Patrick Ben-David analyzes Iran's recent missile barrage as a strategic error driven by domestic misery rather than military gain, noting minimal damage despite hundreds of projectiles. He critiques Zelensky's fundraising as exploiting American naivety while defending Israel as a vital ally and dismissing Putin's threat to Poland if Trump returns, citing mutual respect between "alphas." Ben-David argues the US must prioritize its own interests like debt and borders over pushing Ukraine into NATO, warning such moves could instigate World War III. Ultimately, he urges America to act as a grandmaster, balancing self-interest with selective support for loyal partners to maintain global stability. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Iran's Strategic Show of Strength00:05:57
Iran's tentacles are everywhere.
That it's all part of a concerted effort to drag America into potentially a much wider conflict.
Do you buy into that?
I think it was just a show for them to look stronger from their own people.
Do you feel like it could be a tipping point for the Iranian regime?
Iran doesn't have a dome.
I don't know if Iran is showing strategy.
Whose side is the military on?
Why do that at a moment when your enemy is actually getting more and more isolated?
I don't know if you saw what Zelensky did about four weeks ago.
He fears Trump's going to get elected.
You're putting Putin in the category of a Hitler.
Putin's not going to do shit to Poland if Trump's the president.
Strength is one way to elite and when America's strong, fortunately, the world is at peace.
When America is not strong like we are today, the world is not at peace.
Well, I'm joined now by the Value Tainment founder, podcaster, commentator Patrick Better.
David, Patrick, great to see you.
And I thought about you in the last few days.
The moment that Iran launched this barrage of missiles into Israel, unprecedented.
They've never done something like that before.
You obviously have your Iranian heritage.
What do you make of this?
You know, first of all, it's great to be back on with you.
But when I see the videos, I have a few different feelings.
One, when I see the lights, it reminds me of what it was like when I lived in Iran during that 10, 11-year period from 1978 to 1989 when we left.
And that was the thick of things.
When I lived in Iran and, you know, Iraq, Saddam Hussein, they're fighting.
So I can only imagine the kids what they're going through, the fears, the lights, it messes with you a little bit.
Having said that, the question I ask myself is, did Iran actually think that they were going to cause any kind of damage?
Because they know the dome was going to defend it.
It's not like they knew it was going to go through some numbers that went through, wasn't even a big number that was able to make it through.
We've seen the numbers.
You've seen it.
170 drones, 30 missiles, 120 ballistic missiles, not really any much of damage, around $1.2 billion of damage to protect it.
So was it more of a similar reaction they had with Qassam Soleimani when Trump took him out to say, we attacked you and we got back to you to look good in front of the Iranian folks?
But I don't know.
I don't think they thought they were going to make any kind of an attack.
I think it was just a show for them to look stronger from their own people.
I wasn't impressed by it.
How malevolent is this Iranian regime?
I mean, if you speak to a lot of people now, they think that Israel's tend to with the Houthis in Yemen, they're with Hezbollah in Lebanon and so on.
That it's all part of a concerted effort, not just to take down Israel, but also to drag America into potentially a much wider conflict.
Do you buy into that?
So then we have to ask the question, who do you believe is a better chess player?
Is it Iran?
Is it Israel?
Is it US?
Is it Russia?
Is it China?
Who's the one behind Iran?
Who's Iran calling saying, what do you think?
Should we do this?
Did they call China?
Did they call Russia?
Who are they talking to?
Are they talking to Erdogan?
Erdogan said it's time to send Netanyahu in hell.
I mean, there's a lot of different things that's going on that you got to know who's talking to.
But for me, if Iran was doing this to show strength, okay, but now you gave the green light for Netanyahu to light you up at whatever levels they can.
And by the way, let's just say Israel says, this is Netanyahu.
He does a press conference.
Hey, guess what?
We're going to match exactly what you sent our way.
If you send 170 drones, we're sending 170 back your way.
You send 120 ballistic missiles, we're sending that back your way.
You send 30 missiles, we're sending that back your way.
And let's see what kind of damage it does.
Iran doesn't have a dome, so what's going to happen to them?
So do they want that to get the attack to come back to be at a larger scale?
Nobody knows.
You have to think about this from the mindset of a strategist and what the real motive is.
I don't know if Iran has shown strategy.
I understand motive, seeing strong, showing strength in front of your guys, in front of your people, but I just don't see the strategy behind it.
I think right now Net Niao and his camp can sit there and say, we have green light to do whatever we want to do.
They just made it easy for us.
I mean, it's interesting to me because I have watched this and think that what Iran did was a massive strategic error because right at the moment that their enemy Israel was really on the ropes, I would say, in terms of global public opinion over the execution of the war against Hamas and all the civilian casualties that have been occurring in Gaza, right when Israel's getting very, very unpopular on the global stage, Iran do something that then brings people back into the Israel fold.
And I was very struck by the fact that the Saudis were straight in to help them, that Jordan was straight in to help them.
The UK, France, America, obviously.
There was a sudden coalition, a rush to support Israel over something which everyone could see for what it was, which was an unprecedented and horrific attempt to attack them.
You know, it struck me as just bad strategy, bad politics.
Why do that at a moment when your enemy is actually getting more and more isolated?
You asked the right question.
And for me, I go back to being the paranoid skeptical strategist, thinking who's calling them, who's in their ears to do the attack, what for, what is the motive, because Hamas on the other end is not willing to negotiate with Netanyahu and release the hostages.
So, okay, you got all these proxies that you have that's doing pretty much you're the biggest importer of terrorism.
Iran, everybody knows that.
You're number one.
Your misery index in Iran is 61%.
The Misery Index Explained00:15:12
It's double what it was six years ago.
It's not like your people are happy.
For people that don't know what the misery index is, it's unemployment and inflation combined.
Unemployment is over 10%.
Inflation is 43%.
The Western Lorestan province, the misery index is 69.5% because of water shortage that they have.
And then on the corruption index, Iran keeps going higher.
I think they're ranked 148 or 149 out of 180.
The global average is 43.
Their score is 24.
Even the Middle East average is 33, 34.
Africa's average is 32.
They're the lowest under Northern Africa or Middle East.
So Iran is not really, they don't have the best argument right now around the world.
They have to be concerned about what could happen right now with their country.
They're very unhappy living in Iran.
6,500 doctors left Iran in 2022.
Business owners, educated young men who go to school and learn about what's really going on with Iran, they're leaving in the droves.
They're not staying there.
Iran's not making babies like they did before.
There are so many different indexes that we can look at on what Iran's going through.
They have to really be making a better argument for their own people.
Because the more unhappy their people are going to be, revolutions around the corner.
For them to think that is not a possibility, it just tells me they're very arrogant.
Well, it's very interesting you say that.
I spoke from the Crown Prince yesterday, and he was saying that he believes the regime has reached the point of proper accountability.
I mean, do you feel like it could be a tipping point for the Iranian regime?
Not under Biden.
It will not happen under Biden because to make it work and succeed, you need somebody that's going to be driving sanctions and not taking their feet off the pedal when you're putting that kind of sanctions.
The pain of sanctions sometimes takes 3, 6, 12, 24, 36 months.
You needed two terms to be able to pull it off.
If Trump was going to be back-to-back, let's just say if Trump would have been from 2016 to 2024, he would have had the eighth year.
Iran would have gone through their revolution probably in 2021, 2022, but now it's going to be restarted.
Let's just say President Trump wins.
Hypothetically, if he wins and he starts it all over again, he would need the help of a replacement that comes in that stays for eight years to keep the metal going, pedal to the metal going.
But it just won't happen during the current regime we have in America today.
I mean, you obviously speak to a lot of Iranian people, I imagine.
What is the feeling of the regular Iranian about what has been happening about Iran, about the regime?
Yeah, I mean, if you look at stats, 80% of them are not happy with the IRGC.
80% of them want it to be a democracy, you know, what it may be, maybe not a monarchy, but they want it to be back to a democracy where they're free, they can do what they can do.
I can go back and visit Iran.
You can go to Iran and feel comfortable knowing you're going to be safe.
They wanted to go back to that.
They're not happy about what's taking place in Iran right now.
Iran has a rich heritage, rich history.
They've been Iran for a long time.
Unfortunately, ever since what happened since Khomeini took over in 1979, since 1979 till today, 45 years, it's been a mess.
It's been ugly.
It's been nasty.
They have had a 10% unemployment rate since 1995.
And they're now finally at a point right now when you think about this.
The biggest question you have to ask yourself strategically is, I only have one question.
I just recently watched this movie, Civil War.
I don't know if you had a chance to watch it.
I just heard about this.
I want to see this movie, yeah.
I think you need to watch it, but it's not that great of a movie.
But the way they paint the picture in the movie, we're Reuters, press, we're the good people, the military is owned by the right, and it's a, you know, they're racist.
So the way they paint the picture, you'll feel who has written this movie.
But there's a part of it that makes a very important point.
Whose side is the military on?
Can the current Iranian regime keep the military on their side?
Behind closed doors, who are they supporting?
Who do they fear?
Is the military more for the people or is the military controlled by the folks of Khomeini and who they have?
That's the one thing, because if the military behind closed doors, obviously we speak to a lot of different people in Iran and Middle East that we're having conversations with.
If a couple of these military leaders are able to somehow, some way gather more influence and unity and wanting to do something about it and one of them comes about as a leader, as a voice, now you got something going on there.
But before Iran experiences next revolution, it's going to be very nasty.
And most parents who have kids, no matter how much they want a revolution to take place, they want their kids being alive way more than they want the revolution.
So no parent's going to be like, yeah, son, go out there and risk your life because revolution is more important than you being alive.
Parents are going to say, honey, stay home.
Don't worry about it.
We'll make you work.
So you need the youth.
You need the help of the military.
You need the help of another country, specifically a country like America, to help out.
Now that we know Turkey, Russia, and China has their backs, you need a lot of different things.
And somebody that's bold and strong to be able to pull this off, we don't have that leadership today to Pull it off.
We talked about Ukraine, but we argued about Ukraine last time.
President Zelensky, and I think I completely understand why he did this.
He posted yesterday his kind of exasperation that when Israel comes under attack from a number of rockets in Iran, there's a coalition very quickly in place to take down these missiles and to protect him with anti-air defense and so on, which is what he's been crying out for more of to deal with what's happening with Russia.
Has it changed your mind at all about the fact that maybe it's in the West's interests, not just in repelling Iran, but also repelling Russia, who in many ways are in cahoots with Iran, if reports are to be believed, that Zelensky should be given the same kind of iron dome potential that Israel has?
You know, look, to everybody who is running their country, and if you have a family, if you have a company you're running, I am not naive and oblivious to know that your number one priority is going to be your country, your last name, your faith, your company.
If you're Putin, number one is Russia, then it's your family, that's your number one.
If we're dealing with Khamenei, Iran, it's going to be Iran, it's going to be Muslim, it's going to be Islam.
If you're talking Zelensky, it's going to be Ukraine.
Everybody has their own individual motives.
I'm not here to change your motive.
I'm here to look at the moves we're making.
Is it healthy to lower the temperature or increase it?
If us funding NATO and we're encouraging them to get Ukraine to come into NATO sooner, and then Article 5 can be activated, you're indirectly causing a World War III with Russia.
You don't have to do that.
And you made a promise to Russia for many, many years, we are not going to have NATO recruit Ukraine, and now you're open to the idea.
You're just poking the bear.
So what do you think he's going to be doing?
You're not dealing with a lightweight guy that's just going to sit there and say, okay, NATO, okay, America, you are the ruler, you're the king, I'll listen to you.
We're naive and oblivious to think we're not instigating, we're not poking.
Now, let's go to Zelensky.
What's Zelensky's fear right now?
I don't know if you saw what Zelensky did about four weeks ago.
Again, strategic move.
He fears Trump's going to get elected.
So what does he do?
He goes and tries to negotiate a $100 billion amount of financing that he can get no matter who gets elected to president.
What a brilliant move for him to make, that regardless of who becomes president, the U.S. government should still give him $100 billion if this war continues.
Well, guess what?
In insurance business, that's called an irrevocable life insurance trust, which means when you get married to a wife and you buy her a life insurance policy and she says, I want you to give me a $10 million insurance policy that even if you get a new wife or new girlfriend, you can never change the beneficiary on that.
And you do that for the wife to know that you're going to take care of me.
Okay, no problem.
It's called an eyelet.
This is your $5 million, your $10 million.
Zelensky got an eyelet of $100 billion, give and take.
Credit to him.
I think America is a little bit naive for allowing this beggar, the greatest fundraiser of all time, to keep asking money from us.
And here we are in the state of California and America.
You've been to California, you got a place in California.
They can't track $24 billion of money that they raise from taxpayers to fix the homelessness problem.
Their accountants, like, we don't know where the money went.
And all we needed was $5 to $20 billion to build a border.
America has zero credibility to send all this money they're sending to Ukraine while we are in shambles right now here in America.
They have no moral authority to be so concerned about other countries and not America themselves.
It's a frustration many Americans are going through right now.
But my response to that would be: America has plenty of money to deal with more than one thing at one time.
There's no reason actually why if there wasn't a concerted joint political will, and that's why I find this on-passe in Congress so depressing.
If they just came together and thought, actually there are various things going on here which need America's help.
One is on our own border which is clearly an existential threat to safety of people who live anywhere near it and we need to fix that.
We need to uh help Israel from this attack, from Iran and the fallout from that, which is obviously what America's already done, but we should commit more to helping Israel, which is America's great ally.
And they should also be able to say actually, regardless of the build-up and I hear your argument about NATO encroachment and so on, which is the kind of thing Putin would say as his justification he has said that but ultimately Vladimir Putin two years ago invaded a sovereign, Democratic European country and has murdered a lot of people and he wants to take that land.
And I just cannot believe.
I'm living in an era where particularly a number of people on the conservative right in America seem quite relaxed about that and seem almost to want to find excuses for Putin.
Yeah well, you know, we kind of pushed him.
You know i'm not saying everything you just said, but because I I hear that argument and historically clearly there was a fear by the Russians that NATO were trying to uh, spread their wings a bit and bring in Ukraine and so on.
I get that, but I don't think any of that justifies a brutal invasion of a sovereign, democratic country.
And I think if Putin's allowed to win here, then he will inevitably go after other countries.
Um, he'll want to expand his power base and he will think that actually America blinked and that actually the West blinked, and I don't think that's what we should be doing with a Russian dictator.
Back to you, let me ask you, let me ask you a question uh Pierce, so i'll give you.
You said something earlier, you said about all the money America has.
If, if you make 27 000 a year and you have 34 000 in credit card debt okay, you have 27 000 in income, you have 34 000 of credit card debt.
You think it's a good idea for you to go buy a 20 thousand dollar car?
You think it's a good idea for you to go buy another watch?
You think it's a good idea for you to go out and keep investing into other people?
Let's let's, let's change the numbers so it's a little bit more real.
Let's say you're making 270 grand a year, you have 340 000 in debt and you have a wife and three kids.
You're trying to send your kids to private school.
You live in a community that there's a lot of shooting going on.
You're living in a community that two kids down the street got shot.
Your wife's ask you to put a camera set up around the house, maybe put up a fence, because you know robbery they're coming and breaking into the house.
Do you think your priority should be to fix the fence, fix the gate, put the camera or go and fix someone's problem that's 2000 miles away from you?
What do you think it is?
That's entirely well, okay.
So my answer to that, my answer to that would be, it entirely depends on how you view the overall threat from Russia to the West.
It entirely depends on whether you believe Vladimir Putin, that he simply wants to take a section of Ukraine because they're Russian Speaking and they always wanted to be part of Russia, whether you believe all this stuff, which I think is bullshit frankly um, and it's the kind of stuff that dictators Say when they want to get away with what they're getting away with.
And I think that America's national interest is not served by an aggressive Russian dictator winning wars in Europe.
It's actually the antithesis of the national interest of America being served.
It cannot be good for America.
Yeah, but also Russia starts to expand through Europe.
That would be my own.
Your position is also assuming Putin.
But your position is also, your argument would also be to be respectfully.
Your argument is you're putting Putin in the category of a Hitler, is what you're saying.
You're saying he is the next this, and we because if he goes after Ukraine, then he's going to go after Poland, and then he's going to go after this, and then he's going to try to take over Europe.
Are you kidding me?
You know what it would take to want to go after the EU or NATO or US or all these other guys?
They don't want to do that.
You think that's what they want to do?
You think Russia's trying to go after that kind of a...
They're not trying to do that.
This is a guy that has pride on what happened with his country.
And by the way, everything that I just said to you at the beginning, the $27,000 to $270,000 in income and $340,000 in debt, the U.S. GDP is $27 trillion, but we're $34 trillion in debt and climate.
And you want me to sit here while we got 10 million illegal immigrants just crossed the border.
You want me to worry about a war between Russia and Ukraine and say, send another one.
No, I want you to worry about both.
I want you to worry about both.
By the way, if you're running America...
That's not how it works, though.
Patrick, if you're running American.
That's not how it works.
Well, actually, if you're the president of the United States, you have to deal with a number of things at once.
You have to fix the broken bridges.
You have to fix education.
You have to deal with rising crime.
You have to deal with the Southern Border.
But you can't.
I agree.
But you cannot avoid if you're still the number one superpower.
Well, hold on, let me finish.
Let me finish my point.
If you have aspirations to maintain your position as the number one superpower in the world, with that comes a responsibility, doesn't it, to safeguard democracy and freedom, doesn't it?
Lead with strength.
We are weak today because of our border.
It's called sequencing.
Everything is about thinking like a grand master.
When you play chess, you play chess with Tate.
You're a chess guy.
It's about your next 5, 10, 15 moves.
They say amateurs, I'm an amateur chess player.
I play one my son every night at 10 o'clock.
Neither one of us are professional chess players.
I probably know my next three to five moves, okay?
Professionals, maybe five to ten moves.
Grandmasters, ten to fifteen moves.
America is supposed to be a grand master.
Your number one move should be protect your border, not Ukraine.
If you're saying let's worry about Ukraine, maybe it's number nine on the list.
It ain't number one above the border.
That is the most ludicrous argument I would ever make.
Well, let me ask you this.
Let me ask you this.
Chess Moves in Foreign Policy00:03:49
Then we take care of everybody else.
Why should America be supporting Israel then?
That's thousands of miles away.
How much money are we giving to Israel?
Billions.
How much money are we giving Israel?
I'm curious.
Go ahead.
I'm curious.
Go ahead.
Are we sending troops over there?
Are we sending missiles over there?
No, but how much money are we giving to Israel?
We've got home we've given it since 1957.
America has $10 billion.
We've given to them $3 billion towards the dome.
How much money are we giving them?
Billions of dollars.
Not comparable to what we've given to Ukraine in 12 months.
24 months.
No way.
Not even close.
Isn't the principle the same?
You're doing it to help them defend themselves.
No, it's not.
The part with Israel is slightly different because it's both strategic, because there's only one country in Israel that has historically always been pro-American and has been an ally in the Middle East, and that's Israel.
Iran's not been the case since the Shah, right?
Saudi Arabia now with MBS, he's trying to work and make progress to the point where Ronaldo, your friend, feels safe going out there with his family to play soccer there.
These are good things that MBS and Saudi Arabia is doing.
He's kind of doing what the Shah was doing back in the 50s, 60s, 70s.
I like what he's doing with Saudi Arabia.
But Israel, to us, a part of it is also loyalty due to our faith.
Well, we need that country, especially what America was founded on, Judeo-Christian.
That's a little bit deeper than that.
But with Ukraine, The guy's an opportunistic guy.
Respect to him that's coming up to America, making everybody feel guilty and raising money.
I salute him for being a great beggar and a great fundraiser.
But Ukraine is not more important than the U.S. war.
What if, let me paint the scenario, what if Trump wins the election and he says he's fixed the Ukraine war in one day, which presumably he's already hinted would mean just giving Putin the land that he's taken, and say he does that.
And say that you're wrong about Putin.
Say that it turns out he does have imperialistic ambitions beyond what people think he has.
And that emboldened by America's retreat, not just there, but also Afghanistan and so on.
He's watched how America's conducted itself on the foreign stage.
Say he then does attack someone like Poland, which is a NATO country.
What then?
Pierce, you are smarter than this.
You've been around.
You've interviewed a lot of people.
You know this world better than I do.
You've talked to Trump many, many times.
You have a relationship with him.
It's actually a very entertaining relationship that's up and down, up and down.
And then you go to Charlemagne the God and you defend him in a different way.
I love your relationship with him.
It's very fascinating, truly.
But Pierce, you know Putin's not going to do shit to Poland if Trump's the president because when an alpha and an alpha get in a room and they negotiate, there's a fair level of respect and admiration for each other.
We can look at case study.
The great thing about what I love the 2024 elections for is the following.
Here's why I love the case study of what we have today.
I think it's going to be used for decades, if not centuries to come.
And here's what the case study is.
We can now officially, Pierce, say, we had four years of Trump administration to look at, and we have almost four years of Biden to look at.
We can compare economy to economy, peace to peace, wars to wars, unemployment to unemployment.
We can look at every single thing.
And there is zero proof from those who are skeptical on your end, worried about the fact that Putin's going to attack Poland, that Trump would allow something like that to happen because it never happened under his regime during the four years that was there.
We feared ISIS.
When's the last time you used the word ISIS?
We feared this guy went after Ghassam Soleimani, who was supposed to be the number two, number three guy in the world in Iran, and potentially was going to run Iran.
Audacity on the World Stage00:01:33
And he was a leader of all these guys behind closed doors, all these proxy wars.
You killed that guy?
That's kind of like in the mob family.
You think about back in the days, you go and you kill Ben Siegel.
You go kill the main guys.
You don't do something like that.
He did.
That's what Trump did.
Audacity, risk at the highest level.
You went after a guy like that?
I did.
Everyone in the marketplace says, okay, guess what?
You ever seen the movie American Gangster?
You know, with Denzel Washington?
You remember that scene when he's sitting there at the cafeteria and he's sitting with his cousins?
Their cousins are just starting to realize that Frank Lucas has become a powerful guy.
He sees a guy down the street.
He says he gets up, he walks out, goes to the guy, puts the hat down, he says, where's my 10%?
The guy laughs at him.
He takes him out.
Cousins, everybody sees him.
He comes back, sits down, wipes his hands, has the breakfast, and they start having a conversation together.
Trump did that to Ghassam Soleimani on a world stage.
On the world stage.
Do you know what level of audacity that takes?
Who has that kind of audacity?
Not a lot of people.
He did.
But that could have been risky because to some of us we're like, if Iran retaliates, you have the right to not retaliate.
They took out your number one general.
They didn't.
Strength is one way to elite.
And when America is strong, fortunately, the world is at peace.
When America is not strong, like we are today, the world is not at peace.
Patrick Ben-David, always great to talk to you and hear your perspective.