Oliver North and the Iran Connection

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This is a job for indeed sponsored jobs Welcome to Snapoo, the show about history's greatest screw ups, where we delve into all the messy mayhem and then try to figure out What it says about us as human beings and sppoiler alert It's usually not very good things. I'm Ed Helmms, your host, and today I'm joined by the host of the insanely popular and entertaining podcast Behind the Bastards, which examines the lives and legacies of history's worst people. After first establishing his writing shops at Hor website crracked. Gest worked for the investigative journalism group, Bellingcat. He also reported from conflict zones around the world, including Iraq, Syria, and Ukraine, writing extensively on extremism, disinformation, and political violence In addition to his podcasting work, he is the author of the novel After the Revolution, a speculative story about a fractured future America. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome, the incomparable Robert Evans., that was such a nice introduction. Thank you. That's the whole podcast. After all the terrible things I've told you All I do is just give these lovely glowing introductions and then then we call it a day. No, I'm so glad to have you on. I of course, have been a guest on your podcast behind the Bastards, not once, but twice. That's right I'm still waiting for my third invite. notot going to hold it against you yet, but just pututting that out there I mean to have you back. But I'm super excited to play host to you this time. I'm excited to be on SnaFu. I've been listening since season one. and yeah, I'm glad to get to actually participate in the show now. I can't wait to hear what you're got to tell me about. You are in it now. It's funny, ourur shows have some thematic Similarities. You focus on bad people throughout history. I focus on bad events or incidents or mistakes throughout history. Why are we so drawn to the dark side, Robert Evans I mean, I think there's part of it's just like this little piece in all of us that's encoded by evolution to where like if somebody else screws up in a major way, you wanna like pay attention to see, it's like if you see a car wreck, it's like what happened there? Can I avoid that? Can I make sure I don't get into that kind of problem? It's funny, you put it that way because I feel like that's a well intentioned or it's sort of a positive spin on why we're drawn to these things I feel like there's a darker impulse in all of us Like why why we look at car crashes? It's not because it's like we're looking for ways to avoid that It's because I think what? what is it It makes us feel safer to see other people injured or something. I don't know, That is a good one because like one of my favorite ways to relax. like when my friends and I a couple of years ago, we all got laid off at the website we've been working for and I had everyone over to the house and I just put on hours worth of footage of like people injuring themselves trying to cut down trees because it'll be like a guy and his kid and like a three hundred year old oak tree and he's got like a forty dollarars saw that he bought from Home Depot. and he's like, I can take this treat. And I just love watching like the hubris meet with physics. But there is a darkness to it as well. I think we all have a sort of Soden Freud gene in us that's sort of like It can be soothing to just know we're not alone in our pain and misery in this world. Yeah. It's pretty universal. And someone always has it worse than you do. prettyty much. Now, you have a background in investigative journalism with some pretty serious chops in that area. What drew you into that space? You know, I've always been fascinated By conflict, I came into it sort of as like a military history nerd, someone who was interested in that But really what kind of like broke me into like a significant role in media was I just happened to be paying attention to these weird little corners of the internet right as like the alt right erupted and you know eight chan, four chan kind of like became major things in terms of like people were carrying out attacks and stuff based you know, having been radicalized in these little fastest corners of the internet And I just kind of been watching them for a couple of years. And so I realized at a certain point like, oh, there's not a lot of other people who understand how these communities work. I should probably explain them to people because members of those communities are now killing people. R. It was a mix of like accident and I guess happenstance. Sure. Well, it was a product of your own curiosity Right. And I think I feel like that's one of the traits of the great journalists out there is like this relentless curiosity and that it's coming from a genuine place. It's not just like, how do I get the next big scoop You know, it's like, ye, I really my sense and I'm not a journalist at all, but my sense of it is that The journalists, the great ones really have like a personal like unquenchable thirst to know and this curiosity that drives through because investigative journalism is tedious. It is incredibly time consuming. It be it can be dangerous a lot of tim times U and that thirst for the truth or for knowledge or for clarity on something Um is really powerful. I think it's such an admirable space to be in. Do you see great investigative journalism happening today? Like who are the people that you think are really standing out or doing great work I mean, besides Tucker Carlson. Of course of course, Tucker, you and I are both big fans of of Tucker. You know, my old colleagues at Bellingcat continue to do great work. You know, The New York Times Visual Inestigations desk has done some really impressive open source reporting on Conlicts, I mean, over all over the world over the last like several years, I find myself really interested in BBC Africa Eye, which is their kind of open source covering like particularly like war crimes in places like Cameroon. So there's a lot of really interesting nuts and bolts work being done by folks who are willing to do things like spend hundreds of hours combing through like footage that we know is a war crime, but we don't know what militia was responsible or where it was done and like el laborously matching, like you can kind of see a mountain in the background and so they'll just spend weeks going through Google maps and they're like, it's this mountain. And because of where it is in the frame of the shot, we can like now locate this exact point geographically and we know that these militant groups wereacting like that's really impressive work to me. Yeah so much more of a pain in the butt than what I did, you know, when I was covering that stuff I have tremendous admiration for that And anybody who's doing like financial crimes investigative journalism, this the wonkiness required, the ability to dig deep into like the financials of a company that's doing something wrong is so labor intensive. I can barely balance my checkbook. can't I can't even wrap my head around that stuff. And then it's it's not only the digging into it and the figuring it out, it's then the ability to translate it into English And in an interesting way that lay people can understand. Kudos to you and your colleagues and all the people out there doing great investigative journalism. So let's dig in For today's SnaFoo, I chose something that I think is kind of in both of our wheelhouses because it features both bad people and bad events, which makes it you know It's kind of a It's a mash up of behind the Bastards and Snfu. I like it. What would we call that Behind the snaps? No behind sn I feel like there's a good portmanteau with with snapu and bastards. and I want to call it snapards. Sure Right? That's the. There we go. There we go. We're gonna c all that. All right. today's episode Pak Reagan era Cold War insanity. A true international pickle of the extra spicy variety. This is the Iran Contra affair. Beautiful Do you remember anything about this? I think I'm a little older than you. I'm not sure. Yeah. I was born in ' eighty eight, so I don't like have firsth memories of it. Yeah I do remember I remember my first because I grew up in a very conservative household and we watched Fox News a lot and Oliver North had a television show during the bush years. S stories CNN Was it on CN? I think his show was on CN. Yeah. he had like a war history show. Yeah, I forget which network it was on, but I know it was on a lot. and I asked my parents like, who's that guy? Yeah They were like, well, he got in some trouble a few years back, but it was Totally buing. Yeah Yeah, that was Hareacted. We'll learn a lot about Oliver North today. It's funny. I remember I feel like and maybe it's just because I've read so much about it, but I feel like I remember seeing these hearings and news coverage as a kid. I was born in seventy four. So this was all sort of I was around ten, twelve when a lot of this stuff was breaking. But let's get right into it. So I think it's important to start any conversation about the Iran Cnter affair with a quick warning which is that this can get a little confusing. While the name sounds like one neat tidy little package, the Iran Contraffair is actually a very complicated web of deceit and absurdity involving completely different American adversaries into completely different crises in completely different hemispheres And they all get tangled up in a beautiful knot as as we'll see these crises were initially so fundamentally unrelated that it's hard to fathom how they they mix up. That's part of the fun of this. Yeah, and it really says a lot about how widely we were screwing around with the rest of the world those years that like great point. Nicaragua and Iran w w up tied together in a scandal through us. Exactly. Yes. these two countries so far apart couldn't have less to do with each other. The United States manages to just tie them into this Beautiful Gordon knot, which we're going to try to unravel a little bit. So let's begin our snafu in the summer of nineteen seventy nine, a famously chill, uneventful period in global history. That's. Just kidding, not at all. The Vietnam War had ended just four years prior, the psychic wounds were still very fresh in America. Jimmy Carter was president and the year's headlines included Vietnam, invading Cambodia. China, subsequently invading Vietnam because of course, Margaret Thatcher, becoming the UK's first female prime minister and the Iranian Revolution, which will become very important later in our story. Now let's jump to a tiny country in Central America called Nicaragua, roughly the size of New York state, nestled right between Honduras and Costa Rica Their leader was dictator Anastasio Somosa whose family had spent decades running the country with corruption, repression, and A lot of support from good old Uncle Sam. Oh, Yeah we're just propping this dictator right on up. Yeah. But on july nineteenth, nineteen seventy nine, Samoza was overthrown by Nicaragua's socialist Sandinistas Almost immediately, Ronald Reagan came into office in nineteen eighty and good old Ronny had a very clear worldview It wasn't something to manage, it was something to beat This became known, of course, as the Reagan doctrine, which basically said, we're not just going try to contain communism around the world. We're going to actively try to roll it back. And one of the ways that we're going to do that is by supporting anti communist forces around the world Um, as we'll soon see, by pretty much any means necessary. Yeah. So when Nicaragua's socialist Sandinistas overthrew a US backed dictator in ' seventy nine, to many Nicaraguans, this felt like liberation, but to Washington, it basically felt like Karl Marx had just moved into the guest bedroom. Yeah, yeah, we went to all this trouble to give you guys a nice dictator and prop him up with rocket launchers and machine guns and this is how you repay us. Yeah. for giving this guy guns to kill you with? Exactly. Yeah. What the heck? comeome on Cashflow Crunch, Ondeck's small business line of credit gives your business immediate access to funds up to two hundred thousand dollars right when you need it. cover seasonal dips, manage payroll, restock inventory, or tackle unexpected expenses without missing a beat. With flexible draws, transparent pricing and control over repayment get funded quickly and confidently. Apply today at onndDeck dot com Funds could be available as soon tomorrow. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OndDck or Celtic Bank. Ondeck does not lend in North Dakota, lo ownans an amount subject to lender approval. When it comes to looking your best, Beachbum tanning does it better. 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For more info, talk to your eye doctor, callall one eight fourty four MyIibo Y or visit myibo dot com Baked goods and pasta, but not the way they make you feel? What if I told you there are macro friendly options that don't taste like sawdust and sadness? Satisfying sandwiches, fully loaded bagels, noodles that can stand up to your favorite chunky sauces. All delicious. Craveworthy and smart, each serving of herero bread has up to nineteen grams of protein and thirty two grams of fiber, and just zero to five grams net carbs and zero grams sugar Hero Bread bakes with heart healthy olive oil and delivers the soft fluffy, flavorful experience you love. Breakfast burritos, shemer loaded bagels, realal mac and cheese. Hero Bread bakes loaves, bagels and tortillas that don't taste or feel like cardboard, noodles that don't fall apart in hearty sauces. Plus limited edition small batch bakes like the two Grams Net cararp Hero Croissant or one Gram Net cararp Hero Cheddar Biscuit Hmade in a sonoma based French bakery. Shop now on herero. C. Use code Hart for ten percent off. That's hero. CO. Pererving metal low calorie foods and products contain alulose nutrition info on herero. co for sodium and sugar content So yeah, these Sandinistas are socialists, communism adjacent, close enough that it just was not feeling good. because this wasn't communism bubbling up in Eastern Europe or Southeast Asia, you know, oceans away. This was Central America. It's basically a nine iron chip shot from Texas And now add in the Sandinistas' explicit ties to the Soviet Union and suddenly Reagan's team is looking at Nicaragua like it's the Cold War's new front line Yeah. that's very much like the attitude they had at the time, right? This like if it if it spills over into one country, it will inevitably spread into, you know, the neighboring countries. And even though like You know We saw like it during the Korean War. You've got a communist North Korea After the war or after the ceasefire, you have South Korea, which is not a communist state. and North Korea didn't inevitably spread to its neighbors, right? Like you this kind of domino theory already had proved to be not totally accurate, but they they still really like it's the easiest justification for doing whatever you want, right? If you're just like, if we don't take a handle on this They're going to spread everywhere.ough there will be communists marching into Texas. Well, I really think that you know, getting into the the national psyche a little bit at that time. Yeah. there was a genuine sense that communism was just evil exxplitly evil. And I mean I think there still is in some various corners, but it was not seen as just a sort of competing system of government or a sociological experiment of some kind. It was seen as like a very evil enterprise. And also in that way, it was also perceived as kind of a contagion to your point, like something that could catch hold or sort of corrupt people's minds and then take hold I don't know. if you're a regular American at this time Robert, are you sort of buying the Red Scare or are you a little more skeptical I mean, I would hope that I would be skeptical. You know, as a kid, I certainly wasn't. and my parents were very much big reaganites and very much bought in to this whole idea that like communism is this is inherently different from any other kind of system of government around the world. And so much worse even than other any kind of other authoritarian, we might back, right? Because there's something inherently extra dangerous about communism. And obviously, I would say like looking at The history of this period of time and looking at the history of from like the fifties up through the seventies to the eighties. I don't actually think the evidence is there to say that like these communist regimes were any kind of in any way inherently worse than any other like flawed authoritarian regimes that existed around the world, right? Like there's upsides and there's downsides, there's things they did well, there's things that they did badly. We can now know that like, yeah, the idea that communism, if it was allowed to spread to one country, would inevitably spread to all of its neighbors just untrue. It didn't happen in a bunch of places, right? Costa Rica did not become a communist state, right? But I also, you know, people were playing with a different amount of information at the time too. And I'm not surprised that given what folks were learning in school and what organizations like the John Birch Society were spreading in terms of like anti communist propaganda that a lot of people did believe this is like a life and death thing as opposed to like, well, this is a country that's These are regimes that are geopolitically opposed to ours. But that doesn't mean they're inherently the devil, you know Yeah, I was I grew up sort of inculcated with a sense that the Soviet Union was was evil. That sort of like was a sweeping opinion of just sort of the entire population which seemems kind of crazy, but extremely common Yeah. what's really interesting to parse here is how much of the of the anti communist activity on the part of our government at the time was more of an ideological sort of crusade, or was it more just about trying to control and influence various sort of geographic pockets around the world? We'll learn a little bit more, but that's a really fun sort of open debate Yeah tap into And I think it's kind of worth looking back on previous great power clashes that had happened not that long previously, including like the great game between Russia and the British Empire in kind of the early chunk of the early parts of the twentieth century, the very end of the nineteenth century, where you had a lot of the same language, Oh, the Tsarist Russia is this inherently, you know like destructive spreading force that we have to counter as the British emmpire, alth they'll be right in our backyard A lot of the same kind of like rhetoric hype and whatnot that obviously goes away the instant we wind up allied or the instant that Great Britain winds up allied with Tsarist Russia in a war. But it's this I think a lot of it just is great power conflict as if you are a great power and if you're seeing yourself and very much are, in fact, fighting this kind of coold war against this other great power They're going be the devil, right? withithin your own country, within sort of the attitude of the ruling class in your country. That's just like the norm historically. whether they're communists or an imperial power, whatever you want to call it, you know Amen The Reagan doctrine in a situation like this, the playbook was pretty straightforward, findind the Sandinistas enemies and back them. support the people fighting the Sandinistas. So in nineteen eighty one, Reagan authorized the CIA to build and train a paramilitary force of Nicaraguan exiles to destabilize and ultimately topple the government. These counter revolutionaries, la Contra revolution or what became in Washington shorthand, the Contras initially included former members of Samosa's National Guard. Over time, the CIA bulked them up with mercenaries and disillusioned ex Sandinistas broken with the revolution. Quick gut check do these these interventions ever go according to plan Or is it just kind of like a we'll fix it in post foreign policy? You know, it depends, I guess, becausecause like when we, for example, during like Russia's invasion of Afghanistan The initial stage of that like goes pretty well for us and that like we back the Mujahidein to an extent and they really do do a lot of damage to the Red Army and to just the USSR's ability. It's a contributing factor to why the Soviet Union collapses, right? as a disaster in Afghanistan. And so to that extent, like our intervention in Afghanistan worked exactly the way US war planners thought it would then there were other knock on effects of us messing around in Afghanistan that didn't work out so well in the long run. So and this this Maduro situation with Venezuela is very interesting and I think the jury' very much still out on how that what happens there? How that's going to shake out. but Yeah yeah, this is something we like to do as a country. So as this program ramped up, reports trickled back to the US. that contra paramilitaries were forming death squads and committing atrocities throughout Nicaragua. Atrocities, of course, is not a word you want associated with your team M. Iard deeath squads. Yeah. Dath squad squads. Yeah U in November, nineteen eighty two, newewswek exposed the CIA's role in all of this, which removed, of course, any semblance of plausible deniability. The article landed on the desk of Democratic Senator Edward Boland, who was to use a technical term, extremely pissed off. The thing is Congress generally likes to be told about war stuff and Reagan had just kind of skipped that step here So with Boland leading the charge, Congress passed the Boland amendment restricting U. S. intelligence agencies by prohibiting any funds, quote for the purpose of overthrowing the government of Nicaragua, end quote. The vote was unanimous, four hundred and eleven to zero, which is pretty That doesn't happen anymore. No I mean'ts like that anymore. It was pretty rare then And that was supposed to be the end of it, which historically speaking is exactly the kind of sentence that guarantees it wasn't the end of it.. Interesting question here. Do you think that Congress's outrage was more about the human rights abuses going on in Nicaragua or more about being sort of cut out of the decision making process. I don't know enough about Bolen, so I don't want to say that like, oh, he didn't give a shit about the human rights. But I think Congress on the whole, it was more They're coming for like, this is our We're supposed to have influence here. You're not supposed be able to just do this and not talk to us, right Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the right answer I'm sure is a little bit from column A and a little from column B, but the But really this is a standoff of between congressional and executive branch powers. And u in Congress putut their foot down, which was kind of kind of badass. Yeah. It doesn't happen a lot anymore with that boy of stuff. Boy is not is really okay with letting the president know that you is just they just grin and give high fives, basically Surprise, surprise, Reagan's CIA did not follow this new law. In fact They just doubled down on what they were already doing. In early nineteen eighty four, they helped lay undersea mines at three Nicaraguan ports. This resulted in two people being killed and fifteen wounded And this time, the Wall Street Journal swooped in, exposing the whole thing. and Congress was like, seriously L we just We just told you not to do this. So in nineteen eighty four, they came back with an even stricter, more explicit law. and they're like, guys, we really mean it this time. No more meddling in Nicaragua. Stop it. Yeah. I mean, at this point, is it are they really doing anything than just writing a strongly worded letter? No, this is a series ofcribe the Bolin amendment amendment.ike yeah. Yeah This is I guess Congress has just become a strongly worded letter apparatus. Right. That's kind of all reiew review for the president. Yes, it carries all the gravitas of a bad, yall, review while Q Reagan's team Finding a loophole. yet again, the National Security Council or NSC basically said, hey, the Boland ammendment only restricts intelligence agencies. and we're not technically an intelligence agency. whichich is a bit like a casino saying like, we're not a massive gambling operation. We're just a little mom and pop motif with some card games in the. This is a bar with slots. Quick little bit of context. The National Security Council is the president's inner circle on foreign policy. Usually it will contain the vice president, the seecretary of state, seecretary of defefense, national seecurity addvisor, all the heavy hitters coordinating military intelligence and diplomacy. So they're kind of overseeing the intelligence agencies, but they're technically, I guess they're sort of excusing themselves. likeike we're technically not an intelligence agency. So the wording doesn't apply here Right R. But if there is a giant global move on the on behalf of the United States, like it's because of this group Right, right. And there're certainly like orders are going out to intelligence agencies as a result of stuff the NSC is doing. Exactly. Yeah. But by declaring themselves not an intelligence agency, wink, wink, nudge, nudge. they effectively sidestepped the law and kept on covertly operating in Nicaragua and beyond. There's something so incredible about how bullshitable our legal system is. It really is or not just our legal system, but like our system of laws, like or bills, amendments, congressional sort of mandates and so forth. like lawyers who have mastered crawling between the cracks of language in order to justify and carve out things, It's really a wild way that it's almost like our language fails us because it doesn't address the most obvious and intellectually honest take on something. I think part of the problem is that like we're raised and we growrew up in schools, we're educated With this understanding about the Constitution and the Bill of Rights and the way in which like separation of powers works that is very much taught to us is like, and these are like the pillars of our society and these are like hard rules about how things are supposed to work. And the reality is that like all of the rules that govern What our leaders have the power to do are like the monopoly rules in that like, yeah, there's rules. and if you catch someone doing something wrong, sometimes you can make them like put the money they stole back in the in in the bank or whatever. But the name of the game is to get away with what you can get away with. There's people who spend their whole lives figuring out How much can we get away with And some of those people happen to now be Supreme Court justices. so they're getting away with a lot more. But like, yeah, that's U Oh boy All of this brings us to a man named Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North. And he's the one who's going to sort of rope in Iran to this mess ONDeck is built to back small businesses like yours. Whether you're buying equipment, expanding your team, or bridging cash flow gaps, ONDecks loans up to four hundred thousand dollars make it happen fast. Rated A plus by the Better Business Bureau and earning thousands of five star trrust pilot reviews, ONDeck delivers funding you can count on. Applying mininutes at Ondeck dot com Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OndDeck or Celtic Bank. OndDeck does not lend in North Dakota all loans and amounts subject to lender approval. When it comes to looking your best, Beachbum Tanning does it better. Beachbum delivers advanced sun and spray tanning, luxury skincare, and an elevated salon experience designed around you. It's why so many guests trust Beachbum for flawless color and real confidence. And now Beachbum is expanding wellness services to many locations. withith red light therapy and infrared sauna, with more on the way. recharge your body, refresh your skin. Ret your day. Beachbum isn't just tanning. It's full spectrum wellness. Visit beachbum dot com to find a location near you Do dry eyes still feel gritty, rough, or tired? With my bow, eyes can feel My bow Fibo, for Fluurohexaloactaneopfalmic solution, is the only prescription dry eye drop that directly targets the number one cause of dry eye, too much tear evaporation Myibbo mimics the way the protective outer layer of a healthy tear film fights evaporation, allowing you to keep more of your own tears. It can help the surface of the eye heal when used consistently as directed So eyes can find relief that's Don't use if allergic to Myibo. Remove contacts before using and wait at least thirty minutes before putting them back in. Eye redness and blurred vision may occur. For more info, talk to your eye doctor, call one eight fourty four Myibo Y, or visit myiboot com to find an eye doctor near you. What does treating dry eye differently feel like B bread baked goods and pasta, but not the way they make you feel? What if I told you there are macro friendly options that don't taste like sawdust and sadness? Satisfying sandwiches, fully loaded bagels, noodles that can stand up to your favorite chunky sauces, all delicious. Craveworthy and smart, each serving of herero bread has up to nineteen grams of protein and thirty two grams of fiber, and just zero to five grams net carbs and zero grams sugar Hero Bread bakes with heart healthy olive oil and delivers this soft fluffy, flavorful experience you love. Breakfast burritos, smmeer loaded bagels, realal mac and cheese. Hero Bread bakes loaves, bagels and tortillas that don't taste or feel like cardboard, Noodles that don't fall apart in hearty sauces. Plus limited edition small batch bakes like the two Grams Net Carb Hero Croissant, or one Gram Net cararb Hero Cheddar Biscuit Pan madeade in a sonoma based French bakery. Shop now on hero. C. Use code IHart for ten percent off. That's herero. CO. Pererving metal low calorie foods and products contain alulos, see nutrition info on herero. co for sodium and sugar content Who is Oliver North? He was born in nineteen forty three in San Antonio, Texas and raised in a middle class family in New York. He entered the Naval Academy in nineteen sixty three and graduated as a second lieutenant in the US Marine Corps in nineteen sixty eight. After serving in Vietnam, he continued his military career in various roles, and by june nineteen eighty one, Reagan assigned him to the National Security Council's staff Now this was a bit unusual. The NSC is typically staffed by civilians to keep the military from getting too entangled in shaping foreign policy. But Reagan blurred that line, bringing in military officers like Oliver North who wound up serving as an aide to deputy National security addvisor Admiral John Poindexter.. Okay, so how does Oliver North drag Iran into a story that started in Nicaragua Let's take a little detour and then we'll sort of circle back. Remember when Nicaraguan Revolutionaries were overthrowing a US backed dictator in nineteen seventy nine? Well, it turns out that kind of the same thing was happening at the exact same time in Iran. So in nineteen seventy nine, we're back in nineteen seventy nine, the Iranian Revolution overthrew the US backed Shah Mohammed Reza Palavi and of course brought Ayatollah Komini to power, turning Iran into an Islamic Republic Which was openly hostile to the United States. This is the same rupture still driving US Iran tensions today. It's what Donald Trump and Pete Pgseth are relentlessly referring to as they are beating their war drums. It's so crazy to me that we're talking about nineteen seventy nine revolutions and Cold War fears And it's all knotted up in today's headlines. rightight? Is this history repeating or is it just sort of a story that has never finished? You know, yeah, it's a story that's never finished. because people like to I think history repeating is certainly a way you can look at it. I tend to think of it as like, if you have like an issue with like your pipes and like you have to like get the plunger in or whatever like snake your drain But you don't actually like clean it all the way. You just get it enough to get it working again. They're like, it's good for now. I'll fix it later and then you don't fix it for years and you have another like that's Like I tend to look at especially stuff with like our relationship to Iran that way because like a lot of what's happening, the guy who like the father of the shah who gets overthrown in ' seventy nine was like an aggressive violent secularist to where like he was saying, okay, we're doing away with like all the religious, you know the heads scarfves and stuff that women wear all of the religious and traditional clothing that people have worn