Truth vs. NEW$ Inc, Part 2 (23 March 2025) with Don Grahn, Joachim Hagopian, and Brian Davidson
Don Grahn, Joachim Hagopian, and Brian Davidson analyze a potential petrodollar collapse as Gulf states pivot to the yuan amid escalating Iran-Israel tensions. They examine military setbacks like downed F-16s and the USS Ford fire, alongside John Mearsheimer's warning of soaring oil prices and food insecurity. The hosts critique Newt Gingrich's nuclear proposals for the Strait of Hormuz and debunk "Great Reset" conspiracy theories, ultimately concluding that fracturing alliances signal a definitive end to U.S. global dominance. [Automatically generated summary]
This is all that news out there in the world is so confusing and so aggravating.
Anyway, this is March the 23rd, 2026.
And second hour.
And Jim, I think we got, we had a pretty heavy first hour.
Can you top it with more stories?
You are so right.
Meanwhile, Iran's Hormuz Yen play, the direct hit on the Petro Dollar Asian Times reporting.
I mean, the upshot is Iran and the Gulf states are no longer going to trade in petrodollars and American dollars.
This is a catastrophe for the United States.
The Strait of Hormuz has long been treated as a narrow maritime choke point without sized strategic value.
But in moments of crisis, it becomes something more than a shipping lane.
It becomes leverage.
If recent reports are accurate that Iran is considering allowing limited tanker passage only of transactions or settling Chinese yen, then the issue at stake is no longer merely the movement of ships.
It's a future architecture of global energy finance.
The immediate context is military escalation and maritime insecurity.
The strait, through which roughly a fifth of the world's oil and gas trade normally passes, has become severely disrupted by the latest conflict involving Iran, the United States, and Israel, as we well know.
Meanwhile, Hal Turner reports the United States just lost the entire Middle East.
The U.S. dollar is done, but nobody's talking about it.
While everyone's watching the bombs fall in Iran, something far more dangerous just happened behind closed doors.
Reuters confirms Gulf states are now reassessing their security dependence on Washington and actually considering new regional security arrangements with Iran.
Let that sink in.
The countries America swore to protect are now planning to partner with a country America is currently bombing.
Gulf states realize the U.S. cannot protect their oil gas or sovereignty during wartime.
The cost of Gulf economies described as staggering.
Saudi Arabia's Gulf Research Center says the U.S. failed to secure a single guarantee for its allies.
They're now accelerating diversification of all security partnerships away from Washington.
The U.S. has had military bases in the Gulf since 1991.
35 years of protection gone.
America's entire Middle East strategy depended on Gulf cooperation.
If the Gulf pivots to Iran, Russia, and China, U.S. dollar dominance in oil is finished.
And once the dollar is no longer the means of buying and selling oil, the dollar itself is done.
The media is showing you missile strikes and aircraft carriers.
They're not showing you America's closest allies quietly walking out the back door.
Here's how this ends, step by step.
One, Gulf state sign bilateral security deals with China and Russia already in progress.
Two, Saudi Arabia starts accepting Yen for oil.
The petrodollar dies.
Three, U.S. military bases in Qatar, Bahrain, UAE get reviewed diplomatic language for eviction.
Four, Iran gets rehabilitated as a regional partner instead of an enemy.
Five, America loses its grip on the most energy-rich region on earth permanently.
You don't reassess security dependence on your protector when you feel safe.
You reassess when your protector just starts a war on your doorstep without asking you.
And you only talk to the enemy when you've already decided your protector is a bigger threat.
Trump wanted to project strength.
Instead, he proved that to every Gulf nation that America is an unreliable partner will torch the entire region for its own agenda.
The Gulf isn't diversifying.
They're building an exit plan.
And once that door opens, it cannot be closed.
Prepare accordingly.
Moscow's Betrayal in Tehran00:04:23
Meanwhile, IDF threatens elimination of Russian leaders.
The stupidity here is mind-bongling.
Israel's veiled threat to Moscow came just after Russian media warned traffic cameras in Moscow were vulnerable to the same exploits that Israel reportedly used to monitor Ayatollah Khamenei's residents before assassinating him.
Israeli military spokeswoman Anna Ukalova has drawn outrage in Moscow after threatening that Russian authorities who wish Israel ill could be subject to elimination while suggesting Israel could hack into Russian closed-circuit television cameras to identify and track targets.
Asked by a journalist with Russian radio broadcaster RBC whether Israel had access to Russian traffic cameras, Yukalova declined to answer directly but warned that Khomeini's elimination shows our capabilities are serious and that no one who wishes us harm will be left aside.
She added ominously, I hope Moscow does not wish Israel ill right now.
I'd like to believe that.
In response to a post by Russian philosopher Alexander Dugan, who wrote that the IDF spokesman threatened that Russian authorities will be killed if they take an anti-Israel position, Yukalova claimed Dugan was sweating fake news, but she declined to clarify how her remarks had been incorrectly interpreted.
Here's what Dugan wrote.
IDF spokeswoman Anna Yukalova threatens on Russian RBC radio Russian authorities to be killed if they take anti-Israel positions in the war.
She said that Israel controls all web cameras in Russia and could easily hit whomever it wants, including Putin.
Finally, Putin tells Tehran, Russia stands by Iran.
Russian President Vladimir Putin congratulated Iranian leaders.
And Nauruz said Moscow remains a loyal friend and reliable partner to Tehran, the Kremlin said on Saturday.
The extent of Moscow's support for RAND, though, is in dispute.
Some Iranian sources have said they have had little real help from Moscow in the biggest crisis for RAND since the U.S. hat back, Shah, was toppled in the 1979 revolution.
Putin sent congratulations to Rand's supreme leader, Ayatollah Motaba Khamenei, and Iranian president Massoud Pazinskian on the Iranian New Year.
The Kremlin said, Vladimir Putin wishes the Iranian people to overcome the harsh trials with dignity and stress that in this difficult time, Moscow remains a loyal friend and reliable partner of Tehran.
Russia says the U.S. and Israeli attacks on Iran have thrust the entire Middle East into the abyss and triggered a major global energy crisis.
Well, of Iranian Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamane, that his death was a cynical murder, he certainly got that right.
Joachim, your thoughts.
Well, we'll start with the Gulf states switching over basically to trading in Yuan instead of the U.S. petrodollar.
That kind of Iran would, I mean, Saudi Arabia had been moving in that direction probably for the last year or so.
Inevitable Shift to Eastern Power00:03:02
So it was inevitable.
The U.S. dollar, we've all known that the U.S. dollar eventually is going to be abandoned.
And, you know, the BRICS alliance has been working regularly on that for the last couple of years, actually.
But the developments now just speed up this process where the life of the petrodollar and U.S. dollar as the reserve currency of the world is pretty much almost done.
I mean, of course, you know, a lot of us have been saying that for a long time, too, but we've known it's going to happen.
I mean, it's inevitable.
And now, you know, it's just another marker along the way that strongly indicates that it's probably going to be over very soon, maybe even this year, which the implications, of course, are very grave because U.S. dollar will not be worth very much.
And also hyperinflation will kick in.
And yeah, and it's already looking bad, obviously, for the trade, the disruption in the global supply chain and all the internal economic and financial house of cards that we have in America and the West, particularly all of them.
It doesn't look good.
You know, I've been saying that the controllers, which is the money changers of London and their friends, the oligarchic friends, made the decision a long time ago.
This is back in the 70s when they made their decision, you know, Rockefeller and Kissinger and all of that, to ship the basically the manufacturing base of the world to China and away from the United States and the West and other third world countries.
Mexico picked up quite a bit too.
It's called slave labor for the oligarchs.
And so it's been a process for a long time.
And I also maintain that the power has been shifting, the hegemony power has been shifting now for also quite some time.
I would say over, I was writing articles on global research over 10 years ago talking about the power shift from moving from west to east.
So it's been a long time process, actually.
But we're seeing huge events happening that's indicating that the shift from the dollar and the ship from hegemonic power to from west to east, all of this is just accelerating at this point.
Weaponizing Global Surveillance00:09:48
And great changes for America, unfortunately, are probably going to happen very soon, sooner than later.
And then the other points, Putin telling Tehran, and then the threat by Israel.
Yeah.
You know, Israel wants to control the world.
They have a lot of the cyberspace.
They've done backdoor channels with many of the militaries of the world to be able to gain access to technological, military kind of secrets.
And, you know, they have definitely had advantages, you know, and basically they've become the replacement for Silicon Valley.
So, but for them to, you know, start threatening, you know, a lot of the people that are the citizens, as well as probably people in the government, in the Nesset there in Israel, they come from Russia.
They're Russians.
Their families have come from Russia, and there's been an exodus, steady exodus over the last quite a few decades from Russia to Israel.
But for them to come off like that, that we're going to come at you, decapitation, and we have our technological ways, you know.
You know, they use the pagers and every other electronic device for all of this kind of nefarious decapitation strategies.
Yeah, I mean, they are a belligerent of the world.
I'm going to say it.
Everybody knows it, and they're not very well liked by very many people now.
The people of the earth are sick and tired of Israel being able to get away with all their crimes against humanity, against children.
Obviously, they're not the only one.
I've written books on that.
There's a whole hierarchy of oligarchic power that is the overseers of the pedophilia scourge plaguing the earth.
So Israel's not alone in that, but they're certainly a major partner in it.
That's why they don't even have, they have laws where Like the head of cyberspace in Israel was in America on some kind of conference or something.
Then he was caught red-handed soliciting sex from children, minors.
And then they rushed him.
You know, Trump and company, along with Netanyahu, made arrangements.
So he immediately returned to safety in Israel.
That's what they do.
And they can't bring them back because they have orders against the law that can bring them to other countries to face justice.
That's just one another indication of that.
Israel is a big player in that end.
So I'm not going to stop criticizing Israel.
The youth and the younger generations of the entire world are on to Israel.
Even the young Jewish population are on to Israel.
They're not happy with how they are conducting their states of affairs and bringing obviously America right into the deep trouble that we're in.
America is on the verge of total collapse as far as the economy goes.
But that's been planned too.
You know, it's called the Great Reset that King Charles and Klaus Schwab, the World Economic Forum founder, have been working on for a long time.
The whole idea of World War III and the collapse of all the economy of the earth has been in the cards for a long, long time that they plan to depopulate and move towards one world government.
People will be so desperate, you know, with the supply chain, the closure of the close of the Ormus Strait, not only oil and gas, but also fertilizer plays a big part.
And if you don't have fertilizer, you don't have the crop yields that feed the world.
And that's also part of their strategy, too.
So there's a lot at stake right now on this earth about humans surviving what's coming.
So yeah, they want to depopulate and they want their one world government.
They've been wanting it a long time.
And I don't see, even though we might see little progress, like this war might not go to World War III Armageddon like the Freemasons had plotted over a century and a half ago.
I think that the powers that should never be, the satanic dark side that runs things, they still have their plan in place, unfortunately, and it's not good for humanity.
Brian, your thoughts?
Well, I was really interested in the article by Euclova about the IDF threatening to assassinate Russians who intend to do Israel harm.
And, you know, really what that story is about is the weaponization of surveillance infrastructure at a global level.
What Israel is saying is that they can hack into anything you've got.
And that's that's a very, very dangerous system.
I would say, yeah, well, the headline itself isn't the threat.
The system itself is.
Everybody is reacting to the threat, but they're missing the real story.
The threat isn't even Israel.
The threat really is that the entire world is already wired for assassination-level surveillance.
The cameras are no longer passive.
AI turns footage into intelligence, which then regurgitates it out to intelligence agents, and software turns populations into targets.
It's an urban warfare infrastructure that's already in place.
So, you know, what Israel is saying is that they use surveillance to track and eliminate a head of state.
And the software ecosystem structure that exists globally, not just in Russia or Israel.
And if it worked there, it can work anywhere.
So that ought to be a big reality check for us because these tools do exist.
And it's not hard to capture control of the environments that put the tools out there.
So we need to be very, very careful about this stuff.
And so it gets very, very serious when camera software does this object tracking like they do in China, and it has all the pattern recognition and facial recognition and movement reconstruction built into it.
Because you don't need to go out there and perform surveillance and watch somebody anymore.
You just use the system architecture to reconstruct their entire life from recorded footage.
So, you know, this is an incredibly dangerous line that we've crossed.
And I think it was seen coming prior to 9-11.
And that was one of the functions of the 9-11 consolidation of power and surveillance structure because that took it from beyond way beyond the links of privacy and way beyond security to the point where the TSA is patting people down at the airport for a lighter.
I mean, it's craziness how far they've gone, and they're doing everything they can to condition it, condition us to accept it as a way of life, sort of culturally assimilate us into this new structure.
But, you know, the enemy doesn't need spies if our own intelligence systems and camera infrastructure is the spy.
So that story really is a lot bigger than Russia and Israel because it's the same tech that's being used everywhere.
Every major city is already mapped and wired for this behavioral tracking.
And so, you know, we've been talking about Iran, but that's not so much a threat to our way of life as the infrastructure dependence that we have on foreign-built software, foreign-owned platforms, and foreign-controlled updates to the systems.
Fatal Alliances and US Greed00:04:58
So I could say this: if you don't build your own system, you don't control the system.
And the assassination implication of the story is so scary that it's actually, to me, it's a lot scarier than the idea of Israel dropping or Iran dropping a bomb on New York City or something like that.
This is much more powerful and much more insidious than anything like that.
Very, very interesting.
Very.
Meanwhile, Israeli pilots were killed instantly.
IRGC announced a downing of three Israeli F-16 fighter chats.
These are all reports about how Iran is doing in the war.
Succeeding against what everyone presumed was a more powerful enemy.
Let's check them out.
Well, my dear truth seekers, watching the current armed conflict in the Middle East, it became clear that Henry Kissinger was right when he said that to be an enemy of America can be dangerous, but to be a friend is fatal.
Indeed, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates are suffering the most as a result of Iran's retaliatory action against the U.S.-Israeli aggression.
All these Arab countries are not only allies of the United States, but also close friends of Washington.
At one time, these Gulf states believed the promises of the United States, that the presence of the U.S. military bases on their territory would ensure security in the region.
However, as time has shown, the United States needed these military bases to unleash and wage another large-scale war in the Middle East.
Washington is currently using the territory of the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Oman, Kuwait, and Bahrain to carry out attacks on Iran.
At the same time, the US authorities absolutely do not give a damn that these friends of the United States are suffering heavy losses, due to Iran's retaliatory actions.
However, the insidiousness of the US authorities does not end there.
As it turned out, Donald Trump, being not only the President of the United States, but also a businessman, decided to make extra money on the problems of his Arab allies.
So, a few hours ago, the Omani journalist Salem bin Hamad Al-Jahouri made a rather shocking statement.
In particular, speaking live on BBC Arabic, he bluntly stated that the Trump administration is currently putting a lot of pressure on U.S. allies, such as the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Oman, Kuwait, and Bahrain.
According to him, Donald Trump even issued an ultimatum to the authorities of these Arab countries.
The current occupant of the White House demands $5 trillion from these Arab countries in order for the United States to continue the war until complete victory over Iran.
At the same time, Donald Trump also made it clear that if the Gulf states pay him $2.5 trillion, he will immediately order the U.S. withdrawal from this war and the withdrawal of all American troops from the region.
According to an Omani journalist, this financial blackmail by Donald Trump has no analogues in the history of U.S. relations with Arab countries.
My dear truth seekers, it is worth noting that the White House has not yet officially confirmed the existence of such an ultimatum from the President of the United States.
However, knowing Donald Trump's passion for all kinds of deals and the desire to make big money, this statement by the Omani journalist may be the real truth.
Rather stunning, rather stunning stuff.
My God.
Meanwhile, Iran's fatal two strike, seven Israeli officers killed in one hit, seven in a single hit.
USS Ford Under Fire00:15:29
This again, because it's too hot, they've taken it down as before.
Footage confirms U.S. F-35 was taken up by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard air defense as an F-35.
The Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps published footage confirming the successful targeting of an F-35 fifth generation fighter using a ground-based air defense system, marking the first surface air kill against an aircraft of its generation to be confirmed.
It remains uncertain whether the F-35 was shot down or only seriously damaged, with U.S. sources claiming that it succeeded in making an emergency landing.
The footage was published just hours after the U.S. long-range, high-altitude, unmanned intelligence surveillance and reconnaissance aircraft, unofficially known as the RQ-180, was also forced to make an emergency landing near Iran, which fueled speculation that may also have been successfully targeted.
You can believe what Iran reports and nothing coming from the U.S. or Israel.
Meanwhile, the USS Ford, farewell to the Red Sea.
The mighty USS Ford is finally limping out of the fight, heading to Crete for repairs after the laundry fire scorched berths, injured sailors, and left morale in the toilet, literally.
Nine months at sea, clogged vacuum systems, forcing endless fires and overflows, a 30-hour blaze, turning sleeping quarters to ash.
And now the world's most expensive warship sails away with burnt bedding, smoke stench, and disgruntled crew sleeping on the floor on the deck.
Meanwhile, Trump declares ultimate victory over Iran, boasting that the regime is totally defeated and obliterated.
Yet America's crown jewel superior carrier retreats to Agruk Island for plumbing and fire fixes, while Iran keeps up barrages and chokes a straight of hormoose.
Fully operational, only if operational means fleeing to Crete while the enemy fights on an oil prices spike.
Peak 2026 readiness, defend democracy from a floating repair yard, while the commander-in-chief claims total triumph.
Due forward, you gave us endless memes, morale craters, and zero glory.
We are plumbing forever clogged in retirement.
Wow.
Joachim, your thoughts, my friend.
You know, when I still believe that there is going to be World War III, the powers that should never be are going to insist on it, I believe.
And the young people, pretty much all over the world, but I'm talking about Americans, young Americans do not want to die for the Greater Israel Project.
It's real clear now that they're going to have a, I mean, a lot of the Navy people, a lot of military are leaving the services.
They're going to have to resurrect the drought.
And, you know, the young people are not willing to die for any more, you know, never-ending wars, especially for Israel.
So they're going to have a lot of problems there.
And we've seen it illustrated by what's been going on with the USS Ford carrier.
You know, as far as Israeli pilots being shot down and the F-15s and F-35s, yeah, and then with the S-400 coming in, yeah, they're going to find more difficulty if this war continues.
Iran's going to have definitely more shootdowns coming.
And then, you know, regarding the Fatah II strike seven, yeah, I mean, they have the precision of being just as much as what Israel and the U.S. have now, as far as making precision strikes.
Iran has really improved just in the time that they've been at this war.
They have improved their ability to utilize basically the technologies borrowed from Russia and China, as well as their own, to be able to use precision strikes to their advantage.
And knocking out seven high-ranking Israeli officers in one kill shot, that's, you know, obviously does some pretty severe damage to the Israeli cause.
So, yeah, we're seeing the news in this week, we're seeing that, yeah, the Trump, erratic Trump, the unstable, mentally unstable guy, has really wreaked some havoc.
And we're seeing that the movement on the part of Russia and Iran to basically block every offense that Trump has mustered, we're seeing it all not going well.
And I believe that at least temporarily, I don't think World War III is averted yet, but at least temporarily, I think that the movement towards a larger war escalating, I think that it has been blocked by the events that we're seeing this week.
Thank God.
Brian.
Well, I think these stories are very important because what it's going to do is it's going to cause some very effective waves in the Middle East.
And they're probably asking themselves some pretty interesting questions right now.
Being the enemy of America, obviously, is very dangerous, but being its friend could be fatal.
The Gulf states are probably saying, are we being protected or are we being positioned?
And for the first time in decades, our allies are absorbing the cost of our military posture.
Wars were fought on their turf with our Infrastructure with very limited blowback on our allies.
And so if it's true that Iran's capability is what these articles are saying, then it's going to cause the Middle East to make some new decisions about who are our friends and who are our enemies.
Because I think that the trust factor is waning very, very quickly.
And so if it's our allies that are taking hits while we direct the war, how long are those allies going to be our allies and start rethinking their relationships?
And that could have a very big or even huge effect on the economics of it.
If those Gulf states feel like they're used and exposed and at risk, they may start to lean towards China and Russia and do what they can to reduce their dependence on the United States.
And that's how influence shifts.
It's a realignment.
So Donald Trump right now is acting like a bozo clown in many fashions.
And this is probably beginning to get embarrassing to what we consider to be our allies.
So I would expect that, you know, U.S. alliances are going to continue to become liabilities instead of assets.
And I think that's really what it means.
They're not going to want to be under our security umbrella if that means that they're going to be in the crosshairs of everybody else.
And so, you know, they're probably going to start rethinking how can America protect us as a position and start asking how do we protect ourselves from the consequences of America's wars?
Yeah, I'd like to add here something.
The Gulf states have realized, obviously, that America is not their protector, that America will do everything for Israel, but not the allies called the Gulf states.
And I believe that the Gulf states, I've been looking for their reaction to see if they are going to go to war against Iran for some of the damage done to their facilities, their infrastructure.
Not to mention the military outpost there in the Gulf states, but I'm talking about the internal structure of their oil facilities that have been damaged by Iran now.
And they have been very moot on that point.
They're not pressing it.
They're not going to war joining America against Iran.
That's not happening.
What's happening is they're aligning themselves with the regional power of Iran.
And they're not going to be in the corner as basically used up with all the billions in their oil.
They're not going to be used up by America and Israel any longer.
They know that they have not been defended and they're going to move towards Iran.
And as Brian just alluded to, move towards China and Russia more as an ally than the United States.
So once again, America is becoming a lone warrior out there, unsupported by more and more.
I mean, already there's big, big cracks in the NATO alliance.
America is not been the warrior, number one power of the world militarily.
They've been exposed very thoroughly.
And so, you know, we're seeing the consequences of that now every day.
Yeah, I think America is no longer either morally or economically, much less militarily the dominant figure in the world.
No longer.
We forfeited it all in just the space of a couple of weeks.
It's breathtaking how rapidly American power has been decimated by the actions of Donald Trump.
Just absolutely stunning.
Meanwhile, Mearsheimer rips Trump's epic fury rage war.
Check this out.
John Mearsheimer.
Watch what magnesium does to your screen.
Do I order it?
Do you peel?
Here's what I'm doing.
Here we go.
There we go.
Chicago, great friend of the show.
We're honored always to speak to him.
Thank you for your time.
My pleasure to be here.
So, Professor, we haven't been able to speak with you since the outbreak of the conflict.
We have been reading quite a bit scholars in this piece from Foreign Affairs.
Oh, we can hear it, but we can't see it.
Okay.
He says, how America's war on Iran backfired and Tehran set the terms for peace.
Wow.
General reaction, not only to the world where we are standing now, but how much way that the conflict will come to a close.
Okay, let me see what I can do.
Let me see what I can do.
Honey games.
Can you see anything now?
No.
Okay.
Now?
No.
No.
Here we go.
Okay.
We're okay.
All righty.
Here we go.
My pleasure to be here.
So, Professor, we haven't been able to speak with you since the outbreak of the conflict.
We have been reading quite a bit and looking at some realist scholars.
First, we've seen this piece from Foreign Affairs.
Let's put this up here on the screen.
Curious for your reaction.
He says, how America's war on Iran backfired and Tehran will now set the terms for peace.
Your general reaction, not only to the war as where we are standing now, but how, if any, way, that this actual conflict could come to a close.
I think that starting this war was a colossal mistake.
And it's hard to believe that President Trump did this, not simply because he had promised that he would not start any more wars and certainly not get us into a forever war.
But if you're going to go to war, this is the last war that you want to start.
And the reason is that the Iranians hold most of the cards.
If you think about where we are today and you think more importantly about further marching up the escalation ladder, Iran can do enormous damage to the international economy.
Chaos Over Oil Barrels00:13:45
And there's nothing much we can do to prevent that.
So we're in a precarious situation right now.
And I would argue we don't have an exit ramp, but as we move forward, things only get worse.
We've been talking a lot this morning on the Israeli and U.S. attacks on the South Pars gas field in Iran and then Iranian retaliation, both in Saudi and Kuwait and in Qatar.
What do you make of the significance of these developments and this escalation?
I think it's hugely significant.
And I think the fact that President Trump issued this post where he made it clear how angry he was at the Israelis for doing this is evidence of that.
Look, President Trump is doing everything he can to keep oil prices under $100 a barrel.
And that is not easy to do.
And I would note that he has taken sanctions off Russian oil and he has allowed Iran to sell its oil.
It's very important to understand that Iran is selling its oil on world markets.
Iran has been allowed to send oil through the Strait of Hormuz.
And the reason that Trump is allowing this is because he wants all the oil he could possibly get in the world oil markets.
And he's been quite successful, at least, at keeping the price of a barrel down under slightly less than $100.
Well, what happened yesterday when the Israelis hit this natural gas field in Iran, and then the Iranians retaliated first against Qatar, and now apparently they're attacking Saudi Arabian sites as well, is that the price of a barrel of oil is going up.
I saw it was up around $115 this morning.
This is disastrous for the United States and for the world economy.
And if things continue to escalate, which is a real possibility, the economic situation will only get worse.
So what happened yesterday really mattered.
And that, again, is why President Trump made it clear to the Israelis, don't ever do this again.
Professor, what do you think the best and worst case scenarios are at this point?
Start with the best.
The best case is that we work out some sort of negotiated settlement, but I don't see how you can do that.
The fact is that to get Iran to stop the war, you have to make major concessions to the Iranians.
And I find it hard to imagine the United States and Israel making the sort of concessions that are necessary to get Iran to stop.
So I see the war going on.
And the worst case scenario is that you continue to march up the escalation ladder, and the consequences for the international economy are devastating.
And, you know, we were just talking about oil, but it's not only oil.
One-third of the world's fertilizer comes through the Strait of Hormuz.
And it's quite clear that what's happening is that without fertilizer, farmers all around the world, including in the United States, are beginning to have major problems planting and harvesting food.
And what this means for the future is that the price of food is going to go up.
So not only is the price of gas going to go up and the price of oil going to go up, but the price of food is going to go up.
And this is going to create major league inflation, which is going to slow down growth and result in the deaths of many people all around the world.
So the potential for disaster here is just not to be underestimated.
Yeah.
In fact, there's potentially worldwide famines should this war continue.
Meanwhile, here's where Trump told Israel NATO not to do this again.
Hi, we're Charity Water.
If we lost you at Charity, we get it.
Two days ago, President Trump doubled down on his disagreement with the Israeli attack on Iran's South Pars oil field.
When asked if he had talked to Netanyahu about the attack, he said this.
I told him don't do that, and he's won't do that.
But on occasion, he'll do something.
And if I don't like it, then so we're not doing that anymore.
The President of the United States just told Israel no on camera at the White House.
And within 24 hours, he took on NATO with this post.
Without the USA, NATO is a paper tiger.
They didn't want to join the fight to stop a nuclear-powered Iran.
Cowards.
And we will remember.
Israel and NATO slapped down within 24 hours.
One for its military action, the other for its complete lack of it, but both in service to the same master.
Britain's great game strategy to keep the Middle East in perpetual turmoil, controlling the world economy through energy choke points.
Donald Trump is done playing that game.
But if you're trying to make sense of this by following the media, mainstream or otherwise, good luck.
Is the U.S. being run by Israel, as Joe Kent and Tucker Carlson claim?
Is the world economy in chaos?
Has Trump been caught flat-footed in the strait or by Iran or by our so-called allies?
Here's the real deal.
Donald Trump laid it all out last December in his national security strategy, and he is executing that policy with absolute precision.
I'm Susan Kokinda.
When the national security strategy dropped last December, I was one of the first to highlight its importance because I've spent decades studying how U.S. foreign policy was subverted by British imperial thinking.
So if you want to be on the leading edge of this revolution, please hit those like, share, and subscribe buttons so we can stay in touch and expand our reach.
Here's what I'm going to cover today.
First, what's driving Trump's break with Israel and NATO, and how the NSS explains every move he's making.
And second, how the new deal with Japan shows the world what comes next.
So let's go back to what Trump said about Israel and NATO this week.
Trump blasted Israel for bombing the South Pars gas field in Iran, which triggered Iranian retaliation against Gutter's LNG facility.
Here's what Trump said.
Israel, out of anger for what has taken place in the Mideast, has violently lashed out at a major facility known as the South Pars gas field in Iran.
No more attacks will be made by Israel pertaining to this extremely important and valuable South Pars field.
He then threatens Iran against further retaliation.
But he stresses, I do not want to authorize this level of violence and destruction because of the long-term implications that it will have on the future of Iran.
Both Israel and Iran in the same post.
On notice, stop attacking energy infrastructure.
That is not standard American presidential behavior.
That is a president whose interests don't align with either party in that conflict.
Then Axios spelled out what's really going on with this headline.
Trump aides foresee Iran endgame divide.
Israel doesn't hate chaos.
A White House official told Axios bluntly, Israel doesn't hate the chaos.
We do.
We want stability.
Netanyahu, not so much, especially in Iran.
That sums it up.
Chaos is the operating principle of the great game, and Trump just said it out loud, that his partner in this war has different objectives than he does.
The President, the Secretary of War, DNI Director Tulsi Gabbard have all made that clear.
And Trump has said it more bluntly and publicly than any American president since Eisenhower in the Suez crisis.
Now ask yourself, who benefits from disruption of oil supplies in the Middle East?
This has been the fulcrum of Britain's great game for more than a century.
Use a volatile Mideast and its vast oil supply as a point of economic blackmail.
Iran and the forces of regional chaos have been key assets in this game, and so has Israel, certainly under Netanyahu.
Now, that brings us to NATO.
Trump called out their foot dragging on the Strait of Hormuz, and he called it exactly what it is: cowardice.
NATO and its overlords in London are perfectly happy to keep wars going in Ukraine and rattle sabers at Russia and China, but won't lift a finger to keep open the shipping lanes their own economies depend on.
The mask is off.
NATO is the enforcement arm for perpetual conflict, not collective defense.
And the same goes for London itself, whose insurance companies triggered the initial shutdown through financial mechanisms, not military ones.
Seven emails from London-based insurance clubs and tanker traffic dropped to zero.
Now, if you're beginning to get a deeper understanding of the strategic landscape, that what Trump is doing is dismantling a system that goes back generations, then you need to subscribe to Promethean Action's free newsletter.
We cover this fight from the standpoint of the real historical battle, the one between sovereign nations and imperial systems.
Well, we'll see how that plays out.
Meanwhile.
NATO docked.
Trump's precision strike ends with the forever warrium, consistent with what we were just hearing.
When I started my record label, the business side of things, taxes, finance.
Do you remember what Trump did at the State of the Union?
He walked Democrats right into a trap, and they didn't even see it coming until it was too late.
If you agree with this statement, then stand up and show your support.
The first duty of the American government is to protect American citizens, not illegal aliens.
Now he's doing the same thing with the modern British financial empire and their enforcement arm, namely NATO.
But I was surprised to see that NATO, while they agreed that it was a very important thing to do, they agree fully.
Nobody said, oh, you shouldn't do it.
I think NATO's making a very foolish mistake.
And I've long said that, you know, I wonder whether or not NATO would ever be there for us.
So this was a great test because we don't need them, but they should have been there.
Notice how he calls this a great test.
He followed up on True Social, concluding he wasn't surprised by NATO's refusal to defend ships in the Strait of Hormuz, since we spent billions defending them with absolutely no return to us.
The media is telling you that Trump is throwing a tantrum because our European allies won't help protect the Strait, that he's mad about oil prices.
They're all wrong.
President Trump has been preparing to leave NATO for months.
The Allies' refusal to back him on Iran didn't cause his break with NATO.
It confirmed his idea about their stupid games.
I'm Barbara Boyd.
I've spent decades tracking the British financial empire's imperial wars in the Middle East and NATO's role as their enforcement arm across all of Eurasia.
Today I'm going to first cover Trump dumping.
Okay, we'll see how this plays.
What if we actually nuked our way through the Hormuz Strait?
This comes from Newt Gingrich.
Very, very strange.
Newt Gingrich thinks we need extreme measures to reopen the Persian Gulf.
It's safe to say the era of frictionless global trade is over responsible statecraft.
On March 14th, Newt Gingrich, former Speaker of the House and Foundational Republic and thought leader of American neoliberalism, suggests unclogging the Strait of Ormud by bombing parts of friendly territory, presumably the UAE and Oman with nukes.
He did this by uncritically sharing a ship post on X. We're less than a month into the war in Iran, but I think it's safe to say that the year of frictionless global trade, the foundation of international rules-based order, is over.
For decades, the bedrock assumption of the global economy has been that the U.S. Navy will keep shipping lanes open.
But Iran has turned out to be adept at asymmetrical warfare, signing bilateral agreements with some non-allied countries to negotiate safe passage.
Those would include India, Pakistan, Russia, and China, while allowing non-dollarized oil to pass through the strait.
Within weeks, we could see European and Asian perception shift from Iranian blockade to American blockade.
Europe Realigns Against Empire00:11:09
If that happens, it would invert the value proposition of the U.S. security umbrella worldwide.
Understood in this slide, the proposal to carve a new Panama Canal through the Omani Desert using nuclear weapons is a rational, if outlandish, and impractical one for an empire in retreat that's weighing its options.
It would be American Capital's final desperate move, a world-changing attempt at rerouting geography to create new flow for capital while simultaneously demonstrating America's raw military power.
It's not going to happen.
And I think the theorizing about, you know, setting the European Empire to the side, as it were, has been superseded by events because we are losing this war on every front.
Joachim, your thoughts.
I read all this as the fall of the Western Empire civilization.
I think that the controllers of this earth, through the money and power, have been planning this for a long time in order to depopulate the earth.
They are getting rid of the West.
The West has the largest middle classes, or at least did.
But those middle classes have been shrinking rapidly as time goes on.
And so if you bring the Western civilization down and you don't have any more middle classes left, then they become much more manageable.
Not to mention the depopulation component to this whole agenda as well.
So you crash the economies and bring World War III.
And I think we're still on course, even though we've seen events this week through Iran and allies of Iran slow down the process of the insane guy in the White House for starting World War III.
I think it's just a temporary stopgap to World War III, because I still think the controllers of the earth have that up their sleeve and they're not going to give it up.
So, and as far as the breakup between NATO and America and, you know, all of that, I think that that's all part of the process as well as weakening the West.
So, yeah.
Brian.
Well, that responsible statecraft issue is one of the best stories I've seen yet.
Really, it's asking the question, what can happen when the U.S. no longer guarantees global trade.
So, you know, if the Straits of Hormuz is breaking the global system, Iran can disrupt it really bad.
And if the U.S. doesn't fully control it anymore, that really does become the story.
The world that we lived in since World War II with cheap shipping and stable oil and predictable trade is ending.
And so if 38% of global oil flows through Hormuz, then it's very narrow, it's very vulnerable, and it cannot be replaced easily.
What you have to remember here is that globalization isn't just a network.
It's a series of choke points.
And Hormuz is like the jugular vein of it.
And that's a nightmare for America because for 50 years, our Navy is guaranteed global trade.
And that has been under the foundation of dollar dominance and all of our alliances and all sorts of global influence.
So the U.S. security guarantee to the rest of the world is no longer an absolute.
The whole perception of this thing could shift from is it an Iranian blockade or an American blockade?
And it would turn to, you know, where the world thinks that America is becoming a problem instead of the protector.
And at that point, the whole system flips.
So, you know, does that mean that our empire chooses to panic?
I don't know.
That could be real consequence.
And if the world splits into blocks at this point in time, then the U.S. is going to have a Western hemisphere focus and Fortress America mindset.
China is going to press into Africa because that's easy.
Russia is going to have a lot of energy leverage.
And Europe is going to have an energy crisis and they're going to have to get militarized.
So I don't think we're heading back to global order, although a lot of indicators show that that's the direction that they've been pushing for.
I think that if we lose our cool here, we could be heading back to spheres of influence rather than we are the dominant influence.
And that makes Russia and China the big winners.
And the big losers become Europe and the global trade system and United States credibility.
It's uncomfortable, but it's very real.
My assessment is very similar.
The petrodollar is dead.
The Gulf Coast countries are going to seek security alliances with Iran and indirectly with China and with Russia.
Europe is going to recognize there's no point in depending on Middle East oil.
They're going to reconsider the relations with Russia, that cheap gas represented by Nordstream.
They're going to resurrect it.
NATO, all but useless, is going to be abandoned.
The support for the Ukraine war is going to end.
America is going to atrophy as an empire.
The loss of the petrodollar is going to make the value of the dollar dramatically diminished.
The quality of life in America is going to be reduced.
And indeed, Russia, China, and Iran are going to be the big winners.
The U.S. and Israel, which will be all but decimated by the time this is over, the big losers.
And Europe is going to be realigned.
But the American empire has come to an end dramatically in just a space of a few weeks.
And while I will invite Joaquin's rebuttal, I believe this is going to be over in a week to 10 days that it's unsustainable.
The world cannot endure.
And Trump has finally got the message.
He bit off more than he can chew, and getting out is preferable to staying in.
Joaquin, your further thoughts?
Well, I think World War III may be averted in this moment, delayed, but I believe that the planetary controllers are bent on having a World War III depopulation occur.
So I know that it's not going to be hunky-dory where the world decides on peace just because this verge of World War III might be averted.
So, yeah, the bigger picture is the globalization, the control, the central mechanization of the control grid through the cyber world and all of that.
That goes off.
And then, you know, the Western civilization is falling.
I don't believe that Trump is over.
He is just bent on conflict with everyone.
There's nobody that he's actually supporting other than his stay from prison for being a pedophile.
Brian, your final thoughts.
Yeah, I'm going to lean towards America loses its global dominance position as a result of this play more than I'm going to lean towards the position that this is going to force America to continue to assemble and convert the new world order.
I think that we are going to see food prices rise, as Bersheimer said.
I think that we're going to continue to see rapid inflation.
I don't think Trump's going to solve our problem.
He did it temporarily.
But this play Was to preserve America's hegemony, and I just don't think it can preserve it anymore.
I don't think we have enough credibility to pull it off.
Gentlemen, excellent, excellent discussion this evening.
Don, take us out.
Excellent discussion is really taking us out.
Boy, oh boy, what a way to end the show.
I mean, this is so heavy.
I mean, we've never been here before.
And hopefully, we can get past this point and have something positive for the show next week.
But you've got to get this show up, pass it along to every website and every place you can because this is a goose you ain't going to get nowhere else that you need to know and prepare for the worst.
Yeah, I hope not.
Okay, well, God bless, and we'll see you later here next week.