Middle East Roundtable: What's the Breaking Point?

Ladies and gentlemen, we're back with another episode of the Middle East Roundtable with me, Wilfred Miner, Africa correspondent for War Fronts, Home Fronts, and basically all our other media properties. And I am joined today by my good friend, Kyle Mojan. Kyle, say hi.

Hello, everyone. Kyle here. We once again joined this time as well by Houthi Evin, who is back from Hormuz as well as a brief stint, I believe, in Yemen.

Evin, is that correct? Yeah, that's right. So I was sipping Mai Tais on the Omani coastline this week, kind of watching cargo ships go by, when I heard kind of a faint booming and echoing sounds of gunfire in the distance.

And I thought to myself, oh, the Saudi counteroffensive must be starting. So I picked up my things, I put my lawn chair on my back, and I kind of trundled over to Yemen, where I got to see the Saudi counteroffensive in action. I'm back with many revelations and many insights and all that.

So just to give a quick update on where we're at on the Houthi front. So folks who've watched our recent War Fronts episode will already know this, but just to kind of go through it again, essentially over the last few days, Saudi Arabia has been flagging and now has begun a large scale counteroffensive.

This is around 100,000 Yemeni troops, so supported by Saudi Arabia, loyal to the internationally backed Yemeni government, as well as associated militia fighters.

Supported by Saudi warplanes, and they are essentially trying to surge back and take the coast, where the Houthis, of course, took over a few weeks ago to give themselves fire control over the Red Sea. So they could monitor ship traffic coming in and out, fire down onto vessels that were making the straight crossing, so on and so forth.

Now, that offensive had a good early start, kind of thundered out to the city of Dabab.

Where you can then establish control over the peninsula that goes into the Bab al-Mandat Strait directly. Lots of quick local victories, a fair number of war crimes on the Saudi side, but, you know, this is the civil war in Yemen. We can kind of anticipate a certain patina of war crimes as we're doing all these things.

That counteroffensive was then supposed to push up to the city of Mocha, further up the coast. That has stalled. It looks like the Houthis were able to mobilize some local defenders from elsewhere, from up the highlands, to come down and kind of hit the Yemeni offensive from the side, force them back a little bit.

Yemen has now established fire control over the land that you would need to sit on to actually get to the strait, if that makes sense. So that peninsula is, the Houthis can't move anything on there without being hit by Yemeni forces. However, that seems to be where it stopped for now.

The Yemeni coalition, seeing this, is starting to push up into the highlands to gain control over a military base, over a couple of other defensible points to kind of give themselves a little hinge to use, to then start sweeping further up the coast.

So, as of now, it looks like the Yemeni forces do have a local strength advantage, both in terms of numbers and equipment, but the area that they're moving into has been pretty quickly mined by the Houthis. It's a place where the Houthis were able to call in.

And as of right now, it's going to take some time to kind of restart the momentum here. So that is where we stand on the Houthi front. So, Evan, something that I've been sort of mulling over here is the activation of the Mecca agreement between Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Pakistan.

So we've seen both Turkey and Pakistan eventually, more recently, come around to... actually committing some forces to assist Saudi Arabia here. But this has only come after both of them spent weeks undermining the entire alliance from essentially its outset, given how shortly thereafter the Houthis really ramped up all of this.

So from where I'm sitting, I sort of have to view this as the worst of both worlds, where they've undermined the... sort of... integrity of the alliance, while then ultimately having to commit forces to it regardless.

So I have to wonder, first, what was the strategy here? And two, where do you see Mecca really going from here? Yeah, my understanding of this situation is that most likely, once the Saudis could kind of say, you know, we have these 100,000 or so Yemeni forces, we're going to back it up with really significant air power.

That was enough for Pakistan and Turkey to kind of look at the situation where they could essentially say, yeah, if we choose this moment to back Saudi Arabia in this counter-offensive, we're going to be able to claim a victory, right?

This is going to go pretty well for us, unlikely that we won't be able to at least recapture the territory that directly overlooks the straits. So good moment to declare victory, let's push in.

Now, Pakistan has also been slowly surging troops to Saudi Arabia over time. The numbers that were known prior to this past week were about 5,000 Pakistani troops, as well as air defense systems and some fighter jets. According to Reuters, that number has now increased to somewhere between 30,000 and 40,000.

So really significant spike in terms of the numbers deployed. They still are not tasked with going into Yemen, other than some Pakistani military advisors who are on the ground, kind of in special forces. So that's going to be a really big part of Pakistan's role.

Same deal with Turkey. They're going to be surging in support to Saudi Arabia. Partly what seems to be happening here is the Mecca countries want to really clearly delineate kind of in the same way that NATO does, right?

We will support each other for matters of territorial and national defense and national sovereignty, but not on foreign military expeditions. So similar to the way that the US, for example, can go and declare war on Iran and NATO isn't obligated to come in and help. It seems like Mecca's going to have to come in and help.

It seems like Mecca's kind of going for the same thing. Now we can debate about the effectiveness of that, where you have these Houthi rockets and ballistic missiles and drones all crashing down onto Riyadh and onto Saudi Aramco facilities and onto Yambu and onto the East-West pipeline, so on and so forth.

Then again, you can also say, well, Pakistan and now Turkey are committing air defense.

They're committing troops. Those troops don't necessarily have to be effective for the Mecca provisions to have been held up, right? The Mecca provisions.

If they go there, they did their best. That doesn't mean they're going to be effective per se. So in that sense, we are seeing the alliance kind of use this war in real time to try and like pin down their own confines of their position in regard to each other.

At the same time, it does seem like the timing of this was very intentional that they've chosen to really visibly step up commitments to Saudi Arabia when they know that there will be a victory on the ground and coming. I mean, that victory has been more limited than they seem to have anticipated.

Yemeni forces were falsely claiming to have reached Mocha on the prior, you know, on the day before the momentum kind of stopped.

So unclear whether or not that momentum will be recoverable. Certainly right now, it's going to be tough to really hit the kind of breakthrough in return that the Houthis were able to do a few weeks ago. But as of right now, that's where we stand.

So, Evan, a question for you. And, you know, this is a question I jokingly ask. This is a question I jokingly ask.

Before we even began recording the podcast today, do we owe the Mecca agreement an apology? Because we have spent a lot of editions of this podcast since the agreement was signed clowning on it, saying it's not worth the paper it was written on. So with the latest developments, do we owe the agreement an apology or is it still in that state, in your opinion?

I would be curious to hear what you guys think. But I kind of come down on the side. I think this agreement is kind of in a gray area right now.

So it's not quite to the point where it's like a rock solid NATO-esque alliance. At the same time, I think it's been worth pointing out from day one, this was a very new alliance. It's not necessarily realistic to expect that this alliance is agreed.

And then on day two, Saudi and Turkish and Pakistani forces are all kind of coming together in common defense. Right? It's not necessarily realistic to expect that this alliance is going to be an alliance where you have strategic command architectures.

You need time to pull resources, standardize, figure out who's going where in terms of a conflict. So in that sense, this alliance is kind of thrown together at the last possible moment to deal with an act of conflict when really you wouldn't want to try and have an alliance like this kind of being born into a situation like the alliance is currently facing.

At the same time, as much as we can give some benefit of the doubt for that, I do think that if you're going to announce an alliance like this at a time when at least one of those members is facing an active threat from abroad, you should expect that alliance to be tested.

And if you can't respond decisively in a way that affirms that alliance is strong and will be there for its partners, then you're going to be starting from behind. Now, is it realistic to assume that just because, say, Pakistan and Turkey would have intervened in Yemen, that would have committed them to all future interventions? No, absolutely not.

But I do think that seeing the situation that Saudi Arabia was in and certainly the situation Saudi is in now, I think there was a real argument on the Turkish and Pakistani side that should have been made and should have been accounted for to say, in this moment, if we want this alliance to be legitimate and if we want to legitimize it ourselves, we may

Have to take a much more kinetic role here in Yemen than we bargained for and allow the details to work out later.

You can draw back and say, well, that was a one time thing, we're not going to do that again. This is how the alliance will work in practice here, the parameters around it, and then draw back this absolute commitment to solidarity.

It's much harder to say that you have an absolute commitment to solidarity after you've shown that's not the case. Yeah, I'm pretty sympathetic to the fact that this alliance will probably only get stronger from here on out. They are moving together security-wise as well as national interest-wise, but I am quite critical of that.

And I think part of the reason why it's only going to go up from here is because there's not a whole lot, there's not much room to go down from. So it would be one thing if this Houthi situation had really only kicked off again after the Mecca agreement was signed, but the situation had been escalating there significantly before then.

So the Houthis announced an outright blockade.

They announced an outright blockade of Saudi shipping back in July 2026. They had been hitting, I believe they hit the Jizan, the city of Jizan before the agreement was signed as well. So this was hardly unexpected.

And so Pakistan's line here was that, okay, well, this is a pre-existing condition is the way one of their officials put it. So that doesn't quite qualify. I'm not really sure that has baked into the agreement.

Especially from the Saudi perspective. And I don't really know how well that holds up. As well as with Iran, I mean, Iran technically pre-existing condition because Iran was attacking Saudi well before this agreement was signed.

I don't think that Pakistan and Turkey can simply just wipe their hands of anything going on there because of the fact that it was happening beforehand. So, and unlike... To your point there, Evan, unlike with Iran, with NATO, where the US sort of chose this war, the United States is not under attack.

But if Iran was somehow, of course, this is not in the realm of possibility here, but if Iran was launching directly on the United States, the US could invoke Article 5. And that would be collective response territory. So that really does sort of raise problems here.

Because Saudi is quite literal. Under attack on two fronts at this point. Yeah, absolutely.

And the pre-existing condition argument is so funny to me, partly because this is not a new problem that Pakistan and Turkey and Saudi are now just experiencing. The NATO Alliance, for example, if we want to stretch to that example again, NATO Alliance has provisions for this.

You can't join NATO as a new entrant nation with an active conflict on your doorstep.

So Ukraine, for example, can't become part of NATO. It conditionally cannot become part of NATO as the Alliance acts now and approaches its own security without first resolving the war against Russia. Moldova couldn't enter if it wanted to because it is currently splintered by Transnistria and so on and so forth.

Countries that have these internal rivalries or internal factions that they're struggling to contain can't come in because introducing that pre-existing condition to the NATO Alliance is now basically impossible.

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So Saudi Arabia was in a difficult position, yes, but not as bad as it was right now.

And Pakistan can claim pre-existing condition as much as it wants, but it just feels like it's a negative partner in terms of this deal.

And I don't really see the deal becoming stronger over time, because what if, and you know, we don't really need to get too deep into the hypotheticals, Pakistan and India have long-standing issues, while Saudi Arabia and India have really good ties.

Will, if, you know, Pakistan and India go to war, will Saudi Arabia now see that the issues between Pakistan and India are a pre-existing condition that don't concern it?

If you're signing a deal, an agreement, where the main thing is a neutral Article 5 style mutual defence clause, where aggression against war is not a problem, then you need to get too deep into the hypotheticals. One is aggression against all of us. You need to be willing to live up to it.

Yeah, and I think there is some discussion to be had as well about the rest of the world coming in and kind of contributing in any way here, because we've seen the European Union mission to the Red Sea, which has been criticised recently by Kayakalis, the EU's own foreign policy chief, as well as Italy's defence minister, as being woefully insufficient.

It calls for at least 10 ships. There are currently six in the Red Sea.

So, you know, the European Union mission, to the extent that it exists, certainly is not doing enough. The US is contributing intelligence support. It has no interest in coming in with kinetic airstrikes right now or any other action against the Houthis on the ground.

So too with the rest of Saudi Arabia's regional partners. We've seen the Emirates now appear to be more willing to cooperate with Saudi Arabia on the Houthi issue specifically, because like Saudi Arabia, the Emirates do not want the Houthis in control of the Red Sea. If that can be helped, that's just kind of bad for everybody but the Houthis and Iran.

All of that being said, this is a pretty critical international problem that this Saudi offensive has not been able to really fully dislodge. Taking the Bab al-Mandeb straight specifically does help. That helps create more of a buffer.

It helps limit the Houthis' reach, helps limit their intelligence capability. But the fact that Houthis can kind of sit on the missiles and drones at will against whatever and whoever they want is fundamentally unchanged. They can do that a few kilometers short of where they could do it before.

They can't reach quite as far. But the entire Red Sea, the southern Red Sea is still well within range. So I don't see how leading this to the Saudi and Pakistani and Turkish alliance right now is going to create the kind of momentum shifts that would get the Houthis off of that territory.

But it doesn't seem like the rest of the world is willing to come in. The rest of the world is not willing to come in because Saudi Arabia decided to make the situation in Yemen its personal playground, for lack of a better word.

They decided that we are the ones who are going to settle this, and we are the ones who are going to be the ones responsible for this.

And when that failed, to the extent that it failed before this most current offensive, there was a feeling within the rest of the world that it was going to be the ones responsible for this.

And I think that's okay now you want to make it our problem and from where the rest of the world is standing I truly get what they're going for especially because the Houthis did say that they didn't want to target any ships other than Saudi Arabian ships so I see why the rest of the world didn't get involved in this conflict and the Houthis actually I'm

Surprised to be saying this but they've played their cards better than perhaps their Iranian counterparts they've been far more focused on limited strategic objectives relative to Iran whereas like you said Wilfred the Houthi focus was very domestic oriented and very focused on Saudi shipping Saudi blockade of Yemen all of this stuff whereas Iran has been

Far more wide-reaching in terms of shutting down the entire Strait of Hormuz and some of this is a capability issue if the Houthis really wanted to they can as they've they showed in 2024 and into 2025 they can cause a lot of havoc in Bab al-Mandeb but overall they are more limited in terms of capabilities than the Islamic Republic but regardless they

Nevertheless opted to stay relatively constrained they were discussing with the United States that they want to maintain the sort of status quo with US overall so they've played their cards better than Tehran has in my mind and I think that's a very big indictment of Tehran to be honest because if a group that is you for all intents and purposes your proxy

Right if a group that is your proxy is making better strategic decisions than you are that is an indictment of the leadership within Iran it's an indictment of how they're doing this conflict how they're approaching it because as long as they're making decisions that are negative than you'll be they're going to put continue putting themselves in a strategic

Corner so there was a report I can't remember who by off the top of my head I'll try find it before we finish recording this but there was a report that said the Houthis are looking to Africa in an effort to expand and you know stop just being a spook within Iran's will but to become a hub in and of itself that can nurture and develop other armed groups

We're already seeing that in Al-Shabaab in Somalia with the Islamist groups in Sudan so if the Houthis are capable that capable of making such sound strategic decisions then they might pose a much bigger problem in the long term because of just how deeply they seem to have infiltrated they seem to have infiltrated in Africa you actually sensed that making

Any progress though because overall I know so Somalia was very pro-saudi on this and I don't really from what I've seen haven't noticed too much success to speak of and on that front but I certainly defer to you when it comes to African developments there it's it's it's in a weird situation forgive me for summarizing but it's such a weird place but I can't

Say one will or the other because this is something that has been developing over the past few months it's not something that we have a lot of documented history to look at and we don't necessarily have a situation where a group has gone from being spoke on Iran's proxy will to becoming a hub in and of itself where you know we can draw comparisons and again

With all of the issues that are facing the Houthis in Yemen right now I don't think they have the necessary time and talent to spare focusing on this expansion strategy versus just trying to survive right now yeah that's kind of the Paradox of the Houthis right now which is that they are able to make these territorial gains especially in kind of these

Low-lying Desert areas where this like swarming gorilla Houthis like offensive warfare can do really really well for them at the same time but Houthis are really not doing well among their own people Yemen never really left the humanitarian crisis of the peak Civil War years and there's been much more discontent with the Houthis bubbling up in their own

Territory Houthis by the way control like I believe it's about 80 percent of the I mean population lives in Houthi controlled areas versus a much smaller proportion that live under the internationally recognized government so the Houthis are able to parlay this recent expansion into a play for legitimacy and when we've seen that they're doing very well for

That like you said Kyle they play their cards very well in this regard and they have for a while at this point at the same time they are trying to figure out their international situation potentially gain the ability to work with other nations in a kind of more aboveboard way to surge humanitarian aid to secure investments to start stabilizing so on as kind

Of wrapped into this push for legitimacy before their domestic situation really deteriorates they are a land holding government right and they've proven their ability to govern for a while but they at the same time are still a non-state rebel fashion that just happens to control a good deal of land and a good deal of the people who live on it so that is not

An easy situation for them especially given that it doesn't look like an on current pace that they would be able to push far enough to gain control of Yemen's major oil fields which would put a lot of money in their pockets but they're not going to be able to do that anytime soon so it is a tricky situation even if they kind of do have the geopolitical

Finesse to make the most of it at times speaking of geopolitical goodness let's move on to a country that has shown it doesn't really have that even at the best of times let's move on to Iran and the situation within the country right now Kyle you did one of our most recent pieces on Iran talking about the situation within the country just the Iranian state

Preparing to go to war against its own people so what is the situation like within Iran in terms of its economy in terms of just the battering it's getting from both the primary and secondary sanctions from the U.S yeah so it's kind of a mess Iran has been in the situation where we have these divisions hardliner more reformist oriented the factionalism there

Is really taking off to the point where it's no longer just hardline versus reformist though anymore there's infighting between different hardline groups so the way I opened the preparing for war episode was when your country is facing all of this economic catastrophe there are a number of different ways you can go about it you could do economic reform you

Could try to negotiate a deal with to get out of the current stalemate war situation or in the Islamic Republic sense you could just go about crushing anyone who complains and they seem to be heavily leaning towards the ladder there so overall there are different factions here the this man tieb has been building up essentially a domestic group that does that

Is going through military training receiving arms at this point and essentially other hardliners as well as some of the reformists have formed this like odd Coalition where they are raising concerns about where this could actually go so ultimately this guy is sort of seen as a rogue agent tie-up that is and we'll have to see where that goes but they

Ultimately are pretty willing to repeat the events we saw back in January with the caveat being the lesson they took away from that is they just should have acted sooner before going all out and I honestly have very little reason to doubt their sincerity there in terms of their willingness to crack down again and they may need to do something on it because

The situation continues to devolve the Iranian real is now at 2.7 million so just for some context here I mean 1 million real to the dollar was considered catastrophic before the war and then after around the time the war started it hit 2 million or shortly thereafter and then it's continued to its free fall into 2.7 and it's it's not showing any signs of

Recovery from there and this has just been something that you can only ignore to such an extent before it really comes back to be too much and I think we are approaching that territory at this point yeah I always come back to the same question with Iran right we've talked a while ago now about kind of one of the one of the if you could call it this one of

The benefits of being an authoritarian state in a situation like this is that you don't necessarily have to spend much time waiting for public opinion to cooperate when you can quite frankly leverage just extreme violence to keep your people in line right Iran has made its entire approach to this war contingent on its ability to take and absorb a significant

Level of pain that I think most countries around the world that are that kind of started from a better position wouldn't really have been able to endorse so much just by nature of them quite frankly when you're that you know when you're in that much of a crisis to begin with a little bit more crisis on top of an existing crisis is almost in a way easier to

Manage and tolerate than adding a crisis when there was before none so my question in all this is yes Iran is deteriorating very quickly but do we have any sense of where the breaking point is because right now it seems like Iran can kind of just take and take and take and get its people to stretch their tolerance just a little bit longer right now I'm

Necessarily saying we're going to ask you to remain in this position for three years four years five years but come on one more day one more day and then tomorrow I'm going to ask you for one more day and we just got to take a little bit more and this will be done one more day right is there a point where that will clearly fall apart for the Iranian regime

Or are we just kind of like trying to figure that out and unsure of how we get there I've been thinking about that question of pressure for a long time now because I did a video for France.co at the start of this war about what life is like for the average Iranian person who's just trying to get through their day go on with their lives just raise their

Family do average normal stuff and the more I think about it the more I think as long as the Iranian government can show that it has a monopoly on violence and the ability to inflict as much pain as it wants to on average civilians then they will be willing to go just one more day one more day it's not that bad it's not it might be bad today but you know

Tomorrow could always be better there's always that expectation that things can be better and going to the streets poses such a high risk poses such a significant threat to their life that it's it's not worth it Iran achieved I think one of the greatest victories for a totalitarian regime I've ever seen when you know in January they killed thousands of their

Own citizens to just instill that sense of fear that sense that you know people are always being surveilled and you know they're only reinforcing it with the constant executions so I at least for now from you know where we are sat on the 7th of October I don't see a situation where there's mass public anger against the Iranian regime so overall I think that

It's a very delicate balancing act because if there's one thing Iranians do know it's that this is going to be very bloody if anything like January repeats itself the regime is simply not going to go quietly and the overall situation with the military IRGC besieged they've been heavily beefing up through recruitments through focusing on rearming Israel in

Particular during upper their operation Roaring Lion really focused on the besiege they did some damage not nearly as much as they may have hoped but so Iran has really been focusing on beefing that up so they're ready for any other big protests and I think that they are in a situation where they would be able to pretty resolutely crack down on anything

Again writ large though these divisions inside the country are going to be a situation that essentially cannot indefinitely be tolerated especially with the leader of mushtaba Khamenei this is something that just people have sort of reached the sort of status quo thing with this where it's like you know I mean if he hasn't been on the job for what six months

Now then he you know it's not really necessary I think that this is reaching a point where that might be no longer acceptable Iran is designed to have a very strong central leader a very strong Supreme leader who presides over these factions both Khomeini and then Khomeini were very active in the factionalism they intervening on a daily basis to sort of

Manage and make sure neither neither side got too much of what it wanted and that's something that has really sort of been absent from this equation we do have who is much more sort of I don't I'm not going to call him acting Supreme leader but he has been doing quite a lot is how I'll put it on that but he is not the Supreme leader and so these orders that

Are coming occasionally they're not that frequent but doors that do come from allegedly mushtaba who we still do not have any proof of life on are becoming suspect so a recent report this is raising eyebrows with Iranian officials oh this is from mushtaba is it you know you sort of see where that's going and now we're seeing that there are officials in the

Government who are describing the current arrangement with mushtaba as quote-unquote unsustainable and that they're disappointed with his performance throughout the war in the most charitable way possible and ultimately they're talking about replacing him after the war wraps up to speak honestly the only situation in which I see myself being replaced is if

He has been dead for this entire time and if you do get to a point where there is either a different Supreme leader who comes in or just this current vacuum this infighting is going to continue to play out and I think that could be something that the regime is not really ready for we're we're seeing this there's there's a there's a hard line movement trying

To impeach foreign minister Abbas iraqi and just a total confusion as to where to ultimately go on this stuff because while they're accusing iraqi of being too willing to make concessions the hard the super hardliners including Mohsen razai has have been saying okay well this is actually the worst economic situation that Iran has ever faced since the atomic

Revolution in 79. how do you square that circle eventually this is going to reach in my opinion a breaking point there so most of it is a very interesting character for me when I did my piece for home fronts looking at who would be the most likely successor to his father the late kamini I have much to have a fast simply to get him out of the way and say hey

This guy is kamini's son he has these credentials by the time he wasn't even an official ayatollah but I don't see him becoming a supreme leader because you know obviously all the allegations of nepotism and of course you that's something that was that the Iranian regime was desperately trying to avoid being seen as you know a regime filled with nepotism

Right so I've always been curious about you he's a point he's a point letter supreme leader and just basically ruling Iran and running this war remotely he is acting like a Cameroonian president Paul beer who earlier this year disappeared for a record 73 days and you know for our American listeners it's like Mitch McConnell who was absent from the Senate for

More than 90 days the difference is beer and McConnell have returned they're both in office whatever that means for them and their counselors but mostaba is still still missing so and you know he's missing at one of the most critical junctures of in Iran so according to CNN the Iranian economy shrunk at an annual rate of 10 percent between March and June

It's doing really really badly so where is mostaba we've asked that question multiple times but where is the guy and if he is replaced who wants his job who is the target that comes with being the most powerful man in Iran especially now that the economic crisis is apparently so bad that the country's oil minister resigned about two days ago Mohsen pakneshad

I hope I'm pronouncing that correctly he resigned two days ago so again it's just a difficult economic situation in Iran yeah I really wonder where that kind of line of no more tolerance is going to be because like we've said it's difficult to imagine any way for Iranian civilians to express the fact that they've reached a point of no return right what do

You do if there's simply no ability to take to the streets to demonstrate peacefully to voice concerns online or voice concerns through elected representatives or anything else right it doesn't seem like after the again incredible display of violence from the Iranian regime early this year where you know we've talked many times about the 30 000 plus

Protesters killed estimates that are still floating around unverified right it's difficult to look at that and then say oh well Iranian citizens in this situation can justify going back and demonstrating in any way no matter how upset they might be or how much strain they might be feeling because that's the level of violence that will come back at them again

At the same time those those aren't the only regime indicators that Tehran has to be looking at I guess I really do want to double down on this question of like are there even if there's not a true threshold where we could say yes this will no longer be tenable for Iran or XYZ close or far from that threshold what are some indicators that we can look for to

Suggest that Iran is getting closer and closer to that point I would say a continued look as to into what the factions in Iranian politics are saying so the fact that Mohsen Rezaei in particular is coming out in the scale of this shows to me okay the situation has reached a point where the hardliners are willing to at least acknowledge that there's a problem

Which is it which is progress here in terms of getting any concessions out of the government the first step is indeed admitting you have a problem okay and they have reached they've reached that point so it's still a pretty uphill battle from there but ultimately once we start seeing the logical conclusions to okay we have a problem on this economic stuff

Well okay well what do you do about it Rezaei in particular seems to be waking up to the idea that you can only wreck the country so much before it becomes no longer in your own National interest and especially infant as they've continued as a Iran has continued to lose control over the Strait of Hormuz with more oil flowing through this whole strategy is

Sort of caving in on itself it's the most maximalist possible approach with as minimalist as possible returns on investment there is almost no upside here to the approach because had Iran even just maintained and gone with the incredible MOU that was signed over the summer a truly incredible I mean they would have been flushed not just with the 300 billion

Of reconstruction funds they would be selling their oil on the open market for the first time in almost a decade now the blockade has been back in effect for months at this point and ostensibly the strategy there was to keep Hormuz under total Iranian control and to maintain as much pressure on Washington as possible that's not really working Washington has

Not bent on this including despite the fact that the Republican Party is probably going to get pretty handedly defeated in the midterms but Trump has maintained the status quo approach so there's a strategy from the Islamic Republic on this it just simply is not working in my mind and let's take a turn away from Iran now and discuss what's happening on the

Other side of this board so we've made a lot of discussion in past episodes of course about the coming elections in both the United States for the midterms and then in Israel so let's start with the United States first we have this carrier group moving toward the Middle East this third carrier group now with about 2 000 Marines in addition to around 7 000 8

000 sailors headed into the region getting ready to potentially take hostile action after the midterms do you see that as a really significant or legitimate threat at this point from the U.S or is that just kind of pre-election bluster to try and move the needle I could see the U.S revamping and returning to some action after the midterms I don't think it's

A very strategic option the one thing that was quite effective was hitting the Iranian outposts and military presence along or moves the U.S has been more successful than I would have thought on that given the performance during the actual Epic Fury they were hitting this stuff hard and were unable to significantly deteriorate Iran's military presence there

To the point where Iran still basically controlled her moves this has changed of late so that did ultimately pay off albeit very late and should have been thought of way before the war kicked off but regardless escalation from here kinetically is not going to make Iran any more willing to make concessions the operation economic Fury side of things if you

Will is has been more effective on that and I think that if Washington wants to get further concessions so that you can have a MOU that does not include Iranian permanent control of our moves with all of its wonderful service fees as they call them then the blockade route is the only option and the amount of economic pain I really want to like stress this

Point the amount of economic pain that Iran is going through specifically because of the secondary sanctions that best U.S Secretary of Treasury right Scott Besson put on Iran has been so severe that I don't think I've ever seen Iran in this situation I just wanted to point that out because I was very skeptical of the ability of sanctions to impose any form

Of behavioral change you because sanctions have existed and you have been put on Iran for years now but I have never seen a sanctions regime this effective yeah it really is something because very much to your point there Iran has been sort of the go-to example of what a sanctioned country who does what they want anyway looks like it's really them in North

Korea nobody else really comes comes close to that level but it really has ramped up because it does go to show like the sanctions regime in place is unless you're willing to commit massive forces it's really not that strong when you have major countries like China and Russia willing to do business with said sanctioned countries so Iran was despite the

Massive sanctions we're still able to conduct a lot of oil sales via the so-called dark Fleet or black Fleet or however they call that with both China and Russia as well as some others who were willing to buy it was sold at a discount because of the hassle of doing this on the black market but regardless they were able to carry out a significant amount of

Sales on account of the blockade and in particular again the reason I've leaned so much into the economic side of things the discussions about taking Karga Island was just like so ridiculous to me the what is the point of taking Karg Island the point of taking Karg Island has to do with Iranian oil okay Iran is not selling any oil out of Karg Island right

Now the blockade is doing that without a single U.S soldier on Karg Island I mean the amount of like blood loss on both sides that would have carried been carried out had the U.S taken card would have been just like unfathomable to me when I wrote a script months ago Evan you actually were the one who edited this one for me after I submitted that it

Discussing like U.S ground operations I just I went and I grabbed the nearest beer I had because I'm like this is such a nightmare situation for me it's completely unnecessary it accomplishes nothing and thankfully we did not go that route but I do worry a little bit post midterms we might it's still very unlikely but that's still something that's a concern

Of mine but we can hopefully get past all of that sooner rather than later well we might well I agree with you Kyle that's I hope we never get to that point because too much of what's going on in the world right now you know we're going to have to do something about it because too much of what's going on in the world right now you know we're going to have to

Do something about it we're going to have to do something about it because too much of what's going on in the world right now you know we're going to have to do something about it because too much of what's going on in the world right now you know we're going to have to do something about it because too much of what's going on in the world right now you know

We're going to have to do something about it too much blood will be shared and even a single drop of too much blood will be shared and even a single drop of too much blood will be shared and even a single drop of blood being shared is too much I think blood being shared is too much I think blood being shared is too much I think working this job and just

Seeing how much working this job and just seeing how much working this job and just seeing how much bloodshed how much more is happening bloodshed how much more is happening bloodshed how much more is happening around the world has just exhausted me on around the world has just exhausted me on around the world has just exhausted me on any further bloodshed

Anymore I am any further bloodshed anymore I am any further bloodshed anymore I am one of the people hoping for world peace one of the people hoping for world peace one of the people hoping for world peace more than anything else but there were more than anything else but there were more than anything else but there were reports this week specifically from

The reports this week specifically from the reports this week specifically from the Wall Street Journal that a new U.S Wall Street Journal that a new U.S Wall Street Journal that a new U.S strike group and naval deployments could strike group and naval deployments could strike group and naval deployments could be involving an additional nine be involving an

Additional nine be involving an additional nine thousand to ten thousand troops will be thousand to ten thousand troops will be thousand to ten thousand troops will be heading to the Middle East and you know heading to the Middle East and you know heading to the Middle East and you know this includes more than 2 000 Marines this includes more than 2 000

Marines this includes more than 2 000 Marines from the Island Marine Expeditionary from the Island Marine Expeditionary from the Island Marine Expeditionary units so things are not are not looking units so things are not are not looking units so things are not are not looking good Evan what do you think about the good Evan what do you think about the good

Evan what do you think about the new deployments yeah I agree that there new deployments yeah I agree that there new deployments yeah I agree that there is some chance that the U.S may want to is some chance that the U.S may want to is some chance that the U.S may want to try limiting ground operations which is try limiting ground operations which is try

Limiting ground operations which is for me very concerning how and much where you are on the idea that this would just be a ruinous proposition for the us i mean quite literally what the iranian side has been begging for since day one the example that i know that i used in the past and that i always come back to americans are not ready to watch young marines

And sailors run from their lives run for their lives from fpd drones chasing them on footers that will be that gathered and then clipped and shared online until the end of time the american public is absolutely not ready for that the support that trump has for this work currently will collapse immediately which will essentially leave the australian formulas

In the persian gulf under under iranian jurisdiction right because at that point iran can rebuild its stocks it can it can just impose the level of control that it initially tried to so exactly yeah so i really don't think that there's any way that goes well for the us at all in a world where the us had quite frankly a more legitimate case to begin this war

In the first place and had more public buy-in certainly that's a different conversation there is no public buy-in at all there really never has been since day one there's certainly not now and there is no remaining tolerance on the us side for additional losses so i unfortunately can see with this particular administration getting to a point where the

Election the midterms have been lost and they just kind of say you know what this is the thing that we have authority to do we can't really rely on any laws passing in the near in the next couple of years through the house and the senate this is what we have jurisdiction to do we're going to do it and then surging troops and for that reason i do think that

Would be a really devastating proposition if it were to happen ultimately i think thankfully we're most likely not going to have that happen but the problem of being an analyst in 2026 is that whenever i'm whenever i'm negative about something i end up being wrong and whenever or excuse me whenever i'm negative about something i end up being right whenever

I'm positive about something it doesn't always work out quite as well as i would have hoped but yeah that's pretty much how it goes this is the situation this year for sure but i do think that's a big point there to make evan because this is my argument for the popular support slash lack thereof of the war is the way i describe it now is it's it's soft

Unpopular so it there are not very many people who are thrilled about it there are not many people who are very gung-ho about the way that this has gone down the total number of people who are genuinely very irked at this very annoyed who are out in the streets protesting this war is very small there are some who are ranged from annoyed to outright

Disappointed or even mad but there's a lot of people out there who are out in the streets protesting this war is very small there are some who are range from annoyed to outright disappointed or even mad but there are some who are out in the streets protesting this war is very small there are some who are range from annoyed to outright disappointed or even

Mad but there are some who are out in the streets protesting this war is very small there are some who are range from annoyed to outright disappointed or even mad but even mad but this is nowhere near what it would be like after a ground operation and i think a ground operation would take it to the point where it actually is like genuinely a political issue

Genuinely a political scandal of sorts and i think so i think that would just be all-time worst possible option again for no real return on investment when you have this blockade in place yeah it's worth pointing out that even if we look at some of the most unpopular wars in u.s history iraq sorry vietnam certainly comes to mind the vietnam war took years to

Cook before it got to that point and the war began with significantly greater u.s support than the war in iran did at the same time the remaining support for the iran war in the u.s has dropped fairly quickly and certainly would be galvanized if the u.s were to try a full-scale ground operation or even a limited one in which the u.s were to take these troop

Casualties that are quite frankly voluntary on the u.s side but there is no strategic urgency at this point in this conflict with iran to break the current status quo so completely that you need to put troops on the ground it's just there's no there's no real strategic justification for it other than simply wanting to create the conditions to claim victory

For again really political reasons beyond that there's just no reason to do it and i think if you were to see that happen right the u.s is starting from such a poorer such a poorer start with public opinion that it really doesn't necessarily need to take the years that vietnam did to get to much larger anti-war action here in the states especially if the

Congress is also on the side of opposition how much do you think congressional power actually really matters here out of curiosity to get in trump's way almost not at all yeah but i do think that there's something to be said for basically so elections and their repercussions kind of create a permission structure for public action until the next election so

If you look at the 2024 election where trump was you know coming in winning all the swing states and what was what he certainly claimed what a fair portion of the media as well pushed at the time and what even congressional democrats pushed is kind of a sweeping mandate to govern that is set the tone for the last few years that has kind of set the upper and

Lower bounds of expressions of support and also expressions of discontent elections are a really efficient way for the U.S to kind of recalibrate its own understanding of where public opinion stands because this is a country where you know yes there's there's lots of talk about individualism that certainly runs through the society in many ways you also don't

Want to be the one person protesting on your street corner for something that nobody else cares about right and elections are kind of an easy way for people to shift their individual understanding about where their country is on a given topic I think if the elections are to go the way that they seem like they're going to go and we see a pretty significant

Wave of support for U.S Democrats then that in turn shifts the kind of political decision-making window for individuals to engage more openly in their own communities especially if the U.S were to commit troops and then sustain losses that again are going to be seen as completely unnecessary yeah I'm pretty I mostly agree with that the thing being

Congressional power just being so weakened so we seem to agree most there the stat the size of midterm elections though is always something I sort of play down whichever side is making more grandiose claims so I mean if you look at one of the more large-scale blowout midterm elections I think probably the biggest one of my life was 2010 where just and you

Can look at that after or go past that to 2012. so 2020 midterm elections Democrats get absolutely clobbered Republican wins in Massachusetts of all states for the U.S Senate Obama goes on to comfortably win a election in 2012. so I'm just I've never been super convinced as to the directional stuff of the midterms and betting for what this is worth because I

Know this is just very far out there but despite betting markets being very leaning towards Democrats for midterms this year there's no real direction for who's most likely to win or be the next U.S president right now Vance is the leading candidate there with but that's just a 20 percent AOC second place at 13.

John Ossoff at 10. so really sort of all over the place and there's just going to be so much that happens between midterms and presidential elections I'm not super convinced one way or another that this is going to be that much of a of a topic come then I think it will be a topic if Vance and Ruby or other ones you know vying for the GOP's nomination because

People tend to remember disastrous Wars and I don't think the media will let the GOP candidates forget especially if you know they have ties to the administration that they were involved in one of the most disastrous Wars that caused the GOP to lose the medium you know with an even greater margin than they normally would have if again if that's what happens

How much do you think the midterm is because of Iran though and not just more general other issues so again this is my reading as an outsider looking in I think Iran is one among very many issues there's a lot of disillusionment with Trump in general of course the economy not doing well is going to be the most significant thing but there's just that

Disillusionment with Trump and he was the guy who said nope we are not going to go into any new wars we're going to stop the wars and you know right now he's on record saying you know Iran can blow up was it San Francisco I can't remember it off the top of my head and of course there is some context to that statement but when it's clipped when it's shared on

Social media it comes across as Trump giving tacit approval of Iran to blow up a you know a blue state a blue territory that voted against him and against the Republican Party multiple times so with Trump starting this war and with him being positioned as the anti-war candidate you know with Don Jr Trump's son going as far as saying if you elect Kamala will

Be at war with Iran and you know Trump being the one who led the U.S into war with Iran that disillusionment with Trump I think because of Iran more than anything else and its effect on the economy I think that is why you know in a roundabout way I'm just trying to say Iran is having an impact on them I certainly think it has an impact I the Wall Street

Journal had an excellent op-ed I forget who wrote this but they had one the a week or so ago saying that the GOP is running on empty I think that is a very good way of putting it like what is the case to vote Republican in the fall like can anybody tell me because I can't the question that has been asked on TV multiple times and I've seen the Republicans try

To answer it you know with varying levels of failure all that they can say is you're voting for us so that we keep the Democrats out not so that we have some grand achievements or anything but basically it's just that we keep the Dems out exactly and that reminds me a lot by the way of the 2020 presidential election what was the case of like of the three

Campaigns Trump ran that was in my opinion by far his like worst and I don't mean in terms of like agree or disagree just in terms of his actual like performance on it he was just this like very angry bitter guy who was like if you don't vote me back in the country's gonna go to like there was no real case there whereas other his other campaigns caught on

Issues that people actually cared about so ultimately I think that it's probably going to go quite poorly for the GOP I just think it is a bit more domestic oriented than anything and I think the truly universal just inability of anybody unless Evan wants to come in and save the GOP here with some massive reason to vote Republican then I don't think that the

Fact that he will make answer that is pretty damning well before Evan tries to save the GOP the opinion piece you're mentioning Kyle I saw it as well it was by the Wall Street Journal editorial board oh gotcha yes so Evan will you try save the GOP hold on to your Budweiser boys here's how we're gonna do it all right we're not no there's no I mean it seems

Like from Trump's and the GOP's own admission the rationale at this point is just pretend Trump's on the ballot if you like Trump please vote because we would like more time JD Vance was out basically with an apology video or something that at least seemed like it basically to the effect of yeah we just we need more time that seems to be the thrust of what

They're they're saying and that of course predicates the expectation that Americans like what they've been doing so far which all of the credible polling around that suggests that is not the case as does the state-by-state polling for the coming election it seems as if that's going to be tough Wilford you asked in the chat I'm going to mention for our

Listeners does the GOP still drink Budweiser after the anheuser-busch thing I honestly could not tell you could not tell you I'm a Guinness guy myself so Kyle can you weigh in here I don't think they do this was a this was this I mean their sales got crushed by that it was it was a pretty big boycott that went down there well anyway this is been our little

Segue into beer fronts thank you very much for joining us before we leave beer fronts I just want to ask Evan you're a Guinness man Kyle what do you drink oh man so I do love modelo Negra which is actually one of the things that became one of the or modelo especial in particular caught on after Budweiser I've been a modelo guy for years and years though so

Not particularly influenced by that one but Guinness is also quite good Evan have you ever had modelo Negra yes and I think it's you have made a good choice there we go it is it's not obviously not quite as heavy as Guinness Guinness is in a league of its own and you can almost put a fork into one of those bottles there but it's it Modelo is very good at

What they do what about you I personally drink Jack Daniels because I grew up as a fan of Frank Sinatra and the chairman of the board was buried with a bottle of Jack so actually that's exactly what's going to happen to me as well I'm gonna get cremated with a bottle of Jack that's that's my drink for life that is a hell of an aspiration I'm right there with

You that's awesome that's dedication I will say for folks who are into the Guinness side one of the surprise beers of my life has been if you're ever in Northern Portugal try super Bach dark it's a lot better than you're gonna think it is it's trust me on that one but I do want to move on to one other electoral question for you this time over in Israel so

Again we've seen kind of the Israeli public turning back and forth a little bit based on the push and pull of what seems to be a really really high stakes election cycle for everybody involved where do you see the balance of power at this point between Israel's parties and do you expect Netanyahu to be able to retain his coalition come the end of this month

Oh man this is a million dollar question isn't it so the my usual answer on Israeli politics is that I'm not going to predict things and I think we're still a little too far out because it just changes so frequently it's formalized so we have a bit more indication but things continue to shift around as of right now the safe money would be that Netanyahu does

Not pull it off but betting against Netanyahu is always a politically fraught move he has come back from all sorts of things throughout the years so ultimately this is really going to come down to what Israelis have to say I'm sure we'll have at least one video out by then on this and until then though I really am going to refrain from weighing in too much

On it because it's just it's it's too unpredictable there's so many moving parts and for Netanyahu's Coalition he ultimately has the bigger uphill battle because all of his parties have to be able to get across the threshold and get a certain number of seats it's more the opposition certainly obviously needs to do well but they're able to get a majority a

Bit easier depending on how certain Maths play out there so the long and the short of it is I'm probably going to take the coward answer until we get a bit closer but if you tune in next week I may have more of a verdict well for do you want to weigh in on this one nope I defer completely to Kyle when it comes to internal Israeli politics because I realized

I thought I knew enough about Israeli politics until it hit me that I didn't know enough so I will again with Kyle take the coward's way out and say let's wait and see yeah there we go on our end kind of a geopolitical like finding the you know finding the person's story we know we all thought we knew about Israeli politics and then Kyle and it's just you

Know it's it's it's it's it's it's you know it's been a real education for us so thank you for that but yeah I appreciate the praise this was somebody the other day was I think polymarket posted that the Israeli opposition accuses Netanyahu of being pro-Palestine and then so I mean of course this gets so many views and it just it's speaking because a lot of

People would think like okay a lot of the opposition parties are more moderate on some of these issues and some of them are and then some of them are not which is where you get I think Wilfred you and I at one point exchanged some commentary that Netanyahu really has become almost like center-right in the country I remember saying something to the along the

Lines of we might end up actually missing Netanyahu and I never thought I'd ever see something like that and for our audience who's wondering why Kyle was laughing I officially dubbed my friend Kyle Tel Aviv Kyle just you know so yeah I legit I really I find Israeli politics to be very fascinating so just that idea that you know the opposition a public

Opinion you know especially outside Israel will think that the opposition will be more moderate but a lot of them are not and again we might get to a point where we miss we miss baby and yeah I never thought I'd ever say those words again and maybe that's an appropriately discouraging note to end on given the way that we usually do and also the fact that

We're a bit punch drunk it seems like today too much bud too bad so as we look ahead into the coming week let's take our final little pass around the circle Kyle let's go to you first what are you watching in the coming week what should we all be aware of so I really want to keep my eyes on what's going on in Hormuz as well as domestic Iranian politics is in

Terms of the factions in terms of who's coming out and admitting or saying what in terms of where this should go from here I think that's really going to be determinative as to is Iran going to be willing to bend on Hormuz and until we see more I don't think that they really are but I also no longer think they really have the luxury of eternally putting this

Off so that's going to be priority for me and then I'll I'll consult my sources as thoroughly as I can and perhaps have a verdict on the Israeli elections for next week but no promises well with Tel Aviv Kyle taking the situation in Iran I'll continue to monitor what's happening with Saudi Arabia Turkey and Pakistan because that's for me it's such an

Interesting piece of the world to look at right now I just want to see whether you know we'll see more signs of this Alliance strengthening or if it's still not what the people it was written on and for me of course you would expect who the heaven of the warfront seem to be watching the situation in Yemen which I will of course I also do want to take

Everybody's attention and point you toward Iraq so the U.S pulled out it's its last few troops last week a couple days the Islamic State launched an attack south of the city or I believe south of the city of Kirkuk one Iraqi federal policeman was killed several others others were injured the U.S has now left Iraq and we should expect to see a security vacuum

Develop there numerous Iranian sources have kind of said the same thing that Iran sorry Iraq as much as the country's leaders would like to say they're ready to kind of take on a full security responsibility for themselves that's not necessarily the case right now and where you have these run back militias all kind of hanging out in the country where you

Have the Islamic State obviously kind of in this quiet tucked away but potentially very soon resurgent form that's something we should all be watching so keep an eye on Iraq obviously Yemen as well because there's this active counter-offensive trying to develop and push a little further than what we're used to but I think it's going to be a little further

There with all that said thank you very much for everybody listening if you've gotten this far in the episode you were almost certainly one of our premiumfronts.co subscribers if so thank you very much you are the reason that we are able to do what we do here both on the round table on due South or other podcasts we'll check that out if you haven't done so

Already on warfronts on home fronts on our newly launched defense front channel where you're going to see I believe Kyle's debut episode pretty soon indeed and all kinds of other crunch projects including ones that are super secret and we're spinning up in the background that you don't know about yet so thank you very much for your support thank you for all

That you do if you're listening to this and you are not yet subscribed please consider doing so it does go a very long way and again helping us to do all of those projects that we do for free for everybody as well as to preserve our independence and ensure that we can keep on bringing all this news as best we can so thank you very much this has been Evan

Maloney with Wilford Mina and Kyle Moran the middle east roundtable at france.co we'll see you next time