Threatening War Crimes - July 16, 2026

**Cenk Uygur** (0:00)
You're listening to The Young Turks, the online news show. Make sure to follow and rate our show with not one, not two, not three, not four, but five stars. You're awesome, thank you.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:11)
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**Rosa Calderon** (0:13)
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**Cenk Uygur** (0:38)
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**SPEAKER_5** (6:17)
I don't play with lions, I don't play with those.

**Cenk Uygur** (6:19)
I don't even do roller coasters. Well, hello.

**Cenk Uygur** (6:59)
Well, The Young Turks, Cenk Uygur, my guest host today, Ryan Grim, fun for everybody. Welcome to the show, brother, how you doing?

**Ryan Grim** (7:07)
Fun for the whole family. I'm doing good, how you doing?

**Cenk Uygur** (7:09)
Good, good, good. We're featured in that book back there. We've got people, and not only that, that's up on shoptyt.com. Go purchase it now.

**Ryan Grim** (7:17)
That's right, get your copy, they're going fast.

**Cenk Uygur** (7:20)
Oh yeah, they're gone almost. I need you to panic, shoptyt.com. All right, seriously guys, we got a big show ahead for you guys, including a couple of stories from DropSite News, including the Iranians warning JD Vance that Kushner and Witkoff are self-dealing and using the peace negotiations to make money for themselves. Jesus, man, no bounds at all. And new plans for concentration camps in Gaza, so that's also a little bit later in the program. Potentially attacking Cuba and how and why are we going to attack Cuba? And the devastation we're already causing there. But my favorite story of the day is later in the program where Pete Hagsdoth makes a case for gender affirming therapy.
I did not have that on my bingo card. That is wild, okay, so that's later in the show.
And by the way, and tonight at 9 o'clock, special coverage on TYT, I will be covering Trump's nonsense speech to the nation tonight. I will be doing play-by-play coverage and a summary afterwards. And I think that there might be some surprise in that speech, but we'll see, I have my own theory on that. We'll do that later in the program, but let's start with the Iran War.
So, Donald Trump has an idea for how to take a disastrous war in Iran and make it much, much worse. So what's being considered now, not only a much heightened full out war against Iran again, but ground troops. Ryan, let me get your quick thoughts on how disastrous this could be.

**Ryan Grim** (9:06)
Quick thought is, it's completely and utterly insane. It was a terrible idea when the US had its full magazine of ammunition and defenses and aircraft carrier groups a couple months ago. Didn't work then. How we could do it within a much weakened state is like just the fantasy of a sundowning lunatic, frankly.

**Cenk Uygur** (9:28)
Yeah, well, there's a couple of lunatics at play here, including Benjamin Netanyahu, of course. So, I want to talk about the practical effects of the war in a minute, because that's a really important point. But first, find out the facts of what's happening today so you get a sense of why we're so concerned that it's gonna get to that level. So we'll go to the Wall Street Journal first. They explain Trump hosted a situation room meeting Tuesday evening to discuss the potential seizure of Karg Island, which to be honest, sounds like a pirate island that you'd hear from the Pirates of the Caribbean, Caribbean. Anyways, and other territory along the Strait of Hormuz using US troops as well as the potential bombing of a tunnel complex, more tunnels, at Pickaxe Mountain, curiously with an English name in Iran, a nuclear link site at the US has yet to target.
Great, we have something we have left to target in Iran. Okay, the president hasn't made a final decision on next steps and the war officials said, and he insists privately and publicly that he would prefer resolving his dispute with Iran diplomatically, I want to come back to that with Ryan. Cuz I don't believe that that's true, or I'm not sure that it's true. That's why I want to have the conversation, but more from Wall Street Journal. But the diplomatic gridlock has prompted Trump to ask aides for new escalatory options that could force Iran to surrender or at least promise to stop attacking commercial vessels in the street. All right, let's pause here cuz we're gonna get the ground troops in a minute. But Ryan, two things there. Number one, do we think that it's Israel that's gotten these crazy thoughts into his head or is he just genuinely this dumb?