Iran War Update & Is Cuba Really Next? | EYES ON GEOPOLITICS

**Jack Murphy** (0:01)
Hey, everyone. Welcome to Eyes On Geopolitical Podcast. I'm Jack Murphy. And today, Demetri is out because he got something eating at the buffet. So he's sitting upon the throne, holding on for dear life as we speak.
But we got a great cast of characters here today, joined by Mick Mulroy, Marc Polymeropoulos and Jon Hackett. Really happy to have all of you guys back on the show. Thanks for coming on a Sunday afternoon.

**Marc Polymeropoulos** (0:31)
Good to be here.

**Mick Mulroy** (0:32)
Yeah, great to be here.

**Marc Polymeropoulos** (0:33)
Poor Dee, what the heck? I hope he's got a nice bidet. He needs a bidet.

**Mick Mulroy** (0:37)
It wasn't Greek food, was it? It wasn't a Greek food buffet.

**Marc Polymeropoulos** (0:43)
He needs a little bidet with a little hot water splashing and won't get irritated.

**Jack Murphy** (0:47)
A little slap and tickle, he'll be fine.
All right, so on the agenda today, unless any of you guys have things you'd like to add, I got Iran, the ceasefire is ending, I think in a week. Talk about foreign intel services, who's better than who, and the story that came out this week about the CIA starting up some sort of Cuba task force. I don't know, do we want to start at the top with Iran?

**Marc Polymeropoulos** (1:19)
All right.

**Jack Murphy** (1:20)
So any thoughts on what's going on with that? As far as the negotiations, I mean, it's see-sawed back and forth so much that honestly, I'm not keeping track of it.

**Marc Polymeropoulos** (1:33)
So what's interesting today just to frame this, and then because others are smarter than I on this, but everyone beats up on Axios all the time, but they are a reflection of what the administration is thinking, and Barak Ravid, and Axios, Ravid had a conversation with Trump today, basically said he's doing nothing. He said nothing is going to happen, he's going to keep the status quo, and essentially try to squeeze the Iranians economically. Clearly, he does not want to go back to any kind of military confrontation. I think we've certainly talked a lot about the lack of military options, and there's reports that Chairman Joint Chiefs Kane and Admiral Cooper basically told him or warned him about, essentially, that a lot of these are not going to work. This is where we are now, but I think the key thing, and maybe, Jonathan, you can jump in on this because everyone is going to be, okay, so this is going to be the US policy, what is Iran going to do?
I think that with the old adage of the enemy gets a vote, I don't think the Iranians are going to sit around. Isn't there an opportunity for them to increase hybrid attacks, to increase the use of the proxies, and to start to continue striking ships in the Strait of Hormuz? It's not like the Iranians are going to sit around, they're going to inflict some pain because they seem to have a bit of leverage and they think they have the upper hand. What are your thoughts on that?

**Jonathan Hackett** (2:52)
Yeah, you're absolutely right, I think they're already doing that because we see in Yemen just yesterday, the Houthis launched what they called a retaliation attack against the Saudis because the Saudis had launched something, they actually put a drone into Yemeni airspace, but the Houthis I think are kind of testing the perimeter to see how much they can actually do in a future movement, to see what kind of air defenses are up right now, what kind of counter-UAS platforms are available, how would the Saudis respond? It looks like a little bit of perimeter testing, kind of like touching around the edges there that they're doing, and we also see the Iraqi side, there's some Iraqi Shia militia groups that are doing some preparations and some kind of early stage movements that are outside their baseline. I wouldn't be surprised if these were kind of being organized to possibly be used, but maybe not necessarily be used, but it's kind of how we think about positioning forces. We want to have guys there in case we need them. And I think that's what we see moving right now is that Iran is looking at, well, what happens if Trump decides to do something before the election or right after the election? We need to have forces ready already there that could be activated quickly without much assembly required. But then on the domestic front, you've got cracks in the regime. So you have people in the regime that really want this war to continue. You have people in the regime that want to do domestic oppression as the number one priority. And you also have this kind of what could be relatively described as dovish folks in the regime, which to the rest of the world, they are not doves, but compared to the hardliners, like Pasezhkian, the president, clashing with the Supreme National Security Council, which is the strategy setting body that's directly subordinate to the Ayatollah.