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Chapter 1: What are the implications of Iran's desire for revenge after the war?
Hello and welcome to the Bullard Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. We are going deep on foreign policy today with one of our faves. But before we get there, a few housekeeping notes. And I got to rant a little bit about Trump's bleats. I'm going to do a little bit on Trump's bleats, okay? I go on vacation. Trump bleats that he's Jesus. I can't ignore it. I can't ignore it.
The first on the notes. We have our live shows coming up. Another round of live shows. I'm going back to Southern California. We are going to be in San Diego on May 20th and Los Angeles on May 21st. Tickets are on presale now for Bulwark Plus members. So if you want the good seats... You've got to become a Bulwark Plus member. Go to thebulwark.com slash events to get your tickets today.
For all the regulars out there who just love my ad reads, tickets go on sale on Friday. We're working on some fun special guests. Sarah is going to be there with me, Sam, maybe Woke Bill Crystal.
Chapter 2: How does Trump's recent behavior affect his political allies?
It's going to be good. Thebulwark.com slash events. And speaking of Sarah, also a reminder, Tuesday nights we've got the Next Level podcast, me, Sarah, and JVL coming out. We're going to have a whole show on Friday. Trump's disintegration. How about disintegration? Let's do that. We're going to do a whole show on that. So if you want an hour on that, go check out the next level.
But here's two minutes. My buddy Harry Sisson posted an analysis of Trump's bleats on Sunday night. I was watching Carol G while this happened, so I didn't get to do it. So I appreciate Harry. And I'm going to read this for you. Here's what Trump was posting in the timestamp. 9.49 p.m. He posts the AI Jesus photo, which we're going to get back to.
Trump is Jesus with what appears to be a demon over his head. 9.50, Trump Tower on the moon. 10.10, he posts a meme. 10.32, a news clip. 10.53, a news clip. 12.43 a.m., he announces the Hormuz blockade, which we're going to talk about with Michael Weiss. 2.35 a.m., he posts about Joe Biden. 2.36, another article on the naval blockade. 2.37, he posts about Eric Swalwell.
2.37, he reposts that article about Biden. Maybe he forgot that he posted earlier. He did a double post. 2.38, he posts an article about his ballroom.
Chapter 3: What are the outcomes of the recent election in Hungary?
4.10 a.m. in the East, he posts an article on Iran. So, look, I'm a poster. I like to post a lot. That is insane. From 9.49 p.m. till 4.10 a.m., he was posting 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, a dozen bleats. He's up all night. He's announcing blockades. He's announcing military actions near 1 a.m. after posting about himself as God. I mean, it's alarming. Dude needs sleep. Dude needs rest.
He's already extremely old. He's already backed into a corner. geopolitically and domestically, politically. And I don't know.
Chapter 4: How might Iran retaliate against the US and its allies?
I'm a little worried, I guess I would say. I'm a little bit nervous about whether the president of the United States has the mental faculties to be making life or death decisions when he's not sleeping and he's posting megalomaniacal AI memes about himself in the middle of the night, like simultaneously to posting about updated military strategic decisions. So it's alarming.
The good news, though, is it isn't landed well even with his people. And I just want to give you two examples really quick because they were the most delicious ones for me personally. Number one.
Riley Gaines tied for fifth place in a swimming competition in college and parlayed that into a career as an anti-trans activist because a trans person was also competing in the race and had that person not competed, she would have finished fifth on her own instead of tied for fifth. She... Wasn't happy about the Trump is Jesus meme and posted this. Why?
Seriously, I cannot understand why he'd post this. Is he looking for a response? Does he actually think this? Either way, two things are true. One, a little humility would serve him well. Two, God shall not be mocked. A little humility would serve him well. Donald Trump? Have these people been lobotomized? Do they exist in the world? It's just like... All right.
I mean, being for Trump is one thing. At least you can have some respect for the people who are for Trump who are like, I like that he's a megalomaniac. I like that he's a bigot and an asshole and kind of dumb. And I like that he makes the libs cry. And I like that he's all about that cash and he has the gold toilet. Like, okay, not my cup of tea, but if that's for you, that's one thing.
Being for Trump and wishing he had humility... It's like, what? I mean, that's the one thing that he doesn't have, any of. It's the one thing he's never going to have. Wishing that Trump had humility.
And in case you hadn't learned the lesson, Donald Trump was asked whether... He does end up deleting the AI Jesus tweet, and whether that deletion was in response to the criticisms from people like Riley Gaines. And Trump replied, no, I didn't listen to Riley Gaines. I'm not a big fan of Riley, actually. Ouch. So... Things are bad in the mega Christian influencer space.
Things are already bad in the mega nationalist, isolationist, America first influencer space. So he's losing allies by the minute. Just the anecdote. It's just one little anecdote, okay? It's one anecdote about a person in my life. But you're looking for these. You're trying to hold on to them.
I was visiting some folks during vacation and asking them, you know, it seems like things are going well. It seems like Trump's losing steam. It seems like MAGA's losing steam.
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Chapter 5: What are the current negotiations regarding Iran's nuclear program?
Now that is what I'm talking about. That is the kind of flip that I'm talking about. Not only are we upset about the meme, not only do we think it was a mistake, but starting to have second thoughts about the whole operation. Like maybe it's possible that Trump isn't just somebody that makes some bad calls every once in a while. Maybe this has been the devil's work from the beginning.
Maybe the devil tricked us into thinking that Donald Trump would be our savior. And honestly, if people need that justification for jumping off, then I'm with them, baby. I'm with them. The devil did it. Trump is the antichrist. And we can all move forward to a new future without him, with him in hell. That sounds great. All right.
We're going to talk about Iran, Hungary, and the rest in foreign affairs with our in-house, out-of-house expert. He's an editor at The Insider, a Russia-focused independent media outlet, author of ISIS, Inside the Army of Terror. He writes on Substack at Foreign Office. He's a gold jacket guest on the Bollard Podcast. It's Michael Weiss. What's up, man? How are you doing? I'm doing pretty good.
I'm back from vacation. It's nice to see a friendly face. I was off a single day. And it seems like the podcast was okay without me. Single day at Coachella. I was at Coachella for four days. I just took a single day off the podcast. Oh, I see. Okay. You're a well-traveled man. We'll do some Coachella talk tomorrow night on the live stream, which you can come hang out with me on.
I want to talk to you, though, about more serious matters of international diplomacy and intrigue. And I think we should start with Iran. While I was in the desert... J.D. Vance was in Islamabad trying to close the opening scene of Part 3, by the way. Tim's in the desert and J.D. Vance.
According to his own account, he called Daddy Trump more than 12 times during the 21 hours of negotiations to discuss the issues. Also talked to Bibi a couple times, came away with nothing. And we now have a blockade of a blockade. Kind of, though a Chinese ship snuck through today or yesterday. I don't know, man. Where are we at? What's the status with the war in Iran?
I don't know. I mean, JD's negative charisma and unlikability are just highly contagious these days. Wherever he goes, failure seems to stalk not far behind. So what I heard is he did 21 hours in Islamabad. Jared and Steve sort of running shotgun to his little operation. The Iranians played hardball. They agreed to continue to talk, and I think they're going back on Thursday.
The rumor that I heard was that the Iranians called it off and went back home because they didn't trust their communication not to be intercepted from our side, from Pakistan. So in other words, they had to go back to Tehran, consult with the new supreme leader, Khamenei Jr.,
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Chapter 6: How does the US view the ongoing conflict in Ukraine?
And then come back to with whatever their counterproposal was, which now I think is a 20 year halt on a nuclear.
We want 20. They want five. We want to be in the middle of 12 and a half and call it good. Leave it. I mean, Trump will be dead by then. We can just leave it up to the next guy.
But that's how it's working. So, you know, this is one of the sticking points. But, you know, the other thing to keep in mind, at the start of this caper, the only sort of sensible guy to listen to on anything is General Kane, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs. And he laid out very succinctly, I thought, three operational objectives. Operational objective number one, eliminate the nuclear program.
Well, obviously, we didn't do that because that's why they're putting on the table, you know, five years and we're asking for 20. And plus, they've got You know, 900 pounds of the stuff buried underground or underneath the rubble. And, you know, Donald Trump was talking about the nuclear dust and sending in commandos to come and exfiltrate it. So that's one that we didn't quite get.
The second was the missile capability, particularly their medium range missiles, which have wreaked havoc all across the neighborhood, hitting GCC countries. being responsible for killing American soldiers. We didn't quite get all of that.
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Chapter 7: What role does China play in the Iran situation?
U.S. intelligence assessed that, in fact, they have quite a bit more launchers than we reckoned. And some of those launchers have been kept underground. So that's mark two. And number three, their ability to project power in financing and arming manifold terrorist proxies from Hezbollah in Lebanon to Hamas in Gaza to Iraqi Shia militias. That's kind of TBD.
Hezbollah has been pretty badly battered by Israel and Lebanon. Remember, that was one of the Other questions at the start of the ceasefire, was Lebanon on the table? Was it not? The US and Israel said it wasn't. The Iranians said, yes, it was.
My question, and I don't have a good answer from anybody, is if we are going to lift sanctions, start to enrich the Islamic Republic, if they are going to simply get rich by charging tolls, for tankers that pass through the Strait of Hormuz. That's assuming this hour blockade of their blockade is lifted.
Are they going to use that money to build schools and hospitals and bridges that we knocked out? Or are they going to use that money to enrich the IRGC and also all of the above, missile program, nuclear program?
Yeah, maybe kind of a one for you and a three for me type situation, you know?
Exactly. So look, I mean, my read of this is we have a very interesting kind of split. You get a lot of pro-Israel, MAGA-adjacent, MAGA-curious types in the U.S. saying, rah, rah, sis, boom, bah, we won. Trump really knocked them down and vitiated this terrible theocratic regime to the point where they're now willing to put up or even discuss things that they hadn't before.
Israeli security hawks. who I think nobody could consider to be uninterested in the state of Iran or what kind of future threat it might pose to Israel or the neighborhood, are in, shall we say, maybe not high dudgeon, but they're a little more depressed about the situation. They don't see this as a stunning situation.
Because I think they, too, realize that Netanyahu and Mossad chief David Barnea thought this was going to be kind of an easy operation. They legitimately sold Trump, if you believe this New York Times deep dive that came out a few days ago. on the idea that you go in, you start pounding them from the air, and the Iranians will rise up again. It'll be that protest movement, but on steroids.
And oh, by the way, we could do some fun stuff with Iranian Kurds. So I met with a senior US intelligence official last week. Before the announced ceasefire. And it's actually true what Trump said, believe it or not, about the Iranian Kurds keeping all the kit that was provided to them.
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Chapter 8: What lessons can be learned from Hungary's election results?
Do we have regime change? No. We did regime decapitation, but we got new guys in charge. Whether they're more hardline than the previous lot, some Iran analysts seem to think that they are. The Speaker of Parliament – He's not a cuddly character. I mean, this is a guy who was going around bashing people over the head, embedded with the Basij during a protest movement, what, almost 20 years ago.
He's pretty in it to win it, you know, not a reformist. This is not a Gorbachev of Iran type figure. So, yeah, I mean, what can I say? Yeah.
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Go to quince.com slash the bulwark for free shipping and 365-day returns. quince.com slash the bulwark. Let's talk a little bit more about just the negotiation status and kind of what's at play here. So the ceasefire, so-called ceasefire, is going to end April 22nd. It's eight days from now.
The Pakistani prime minister said, I want to tell you that a full effort is still on to resolve the issues before that time. Tyler Pager and David Sanger at The New York Times reporting that Trump and aides obviously want a deal, but they're worried that they'll end up with a deal that looks like Obama's peace accord. Can't have that.
And the other side of the ledger from that, you know, I mean, Trump, unlike the Iranian parliament speaker, is not in it to win it, really. And J.D. Vance is certainly not in it to win it. And so the Iranians and the Pakistanis have a counterparty here that like particularly in J.D. Vance, like wants to find a face saving exit. And the Iranians seem like they might like a face-saving exit.
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