Trump Drags South Korea Into His Iran War | Silk and Steel

Jamarl Thomas (0:00)

I see them in the background. My man, a good friend of the show, Carl Zha. How are you doing, Carl?

Carl Zha (0:06)

How are you, Jamar? How are you? Good to be here.

Jamarl Thomas (0:09)

I'm doing okay. I heard that you are here. I appreciate you for joining me. And just for the audience, and maybe I can read this. Carl Zha is ho... No, I can't read this.

Carl Zha is host of Silk and Steel Podcasts focused on China, surrounding regions, their history, culture, politics. You can follow Carl on Twitter, at Carl Zha. You can also follow his podcasts on Twitter, at Steel, Silk and the Letter. And you can subscribe and support the podcast on patreon.com/silk and Steel. Carl does a fantastic job doing a breakdown of Chinese history. And he is astute in most areas of Asia, all areas of Asia, I should say. Carl, thank you for man. I appreciate you being here. There was a fascinating story that popped up. In fact, there were a few fascinating stories dealing with China, some of which seem to be off their rocker. This idea that the US should think of attacking China in order to prevent it from getting general AI. Okay, that's pretty outlandish. The one that's more grounded and I think is more interesting to me, especially considering what's happening, is the South Korea story.

So I saw the story, I think it was yesterday or day before yesterday, but I didn't entirely put too much thought into it until you sent me another follow up to it.

Of course, there were protests at the US Embassy by South Koreans effectively saying, we do not want to die for America and Iran. Basically, the South Korea is preparing, and I've heard multiple conflicting stories on this, but let's go with the main story, that they are preparing their military to work with the United States against Iran in the Iran war that the United States started.

Now, I don't know if it was you, or if I was talking to someone else that pointed out that South Korean military basically is given to the United States in times of war. I found this to be pretty amazing. Is the story true? I mean, they're talking about even passing legislation in order to allow the South Korean military to work with the US in the context of the Iran war. Break this down for us, what's going on?

Carl Zha (2:18)

Yeah.

Last time I was on your show, Trump was not happy that South Korea said no to deployment to the Strait of Hormuz. So Trump said, well, okay, since I'm good friend with Kim Jong-un, we're just going to scale back our joint military exercise with South Korea. And to which the South Korean president said, okay, that's fine. We actually want a formal peace treaty with North Korea to conclude the state of hostility that existed since the Korean war. So thanks. Yeah, no thanks. But now it seems like United States must have applied some different pressure from different vectors. So South Korean government is basically bending to US pressure to agree to send forces to the Strait of Hormuz, just to please Uncle Sam. Now, of course, understandably, the South Koreans are not happy about this because this is not their war. They have no stake in this, other than the fact that the US-Israel illegal war on Iran has totally jacked up the energy prices for South Korea. They don't see this as their problem.

They don't want to die for America to die for Israel. It just does not make sense for them. But at this point, United States is desperate. As we speak, they have currently escalate up the ante by bombing Iranian tanker around Carks Island, and Iran did a massive retaliation by hitting US bases in Jordan. US launched over 100 missile interceptors, and the Iranian drones and missiles still getting through. There's no way US will be able to keep up, by the way, at that pace of missile interceptors because US is running out, and they are not making anymore because China has put export control on the real earth that's necessary to make those missile interceptors. They are at an untenable situation. This is why they're trying to loop in all their allies to help. But realistically, even a couple of South Korean warships showing up is not going to make realistically any difference. Iran actually announced they have launched a couple of ballistic missile attack against the two US missile destroyers in the region.

Just a couple more South Korean warships with just a couple more targets. It really does not make much difference.