Trump Goes from Obliteration to Negotiation on Iran

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<p>In the past few days, Donald Trump went from threatening to obliterate Iran's power plants to announcing a surprise diplomatic reprieve and declaring that the war has been won. This episode breaks down the whiplash: what actually happened, whether the talks are real, why an agreement between the US and Iran will be extraordinarily hard to reach, and why $580 million worth of energy trades just minutes before Trump's announcement reek of insider trading and corruption. Ben and Tommy also cover: the US allowing Iran to sell $14 billion worth of oil, Iran firing missiles at a joint US-UK military base, Israel's creeping occupation of southern Lebanon, signs that Trump is actually harming far-right parties in Europe, and how a workout app put a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier at risk. Then Tommy talks with Edward Fishman, the author of <a href="https://bookshop.org/p/books/chokepoints-american-power-in-the-age-of-economic-warfare-edward-fishman/c7daeb1977d6235f?ean=9780593712979&amp;next=t">Chokepoints: American Power in the Age of Economic Warfare</a>, about the ballooning economic cost of war with Iran and how it’s revealing America’s economic vulnerabilities.</p><p>For a closed-captioned version of this episode, <a href="https://youtu.be/jivWc8QbbO8">click here</a>. For a transcript of this episode, please email transcripts@crooked.com and include the name of the podcast.</p><p>Preorder Ben’s book All We Say: The Battle for American Identity: A History in 15 Speeches (<a href="https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/all-we-say-ben-rhodes/1148264021">Barnes &amp; Noble</a>, <a href="https://bookshop.org/p/books/all-we-say-the-battle-for-american-identity-a-history-in-15-speeches-ben-rhodes/c9d9b22b61e6fd44?ean=9780593595121&amp;next=t">Bookshop</a>) and subscribe to his Substack <a href="https://benrhodes1.substack.com/p/notes-on-the-stories-we-tell?r=7jalf&amp;utm_medium=ios&amp;shareImageVariant=overlay&amp;utm_source=ig&amp;utm_content=link_in_bio&amp;fbclid=PAZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAc3J0YwZhcHBfaWQMMjU2MjgxMDQwNTU4AAGnk2XQpGCmzcvVGkeFlK9dqpiOZOtrjYa6vZNZOGIUYKNGWNuwRdTS-TcWTxc_aem_CO-34uPQ7U7nZXxTI-IbdQ&amp;triedRedirect=true">here</a>.</p></div>