Jared and Nick Osmond reflect on personal milestones before dissecting stalled US-Iran peace talks, where Washington urges Chinese mediation amid escalating Strait of Hormuz violence. They highlight Saudi Arabia's refusal to host US assets due to OPEC losses and infrastructure damage, contrasting this with Iran's short-term economic resilience against global capital panic. Ultimately, the hosts warn that without decisive action by June 1st, deteriorating conditions will accelerate China's expanding influence as the US retreats from its Middle Eastern footprint. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: CohereLabs/cohere-transcribe-03-2026, WAV2VEC2_ASR_BASE_960H, sat-12l-sm, script v26.04.01, and large-v3-turbo
Time
Text
Extreme Measures by June 1st00:09:09
Oh, yeah.
Hey, everybody.
Welcome to the Weekender Edition of the McCraig podcast.
You know, here's the thing you can let all the doom and gloom roll off your back like so much rain.
The rumors are true.
The boys, the boys are back in town.
Nick Osmond's here with me.
How are you doing, bud?
You know, what is time?
Because it didn't even feel like we were gone.
We were apart.
I know this.
I got to say, I don't know how it's going for you.
This year is speeding, but the last month has like broken.
Sonic barriers with how fast it's gone.
This week itself has moved.
Just it's uncomfortable how fast it's been.
Jared, I will be gone this weekend after we record this to my daughter's college graduation ceremony.
Your college graduating daughter.
Yeah.
Going out into the world as an adult.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, it's exciting.
Listen, I was talking to one of our friends who graduated last year who has got a nice job at one of the Nike advertising firms in Portland.
I'm like, this sounds amazing.
Glad to hear you got a job.
Yeah, yeah.
He goes, Yeah, I'm one of the only 13 of my friends who actually have a job right now.
I was actually talking, it's funny you bring this up.
I was actually talking about your daughter graduating from college today.
Yeah.
And I was thinking about how I graduated from grad school in August of 2008.
Wow.
So, like a month before the bottom fell out.
And I was like, it's a tough time to graduate from college right now, but cheers to her.
I mean, Godspeed.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, I think every generation has this version of it, right?
Everybody's always thinking that their generation's got the worst of it and this and that.
And so, you know, just put your head down and come up with a solution.
It's the cycle of life, everybody.
That's right.
We're talking about the absolute scraps and disasters of capitalism.
And what a way to kick it off.
A reminder if you're listening to the preview, and I know that you are, I know that you are, I know that you are.
The numbers add up.
Everybody who listens to the main show on Tuesdays, Nick, they're listening to the preview of the Weekender.
And listen, I know that the preview is great.
All the stuff we do is fucking great.
Head on over to patreon.com slash muckrake podcast, become a patron, listen to the weekender, come out to live shows, stuff like that.
Like just do it.
Jump in, do it.
Oh, boy.
We need the Shia LaBeouf.
Do it.
Do it.
All right, everybody.
Patreon.com slash muckrake podcast.
Nick, we got a humdinger of a show.
That's what I'm going to call it.
We got to start out.
I've never heard this before.
The US and Iran are, according to the United States government, incredibly close on a one page deal to end the war.
Meanwhile, Iran is like, I guess we'll look at it.
I don't know.
Meanwhile, we are begging China hat in hand to try and convince Iran to take the deal.
Oh, by the way, I think I had that one.
Also, at the exact same time, we had a day while you were gone.
I covered it on the episode on Tuesday.
Things were getting fucking wild in the Strait of Hormuz.
There were things going every which way, boats being sunk, missiles being lobbed at the UAE.
Guess what?
Saudi Arabia was like, hey, do you guys want to cut that out for a second?
This is a mess.
We'll get to the economic fallout once we're done talking about the actual war.
But, Nick, it feels like I'm freaking stuck in Groundhog Day at this point.
It's the same bullshit over and over and over again.
Well, I don't know.
I like the fact that Saudi Arabia stood up to the United States and said, uh uh, you're not landing any of your ships on our or your planes on our bases anymore.
That seems different.
Well, I will say it serves the Saudis right, not just because they're authoritarian murdering fucks, but also the fact that they played a pretty big role in starting this war and they have thus had their entire infrastructure and control over OPEC ripped away from them.
So I'm glad somebody stepped in because that was already a mess waiting to happen.
So I'm glad that the globe-striding, bestriding empire hegemony, the United States of America, again got bossed around by one of its proxies.
So that's always good.
Yeah, and it's funny because it was a slight.
They were slighted, Jared, by the United States.
Go figure, Trump slighted them because he announced Operation Freedom without consulting with anybody, which, check my notes.
Yeah, that's probably not a good idea, you know, if you're in the area and you want to, you know, figure out a plan to get yourself out of all this.
So, you know, and by the way, now that the potential for more violence is out there, I'm sure Saudi Arabia is really concerned about U.S. interests, for sure, which is why they don't want to be any part of it, but certainly they don't want to get astray.
Missile fired at them either, right?
And as we've seen the reporting, clearly the Iranian damage that was done across the region was severe enough that they tried to bury it, right?
The United States is not letting even satellite imagery come out of there.
That I won't play, you know, clearly Saudi Arabia is really worried about what Iran can continue to do to them.
Oh, absolutely.
And I mean, add to that the fact that basically every U.S. base in the Middle East has been eradicated from the map.
And the only thing that we're able to do at this point.
is hang out on aircraft carriers and hope that maybe a drone doesn't show up at some point.
Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia is already suffering incredible consequences, which I would say good.
They need to try and rebuild their infrastructure that Iran absolutely destroyed.
Meanwhile, they've got the UAE over here, and they're hoping that this economic conflict doesn't lead to some sort of regional neighbor war with them.
I mean, it's, I'm going to say something, Nick, and this is going to be controversial.
So I want everybody to just hold on to something.
I just want them, if you're driving, Pull over.
Just please.
I don't want any accidents to happen.
Nick, I kind of think this war was a bad idea.
Oh, boy.
I almost fell off my chair.
It's too much.
I know.
I know.
Listen, I'm a provocateur.
I'm a shock jock political radio guy.
I get it.
I think it might have been a bad idea.
It might have been.
And in fact, we heard Rubio talking about it lie.
He didn't know the microphone was on when he said, We just want to go back to the way it was.
That's what he basically said.
I was kind of talking about the Strait of Hormuz, but I think they're talking about everything.
We just want to pretend it didn't happen.
We'll go back to where we were.
We got to fire off some missiles, got some hard ons.
It's great.
And we can move on.
But, oh my goodness.
Let me ask you this, Jerry, because we did mention this a few weeks ago when UAE started having their issues.
But is this capitalism that countries that seem as wealthy as they are and flout it as much as they do go under within a few weeks of hardship?
A little bit.
You know, it's like Saudi Arabia, in my mind, has so much money that they could handle a year worth of problematic oil prices, right?
But it doesn't sound like that, right?
It sounds like they start to panic after a few weeks.
And that just tells you everything you need to know about capitalism, doesn't it?
It does.
And the fact that it has always been this facade that's one of the things we've sort of discussed is how brittle this entire system always was.
And by the way, people who learn from things, and I, God, we got to talk about Hannah virus here in a second.
Like, People during the coronavirus pandemic, they should have looked at that and learned and said, oh, wow, it is so easy for this shit to fall apart.
And when it comes to, I mean, the Saudis, Nick, the Saudis were throwing trillions of dollars everywhere, doing everything, and it's all fallen apart at this point.
And for people who aren't aware, and I don't know if you've seen it, I know you've been busy.
Like, I don't know if you saw it, but intelligence reports show that Iran isn't even going to suffer like real economic problems from this situation for possibly another three or four months.
Meanwhile, the United States of America.
Every analyst who has taken a look at this says zero hour is June 1st.
If we don't get this thing taken care of and take extreme measures by June 1st, the economic problems we're already suffering, which are going to get worse and worse and worse anyway, even if while we're taping this, there is a peace deal reached, it's still going to get worse and worse and worse.
Iran is in the catbird seat, period.
And going back to the China thing, this is what I kept saying.
The only thing the United States of America could do. is beg China to step in as an intermediary and basically expand its global power and leadership and leverage.
So Iran has no reason to do any of this, nothing.
And matter of fact, they're talking about taking off sanctions or unfreezing accounts.
Nick, the money that Iran is going to make from keeping the Strait of Hormuz closed, you want to talk about capitalism, that's not hard math to do.
Iran in the Catbird Seat00:00:27
One side of that ledger is bigger than the other.
You've been listening to a free preview of this week's Patreon episode.
In order to unlock the full thing, head over to patreon.com slash muckrakepodcast, where you'll gain access to the full pod, frequent live shows, and the Muckrake Discord server, where our incredible community interacts on a daily basis.
Your support helps us keep the show going and editorially independent, and Lord knows we need to support each other now more than ever.