Exposing Black Cube Interference in Slovenia

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Advantage Chewable Welcome to Pod Save the World. I'm Alona Minkowski. And I'm Ben Rhodes. Tommy Vieater is spring breaking with his family. I mean I hope he's having a great time. Springbreak, yeah. Yeah. No one works harder than Tommy, so I'm happy he's on a little bigger. Oh how could I forget? These guys uh and women work harder. But yeah. But we love Tommy. Okay. We love you Tommy. We miss you, but uh I'm gonna fill in today in his absence. And Ben, you were remote last week for the show because you were in Mammoth with your family. I went to Mammoth this past weekend with my family. And so I remember last week you were like, I just went skiing in a t-shirt. You had this glow. Yeah. I saw people I saw a woman skiing in a bikini. I saw a skin. Over the weekend. Oh, you did too? Okay. I saw a guy, no shirt, just only bib. Yeah. It's a little weird up there. I mean, the funny thing about mammoth for people who aren't Californians is it's kind of only accessible from like LA and Southern California. Yeah. So you kind of feel like you're in Los Angeles on a mountain, uh including the people wearing few clothes. It's it's a very like la id back Southern California vibe, I'll say that. This is not like your hoity toity . There's a lot of edible skiing happening, I think. The party scene afterwards with like the DJ and everything. I saw ki people in like Burning Man, you know, at the end of the yeah, it's yeah. You know what? It was fun. It was fun. I loved it. Um all right, we do have more serious business to discuss. We have a great show for you guys today. We will get into all of the latest with the war in Iran , like the continued mixed messages from the administration, the military buildup in the Middle East, the very scary normalization of targeting civilian infrastructure, and we'll talk about Pete Heggseth personally interfering in military promotions, the Russian government's attempts to block the messaging app, Telegram, and basically the internet altogether, the latest in Cuba, and a little special treat from former French president Nicolas Sarkozy . Um Ben, who did you speak to for the interview today? I spoke to uh Nika Kovac, uh, who's been on before. She's a Slovenian-based activist um who's done a lot of work. She has done work on behalf of reproductive rights across Europe . Um, but most recently in Slovenia, they had an election we talked about last week where the kind of far-right authoritarian candidate Jansa was widely expected to win. Uh a week before the election, NICA was one of a small group of people who did an investigation and revealed that the uh Israeli intelligence firm uh Black Cube, which is made up of former Mossad officials, had essentially contracted with uh YANSA to interfere in the uh Slovenian election, that kind of rocked things. Um and and ultimately the progressive incumbent closed very strong uh and eked out a victory. Um so we talked about that story. It's a great story of just how did they reveal this black Cube interference? Why is you know a group of former Israeli spies um intervening in Slovenian politics. They've also done it in Hungary. They've also spied on me . And then we talked about kind of where things are in Slovenia with the election result, what it might say about the election in Hungary with Viktor Orban who's coming up. Victor Orban is very close to Jansa. And then I think really importantly, and I hope people listen to this, I asked Nika, who's been involved in a lot of campaigns in and lots of different parts of the world, kind of what her lessons learned are about the best way to fight authoritarianism. And she had a very good summary, I think, of of key lessons learned from not just Slovenia, but a lot of work she's done. So people should check it out. Yeah. And I mean you actually have such a great network internationally, I feel like, of pro-democracy activists. And those are people that you are in touch with all the time, that you speak to all the time. So if you want more of Ben's insight from speaking with these people, I just want to also, you know, highlight that friends of the pod is something everyone should be. Um, you know, that's where we bring you bonus content drops every single week, bonus insight from our incredible hosts. Uh, last week we dropped a new episode of Pod Save America Only Friends with Love It and Favreau. And as a subscriber, you get access to tons of content. There's Polar Coaster with Dan Pfeiffer, Open Tabs, which is the behind-the-scenes newsletter from PSA editor Reed Churlin. Terminally online, Crookest Loosest Show, where hosts and staff reveal the unhinged rabbit holes that their algorithms drag them into this week. I would argue like maybe our YouTube specials get a little looser sometimes, only because I asked you. Our YouTube specials are a little looser. Ask really awkward questions. Yeah. Um and that if you need any more reason to subscribe, just remember that doing so directly supports independent progressive media that helps Crooked reduce their dependence on tech platforms. Um, you get ad-free episodes of your favorite crooked pods, and of course, you have a great community of fellow crooked listeners from across the country. So hit pod, subscribe to friends of the pod right now, cricket.com/slash friends. Across the country and around the world. There you go. Don't forget the world is out there. We have quite a global audience here at Pod Save the World. Okay. Now let's get to Iran. So it's truly impossible to make sense of all the various statements, the threats, the backing off, the contradictions that are coming from the president and uh his administration on this. So I'm gonna do my best here to give you a play-by-play. So I guess just hold on to your seat. So as of Tuesday, which is the day that we record this show, there are reports saying that President Trump doesn't care about the Strait of Hormuz anymore. We could just walk away from the war before the strait gets reopened. But as you and Tommy discussed last week, Trump initially gave Iran 48 hours to open the Strait of Hormuz. Then last Monday, he extended that deadline by five days. Then last Thursday, he said that he was pausing the period of energy plant destruction by 10 days to Monday, April 6th. And I have to point out, too, that all along, we're getting these messages from Trump, right, that the talks are ongoing, that the talks are going very well. At the same time, he will write on truth social threats to obliterate Iranian power plants. He also restated his plan to take Carg Island in an interview with the Financial Times. And I have not been in high-stakes international negotiations, Ben. I know that you have. That seems to me like a little bit of a counterproductive strategy. Yes. If you're trying to negotiate with someone, um but the Iranians, meanwhile, they still don't acknowledge that any talks are even happening. Um Abbas uh Arag ie Runs Foreign Minister said today in an interview with Al Jazeera that he had received a direct message from Steve Whitkoff, that's's President Trump special envoy, but he denied that the countries were negotiating at all. And so then that's how we come back to this week. Trump wrote on Truth Social on Monday that the talks with the new and the more reasonable regime going we're great, but that if for any reason a deal is not shortly reached, which it probably will be, I'm reading verbatim here from his truth, and if the Hormouth Strait is not immediately quote unquote open for business, we will conclude our lovely quote-unquote stay in Iran by blowing up and completely obliterating all of their electric generating plants, oil wells, and carg island, and possibly desalinization plants, which we have pur posefully not yet touched. And then, as we previewed at the top of this section, by Tuesday morning, the story changed. The Strait of Hormuz is apparently not our problem anymore. Uh, President Trump truthed all of those countries that can't get jet fuel because of the Strait of Hormuz, like the United Kingdom, which refuse to get involved in the d decapitation of Iran. And number two, build up some delayed courage. Go to the straight and just take it. You'll have to start learning how to fight for yourself. The USA won't be there to help you anymore, just like you weren't there for us. I'm gonna end that very long uh tirade I just gave with a little clip from Pete Heggseth, the Secretary of War. He gave his first press conference in twelve days today in the middle of the war. Yeah, where he basically just, you know, followed up on uh what we've been hearing from the president I think the president was clear this morning it is truth that that there are countries around the world who ought to be prepared to step up on this critical waterway as well. It's not just the United States Navy. Last time I checked, there was supposed to be a big bad Royal Navy that could be prepared to do things like that as well. So he's pointing out this is an international waterway that we use less than most, in fact dramatically less than most. So the world ought to pay attention to be prepared to stand up. President Trump's been willing to do the heavy lifting on behalf of the free world to address this threat of Iran. Uh it's not just our problem set going forward, even though we have done the lion's share of preparation to ensure that that straight will will be be open, which is an outcome uh the the president's been very clear on. I don't know Ben. If you were just to sit back and think like my wildest dreams, I'm gonna write this fictional story, would you ever have considered that it would be for us to start a war, create a global economic crisis, and then just walk away and tell everyone that it's their problem ? I I mean the problem the so many problems with this, but i i is it I I have no idea what the hell they're doing and neither do they. Um and and I mean let's just kinda break this into pieces. You've got the negotiations , the straight, and the hexethian uh demands made on other countries. Um these negotiations, it is quite clear that there are no really active bilateral negotiations between the United States and Iran. There's a lot of diplomatic activity. Um today the Chinese and the Pakistanis met uh to come up with a formula of friending the war. We know everybody from Egypt to Turkey to Saudi have been involved in diplomatic efforts. We know probably back channeling happening. But what's very clear is that nobody can believe anything that Trump says, and that most of what he posts on social media has the single-minded intention of trying to calm markets and keep oil prices from going up too high or keep the stock market from going down too much. But every single time he says there are these negotiations, Iranians come out and say that there are not negotiations happening. Or yeah, maybe Irachi, the foreign minister, might have gotten like a you up text from Whitkoff, but like that there there there's no formula that anybody is aware of about how to end this war, in part because there's no clarity on what the US objectives are, right? And that leads to the straight. Because when the war started , we were told it was because Iran's nuclear program was two weeks away from a nuclear weapon, which is complete bullshit. Now we don't even hear anything about the nuclear program. Um then you know Marco Rubio's been out there saying that the purpose of the war is to destroy the Iranian Navy and Air Force. Uh yeah, that's a new one. That's a new one. First of all, like I I'm not I mean, I I don't like the Iranian regime, but I don't know how many Americans are like, you know what I'd really like my government to be doing? Like destroying the Iranian Air Force. You know, that can't fly to the United States. Yeah. Like it's an insane. It has nothing to do with the nuclear program. It has nothing to do with um, oh, I forgot the Iranian people were supposed to rise up and there was gonna be a democracy and the former Shah's son was gonna go what happened to that? That's out the window. So no nu no nuclear ambitions anymore, no um ambitions to change the regime to a democracy. I'm not saying that would have worked, but that we don't hear about that anymore. We hear about the Navy and the Air Force of Iran. But the the fundamental issue for the United States is that things are much worse today than when the war started. The main reason for that is that the Strait of Hormuz has been closed, and therefore 20% of the world's fossil fuel energy is not getting out, creating a potenti ally economic catastrophe that I think people have not yet gotten their minds around. Um, because it it's coming one way or another. Even if the war ended tomorrow, we're gonna be dealing with the effects of this. Um so I as an American citizen have no idea what the purpose of this war is. Importantly, the Iranians, who are supposed to be the ones that Trump is ostensibly negotiating with, I d how could the Iranians have any idea what they're being asked to do when the these things keep changing? How can the Iranians trust a negotiation when they've been bombed twice in the middle of previous negotiations? How can they trust a negotiation when Israel keeps assassinating people, including some of the people that would be engaged in those negotiations. So it's just totally incoherent. And now for him to say, we will walk away from this without the Strait of Horne Moose being opened up, and in fact, the Strait of Horror Movies is being run like a fucking toll road by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, which was not the case before the war. So Ira Iran's got in a stronger position because of the remote. We've literally just made everything worse. Yeah, we made the Iran Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps like h hold twenty percent of the world's energy hostage. If we walk away from that , and our only solution is to ask like the Royal Navy uh as PDX S forgot big bad. Big bad British Navy like as if it's, you know, the nineteenth century. Like those countries are not gonna bail Trump out because he's treated them like shit. Because he's terrified them, he's insulted them, he's humiliated them, he's threatened to invade Greenland. Uh why would they come bail Trump out by opening up the strait? And by the way, even if they decided they wanted to do that, do you know how long it would take the Europeans to put together some naval armada to then go down to the Strait of Hormuz and escort tankers? Like months. So none of this makes any sense. And meanwhile, while it's happening, Trump is deploying the eighty second Airborne and all these special forces to the region. So maybe he's just saying all these things about peace to calm markets, but we're gonna have ground troops. We just don't know at at this point. And that that is terrifying given the scale of the crisis that we're in, that that i people that follow this as closely as we do can make no sense of what the hell's going on. Yeah. And well, and it's you know something we'll discuss more in terms of the ground troops, in terms of the impacts for people. Um in the region, there's a projection from the UN development program. It said one month of this war could plunge four million more people across the Arab world into poverty and shave off up to six percent of the region's economic output during that time. And that's just one month of the war. We're in week five of this war. And that's, you know, that's not including all the other global economic impacts that we've talked about in the show and especially last week in our interview. I mean obviously something is happening, right? Like there were 20 Pakistani oil tankers that were let through. So somebody's talking to the Iranians, but as you mentioned, maybe it's not bilateral talks. I can see how it's also not um, you know, the Iranians would want to project an image of strength probably to their people and not say that they're negotiating with the US, even if they were, but either way, it's just it's so demoralizing to see that nobody really has an idea of what's happening, who's in charge. Um, and so another thing that I want to bring up though is the notion of regime change. It used to be focused on bringing some kind of democracy, right, to the Iranian people. First of all, Mushtaba Hamini, the former Aitola son, who's now uh been put in charge, he hasn't been seen or heard from. The Russian ambassador to Iran did say that rumors that he was being treated in Russia are untrue and that he's in Iran, but obviously avoiding public appearances. Um but I don't know if you've noticed, Ben, suddenly the line from the administration is that regime change is just it's already happened . Yeah, yeah, we have a clip of that. Let's take a listen. We're doing extremely well in that negotiation. But you never know with they're at because we negotiate with them and then we always have to blow them up. But we've had regime change, if you look already, because uh the one regime was decimated, destroyed, they're all dead. The next regime is most ly dead, and the third regime we're dealing with different people than anybody's dealt with before. It's a whole different group of people. So I would consider that regime change and frankly they've been very reasonable. If there are new people now in charge who have a more reasonable vision of the future, that would be good ne ws for us, for them, for the entire world. But we also have to be prepared for the possibility, maybe even the probability, that that is not the case. There's a little Marcos not not in the loop apparently, but are we on regime number three? I I you know, was under the impression the regime is a system. It's not just about what individual might be at the top that you're talking to. So and you know first of all, I do want to say on the 20 tankers, like because Trump also went out and said that that the Iran made this tribute to us of letting eight tankers. Before the war, a hundred to a hundred and thirty-five tankers were going to the Strait of Formers every day. So this is such Trumpian logic. You you launch an illegal and unnecessary war, create a giant fucking problem, and then when eight tankers get through, you treat it like an achievement. When like you should have 135 tankers getting through there potentially in a day. Um so like just bear that in mind. Look, on the regime point , this is Trump, he is he's finally created a problem that is so big that there's just no way to him to spin his way out of it. He's so accustomed to bullshitting his way through things and lying about things in ways that he knows will be repeated on Fox News. But just take the regime issue. We assassinated, or Israel assassinated, the 86-year-old Supreme Leader. Well, the 86-year-old Supreme Leader was replaced by his younger and more hard-lined son. The regime is not Ayatollah Ale Khamenei who's been killed. The regime is called the Islamic Republic of Iran. It's a system of governance that has clerics, that has the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps as the most extreme and hardcore version of their security forces, that has Basij militia, that has a military, that has government officials across that country, just because you kill a bunch of those people does not mean that there's regime change. I don't think Americans thought there was regime change, God forbid, when like JFK was assassinated, you know, like the regime is fully in place. And the regime is in some ways weaker because they've lost a lot of people and capabilities, but in some ways actually stronger, because they are now controlling the Strait of Hormuz and holding the entire global economy hostage. They've now demonstrated that they can regionalize this war and impose such a cost on the United States that the president of the United States is self-evidently trying to talk himself out of this war, right? And so th this is utter bullshit. And there's the problem with it, Alona, is that you cannot make policy based on lies. Like he wants us to believe that the regime has changed. He wants us to believe that everything has been obliterated. He wants us to believe that Iran is paying tribute with ships that are going through Strait of Armuz, which is closed. Like these things aren't happening. And if you're trying to suit policy to the lies being told by the president in something as big and complex as a war, when Iran gets a vote, how and when this war ends, Israel, which we have, you know, gets a vote on how and when this war ends. The fact that even if this war ended tomorrow, it would take years, I think, to rehabilitate all of that energy infrastructure that's been damaged and to restart uh the full supply of energy through the Strait of War Moose. These are all facts that Trump cannot contend with. And so we're living in this crazy reality where we can all see from the price of gas in this country to the shit that is blown up uh across the Middle East to the tankers that aren't getting to the Strait of Formu z, what is actually happening? And you have Trump out there saying, There's regime change, we're on the third regime, we're winning, we've already won, we've obliterated everything, when none of those things This podcast is sponsored by Squarespace. Squarespace is the all-in-one website platform designed to elevate your online presence and drive your success. Squarespace provides all the necessary tools to claim your domain, build a professional website, expand your brand, and facilitate payments, making it the ideal solution for businesses of all sizes. Squarespace gives you everything you need to offer services and get paid all in one place. 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It's interesting, you know, you bring all that up that you can't win a war or run a war based on lies. You know, I I've I have a lot of people who I know who are supporters of Trump or who maybe think that this war is happening for the right reasons because they're afraid of Iran getting a nuclear weapon, right? And I'm always just trying to think of like how do I have a reasonable conversation where I'm really trying to put myself into their shoes, see their perspective, you know, come back with what I think are like rational arguments to express my own. And, you know, I think pre-Trump, the American people were also got really fed up too, a feeling like they were lied to by their government when it came to wars with Iraq or with Afghanistan. I mean, I'm sorry, but for twenty years we kept being told that we were like winning hearts and minds and that things were working, you know, when realistically, no, they weren't at all. But now it's just the lies seem so much more in your face. Aaron Powell But you this is such an important point. And I, you know, you're right. Like let us try to inhabit like someone who might support this or support a tougher policy with Iran. When the last operation at Midnight Hammer, the last war with Iran, the 12-day war, whatever you want to call it, when we bombed Iran's nuclear program last year, I could have a sincere policy difference, right? I could say, okay, I I I guess I understand, even if I totally disagree, that the best way to deal with the Ron Snooker program is to bomb it. But I could see that someone else might think that, you know what, like dipl omacy is not working well enough and you know, this is a threat. You know, we don't want around to get a nuclear weapon. And so I, you know, I can inhabit the perspective of somebody who thought that bombing the Iranian nuclear program was a good policy and that we have a difference of opinion about that. The problem with this war is I don't know what it's about. So I c actually can't even inhabit the position of a war supporter because nobody can tell me what the purpose of the war is. Is it the nuclear program? Is it to install Reza Pallavi as the leader of Iran? Is it to destroy the Iranian Navy? Is it to change the regime? Is it what what is it? It's all of the above. It's because we w just because we felt like it. Well, yeah. Yeah, or Israel felt like it. And so how can you even inhabit the position of people that are supportive of this when you don't even know what this is. You don't even know like what even in Afghanistan or any of these other world actually I knew what the Bush administration said it was trying to set up a new government in Iraq, you know uh in Afghanistan we were trying to keep the Taliban out of power. Like I don't know what we're doing in Iran. And and I don't even know if the president of the United States knows what we're doing in Iran. And that's what makes it impossible to even like try to understand it from their perspective. Aaron Powell Well I think the part that really upsets me is that, you know, it's people's lives are at stake. It's a war is not a game. There are already 13 U.S. service members who have been killed, uh, around 300 last I checked, who have been injured. And now the New York Times reported that we have over 50,000 troops currently in the Middle East. That's because that's 10,000 more than we usually have in the region. That's because we've sent more there. In addition to those 2,000 paratroopers from the 82nd Airborne Division that were sent last week, several hundred special operations forces, that's Army Rangers and Navy SEALs, have been deployed. And the Wall Street Journal reported that Trump is considering sending another 10,000 troops, which would likely include infantry, armored vehicles, and logistics support. I mean, you and Tommy have spoken about some of this already on the show. I just want to go over some of it again, right? Some of the potential ground operations that are on the table, which are the invasion of Karg Island, which is where most of Iran 's oil exports go through, exports go through. Um that island is only sixteen miles from Iran's coast, so drones, missiles, those would be a constant threat if we were to uh invade Karg Island. Then there's the operations along the coastline of the Strait or on strategic islands to secure the Strait of Hormuz, but we apparently don't care about the Strait of Hormuz anymore. And then there's an operation to seize Iran's enriched uranium, which would be a massive multi- day undertaking involving, for the Wall Street Journal, combat troops to secure perimeters, engineers with excavating equipment to search through debris and check for mines and booby traps, special operations forces with expertise in handling nuclear materi al, and unless an airfield was available, a makeshift one would need to be set up to bring equipment in and take the nuclear material out. Um I just want to play you a clip here because you I think you have, you know, some unlikely people who normally would be war cheerleaders who've been coming out, and we've talked about them. But just in reference to all of this potential military action, you have Eric Prince, right, the founder of the infamous uh military contractor Blackwater, formerly known as Blackwater. I forget what they uh rebranded to. So this was at a panel at CPAC last week, and I kid you not the name of this panel. It was called Breaking Stuff and Killing Bad Guys. to be a a a peaceful uh uh uh a stop to this they will burn it down uh and my real concern is that if they try to put boots on the ground force the Straits of Hormuz you will see imagery of burning American warships in I take everything Eric Prince says with a grain of salt. Right? I mean the guy he's he's profited plenty off of uh American military endeavors, but what does that tell you? Aaron Powell Yeah. But he's got a point. Look, you know, he tends to like to operate in places where there it's kind of chaos and there's not not like a military force like the Iranians. You summed up well these potential operations. Um I I just make a few points to build on it. In any event where the American military is put onto the ground in Iran, they will face fierce resistance, either from drones and missiles or from some kind of direct combat. The thing that concerns me is that Trump might want continually be looking for some win, some event that allows him to say , we won. We have Karg Island, or we won. We got the stuff out of Isfahan, where the nuclear material is in the center of Iran. And it is entirely in Iran's interest to deny Trump the illusion or the narrative that he won, right? And so therefore, they're not just going to say, oh, you got us, you won Carg Island, we surrender. You know, no, they're going to try to kill as many Americans as they can in Carg Island, to take out warships, to bomb our facilities across the region. And this is a country of 90 plus million people. This is a civilization that has survived for five thousand years. This is a regime in the Islamic Republic that went through nearly a decade of the Iran-Iraq War, losing hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people and continued to fight. It's a statement that they're not going to capitulate. Uh and and and Trump just doesn't seem to understand that. And what I worry about with these deployments, as we saw in the run-up to the war, or as we saw with the deployments to the Caribbean, they take on a logic and a momentum of their own. You don't send all these people to the Middle East without doing something with them. Um you know, I I it just feels ominously like he he's gonna pick from this menu of like season island or open the strait or try to get the nuclear material. But the that's escalation. And if you boots touch Iranian ground, the Iranians are gonna fight like h ell. And then we're gonna feel like we have to hit them again because they killed some more of our guys. And we just stay in this escalation loop that actually over time benefits the Iranians in some ways because they know that they've looked at Afghanistan, they've looked at Iraq, they've looked at Libya, they know that the United States is not going to stay invested in a multi-year ground war in Iran. They know that there's no public support for that. And they're just going to want to try to cause as much damage to us as as they can so that we don't do it again. Uh and and and so this is the fundamental problem. There's there's not like a Trump keeps wanting like the video game victory, you know, like the you know, like the the this island can become the objective. You know, w when that's not how the Iranians are going to respond. And in the meantime, Americans, uh I've I've said this to you alone uh offline, but we're not seeing the full damage picture either. The Pentagon is not being transparent. Baghdad, we've like we are taking on huge damage. We don't know how seriously these injuries are. Like I keep learning about injuries from like leaked reports. Like officials say let me just say so. There were 12 troops who were injured uh on Friday, when Iranian missiles and drones hit the Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia, which is interesting too, because it's like we don't have a military base in Saudi Arabia, unlike some of the other Gulf countries, but then clearly there's a U.S. uh troop presence there. And can I say one thing about that? Yeah. They destroyed an A-WACS, which is one of the most expensive uh planes that the United States has. It's like a radar aircraft. And you know, there are reports that they knew exactly where to shoot and that the you know the Russian intelligence that the Iranians may be getting could be improving their capacity to hit things like very specific to hit an AWAC, a single airplane on a tarmac, it you know, it shows a level of capability and a level of targeting that is better than the Iranians were a month ago. And uh the New York Times said that many of the thirteen military bases in the region used by American troops are all but uninhabitable. So, you know, yeah, th this this is what we've done. And and I think like just to your point earlier too that, you do one thing, it's gonna lead to continued escalation, continued escalation. You know, you and I were talking about this earlier before the show that it just it just feels like mission creep, you know, becomes an inevitable thing when you think that m some type of military operation is just gonna be quick, one and done. Um, it never is. And so I just wanna, you know, hit one more aspect of this uh war that we haven't gotten to, but which is incredibly important, which is of course the civilian um harm that's being caused, the normalization of the targeting of civilian infrastructure from both sides too. I mean the list of non-military targets that have been hit is very, very long. We spoke a lot about the girls elementary school at the start of the war. Iran's ministry of science says that 21 universities in the country have been damaged by strikes. Um and Iran has, by the way, threatened to retaliate by hitting American affiliated universities in the Middle East. Then of course, we've spoken about all of the attacks on energy infrastructure. Um, and we've seen hits on water desalination plants, Amazon data centers, airports, ports, steel, chemical, and aluminum factories. I mean, this is both sides too, right? It's not just like uh only one side doing it. But we also then were able to speak with somebody who is in Tehran currently because you know, one of the big problems is we've been hearing so little from people on we see so little from the people who are living through this in Iran, who understandably I think have very complex feelings about it. Um and so this is Marti van Ramsdunk. She is the Iran country director for the Norwegian Refugee Council. And here's just a little bit of what she told us life in Tehran is like right now. Colleagues are working on the extreme difficult and dangerous conditions to scale up our relief for families that are displaced by the war . We have over 108 workers, of which many have been displaced themselves with their families. In nearly every neighborhood, buildings are destroyed with surrounding damages. Desperate families tape their windows to prevent shattered glass after a blow. Civilians are paying the highest price for this war. I also lie awake at night and listen to the heavy explosions in Tehran. I am worried about my colleagues and their families. Some are living so close to locations under attack, and colleagues have been telling me that the sounds are becoming too much. Even small cities are under attack and nowhere seems to be safe. Yet even in this situation people try to help each other. Conversations now start with inquiring if the other person is okay and still safe . Despite all this doom and gloom, Iranians are still living. We are living in a surreal balance of war and everyday life. And I mean the latest estimates that we've seen by the way do show that at at least fifteen hundred uh Iranian civilians have been killed so far. Aaron Ross Powell Yeah. And I you know first of all on the targeting piece, uh this is incredibly worrying. And part of what we've seen, and we talked about this for years with Gaza, right, is that the Israeli Defense Forces had a view of fighting wars that ignores the laws of wars, right? The we saw them bomb hospitals, we saw them bomb We saw them drop two thousand pound bombs on apartment blocks to kill one terrorist and you know God knows how many other people got killed. We saw refugee camps bombed. And and basically we saw the laws of war tossed out the window. We saw a serial commit commission of war crimes by the IDF in Gaza. And by if you pointed that out, you got attacked or you know called names or what have you. But that's what happened. And what's worrying me is that the United States military, which has always held itself to uh tried, I'm not saying it perfectly, but tried to abide by standards, you're s you at first you saw a targeting error. I b I I would like to believe that, and I do believe that that Iranian girls' school that got bombed, where over 100 children were killed. That was a targeting mistake. But when Donald Trump goes out and threatens to blow up desalination plants and threatens to blow up electricity generation, he is threatening to commit war crimes. The same thing that if Vladimir Putin does in Ukraine, we're all appalled and up in arms about it. The same thing that the IDF uh has been doing in in Lebanon and in Gaza. And and if if the we are now in a world in which this is what it's like when nobody plays by the if you want to know why there are laws of war , this is why. Because it becomes a race to the bottom. Because you know, everybody starts committing war crimes, everybody starts targeting civilian targets, everybody starts targeting infrastructure that will have an economic impact and a human impact. Uh and and so when Trump says those things, we shouldn't shrug it off. I wish he heard more resistance, including from Republicans, that that if the American military starts to act like the IDF has been acting and blowing up desalination plants and bombing and don't you know, the universities it really pisses me off. 'Cause then they'll say like, Well, there was some re IRG C research going on. Uh under that standard, you know how many American universities do research for the Defense Department. Are you are they credible military targets now? Because that's what the Iranians are gonna say. It doesn't make the Iranians right, it makes them wrong, but it means that there's a reason why we follow rules, because we want other people to follow rules too. And the other thing I'd say is whatever the objectives of this war are, there are we talked about the thousand plus killed. Millions of Iranians are displaced. A fifth of Lebanon is displaced. Is anything that is trying to be accomplished right now worth that? Imagine if you and your family were living in a fucking tent uh in southern Lebanon or uh you know on the outskirts of Tehran. That's what we're doing to families. For what purpose? So Donald Trump can get a news cycle win? Or so Bibi Netanyahu can annex southern Lebanon? Like this is this is I'm sorry, like I uh I told you I should not be able to I respect your I respect your fashion because it's true. It's not a what I would like to happen is for this word to end and it can end diplomatically. And so if people say well, what',s your solution? My solution is probably a multilateral, probably not the US even leading the negotiations, but some agreement in which the Strait of Hormuz reopens, Israel and the US stop bombing, Iran is gonna have to get something, sanctions, relief, and we can all just everybody can move on with their lives. Because the longer this goes on, the more individuals are gonna suffer and the more global economic catastrophe is going to be deeper. Well, I I also think that's just always the problem with a lot of our military exploits as a country, right? Is we just tend to be geographically, physically, in many ways, economically isolated and removed from it. This is my very awkward segue then I was gonna play for you, Ben, because I didn't expect for you to go on such an impassioned orient before. No, I'm really glad you did it because I've been thinking and feeling the same thing all the time. And it's why I think that hearing firsthand accounts are so important, right? And it's one of the things that we talk about this all the time with press not allowed into Gaza . That we miss, right? Without a lot of more reporters in Iran, it's the thing that you're missing, which is seeing people who are just living absolutely normal lives a month ago. Yeah. Who are now are completely uprooted. And I, you know, I was listening to a report on BBC just this morning and they were talking about like there's these newborns who are four or five days old, and these people used to have homes with all the toys for their kids, and now as you mentioned, you know, they're living in a tent, and it's not the environment you would want to bring kids into. I want to play this clip for you, which was actually done for um the Jesse Waters show on Fox News of American Spring Breakers. Yeah, so uh let's just I guess for for a little levity, let's check it out. Spring break twenty twenty six. What is the game plan? And my mom is watching, I'm sorry, mom , but I've been getting pretty drunk almost every day. What issue facing America is the most important to you? What bikini I'm gonna wear next? Obesity is terrible. Getting its hand on the beach, that's the most important What have you heard that Donald Trump has been doing recently? We're going to war with Iraq. That's been crazy. What do you do in Columbia? You got Moldura out. I'm so what? Who? What? What is that? Who the f is Ayotola? I have never heard that word in my life. Louis. What's Ayotollah? He was the supreme leader of Iran. He's dead? We killed him. Well, you did? You killed him? What have you heard about Venezuela? That they beat us in the world baseball classic. Have you heard anything else? No. Okay, so by the way, that went on for a lot longer, and that was just Anisha, you know, cut it down to a nice little uh bite-sized chunk. Before we hear from you, I just want to say that my first, you know, instinct when I saw this video was to like to be in defense of our youth. Because I'm like, you know what? They're dying. You're allowed to be dumb. You're on spring break. You're allowed to be getting like drunk. And like, you know, I certainly if you would have asked me about geopolitical events when I was like a freshman in college, I probably wouldn't have given you very like salient responses to things, you know, and and then people evolve and they get wiser and they get older. But man, when we just compare that to what we were talking about, you know, in terms of our uh our isolation as a nation, it's not such a good look. Oh God. Did you think it's a bit had a good time or whatever. But um I I would say um the the there's something here's what I would ask people, you know, extending the grace that I don't expect every college kid who's on spring break to be following the intricacies of you know a war in Iran. But we are bombing this country . And the two things I would ask are : what is the grace you extend to a 19-year-old Iranian or Lebanese college student? Right? Like what why is it okay that you know we can go around and just break countries and bomb people and kill their leaders and blow up their universities. Um, and just think it's charming and wonderful that, you know, people are thinking about their bikini tan or how drunk they're gonna get tonight. Like i there's there's something grotesque about that. But the second thing is how does that clip look to anyone else in the world who's not American? Like that's what I I just think we really need to consider here because we we cannot simultaneously want to be the superpower that runs the world and that you know launches all these wars. The reason we can do that is because of what we just saw. Like the the reason we can continue to do stupid things. And by the way, I'd be pissed if I was a 19-year-old American who just got deployed to the fucking Middle East. Yeah. Right? Because it's not so now let's now let's defend the military. Like we keep asking 19-year-olds to go fight in in in in South Asia, in North Africa, and the Middle East. So what? So that these people can get drunk and Jesse Waters can have a laugh about it, you know? So I don't know. I don't know. No, I don't want to chide them either, but I I feel like actually it's like a It's It's actually not their fault. Yeah. It's the their parents, their politicians, all of us. It's actually not their fault. We're the ones that are supposed to educate the younger generation. So that's what I was thinking too. I feel like these shows always love to make fun of college students and be like, oh, this is what like a liberal arts education is gonna get you and this is what happens, you know, with all the universities. But it's on everybody, you know, like the way that you parent, the way that you are raised and educated by your community, you know, all of that is it's all it's everything that builds up over time. And so if this is the way that you know our youth are looking at the world, or rather like, you know, not looking or thinking about the world, it's on all of us. And now d this is a total swerve and we can come back, but like there is a longer conversation to be had about the systematic dismantling of public education in this country since Ronald Reagan was president. Um the systematic delegitimizing of being smart, you know, like like elites or intellectuals or, you know, uh the starving of funds for s you know state university systems in some cases. Um Um if I'm cynical, I would say some of that is by design, because like autocratic right-wing parties would like to have dumber popul ations so that they're easier to control. And that's not even getting into what social media has done, unregulated social media has done to. So I truly, truly, truly don't blame young people. I blame the last 40 years of post- Reagan policies that have starved public education and deregulated the kind of technology platforms that kind of lock people into you know or even with this current administration just in terms of like the books that are being banned. Right. The dismantling of DEI means also taking out like rewriting rewriting history. Taking out all kinds of people. All of that is connected. I couldn't agree with you more. And it's just it's so deeply upsetting and frustrating because it's it's also it's what happens in other countries. And the war no when they try to just erase dirty histories so that you have an uneducated population and then you just A war like this could not have happened. Get away with it all thirty years ago. Um the a lot of prep work had to be done to to make Americans like be able to tolerate this ta the world is brought to you by Simply Safe. You shouldn't feel locked in just to keep your home safe. While traditional providers rely on fine print and massive cancellation fees, Simply Safe believes in earned loyalty. Get the twenty four-seven protection you need today with the freedom to change your mind tomorrow with Simply Safe. Easily customize a system that's right for your home at SimplySafe dot com and it ships to your door in a few days. With app guided setup and no drilling required, you can install and arm your system in under an hour. No need to wait for a technician or appointment. It's not just a camera, it's a comprehensive ecosystem of sensors. Cameras for inside and out and twenty four seven professional monitoring. In the event of a break in, fire or flood, the Simply Safe agents are there to take action. 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By the way, actually I was thinking about that while I while I wrote this 'cause I was like, ew, am I gonna have to say Secretary of War? The writing was on the wall when they changed it from Department of Defense to, you know, Department of W Hexeth is better suited to be the idiot interviewing those kids on the beach, you know. Like that's what he actually is talk about Iran, but just because you said that, there was a CNN report today that was talking about how Pete Hegsa is apparently like was one of the biggest cheerleaders for the war in Iran within the Trump cabinet. And uh according to one source familiar with Hegsa's current mindset, Well, you know, it to your point, the warning signs have been there though, because he said he wanted to get rid of of rules engagement, you wanted to be warriors again. You wanted to be you know, like like this has been building for a year. All right, but so I wanna talk to him about a different uh talk about him for a different reason though. We spoken before on the show about how he's undergone this firing spree at the Pentagon, right? He fired the Joint Chiefs Chairman CQ Brown. He fired Lisa Franchetti, the first woman to be the chief of naval operations. Now he has reportedly personally intervened to stop the prom otions of four Army officers who were on track to become one-star generals. It just so happens that they were two women and two black men. And then MPR reported that a black colonel and a female colonel were both taken off of a promotion list as well. Um, you know, Pete Hag Seth, of course, former Fox News weekend host, knows a thing or two about being promoted to powerful positions without being qualified, I think. But what I think is really worth bringing up here, Ben, is that, you know, not only is it unprecedented for the Secretary of War to personally intervene, um, these people were on these promotion lists because they've been selected by the people that actually work with them. You know, like you're selected by your peers based on your performance and all of that to be promoted. Um so I don't it, you know, it's just mind-blowing to me and what unnamed officials keep telling the press , because now I think that there's just environment of fear among the Pentagon based on just all of the unnamed anonymous sources that are talking to um all the different media organizations, is that you know they're saying it's just weeding out the people who aren't ideologically compatible. Aaron Powell Yeah, but what's even worse about it is they seem to think that just because you're black and a woman, you won't be ideologically compatible. Aaron Powell Of course they're just straight up discriminating. There was no reason to get rid of CQ Brown as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of staff, other than the fact that he was black and and made an eloquent video once about racism, right? And um we saw him get rid of a lot of senior women too. So there's a pattern here of getting rid of black people and women uh from high positions in the military. And and just so people understand this, uh the promotion to a one-star general would normally, like the Secretary of Defense, would not even be involved in any way, shape, or form of that. You know, I mean keep in mind one star, two star, three star, four stars, like you're climbing a ladder there. And maybe when you get to the four stars, you know, like the Well he already cleaned house with the four star dress , don't forget. And so the fact that he's reaching all the way down there is clearly sending a message. And if you look at the operation of the military, they're getting more white and more male, and presumably more manga. And you and I actually did a YouTube about this a while ago, but there they're all these warning signs and they are connected to what we've been talking about with Iran because Hegseth has come in and at Trump's direction, the military is far less transparent. Like they've got the my pillow guy media in the Pentagon press briefing room. They try to kick everybody else out. There it's whiter. It's more ideologically in line with uh Trump's agenda. It's not being transparent. I hate I have to I hate to say this. I wish I could just pick on Hegseth, but I usually there'd be these kind of professional briefings by uniformed military about everything f that are factual. And and we'd see much less of that too. And and and you know, something like forty percent, you know, of the military is not white. And and so this isn't like some crazy, you know, DEI initiative. It it it's just the point that like it's something deeply fucked up about saying we're only gonna have a bunch of white men run an institution that looks like America and that should look like America. I mean, it's just pure racism and misogyny. Like there's no other explanation for why Petexeth is reaching down and denying people a promotion to a one-star general. Trevor Burrus Well, not to mention it just goes against everything that we think the military is supposed to represent too, right? That it's it's it's it's meant to represent all of us and all Americans and defending. It's one of things Americans admire about the movie. Yeah, exactly. It's meant to be apolitical, which that I mean that reminds me too. Like I want to bring up another bit about Heggseth, which is that there's been all this reporting that he is injecting so much of his personal faith, Christianity, you know, into uh the Pentagon too. Like the Washington Post said that every month at the Pentagon, Heggseth hosts evangelical worship service His social media profile and public comments routinely espouse his understanding of Christianity. He's brought clergy from his small Christian denomination to preach at the Pentagon, including a prominent pastor who says women shouldn't have the right to vote. And then last Wednesday at the Pentagon, Hegseth prayed for US troops to inflict, quote, overwhelming violence of action against those who deserve no mercy, we ask these things with bold confidence in the mighty and powerful name of Jesus Christ. And then sorry, this is still from the Washington Post. Later that day, his department announced military chaplains would no longer wear their rank on their uniform and instead, they would wear religious insignia. You know, even that part, like the military is also supposed to be highly representative of everybody who serves in it, people who come from all different backgrounds and all different religions. And, you know, if it now, if you have a very clear prioritization for Christianity, you know, like you're again dividing, weeding out people. Well, I mean, uh how would you feel if you were black ha and the uh like how would you feel if you're a woman ? How would you feel if you're Jewish? Like the the message being sent to what is really the majority of the mil if you add up the people in the military that are not white Christian men, it's probably a majority of the military. How do they feel? So this will harm the cohesion of the military , it will harm the way recruitment, because do you want to sign up for that kind of military? Um so this is you know could have long-lasting impacts. I'll also just say, you know, I'm not the Christian of the year over here. But last I checked, Jesus Christ wasn't like a bloodthirsty warlord. Like I thought, you know, blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God. Like what th this is such a bastardization of Christianity. Like Christianity is supposed to value civilian life. What is Christian about threatening to blow up desalination plants? What is Christian about bombing a girls' school? So this is just bullshit performative Christianity that I doesn't comport with any Christianity I'm familiar with. Yeah. I just want to use this moment since you brought up our old YouTube video to uh you know tell everybody, remind everybody to subscribe to PodSave the World on YouTube because we do additional videos there. Ben and I do uh stuff every now and then. Ben and Tommy hop on whenever there's big breaking news and we do responses. So don't forget that that goes a long way for PodSave the World. We gotta uh we gotta get more subscribers because we're trying to fight the good fight here for progressive media. Um Russia, naturally. Um, but specifically, I want to talk about the way that the Russian government is kind of waging a war on its own people and their access to information. They're trying to get everybody to switch over to a government created op called Max, but no one really wants to use it because obviously there's certainly a good strategy to the FSP, right? I mean you're the Russian in the conversation, but I just have to point out though, right? Telegram is incredibly popular within Russia. Um, I've seen statistics that more than 76% of the population uses it. Also, the government uses it. They have their, you know, like social media uh channels on there to put out information. The military uses it to communicate with each other. Um it's also a way for all kinds of influencers and bloggers to make money, like a lot of pro-war military bloggers. There's a TikTok economy here. There's a telegram economy. Exactly. It's a huge it's a huge economy. And so yeah, just think about the impacts of that if you're gonna take telegram away from people. And then the second thing that's going on is the Russian government has been increasingly just blocking the internet altogether. People are complaining that there's no Wi-Fi around, that there's no cell service, VPNs are getting blocked. Um it's it's less so impacting people who work for like really big companies that have their own servers, but it's inflicting damage on just the way people go about their daily lives, right? Like Russia is a plugged-in society. If you want to order food, you want to order a taxi, you want to pay for something with your phone, you need the internet to uh to do all that. And according to uh Kamirsan, which is a newspaper, each day of no service costs Russian businesses as much as 1 billion rubles, which is 12 million dollars. I also just want to point out, you know, personally, I've been impacted by this because it's just getting harder and harder to communicate with my family than Russia. How do you communicate with them? We I don't want to give all my secrets. It's not Max, but yeah, like we we you know, we communicate, we use video, we use the internet, and increasingly there's just like really bad service. Sometimes like, you know, we can't really see each other or hear each other. It's just a horrible connection or the calls just don't go through at all. Um and you know, all of that obviously is upsetting and terrifying, not just for me, but I think for anybody who has, you know, family and and loved ones and people that they need to communicate with in the country. Um but the thing that they're doing is, you know, the Russian government is claiming this is all done under the guise of security. They tell people it's to protect protect against Ukrainian drones. Um I also think, though, it's interesting because there's a lot of speculation that it's really just Putin becoming completely parano after reports saying that, you know, the Israelis and the Americans like hacked into the street cameras. Yeah. Um and and that's how traffic cameras and that's how they monitored the Iranian leadership's moves there. So I don't know. First before I go a little further, what do you think of the paranoia angle? Aaron Powell I think it it feels right to me. I mean and I I saw a crazy uh you know the New York Times uh Bureau chief in in Moscow did a great report on this and her one of her points was that increasingly the Internet outages are in Moscow. Yes. in the rest of Russia. Because Moscow is supposed to be the rest of Russia. They've been dealing with this for a long time, right? They've been first hand feeling the impacts of the war a lot more because it's their method. They're that are going, yeah, to the front. And so Moscow has been the the America it's It's been the isolated, you know, little island where life has pretty much gone on as normal. And then now the last like month, um, I think this has really good. And we should say as you know, you know, already uh the the major you know, app uh Facebook is banned, uh YouTube is banned, uh WhatsApp is banned. Um and and and what's interesting to me about this is that okay, Putin has now moved in the company of like North Korea and to some extent China. But the point is that North Korea never had internet access. The Chinese built this firewall. So they kind of built the system to be controllable and accessible to mass surveillance. And it's been there all along. It's been there all along. So whereas Russia had an open internet-based society, right? Like they they were connected, you know, uh to all the same things we are. And it just I asked people to imagine all that being taken away and not just again your ability to kind of go to, you know, n ytimes.com or something, your ab ability to like order food online, your ability to do any e-commerce, your ability to communicate, like you said. I just have to wonder whether this kind of Putin paranoia and desire to kind of wall off Russia entirely and create a total police state there at some point, i there's a combination of that, casualties , you know, disabled people coming home, like when does this start to tip against him? A lot is going in Putin's favor right now, including the war in Iran, including high oil prices, including uh getting sanctions relief from the US. So this is more a three or five year question to me, but like this has got to be pissing people off. Uh yeah. Well so I mean I I think that's a really interesting point, right? 'Cause at the moment people are still too scared for any kind of mass action. I mean, there's been reporting that people have been trying to plan protests and rallies, but they're unless they're sanctioned, like uh like basically allowed and approved by the government, then people choose not to do it because then like it gets a little too risky. But um the Associated Press actually wrote the wrote about this. And you know, it's just like so classically Russian in terms of the bureaucratic approach always making no sense. So they talked about how in one Russian city, officials blocked a rally due to a tree inspection. In others, they blamed snow removal problems or still existing COVID-19 restrictions. And in one location, administrators argued that the reason for the protest didn't exist. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So um and then there was this incredible piece. You know, I didn't have well the team cut a clip today because it's in Russian, but it was produced by Channel One, which is like a state um, you know, run news channel there in Russia. And it was like man on the street interviews, and it's just talking about like the novel ways people are getting around the internet not being available and Wi-Fi sucking. And it was like, you know, wave down a cab the old fashioned way, like always carry cash on you. Download the maps in advance. Yeah. Or it's like, you know, go into a cafe and ask if you can use their internet, you know, to like call your mom. It's just it's so pathetic. Which you have to wonder how long that can go on. But just to your point, right? So there were a couple there was a recent poll by uh Lovada, which is uh a polling organization there and Nova Gaizieta newspaper, they found that three-quterars of respondents said that tiredness of war described the mood in the country. And there was a survey that was done. This was like a government-sanctioned survey, so it's interesting, but they said that internet restrictions triggered anger in forty-six percent of teenagers, um, crying in fifteen percent, confusion or irritation in fourteen percent. This is probably like bad uh translations and I didn't read the Russian version, but so overall, 83% of respondents reacted negatively. And that's amongst, you know, teenagers. They they didn't ask the adults understandably, because I think it's easy to be like, oh, the teens can't live without their web. But you have to wonder. You know, if eventually this is the like one that could kind of uh backfire. Aaron Powell I think what it reminds you of is like, you know, we we talk a lot about, you know, the war in Ukraine's been trending well for Putin in a lot of ways, right? Like but that doesn't mean it's trending well for Russians, you know. And and and and a common thread in all these autocratic societies is what may be good for the strongman or even for like a cabal of people on top of the system. One thing we all share in common these days in most countries is that we're all getting screwed by a bunch of corrupt strong men who are hijacked power, you know. Um and so Putin's success is not the Russian people's success. Um and and you would hope that at a certain point that leads to some change. there But it's not gonna happen I you know tomorrow. I was thinking about that a lot yesterday. No, I was I was thinking about that a lot too, because uh again, I was relating it back to like Trump and just how still so many Trump supporters kind of just believe in everything he does. Yeah. You know, and it becomes this kind of like cult celebrity worship around one figure. And Putin has that. But and Putin has that too. And and so does like, you know, so do so many of the autocratic leaders, but they don't have your best interest in mind. If these are people, if these are people who uh would stay in power forever if they could, you know, they don't have your best interest in mind. Putin would live in the page. Which is what they're doing. Exactly. Like if they're just focused on how to enrich themselves, you know, damn everyone else, they're not interested in what's best for you. And like they're just all the writing is on the wall, you know, like if you're trying to pick a boyfriend, you're not gonna choose the guy that only wants to talk about himself and wants you to make all the comprom uh story here. I want to just do a quick update and get your take on it. So um speaking of the Russian president, right, in a strange turn of events, President Trump broke the blockade over the weekend by letting a Russian oil tanker navigate into Cuba. That ship is called the Anatoly Kalotkin and it reached ports this morning. Um now we've continued to cover this, but the blockade that was imposed back in January, it's thrown the island into a full blown energy and economic crisis. I think crisis can seem like a little bit of a vague term. So yes, and humanitarian crisis. Let me give some specific example of what's going on. Cubans are suffering from frequent and long blackouts, power plants aren't operating, hospitals have limited power capacity to treat patients. The water supply is disrupted. There's no heat or air conditioning. Students aren't able to attend classes. Because there is no fuel, there's no transportation. That means that, you know, like garbage trucks aren't running, trash is piled up all over the street. Um, anything that's arrived at the island is stuck at the ports, including humanitarian assistance. And uh, you know, the Washington Post reported that in extreme cases, people were using donkeys to move supplies from the ports. The list just goes on. And I've seen different estimates here on how impactful this single oil tanker would be. Like some people would say that some people have said that it could meet the country's demand for only nine or ten days. Other people have said like a month or two. Either way, it's it's not a very long time. Um but Trump did comment on this on Air Force One on Sunday, so let's take a listen. US is gonna let a Russian oil tanker go to Cuba. Is that true? But we have a tanker out there. We don't mind having somebody get a boat load because they need uh they have to survive. That report is true as far as you know. Well I I would say I told them if a country wants to send some oil into Cuba right now, I have no problem with. Do you worry that Latin ? Do you worry that that helps Latin America Putin though? He loses one boatload of oil, that's all it is, it's fine. If he wants to do that and if other countries wanna do it, it doesn't bother me much. It's not gonna have an impact. Uh Cuba's finished. They have a bad regime. Uh they have very bad and corrupt leadership and whether or not they get a boat of oil it's not gonna matter. I'd I'd prefer letting it in, whether it's Russia or anybody else, because the people need heat and cooling and all of the other things that you need I j I'm I'm just so curious what you think is going on because like we created the humanitarian crisis that's going on there. Once again, there's the incoherence here because we created this humanitarian crisis in Cuba, right? On top of the embargo that's in place, on top of Trump's reversal of the Obama-era opening that I negotiated, they put this blockade in place. And so the policy of the United States under Trump was to do the opposite of what he just said. The policy of the United States has been to restrict any oil and fuel from getting to Cuba, which is leading people to die. I mean, you you know, when hospitals shut down, incubators, ventilators shut down, right? I mean, this is not without human consequence. And and so so now he's magnanimous because he's letting a single world tanker through his own blockade? And and what he's what what and again it's like Iran in the sense of I don't know what we're trying to achieve in Cuba because the Cuban government, whatever you think of it, poses no threat to the United States. There's no there's not it's not even like you know Iran again where there's a nuclear program or the k this is a poor country. It's a poor island nation. And so what is he trying to achieve? And actually, what we there's increasing reports that they're trying to negotiate with the Castro family. Um , the Castro family, I negotiate with the Castro family. I negotiate with Alejandro Castro. Um who was a good faith negotiator, by the way, I'd say. Like he it doesn't mean I agree with him about politics, but he they always did what he said. It was US that changed the terms of the deal when Trump came in. But what's the point of that? Like what are we trying to achieve here? You know, um i he he talked about regime change, but to what and to what end? Like like we we we don't know why we're blockading this island and why we let Russian oil tankers through and not other oil tank ers. And it just it's nonsensical. And by the way, it bears saying, Alona, like this is not what Americans elected Trump to do. Like, they wanted lower prices here. Like they didn't want to like change the Cuban, Venezuelan, Iranian governments. Like why like why he's doing this? It flies in the face of anything that with the exception of like small pockets of diaspora populations, like hardline Cubans , Iranian mon monarchists, Venezuelan diaspora, like people who clearly have the ear Diaspora populations. But meanwhile, don't forget that we cut all foreign aid, you know, that was helping people who might actually aid or AIDS tuberculosis, you know, like you you name it. Okay, well we're not gonna live you out leave you on that depressing note. So I'm just gonna I'm gonna finish the show here with um a reading of a poem . And I'm actually gonna read the Michael, uh our amazing producer's exact language here because He says, Ben, you're a man of letters. So I know that I know you know that the French have had an outsized impact on literature, right? Michel de Montagna invented the personal essay, the Marquis de Sade pioneered kinky prose. Yes, he did. And Marcel Proust pushed the very boundaries of what fiction could do. But now we welcome a new member of the Pantheon, former President Nicholas Sarkozy, to that ext exclusive club. Okay, so Sarkozy published a memoir in December of last year. The book is called The Journal of a Prisoner. Um, in it, Sarkozy writes about his long stretch behind bars from uh October 21st of 2025 to November 10th of 2025. Yeah, for the BBC, he was sentenced to five years for conspiring to fund his 2007 election campaign with money from the late Libyan dictator Momar Gaddafi, but uh he was released a few weeks into the sentence while he awaits an appeal. And during his 20 days in the clink, he did a lot of reading, writing, found God, because why not? So thanks to Harper's, we have a short excerpt from the memoir to share with listeners. It's translated from French by Laura Treesman and it goes a little something like this. I don't know if I can read all of it with a straight face, but I'm gonna try . Likes to complain, who seeks pity or commiseration. I don't know how to sulk still less how to pout. Sitting down on the unmade bed on my first night in prison, I had a shock. I had never felt, even during my military Not a glass of water, not a coffee, not an ounce of humanity. Never before had I used a treadmill powered solely by my own stride. For someone used to running daily in the Bois de Bologna, the contrast was stark. Never had I encountered a more inconvenient shower setup, the meager steam shut off almost immediately as if controlled by a timer. You constantly had to find the button and press it again. It produced none of the usual pleasure. From my window I could no longer see the sky, a bird in flight, or a tree trembling in the wind. I was struck by the complete absence of color. And then there was the limp damp baguette on each day at lunch. I felt myself becoming vulnerable to sadness. Oh. It was as if my heart had stopped beating. I felt on the edge of the abyss. I got the idea of rereading Sartre to see if I would find there the emotions I was living through. There was nothing to elevate the eye, the perspective, the setting. I am a lover of painting. I appreciate the beauty. Prison is not made for esthets. How do I pronounce that word? Are we sure this wasn't uh, you know , so uh satire? No, I mean so Sarkozy, uh I had the occasion to be in rooms with him a lot and my favorite thing about Sarkozy was um he had this interpreter who was a m a younger and attractive woman. But it's kind of the point. I've got I'm French and I've got of- French translator. But the funny thing about it is she would not just translate, she would mimic his gestures. And so Kosy would gesture a lot. So he'd puff out his chest and she would too. And he'd pound on the table and she would too. That's amazing. And sometimes he'd pull her his lapels and she would too. It was the most bizarre thing. But I love it was made it entertaining. Um but he's an over-the-top kind of guy. Clearly his prison experience I I mean, what's amazing about that is all that he's describing is yeah, that's why you're in prison. Like we don't supposed to feel the consequences and are convicted of crimes , the baguettes are damp. The shower pressure's not that good. There's not a view of the Bois de Boulogne to run in, right? Like like of what the the fuck did he think was gonna happen in prison? Did he think he was going to like, you know hotel in the south of France or something? The penthouse cell. Uh and and the fact that this is he's describing I'd actually have some more sympathy for it if the guy did five years. I mean I, I could do that for three weeks. I could do that for three weeks. Do some fucking push-ups. It's like a silent retreat. You know, it's like people pay for stuff like that to be like blogged off from the world. I don't know. I mean, but it is enjoyable. It is delightful.. Oh my god Well, I I didn't make it through all the way without literally like laughing tears, but I hope you all enjoyed my uh rendition. Next up, we're gonna hear Ben's interview with Nika Kove c. Keep the cuddles and lose the mess with Advantage Chewable . Just one tasty tablet kills fleas and ticks No mess, no stress. Just one tasty chew. Advantage Chewable. Flea and tick protection made easy. Find out more at Advantage Chewable .co.uk . Easy to love, easy to protect. Advantage Chewable . All right, I'm very pleased to be joined by my friend Nika Kovach, who's been on the show before. She's uh an incredible activist. She's the leader of My Voice, My Choice, which successfully, right, Nika, um, got a over million signatures to force the issue of abortion rights onto the European agenda and successfully uh got the European Commission uh to commit uh additional funding for that effort. She's also the co-founder of the Eighth of March Institute, a human rights activist. Nika, uh, thanks so much for joining us. Hey, I'm so happy to be here. Okay, Nika. So I want to start with uh you obviously are Slovenian, you've been involved in Slovenian politics, um, supporting progressive candidates and causes. There was recently a Slovenian election, which we talked about in the last uh episode. Um, but I want to begin with this crazy story of um your role in coordination with some other activists and journalists in the run up to the election, in uh uncovering the interference and involvement of BlockCube, which is a firm of former Mossad agents that I have history with. They once uh were spying on me. Um but you uncovered uh uh that Black Cube was um interfering in the election. Uh can you just start by uh describing um you know what you what you discovered essentially and how that came about. Yeah, so basically like we had elections in Slovenia, a very intense campaign. The authoritarian candidate was so well organized. Like they had influencers who are doing like the usual shit that they do by the playbook. And then suddenly, throughout the night, a webpage popped up which was like revealing the corruption in Slovenia. And on that webpage , there were like um videos of different people, they were called Apprendix 1, Apprendix 2, Apprendix 3, which were secretly recorded while speaking about corruption in Slovenia , it was not like a video of like actual corruption, like people getting money, just descriptions of how the state function in Slovenia. And when this webpage popped up, for me it was clear two things. Firstly , that it's not a whistleblower, that it's not someone who is just wanting to attack corruption. And secondly, that it is way too well done that it would be done by anyone in Slovenia. So I got this very suspicious feeling that um it's a foreign um intervention and I knew that similar things were happening in 2018-2022 in Hungary, and I got this very bad feeling that it is going for like Israelis work, um, and that there are some firms with a lot of money um attacking Slovenia . I started to talk with very good friends who are journalists, and um they had a leak that Jansha met Yes. He's the the the authoritarian best friend of Victor Orban. He's in politics for thirty three years. Um and he wanted to get the power back . He lost elections four years ago. Um and he did everything to basically um come to the power now. And we got an in a leak that basically um a group of people speaking in not Slovenian language came to him and that they were from Israel and they had a meeting. And journalists had this leak. And when I started to speak, hey, I think there is like a foreign interference. Um, we started to connect the dots. Um, we got information when this meeting happened. We um bought an access to fly riders, so we got the information when the private jet from Tel Aviv landed in Slovenia . And then we got the names of the people who were there, and we realized that it is Black Cube. And then things started to connect. And it was this what the fuck is happening in Slovenia moment. In three days, we decided that we will tell the story and that we will go out with the story. I have friends in Israel who are investigating that kind of stuff for years and they told me who Black Cube is. And then we made the decision that we will expose private Mossad in Slovenia. And in one weekend we prepared a report about this, about the other cases, about um what Black Cube already done in other countries, and also um information about what they were doing in Slovenia. And what I think it was really important was that we decided that we do it in a very non traditional way. So it was not just journalists exposing them, not just activists. But it was me, one journalist and another colleague from civil society who had a press conference, and we told: Hey , like this is happening, these guys are here. And why they met Jansha, who is paying them, and what the people that are paying them want from Slovenia. And this is how the whole journey of one week of craziness started. Um, Jansha's first reaction was that he doesn't know who Black Cube is. Then his second reaction was that they need a monument because they are exposing corruption. The third reaction was that he will sue me because I'm saying that he's working with them. And after Slovenian national security forces said publicly that they did an investigation and that they were really a Tanzhao's party, he finally admitted he knows them. And this is when the story started to unfold. And it's the biggest scandal in Slovenian history, in and it's like the biggest attempt to influence our elections, which is actually really damp, you know. I think Jansha would win like so easily if he wouldn't do that kind of bad shit that he was doing. Um, he would just need a positive agenda. People were quite disappointed with the government that we had and wanted change. And I think what uh fucked him self was that he's actually an evil guy who used even more evil guys to help him in Slovenia, and he was not ready that a group of people will expose them. So yeah, I I'm gonna give a little bit of background for the listeners too because of my own history. So uh for for me, um way back in twenty eighteen, uh the Guardian reported that black cube was uh digging up dirt uh on me and trying to spy on me. Um that was news to me. Um but I subsequently learned all these things like they'd contacted my wife. Um they had, you know, fake LinkedIn pages. They had to file on me that had all kinds of stuff in it. Um but you know kind of stuff that was kind of more to intimidate like pictures of I don't know my apartment or things the front door of my apartment or things like that. What was interesting is and relevant to Slovenia is I went to Hungary a year later when I was reporting my book, and I met all these people that I didn't even know had been all similarly spied on by Black Cube, but essentially what I learned is Black Cube had run a whole operation inside of Hungary to help Victor Orban, where they recorded conversations with someone who was basically just saying, Hey, I'd like the European Union to put more pressure on Victor Orban , which by the way, any activist would say if they came on this podcast, right? But because it was recorded secretly, it sounded like a secret plan. And guess where the leak was, Nika? It was in the Jerusalem Post. So it wasn't even subtle. But then Orbon took this leak and they called it Soros Leaks. And then Steve Bannon started to juice it on Breitbart. And Orban kind of closed his campaign with the idea that George Soros was trying to overthrow the Hungarian government. The point is that there's a history of Black Cube intervening to help right-wing, far right-wing, autocratic people in Central and Eastern Europe. The question I want to ask you, because m uh some people may not be familiar with the positions that the current prime minister of Slovenia's taken on Israel. Um why do you think Black Cube and Israeli you know pot Israeli intelligence or former intelligence was so interested in helping Jansa, this far-right guy, win in Slovenia. And is it tied to um the desire to see far-right politicians win in Europe? Or is it is it tied to the positions that the Slovenian government's taken on on Israel um and and and what are give a little bit of background for people on what the those positions are. Yeah so firstly I think that it's really important that we say that the black cube has always a playbook. Like they always are having like fake identities, they record people, they post this, and they even like do not post real stuff. They do these mixtures from videos with a clear like intention to basically fake the reality. What we need to know is that they're not activists. They are not people coming to the country and fight for like different political opinions. They are a firm which is making billions out of that kind of resources. They were also working with Weinstein and the operation with Weinstein costed like 1.3 million euros. So firstly, someone needed to pay them that they came to Slovenia. But what is also important is that they were definitely close with Jansche, because the people who came to Slovenia were like the highest people in this organization. Why is this happening? Because as you said, our Prime Minister had a really clear stand on Gaza. What he was saying is that this is a genocide, he was very clear about this. We were one of the first countries who basically made Netanyahu a persona non-grata in Slovenia. And it was very, very clear like where we are standing as a country. But on the other also, Henti Ansha always is visiting like Israel, he's always speaking nice about Natanyaho and he's clearly connected with these people. I don't know if this was like an Israeli state operation, like in Slovenia, and I also don't want to claim this, but what I know is that there was a clear interest to basically um attack the current government and to basically mess with it. But we also need to know that like this cost that like hundreds of thousands of euros. Probably this whole operation was more expensive than all the Slovenian elections altogether. And uh my question is like who is paying for this? Is this the money which came from Hungary? Is this the money that came from some rich people in Slovenia? Um and um why um people had such a big interest to do this here? Yeah, I think in and what we've talked all about this a lot on the podcast, but people just really need to understand that there is this network, this ne xus that extends from Russia into Hungary, right? Orban is tighter with Putin, he's not a supporter of Ukraine. Um, but then Netanyahu has been very supportive of Orban, despite Orban having some pretty anti-Semitic tendencies, but Orban always sides with Israel uh inside the European Union and against uh Palestine. Uh and and so there's this kind of weird convergence of uh the American far right and Trump and Putin and Orban and guys like Johnza and Sylvania and Netanyahu, like these guys all help each other out. Um and and and again, we're not saying it's an Israeli state operation, uh, but we are saying that they were a group of former Mossad guys that were getting paid to help Johnsa. And also these people like who were in Slovenia were one of the main people who were the um basically the propaganda machine for the genocide. They were the people who where we can see public statements of them that like the Gaza needs to be like basically um cut down from the humanitarian aid, that they need to be cut down from like food, that they need to starve the whole population there. So I also like we need to know where they are standing ideologically and why they are such a good friends with Jansha. Um and why they um were in Slovenia with such a big passion and um wish. Well, yeah, and and and so there are a lot of questions that can be answered. I do want to ask you about the Slovenian election results. So part of what happened here is it it seemed like Yansa was going to cruise to victory, like you said. Um in part because there was a vigorous campaign, in part because of this in the final week. It turned out that the progressive incumbent won a plurality. He won a slightly more votes in Nyanza . However, you know, everybody was under thirty percent 'cause there are a lot of parties. Um how do you feel about the election result and what I I know now it's a coalition gu formation question, like do we have any sense of who's gonna be the next Prime Minister of Slovenia So a couple of things. Like the first thing was that like people were disappointed by the government. Um, they were disappointed by the cost of living, by the housing situation, by healthcare, and also like what current government did wrongly is that they had like Biden's model of campaigning as the role model of campaigning. So the campaign was not hot at all, you know, and it was very hard to make people excited for the elections. Why I think that revealing this story was so important was because it was a reminder what Jansha is, and it was also showing like what kind of Sikh methods he's using to go to the victory. Um what will happen and what happened on the elections is that um Gulop won for like seven thousand votes. It was very intense. Yes. And also like right now we don't know who will be the ne xt um prime minister of Slovenia. We know that Jan Sha lost in his big mission. His big mission was to get a constitutional majority, and I think this could happen without all the stuff that happened in the last week. But I think that in Slovenia right now what would need to happen is that the older parties would need to say we are not going with Jan. So he betrayed the country, he brought like Israeli private Mossad in the game. And this is a limit. Like if we are democrats in a sense of like believing in democracy, we cannot um collaborate with that kind of person. But they're not saying this, like the process for forming the government will last at least a month more. Um and I wish that the current prime minister will stay the prime minister. Um, but um I cannot say this uh with certainty. And also another option is that they will not be able to form a government for a couple of rounds and that we will have another elections. Um which is something that um no one is very excited about it makes you exhausted thinking about it. Yeah. Well we'll follow it. I two more questions that kind of widen this um lens a little bit. Uh one is you're obviously involved in Slovenian politics, but you're also involved in anti-authoritarian politics across Europe. And frankly around the world. Um the the kind of next big election that everybody's been watching is Hungary. Um you've taught already you know Slovenia is often seen as a bellwether too. It's a small country, but it it's kind of often been seen as an indicator of where things are going, at least in that part of Europe. Um, it seems like Peter Magy ar, the opposition candidate in Hungary, has the best chance to beat Victor Orban of anybody since 2010 when Orban came back to power. Uh I know you have a lot of Hungarian friends. What is your assessment of kind of the Hungarian election, but also does it does the Slovenian election have any relevance to Hungary in the sense of, you know, Jansa and Orban are buddies and Jansa just underperformed? I mean, how are you feeling about the Hungarian election? I mean, I'm watching videos from Hungary all the time, and it's giving me so much hope because I see people like standing up and resisting. And also Orban is doing a lot of mistakes. They also have spy scandals. They have like different things which are popping up in Hungary. And my feeling is that he will end on his own, his own regime. And I hope this will happen. Another question which we always have in that kind of countries is will elections be fair and will actually like not be stolen. For Slovenia, particularly, like losing Orma Orban in Hungary means that Jans o will lose a lot of money and a lot of funding for the system around him. A lot of media have been bought with Hungarian money in Slovenia. It was always like very a connected regime. So we are watching this with a lot of excitement. And I also think that like imagine the whole picture of the Europe in three weeks if we have like centuries government in Slovenia and the centrist government in Hungary. Like it would mean like a huge change for the Europe and also for the vibe of the whole continent. I don't know what will happen, as I said, but um it's the biggest amount of hope so far, and I always hold on to the hope in that kind of situations. Well, uh we need to hold on to hope right now. Uh the last question I would ask you is you know, we've talked a lot on this podcast, and you know, you and I've talked a lot about how networked the far right is, how much they learn from each other, how they help each other. You've already talked about the fact that there's Hungarian money buying up media in Slovenia. There's Israeli, you know, ex-Massad helping you know both Orban and Johnson. There's this, you know, you had uh Marco Rubio fly to Hungary to endorse Vic Victor Orban. Like there's all this synergies on the right. What we need to do more on the progressive side is similarly network and learn from each other. And so, and I frankly, I think a lot of those types of people listen to this podcast. When you look back on the Slovenian election that just took place, what lessons would you identify that might be relevant to progressives who are mounting campaigns either in politics or civil society in other countries? And if I may ask kind of a leading question, it seems like being aggressive in exposing and revealing that foreign interference is probably one lesson. Like don't just wait for the newspaper to print it. You know, people had to go out and do it themselves. Yeah. A couple of things. So this is my second get out and vote campaign and the second campaign where we managed to defeat Jansha at least by the amount of votes. Um and in both campaigns it was super important that I was spending time with people from other countries, that I understood what happened in India, that I understood what happened in Russia, in Belarus, in other places. On the first campaign, it was important because I needed to understand that authoritarians have a playbook and that they always play by the same rules, that they attack the media, that they help um other friends, that they attack independent institution, that they threaten you. Um in these elections, why it was important that I have all of you in my life is because I could recognize the pattern. And I could understand that what is happening, it's not a whistleblowing campaign, it's not a referendum about corruption, but it is like fucking foreign interference in elections, which happened in other places. Um, and it also happened to my friends. The second thing which I always learn is that we should not be afraid of them. Like um, we always think that they are so powerful and so strong, but actually these dudes just play by the same like rules and um when you become loud and when you become not afraid and when you start to exposing them, like they get so lost because they don't know what to do because they count on you being afraid. The third thing is that the secret is in big coalitions and that usually in on our side like politicians are not sexy and hot. Like it's very rare that you have a candidate. Pedro Sanchez is yeah. Yeah. or Or like like, you know, Mamdanny and stuff like but like in general it you're very lucky if you have a candidate for who you would like go on the street and die for. But so we need to create this like hour of making elections fun and important and joyful, like on our own. And this is why I really believe that we need to form big coalitions, not just with civil society, but also with influencers, with like um people who are doing different stuff like with coffee shops, with bars who have the posters, um with um people on the ground. And um also one of the things is that we need to demand from politicians. Like that when we go to the elections and when we vote, people need to have a feeling that there will be a difference and that they are voting for something. And if we don't have this something extra, um what um I think happened um in the US and also in Slovenia to certain extent, like it's very hard to do a campaign because people deserve more and politicians need to um promise more. And the fifth thing is that um expose them and talk about their tactics and their strategies um because um it's important that people understand and in our case what was also important that like we were a group of friends like if I wouldn't have such a close relationship with journalists who are exposing this and with part of civil society who was with us, like we would never do this crazy and dangerous thing. But we did it because we trusted each other, and we did it to um protect the country. And also the last thing is that you need to love your country, you know? Like I love Slovenia so much and like I would do everything for it. And I think that when you love it and when you show the people that like there is something we need to protect and care for, um they will join you. So at the end usually things come together. Um I don't know if it will be the case right now informing the government, but at least we didn't allow black cube to fuck around on uh unnoticed. Well look uh that's one of the best summaries of the counter authoritarian playbook I've heard. I hope everybody you know pays careful attention to that. I I also just want to say, Nika, I know you've been working like crazy for a long time because you you protected and extended abortion rights in Europe through My Voice, My Choice. You exposed this Black Cube operation. You helped defeat DYNSA, at least in the vote count, for the second consecutive time. So we're very proud of what you're doing and uh also hope you get some rest. Time for self-care. Let's add that to the list at the end. Or that we stop with everything and open a bookstore, huh? Well that you know