Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
You're listening to American Power from Find Out Media. I'm your host, Nat Towson, stand-up comedian, speechwriter, comedy writer, other kinds of writer, and most famously, podcast host. We are recording this at 6 p.m. on Monday, May 4th, 2026. I'm here with my panel of experts. Up first, our expert on military and policy, Chad Scott. Chad, how you doing?
I'm doing well. Glad to be here. Hope everyone is having a great week.
And of course, also joining us, as always, is our expert on energy, Mr. Global himself, Matt Randolph. Matt, how you doing?
Living the dream, Matt. Living the dream.
You really are. I want to focus on some evergreen topics, some long term strategy that we can discuss at great length. But unfortunately, news keeps happening. So I was hoping we could start today's episode by talking a little bit about what has happened in the world of oil and the situation in Iran. Chad, would you kick us off?
Yeah, so it seems the ceasefire is effectively over, despite the fact that it's technically still in place on paper. I mean, Iran and the United States are shooting at each other. If you take a look at Trump's announcement of these escort missions through the Strait of Hormuz, that's not sitting well with Iran. And the U.S.
began supposedly moving ships through the Strait under this Project Freedom. U.S. Central Command, CENTCOM, said two U.S. flagged merchant ships successfully transited the Strait of Hormuz with a U.S. Navy destroyer. Interestingly, the The original construct for this was for neutral ships, but U.S. flag ships are not neutral. So a bit of a misconception on what's going on there.
Shortly after those ships went through, a South Korean-operated cargo ship called the HMM Namu was hit by an explosion, likely came from either a drone or a missile out of Iran. There's no casualties, but Trump publicly blamed Iran and said South Korea should join the war now because of this. There's a new strategy coming out of Iran.
Iran's not claiming responsibility, right?
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Chapter 2: What is the current situation in the Strait of Hormuz?
They were apparently struck by Apache helicopters. destroying them, missile strikes on these countries, and then obviously the missile strikes on a pipeline system. So CNN's reporting that within the next 24 hours, a coalition of the U.S. and Israel and potentially even other countries, including the UAE, are looking to start striking Iran again.
And that's why in the beginning I said I believe the ceasefire is just effectively over at this point, and we're going to move to more kinetic operations.
And so we find ourselves, as you mentioned, we're 60 days past the original invasion or the original strike in Iran, right? Which means, which puts us, the War Powers Act would require a declaration of war after 60 days of military activity. Is that the deadline?
So it's either that you either have to have a declaration of war, which we won't get out of Congress, or an authorization for use of military forces. That's kind of the... We haven't declared war on anyone since World War II. So it's always been an authorization for use of military force. It's basically Congress saying, hey, we give the president permission to do this. It's not an act of war.
Is that a lower threshold than a full declaration of war?
Yeah, basically, there's... It it kind of divorces the Congress from the action if there's too many people who are opposed to it. But it's also quicker. There's a quicker mechanism for an authorization for use of military force. And it allows them to the Congress to instead of saying, we want this war, we want to fight this war. We believe wholeheartedly in this war. They just kind of say, yeah.
go do what you need, President. We're not going to get in your way. And that's kind of what happened.
This is how we got into Afghanistan and Iraq.
And Vietnam. They were all authorizations for use of military force. Key thing here is right now for this Iran situation, this Iran debacle, There is not a declaration of war, nor is there an authorization for use of military force. So we are in a new area now. We've passed the 60 days.
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Chapter 3: How is the U.S. military strategy evolving in response to Iran?
strategy. I mean, the pain has not been incrementally ramped up against them. We just said we're doing a blockade and they're surviving the blockade. It's not great for them. My biggest concern, though, is given Trump's kind of cowboy-esque ways of doing things, at what point does Iran say no one too many times?
And then it becomes, OK, well, Trump did say this is going to end a civilization or something to that effect, or I'm going to strike bridges and civilian infrastructure and power plants. At some point, I'm concerned that he will start doing that. And that's going to hurt the people of Iran who we should be supporting. Not so much, obviously, the regime.
There's no love lost with this regime, but we need to be supporting these people.
Absolutely. And well, let's take a moment to talk about how this is affecting because we're talking some of this is. the Iran is guaranteed, you know, banking on this affecting not only Americans, but American citizens. How is this? I know a lot of Americans are paying a lot of the pump these days.
Mr. Global, can you give us a little sense of how is this affecting all the markets as a whole and how is it affecting costs for Americans at the pump and at home?
I had that. It's really bad.
Worse than worsening or is this sort of decline as usual? At this point, we have to talk about acceleration.
Honestly, I don't know which is worse. I don't know if today's events are worse with Iran hitting so much infrastructure in the UAE or if all of the tankers coming to the United States are worse because people really don't understand how bad that is. But that export terminal that Iran hit today We don't know the extent of the damage yet. So the pipeline might still be functional.
In that area, there's a whole storage terminal. There's a pipeline. The start of a pipeline is there. There's a lot of stuff there, a very large area. And it's not clear yet to the extent of the damage. That pipeline moves about one and a half million barrels of oil a day. but we don't know if the pipeline itself was damaged.
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Chapter 4: What are the implications of the War Powers Act in this conflict?
It's just going to be really expensive.
We just can't afford the gas that we have because the lack of supply will just make it so expensive to the average consumer.
Yeah. And in many ways, this kind of needs to happen, to be honest. Like we need a wake up call about what's happening in the Middle East and the markets have been suppressed for so long. People act like it's no big deal. Maybe we need gas to hit seven or eight dollars a gallon. So people will wake up and say, oh, this is actually serious.
That's the only way the market can correct itself is through that demand destruction that will occur with those higher prices.
And I'm curious, am I incorrect in understanding this? In other Western countries, I understand that people pay proportionately more per gallon for gasoline. Our gas has been traditionally much more subsidized, and so we're used to a...
artificially lower price than say like a car driver in the uk am i getting that right oh yeah our gas is a lot cheaper than all of the other even the western nations you know we complain you know gas right now in canada on a well if you convert it to gallons it's over seven dollars a gallon like a uk i remember being in the uk and saying oh it's almost the same price and then going oh that's pounds like it's almost twice what we were paying at the time
And, you know, the pound was almost double the dollar at the time and it was a comparable number. And I went, oh, my God. And then I realized that was like one of the first times I experienced. So we our price has just for decades been somewhat like artificially suppressed. So Americans are under the impression that gasoline effectively is cheaper than gasoline.
it could be, I mean, obviously it could be, it could always be more expensive, but do you think that at, do you think this is a thing that's just never going to go all the way back down that we made, this may just be what triggers, like we have to adjust a little bit to the idea that gas can't be as cheap as we think it is.
So this is a deep conversation because I don't think gas is expensive. I think wages are extremely low and we don't have a cost problem in the United States with everything. We have a problem with what we pay people. If the United States paid people, you know, just... normal amount of money, gas would not be expensive right now.
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Chapter 5: How is the blockade viewed under international law?
Without those other Western economies, countries like China and Russia will find loopholes to help Iran survive the pressure because they love seeing this pressure on the United States. So it has to become not the United States pressuring.
It has to be a coordinated global pressure campaign instead of this unilateral American mess that we love to think that we're so star-spangled awesome that we can fix ourselves. And it ends up turning out, no, we can't. We need help with our allies. Second of all, we've got to separate the immediate crisis from this long-term Iran problem. The immediate crisis is Hormuz right now.
We need to solve that now and kind of backburner everything else. And I know that sounds really bad to the Trump administration. That means we've got to backburner the nuclear program, their missiles, their drones, their proxies, all of that. But now we're having actual human suffering from the Strait of Hormuz being closed. So that needs to be separated.
And if we try to solve all of it at once, we're not going to get anything. That's kind of the premise of the JCPOA. We, we got around this, this whole thing. So before I go on, I just, I mean, cause I, I can talk about this.
I just, if Matt, if you want to interject, absolutely throw out whatever you feel or, or Nat, but I'm listening and I'm hearing, you know, obviously you're saying number one, not obviously, but if I can recap number one, you're saying essentially restore our standing among allies and,
100%.
Come back to NATO hand in hand and say, hey, we actually recognize that we need your help, which does sound a very non-Trumpian thing, but that is the caveat of this discussion, which is how could this be done, not will Trump do it?
And then secondarily, I'm a little confused about this because I do feel like the administration, while they're talking about Iran's nuclear concerns and all these things, have been pretty focused on the Strait and have been delivering a lot of misinformation about the Strait. Are you saying that they need to be actually solving it and that the focus has been... Yeah, it's what they're doing.
Because they do seem focused on it to me from a news perspective.
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Chapter 6: What economic impacts could arise from the situation in Iran?
You know what I mean?
Like, just stop. This existential threat, I agree, is complete nonsense because there's only, frankly, two countries on the face of the earth that are existential threats to the United States. And by proxy, that means they're existential threats to the world. Because if that existential threat, obviously a nuclear threat, Strike comes to bear. We respond. End of the world.
So this notion that small countries, whether it's Iran, North Korea, whatever, are this existential threat, it's completely bogus. And it's Trump using the same playbook that Putin used, saying that Ukraine was some sort of existential threat to Russia. That's absolute nonsense. It's the narrative, the boogeyman narrative. And it is. It's BS.
So I just I just want to throw that in there that there's no country is truly an existential threat. And the only countries that are it's it basically becomes a globe ending event at that point. So it's it's an it's either all or none.
You know, they keep talking about all the last 47 years. So what have they done for the last 47 years? Right. Financed or helped carry out terrorist threats. When all of this is over, are they still going to be able to do that? Yep. Absolutely. So like, what the hell are we doing?
Like, they're still going to be able to do the thing they've done to us for the last 47 years after all of this is over.
Yeah. And also, if we're talking about who funded terrorists, didn't we fund Al-Qaeda? Like, we're not spotless on that record. Yeah.
Hey, take it easy. Take it easy.
Hey, we didn't know what they were going to do.
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Chapter 7: How are gas prices affected by the geopolitical situation?
I've just always thought they were really stupid. And it's probably the largest thing that's driving countries wanting to get away from the U.S. dollar, by the way. Using your currency as a weapon is just... Not cool in my book, but this is something that needs to settle. As far as gas prices are concerned, like I said before, this has always been a wage thing for me, not a gas price thing.
And there's ways, there's a lot of ways we can lower gas prices in the United States, and it's mostly by controlling our exports. But we live in a country... You know, we cater to corporations and we want them to send, you know, you can pay 50 cents more a gallon so we can have leverage over Europe by sending them fuel. Like, that's okay. And that's what people don't understand.
Like, a lot of what they pay for gas is because we use our natural resources geopolitically to get leverage over other countries. And, you know, they blame it on oil companies or whatever. But, you know, if we weren't exporting all the diesel we export around the world so we can have some control over someone else in the world, diesel would be a lot cheaper in the United States.
And so would everything. So...
But we're using it as a bargaining chip by like underselling other exporters or to put pressure on them for other purposes.
Yeah. And look, I'm not opposed to exporting anything, but I am opposed to unlimited, relentless, just export as much, you know, just total. Give it to the corporations. They'll they always think about the American people first. Oh, yeah. Let them do everything. You know what I mean? Like we are trickling down. Yeah.
Like it's just like it's almost down to us, guys. It's so close.
Yeah, our whole LNG strategy is to make countries reliant on us instead of Russia.
Well, I think there's a great point there because we keep focusing in this administration on the punishment. Punish them, punish them, punish them. And one thing that the Obama administration flipped the script on with the JCPOA was –
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