SPECIAL REPORT: US & Israel Now At War With Iran – What Will The Implications Be? | Ryan Bohl, RANE

Summary

• Middle East Conflict: Joint US–Israel strikes decapitated parts of Iran’s leadership, triggering widespread Iranian retaliation across GCC states and Israel with expectations of continued strikes for weeks.
• Energy Security: Worst-case scenarios include attacks on refineries, LNG facilities, pipelines, and platforms; Strait of Hormuz closure seen as less likely but still a risk to shipping flows.
• Higher Oil Prices: Base case is a near-term energy price squeeze with potential gouging and inflationary pressure, while a true “scorched earth” energy shock is viewed as unlikely but catastrophic if realized.
• Aerospace & Defense: Multi-layered GCC air defenses (Patriot, THAAD, Barak, etc.) have been intercepting a high share of missiles, and US/Israel are near air superiority, reinforcing the role of advanced defense systems.
• Gulf States: Regional economies face costs from damage control and tourism disruption; sovereign wealth funds may pivot inward, potentially reducing external investments (e.g., AI and entertainment) in the near term.
• Market Outlook: Higher energy costs add to inflation and could weigh on global growth into 2026; energy infrastructure remains a prime target for pressure tactics.
• Geopolitical Paths: Outcomes range from a restrained Iran to prolonged tit-for-tat conflict; best case is gradual reform, with low odds of great-power intervention.
• Investment Angle: No specific stocks were pitched; focus centers on sector exposures like Energy (upside from price spikes) and Aerospace & Defense (sustained demand for air and missile defense).

Transcript

and we should be live. Welcome to Thoughtful Money. I'm Thoughtful Money founder and your host, Adam Tagert, here welcoming you here for a special report. Uh I wish it were for better reasons. Um but as many of you know, uh there was a joint uh USIsraeli strike on Iran yesterday that killed Iran's supreme leader and a number of members of the senior government there. Um this is a very chaotic kinetic unfolding situation right now. And to help make sense of it for us, we have the great good fortune of having Ryan B um Reigns geopolitical um M East analyst joining us here as he has in the past. Uh Ryan, thanks so much for joining us. I know it is a crazy time for you. We've had you on here, you know, over past year, a little bit more as sort of we've been on the milestones to this moment. um you know some of the the um uh previous exchanges between Iran and Israel and then uh the US bombing of Iran's nuclear facilities and through all that I think we were all hoping that um uh we were going to hopefully maybe be able to avoid a full-out kinetic situation but here we are. Um so lots and lots of questions for you. Um, I'm sure you probably know a lot of things that I'm not even going to think of to ask you. So, please bring those into the discussion as need be, but if we can just start, um, let's just kind of bring everybody up to speed. What exactly happened in yesterday's joint strikes uh, with the US and Israel against Iran? Well, you know, very broadly, uh, it was a joint mission between the Israelis and the Americans, which is different than June of 2025, where the Israelis led the strikes and carried out their their campaign until, uh, you know, somewhere around 10 11 days and then the Americans came in, delivered the final blow on the nuclear program and then there was a ceasefire declared. This was worked uh worked out together. Uh, it was extensive. it went after uh as many targets as they see as they thought were uh viable as part of a decapitation strike. So their idea, you know, killing uh Ayatollah Ali Kaini was a very deliberate act with the idea of knocking out as many uh Islamic Republic officials at the top as possible in order to their command and control, their political leadership, uh make their response more difficult. Uh there was also a massive cyber attack that was involved. Suppression of air defenses, strikes on nuclear uh related targets yet again, underground missile facilities, launchers uh and as many military bases as they could manage in that first round. Um and they continued to carry out strikes and there are continuing to be strikes um even today and we are seeing from Israeli and American officials leaks that suggest that these strikes will continue uh for several weeks. They are they are planning for them up to 30 days. Now whether or not they do 30 days is going to depend on all of our various off-ramp uh scenarios that we can kind of talk about. Nobody knows uh how long this war will necessarily last and they certainly don't know how it is going to uh to end. Uh but there are certain paths that make more sense than others. um we can kind of chat through those, but that that's kind of where we're at is we are at um that massive uh attack by the US and the Israelis and then the Iranians once they started to um understand the scope and scale of these attacks, they calculated their their pre-planned retaliation for many many years. Anybody who's been looking at Iran has worried that the Iranians would someday come under an attack like this and that they would have nothing but an incentive to carry out strikes across the entire region. and they have now struck uh virtually they have struck every single Gulf Cooperation Council country including now Oman as of today as well as Jordan and of course Israel. Um and so they have expanded their geography much further than they ever have before. Uh casualty counts are starting to come in. I've seen that Sentcom confirmed that three US soldiers were killed. We don't know where or exactly how. Um casualties throughout the GCC and within Israel and several hundred uh reported casualties inside of Iran. those numbers will climb uh as this conflict continues and it's very uh unclear how much more damage will be done uh across the region and and of course we've seen some norms um shattered and uh things like seeing places like Dubai and Abu Dhabi and and places that I used to live in uh seeing familiar target or uh towers coming under attack Burjal Arab and and interceptions near the Burj Khalifa and uh over downtown Doha. These are all civilian targets that the Iranians have gone after and they are economically linked or they are prestige linked or in some cases they seem to have been caught up with air defenses downing something and then the debris causing damage on the ground as seems to be the case with the with some of the incidents at places like the the Palm JRA in Dubai which had a fire that's that's gained a lot of high-profile attention but seems to have been the result of a shootown rather than a deliberate targeting but it's still going on um and we're going to continue to see that you know over the next few days in a few weeks. >> Okay. So, tons of questions here. Um, so just to be super clear because this is the first I'm hearing of it. Um, it sounds like America does have its first casualties here. You said you're getting reports of three soldiers. >> Yeah, Sentcom issued a statement earlier today. It's three soldiers that were confirmed killed and five wounded. Again, we don't know where. Um, there were lots of images of of the base in Kuwait getting hit by a Shahed drone. So, it's possible that it came from there. There was a report of a medevac in Doha yesterday. So aloud date is also an option. It's very hard to say. It's not pilots. We know that there have been no shootowns of American craft so aircraft so far. Uh an Israeli drone was reportedly down but that's it so far. So this is very likely the result of a drone or missile attack somewhere I would suspect either in the Gulf or even in a place like Iraqi Kurdistan has also been struck uh by Iranian missiles and drones. >> Okay. So um huge amounts of fog of war here. you know, stuff we don't know for sure. Um, we do though seem to know that um the Supreme Leader Committee was killed as well as I think the head of the IRGC um and uh a number of other sort of senior leaders. Um, how how uh how how badly h how decapitated um is the Irani uh senior level uh government uh roster and uh I I do believe Iran has actually appointed kind of an interim leader to call the shots. Um, and I think an interim, you know, guy, I don't know what was whether they had the revolutionary guards guards or the the police force there, but they seem to have some sort of team in place. And I'm curious, how far are those players from the top of the organization as of two days ago? >> Well, you know what's different about Iran versus say Saddam's Iraq or Assad Syria or Gaddafi's Libya? It was not a personalized system. Everything didn't go through and and live or die by Kamei's final word. He was an arbiter of the system. But in some ways, it it's a mixture between our system in the United States. You know, a democratic network. If you assassinate the American president, there's a succession process. And no matter how many assassinations you carry out, the machinery of government would continue in the US. You again the only like a nuclear attack would genuinely destroy uh our leadership to the point of of being ineffective. Iran is structured in a similar way only along ideological lines meaning that casualties at the top don't necessarily interfere with the overarching strategy. They do disrupt. It's very important to note that if you have leadership sudden leadership assassinations. It does mean that there's a time where you have to sort out succession rather than retaliation or changing you know facts on the ground. But local commanders, IRGC commanders have long had their marching orders, particularly since the June war, to carry out their orders regardless of what's happening to the top while the top is rearranging itself. And so there's a resiliency built into the Islamic Republic, then makes it so that these top-down assassinations aren't going to disrupt Iran's ability to carry out retaliations at scale. And obviously, we're still Khani is dead. Um Abu Dhabi and Dubai are still getting hit uh as of this moment. So the the the continued retaliation orders are still being given and carried out. Um because at the end of the day the IRGC is still tens of thousands of soldiers and ouresh is hundreds of thousands as well. Uh and the infrastructure of of stopping their attacks requires a much more extensive campaign than we have seen so far and certainly is not not something that would be capable for the US and the Israelis to do in a single day. So uh it is important to note that this is a significant setback for uh Iran's legitimacy and the potential cohesion of the country but at the moment their succession plans are working. Their command and control is still functional. It it's definitely battered and you know again fog of war we don't know how much chaos there is behind the scenes but we do know the outcome which is that they're still firing their missiles. They're still giving orders. Their leadership is still issuing statements. Um the pro- uh regime crowds are still coming out when they're asked to. And as far as anyone can currently tell, there is no indigenous uprising. There's no rebel force taking over cities. There's no defections from Artesh, the military. There's no defections from the IRGC or the Basie. The regime is united. It's certainly rattled, but it is united at least at this moment. >> Okay. And what do we know about the new leaders that have been announced today? It is very fog of war in terms of whether or not they're actually the ones in charge because at this moment Iran has a strong incentive to put people in the front of the assassination line that aren't necessarily calling the shots. In all likely, you know, in all likelihood, it's probably diffused system where IRGC commanders are taking over spheres of influence and carrying out things autonomously so that as assassinations may come down the pipeline, it doesn't affect the overarching response that the Iranians are focused on. So really what we need to look at is the postwar scenario because who's in charge right now as a caretaker may or may not make it through first contact with the Iranian political system after the war inevitably ends. And those are the people we want to look at to understand more deeply as to what the future direction of Iran is going to go. The emergency government is in place. It's functional. Uh but that doesn't mean that that's going to tell us who's going to be in charge after the war is over. >> Okay. So anyways, there there still remains a command and control there. It is still operating obviously for you know all the things you mentioned they're still retaliating you know [snorts] Iran is still governing itself with the current regime. Um so uh the I mean there was a I think the US alone did 900 strikes yesterday. Um Israel of course has been all over this. They're the ones that actually took out uh Kimi and I actually want to get a little clarity on that at some point in time because I think I've heard that it's sort of unclear uh in our form of governance whether we can go take out a head of state. So it was very clear to let Israel actually kill Kmeni. Um, and I had heard yesterday, so this might not be correct now, but that, you know, Israel was hoping to have uh total air superiority um in Iran within a day or two or so. So my question there is is is is the current plan, as best we understand it, from Israel and America to just continue taking out um Iran's capability to launch missiles uh and take out all those missile installations. So, what are the odds that it looks like the allies, I don't know what we want to call them yet, but but our side um is is going to eventually achieve total air superiority? >> Well, on the air superior uh superiority front, they're very close already. Um Iran's air defenses were already rattled pretty badly by the June war last year where the Israelis established air superiority. Um there's going to be of course some localized threats from shoulder uh fired weapons and and uh you know older uh AA systems that are that are you know more bullet based and are a little bit harder to for uh the Americans and the Israelis to track down. But I think >> sorry to interrupt. Is that mostly just anti-aircraft versus being able to send a ballistic missile in another country? >> Right. Yeah. So ballistic missiles is a much more robust program that the Iranians have been building up much more so than their air defenses. There's always been an assumption within the Iranian defense establishment that they wouldn't be able to maintain a closed air uh space for very long against a concerted American air campaign. So, it's always been about the missiles being able to strike back to deter that air campaign knowing that they would not have uh advanced enough air defenses to to block one over time. After all, they saw what happened to Saddam Hussein's Iraq, which had a very robust air defense system in 1991, and it was pulled apart. So they they've always the missiles are always about their their defense. It's both an offensive and a defensive weapon. Um so the air defense system is is more or less decimated and I suspect that sometime today they will declare that they have air superiority over places like Tyrron. Um the missiles and the drones on the other hand are a lot harder because those are scattered throughout the country. There are thousands of them. The stockpile estimates are always just that. They're estimates. You know, I've heard 2,000 of their biggest, baddest weapons are the ones that that's a commonly cited figure. Is that accurate after the June 2025 war? Is it accurate after some deliveries from the Russians earlier this year or what they've been sending to Ukraine? Um, and is it is it accurate what they have fired so far? It's very hard to say, but that is what the the Americans and the Israelis are chasing is that missile arsenal. It just doesn't it's not clear if they have the intelligence uh on the ground to fully decimate that program or if the Iranians are going to exhaust it by continuing to fire these you know dozens and hundreds of targets uh that they're doing each day. >> Um all right so a couple things there. Um, so some of the adjectives I've heard in the mainstream media about Iran's response is um, yes, it's they're kind of throwing missiles everywhere, but it's a bit weaker than they thought. Um, is that a fair adjective? >> Yeah. And I, you know, I think this is an interesting thing to to consider. Before the Russians invaded Ukraine, there was kind of this 10-ft tall perception of the Russian army that they take Kev in a few days and even the Russians believed it. And I think there was that angle of Iran analysis as well that the Iranian ballistic missile program was significantly more uh capable than what we have seen so far. Some of that of course is that uh the air defense systems are performing quite admirably and some countries like the UAE have built multi-layered uh air defenses. They have Russian pancers, they have South Korean KM systems, they have American Patriots and THAADs and they have Israeli Barack uh missile systems. So they have these these multi-layered air defenses throughout the Gulf that are shooting down hundreds of missiles and drones that are relatively effective. You know, even 85 90% is what some folks are already starting to report for their their interceptions. So the Iranians have the ability to strike these countries, but they're coming up against a more sophisticated air defense network than they probably planned for. Um, and so there is we're again the war is certainly not over. But if this pattern holds and we're on the other side of this, it's going to look a lot like a lot of the assessments of Hezbollah before the 2024 phase of the war where people were always saying Hezbollah will rain down a thousand rockets an hour on Hifa and it'll decimate that city. And that never happened. And this these were sources from the Israelis. The IDF was was assessing that Hezbollah could decimate their northern cities. Um, and then the actual war happened and they never followed through. Um because I think where there's somewhat of a of a threat inflation of missiles and drones and rockets that that they're very scary because they're sudden, but they aren't actually strategic game changers the way that they've kind of been sold. But we will see. Iran's full capabilities haven't been utilized yet. And they may not. We may get off we may de uh deescalate this before we see Iran decide to fire its most sophisticated missiles in a swarm at a specific target where they would be most impactful. Um, so we may not see that either. And so there's a there's a fog of war element here. Did we overinflate the Iranian threat and we've been portraying them to be, you know, more dangerous than they actually are, or is this truly the best that they can do and the best that they're going to do is in this moment? Um, I think we're going to have to wait a while before we can f uh firmly write that assessment. >> Okay. And uh you mentioned intelligence earlier. So, um, obviously the, you know, I believe probably is Israeli intelligence, you correct me if that's not the case, but the intelligence that we had that said, hey, all these guys have gotten together. I believe they actually were planning to do this, but then they pulled up the timeline because they had intelligence that said, "Oh, this, you know, the Supreme Leader and all these key leaders are meeting uh in the certain place." It was a daytime raid, which is normally not something that we do, but we did it because they were all together. So, it it seems like the um the intelligence here on what's going on inside Iran um is prodigious and has probably played a really dramatic a really essential role into what's happened so far in these strikes. Um, what do we know about the Israelis and Americans intelligence capabilities inside Iran at this point? So, like you talked about, well, you know, Iran's got its uh its ballistic missile infrastructure and drones all spread throughout the country. Um, and we're not entirely sure if we've got the intelligence to uh, you know, sus all those out or whatnot, but it seems like our intelligence is pretty darn good. >> And, and there's a record of how how effective this has been. After all, they they assassinated the Mossad assassinated Ishmael Haneia inside of Thran in what was supposed to be a safe hotel way back in in 2024. Uh there were the strikes last year that involved a fair bit of coordination on the ground from Mossad assets on the ground. Um Iran has a lot of structural disadvantages to to having uh proper operational security. Of course, it's geography is one problem, right? It's very easy for the Israelis and the Americans to sneak in given the size of the country, but Iran's system is also remarkably uh corrupt. It's very good at holding on to power and it's not very good at running anything else. Hence the reason we've seen things like Tyrron's water crisis. >> Water crisis. Yeah, we talked about that last time. Yeah. >> Right. So those that level of corruption makes it a lot easier for intelligence agencies to uh to penetrate these systems. And there's also this element of technology which is that, you know, even with Iran knowing that a cell phone is essentially a tracker, they're still utilizing it. Either the Supreme Leader or somebody near them are utilizing these modern tools of technology that the Israelis and the Americans are very good at getting into. So there's probably an element of that as well. Think about this. 20 years ago with Saddam, cell phones weren't ubiquitous back then. Saddam hid in his spider hole for six months uh because he was literally cut off from the world. And I don't think Iran's leadership even now has fully been willing to go to that that that kind of ground on technology. They're still reliant on some sort of tech that is being tracked and and and uh used against them by the Israelis and the Americans. Um or it's potentially being given to them by Mossad agents, you know, specific phones. The Israelis have a long history of giving people bug phones and phones that have bombs in them uh going back decades. And and it's entirely possible that that's what contributed to Kmeni being assassinated. Of course, Kmeni was also a man of habit. Um, and I think that they had mapped out the way that he had done his his daily life and certainly had tracked him through the June 2025 war. Um, and that made it easier to figure out how he might respond to say the talks on Friday and where he might go and who he might meet with. And that probably uh fed into the the decision to strike because they had higher confidence knowing how he had behaved in the prior conflict. >> Okay. I want to talk in just a second about the um the talks that have been going on between the US and Iran and sort of why they eventually got to this breaking point real quickly because Iran's response was to basically hit everybody you know in region and and granted it was trying to go for American bases in these countries. Um but you know there's been a fair amount of collateral damage. We've all seen the footage of the hotels on fire and stuff like that. Um, [clears throat] from what I've read, which could be wrong, it sounds like, you know, we were in discussion with a lot of the regional players to say, "Hey, we might need to go against Iran." And for the most part, most of them said either, "All right, you do what you got to do. I'm not going to do it. I'm going to be neutral." Or in certain cases, yeah, all right, America, we think you should do that. Um, and we we've talked a bit in some of your previous appearances here that Iran isn't really very beloved by a lot of its regional um, neighbors. Um, the fact that Iran has now just lobbed a bunch of of missiles into neighboring countries there, is that actually galvanizing them even more to get on the American and Israeli side? Like is Iran I don't know necessarily say is this a miscalculation, but is its response uniting the region against it? Well, yeah, I think that's that's that's certain, right? We we're already seeing threats from the Saudis and the Emiratis and others to get uh involved in counterattacks against Iran directly. We haven't seen those orders being given, but there's lots of suggestions that if there's continued attacks on their countries, they'll join the Israelis and the Americans because they of course have the similar hardware uh to conduct their own air strikes inside of Iran, even if those are symbolic. Uh and you know a month ago if if we had been talking about the Gulf uh Arab states, we'd be talking about the Saudi UAE spat uh and and their their very big differences in Sudan and Yemen. Instead, we're getting phone calls between Abu Dhabi and Riyad, between Muhammad bin Zed and and Muhammad bin Salman patching things up. So there's a temporary unity. Um because after all, Iran is the reason that the Gulf Cooperation Council that that group of states even exists. It was after Iran in 1971 decided to grab some of these islands in the Persian Gulf. Uh as these as the UAE was becoming independent that helped galvanize the region to say Iran even under the shaw this happened under the Shaw. Iran means to dominate the eastern side of Arabia. That's it's history. We have to have a united front against it. So when the Iranians are a big threat this p pushes them all together and for the moment they are they are showing a great uh uh degree of solidarity. But all of their imperatives, they're not totally aligned. Um, the Saudis, for example, want the region to be stable and they want it to be consistent and they want it to be under United States. And that's what a United not the United States, but under a united state. >> Yes. >> Series of Gulf States. Yeah. >> Right. And so you can see that strategy in Yemen and Sudan and Syria. They're backing a central government in those places. They want to end those civil wars. They want stability. The Amiradis on the other hand, they look at the world and they say, "We're a minor power. The only way we're going to be able to climb up the geopolitical ladder, so to speak, are there are therefore are our our rivals, our middle power rivals or or for other minor powers to be broken up so we can exploit them, so we can influence them, etc." And in Iran, what this means is that the Saudis, whatever happens on the other side of this conflict, the Saudis are going to want to see a united Iran under a predictable government. The Emiratis, on the other hand, are going to be much more open to a chaotic Iran. Iran that might be a haven for extremists that might be fighting its own civil war. We're not going to see that cleavage during the course of this war, but over the next year to five, we should be looking for that as as the Amiradis and the Israelis want to see a broken Iran. The Saudis, the Turks, the Qataris, the Egyptians, they want to see a stable Iran. Um, and that's going to play out and resurge some of their differences uh into the future. in in in a stable Iran, would they be happy with a return to or I mean, I guess it's still there, but would they be happy with a stable fundamentalist regime? Um, or this is my thinking, which might be totally erroneous, but I kind of feel like on on the world stage, it's it's almost like that TV show Survivor >> where sometimes where when someone's just too problematic, everybody else can vote them off the island, >> right? where they're just like, you know what, Iran, you guys have just been such a thorn in everybody's side for so long and you're you're just getting in our way, and I don't have confidence that you're going to get better anytime soon. So, I'm totally happy with regime change in your country, and maybe I'm now going to contribute to it because it's time to get you off the island. Um, so, you know, again, would the Saudis be be fine with a stable fundamentalist regime like this or would they really want to see something else that's stable replace it? So I mean we can look back at the example of of uh Gaddafi in Libya where everybody turned on him uh because he had worked very hard to alienate the entire region over 40 years sponsoring terrorism sponsoring assassination attempts coming up with an ideology that upset everybody the Saudis the Egyptians everyone. So when the moment came >> that sounds like the Iran playlist but go ahead. >> A little bit like the Yeah. But when the moment came it was easy for them to unite and say we want to get rid of Gaddafi. This was quite different though with the US invasion of Iraq. uh which is you you might recall we could not send troops through uh Turkey or through Saudi. blocked uh military operations because they said, "Yeah, we don't like Saddam, but he's he's the devil we know, and you don't have a plan for the day after." And the Saudis, I think, are still in that position with Iran. Even if it is still the Islamic Republic and you have somebody like Khani's uh key adviser like Ali Larani calling the shots or some other hardliner calling the shots, as long as they are predictable shots, they would be willing to cut a deal with that that ver that version of Iran and hope that they could build a new working relationship. The Amiris, on the other hand, I think are in the regime change camp and are more willing to support um a a a efforts to overthrow the Islamic Republic again because chaos benefits them. >> Yeah. But also because they want uh uh they would want an ideologically different Iran uh on so they can accept the worst case scenario which is a broken Iran. Um but the best case they get a new Iran that they can work better with. The Saudis on the other hand, I don't think they want a broken Iran. they can't accept a broken Iran. That chaos could spread over to the eastern province where there's lots of Shia uh and create real problems for them. It could destabilize Iraq and reignite its civil war and that's on their northern border. Um so I think that there would be that divergence in in the way that different players look at the future of Iran, that willingness to accept that it might end up broken if you do a regime change campaign that's actually successful. >> Okay. And and we're going to talk about this in a bit, but last time you're on, we really dug deeply into the fact that um Iran is it's sort of a very fractious country um different interests, different groups. There's there's no clear like opposition leader um that that the entire country would quickly unite around. Um but before we get there, let's let's get to the point I mentioned. So, um, America was in talks with Iran >> and, uh, it was trying to get to some sort of outcome. I mean, if you listen to the what the administration's been saying over the past 24 hours, they're like, "We gave these guys every shot of of doing the right thing." But when we finally realized they weren't going to play ball, we we had to get serious. Um, what what what what brought us to here? I I I think listening to Trump at least in the State of the Union speech sort of intimated it was just we it was down to the nuclear issue >> and um I guess the question there is is from from listening to what I've heard the administration say recently it sounds like we were not just saying don't enrich uranium I think we were saying we don't want you to have nuclear anything going forward like not even nuclear energy we don't want to have any nuclear program at all and it seemed like Iran was unwilling to agree to that was that truly the breaking point >> that that's a way of putting it is that they were essentially looking for a nuclear surrender. They want they wanted to remove Iran's technological capabilities for enrichment. They wanted to essentially gut all of Iran's nuclear progress over the past 40 some odd years. And of course, remember the the program began under the Shaw with US help. So they wanted to wipe out all of this as cleanly as they could. Um that is what Trump perceived to be his better deal over the JCPOA because after all remember the JCPOA it was working. There were inspections, there were limits on uranium, there weren't a lot of secrets. Um there may have been some side stuff in terms of weaponization that was taking place but nothing substantial that would allow them to carry out a quick breakout uh under the nose of the IEA. Um so he wanted something stronger that was there were other versions of compromise that were possible. Trump really views Iran and its nuclear issue as a legacy issue. It is after all he pulled out of the deal. He picked this conflict. This is a war of choice that he decided to begin. Now it is all a very second-term president sort of behavior uh in that he is looking for some sort of finality with the Iranians and he wants it to be significant finality and you can see that in many of his his policies all across the board he wants to leave a major legacy and with Iran it really did look like the full dismantling of the nuclear program now and and forever. >> Okay. So what in your mind was it that made America say okay now is the time to strike? I think a a couple of things. First is that the peeling away of Iran's deterrence over the past few years since October 7th, 2023. Hamas's is decimated. He has decimated. Assad has fallen. The Houthis have shown the most that they can do. The uh Iraqi militias are restrained. And of course, Iran's been attacked multiple times. So, Iran is more isolated and weaker than it ever has been. uh the popular uprising that happened in early January I think created some wishful thinking in the administration that this would be an easy government to topple with some outside force. I think the Maduro operation in Venezuela certainly fed into that as well. Uh because that all things considered even as the impact of that has been relatively marginal. Uh it was there was no major blowback from it at this point. Um and the administration is seeing that the use of force doesn't seem to carry with political consequences that they care about. Um, and it doesn't seem to be causing sort of security blowback. Uh, that could really turn the public against them. And and so I think that Trump said, "I killed Salmani back in 2020. The world didn't end. We fought a war with them last year. The world didn't end. I can fight another war with them this year. See if that softens them up on the nuclear front because I know the world is not going to end." And it seems like that really is his threshold is that unless we see a major energy shock or a very large even a very large terrorist attack or civilian casualties. Uh I'm not even sure if that would change his mind, but an energy shock probably would. Um I think he is still calculating that we won't see an energy shock and if we do he'll restrain his his Iran policies and change course and move away so the energy shock goes away. >> Okay. And we have heard Iran threatening to close the trade of Hormuz and we'll talk about that in a bit. Um, so my opinion, you don't have to have share it, but Trump Trump seems to really like tackling these sort of 8020 issues where they they might be very partisan, but he feels like, look, 80% of people are on my side, and I'm just going to use that overwhelming, you know, majority of opinion to do what I think is right, and everybody will, yeah, some people will scream, but the majority will be okay with it. >> Um, is is fighting Iran like an 8020 issue? Striking Iran like an 8020 issue? Um because Iran doesn't seem to have too many friends here and and TBD, but I don't think we've heard all that much from its traditional supporters, China and Russia, besides kind of finger wagging at this point. Do you expect them to to to rush materially to Iran's support here, or is this pretty much an 8020 global issue where people are like, "Yeah, I might not love it, but you know, I don't really like that Iran guy anyway." Well, the the of course Iran's a major source for Chinese oil and they very much care about that. So, they're going to not want to see interruptions to that oil. Uh but at the same time, uh Iran is not a a core part of China or Russia's, you know, regional or global strategies, it's a partner and when things overlap, they work together and when things don't overlap like this is where they don't work because again, Russia's always not been thrilled with Iran's nuclear program. It it also opposes nuclear proliferation because Russia wants a monopoly on nuclear weapons too. China also saying again is against proliferation one. >> Yeah. So there's there's always been a divergence on that front. Um now in terms of on a diplomatic front, many countries want to see a change out of Iran's behavior, but they're not willing to pay the price uh of war or an energy shock or regime change or regional chaos to do it. Most countries don't want to pay that. Everybody wants to have their geopolitical cake and eat it too. um with the exception of the Israelis and the Israelis are the ones willing to take these risks because October 7th has shifted them into a hawkish mode and it's going to be a while before they get out of that hawkish mode uh because of the scale of the October 7th attack. So this is all happening in the context of October 7th for the Israelis. Um for Trump here on the domestic front, I see very few pro-Iran war supporters. Uh this is far less popular than Bush invading Iraq in 2003, which was controversial enough. um let alone a a conflict like Afghanistan which had like 90% of Americans supporting it initially. Americans are very warwary and the current narrative is that this is money that could be spent at home is is that this war is being taken place on behalf of Israel that it is not in America's core interest and the urgency wasn't there. Um he's decided to do this I think against public opinion uh because of that legacy issue again. I think he, you know, again, second term president, he never has to win an election again, but he does care about what the history books say about what he did with Iran. And he's taking this moment where Iran looks very weak and the the global community is very passive about what's going to happen to Iran to take this risk. Um, and he was pitched this high-risk, highreward uh war plan. And as we know, he really likes risk and he really wants to take, you know, he's a gambler in many ways and he's he's gambling right now that the worst is not going to come out of this conflict. >> Yeah. And I certainly have seen a lot of skepticism, you know, amongst sort of the America First commentator community. Um, uh, and I think the administration probably has a, you know, an answer, their answer to that just doesn't seem to be very convincing to them where they're saying, "Look, this is long-term America's interest because it's going to make the world a lot more stable and yada yada yada yada yada." Time will tell, obviously. Um, okay. So, I I want to talk about what's most likely to happen from here. >> And um the last time you were on, uh I think we talked about the concept of uh what what may be Trump's new preferred way of doing things, which is not regime change necessarily, but regime influence. >> Right? So, Venezuela, a really good example of that. You know, we come in, we're taking out Maduro. He's been too much of a of a gadfly for us. We're leaving everything else intact. We're just sending the very strong message to the next person who gets his seat that if you don't comply, if you don't do what we like, you're next on the hit list, right? And and hopefully we'll be shaping, you know, that nation's policies to be more if not west friendly or America friendly, at least more America kind of compliant, right? >> Um so will that work in a country like Iran? >> Uh the baseline scenario would be no. Uh Venezuela's political system is very different than Iran's. Uh its ideology is quite different. Uh Iran's successors are all going to be ideological cadres of Ayatahani. They're going to believe and think similar to him. They'll have different interpretations of things. And one of the dangers is that they're going to interpret's comparative restraint in this period of regional conflict since October 7th was a mistake. >> Mistake. Yeah. >> That's the real danger is that they're going to take away from it. We should have gone harder and faster and sooner um against the Israelis. the Americans, etc. Um, that's kind of the baseline is that what will happen is a a successor that thinks similar to Kmeni but is more aggressive as a result of the lessons and that aggressiveness could go to the nuclear program. Um, you know, when the June war happened, you know, our our company, we wrote about the idea that now Iran has an incentive to get a nuclear weapon. Now there's a reason for hardliners to make a viable argument because before the argument was, well, we get a nuclear weapon, America and Israel will attack. Well, now America and Israel have attacked, so why don't we get a nuclear weapon? Uh especially if they're not going to invade the country. So, um that's a real danger is that we end up with a a more isolated, more uh reactionary and potentially a nuclear armed uh Iran that is focused at least in the near term on adaptation and and survival of and that adaptation will be first figuring out how to restore deterrence against its enemies. uh and second figuring out how to shore up its political order with so much decimation at the top ranks with so many there's kind of a generational turnover happening now because of this level of assassination so that a slightly younger generation of folks are taking over um how do they interpret the world beyond the prism of of looking at everything through the sha and the Iran Iraq war how do they look at the world in the 21st century um away from those 20th century lenses that that I think at the end of the day really influence >> okay so How how likely do you think what I I what I think we think is happening here um is the the US's and to a lesser extent Israeli I guess um carrot and stick approach right where we've got this stick of look we're just going to keep bombing you know every single facility of yours obviously trying to avoid as much civilian casualties as possible because we're not at war with the Iran people we're at war with the the leadership there um uh but at the same time we're having these diplomat atic, you know, discussions about trying to find offramps and stuff like that. Um, will will that work with a fundamentalist, you know, organization like this or are they just waking up every morning repeating death to America and, you know, they're just going to continue to harden as you were saying? >> Well, I mean, there's like three regional uh examples we can kind of look at. The first is Hezbollah, which is Iran's uh protege in Lebanon. It's structured politically similar. The ideolog ideologically it's very similar. Hezbollah stayed out of this war because it it was uh decimated by the Israelis. Its leadership was killed and at the moment there's not a strong driver for Hezbollah to get involved attacking Israel directly even as that would be a real hamper for the Israelis. So that is one scenario is that you get a version of Iran that is simply less aggressive. It's still ideologically uh un unchanged. It's still politically aligned in the direction that it is. It's just that it more or less gives up or moves away from its proxy strategy. um that it's willing much less willing to use its missiles in reaction to provocations. That is a possibility that on the other side of this is a is a restrained Iran not because they suddenly want to get along with the Israelis and the Americans but because they believe that the costs of conflict are too high. And you know again one of the things that could work in their favor is if if Israel and America are going to keep attacking anyway. If Iran doesn't respond to that, if there are civilian casualties in that it actually will strengthen the hardliners in the long run. they'll look more and more like victims diplomatically as well as internally if Israel and America are attacking what looks like a defenseless or at least passive Iran. So that is an option that they might have. Um the other is is sort of what the Houthis have done and the Houthies have also not gotten involved. Um but the Houthis are not getting involved not because they're afraid of the US. They actually faced down the US last spring and the US eventually cost uh called off that campaign. It's because their own drivers and their own politics have moved away from uh aligning with all of these conflicts. So maybe the Iranians adaptation is to deemphasize the Palestinian conflict which would create less friction with the Israelis which would create less of an issue uh between the US and and and Iran as well. So the nuclear program is not resolved. But if Iran is no longer talking about the destruction of Israel left and right and and and championing the Palestinian cause, that's an option, too. They really focus on being Persians and Iranians and and and holding on to their own territory. After all, on their eastern frontier, Pakistan and Afghanistan are now in in something close to an open war. There there's in their own neighborhood that they could focus on that Iranian uh governments in the past traditionally would have considered to be a core interest. Um so that's an option, too. And the other is just the Saddam angle. going back to that Saddam angle, which is that they hunker down, they double down, they endure strike after strike, calculating that the United States and Israel just don't have it in them for a major invasion of of of Iran. Um, and we end up stuck in cycle after cycle of conflict, much like with Saddam Hussein in the 1990s, that may someday culminate in an actual ground invasion of Iran since that's the only way one can resolve that sort of dispute with a hardened um recalp. Okay. So, we're we're talking about this so far as if the regime has an iron grip and and can't get removed by, you know, a domestic movement. Um, is that really the case or is there potential here that the the people who were, you know, what 32,000 or so protesters just got slaughtered over the past uh month or so? Um, is there a potential that enough of the people of Iran have had enough with the regime that they actually, you know, take the opportunity is what Donald Trump has been doing here. All right, Iran people, this is your help you were asking for and you said this is your one best chance to rise up here. Um, what odds do you give that? If there is an uprising and it involves defections from the security forces and the Israelis and Americans start running an air campaign on behalf of them, I think that's more viable. We haven't seen anything like that and the Iranians are obviously laser focused on preventing that. But that's the only viable scenario that I could see taking place is essentially a version of Libya which would probably be very small scale. would probably be emerging on the margins of the country like in Iranian Kurdistan or in the Arab territories in the southwest towards Iraq. Those are the kind of places you would look at for the Israelis or the Americans to try to set up a proxy force. Even so, they would be climbing like literal mountains in many cases of of taking on a country of nearly 90 million people, most of whom are Persians who aren't keen on on having a foreign backed uh revolution or or or coup. Uh given their long history with that, given the way that they're educated, u it's very difficult for that to happen. Uh but it it can't be ruled out that in the course of the next say year, two years, three years, serious divergences emerge between the establishment on where to go from here because there will be those who argue we didn't go hard enough, we need to get involved more. The doves are also going to have a very good argument of like if we just gave up on confrontation with the Israelis, they'd leave us alone and then we could do our nuclear program without without an issue and we can start focusing on influencing countries we really care about like Iraq and Afghanistan and Pakistan, our actual neighbors. Um, so there will be serious divergences there and it's possible in the course of the succession process and remember we we don't know who the next supreme leader will be. >> Perhaps it's another old person who doesn't last very long like the old late Soviet leaders were not lasting very long. They'd only be in power for a little while before time took their toll. Um, if we have a process like that and a very serious internal debate of how to save Iran, so to speak, that leads to splits that could lead to paralysis. That's where you have your civic uprising similar to the Soviet Union where the protest movement really could take over the country. If there's a half of the country is saying we need to go this way and half of the country is going that way and it's splitting down the middle of the security establishment and they just when the protesters show up they just don't know how to respond. They aren't nobody's picking up the phone the way that the the border guards were in East Berlin uh in 1989. It's a possibility but it's certainly not going to happen. Uh I would say certainly not this year but in your medium term of two, five or 10 years it becomes a bit more viable. But I do want to say you know as a final thing we look at about Venezuela, Cuba to a large extent Syria these countries can you know Cuba can't even keep the lights on right they they're um they have very little uh ability to govern effectively on behalf of their people and yet they endure. people leave Cuba, they don't overthrow the government because it's not worth their lives. Iran could have a similar circumstance which is just it's a shrinking population. More and more refugees are leaving for Europe and Turkey and places like that. And the regime just holds on and it's more and more decadent and more and more corrupt and and less and less effective. But it's it's there because uh at the end of the day without that viable civic organization on the ground or a rebel force being backed by a big power um it it just doesn't happen spontaneously. >> Okay. So these this footage that we're seeing of Iranians cheering and setting off fireworks uh across Iran and and all the Iranian people, refugee or or um expats in other countries who are dancing and saying, "Okay, we finally get to go home." You don't really think that that's something that's going to happen anytime in the near future. >> It's it's it's similar to the what we saw with the, you know, Iraqi exiles watching Saddam's army be defeated in Kuwait. You know, they thought that that would be the moment for the revolution to overthrow him. uh and he was able to suppress that that the uh uprising that took place in the aftermath of that. I think that's the moment that we're in is the Islamic Republic is not popular, but it doesn't have to be because it relies on force rather than legitimacy. Uh and as long as they have the bas staffed and the IRGC staffed, that is enough to hold people together. And the the Iranian government has been pulling out its supporters in places like Thran and Ispahan and they're flooding the streets with pro- regime supporters. that makes it very hard to even get a Tahir Square uh sort of experience going in Iran if the public spaces are already occupied by the regime's supporters and they only need you know 10 20% of the population to support them. Um and if that you know even a fraction of that 10 20% comes out they dominate public spaces make it very hard for the opposition to to counterorganize. >> And are those people true supporters or are they there kind of with a bayonet of the back like get out there and tell everybody how much you love us? There's a few people that would be along those lines, but I think that there are, remember, this is also an a Islamist uh theocratic government. There are true believers for sure. Uh and that's part of its resiliency is that these these true believers really do believe in things like that the Israel and the United States are are theological enemies of their country and of their religion. And and again, that's not a majority of people in Iran, I would say, by any stretch of the imagination, but it doesn't have to be. you just need, you know, your 10% of fanatics to dominate the other 90% because at the end of the day, most people globally don't want to think about politics. They only think about politics when it directly affects them or it hits on one of their interests. Otherwise, they'll let the the fanatics kind of run the show if they're left alone. Um, and that is, I think, going to still be the case in the aftermath of this. And of course, there's still a bit of a rally around the flag effect even even now. People didn't like how many there many people are glad that he's dead. Um, but they also don't like that it's an outside force, especially the Israelis and the Americans that are doing it, >> right? It's like I can criticize my family all day long, but if you do, that's that's not cool. >> Yes. Exactly. [laughter] >> Exactly. >> Um, okay. So, uh, just to get it out there, um, you know, that the the talk about, well, the Shaw could return, and of course, this is the son of the Shaw that was deposed. Um, I'm guessing you're given really low odds to that happening anytime soon. Yeah, I mean, uh, the the Sha's son has very little support outside of the exile community. They're mostly wealthy folks who fled tyran, uh, and are looking to get back, you know, that that wealth and businesses that they had back in the 70s. Um, they have money and influence, uh, but they don't have popular support, and there's very few in Iran who would qualify as monarchists, who would want a return of of of the monarchy. Um, the problem, and we've talked about this before, the opposition is very divided. what Iran is going to be post Islamic Republic. Is it going to be another Islamist democracy like Turkey? Is it going to be a secular democracy like a European state? Is it going to be something else, something different? Um, some sort of nationalists military leadership like a place like Russia. Um, there's a lot of arguments as to where Iran should go. Um, and that makes it very difficult uh for the opposition to come up with a plan. But very few people are arguing that a monarchy is going to be a solution to to Iran's problems and that Pavali is is going to provide anything more than just you know being a foreign sponsored uh outsider. And of course the Iranians are very sensitive to the idea of of a foreign leader being imposed on them. >> Uh [clears throat] what I have seen floated which you might not give much you know credibility to of it happening is having him return to kind of oversee an interim government to then hold elections. uh to put in whatever new you know form that the a government that the Iranian people would like. But of course to do that you you got to get the existing regime to either comply or disband or lay down their arms or go in there and forcibly remove them. I mean, >> exactly. So, if you had the IRGC and others, you know, having a Gorbachoff style moment where they they, you know, decide they're not going to shoot into the crowd, um, or, you know, a Yeltson moment on the tank like in '91, then he could come back and he could be the guy in the tank saying we're going to have elections and I'm going to lead you there and then I'm going to go, you know, into retirement and consider that my legacy. Um, but we're still so very instead we clearly see a regime more willing to shoot first um, and reform later, if reform at all. >> At all. Okay. All right. So, um, uh, let's get into the tail end of this, Ryan, not to freak people out too badly, but what is the worst case scenario here? >> The worst case scenario in my mind is a a sustained supply interruption of energy out of the Gulf Arab states and and that can take a few forms. Hormuz they've said is is closed and now the foreign minister is saying it's open and we're not going to bother with it. Uh it's not so much Hormuz that we would be looking at for a supply interruption because ships can go back and forth from that pretty quickly in case it you know if the Iranians do actually get aggressive there the ships will just park and wait for the the the tunnel to go away and then they'll pick up business as usual. The worst case scenario is the Iranians decided to declare war on energy both uh in the Gulf Arab states uh to try to create either an environmental disaster as Saddam did with Kuwait's oil wells to create an energy shock where they go after the refineries, the oil platforms, the LG facilities, the pipelines and their idea is to destroy as much energy uh in the region as possible. And that is something that isn't irreparable. It's something that the Gulf Arab states have long worried about and planned for. they could get these things working again. Um, but in the course of that, you would have a global panic. You could have a global recession uh sparked by that sudden destruction of energy. I don't think the Iranians are going to go there. Um, >> literal scorched earth, right? You're blowing up these oil fields and they're burning. Yeah. >> Yes. I I don't think the Iranians will go there. And I don't think they'll go there because while this is existential for certain Iranian leaders, no ground forces going into Iran, no rebel forces about to take over the capital. I don't think that they'll do this. I think the more realistic scenario is that we see a price squeeze on energy as as the Iranians rattle markets over the next few days. Um, and I think we'll see some energy targets getting struck here and there to try to again increase that squeeze. Um, and I think we'll see gouging here in the US here and there. You know, as early as Monday or Tuesday, I believe is what some folks commenting online have said. You could start seeing gouging taking place. Um, but I don't think you'll see a Russia Ukraine style shock because that was Russia being taken off as a supply source pretty much permanently and and everybody understood that. Iran on the other hand can only do temporary interruptions for a certain amount of time and I don't think it has the incentive to want to do the scorched earth at the moment again. So that's the good news is I don't think it's a very good idea even after Kmeni's death. Um, but I do think we're going to move in the direction of seeing energy struck, energy squeezed, prices being pushed up, and gouging take place. And that's going to push up inflation, which has already got its own other factors feeding into it. It's going to slow down the economy. It's going to be part of a compounding issue of making it difficult for the economy globally to grow uh in 2026. >> Okay. So, so you see that as sort of their best bargaining chip here, which is as long as you continue beating us, America, we're going to really start threatening to make energy very costly. And if you push us too far, we're going to destroy all these oil fields. And yeah, maybe you can repair them over time, but the world's going to go through a lot of pain, and we're going to bet you don't want to go through that pain, >> right? And then the the uh amount of reconstruction that'd be necessary, the damage of the Gulf Arabs economies, all of that would be something that they'd be aiming to do. Of course, that's why they're attacking civilian targets is to damage Gulf Arab economies, to get them to call Washington, to get them to end the war. >> Okay. All right. Um, let's dream for a moment. What's the best case scenario here? The best case scenario um the best case scenario is is a version your your Iranian Gorbachoff is that from the reformist ranks of the Islamic Republic gain uh more credibility over the next few years because of not just this war but the Tan water crisis, you know, all of these other mismanagement things where they say the Islamic Republic as structured can't keep doing this. We can't be uh confrontational, open-ended uh towards uh the the West and towards Israel. um and that they start to drive policy slowly in the direction of reconciliation in Daytona. Um and that they may even push for some political reforms because after all, Iran does have elections. They're just very carefully structured and and and rigged so that only certain candidates can win. They could liberalize those and open those up. And then over the course of several years, you see Iran moving in the direction of a place like, you know, say uh uh Turkey, which kind of slowly moved away from its military authoritarianism and moved into a more democratic path. It's still not a perfect democracy by any stretch of the imagination, but it has a lot more of a of a a a democratic calculus in the way that it does things that imposes restraint. So, I think that's the best case scenario is that you have a slow reform path emerge out of Iran. um that that would allow for, you know, again, your Iranian Gorbachoff to start calling the shots eventually. >> Okay. Well, let's let's cross our fingers for that. Um Ryan, just dream with me here for a moment. Not saying this is going to happen, but let's just be crazy and dream of of this world where where what you just said, best case scenario, has has happened in Iran. And let's say that the um the rebuilding of Palestine, you know, with this new um council of peace or whatever, you know, is looking over it, that that all works and that the uh you know, the the the age-old Hatfield and McCoy, you know, relationship between Palestine and Israel substantially diminishes. and that without Iran's backing, Hezbollah and the Hoodis um and Hamas presumably, you know, they they disband and you know, they're they're left to to history and uh Venezuela eventually falls into the fold of of, you know, being much more USfriendly and into the the Monroe Doctrine 2.0. [snorts] Cuba eventually says, "Look, we're yeah, we're tired of being a basket case. US, can you start partnering with us more?" Um, they get a more friendly regime in there. And then presumably, hopefully at some point in time, there's going to be peace in Ukraine and uh relations between Russia and the West will hopefully start to normalize. That's not I don't know if it's probable, but it's not impossible. like how how how how materially better is that world? >> The trick with getting to that world is that we're moving into a space where there aren't any geopolitical norms except for the old norms of war and force and coercion and influence. So let's go with the Middle Eastern example. Let's assume that Iran becomes, you know, a comparatively normal actor. um the balance of power within the region still has to be established and Iran may be entering it as a as a more normal actor but as a weakened actor that leaves space to be filled by someone and that someone is going to be Turkey it's going to be Saudi Arabia it's going to be smaller more assertive powers like the Amiradis and and the Israelis and they will not get along with one another in spite of the fact that they are all nominally pro- uh pro-western and they're nominally pro- US and they're all nominally uh in favor of capitalism there is still only so much power in the world and so much influence in the world to go around and those scarce geopolitical resources will always inspire competition as a result. So you rearrange the deck of of of how competition plays out rather than solving and ending uh competition permanently. You know Europe is one of those few places where geopolitical competition looked like it had been solved through institutions like the European Union and then Brexit happened and people got kind of tired of the consensus and they moved away for for nationalist reasons. So you never really it I don't know how you get rid of that human condition of of the of the impulse for competition that certain politicians will always ascend because being in competition with an outsider gets them elected, keeps them in power, gets them wealth. I I don't know how we quite figure that out. But I do know that as you push down one rival or you create one sphere of influence, you're generally rearranging power in a way where somebody else has to take that over. You know, the US is not going to be is not the global police, right? Can't be everywhere all at once. And as it focuses on the Western Hemisphere, does that mean that Turkey gets to do its neotoman sphere of influence that it so desperately wants to do through the Arab world? Or is there a bunch of broken states that the Emiratis and the Israelis are trying to manipulate and turn into smaller states like them so they can compete more viably? Um, or does Iran find a way to get its house in order and start to rebuild its old sphere of influence, just less Islamist and less focused on the United States and more focused on its imperatives of reaching the Mediterranean and gaining access to global trade. Um, those are big questions that I don't know the answer to, but I I think that we won't see the end of geopolitical competition in our lifespan um unless we can really figure out what it is about people that drives us to compete over power and influence um as individuals. >> Okay. So, so you you you see much less chance of a new Pax, whatever you want to call it, uh uh whether it's Pax Americana 2.0 or Pax World, whatever, and you're seeing this as more just the Game of Thrones, which is you take the Targaryenss and their dragons down and another house rises and forces everybody else to venate. >> Yeah. Unfortunately, you know, even in your periods of, you know, the Pax Romana, there was still significant internal competition that led to big violence and things like that. Of course, we're seeing here in the US our own intense internal competition between different parties and factions. Um, so one way or another, it's going to express itself. It's going to be either internal or it'll be external or it's like right now we're it's both. Okay. [snorts] Um, so you are a geopolitical analyst, not so much a a economic or financial analyst, but I know those are inputs that go into your your uh uh calculations and observations. [clears throat] Um, what do you see as sort of implications of what's going on right now? So presumably we're going to see a higher oil price open tomorrow. Um presumably the price of oil will go higher if Iran does really start to try to put a choke hold on supply and and Katy bar the door if they start blowing up a whole bunch of other oil fields around the Gulf. Um any other potential implications that you think could affect global markets or specific commodities or any other just general investment themes coming out of all this? Yeah, I think it's going to be important because to look at the Gulf Arab economies in the aftermath of this because they are such a massive source of capital for a lot of investment. You know, a lot of AI in the United States and a lot of entertainment companies etc. Um whether or not they develop a a their appetite for external investment diminishes in the aftermath of this and they want to focus on fixing their own problems and the Emiratis have already announced that they're going to pay and bail out everybody who's trapped in the UAE. Uh, so anybody who's trapped as a traveler or as a tourist or whatever, they're going to cover their hotel bills and their flights, etc. That's one bill. I think that's probably not that big of one all things considered for the Emiratis, but it's one thing that they'll have to pay to restore. Um, so will that mean that all of a sudden their interest in say you know a company like OpenAI might diminish because now these sovereign wealth funds are going to be focused internally on not just reconstruction because the damage isn't all that significant from a physical standpoint but on rehabilitation on finding a way to redevelop their comparative advantage that has been lost through the course of this war uh on the fact that they were supposed to be safe countries. Every they were all always selling how safe it is to do business in our country. Now they have to change the incentives a bit and those could be very expensive changes because now companies might say well I do want to take part in vision 2030 but you might get an Iranian ballistic missile. I don't want to evacuate my people. So on and so forth. If that's the case what are you going to give me? And they might say lower corporate taxes. We might give you um you know cheaper visas. We might give you something that's going to cost us money but because we want you here long term we have to do that. And that'll diminish their appetite for um more external especially westernf facing investments. So that's really from an economic standpoint, that's what I would really look at beyond um the economy is how much of an of an economic setback is this for Gulf Arab states. What do they have to spend to try to fix that setback and improve it? Um and does it change their risk appetite for how they externally invest in the West? >> That's interesting. So, you know, Trump came back a couple of months ago from meeting um in the Gulf and said, "Hey, I've got these, you know, trade deals that have been agreed to and man, the Saudis are going to put a new trillion into America." What I hear you saying is is they might slow their role in that a little bit and say, "Hey, you know, we yeah, that's still our plan, but we got to really focus on rebuilding here and making sure that we don't lose, you know, the the commerce that we're trying to attract because of, you know, what you're doing in Iran. And so yeah, like don't bug me. You you sure maybe I'm still good for that money, but it's not coming anytime soon, >> right? I think priorities will be shifting and they will be getting a lot closer to Gulf Arabs homelands and and far less about trying to, you know, appease the United States. After all, the US has created a security uh situation that they very desperately wanted to avoid. So I don't think this would be retribution, of course. I think this would just be the way that they perceive where they can put their limited assets and and I think some of it will need to be shifted back home. U but we'll need to know you know what is the impact again if the if Iran does that very unlikely scorched earth scenario that would mean that I would expect that Saudi and Emirati and Qatari investors will be pretty scarce in the west while they try to recover from such a nightmare scenario. Uh on the other hand, if they're trying to rebuild their tourist sector, which could take a mu a huge hit right now, that could mean subsidizing hotels. It could mean subsidizing flights. It could be doing all kinds of other expensive and potentially open-ended subsidies uh to get people to come back to their countries. Um again, that that constrains your always limited capital. >> All right. Um well, look, Ryan, I'm looking at the time. Um, we've packed a lot into this hour and I know that you've got to hop from here and do this all over again with all the other organizations that are demanding your expertise on this very fluid and chaotic and unfolding situation. A huge thank you. Thanks to you for doing this. For folks that would like to follow you and your work between now and your next appearance on this channel because I'm pretty confident that this is not the end chapter here and so we're going to have you back on at some point. Um, I'm going to hope later than sooner only because I'm I'm hoping there's nothing drastic that happens anytime soon. But we'll find out. But where should folks go to follow you and your work? >> Um, I'm pretty My long form stuff is of course on the RAIN website. You know, the RAIN network where that's where our assessments are. And of course, we sell individual subscriptions where you can get more access to our our detailed analyses from the team. Um, but in addition to that, you know, I post on LinkedIn every there and again, every few days. Their algorithm is not always friendly. I'm more active on X these days because a lot of the best G Arab experts are on that. So, you can still follow me on X as well. Um, and those are those are the main places to find me. >> All right. Well, folks, if you do not follow Ryan yet, you definitely should go do that. Um, real quick, folks, just a couple quick asks before we wrap up. And Ryan, I've got one last question to ask you. Um, first, uh, please extend your thanks to Ryan for coming on and doing this, both in the live chat if you're watching this live or in the comments if you're watching the replay. But definitely hit that like button to show them as well as well as hit the subscribe button below as well as that little bell icon right next to it. Um, if you want to get some help in trying to figure out um, how to potentially position or readjust your portfolio based upon what's just been happening here, highly recommend you get that uh, you get help to do that from a good professional financial adviser. If you've got one who can counsel you on that, who understands all the macro issues that Ryan's been talking about, great. If not, feel free to talk to ones that one of the ones that thoughtful money endorses. To do that, uh, just go to thoughtfulmoney.com and I will try to bring up that URL here, but I'm not going to stress too much on it. Um, there we go. Um, and then, um, just a quick reminder too that if you haven't signed up for our conference yet, uh, our spring conference on Saturday, March 21st, do so right now after watching this video because there's less than a week left to lock in that lowest early bird price that we're offering. And I want to make sure that everybody gets it. Uh, and if you are a premium subscriber to our Substack, look in your email. I've sent you a link you can use to get an additional $50 off of that. that uh that was already going to be an incredibly timely conference, but now given what's going on uh with Iran, it's just even doubly more so. Um all right, Ryan, last conf last question for you. For, you know, folks that kind of woke up yesterday and and sort of, you know, felt that panic in their gut of, oh my god, did World War II just start? What would your party I mean, I I know we don't know with confidence exactly what's going to happen from here, but what would what would your just general gut counsel to those people be? U Russia and China don't have mutual defense treaties with Iran. They never have. Probably it looks like right now they never will. Um and and that's the key part. You know, our world wars started because of mutual defense treaties. Um there aren't any at play. You know, NATO is the is the big one to watch. This isn't a NATO war. This is a US war against the Iranians. Um so that's that that's a thing to be be be assured of. There aren't any secret agreements. Um there aren't very strong incentives for either sides to to escalate to that level. Um, the Iranians are a nice to have for the Russians and the Chinese for from their regional and and global goals. They're not a must-have. Uh, and they've never said as much either in spite of of a lot of news that I see out there about talking about bricks being the next NATO. Um, they're very incoherent and not very good at that kind of organization. So, that's the reassuring thing is that there is no reason for the big powers to come to Russ to Iran's rescue because they've never promised to. >> All right. Um, well, comforting. We'll all take comfort in that. Um, and Ryan, again, I just want to thank you again, not just for making the time here, but you do such a great job of uh, you know, providing, you know, I think the best insights as best as the world knows them right now, but you do so in such a um, unbiased, nonpartisan sort of just the facts. We're not calling good, we're calling we're not calling bad. We're just trying to follow what is and what the likeliest implications of that is. And it's very rare to find that in today's world. So, thank you so much. >> I appreciate that, Adam. >> All right. And uh Ryan, like I said, look forward to seeing you in the program again, but let's not make it too soon. Let's let's let's hope the world simmers down. And everybody else, >> thanks so much for watching.