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Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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And I'm recommending it to you as well. Please go out and get yourself a Whoop. You'll try it on. You won't take it off. So head to join.whoop, that's W-H-O-O-P.com slash politics to get started with Whoop today. Hello and welcome to the Restless Politics US with me, Anthony Scaramucci.
And me, Cathy Kay. Anthony, you're in Hong Kong.
I'm moving around a little bit. I'm in Hong Kong today, heading back to New York. Actually here with Alistair, so we're having a little bit of fun together.
Does the world look better from the other side of the world?
I will say this about Hong Kong. They have very good infrastructure here, as you know. Yes, very. Fast trains and pretty nice highways. So some things about their government is functioning. We probably could learn some things there. I'm sure that both sides could learn things from each other. But let's talk about two sides right now, Katty. that seem to be talking over each other.
There's escalating tensions with Iran. Looks like the US launched a strike over the weekend. They said it was a self-defensive strike. What do you think, Katia? We lost another plane to a country that has no military because we've decimated their military caddy, we've wiped out their Navy, we've wiped out their air defenses, but somehow we lost an American plane.
So explain that to me, and then let's talk a little bit about this potential ceasefire.
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Chapter 2: What are the current tensions between the US and Iran?
And it's also exposed this seam of danger now for America. Whereas if you were really being honest, you'd say, hey, guys, you're spending money on the wrong type of equipment. And last point, Caddy, $13 trillion aircraft carriers can't get anywhere near the theater because the carriers have been made obsolete by the hypersonic missiles. So, I don't know, you tell me, Cady, how are we doing?
Look, I think this is pretty catastrophic for America, not just in the short term, but I think it's also severely weakened America. Look, if we, I mean, zoom out big picture and then let's focus in on the agreement just for a second, but big picture, we came out of the last century, indisputably the American century, the 1900s.
We go into the 2000s, and I think it was a toss-up for the first 20 years of this century. It was a toss-up. Which is it?
Chapter 3: How does the US justify its military actions in the Middle East?
Which is the economy that's going to prevail, the United States or China? It's the battle of the two big superpowers. This venture of Donald Trump's, at least in the short term. And I get it. There's way more intellectual freedom and capacity still in the United States to develop a Silicon Valley type economy than there is still in China. But they're catching up.
They're further ahead on robotics. They're further ahead on agentics. and they are making much more progress, I think, in defense areas than a lot of Americans had initially thought they were. And I think this venture has exposed America's weaknesses, not just because of Donald Trump, but because of actual structural weaknesses that America has. And you've tipped the balance of power
during the course of the last three months, the balance of power has shifted towards China. It just has. I mean, you and I had a conversation right at the beginning of this war, and you sounded pretty optimistic about the idea of America being able to pressure China into getting involved in a way in the Gulf that was positive for America.
You thought that maybe Donald Trump could call up Xi and get him involved. I don't think that's happened. I don't see Xi exercising the kind of power behind the scenes to help Trump that Trump would like and would need because they don't have to. They don't feel they have to on this one.
Chapter 4: What is the significance of the ceasefire agreement with Iran?
We don't know, it's a state secret, but they have much bigger reserves of oil and refined fuel than American intelligence thought they did in February, is what I've been told by people in the intelligence community. They can ride this out for a little bit longer and now they're getting fuel through other routes as well. I think If you want to look at the balance of power, it's a win for China.
It's potentially a win for Russia, your friend that you were just mentioning. I really want to know what you actually think, and I'd like you to say that. And it's a loss for the United States. If you had to scorecard this one, this has been a terrible, terrible cost. Beyond all of the costs, what are we doing now? We're negotiating. This is the terms of surrender.
This is the terms of pain that America has to accept. It's a question of how much frozen assets does Iran get? How much sanction relief does Iran get? How much enriched uranium is it going to get to keep and where? Trump said it had to be out of the country, but guess what? On Monday, he's also suggesting that it could be in the country. How much control will Iran have of the Strait?
You can call it an environmental cost, but it's actually control of the Strait that Iran has and that they can resume at any point they want to. How many proxies can Iran continue to fund with all of that cash that it's about to get as a bribe for reopening the Straits of Hormuzna, allowing Donald Trump to say that this was a win? This isn't looking good.
Well, I want to be balanced because I do think that to use a Hegseth term, which I despise, but has some relevancy, war fighting. The U.S. knows how to do war fighting.
Maybe war fighting with the wrong kind of weapons, with outdated weapons.
Yeah. So, but I think what the U.S. doesn't want to do is actually war fight here, right? Because I'm sure they have these plans. You could put 500,000 troops and mobilize them into the region and try to take the Strait of Hormuz back. And, you know, maybe you need 150,000 Marine Expeditionary Force and others, 101st Airborne, etc.,
And they'd have to stay a while, right? They'd have to stay a while. This is not a one and done.
That's a 10-year, that's a, you know, look, we've stayed a while in Europe, right? We've been in Europe for 80 years after the Second World War. And look at what we've done since 1953 in Korea. So this is a stay a forever of a while, right? But then you'd have the straight open. But again, I want to be fair.
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Chapter 5: How might Donald Trump's approach to Iran impact his presidency?
all the submarines are gone. If you were the Americans and you're working for Pete Hegseth, you're making those announcements, right? But then you're saying we really depleted ourselves while we're doing this, right? 50 to 80% of the THAAD interceptors are gone. 45% of the precision strike missiles are gone. 50% of the Patriot interceptors gone. Now, be a defense...
analyst, and let's say that you were going to President Xi Jinping and you were saying to him, what about the American military? What would you say, Caddy?
What you mean in terms of how well positioned the American military is?
Yeah, so I'll start. I would say President Xi, I'm worried about their AI capabilities. I'm worried about our missile defense systems because they didn't work in the first couple of days of the war. I'm also worried about the way we're using AI relative to the US Pentagon's use of AI. But they are thin, are they not? From an arsenal perspective, are the Americans thin?
No, I think they are looking thin. And I think they've used an awful lot of weaponry and munitions and missiles up. but haven't defeated the opposition. I mean, that's the problem.
That's why we're now in a position where the choice is between a long-term ground forces commitment, which the president doesn't want to make, more bombings, which has no guarantee of producing a better result than we've got right now, or a negotiated deal, which is what... Barack Obama did over 20 months. We'll end up with something that looks very similar to the JCPOA.
Congressman Mike Turner, who used to run the Foreign Relations Committee, said to me very clearly, the one thing that Trump doesn't want is to be sending pallets of cash to the Iranians like Obama did. It's the thing that he keeps mentioning. It's no surprise to me that over the course of the weekend, Donald Trump is putting out cartoons denigrating all of Obama's negotiators because
Projectional confession, this is what Trump does when he's in a difficult position. He attacks the people who have been in that position before, but they did release frozen assets and he's going to end up doing the same thing. He's going to end up releasing frozen assets because it's going to cost him. This defeat is going to cost Donald Trump in money, and in uranium.
I'm not sure that he's going to get the uranium deal that he thinks. He's not even going to be able to come out of this and say, we got that enriched uranium out of the country because I think it's going to end up with the Iranians quite possibly watering down the uranium inside country and then they can spin it back up again quite quickly to get to weapons grade.
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