Okay. So, if the real number's probably 20 and for 20 people they potentially shut down like a nuclear site and retaliation, that's

Simone Collins: huge. That is especially considering the, the damage caused by nuclear weapons. So that's, yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And, and Al Jazeera here argues that 20 of those killed were children.

But again, this is Al Jazeera, which is basically, you know, Islamist State News and not normal Islamist, the Iranian side, not the Wahabiists. They would say anything mean about the wahabiists that they want because they hate them. But we'll get into that little conflict in a second. In Tarran, some missiles struck residential areas while targeting regime figures.

One strike leveled a high rise apartment building in the Farrah Zad neighborhood, killing around 60 civilians in that single incident, according to Iranian claims. Well, that's more than a lot of the other things. So did almost everyone die in one incident over several days as Israeli raids continued.

The cumulative human costs mounted by June 15th, the independent human rights org, activist news agency, Harana. Tallied at least 406 people killed and Iran and another 654 injured. Again, those are incredibly low numbers. Given the scale of what's being accomplished here these figures suggest that for each high profile, general or nuclear scientist eliminated, many iranis civilians have been caught in the crossfire, whether from Aaron missiles strikes, or dual use infrastructure or secondary explosion.

Iran's government has blasted Israel for what it calls deliberate attacks on civilian areas. Though Israel insists any civilian harm was unintentional. Israel knows when they're bombing a civilian apartment complex where they know a scientist is civilians are gonna be harmed. But I, I ran it's rich that they say this.

Well, in response, they just send waves and waves of unguided dummy missiles. I, I under. How dare you sometimes kill the people who live in the same apartment building as our nuclear scientist who wants to wipe your people off the planet. Mm-hmm. We will send wave after wave after dummy missile for, for this injustice.

But like, I get it. What else are they supposed to do? They don't have access, you know, they've already used all their guided missiles, right? Yeah. I mean, we'll put a, we'll be painting a picture of how far in a corner Iran is painted right now. And I really don't blame them for this. I just am a little annoyed with the hypocrisy still scenes of rescuers pulling wounded families from collapsed homes and Iran underscore the blistering attacks come at a painful price for Iranian society.

Now Iran's fragility before the onslaught, ironically israel's hammer blow landed at a time when Iran was already weakened in a fragile state, both domestically and in its regional posture economically. Iran had been reeling under renewed US maximum pressure sanctions. And internal mismanagement.

By 2025, the country was mired in its worst economic crisis in 40 years with soaring inflation and fuel shortages, the economic pain had translated into public frustration and sporadic protests, s threatening the regime's stability even before the first Israeli missile fell.

International Atomic Agency, IAEA, reports of Iran's nuclear non-compliance had Iran facing the possibility of harsher sanctions and diplomatic isolation. .

Meanwhile, Iran's regional influence had been eroding over the past year. Tehran's network of proxy forces its chief mechanism for projecting power, suffered devastating setbacks. In late 2024, Iran's ally in Damascus, the Syrian President Bahar Al Assad, was overthrown removing a cornerstone of Iran's axis of resistance.

Around the same time, Israel wage major campaigns against , Iran aligned militants on Israel's borders. Hezbollah in Lebanon was decapitated with this longtime leader, Hassan Nazare, reportedly assassinated and its fighting capability shattered. And you can see our video on the pager attack, which was just absolutely devastating.

But we go over it as a strategy for applying to jobs. , But , the devastating nature of the attack and the brilliance of it really cannot be overstated. Because it basically took out all of Hezbollah which is crazy. So they've taken out Hezbollah. They, they, they've, they, you know, Hamas is not a useful ally to Iran anymore.

And now the Syrian president Bashar AAD has overthrown. Basically, Iran built out this network of allies in the region. Mm-hmm. Which were all sort of like, if you played command and conquer, it's like the extended GLA network. It was the Muslims who just wanted to kill other people. Not the ones who wanted like, some sort of regional stability and ability to work with the outside world, which is what you see with the Saudi, Saudi Arabia aligned forces.

Right. Even though they're actually more conservative and more conservative Muslim, they're more like the resistance. And these guys are more like, well, we're more conservative, but we're gonna, you know, go with the status quo. Okay. And I won't say I hate that. I kind of like the whole resistance thing.

I like playing the GLA and command and conquer.

No, I will share a short clip to give you an idea of what I mean by they are basically the modern GLA faction. But I must warn you before sharing it that you know, back in the two thousands video game companies were very, very politically correct. So you're going to have to brace yourself for this.

Speaker 3: We must be on our guard reports. Say the GLA might attack us. Revengeful, our entering the war

GLA,

Speaker 4: we're everywhere We. Another way, we need reinforcement.

Speaker 5: We

Speaker 4: got the air

Speaker 5: just trying to get to the main reactor, protect it, and all

Speaker 6: the command center, they got the command center.

Malcolm Collins: They're my favorite faction by an enormous margin by like 80%. I just play the GLA, if anyone knows what I'm talking about, I'm, I'm a big fan.

Speaker: Unit lost, unit lost. A warrior has fallen.

Malcolm Collins: But what I'm saying here is in terms of like global stability and everything like that, I get where they were going with this.

But they sort of made themselves an enemy of everyone except for global adjectives at the same time. And with Russia tied down, and everyone else who was interested in global agitation, like North Korea, et cetera, tied down because Russia is tied down. Iran you know, allowed its sort of agents, you know, the Hezbollah, the Hamas, the the Syrian guy to sort of be left out on our limb.

And Israel just took the opportunity to like, I wouldn't even say Israel, it was more mossod to just cut those strings one by one by one. And once all those strings were cut they targeted the thing that was funding all of that.

Simone Collins: Right.

Malcolm Collins: Which is first I ran. And they probably won't go after Qatar, if I'm gonna be honest.

But th this is. I wonder if Qatar is gonna rethink their situation because they've lost pretty much all of their supporters of Iran ends up undergoing any sort of political realignment, although I don't think that that's real school.

Simone Collins: Is, is Quatars endgame different from that of Iran? I mean, I think so,

Malcolm Collins: right?

I mean they, well, Qatar was sort of, okay, so we're gonna go on a brief tangent here about my understanding of what's happening in the region. Okay. And I called him Qatar 'cause I'm an American and that's a real word and cutter sounds lame. Anyway, so, Qatar was, you have anything sort of in like a pride fight was a UAE almost more than it was, was the various regional forces and the UAE had to ride themselves with the Saudi Arabian and American factions.

And so Qatar almost like. Reflexively aligned themselves with Iran. But I don't think they ever really had a serious like foot in the game or anything like that. I don't think they cared that much.

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: And so, I think a lot of this is just, they're gonna give up pretty quickly. Like, they're gonna be like, okay, well that, those minions died.

Let's see where we can reorient ourselves. Because otherwise they're not like that big a power player except for the money they have.

Simone Collins: Well, what confuses me about them is that they also invest a lot in reputational things with the west. You know, like Iran isn't trying to like bring in Western tourism and engage other like western thought leaders and

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, but they're not doing it successfully.

They're not like Quatarsst them. Quatarsst Dubai. And do you know any city in Qatar's name

Simone Collins: Doha?

Malcolm Collins: Okay. Doha. Yeah. 'cause we're we might be doing a thing there soon. Well

Simone Collins: also, like, you know, DOHAS in ter, but I, I don't know any other cities to be fair, but I don't know other cities and aside from like major, major cities and capitals in other Middle Eastern countries, either because I, we don't do much work there.

And if I don't do work somewhere, this is how it is for most people, then I'm probably not gonna remember what I one at one point memorized so lame. But

Malcolm Collins: I mean, I, I guess the point I'm making is from Qatar's perspective, it's like all their minions were killed. They, they don't particularly, I don't know if they care that much.

It's like, okay, well that particular card hand didn't play out because they haven't actually burned Bridgets with the west that much for whatever reason. No, and

Simone Collins: they're, they're, well, they seem to be trying to invest in being a world player. In various economic and cultural and intellectual spheres.

Well then they might sports too. And with conventions too, like I think that's like some anime stuff that's happened there. Yeah. They, they might

Malcolm Collins: be, this is like a useful cutting of the strings in, they might be like, oh, this is fantastic. Now we don't need to appeal to those crazy people anymore. Yeah, I mean,

Simone Collins: yeah.

Part of it is I just, and I'm, I'm speaking of course from immense ignorance about what's really going on in the area, but Iran seems like this really unstable mean girl who has like this troop of, of like, she's a rich, mean girl, or at least a mean girl who like spends all of her family's money. So maybe there aren't actually that rich, but she like forces her parents to go into credit card debt for her.

And she just spends all this money on her flunkies. And her flunkies cause a lot of problems and bully other people and are really unstable. And now she's being, I. The pistol whipped by someone else in, at school? Well, no,

Malcolm Collins: who already like, beat up all her flunkies

Simone Collins: Yeah. Like caught her who like kind of was nice to her or like sometimes helped out her flunkies too.

Maybe out of like protection or maybe out of like, yeah. I mean, I also don't like the people that you're bullying that much. It, it may now just be like, I'm not, I'm not gonna hitch myself to this losing

Malcolm Collins: wagon. Yeah. No. That's sort of the impression I get is, is, is, is Qatar might be the person who walked into the room and is like the very wealthy, aristocratic girl and is like, as she sees this other girl who she saw as like her friend just absolutely being beaten with like the back of a gun.

And she's like, whoa, I didn't know that could happen. I'm walking out of the room right now, like, you, you guys have fun with that little game I had. I don't know this person.

Speaker 7: 昨 日なんか連絡とかあった。うちは何も。やばいかもと思ったけど、あいつもビビったの。

Speaker 8: 私の。

Speaker 13: 終わりでいい。何よ。

Speaker 14: です。

Speaker 8: then Qatar walks in and is like, Hey girls, how's that? Oh, oh, whoa. And just like slowly turns around hoping she hasn't noticed and starts walking back out of the room.

Simone Collins: Yeah, but I mean Iran has really been asking for it too, like just by, I mean the fact that. Iran was being sanctioned for crossing the line with developing nuclear weapons.

I think it was getting to this point where Iran was like, what are you gonna do? Whatcha are gonna come at me? Like, no, I, the Daily Show

Malcolm Collins: was so funny. The Daily Show did this piece where they show Netanyahu talking over and over again throughout history about how Iran is getting close to crossing the line.

Mm-hmm. And he is like, you see, like this is all fake. I was like, imagine if I showed him like environmentalist scientists saying over and over again how close we are. I'm like, oh, that's proof. Environmental issues aren't an issue. You know, global warming had been an issue. He'd be like, whoa, whoa, whoa.

It is an issue there. You know, they were just, and I'm like, no, actually it isn't an issue there because we never actually made any big, they kept saying, well, if you do this and if you do this, then it won't be an issue and we can delay it. But we never accomplished any of those things the environmentalist advocates said.

But Israel kept saying, well, you know, we can slow them down 10 years. And then they do like stuck neck and. Sex net, if you're not familiar with that, was this amazing program where they like absolutely screwed up. Really amazing. So they they jumped the Iranian like air gap computers using like USB sticks that they like left outside the Iranian in a parking lot,

Simone Collins: right?

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And then, yeah, and then they plugged it into the internal computer system to like see what's on it. And then it slowly went through and it sped up the turbine to the point where it destroyed all burned the story

Simone Collins: burned. Yeah. So

Malcolm Collins: smart and they couldn't be fixed, you know, they had to start from scratch after this.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: So absolutely brilliant by the way. Especially in terms of a no death way to, you know, slow this down. But what we kept seeing was Israel is, is they kept slowing down Iran through things that we can, like, measure, like this is why they kept delay the timeline and they finally got to a point where I think we'll get into a lot of this in a second, but I think they sort of got to the point of like, nobody cares.

You know? Most, most of the Western powers right now at least want Iran out of the scene, especially with what's going on in Russia right now. Mm-hmm. And Iran's, you know, tacit alliance was Russia. You know, they don't want them to have nuclear weapons anymore than we do. And we're already in this incredible negative public perception around Gaza right now.

And you know, Irans in this incredibly weak position 'cause we just took out every single one of their major surrogates.

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm. Yeah,

In an ironic way, it was the Gaza protestors that sort of led to this because they put Israel in a position where everyone who was going to turn against them for trying to protect themselves had already turned against them, and there was no one else who could possibly turn against them for that reason.

And yet those was in Western positions of power who wanted them to take out a. , A threat to also them because Gaza wasn't really that much of a threat to any of the Western players. , But Iran was, , it was really only a net benefit for them to go and do this because of the protestors.

Malcolm Collins: Gaza, the whole, we came for their

Simone Collins: friends and then we came for their internal infrastructure. We came for their leaders. We're there's a chilling effect too with anyone else who might take a position of leadership.

'cause

Malcolm Collins: Well, I mean it's not just that Trump recently is like, oh, we could take out the supreme leader. We've just decided not to, which I love as well. He is like, you know, we've decided not to for now, I think is what he said. Oh, Trump. That's very Trump. Anyway. In Gaza, the Hamas militant faction backed by Iran was decimated during a two year war, following its October, 2023, attacks Oregon talking about their various you know, people who follow them with Hezbollah and Hamas neutralize and the Syrian corridor disputed Iran found itself strategically isolated.

Its deterrent. Reach, blunted. Even Iran's attempts to retaliate indirectly, for example, via Yemen's. Hhi rebels have been constrained by prior US and Israeli actions. In short, by June, 2025, Iran was strategically and economically brittle. The fragility likely influenced . Israel's timing as Rand analysts note.

Israel perceived a closing window of opportunity having dealt significant blows to Iran's proxy network and seeing Iran's regional position as its weakest. The Iranian regime for its part was aware of its precarious position in May, Iran. Secretary counsel, ironically chaired by General Bagari, who would soon be killed, met to hardened defenses against a potential US and Israeli strike.

Mm-hmm. Yet those preparations proved inefficient to prevent Israel's onslaught. The confluence of internal economic stressors and external losses left Iran Ill prepared to absorb the massive attack that followed adding to fears in Iran that the regimes vary.

Survival could be at stake. I. Now we're gonna talk about the weird phenomenon we've seen of Westerners supporting this. A striking aspect of this conflict is a largely supportive reaction of Western governments to Israel's attack on Iran. And this has even been noted in a New York Times piece I read today where they're like, why are all the western governments so supportive of this?

Okay. A sharp Quatarsst to the wary critical stance during Israel's war on Gaza was in hours of the strikes. Leaders in the uk, France, Germany, and other western nations openly affirmed Israel's right to self-defense against the Iran's nuclear. Threat France, president Emmanuel Macron even blamed Iran for destabilizing the region.

Noting Teran was enriching uranium to near weapons grade was no civilian rationale. And I note here, by the way, that Iran was in the middle of talks about this was Israel, right? So I'm not, just to take the other side of this, it wasn't like, there weren't like ongoing talks within the next week. They were supposed to be finalizing things and then all these attacks happen, and everyone who is a participant to those talks are like, eh, this is, this is for the best.

So I think it shows what their spy networks were saying about what, whatever Iran was doing on the other side of this, because these countries have informants as well, right? Right. Britain's Prime Minister, Kira Starmer announced he was deploying combat aircraft to the Middle East in a show of solidarity with Israeli's defense.

Keep on this. Is, this is, this is the UK after, so Macron is like, oh, and then the uk, those big pussies are actually sending military aircraft. Imagine them doing that. Intense around, that's intense, right? Yeah.

Simone Collins: But I think, I mean, everyone recognizes the threat of a new country coming online with nuclear.

The fact that massage, well, no, it's,

Malcolm Collins: it's, it's very different than any other country coming online with nuclear because Russia or North Korea comes online with nuclear. And your fear is them using it defensively. Yeah. And it lowering your ability to maneuver geopolitically. Iran is the first country with nuclear that might just use it the moment they get it.

Simone Collins: Oh yeah. Okay. So your point is like they might, it's one thing for them to have it for signaling reasons. It's another thing to have it for like.

Malcolm Collins: They kill you.

Simone Collins: Theological

Malcolm Collins: and ideological reasons.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Mm. Okay.

Malcolm Collins: And, and, and honestly, they might use it on Saudi Arabia before they use it on Israel. You know, they, they you know, we, we'll get to that in a second, but like Iran might send missiles flying, and that makes them very different than other countries.

Germany's Chancellor, Frederick Mi Mers likewise declared that Israel has a right to defend its existence. Iran's nuclear program is an existential threat in quote, you know, all these countries, when Gaza happened, they were like, what are you doing? You terrible Nazis. And now they're like, oh, well, I mean, Iran is different.

You can handle them in the background if you want. What's really happening here, just in case people are wondering is all of these countries wanted Iran really? Defanged, you know, they wanted every one of Iran's teeth ripped out. Israel's doing that. Israel's paying for it. Israel's taking the blame for it.

And the rest of Europe is like, you, you go ahead and do that. Whatever you wanna do. Like, I, I'm not gonna, I'm not, I'm outta you later. We might allow our citizens to protest this. And I think that this shows that this is not war mongering, right? When every single other major power powers that do not like Israel in many cases are immediately like, oh, well, in this one instance, just,

Simone Collins: yeah, I can, can't resist.

Yeah. And we'll

Malcolm Collins: talk about this later. If anything It is, it is, it has decreased the pressure that they were placing on Israel for Gaza, which I think is really interesting and I didn't expect at all.

Simone Collins: Ah, you mean you think at this point right now because of the distraction post by Iran? No,

Malcolm Collins: not by the distraction.

It's Germany, France, the uk, the, the US less because the US is already pro-Israel. Yeah. But these European powers, right. They were avidly against Israel. What, what Israel was doing in Ga. Gaza, right. Yeah.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: But now they're in this situation where it's like, I know we were complaining about that thing you were doing in Gaza.

Right. But I wouldn't want to distract you with our complaints until you're done with this Iran thing. Then we can revisit the Gaza situation is sort of where they are right now. I see. At least at the government level.

Simone Collins: Okay,

Malcolm Collins: interesting. Which I think says to people, you gotta ask yourself, what do these governments know that you don't?

That despite the rab often anti-Israeli perspective, they feel this way about Iran.

Simone Collins: Yeah. That is big. That is big.

Malcolm Collins: Because I didn't expect them to feel this way. And this was actually a shock to me where it revealed to me that intelligent services knew something about Iran that I didn't know. I didn't think that they were this potentially threatening to all of these countries.

This unified western stance is especially remarkable given that these same leaders had just weeks before been sharply critical of Israel's conduct in Gaza.

During the Gaza campaign, European allies grew alarmed at the humanitarian toll on Palestinian civilians. In fact, in the lead up to the Iran strikes, Germany was considering an unprecedented weapons export ban on Israel. France has curtailed off an Israeli arms expo display and the UK suspended trade talks, all in protest of Israel's bombardment of Gaza.

And Im impediments to the humanitarian aid. So why the about face of Iran? Fundamentally, Western powers view of Iran's regime as a far more dangerous and unambiguous threat to global security than Hamas and Gaza? .

As one analysis put it, Gaza, by late 2024, looked like a mad, active collective punishment on an enfeebled population eroding Western sympathy. Iran, by Quatarsst, is a large hostile state, a theocracy, on the threshold of nuclear power that has openly sworn to destroy Israel. In other words, western capitals see Iran as an existential menace.

Not just to Israel, but to regional stability especially. But also like what

Simone Collins: we talked about with our, our discussion of the march on Gaza. In, in many cases, it's very difficult to help Palestinians because of what Iran continues to do in making Palestinians radicalized and violent and weaponized like, and I think a lot of the reason why we're not able to help them more is because of Iran's ongoing use of them as a cudgel.

It's horrible.

Malcolm Collins: No. And I think what we're seeing here is Israel wouldn't have felt comfortable going after Iran like this if it hadn't first handled this, if it hadn't first handled Hezbollah. And, and, and that it can do this because if it, if it did this while those two other factors who are basically like Iran surrogates were still at play, then they just attack Israel, right?

Like it can go after this because it handled those and the other major capitals and power players didn't see the wider logic at play here.

Simone Collins: Hmm,

Malcolm Collins: especially given Iran's ballistic missiles and its military alliance with Russia, which is waging war was Ukraine. Moreover, just one day before Israel's attack, un nuclear inspectors reported Iran was closer than ever to a bomb violating the non-proliferation treaty, a red line for Europe's big three, who are staunch defenders of the NPT regime.

Now, I note here that this happened one day before they started to attack. I bet Israel knew all this and they were just waiting for that report to come out, or the, the inspectors to go through and then be like, okay, now we attack. Because I ran, apparently didn't care, care about all the treaties. You know, the UN thought, oh, they, they care about these, oh, they're, no, they're not playing games.

They're not playing game and, and, and, and, and Israel's entire civilization was at risk as a result of this. And what a lot of people, I think this recontextualizes what's happening in, in, in Gaza right now to this is the goons being taken out. Now they're taking out Command Cobra. This isn't the Putties anymore.

Facing that reality, London, Paris, and Berlin all signed approval of Israeli's preventative strikes to stop an Iranian bomb. Wow. London, Paris and Berlin all signed approval. Their emphasis was on Iran's own heavy responsibility for the conflict due to Iran's and nuclear escalation. Mm-hmm. And I'd note this for anyone who says War monger.

War monger, clearly not everyone else is like, oh, actually, that's why you were doing all this stuff in Gaza. Well, that makes perfect sense. Yeah, go ahead. You, you go right on ahead and get rid of that Iranian problem we all have in the back of our necks. No. Well, I,

Simone Collins: I think a lot of people see the writing on the wall of what happens when Iran continues with what they're obviously choosing to continue doing.

I think that's the scary thing.

Malcolm Collins: Well, I love Trump's response to this, which is, he goes, he tweets I'm not in the mood for negotiation. Wow. You know, that's a very like thing to say. Very Trump, you know, I. In effect, Israel's offensive against Iran achieved what years of Gaza fighting could, not a broad realignment of Western support behind Israel, at least in the short term.

Western leaders still verbally call for deescalation to avoid a bigger war, but they have largely refrain from the harsh condemnations and sanctions threats that accompanied Gaza. The difference comes down to strategic self-interest, stopping nuclear proliferation and checking a Russian aligned adversary takes precedence for the rest.

Whereas Israel's punitive operations in Gaza raised uncomfortable moral and legal questions. And I note that I don't really see them as punitive myself. I see them as necessary to, for Israeli safety, but Okay. I mean, maybe less necessary once Iran is taken out, once Iran is taken out, you don't need these same types of operations in places like Gaza anymore because they're not as much of a threat anymore.

Simone Collins: Yeah, absolutely.

I'd also note the almost disgusting hypocrisy on display here, which is to say that Gaza was unique in that Gaza was really only a threat to the Israeli people, the uk, France, Germany didn't have to worry about Gaza's kidnapping their people breaking into their cities. And so when Israel was trying to defang Gaza.

They were like, oh, you horrible, horrible Jews. , But then the moment they came for a tiger that could attack them, they were like, oh, well, you know, in this case, in this case, what you're doing is necessary. It wasn't that Gaza was toothless, it's just that it was toothless against them. So they took the opportunity to score political points with their, you know, wokes who act like no one actually ever attacks anyone or is a threat to anyone else.

Malcolm Collins: Iran's counter attacks in their decline. So I wanna talk about what happened with this as well. Iran's response to Israeli onset was swift, but ultimately limited in duration and effect was in hours of being struck. Iran unleashed a barrage of missiles and drones aiming at Israeli cities and military targets.

Iran State media claimed hundreds of ballistic missiles were launched at Israel, following the attack on naan and killing of its generals For several nights, missiles, salvos reigned down on Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, and other areas. So many at times, Iran's nightly missile attacks, overwhelmed Israel's anti-air defenses penetrating the dome shield.

Israeli officials reported intensive barrages apartment blocks in Tel Aviv and Ram gone suffered direct hits resulting in significant damage and fires in Israel. Error raid sirens became a nightly routine and citizens huddled in bomb shelters as interceptor rockets streaked overhead. Iranian missiles that evaded interception did cause casualties.

At least 24 Israelis were killed in the first wave of retaliation and dozens more were injured. One long range missile even reached the West Bank landing in Heran. A testament to Iran's ability to strike across the region. However. After the initial fury of the first few days, Iran's direct counter attacks , noticeably tapered off by middle of the conflict's first week, the volume of missile fire from Iran had diminished.

Several factors explain why Iran's retaliation died down so much. After the early salvos preemptive suppression, Israel's opening strikes specifically targeted Iran's retaliatory capacity. In the first 48 hours, Israel's forces struck many of Iran's missile launch sites and air defense systems. Israel reportedly destroyed dozens of radars and surface to air missile launchers across Iran.

It also hit surface to surface missile launchers that Iran was using to fire on Israeli cities. This degradation of Iran's launch platforms and targeting networks likely blunted. Iran's ability to sustain heavy missile fire. Simply put, some of Iran's guns were knocked out early.

Limited arsenal or caution. While Iran possessed thousands of missiles on paper, it may have held back from expending its full arsenal firing large volleys risk depleting Iran strategic missiles without achieving decisive effect. Most were being intercepted or striking civilian areas which can backfire.

Diplomatically trend might be conserving missiles in the case of war drags on or the US becomes involved. I really don't believe that at all. I don't, I I think they sent everything they had. And, and I think that they're, they're, they're lying about how many missiles they had, and we're seeing that already.

I mean, why wouldn't you hit with everything? Really? They, they can't use these dumb missiles to fight back against the us. They can't use these dumb missiles to fight against the land invasion. They're really only useful for terror attacks against civilian populations.

Simone Collins: Hmm.

Malcolm Collins: The loss of command and coordination.

The decapitation of Iran's military leadership likely caused chaos in Iran's defensive operations was top generals and the IRGC commanders killed in the opening strike. Iran's response in the immediate ness may have been uncoordinated, except why is it decreasing more the more they get new people in positions?

Could be trying to reserve ammunition, but I doubt it. I think they're just running out. Proxy retaliation fizzled. Iran initially signaled that its regional proxies would join the fight. For instance, a missile was fired from Yemen by the Iran Allied Hui Militia Landing in the West Bank. But Iran's usual proxy options were largely unavailable our weekend.

Hezbollah and Hamas, traditionally Tara's frontline retaliatory tools had been badly damaged and offered little fire terror. This round. Some rockets for militias in serial and Iraq may have been attempted, but with Assad gone and pro Iranian militias scattered, these fronts were muted. The lack of a proxy second front meant Iran stood relatively alone, unable to sustain a multi-front assault on Israel without significant proxy attacks to compliment its own missiles.

Iran's offensive potential was more easily contained. I just can't imagine how bad that felt for like Iran being like, okay, guys, we've been giving you missiles for years. You should have hundreds of thousands of stockpile and Hezbollah's like, yeah, we have no leadership anymore. And Hamas is like, well, actually, we're completely under, and the are like, actually we were mostly destroyed and our stocks were seized.

Ouch. Ouch. You gotta almost feel bad for them at this point. Yeah. In summary, Iran's counter attack was intense, but short-lived. It caused real pain in Israel, dozens, dead, hundreds wounded and daily disruption of life. But it failed to alter the strategic balance or slow Israel's campaign.

Simone Collins: Well, what stands out to me is that one, this is really the solidification and confirmation of a clear trend, which is the nature of warfare is, you know, it, it's here, it's officially changed. You know, we, yes, we still have aircraft carriers, but now we have people taking suitcases and trucks into enemy territory and doing this sort of new form of gorilla warfare, like Amazon Prime delivery warfare, like at piecemeal IKEA furniture, assembly warfare.

And I think that's really, I. Interesting. What you see too is Iran's reaction is extremely old school. It's, we will send our missiles from our war chest and it's,

Malcolm Collins: we will get our regional players to attack you even though they have no technology or real power. Yeah.

Simone Collins: Yeah. And I think, I mean, what, what you can see, I think Mossad is kind of the trend setter.

Also like you, Ukraine to a, a great extent too out of, out of necessity and creativity. Of what the future of warfare is gonna look like. Which is what, where Mossad I think really represents what the future of warfare is gonna be, especially with ai, is that it's going to be smart and by the time you know it's happening, it will pretty much strategically be over it's checkmate before you realize, you know, this is

Malcolm Collins: checkmate in move one.

And, and I'll also say here that to me the biggest thing that this changes that the Ukraine situation didn't change is Iran was operating off of Cold War logic. It was build up less economically, less technologically developed regional allies. Mm-hmm. Um, And if you have enough of these that they will be able to assist you when you go to war against one of the other big, you know, powers.

Right. And what is Israel is showing is. Those sorts of allies don't matter one lick. Mm-hmm. You know, and, and, and if you look at the Cold War, you know, we tried to build up allies in, you know, Vietnam. We tried to build up allies in Korea. We tried to build up allies all over the world, right? Like that's what all these conflicts were about.

And we fought over these allies, right? Like yeah. Hundreds of thousands, millions of Americans died over these allies, right? And what we're seeing in this new ecosystem is those types of allies don't matter at all. You know? And that's what Israel showed that one little country can wipe out every one of those allies you care about.

Yeah. And that the only allies that matter are the ones who are technologically capable.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: And this is why I also say it's useful for the United States to invest in its relationship with Israel because of the technologically capable and economically productive countries. It is the only one with an above replacement fertility rate, which means it's one of the only ones that's gonna matter.

You know, intergenerationally speaking.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Well, and again, I mean, I think that. Th this, this could be a huge opportunity for Iran. Like if they experience a regime change it, at least we're, we get to roll the dice again for Iran, where I feel like we are at a point of multidimensional failure here.

We're at a point of religious failure as you covered, you know, they're, they're not like they're having a crisis of faith. We're seeing huge detraction from, from Islam in practice in Iran. We're seeing declining birth rates. We're seeing what seems to be a fairly un unhappy populace and, and now an unstable government.

Like, let's give it another roll of the dice. Like maybe we can save Iran. I think I saw someone post something like you know, Cyrus freed the Jews. Now the Jews will free the Persians. Like they're gonna, they're gonna pay it forward or no, pay it back, return the favor delayed. And maybe, I mean, that's true.

I'd like. I, I don't think that Israel or Jews ever wanted, like, animosity toward Islam in general. Right? Well, listen, what I'll say that

Malcolm Collins: the Jews should now go to Saudi Arabia and say, money, please. We got rid of your geopolitical rival money, please. And if Saudi Arabia doesn't go to them, they need to go.

As I've said, I even though, even though Turkey has said anti semetic stuff in the past, I know people think that they would never be friends, but I actually think Turkey is the number one desirable ally in the region for Israel. Long term. You gotta go to, is Israel gonna be like, Hey, let's be friends.

You got those great tors. You know, they're, they're also fairly technologically competent. Also a diversified economy. I. But we'll see, we'll see. Also, they don't know how to manage money. Look at their, look at their banking system right now. Just be like, you need a few Jews. You need someone who can handle usre.

Just put all this in on us. You know, we'll go back to a medieval system here. But anyway, to continue here is I ran spit now or does Teran have any cards left with this Generals gone. It's nuclear sights burning and it's missile offensive petering out observers. They're asking whether Iran has effectively been spent as a fighting force in this conflict and what options remain for the Islamic Republic.

There is no doubt that Iran has taken a severe beating. The war so far has left Irans military badly decapitated and its strategic program set back by years. Yet it would be premature to count Iran out entirely. The Iranian regime still has significant cards left to play, though each comes with high risk.

Missile reserves, Iran likely still holds a vast reserve of missile and rockets. US analysts estimate Iran holds thousands of missiles capable of r striking Israel. If cornered Iran could choose to launch larger salvos and more advanced missiles in future rounds of fighting, I don't believe that. I just don't.

They'd be thinning them away. Just think they're

Simone Collins: out. One, because a lot of that infrastructure was attacked by Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: The, the, where that stuff was stored was attacked on day one. That's why they ran out so quickly. Yeah. Asymmetric warfare. Iran excels in irregular tactics even as its conventional options.

Narrow toran could turn to cyber attacks, convert sabotage, and global terrorism as a way to hit back Iran or proxy hackers might try to disrupt Israeli infrastructure or Western financial systems. Iran operatives could attempt attacks on Israel or Jewish targets abroad. Past incidents like the 1990s Buenos eras bombings linked to Hezbollah show, Iran's willingness to use terror as a pressure tool.

Already there are concerns that Iranian agents could target Israeli embassies or soft targets in third countries in retaliation. Such shadowy responses don't win battles, but they keep, I ran the game by raising the cost for Israel and his supporters in a deniable way. I don't see that as mattering either.

Israel doesn't care about your. Dumb terrorist attacks. They're not like the US where like we panic because you blew up a bus like Israel's used to that stuff. And they're basically carrying this out on their own. You can try to attack like US and French buses, but that's just gonna galvanize them more to be pro-ISIS Israel because they don't even see themselves as in this fight right now.

So it would be incredibly stupid, like Israel has done a really smart maneuver by not asking for help from other players because it just allows Iran to potentially try to do terrorism on them and then force them into Israel's hands. Maritime front Iran could threaten the vital oil shipping lanes at the Persian Gulf, specifically the strait of her moose, which is what we've heard about a lot recently.

Through which large share through which a large share of the world's oil transit. Transits, the IRGC Navy could harass or attack tankers or lay mines, creating a global economic shock. This oil weapon is a classic card. Iran holds Indeed, oil prices spiked after the war began. Yeah, on a fear, Iran might widen the conflict to the Gulf.

Those, so far no major incident at sea has occurred because again, Iran doesn't want to draw in other players. Right now it's Zim versus Israel. If they widen, it's there. It's Zim versus everyone.

Simone Collins: Yeah, and, and, and no one actually wants them to kid nuclear. Weapons. No one, no one wants that.

Malcolm Collins: Well, I mean, if they, and, and, you know, if, if they choke MOUs, the US is gonna get involved immediately, at least within that, that context.

And the problem is in what they know now from what's happening in Russia is their big battleships are basically pointless from the perspective of modern warfare. Russians were taken down by, you know, AI controlled jet skis with bombs attached to them. Like there's very little you can do. Again, when you look at the cost of these big giant ships,

you know, you buy a few hundred jet skis, you, you're talking like 0.0 0, 0 0 0 0 0 1% to like strap them with bombs. In an ai, you could sit on a whole swarm and there's nothing they can do. Eventually they're going down. And it basically means that these are all just paper tigers for them, right? Like they can't actually blockade the straight.

Yeah. And I'm sure the US would love to try out some of its new weapons that it has built with inspiration from the Ukrainian war. Yeah. Real, really? No. Honestly, this is so funny. If Iran does try to blockade with these legacy weapons that they have, like these big old battle cruisers, it's like every weapons testing company right now is like a drooling for them to do that.

So they can use their weapons to show how awesome they are on basically a feckless and incompetent and witless enemy to be like, look, we can grow up a few battleships. Why don't you buy from. Target ai proxy military resurgence while Iran's main proxies are down, they are not entirely out remnants of Hezbollah.

Not really Iraqi Shia's militias, I mean, kind of, or the hussies in Yemen. Oh, come on. Could be activated in a more coordinated way of Iran chooses.

Simone Collins: They've been trying, they've been pulling out all the stops for a while now. I mean, they, at, at some point you're gonna get worn down.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. For example, the Houthis have already signaled readiness to strike Israel, or even shipping targets on Iran's behalf in Iraq, Iran.

Linked militias could target us bases, as they have occasionally done in the past trying to compliment Kate. America's posture. No, that would just cause America to become involved. You don't want that, you don't want us to be more involved than we are, especially with Trump saying that. Look. Okay. So I should explain why America getting involved matters so much.

Israel, as it is said, cannot hit the underground labs where nuclear weapons are being refined or developed right now. America easily can. Mm-hmm. Because we have the types of jets that can carry bunker buster bombs and Israel doesn't, they don't have the bombs. They don't have the Jets

Simone Collins: should, like, that's the They

Malcolm Collins: should, but we do, and we've got a lot of them.

They're basically infinite. Amount from, from a global perspective, you, I don't care how under a mountain you are, that mountain will be dust. If you, if you piss us off enough next diplomatic rush, leverage Russia and China. No, no. I'm not even gonna read that. That's pointless. Mm-hmm. Russia and China are not coming to save you Iran.

No, I'm sorry. Russia is heavily involved in its own war right now, and China is right now looking to go to war with like, you know, the, the Taiwan, they, they do not want to waste a bunch of forces on your dumb, dumb instigation. That's fair. And they don't,

Simone Collins: they don't necessarily benefit from. Iran going off making things.

No,

Malcolm Collins: but Russia and China are actually gonna be put on a significant back foot because of this. If Iran has dealt with, as well as their entire mil, you know, axis of supporters mm-hmm. Russia and China have lost a major geopolitical ally in the region and basically it moves the entire Middle East, at least the parts of it that matter into the United States' hands.

Wow. In a big way.

Simone Collins: Well then aren't you arguing that they have a really good reason to get into this?

Malcolm Collins: Who at the region? No, they've got no reason. I mean, they've got a reason, like technically, but like not actually on, like, no one would decide it. Even though they know they're gonna lose a lot of power because of it,

Simone Collins: like the amount of power that they'll lose in the region is not worth the risk that they take on by getting involved.

Yeah. Okay. That's makes sense.

Malcolm Collins: I mean, keep in mind if, if Russia cannot get involved. So it's really just a question of China. If China attempts to get involved they will make a lifelong enemy of the Saudis. China does not want to make a lifelong enemy of the Saudis. They would prefer to stay neutral as all of this plays out.

That is, that is one thing the Chinese don't want to do at this point. And the Saudis have likely already communicated that to them. They're like, let it play out. I'm sure, and I'm pretty sure the Saudis, when you look at their diplomatic network, have a lot more people close to people in position of power in China than the Iranians do.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Fair.

Despite these remaining options, Iran's overall position is extremely precarious. Tyra Iran's supreme leader is definitely rejected any notion of surrender, stating Iran will continue to resist impositions of peace on unfavorable terms. But resisting is not the same as prevailing. The chances of Iran's regime surviving this crisis depend on a few critical variables.

If the war states limited to airstrikes and missile exchanges, Iran's clerical leadership might endure by brutally repressing descent at home and rallying national sentiment against a foreign enemy. In fact, some Iranians, even regime critics. May unify in the face of an external attack, at least temporarily, which could shore up the regime as happened during the Iran Iraq war in the 1980s.

On the other hand, the regime's legitimacy is already eroding and a humiliating military defeat could spark intense anger. The severe economic strain, coupled with public shock of seeing iconic generals killed and key sites in flames might embolden opposition factions.

If street protests were to explode again as they did in 2022, the revolutionary guards may be to overstretch or demoralized to contain them. In a worst case scenario for Iran, the combination of military , decapitation, and popular uprising could threaten the country of the Islamic Republic now, I, I just wanted to, go to the thing I talked about at the beginning here. 'cause I think it's really important to go over 'cause I was so disappointed in gold historical knowledge where he is, like Iran calls America the great Satan. Or at least calls it still the great Satan because of our alliance was Israel.

And I was like, that is not true of anything. It's hostile to Israel because of us. So first why did Iran start calling us the great Satan? It was because we led a coup to overthrow a Democratic elected government and try to , reinstate a monarch. And the 1953 backed coup that overthrew democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammed Masa and reinstated the Shah is the core historical grievance that led to this anti-US ideology.

The term great Satan was coined after the 1979 revolution. But it draws moral legitimacy from this particular event. Mm-hmm. Now, iran has showed itself open as I, as I mentioned, Iran in the past has shown itself open to actually normalizing relationships with Israel and the United States. I pointed out that it cares much, much more about Saudi Arabia than it cares about US or Israel. We are distant afterthoughts in its mind compared to Saudi Arabia.

E everything it does to Israel, it does to shore up support among its subordinates. And we'll get to why that's important to them. But Israel doesn't matter and its subordinates don't matter if Saudi Arabia can be checked. Oh.

Simone Collins: So if they had some other means of feeling not threatened by Saudi Arabia, you think they just drop all this?

Malcolm Collins: Absolutely. And they've signaled it in the past. So, in the past they've shown themselves open to normalizing relations with both Israel and the us. Specifically in the NI in 1986 during the Iran Quatars Affair, quiet Cooperation Between the US behind the scenes, in 2001 to 2003, post nine 11, Iran cooperated with the US against the Taliban and offered a grand bargain to normalize ties.

The Bush administration ignored it 2013 to 2015. G-C-P-O-A era under President Rouhani, real diplomatic engagement with the us, hence at a programmatic regional realignment. So this isn't like a one time thing, it's something they wanted over and over and over and over again. This isn't a flight of fancy of one ruler or anything like that.

Iran does not care about Israel in the same way that like, they care a little bit in terms of how it makes them look as a regional power player, same way that like, you know, Saudi Arabia does or Egypt does. But at the end of the day, like as we shared with the, the Gaza March, like the, it's Egyptian government cares so little about the public perception compared to like their own safety when it comes to Gaza, that they're just like, yeah, okay, like maybe 96% of people support it.

Whatever. You're not getting through. So Iran does not hate us because of our alliance with Israel. It hates us because of our alliance with Saudi Arabia, and it hates Israel because they align with us. That's one of the reasons, and I will note, they, they do dislike them for religious reasons, and the same way Saudis just like them for religious reasons, Uhhuh, but apparently that's very overcomeable for a lot of Muslims especially wealthy Muslims.

As I've, I've, I've found in my history wealthy Muslims are very quick to forgive the Jews when they start having to do finance and business interactions. I, in fact, I don't know any, I I have a lot of Muslim friends and I don't know any of them who have an ounce of antisemitism in them. But it's because, you know, they've got lots of Jewish financial friends.

It is really, I know that's a horrible stereotype, but that's why they're like, Hey, I, I know all my Jews from work. You know, what are you talking about? Now here I would note something. Iran's 1979 Revolution established a Shia theocracy defined in opposition to Western imperialism and quote unquote, Zionism hating Israel became a core part of the regime's identity.

So, a, a, a revolutionary posture against what they call the quote unquote Western colonial Project. And they're not wrong. There is a western colonial project in the region. I understand why they would. I've actually been on Iran State TV a number of times that may surprise people. Talking about her Wait win.

Simone Collins: Yes, actually, sorry. All those random interviews you've done. Yes. God,

Malcolm Collins: yes. I've done interviews where I rail against the urban monoculture and I rail against Western cultural imperialism. And they love it because in that way our views are aligned. But, you know, I, and I'm not like doing this for money or something, you know, you guys know me, I hate the urban monoculture.

I'm like, yeah, you're right. They shouldn't be trying to force their weird ga you know, like, you know, calling this flag, which is what we call the progress pride flag values on you guys. Like, you guys gotta, that's not your culture. You don't need to obey them. But what's notable here is if you look at the Saudi Coalition versus the Iranian Coalition they both built their coalition on different things.

The Saudis both built it on economics religious similarities, and a a a sort of pragmatism. Mm-hmm. And I'm gonna put a map on screen here so you can see it, of the Iranian, the quote unquote axis of resistance. This is Hezbollah, Assad and Iraqi militias. Right. Okay. But then you've also got obviously the, the daddy, war B of it all, which is Qatar, which means they always seem like the odd one out, but whatever.

And on this map you can see the dark red is Iran. The dark blue is is Saudi Arabia. Light blue is Saudi Arabia's allies. And light red is Iran's allies.

Simone Collins: Okay.

Malcolm Collins: And then, and then you've got the, the neutral ones, right? And then we're gonna go to the, the, the next one here, which is the GDP per capita of each of these countries.

Oh. And so I'll put them both on screen here so you can see them next to each other. But what you will see is largely speaking, the Saudi Arabian allies have a high GDP per capita, and the Iranian allies have a low GDP per capita. Very low. Yeah. You know, you look at something like Saudi Arabia, 32,900 per year, UAE 49,600 per year.

Let's look at the I Iranian allies. Well, Iran itself has 5K per year. Yemen is $465 per year.

Simone Collins: Oh.

Malcolm Collins: We, we, we've got oh, who else do we have? Iraq, 5.9 K per year. We've got Syria, we don't even know what that is. Yeah. Like, it's, it's not gonna, well, we, we've got a hold on, we gotta,

Simone Collins: well, this is again, I just feel like there's this meme girl dynamic where.

In, in many cases, Iran is preying upon populations that kind of can't say no to the money and the support. But then those populations are being further ruined, degraded, made, made dangerous and radicalized and not more economically productive by this support. And it's really screwed up.

Malcolm Collins: And the final thing I'll note here is for those who are like, well, I don't want a ground war with this region, don't worry, you're not gonna get one.

Simone Collins: Well, and I think what we're, again, the whole thing is ground wars.

Malcolm Collins: Or a thing of the past. Yeah. We gain nothing from grabbing territory in Iran. This isn't like historical battles that we've seen where it's like, we wanna occupy, because after the success of McCarthyism that's what we call General, general McCarthy, right?

And he, he rebuilt all the countries that we destroyed in the Second World War, whether it was Germany or Japan, et cetera. And everyone was like, oh, you could just rebuild countries. That's great. Let's rebuild them into great Western allies. And then we were, oh, well that really only worked because we were dealing with countries like Germany and Japan.

You can't do that with a country like Iraq. You can't do that with a country like Afghanistan. You can't do that with a country like, you know, actually, you maybe can with a country like Iran, but generally, you know, they, they're like, we're not gonna try. You know? And so. You don't have this belief anymore.

Now it's just about let's beat them into the dirt because they've got nothing we want. And they will beat them down so hard that they won't stand up again for a long time. Maybe they can restructure the country theirself in their own way, but we're not gonna get involved. Mm-hmm. And it's not just, I mean, like Israel has no desire to control Iran.

Like, like no desire. Yeah. They have no desire to put on the ground. They just wanted them to pay attention to their darn sanctions, and they weren't gonna do that without being spanked.

Simone Collins: There you have it, basically.

Malcolm Collins: And so right now yeah, I'm, I'm, I'm sort of shocked that we're in this timeline, but I will say that the world is a dramatically safer place this week than it was two weeks ago.

Yeah.

Simone Collins: Yeah. I just felt hopeless with Iran for so long because so many. There was so much flip flopping around how they were dealt with geopolitically, that it got to the point where kind of like with a kid that was not punished or shown consistent discipline. Yeah. We essentially trained around like, yeah, nothing's really gonna happen if you just keep going.

Like, go ahead, you know, what are we gonna do? You know, maybe we'll change our mind. Maybe we won't sanction you as much. Maybe we'll, you know, release funds to you. So it felt so hopeless, like they had learned that they could just go ahead and Israel very strategically put its foot down in another one of those brilliant strategic moves that clearly involved years of planning.

And

Malcolm Collins: yeah, and likely prevented a larger conflict in the region.

Simone Collins: I, I wonder, you know, I, I used to be under the impression that the United States government was doing things like this, and maybe they are, but now I'm starting to doubt that because Mossad keeps doing things like this and it comes out and you see, and it's like, whoa, I can't believe that you, you know, built these fake companies and, and distributed these, blew up the entire network of Hezbollah.

And like, we just don't hear about any amazing coups. Well, no, it's because

Malcolm Collins: our int intelligence services have been completely taken over by the woke mind virus. Yeah. As we keep seeing and hearing, they are completely ineffective now and just dedicated to spreading wokeness.

Simone Collins: Yeah. I mean, maybe I, I, I mean, I would like to think that.

We are doing cool things like that too. No, they,

Malcolm Collins: they look, they've done great things. Hey, so swung. They tried to assassinate Donald Trump twice already. That like, in just the past couple years, like that's pretty impressive. Two attempted assassination attempts against a presidential candidate and they still haven't been shut down.

Come

Simone Collins: on. Yeah. Well there was this you should probably take this out. I don't know. I need to, I need to double check it. You should probably double check it. But I you know, I have like a news alert for Dan Dal because I wanna see what he's up to. A Secretary of the Army and there was this Yeah, he needs one of our

Malcolm Collins: friends.

Anyway, continue

Simone Collins: news article that came out that was like, yeah. In this interview he was doing, just randomly, he mentioned that he'd just spoken on the phone with someone on the Army who was on the moon, and then he quickly changed the subject.

Malcolm Collins: Wait, what? I know.

Simone Collins: And so I was like, I just want that to be a troll.

I want it to not be real. I know, I know. Like, so like, yeah. There, there are two really great scenarios in this. Like, there are three outcomes here, right? Like one is just this was misunderstood or he's really sleep deprived and like meant to say something else. I'm like on the moon project, like a project, you know, to bring us back to the moon.

You know, like he just, it was not articulated correctly and he's been under a lot of stress. The other scenario is it's true and he accidentally slipped it, and the other scenario is that he's trolling. And those are two, both almost equally amazing scenarios. Like the T is fantastic. I, I think

Malcolm Collins: Secretary of the Army, so I could, I'd be like, oh God, I was just on the call with the aliens and Oh, sorry, I meant like illegal aliens.

The illegal alien. The illegal alien. Just

Simone Collins: cruel.

Malcolm Collins: Just, just yeah.

Simone Collins: Yeah. But I mean like random things like that make me sometimes seem like, oh, maybe we. Maybe, maybe,

Malcolm Collins: you

Simone Collins: know, I mean, no, sorry. Considering all the money we have,

Malcolm Collins: this is the way you lay it out. You gotta be like, oh God, I'm sorry. I, I've been, I, I spent all day being berated by the aliens and the illegal aliens.

You gotta have it in a way where it wouldn't make sense of, unless you mentioned in the first way. And I just practice that all day getting ready for this.

Simone Collins: Yeah. I mean, yeah, but I mean, it, it's clear to me that this, I mean, even if the United States government can't get its act together to do really cool things like this now, I do think that at least hopefully a sufficient proportion of the US government is going to adopt ai, and AI will start doing cool things like this, even if we can't.

So hopefully we'll shape up, but it, I do feel a little humiliated and embarrassed that we're not pulling off really cool things like Mossad is.

Malcolm Collins: Well, the US would never do, we have never ever tried to, like, I mean, the way that they're going into this is like, let's just bomb this country into the dirt.

That's not the way the US does things these days. And it is the way we should do things going forward. It's

Simone Collins: you, you don't wanna protract, you don't wanna have a lot of people on the ground. You don't. And I, I mean also like there's so much more collateral damage when you have this. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: But I, what I also like about the way they're doing it is they're not sorry, bombing them into the dirt is the wrong word.

They're not like firebombing them or anything like that. No.

Simone Collins: They're strategically taking them out.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. They're strategically taking out every aspect of the country that they don't like. Yeah. Without focusing on the industry or anything like that. And I think that that is really what we should be doing in wars going forward.

Mm-hmm. That is what a war should look like. When we have our automated drone swarms. They shouldn't go in and kill, you know, just like every civilian, they should go in and we should be like, okay, eliminate this person, this person, this person, this person. And destroy all these buildings.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Well, and I mean, what, what I think we will see over time is there will also be.

Just like how, like sort of the Russian way is, is some kind of strategic poison or nerve agent will seem more strategic, genetically targeted poisons and stuff that like literally is, you know, made for this one person based on a DNA sample we've picked up from their visit at this one conference. And, you know, they'll be taken out that way or they'll be taken out by drones, like you said.

But yeah warfare is different and it's really interesting to see the, the asymmetric warfare taking place now of like old school versus new school and how it's, how it's playing out. But yeah, I mean, I, I don't like any, any sort of conflict or innocent people are dying. All of this is horrible. But at the same time, when I think about the untold suffering that may have been, may very well have been prevented by this action.

I'm just thrilled. Because it's very scary what Iran has been doing. So thanks for the detailed. Is that that

Malcolm Collins: not the most detailed breakdown you've heard yet so far?

Simone Collins: Yeah. I mean, well, 'cause all we're getting, and I mean, especially in the media too, there's a lot of people that wanna make Israel look bad, that wanna make the US look bad for its involvement.

They're only talking very myopically about, well, this US official said this, and like the US doesn't seem to be aligned on its reaction to this. And like, that kind of reporting doesn't matter.

Malcolm Collins: Who cares? Or it'll be like, oh, this person died, or this person died. It's like, you don't hear it all at once.

You're not, yeah. What does it

Simone Collins: mean strategically for the country and like, what, what, what is, what is the bigger picture here and what's gonna happen with allies in the region? So, yeah. Yeah, the, the high school clique dynamics of the Middle East shifting. Who's gonna be the new queen Bee? Who knows?

Malcolm Collins: Oh, we shall see.

I, I, as I've told you, it's Turkey,

Simone Collins: it's Turkey. Turkey.

Malcolm Collins: Turkey. Turkey. All right. Simone, it is. Well, and obviously Israel is gonna be way more important after this.

Simone Collins: They've shown that if you come at them, they may wait a while. They may take some hits.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. They're, they're ready for, but they're

Simone Collins: like that nerd that they're like that nerd that you bully in high school who eventually you wish, you wish, you never even encountered them.

Malcolm Collins: No. It reminds me of the nerd from the Billy Madison or whatever, where he has the list of everyone he plans to eventually kill like a complete psycho.

Malcolm Collins: I'm like, I, I know Israel has one of those lists somewhere. They're like the dwarves. I, I always joke about that, like, with the, the book of grudges which, which I always thought was probably like an anti-Semitic stereotype,

Speaker 26: Our enemies cowards, hiding in the deepest, darkest places.

Speaker 27: Fools.

Speaker 26: Every wrong is recorded. Every slight against us. Page after page. One wrong put right. But the great book of grudges remains full.

Malcolm Collins: like. Anyway love you to ES Simone. Love you too. Do you wanna try to do one more episode or not?

You

Simone Collins: do. I love talking to you. All right. I got

Malcolm Collins: another one ready? Send the one on. Who's funding No. Kings. I

Simone Collins: already did. I have the weirdest pregnancy craving for bananas and peanut butter. So I've just been knocking 'em back and I think I knocked back a few too many.

Malcolm Collins: I was the same this morning when you gave me, because I'm beginning to feel better. The big slushy. Oh

Simone Collins: yeah,

Malcolm Collins: giant. And I'm like, now I'm like, I don't, I don't need dinner.

That was too much,

Simone Collins: yeah. Well, we're both, I mean, at least it's moderately healthy foods, so that's good.

Malcolm Collins: I mean, I don't want to eat only healthy foods. I feel like I can drink beer again, which I'm excited about. But

Simone Collins: yeah, I mean, at least you can drink again

Malcolm Collins: a a after days of sipping on titty juice.

Simone Collins: Poor thing. I don't

Malcolm Collins: know

Simone Collins: how you survive that

Malcolm Collins: milk. I, I, I drink milk primarily when I'm feeling sick.

Simone Collins: Just funny, I don't know. When I was raised, I was sort of told by my parents that,

Malcolm Collins: oh, there's this weird, like, magical thinking thing where people think that milk leads to more mucus and it doesn't.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: It's like actually one of the better things you can drink when you're sick.

Simone Collins: Sympathetic magic. Nonsense. Yeah. It's sympathetic because it looks like mucus. It does not look like mucus milk. Does not look like mucus.

Malcolm Collins: No. People look at it and they're like, this looks like what could create mucus, right?

Like it's a thick biological liquid. And so they think, oh, you drink a lot of the thick, creamy, biological liquid, you're gonna create more thick, creamy, biological liquid. But the reality is, is that. Milk is actually fairly well nutritionally balanced in terms of giving you a lot of what you need if you're otherwise queasy and you can't keep down solid foods.

Simone Collins: Hmm.

Malcolm Collins: I mean, it's not everything, but it's a lot of it.

Simone Collins: It's great. Yeah. I'm, I'm of the opinion that it is fantastic,

Speaker 18: Okay. You butt heads what's happening. Its right.

Speaker 17: Hey, how'd you get up there? I, um, I was doing something. You was jumping so high up. Climb up here.

Speaker 19: Stay away. Stay away. I'll stop it. I'm looking at Stop it and go to bed. Go to bed. Go to bed. Go to bed. You guys Sure. In bed you go to bed, okay. Or while I have to send you back to your room. Okay. Yeah. You gotta be calm. Okay. Can you do that? Yeah.