As mass protests sweep Iran and President Trump declares the U.S. is ‘locked and loaded’, Thomas and Aimen revisit the event that shaped U.S.–Iran relations for the next half-century: the Iran Hostage Crisis. Then, in real time, the conversation veers into a fast-moving geopolitical shock: Venezuela, Iran’s global networks, and what a new era of American ‘muscle’ might actually look like.
They discuss:
- Iran’s 2026 protest wave: currency collapse, water crisis, and regime pressure points
- Trump’s ‘locked and loaded’ warning
- Why the embassy takeover began as ‘revolutionary entrepreneurship’
- How and why Khomeini endorsed the hostage crisis
- The shift to economic sanctions as America’s primary lever
- U.S. back-channel diplomacy
- Operation Eagle Claw: what the plan was and how it fell apart
- Hostage diplomacy after 1979
- The creation of the U.S. Special Operations Command
- The Iran–Venezuela–Hezbollah nexus, and why Washington’s focus may be shifting
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Conflicted is a Message Heard production.
Executive Producers: Jake Warren & Max Warren.
Produced by Thomas Small and edited by Lizzy Andrews.
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