Why Iran's Proxy Network Was Defanged

In this episode of Based Camp, Malcolm & Simone Collins break down the insane geopolitical wins stacking up for Trump in early 2026—wins so massive they rival the collapse of the Soviet Union, Napoleon’s early campaigns, or Cromwell’s rise, but with almost zero U.S. cost so far.

From the precision strike that took out Ayatollah Khamenei (and the sneaky Mossad magic behind it), to Maduro’s capture in Venezuela halting oil to Cuba and forcing blackouts, to Iran’s proxy network (Hezbollah, Houthis, Hamas) getting defanged, the Collinses argue this is a new era of low-cost, high-impact American dominance.

They explore the risks of overreach (history’s villains who won too much too fast), why most of the Muslim world isn’t mourning Iran, the “frenemy” dynamic with China, why dumb white women seem to be the main group getting radicalized, and Trump’s unlocked hack: kill hated dictators surgically, threaten successors, let regional allies (Israel, Saudis, UAE) handle cleanup, and watch dictators self-moderate out of self-preservation.

Episode Transcript

Malcolm Collins: Hello, Simone. I’m excited to be here with you today. The world has changed so dramatically, and I think much more dramatically than people realize in the past few months, specifically in the past few weeks with what’s going on in Iran right now, the number of core geopolitical winds that Trump has had.

And I think even the right wing doesn’t seem to really grok the magnitude of this. There is no historical parallel in all of American history except for maybe the collapse of the Soviet Union, but that wasn’t exactly all our doing. A lot of that was internal. Yeah. The, the closest three historical parallels I can find, like series of wins this significant with this little early cost would be the beginning of h man’s campaigns.

The beginning of Napoleon’s campaigns or most of Oliver Cromwell’s life. Those are the only three that come anywhere near. And, and I think that this actually [00:01:00] highlights one of the big risks of where we are geopolitically right now.

Simone Collins: Okay.

Malcolm Collins: In the same way that if you look at Napoleon’s early career, just win, win, win, win, win, win, win.

Or the h man’s early military career. Win, win, win, win, win, win, win. Mm-hmm. Very low cost to his own troops. Very low cost to him geopolitically. What happened in, in both of those cases is they completely overdid it and ended up giant villains from history. Mm-hmm. And I can completely see the temptation from Trump’s perspective right now.

And for people who don’t understand what I’m saying right now. Trump has taken out first obviously Maduro and the Venezuelan, the new Venezuelan president. It, it appears to be working like she halted the oil shipments to Cuba, which now is forcing Cuba because Mexico did not restart the shipments. They, they, somebody out our last podcast we’re talking about this, said they restarted them.

They’ve halted oil shipments as well. So it looks like the Cubans are either [00:02:00] going to cave or be put into a permanent blackout because they don’t really have oil anymore. And if you don’t have oil, you can’t grow crops or move cars or anything. And none of their geopolitical allies have the ability to get them oil because like if China tries to send a ship all the way to them, the US will just.

Grab it like we’ve been with everyone else who’s trying to send them ships. And they don’t, and China doesn’t even seem to want to. And then Iran has been taken off the map with very little geopolitical cost. And we’ll explain why each of these has had so little geo, because that’s also weird, right?

And if you go through American history and you look at something like, say the Vietnam War or something like that, if we had overwhelmingly won the Vietnam War, right, like just completely won it early days, it would not be one 10th Is geopolitically relevant at the three victories combined? Hmm. We have been trying to deal with Iran, [00:03:00] Venezuela, and Cuba for.

A half a century at least.

Simone Collins: Oh yeah. No. From our childhoods, we’ve all grown up hearing about Iran and Death to America and Yeah. All this stuff. But it was more of a recent thing though.

Malcolm Collins: The United States doesn’t really have that many geopolitical enemies.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Truly it’s just been Iran and North Korea mostly with China and Russia both being kind of like frenemies.

Frenemy

Malcolm Collins: China is, is really more of a frenemy than anything else.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah. They’re like the Jessica to our Utah mom. That’s a little too. Yeah,

Malcolm Collins: , What I mean by China is more of a frenemy is in terms of like big geopolitical enemies that we’ve had. China really hasn’t made a point outside of the fentanyl epidemic, which is absolutely terrible.

And inventing TikTok again, absolutely terrible. But, you know, it’s, it’s been nothing like our wars against our other geopolitical enemies, like what we had

Simone Collins: to deal with. No, they’re like that [00:04:00] passive aggressive, mean girl. Like we’re, we’re in a mean girl clique together and like, you know, one’s like, Aw sweetie, let me help you.

Like you can buy some of my cheaply manufactured goods. Or like, oh, why don’t you have like, here you can have my Cheetos. ‘cause I mean, they’re gonna make you fat anyway, and I’m gonna eat like all my healthy food over here.

Speaker 22: We do not have a click problem at the school, but you do have to watch out for frenemies. What are frenemies? Frenemies are enemies who act like friends. We call them frenemies or ene amens, or friends who secretly hate you. We call them freighters. That’s so gay.

Simone Collins: But that

Malcolm Collins: is actually exactly like, it, it’s like two mean girls that constantly hang out together.

Simone Collins: Exactly.

Malcolm Collins: But, but what I mean is they’re not like an existential threat to

Simone Collins: Yeah. They’re just like competitive rivals who really don’t like each other and feel like it’s a zero sum game. So like, yeah, actually it is pretty bad, but like. In a more collaborative way, whereas Iran was like, no, I just wanna kill you.

You just like, there can be no room for the two of us. You know, it’s more exclusive. That’s like a one,

Malcolm Collins: their founding thesis is, I [00:05:00] wanna kill you. You

Speaker 12: We are two months away from enriching weapons grade uranium to be used for peaceful purposes.

Speaker 29: Obviously this joke was made a while ago. , By Iran’s own claims, they had enough enriched uranium to make 11 nuclear bombs, , nearly enough to wipe out all life on earth.

Simone Collins: Know, like, yeah. So it’s like, it’s, it’s the, it’s the school bully. Like, meet me out back. I’m gonna beat you up. Versus the mean girl of like,

Malcolm Collins: well I do, I love how everyone is meed on Khomeini for this, that he, the mans spent his entire life trying to get into a war with the United States.

Simone Collins: So you can’t make you smell. It’s gonna burst my mouth. Stitches, but kine, can we please? Oh God. Oh, the stitches are gonna open. Whatcha doing? Kine. [00:06:00] Okay, go. Keep going, keep going. Just, just keep butchering all the Iranian words and I’m just gonna bust all my stitches open.

Malcolm Collins: I’m not, I

Simone Collins: to stay away.

Malcolm Collins: I ran. Day one, he spends his entire life trying to get us into a war with Iran.

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: Dies like day one, hour one. Watching a video on this was insane because they knew not just like the bunker he was in, but the floor he was, was in, in that bunker.

Simone Collins: How I, I wish I knew how they knew. You know, I wanna watch the Oceans 11 version. It’s real piss

Malcolm Collins: off Jews. Jews are sneaky. This is the thing about Jews that people don’t know.

They were very sneaky people, which makes them excellent spies. Like all Jews, if you’re playing like Skyrim or something, they’re born with like a plus 10 to their sneak stat. You know, stealth, they’re, they all go stealth. Archer blt wait,

Simone Collins: Because I like legit have never played Skyrim or like any video game, aside from a rollercoaster tycoon, are there [00:07:00] Jews in Skyrim?

Malcolm Collins: No, no, no, no. But there’s races in Sky Room, so I’m saying if there were

Simone Collins: Jews in Sky Room,

Malcolm Collins: okay, I get you. It’s racial sta modifier. With Jews, it’s a, oh, we should do that. We should have an episode where we make racial stat modifiers for every race. Oh my God. But Jews, Jews, Jews are sort of an op build these days, I’m gonna be honest.

Gotta, gotta Nerf. That turns out to be very, very useful. That’s

Simone Collins: what the H man said as you refer to him. But

Malcolm Collins: you know what? Oh yeah. Yes, he did try to Nerf the Jew build. He’s like, he did try to Nerf

Simone Collins: the Jew build

Malcolm Collins: unfair to have Judes in our server.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: How, how do you compete? So anyway we have other episodes where we talk about these sorts of topics.

If, if you’re interested in learning more.

Our Jewish Patreon supporters after hearing this.

Speaker 14: Lemme take that back. Huh?

Speaker 39: But on the other side, imagine how stupid you have to be to know you’re in a stealth archer. Meta to know that like the elves have a stealth archer, meta buff, and to intentionally attempt to isolate them, , just [00:08:00] because they are arrogant and have. Dicked you around occasionally, right? Like this is, this is my cultural group, whatever.

We try to run the sneak meta, as you have seen from me trying to pronounce whatever that guy’s name is.

Speaker 4: Buongiorno.

Speaker: Signore un piacere. Gli amici della vedetta ammirata tra tutti noi questa gemma prove della nostra cultura saranno naturalmente accolti sotto la mia protezione per la durata del loro soggiorno

Speaker 4: Grazie.

Speaker 23: We, we we’re, we’re bored with zero sneak stat.

Malcolm Collins: But so, so, they knew exactly where, and this is the thing, right? So the US has said, and this is a very interesting, like we’ve never done this before. So when the US this was Netanyahu who said this, he’s like, anybody who replaces Khomeini as the Ayatollah if they take this position with stated an antagonism towards the United States and Israel and towards the people of [00:09:00] Iran as Khomeini did, and keep in mind he murdered tens of thousands of people, tens of thousands of people in just the past few months.

Like the death count in Iran was staggering. Even if you’re looking at the more conservative numbers of, of people just protesting in the streets, you know, genuinely the people who are standing this are genuinely monstrous.

Speaker 7: Indulge me for one second. Pretend that I’m an idiot. Okay. I’m there.

Okay. You know what, let’s just agree to disagree, my friend. Okay.

What? Why? No. Don’t you remember? Of course. I remember. How dare you question my memory. I remember everything. Oh no, I would never do that. Never. I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean that. Not worry. It’s fine. NDA, my friend. Thank you.

Malcolm Collins: And I think it’s important

Simone Collins: that, yeah. Has, has the death count from the Usis Israel attacks, yet surpassed the death count from the protestors being taken [00:10:00] out.

Speaker 30: To the Iranian government’s official dis death count for civilians so far is around 1,300. Keep in mind that their official death count for the civilians that they slaughtered was around 3000, whereas, , death counts from outside have been at around 35,000. , So. This is, this is astonishing to me that their official death count for the civilians killed in the war so far as a, a third of their official death count of the civilians that they mass slaughter.

Just over the last month,

I.

Malcolm Collins: I don’t, I don’t know. I don’t, I’d be surprised if it has

Simone Collins: because when I last checked, I thought it was like around 1,600 or so from this conflict.

Malcolm Collins: Oh. Then it’s not even close.

Simone Collins: It’s one, there’s like over 5,000 for the protests.

Malcolm Collins: I heard up to 30,000 for some estimates.

Simone Collins: Oh my God. Well, I mean, who knows?

Malcolm Collins: I think 5,000 was actually Iran’s official figure.

Simone Collins: Hmm.

Malcolm Collins: So,

Simone Collins: I mean, I wanna be conservative, but I mean, that, that basically means that like, [00:11:00] it’s been, you know,

Malcolm Collins: and I wanna point something out to how vile the people who were fighting are, you know, when they, when, when they say that Aya Khomeini is with his, you know, 30 virgins right now, you gotta keep in mind what they’re, what they’re imagining.

You are imagining a bunch of young,

Simone Collins: I thought it was 40 virgins. Did he get a penalty for something? 40

Malcolm Collins: Virgin. Yeah, sorry. 40 virgin.

Simone Collins: 10 virgin penalty for like. Getting bombed by the infidels. I guess it’s suck.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Yeah. But anyway, so you, you are imagining like beach girls or something like that?

Khomeini is the guy who lowered the legal, marrying age in Iran to nine. Like when he, he, if that’s the age that you’re getting married, that’s the age that he thinks when he thinks he’s getting 40 virgins for all eternity, he thinks heaven.

Simone Collins: Well, by the way, is there, like, have you looked this up when you did more research on Iran?

Are, are they like, do they ize every time you bang them? Like, or is it just a one time? ‘cause this is [00:12:00] eternity, you have them. So like, what’s the point of them being virgins if like, you immediately become intimate and then. You’re not,

Malcolm Collins: well, I guess they’ve never slept with anyone other than you.

Simone Collins: Okay. So that’s the point is that they’ve been untouched by other men.

Okay. Okay. Okay.

Malcolm Collins: Well, I mean, I imagine, you know, in their heaven, nobody ever ages and that basically their heaven is literally,

Simone Collins: so he gets his harem of nine year olds and goodness,

Malcolm Collins: yes. An eternity of being a PDA file. Like,

Simone Collins: he can watch frozen with them over and over and over. It’s gonna be delightful.

Malcolm Collins: And these are real things here. People you can, you can look this up. This is what he lowered the marriage age to. So I, I want to and if you wanna go deeper onto this concept within Islam, because a lot of people are like, oh, Aisha wasn’t actually nine. Look at this, look at this, look at this. And it’s like, you, progressive Muslim can say that.

But the truth is, is that the vast majority of conservative Muslims in conservative Muslim countries do believe she was not.

Speaker 24: So while we may never be able to know, was she actually nine when he [00:13:00] slept with her, was she actually, what was it, six when they got married? , We, we can know for a fact what most conservative Muslims believe, and they do believe this, that is a hundred percent easily provable.

Malcolm Collins: And so it doesn’t matter what you think, this is what they think. And this is what they’re acting on in our episode where we talk about the major religious court in Pakistan saying it was Islamophobic to raise the marriage age to, I wanna say 14 or 16 or something like a still a fairly young age.

They mean this, this is like a, you know, you gotta take their religion seriously. And, and they mean what they say they mean, don’t, don’t be like, they don’t mean what they, they, they mean what they say they mean, um mm-hmm. Because they do it and they show it legally. But I wanna, I wanna talk about like how geopolitically this shift things, how much, I mean, imagine you’re Kim Jong-Un or Putin.

Right now, right. You are effing terrified. You are e every, like, China thinks they built this giant geopolitical network like I Rand did. Before I go into this, what I wanna say is a lot of people who think like, oh, we’re getting into a new Iraq war here, or something like that.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: The cool hack [00:14:00] that Trump seems to have figured out about this stuff is people were like, how do you take down this dictatorship and rebuild the country at like a good, like at a decent cost, right?

And Trump’s like,

Speaker 20: space? That’s the neat thing. You don’t,

Malcolm Collins: You don’t, you don’t rebuild it. That I just, that’s not, we’ll leave that to, and if, if people are like, well, that leads to you know, worse situations in the long run, not if they have the demographics that they have right now. Like they’re not building into some, like, bigger power in the future.

Every year Iran is just less powerful than it was the year before and they just completely knocked it out as a geopolitical player. Because Iran has a terrible fertility rates below the United States, for example, despite their poverty. And I think that, and, and people can be like, well, US presidents in the past weren’t about this.

We tried to kill Castro like 135 times or something. And that was during the height of the age of Spycraft. [00:15:00] Trump basically unlocked a new way of doing this. And we’ll talk about that in just a second. But now I wanna talk about the geopolitics of this, what he unlocked, why it hasn’t had the negative geopolitical effects that many people expected it to, why things seem to be working out well in Venezuela and why I suspect less, less easy, but it may work out in Iran.

And, and even with Iran, when I thought about this last, I was like, I don’t. I wouldn’t say that you should go in and try to do regime change in Iran. I was a little worried about it. It is, it is definitely harder than Venezuela. But with those sneaky Jews, we may be able to do this without too much death.

Speaker 14: Not bad, huh?

Malcolm Collins: When I say that, what I mean is the reason if we are able to do Iran well mm-hmm. You are able to rebuild it well without actually attempting a boots on the ground reconstruction of the country. It is going to be because of Mossad. And, and, and I hope that Trump plans to basically leaves this in Israel’s lap after all of [00:16:00] this be like, Israel, Saudi Arabia, UAE, you guys take over here, you’ve got the money.

We’re out. Right. And I think a lot of Maga is gonna be very mad if he decides to go in a heavy way, boots on the ground or reconstruction. But I don’t think that, I’m not, I’m not expecting that from what I’m saying. I, I think a lot of that is just threats right now. But anyway. So, geopolitically? Yes. Our entire lives, it was a, a fight between the Shia and Sunni faction.

Okay. And the the Sunni faction, the Saudi faction they were largely the UAE Saudi Arabia and the United States and Israel. And they, they, they really sort of side it with Israel. They pretend like we’re not really on Israel’s side, but you know, they, they largely side it was Israel.

Mm-hmm. And then the sh affection, the Iranian affection. Did not use states. It used Hezbollah, it used Hamas, it used HHI rebels, it used non-state militant actors. And it would fund them to go out and attempt to do things on its behalf, [00:17:00] what we would call today, terrorist organizations. And they unfortunately we have another video where we talk about this, that group was basically entirely taken out and now is being wept up.

So initially you had obviously, like Hamas is not nearly as powerful as they were before the Gaza War, or able to push Iran’s will right now has the Houthis Rebels have largely been Defanged, Hezbollah was so afraid after all of this that when, when we were bombing and when Israel mostly was, was bombing Iran.

They to like a token show of support, shot one measly missile into Israel, killed, nobody was shot down, wasn’t even at a, like a, a populated area. And Israel was like, okay, buddy, we’re coming in, in full force and they’re now doing a ground invasion of Lebanon. And it’s even crazier because the Lebanese government, which used to be the like, like subordinate basically to Hezbollah was in this region, is now actively helping Israel in [00:18:00] securing Hezbollah weapons.

Simone Collins: No

Malcolm Collins: The, the core reason, the core flip that happened, a lot of people are unaware of this is do you remember when there was that giant explosion in that port town?

Simone Collins: No.

Malcolm Collins: So in the Middle East a few years ago, a giant explosion, some of my friends like, lived there and you could see like all other windows.

Simone Collins: Oh my gosh. Yeah. Yes, yes. And there was footage in people’s, like balconies got blown in and Yes.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. So that it turns out was in Lebanon and that was a, a Hezbollah warehouse. And that is because previously people were like, well, you can’t get rid of Hezbollah because Hezbollah, you know, runs some schools, runs some medical stuff, runs some, you know, it helps people.

Right. And that. Because of not just that happening, but then Hezbollah really ham-fisted using corruption to cover up that. It was obviously a Hezbollah warehouse that turned public sentiment against Hezbollah in elections and political sentiment against Hezbollah. And so then politicians were like, oh, let’s go [00:19:00] all in on this.

Let’s do joint operations with Israel. Wouldn’t it be great if we didn’t have to worry about them coming in and fighting us all the time? And, and they also see where things are going with Iran. Iran is not gonna be Daddy Warbuck for anyone anymore. Right?

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: The only state actor that Iran really had as a friend was Qatar.

And that wasn’t even because Qatar and Iran really liked each other, it’s because they sit on the giant gas field that makes up the majority of Qatar’s wealth is like half in Iran, so they have to get along mm-hmm. By Qatar. And Al Jazeera keeps saying things like, oh my God, the cost of oil is gonna skyrocket and that’s gonna hurt economies all over the world.

Yeah. I’m like, oh no, America, the cost of oil, oil, that’s gonna be horrible. What did we just get a ton of? Was this whole Venezuela situation? Hmm. Something We definitely wouldn’t want the value of that to explode. Hmm. That’d be horrible for us. A net oil exporter. At least vis-a-vis the rest of the world.

You know, I’m not looking forward to a [00:20:00] depression either, but you know, in the, in the world of ai, maybe we could use a, a slowing off this grocery right now. But anyway, so that has basically been resolved. And the way that we were able to resolve that without the major geopolitical fallout that I think a lot of people expected because pretty much every major power is praising this.

I mean, Spain threw a bit of a, a donkey tantrum about this and so did the uk. But the truth is, is they both capitulated within like two days of throwing their tantrum. And now. They’re, they’re towing the line because of a few things. One is, is I ran, and this is, was an accident. They didn’t mean to do this.

I, I almost feel sort of bad for them on this run, but they accidentally shot a missile into Turkey which is a, that was an

Simone Collins: accident. How do you accidentally do that?

Malcolm Collins: They said it was a technical malfunction

Simone Collins: who

Malcolm Collins: given the number of missiles they’re shooting, I can see that it could be a technical malfunction.

Speaker 25: If you’re like, Malcolm, why do you believe it was an accident? And it wasn’t meant to target a US base, it’s because they only sent one missile. And every other missile campaign that they’ve done has been a huge barrage of missiles. So to me, this looks [00:21:00] more like an accident. I.

Malcolm Collins: So anyway this could trigger Article five. Now the UN is not saying we’re gonna trigger Article five. Turkey is not saying, they’re like, we understand it with an accident. We’re sorry, you know, blah, blah, blah. But the point is, is it gives America a lot more leeway to be like, Hey, what’s even the point of NATO if you guys aren’t even gonna allow us to use our bases in your countries and stuff like that, right?

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: And so the question is this, why, why aren’t people freaking out about this existentially other than just progressives? Like why aren’t Muslim groups freaking out about this? Why aren’t why aren’t Europe freaking out about this? Why is the Middle East not freaking out about this? And the answer is because Iran unfortunately made an enemy out of most other Muslim groups.

Speaker 26: And then in a moment of almost hilariously bad decision making, when Iran started to get attacked, rather than shooting all the missiles at Israel, it shot some, but it has shot many more missiles at non-aggressive Muslim countries. Some of them, even [00:22:00] Shia, majority countries, uh, who just weren’t 100% on board with them.

Uh, and. As you can guess, a lot of these countries were not involved in this. They did not want to be involved in this, but now they’re like, you know what? You’re gonna bomb us. Okay. Like, I don’t even see the point in not being involved in this if you’re just gonna shoot us with missiles anyway. Like how, how would you build public support around that?

That’s comically stupid.

Malcolm Collins: So first of all, you’ve got to remember is the Shias, were always the minority, always in the Muslim world. Yeah.

For an understanding of just how much of a minority they are. Only 10 to 15% of Muslims are Shia.

Malcolm Collins: And they often treated the Sunnis really, really terribly now. It was, it’s sort of a Boas way thing, a Catholic Protestant thing here. Mm-hmm. But they haven’t gotten over it yet in the same way.

Okay. And, and so obviously Saudi Arabia isn’t shedding a tear over this. The UAE isn’t shedding a tear over this.

Speaker 31: And Iran hasn’t even been able to keep the real Shia on board with them, you know, [00:23:00] bombing reflexively despite not being involved in the attack. The Shia majority, Bahrain. Um, and, and I’d point out to you if you’re like, I’m seeing stuff online where Muslims support this or whatever. This stuff is entirely AstroTurf, uh, and it’s very easy to tell that it’s AstroTurf, but that might be for another episode.

Ironically, the only people who I’ve seen who appear to be real and are actually being radicalized by this, who were not already, you know, radical, I just want to destroy America. Types are of course the patriotic Americans worst enemy, dumb white women. .

Malcolm Collins: And then other places where we’re seeing major power overhauls, like in Yemen right now, they’ve got their own stuff going on. They don’t care about this, but most of the, the Islamic world just doesn’t feel a kinship with Iran.

Mm-hmm. On, on, outside of like a few isolated terror cells outside of that, a lot of the other countries in the Islamic world saw Iran at their, so remember I said the [00:24:00] Islamic world was like a bipolar axis of Iran and Saudi Arabia as the two core power players?

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: And remember how it was listing countries that were on one of those axis or another.

Mm-hmm. And you might have noticed some very big countries weren’t on that list specifically. Egypt and Turkey. Two very powerful Islamic countries. Yeah. Because they wanted the power play to be between them and Saudi Arabia. Right? Iran has always been the weaker of these, these two partners, and they wanted it to be focused on them.

They wanted to be one of the uncontested power players in the region. So they’re happy that this has happened, right? Mm-hmm. That Iran is off the map at this point, right? They’re not, they’re not shedding a tear. They’re like, oh, awesome. Like, like, now, now I have a chance to play for a bipolar axis of power was in the Islamic world, which is going to reemerge eventually.

And a lot of people are gonna be moving to, to try to gain power in this vacuum. But, but you have that reason for like theologically and ideologically why a lot of people don’t care. Second, if [00:25:00] people are like worried about a lot of terrorism in the aftermath of this you may get some. But the reality is, is that Israel has sort of acted as our terrorism bug zapper.

Like it’s just an easier place to do terrorism if you’re already a Muslim and it’s, it’s more culpable than the United States is. Mm-hmm. And it’s also better at defending itself. Now people in Europe are like, well what about Europe? And I’m going, well, maybe you shouldn’t have let a bunch of freaking radical Muslims into your countries.

And, and America’s got a clamp down on this too. I think like, especially the situation in Texas right now really needs to be resolved. And you know, that was the Trump administration and, and, and this is why if there is a major Muslim terrorist attack in the United States, like we recently had one in, in Texas, this stuff gets covered up, of course.

But we need to get and I think that that’s what we’d likely see next is a, is a major Muslim deportation push in the United States. Mm-hmm. As a result of that. And I could see that being popular depending on the scale of the attack. And so that wouldn’t even necessarily be a negative thing for the goals of the Trump administration because the Trump administration is looking for an excuse for something like that.

If they, if they can get one, right? Mm-hmm. So, so [00:26:00] again, even that’s not like, it’s, it’s, it’s like is it a risk? Yeah, it’s a risk, but it’s a risk in the same way, like a school shooting is a risk, you know, like it’s a risk. I would prefer it not to be a risk but it’s not like a, a statistical risk to anyone.

I know’s individual life. E even if one does happen, you know what I mean? So I think that that, that that’s again, why like he’s, he’s directed the anger at this within the Islamic world where there is anger onto Israel. And Israel’s been willing to accept that. Second, and I wanna note like the genius of this is weird because it wasn’t even like Trump’s own move.

Like apparently the way I’m hearing it from the administration mm-hmm. Is that Yahoo basically called him up and is like, we’re gonna do this, or you enter you out.

Simone Collins: Oh my God.

Malcolm Collins: And Trump was like, f**k. Like, I guess I’m in that, that basically because they want, they wanted this to be over with the last bombing, right?

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: But anyway and the way that they’ve been able to, like the, the way that they’re trying to handle this is basically just like, we’ll kill whoever you elected as an antagonistic ATO going forwards is

Simone Collins: that’s what I wanted to ask you. [00:27:00] What you read on the ultimate outcome is gonna be because. In general, I think this kind of foreign involvement is unpopular among Americans and many others because it doesn’t tend to end well, even though it it

Malcolm Collins: hasn’t ended well historically.

It ended spectacularly well in Venezuela.

Simone Collins: I would say that’s a to be continued kind of thing. It’s still in the midst of happening.

Malcolm Collins: It’s not to be, we, we, the situation in Venezuela is resolved. Venezuela is stable with a new government that has acted while they have spoken negatively about the us. I mean, of course she has to, if she was working with us to do this power transition.

Yeah. They have acted, they have been releasing prisoners of war. They have been loosening up on the draconian rules that they had on our, their people. They are opening up, economically speaking. We are getting access to their oil at preferential prices. And they stopped sending oil to Cuba and they broke off all of their connections that were damaging to us with our geopolitical enemies, like China.

Like, I don’t, I don’t understand like what you, it was, it was like ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. Like, the, [00:28:00] the, the situation. So this is what I expect to happen. The council that would elect the next ayatollah is either going to do it in secret or not do it at all. Like they’re gonna be really quiet about it.

Speaker 32: So they did elect him over the weekend, , I think late last night actually. , And it was the Ayatollah sun, which is actually really bad for the optics of Iran, as the entire point of the Shah revolution was to get rid of a hereditary monarchy. And now it looks like they just replaced that with another hereditary monarchy, which further loosens their legitimacy.

Malcolm Collins: They’re really afraid to do it right now. Right? Yeah. Because oh, yeah’s basically saying, well, we’ll kill the, whoever you elect they’re still going to the way they’re structured, probably elect a hardliner Islamic conservative anti-Israel person. The question of is this works is then does Israel kill him?

If Israel kills him, and especially a few of them after they were elected, which it appears they might have the capacity to do eventually one of them is just gonna be like, maybe we need to rethink this idea. Like the moment [00:29:00] he’s elected, he’s like, guys, I have a great idea. Let’s stop being antagonistic to Israel in the United States.

Hmm. Let’s stop killing the protestors. Right? Like, and and, and that’s even just like a self preservation thing. I mean, that’s basically what the US did was this Venezuela, this Venezuela lady is not like a capitalist or whatever. She’s not like, actually she was like Maduro’s right hand man for ages.

She just understood, oh they can take me out whenever they want. I guess I’m gonna play ball because I’m dictator now and I like being dictator. This is kind of cool. It’s a completely new strategy for foreign policy that like we just didn’t try before. Like, oh, just try to create a situation where the new dictator doesn’t want to act in a way that’s against our geopolitical interests.

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: Now whether that plays out Now, as I’ve said, the situation I ran is harder than the situation in Venezuela. And what ends up happening in Cuba is also like, we don’t know, like s stuff is bad in Cuba right now. And what could end up happening to Cuba is Cuba goes the way of Haiti which is [00:30:00] just Haiti.

No, not, no. It just becomes a complete hellscape. And the world forgets it exists, which is, by the way, what happened to Haiti. Haiti, Haiti is still happening, by the way. People, barbecue is still like basically running things there. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Literal hellscape. So, and I think a lot, a lot, a lot more places in the world this is gonna happen to, I mean, we basically memory hole it because there’s not a lot of Jews in Hades, and as they say, no Jews, no news.

You know, nobody cared when the Iranians were being killed en mass, except for conservatives because, you know, we actually care about, you know, people dying. Right. You know? But anyway sorry, what, what, where was I going with this? So, this, this gets resolved now. Let’s talk about the Cuba, Venezuela situation.

They were like the two tools, and if you wanna talk about like North Korea, how tied in they were with all of this. North Korea has been like frantically saying like, if you kill any North Korean citizens in Iran, well considered an act of war. And I think that this serves to remind you that North Korean Iran were tight, like North Korea was sending its citizens to work as slave labor in Iran, right?

Like, they don’t, they don’t actually care. I mean, talk about, [00:31:00] when you talk about the forces that raid against us, how tight they are. It looks like right now, Russia within Ukraine, we know that they have deployed some North Korean soldiers and they might be increasing that significantly. Hmm. And they appear to be doing this in exchange.

For modern weapons to North Korea. Mm-hmm. But a a a a player like China or something like that is increasingly isolated. And in a way that is interesting because they’re, they’ve got so many internal geopolitical issues right now that like, and this is something I should note in terms of like regime change, when people are like, where do we target next?

Who do we target next? If you’re, if you’re looking at this in a Trump style one of the things that he sort of takes is he’s like, okay, one only target leaders that are nearly universally hated.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Like basically everybody has to agree this person is terrible in almost 90

Simone Collins: 10. That’s his thing.

Malcolm Collins: Country seems to hate him. Yeah. 90 10. And that was true of, of Maduro and the Ayatollah. Okay. Mm-hmm. [00:32:00] You, you so don’t, don’t do, don’t do it. Wishy-washy. I mean, we, I might love to take out the German government right now, you know, ignoring the will of their own people’s vote with the A DF conservatives winning the majority, and then them freezing the a DF outta the government, putting them under surveillance.

I mean, they are a a police state. And the way that we would think of one historically was one political party living under surveillance despite viewer voters with their viewpoints getting a majority win of the vote with the conservative A DF victory in the last election cycle. You know, they, they, they, they, they are a major geopolitical enemy to us going forwards.

And this isn’t because like Trump did something wrong with him. They’re just a country that has experienced a drift into fascism. And in, in sort of a, a more traditional sense, you know, the, the state exists. It, nothing exists, but the state. And, and when you get to this level of socialism, that’s, that’s what it is.

I mean, musin laid this out. That is, that is what definitionally, the inventor of fascism said fascism is. And, and when he says the state, he doesn’t mean the land or its people. He means the ideology that that state embodies. And [00:33:00] that’s, that’s what we’re seeing. But fortunately, they’re, they’re gonna be economically irrelevant through, given their, their demographics and that they have turned off all their power plants like idiots.

Why, what

Simone Collins: not ideal?

Malcolm Collins: But no, the point I’m being is, is, is so like who does that leave on the board in terms of people who we might be going after next? Putin Kim Jong-un. And the, the what’s left at the Castro regime the Castro regime, I do not expect them to go up and take out because the, the that situation seems to be resolving on its own without any oil.

Like, like the, there’s been talks of negotiations. I think that they might do something eventually with that, but I, I don’t expect them to move that quickly on that, given how bad the situation is there right now. So right now it’s just negotiations and I suspect those are already happening. See our episode on you know, G’s got two weeks left.

Be, they’re out now of oil. And that you, you, you know, you need oil for everything a

Simone Collins: little bit.

Malcolm Collins: Then you’ve got the situation in North Korea. The second thing you did is, so first everybody has to hate the person. So that, because [00:34:00] it makes progressives look really bad when there’s like Iranians in the streets cheering that the Ayatollah is finally dead, who tortured and killed their family, and then leftists like free Iran.

And they’re like, but that’s like what we’re doing, right? Like, what did you think that this wasn’t an, this wasn’t an occupation of Iran by a hostile power that that mass killed leftists, by the way after using them to win support. But North, the, the other thing is, is he wants situations where somebody else has a financial interest in stabilizing whatever’s gonna happen in the region.

Mm-hmm. And I think that’s why we’re moving slower on Cuba, because nobody really has a financial interest in stabilizing or an ideological interest. With Venezuela, the oil companies had a financial interest in rebuilding Venezuela, right? Mm-hmm. Yeah, sure. Get them to go back in, rebuild the infrastructure, everything like that.

With Iran, Israel and Saudi Arabia in the UAE, you know, if they can expand their power projected in, in the region, oh my God. Gift box package for them. Right.

Simone Collins: Basically, yeah,

Malcolm Collins: don’t do it ourselves. Basically don’t do what Bush did, which is you [00:35:00] know, MacArthur Plan 2.0. That was stupid. Okay.

Trying to make a democracy in the Middle East was stupid. Bring back the Shah or something like that. In terms of North Korea, you might have a situation for that because South Korea for a long time, and especially the people who run the Chis now younger people in South Korea, they don’t want to take on the cost of handling North Korea.

But what you gotta remember is all the power in North Korea is with the tribal heads I’ve described South Korea as sort of like a collection of fascist states competing against each other in a communist, in a capitalistic ecosystem.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: And, and who do you think is gonna get all those road paving contracts?

Who do you think is gonna be remaking all the North Korean infrastructure?

Simone Collins: Hmm.

Malcolm Collins: Who do you think they are? Foaming at the mouth at the opportunity to get the government to take out a ton of debt in this big sort of national savior project or whatever. Now, do I think it’s actually a good idea for South Korea to allow a bunch of people who are brainwashed under a North Korean system to vote in a South Korean election cycle?

Mm-hmm. Or probably not. But that’s again, the type of thing [00:36:00] where we can go in do a surgical thing. And, and, and also the thing was North Korea, like if you really wanted to handle North Korea the way he handled Venezuelan just go keep killing whoever is at the top of the leadership take out their nuclear program which is going to be harder to do, which is likely why we are not doing this yet.

And then just tell whoever takes the position, be like, you get to keep your dictatorial state. Just treat people a bit nicer. Okay? Marginally nicer. That’s all we’re asking for. And normalize your relationships with us. Mm-hmm. And stop helping your, your jerk friends. Okay. And it turns out that a lot of dictators when they have seen the last dictator, and keep in mind like.

This form of power projection is so powerful because now Kim, Kim Jonin has seen this, like every other dictator has seen this in every other position, right? Like with Russia, when this started happening, Russia and Iran had a mutual defense pact Russia, like, like a nato, like was supposed to come to Iran’s aid.

And it, it [00:37:00] immediately said, oh, these are counter-terrorist bombing runs. This is not a, this is not an invasion. And they rumor is like, I haven’t seen this confirmed yet, but they even turned off some of their satellite things that they had given Iran to protect. Oh, bombing runs.

Simone Collins: Yikes.

Malcolm Collins: Well, I mean, I, I’m Putin.

I’m like, I better stay on Trump’s good side, I’ll tell you that. Right? Like the, the words were, Trump is like all those beautiful ettes, you know, wouldn’t it be shame if I dropped a bomb on them? And that’s why Putin didn’t invade Ukraine. And I think a lot of people were being like. Putin didn’t really think Trump might do that, like a sane Putin.

And I think now a lot of people are like, oh, he was, he was probably really considering it. Right? Like, geopolitically this sort of changes everything. And so the question is, is, is what allowed for this to happen geopolitically? Like why, why did we have to try to kill at the height of Spycraft Fidel Castro 136 times?

I always put my episodes into AI to ask if I made any factual errors after I record them, and here it goes. , You made a big one was this [00:38:00] 136 times. Apparently it was over 600 times. .

Malcolm Collins: And yet we get Maduro and Al Khomeini on our first tries, right?

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: The answer is a couple things. Thing number one is the way that the CIA operated in the past was a joke. Giant bureaucratic institutions in the, you know, they had like the staring at goats experiments and stuff like that.

Mm-hmm. And the weird stuff like Ruby Yard believes that they discovered parallel universes. And I’m like, no, actually just a huge branch of the, the CIA was actually controlled by Scientologists. See our episode on that one? I think what a

Simone Collins: trip. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Like Canis read minds. It’s, it’s hilarious how crazy it is when people think the US government discovered paranormal something or another.

I’m like, no, that, that was a bunch of Scientologists. And, and if you had a government, but anyway, basically they were just idiots. Is, is is one thing. And the other thing is, and Simone and I have noted this, is that when you. You know, outsource something to another person. Like humans. Humans are like, generally like [00:39:00] borderline mentally handicapped, like most of them.

Right. You know, so, we just don’t like dealing with ‘em. We like dealing with AI agents, by the way, live now on our five.ai. Still very buggy, super alpha, but we’re, we’re improving those. But that’s actually what we have seen within these latest things is they, they didn’t give it to these bureaucrats, they gave it to elite military groups.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Small, yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Not through intelligence, but elite military groups. And then, and I’m saying, you know, start to dismantle intelligence if they’re not helping us with this stuff. Elite military groups combined with AI technology satellites, you know, not, not the way that we did things historically.

Right. The amount of AI that was probably used in the triangulation of these people’s positions and stuff like that was enormous.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Secondarily we are partnered very tightly right now with a government that, and when people are like, Iran was Israel’s enemy, not ours. No. Death to America was Death to America, right?

Speaker 28: [00:40:00] And for people who are like, whoa, we’re getting in another Middle East war because of Israel. What do you mean another Middle East war? Because of Israel, Israel asked us not to go to war with Iraq. If you think, oh, we want, we don’t want another war like Iraq, where Israel told us, Israel told us, don’t do that.

I don’t want you to do that. That is actively against my interests and this is well documented.

But it also doesn’t even pass a sanity test. Like what did Israel gain from our war in Afghanistan or Iraq?

Malcolm Collins: Like we were on, we were on the the meal board. People who say that are just traitors, they’re either getting money, I think directly from Iran, their, their fake accounts.

Simone Collins: I think it’s simpler than that. I think that there, because we’ve even been asked by some people what we think about the people on the right who are against this action because there are some people, and no,

Malcolm Collins: I, I don’t, I don’t believe there are really many people on the right against this

Simone Collins: action.

Well, I think if you’re anti-Israel, it’s really hard to stand this because this was Israel’s idea kind of. And if you are [00:41:00] anti-Trump, you can’t get excited about this. ‘cause then you’re giving Trump credit for doing something awesome. So there are going to be people on the right. Who are against this because of those.

So I, I want primarily

Malcolm Collins: I mean my take on this, right, is every real influencer who I follow on the right, like somebody who I consider like intellectually saying and interesting to listen to. I have not heard a single one of them frame this anything other than universally glowingly. The only people I’ve really heard go against this are people who either just are not particularly tethered to reality, just like cons.

Complete conspiracy, brain cooked people like say Candace Owens. And I don’t know if she’s against it, but I suspect she probably is ‘cause she’s very untethered from reality. See our episode on, on psychosis Maxing with Candace Owens. Or there are people who seem to be controlled opposition in the right, you know, like, Tucker Carlson and Nick Fuentes where, you know, they’ll, they’ll, they’ll stand, remember Tucker Carlson was standing Venezuela, [00:42:00] right?

Like before we went into this, like literally like Venezuela is good because they kill gay people. Like what? What? Yeah. Like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. This guy is not right wing in any sort of a traditional context. Right.

You know, in, in, in terms of like the saying. Right. And as we, we’ve done other episodes Nick Fuentes appears to be hugely AstroTurf, first of all.

And second of all, controlled opposition. I don’t, I just don’t understand what position did he hold? The controlled opposition wouldn’t hold. Right. Like, you know, whoever is elected the next head of the Republican party he’s gonna be against. And the fact that, you know, that today means that you know that he’s not interested in Republicans winning.

Speaker 33: and he knows, he knows that the Iranian government tried to have Trump assassinated, right? Like a government tries to have Trump assassinated. We assassinate their leader and he’s like, oh my God, how could you do that? The United States? Oh, that’s so horrible. . Early on when I covered him, I tried to give him the benefit of the doubt.

I tried to act like there was something real behind him, some sort of real movement. I just don’t buy it anymore. I don’t think anyone who’s seriously a right winger is [00:43:00] out there supporting the ayatollah of Iran., like, oh, if we had boots on the ground and I ran, if we had some major invasion force, yes, it would make sense to be against that.

But that’s not what’s happening. . So if you’re standing Iran right now, you’re just standing the ayatollah, right? You’re just standing the regime. And I don’t understand how any sane person with , a non completely leftist brain cook on things could be having these opinions. And so my only thought is, , the people who still support him after all of this, I just don’t really have any patience anymore.

Like, you wanna go out there and you want to criticize Israel’s actions in something like Gaza, I can be like, oh, maybe he doesn’t have all the facts, or maybe he doesn’t understand what’s going on or whatever. But when you go out there and you say, uh, this country that tried to assassinate our president, that we assassinated their president and we don’t have boots on the ground, and I don’t like that.

And there’ve been our, one of our primary, if not our primary geopolitical adversary for [00:44:00] almost half a century. . And I’m against us winning there. , That’s no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. When he goes, oh, I’m pro Epstein. He’s like, Epstein is cool, like, and awesome.

Speaker 37: Jeffrey Epstein was probably so cool. Like he was probably the coldest, coolest guy. You know?

Speaker 35: i’m like, what? Like when I saw that, I was like, oh my God.

Oh my God. Like, come on people. This is who you’re supporting.

When you say Epstein is cool, you aren’t speaking truth to power or something like that, you’re just reflexively saying whatever you think is the most offensive thing is because you’ve learned. It’s a brain hack for simpletons that gets them to follow you and cheer I.

Speaker 43: I wanna be in the Special Olympics. Bird.

Malcolm Collins: Mm-hmm. Especially given that he says he believes like life being as a conception. And he knows that we are fighting to make things like [00:45:00] abortion more restrictive, and yet he would fight against that. Right? Like the, the, that is like being supportive of what is apparently in his mind a genocide, but it’s just unimportant to him unless he can have complete ideological purity which is silly.

It, it, it, it shows to me that I don’t think he really holds the beliefs. He says he holds. Because if I believed that strongly that life began the conception, I would not be constantly sabotaging the party. Given, given what the other side believes. So I think some of them are just like controlled oppositions or people who are just trolling for trolling sync.

I really think Nick Fuentes is, is just trolling for trolling syn. And then he doesn’t know that he’s controlled. I think that he’s then just platformed and ad bought by by people who want to hurt because like, look, look, he’s everywhere all of a sudden. Right. How does that happen? Oh, because leftist news sources, right?

Then a bunch of Twitter accounts that are probably, you know, Pakistani, right? Like that’s what we saw with a lot of these, quote unquote, like based Twitter accounts, was the big XLE is a lot of them showed that they were never actually on our side. Right. The, the, and I was talking to this reporter, it was a reporter who reached out [00:46:00] for a major.

Newspaper and she goes like, what, what are the people who you, when I, when I’m watching my circle, you know, like leaflit and nux taku and asmogold, gold and stuff like that, people, I consider like normal, sane rightists. None of them have, have had anything to say about this that was negative. And, and these are people who, who might criticize other things.

It’s the right dad, but on this stuff, no, just like universal. Like what, what do you, what are you even on about is one when somebody’s like, well, Iran isn’t really our enemy. And like you can show a video from like, well this is them shouting, like, death to America, like last year. Like, what do you mean?

Like, this is in the party’s like bylines, right? Like Death to America. You literally like, do you take me for a complete imbecile? Like do you take, are your followers just complete imbecile? Like, do they not like understand like, what, what’s, what’s going on out there? Geopolitically

Simone Collins: speaking? Well, I think you’re forgetting that there’s a.

Non-trivial level of agreement with the Death to America argument among American progressives. [00:47:00] America is the enemy in their opinion.

Malcolm Collins: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. But these conservatives are citing was that team right? Like, so I think that that’s, that’s a big thing. And so I, I think a lot of it is just, I, I just, I don’t understand how you can be like somebody who has actually thought through this.

Even if you hate Israel, even if you think that and note, I mean, our position on Israel has tempered a lot recently. And you, you can see some of our videos on that. Even, even, even if you think that Israel’s manipulating us and we shouldn’t be giving the money and this disproportionately geopolitically helps Israel, which it does.

It’s still overwhelmingly in our geopolitical interest that this is resolved. And, and the war so far has gone overwhelmingly well. We just need to have the, the the moral fortitude to step back after we install another dictator. Right. You know, don’t change things that much. Let them stay whatever they want, just get them like what we did in Venezuela.

If we, and this is where things get scary, if we repeat [00:48:00] what we did in Venezuela, and this works out one quarter as well as the Venezuela situation did. This like if I’m Trump administration, it’s like, who’s next? You know, this, this changes everything about the level of power projection America has.

And, and the, the one thing I’d note on, on this situation is we were able to do this because of Mosad. Right. And if we, if we end up stabilizing the situation, it’s gonna be in a large part because of Mossad. Yeah. And that’s why it’s useful even if somebody is being a selfish and douchey friend, which I think Israel often is like, Hey, give us money.

Like, I’m only gonna be, it’s like, come on man, like you’re doing well. Okay.

Speaker 14: My trick don’t work on, I make only money.

Malcolm Collins: Like, stop shaking me down every time we hang out. Right. But like, genuinely, they also helped slip me like , the pathway that the school bully or whatever was going to be walking on so we could jump him. I’m like, I am really annoyed [00:49:00] that you’re a jerk to me and, you know, paning me for money all the f*****g time.

Speaker 14: I make only money.

Malcolm Collins: But, but that costs me less than being able to deal with a country that we’ve been trying to deal with for half a century.

Simone Collins: Yeah,

Malcolm Collins: this holistically. Now I also wanna talk about how much Iran screwed the pooch on this and how, like, so, so this war starts and Iran then decides that it’s gonna start shooting missiles at somebody who hadn’t even attacked them, which was the UAE.

So they sent, I think it was 350 missiles. All of them were intercepted by the ua e’s interceptive system, different from Israel’s interceptive system. But anyway it showed that it, it would potentially even better than the Iron dome. Really? Yeah. I

Simone Collins: didn’t even know they had one until you just mentioned it.

Sure.

Malcolm Collins: And this is huge for the UAE actually, and, and huge for geopolitics. One, it showed to everyone in the region that like, yeah, Iran will just randomly flail and start attacking you if you’re not like full threaded on their side. Mm-hmm. And they were shooting these into tourist [00:50:00] areas.

They were shooting these into residential areas. You know,

Speaker 38: And as I mentioned earlier, but I think it’s really important to reemphasize, is Iran has sent more missiles to non-combatant states than it has to Israel since the start of the war. Uh, this includes the UAE, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Oman, and Jordan. , And then shortly before the war Iraq, , and oh Turkey as well, if we’re including the one that went by accident.

So they just. File, flailing out and hitting everyone. I do not understand how you could be more politically inept. Actually. Wait, did Mossad infiltrate them and get them to do this? Maybe they did. ‘cause I cannot believe that anybody who wanted them to win would do this..

Do you see? I’m learning to think like, like a Jew learning to be sneakier. Here. I’ll figure this out. I’ll figure this out.

Malcolm Collins: So I think one UAE is like, oh, I’m glad we’re not like Iran’s friend. Like this is, this is, they were as bad as we thought. But the last time I was in the UAE and I was talking with one of my friends there his mom was telling me, he is like, [00:51:00] she’s like, you know, honestly, I go to sleep like afraid.

Like every night that Iran is gonna try something. ‘cause you know, they’re just across the Gulf. Right. You know, they’re, they’re just like, you see this body of, that’s Iran on the other side of that. And they, they hate us, right? Because we’re in this wider, like Saudi us. Alliance. And and so a lot of people in the ye lived every day in fear, and I think that we don’t, we don’t realize that, that they lived in fear of somebody who wanted to kill them within bomb range in the same way that like South Korea does.

And for a lot of them right now, they’re feeling like that threat is basically gone. The amount of, I think it was like using hundreds of thousands of ba missiles a day on the first days of the war, and now it’s down to something like a hundred a day or something like that. Like just barely any, like they’re running out of stockpiles.

Simone Collins: Well, but also the United States and Israel, as I understand it now, have shifted from taking out their leadership to not taking out their defense defense building infrastructure essentially. Like they’ve, they’ve gotten rid of all the existing stuff. Now [00:52:00] they’re destroying the stuff to build their defense architecture.

So yeah, they’re not gonna be able to even make more bombs and missiles, et cetera. Right.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. No, it’s, it’s, it’s I mean basically the idea is, is destroy their infrastructure and leadership enough that it’s another few decades before they can reorganize anything. And they seem to be doing a pretty good job of that.

But the, the thing is, is that if Trump wants to continue this staying friends with Mossad is going to be useful in this type of power projection because they’ve shown especially with the pager text, like, and, and, and being able to know the room that he was in enormous aptitude at that

Simone Collins: is so fascinating.

I wish I knew how I knew that.

Malcolm Collins: So, well, the funny, here’s that anecdote. So, and this was actually leaked by the Young Turks. Okay. So there’s, they, they would be in a place to know this, right? Like Chuck Youer this, this comes from him. ‘cause I was trying to confirm this. Is at one point they built an anti Mossad task force in Iran.[00:53:00]

Okay. And they later found out hold on.

Simone Collins: No, no. That like within it was a Mossad agent.

Malcolm Collins: No, it’s not just that within it was Masad agent. So it, it came out yeah, the, the head of the unit was a double agent for Masad of course. And then there were 20 other double agents in the task force.

Simone Collins: It’s like mostly massage agents.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. It’s just like not an organization to take out, you know, the Jews. And it turns out and

all

Simone Collins: these people start volunteering for it. They’re like, wow, let me help. I’d love to help. This sounds great. Sure.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Yeah. It’s like, actually, you know, if I was a Middle Eastern country, I would start one of those organizations to, to like track down Mossad.

Then like a year later, just go and be like, we’re executing everyone who works here. Like we, our honey trap for Mossad is just created an anti Mossad agency. Oh

Simone Collins: my God.

Malcolm Collins: But yeah, [00:54:00] no, I, it’s, it’s just ge geopolitically where we are right now. I almost, I’m just like astonished. I’m astonished if, if you’re like a politics, why we spent our entire lives trying to deal with Cuba, Venezuela, and Iran.

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: And it might be over and even it’s over. Everyone else is cornered at this point. And that what, what does that mean, geopolitically for the United States? I, I mean, we are at a, a level of geopolitical dominance right now that no political power has ever had in human history like this. This might at this point be bigger than what we had in the end of World War ii.

And that’s the final point I wanted to make here. When I was talking to this reporter. I remember what I wanna say. She’s like, well, weren’t people in the right like America first? Like, weren’t we against invasions? And it’s like, yeah, we were against invasions. ‘cause like, we hated what happened with Iraq.

We hated what happened with Vietnam. We didn’t wanna [00:55:00] get dragged into something like that again. We love killing terrorists, right? Like we, we want to be the hero country that goes out and takes out bad guys, right? And then has people from those countries cheering in the streets and everything. We just didn’t like the business of nation building, right?

We didn’t like the business of boots on the grounds and occupations. We thought. You can’t have your cake without your bag of s**t. And so we were like, well, every cake has a piece of a turd inside it. And so I’m not gonna bite into that cake anymore. I’ve learned my lesson. Right? Trump has shown us a way to have our cake without a big turd inside it.

And if he continues to execute on this as well as he has in Venezuela, because with Venezuela, we didn’t know this was actually gonna play out well. And now that we know, in hindsight it appears to have

Simone Collins: [00:56:00] mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: It’s like, well, what now? Right. Like, what now? I don’t know. I, I, I, I honestly you know, we’re, we’re entering a new world.

And this also could be very good. Like I’ve often said, I think that the world that we’re heading into is gonna be a by power structure, not the US and China, but the US and Israel is being the two core powers and thus potentially antagonistic to each other as world powers often are. But if we integrate the way that we are handling this, it becomes harder for us to become antagonistic to each other.

And so we might actually be able to achieve a degree of global geopolitical dominance without you know, they just gotta hope dims don’t win and screw all this up. Somehow be like, oh, we’re giving, we’re giving it all back.

Simone Collins: I mean, odds are that they will win in the next presidential election.

That’s just generally how things go. So, I mean, what about that? Because what this has also demonstrated is that it is a [00:57:00] nation’s imperative to, I guess, have nuclear capabilities because I don’t think we would’ve done this to Iran had we known they had usable nuclear weapons. And now this is demonstrated like, well, okay, I need to make sure my nukes work or else the United States is coming for me.

Like I don’t think Kim Jong Un is on the chopping block because we know presumably that they have nukes also. Have you heard like they’re thinking it looks like his daughters next in line, which would be delightful. I mean,

Malcolm Collins: are you actually like win for feminism?

Simone Collins: I mean, she’s a Yeah. Girl. Girl. Bus girl, whatever.

Female

Malcolm Collins: dictator, mass murderers.

Simone Collins: She’s got style, she’s got verve. And ever since, so Ozempic hit, she’s slimmed down a lot. She’s looking great. So yeah, I didn’t

Malcolm Collins: like the fat version of her, the thin version. You know,

Simone Collins: she looks chic. She looks chic. Gotta say, you know, it’s the new flex. You try to get an invite in South Korea, which is kind of saying a lot when everyone else [00:58:00] is starving.

The whole like moon face was more for like, well she has food. We don’t, she must be a big deal. But yeah, I dunno what,

Malcolm Collins: what’s more likely to happen with Korea, just so people know. North Korea has been doing a lot of trades with Russia right now to expand its military force and modernize it because it was, yeah, dreadfully out of like Iran by the way showing off us made military planes in like its propaganda videos that are literally 70 years old and made by their enemy.

It’s like, bro, like

Simone Collins: isn’t it showing video game footage as well?

Malcolm Collins: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. They’ve been showing video game footage, AI footage.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: So, we are, what’s weird that Trump has somehow been able to do is to be the global good guy, take out the dictators that the own people hated in these situations without the boots on the ground, without the enormous cost.

Mm-hmm. We are getting the jingoism of post-World War II America of, you know, Iranian women running around on the streets of New York, hugging random strangers and screaming that, that [00:59:00] is V-Day. Like without, how can you do this?

Speaker 18: Oh my God. Oh my God. I said he’s gone.

He’s, he’s gone. He’s gone.

Speaker 17: How can you be silent? This is not okay. I am, I, I’m no longer gonna support Democrats. You Iranian. None of you should support Democrats. I’m honest. Honestly, I’m, I’m livid. I’m livid. I’m done with them completely. Just acknowledge the truth. Islamist Marxism is a terrorist entity. 90 million Iranians held hostage.

For 47 years because of your silence.

Malcolm Collins: Right. Like, and what a lot of people say is, well, you know, you’ll pay the cost eventually, but like, he handled Venezuela.

So I guess we’re gonna see, we’re gonna see

Simone Collins: yeah, I am. What, what [01:00:00] did they say? Cautiously optimistic. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Oh the, the point I was making earlier, I dunno if I finished this one, is now with Israel moving into Southern Lebanon and wiping up Hezbollah. Mm-hmm. Like, there isn’t even like the ability for power projection in Iran anymore with Hamas and Hezbollah taken out.

Right. So like, this is. Fascinating in terms of like, what are the Saudis and the UIE gonna do after this, right?

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Anyway love you. I thought it was funny, like the last time we were talking about this was, was Venezuelan and people were like, oh, you just wait and see everything’s gonna fall apart, or they’re not gonna, we’re I am like, I don’t know, it seems like they set things up pretty well.

Or, or the US is gonna face like major retaliations for this and you, the, the things will never be the same. And it’s like, well, when, right. Yeah. Could we face retaliations? Yeah. But. From who? Like independent terror cells. There’s nobody who’s a, a terror cell tomorrow. That wasn’t a terror cell yesterday.

Like they might use this as justification, but if they were [01:01:00] nobody was radicalized by the killing of the ayatollah. Okay. Yeah. This, this is ridiculous, right? When people say this, especially if you’re like an Iranian and you just saw the mass slaughter of the Iranian people, right? Anyway fascinating, fascinating time.

Love you.

Simone Collins: I love you too.

And. It’s

Malcolm Collins: not actually particularly clear that you

Simone Collins: had this, you can still see through bruising through dermal blend is the the makeup of choice for battered women who have bruises to hide. I don’t, I didn’t find like your mom’s derma blend, so I think you can still kind of see though completely.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah.

She, her like half of her face is black right now.

Simone Collins: Yeah, the, the inside of my mouth is like a poorly sewn together ragdoll

Malcolm Collins: don’t talk much. Okay, sweetheart. I’m trying to, this is why we haven’t been doing new episodes recently, guys, and we had to wait to talk about this subject.

Simone Collins: It’s not just that, it’s not just that, like my face is [01:02:00] immobilized and incredibly painful and I’m constantly spitting out blood.

It’s that. Then I caught the cold that the kids had and then I poisoned myself with expired oatmeal because I can’t eat anything but like really soft, mushy foods and then I got terrible food poisoning. And

Malcolm Collins: I saved you from that by, by just going through. You’re like, oh, I think it was a surgery. And I go, I don’t think it was a surgery.

What else changed when you did the surgery? Did you eat anything new? And I’m like, and was it expired? And you go, yeah. Well, it was very old. And I was like, Simone, that’s expired oatmeal.

Simone Collins: You

Malcolm Collins: could die. You’ve got

Simone Collins: ergot green. Don’t kill people. And I’m like, oh wait. Ergot poisoning, et cetera. Right?

Malcolm Collins: I, I love that your knowledge of history is how you know about this.

You’re like, oh, well, oh, by the way, other fun thing for people, the agents on our fab.ai in, in extremely alpha version are finally live at this point,

Simone Collins: so

Malcolm Collins: excited. And you can test them and play with them in on the Discord, [01:03:00] the, specifically the R Fab Discord, not the Basecamp Discord make bug reports.

And I try to be check those every morning and be responsive to those. So the site’s getting updates typically multiple a day. And everything else is pretty stable on that. So I’m sorry, I’m just sort of like pulling up where I did my notes on this.

Simone Collins: Yeah. I’m keen to get an update from you because I was kind of in a, I was, you know, like walking up the stairway to heaven dying in bed.

And then I like get out of the haze and I’m like, wait, what? Christine Nome was fired. Wait, what? Like, Iran is falling apart. What is happening? Like, you, you fall asleep in this timeline for like two days. You know, you’re, you’re out of, out of content, you know, you, you go backpacking or something and the world is completely different when you come back.

I think it all started with that one guy who went on our long backpacking trip when COVID started. Just like, just before it became a big thing and then came back and the world was like completely different. And he was like, oh my god. Oh [01:04:00] God, I can’t smile. I look like George Washington when he like stuffed the cotton balls.

Now you

Malcolm Collins: can really see your relation to him now.

Simone Collins: Yeah. When he, they, they, for context, he lost most of his teeth. Oh God. Is this genetic? Maybe he also had a thin biotype like I do, and his teeth just fell out because of that too. But anyway, he lost most of his teeth, had dentures that included some of the teeth from his slaves, which he apparently bought below market value.

So not great,

Malcolm Collins: sharp, sharp businessman there.

Simone Collins: I mean, you know, we love, we love a deal. I, I can’t, yeah, I’m with him on that. I love a deal. But anyway,

Malcolm Collins: I think of Simone, I think of you as an ethical woman. I think if you own slaves, you would buy their teeth at below market value, below market. You are an incredibly ruthless individual.

Simone Collins: Well anyway, so his portrait artists didn’t like the way his mouth looked caved in when they did his portrait. So allegedly they stuffed cotton balls or cotton batting into his mouth. And now I am kind of, [01:05:00]

Malcolm Collins: for

Simone Collins: people, people who don’t

Malcolm Collins: know, she is probably the most closely related person to George Washington, currently living.

Simone Collins: Well, he is a great, however many times over uncle of mine.

Malcolm Collins: So he didn’t have any kids himself, but she has descended from two of his siblings. Which you know, she, she should be, if he has accepted kingship, she should be the current Empress of America. And you’d be doing a great job of it. I, I know people would trust you to handle things.

Simone Collins: Oh, thanks. I just like him. I, I don’t want it. So,

Malcolm Collins: you do, Simone, you better want it if that job comes your way.

Simone Collins: Come

Malcolm Collins: on. All right, so we’ll get started here. You Yeah. But like George Washington, you’re also like, eh, I don’t really want it, not my thing.

Simone Collins: Teeth falling out. Puffy face, anorexic. He was so anorexic.

You’ve seen his uniform with the Smithsonian Museum, right? No, I wouldn’t have fit into that thing.

Malcolm Collins: And you were anorexic at one point. So you see just so many

Simone Collins: similar. I still am, I’m just a functional anorexic. Just like you’re a functional alcoholic, right? Like we, we, we just, we skirt the lines [01:06:00] like this is functional.

No, this is what I mean by functional. I literally had a DEXA scan to see exactly what my body fat composition is, to keep it at exactly the bare minimum, to be healthy and to have healthy pregnancy. So I’m at 20% just like that is, that is at the top end of what like a female athlete would have. And that is at the bottom end of what like a normal, healthy, reproductive woman would have.

And that is exactly where I’m gonna stay.

Malcolm Collins: All right.

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.

Speaker 40: Okay. What are you guys doing? Yep.

Are you guys cleaning up?

I love you guys. Do you wanna kiss this one? No. No. You’re too busy. You too tight. Are you [01:07:00] too busy for a kiss?

Working hard or hardly working. Right guys? Yeah.

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