They would hate that, but fair enough.

So maybe, I mean, there's a couple of other big themes that we can talk about and personalities who will be coming back again and again.

And then I want to get into sort of the situation on the ground in the Crusader States for the last half of this episode.

But in terms of themes, I think...

Another one that we will touch on, it won't be a huge focus this season, because the Byzantines are not a huge player in the Second Crusade, but they will become, for some observers, including Odo, I believe, they will become the reason why the Second Crusade fails.

Which just continues the deterioration in the crusader Byzantine relationship leading up to what I consider to be the quintessential crusade, the fourth crusade, when they go to Constantinople instead of to the Holy Land.

So there's that.

Yeah.

That's what they call

themselves.

That they are going to operate here as they're often portrayed in Western media as just purely an Iranian proxy or cut out, which they're not.

And they don't show any indication of acting that way.

So I'm still waiting to see how these two things are going to sort of interact with each other.

It certainly is a big deal from the standpoint of Saudi oil sales.

The pipeline, you know, is the most immediate concern.

It's getting wild and interesting.

It would seem that both sides are sort of, I don't know, escalating their way out of a stalemate or like expanding the aperture of targeting to previously sort of, I don't know, untouched areas of both countries.

Yeah.

So, I mean, I think there's a couple of things here for the Ukrainians.

It's expanding the aperture of the conflict in order to impress Trump, which seems to have worked.

But the Ukrainians have developed, you know, over the last few years, a pretty effective drone program, especially, you know, they're getting better at building longer drones.

Range drones or at least carrying out strikes inside Russia.

I mean, I hesitate to say that, you know, they've got drones now that are going, you know, to 2000 kilometers from the border or whatever to strike targets inside Russia, because it's always some possibility that I mean, we've we've seen them carry out like infiltration.

I mean, like it just this thing is just a slaughterhouse and it just never

Well, Derek certainly is, so I'll leave this one there.

The double D, D squared over here.

Yeah, I mean, this has happened a few times, this back and forth, like strike Iran, Iran strikes back.

Maybe they do it for two or three nights in a row, two I think is as far as it's gotten to date, but I suspect we're going to go longer this time.

This happened a few times since the MOU.

And it's based on, you want to get into the MOU, on the vagary, vague wording of the MOU, which is as vague as possible.

Because that's the way they got an agreement, was by making this something that both sides could read their own points into.

But what is your take? Are they paying something?

Yeah, if there is, I need to be found.

Yeah, this is...

Yeah, I mean, it's might makes right, I guess, would be the easiest distillation of it.

You know, people have... made a lot of hay out of some documents that they've released, some strategy documents that they've released that seem to suggest we're giving up on global primacy.

But I think that's overblown.

You know, I don't think that Trump has much interest in, let's say, defending Taiwan or, you know, standing up to as much interest vested in sort of You know, standing China up in the eastern in eastern Asia and the Pacific, as perhaps Biden did or past presidents.

But you don't spend one point five trillion dollars on the military unless you're aiming to be globally prime, prime, primary or have global privacy.

like one of the few things that we've ever done that has actually helped a lot of people yeah outside of this well

It's...

So, I mean, I...

This isn't the first time that they've done this kind of signaling like, oh, let's test a nuclear, potentially nuclear armed weapon just for the hell of it.

You know, they've done this kind of signaling to the West.

And, you know, I don't think they're actually...

No, I don't think nuclear...

But I do think what they threatened earlier this week, openly threatened to do earlier this week, I think is realistic, which is to start bombing the underground Ukrainian military bunkers in Kiev.

I think in the latest exchange, probably nobody was killed on either side just over the last 48 hours or whatever, but that's not necessarily encouraging, right?

[laughs] Derek, you wanna go first?

I think it's more that neoconservatism is, is still very prevalent within the Republican Party.

I mean, look at the two people who are probably gonna contest.

I mean, you know, anything can happen before 2028, but the two people who are probably gonna be at the top of the list to contest for the nomination in 2028 are Vance, who is, I guess, now the, the avatar of this Tucker Carlson, you know, like the true MAGA has not been tried wing of this movement.

But the best you can say i-in the context of the Iran war is that he's just, like, bobbing along in the stream [laughs] while everybody else kind of flows around him.

Like, he opposes this, but he's done absolutely nothing to stop it.

Oh, okay.

I don't know what you think about that, Derek.

Yeah, he-

...

he seems to, like, go to the Andrew Lloyd Webber, uh, library.

Um, yeah, so th- th- the Lebanon ceasefire was supposed to p- ha- have happened, um, at the same time that the US-Iran ceasefire happened.

I mean, I'm convinced of this now.

Like, Trump, you know, later insisted that, you know, there was no...

Like, Lebanon was not part of the deal, and, uh, this wasn't, you, you know, the Iranians...

Yeah.

... walk us, walk us through what's going on in Iran right now.

So yeah, I mean, uh, the, the, it, it comes back to the, the Iranian economy and the, to partly sanctions.

I mean, there are other factors that, that have weakened the Iranian economy: corruption, basic mismanagement.

Um, but, but sanctions are a huge part of the story, and they're a huge part of the story, not just in their direct effect, but in the fact that they create...

You know, by cutting Iran off from all the normal channels to access, you know, world, global capital or international capital or, uh, banking services or these other things, they create a lot of space for, uh, black market operators, corrupt operators to, to kind of fill in the gaps.

So they, they, it's a reinforcing.

They're kind of mutually reinforcing.

Like, uh, yeah, could you, could you give us some background about what's, what's happening there?

Yeah.

Um, yeah, I think you're right.

I mean, there i- there is a, a certain...

And I think a lot of this comes from Trump 'cause the people around him tend to be younger and, I, I suspect, um, know better but, but Trump drives a lot of the tariff stuff and the, you know, the really, uh, let's bring back the factories.

And, and, you know, certain, certain people around him like, you know, Howard Lutwick and, and, uh, the really old guard types, um, do have this vision of, like, America as y- you know, the industrial power of the world but it's, it's a, it's a fantasy and it's, it's not...

They're not even pursuing it in a serious way.

Like you, you can't just throw up 50% tariffs on India or, you know, 30% tariffs on China or even the 140% or whatever we were at with China, uh, before their deal and say, "Okay, magically now we're gonna start manufacturing y- you know, electronics or we're gonna start manufacturing, like, basic shit, uh, in the United States." It doesn't work that way.

Yeah.