On this Out of the Loop, Jason Pack helps us understand what the conflict between Iran and Israel signifies, and where we can expect it to go from here.
Welcome to what we’re calling our “Out of the Loop” episodes, where we dig a little deeper into fascinating current events that may only register as a blip on the media’s news cycle and have conversations with the people who find themselves immersed in them. Disorder podcast host Jason Pack is here to help us make sense of the recent escalation in conflict between Iran and Israel — how we got here, the dangers and opportunities of the moment, and what we need from world leadership to keep the problem contained.
On This Episode of Out of the Loop:
- Israel launched surprise attacks on Iran’s nuclear program and leadership, setting back its nuclear capabilities by months to years while demonstrating complete intelligence penetration.
- The US brokered a ceasefire between Iran and Israel, but this only addresses symptoms — the underlying regional conflicts and proxy wars remain unresolved.
- Iran announced it’s accelerating its nuclear program in response to the attacks, following the “Libya lesson” that nuclear weapons provide protection from regime change.
- The current moment presents a unique opportunity for comprehensive Middle East peace due to weakened Iranian proxies and shifting regional power dynamics.
- Success requires multilateral diplomacy involving Qatar, Europe, Gulf states, and addressing root causes — not just ceasefire management but genuine conflict resolution through shared interests.
- And much more!
- Connect with Jordan on Twitter, on Instagram, and on YouTube. If you have something you’d like us to tackle here on an Out of the Loop episode, drop Jordan a line at jordan@jordanharbinger.com and let him know!
- Connect with Jason Pack on Twitter or on LinkedIn, and be sure to subscribe to his newsletter and check out his Disorder podcast!
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Please Scroll Down for Featured Resources and Transcript!
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Resources from This Out of the Loop:
- Disorder Podcast
- Ordering the Disorder by Jason Pack | Substack
- Jason Pack | Website
- Israel vs. Iran | Out of the Loop | The Jordan Harbinger Show
- Iran–Israel War | Wikipedia
- Israel Strikes Iran’s Nuclear Sites and Kills Top Generals. Iran Retaliates | Associated Press
- How Much Influence Does Iran Have Over Its Proxy “Axis of Resistance” – Hezbollah, Hamas and the Houthis? | The Conversation
- Houthis in Yemen | Out of the Loop | The Jordan Harbinger Show
- Trump’s Approach to Iran-Israel 12-day War Tells Us About His Foreign Policy | Vox
- An Iranian Nuclear Facility Is So Deep Underground That US Airstrikes Likely Couldn’t Reach It | Associated Press
- What Was in the Iran Nuclear Deal and Why Did Trump Withdraw the US From It? | ABC News
- Right Move, Wrong Team | The Atlantic
- ‘Gravely Alarmed’ World Leaders React After US Strikes Iran | Time
- The Road to Middle East Peace Runs Through Doha | Foreign Policy
- Abdul Qadeer Khan: Nuclear Hero in Pakistan, Villain to the West | Al Jazeera
- Opinion: The US and Its Allies Should Handle Iran and Gaza | The Boston Globe
1177: Iran vs. Israel 2025 | Out of the Loop
This transcript is yet untouched by human hands. Please proceed with caution as we sort through what the robots have given us. We appreciate your patience!
Jordan Harbinger: [00:00:00] Welcome to the show. I'm Jordan Harbinger. On The Jordan Harbinger Show, we decode the stories, secrets, and skills of the world's most fascinating people and turn their wisdom into practical advice that you can use to impact your own life and those around you. Our mission is to help you become a better informed, more critical thinker through long form conversations with a variety of amazing folks.
From spies to CEOs, athletes, authors, thinkers, performers, even the occasional organized crime figure, war correspondent, neuroscientist, or Hollywood filmmaker. If you're new to the show or you wanna tell your friends about the show, I suggest our episode starter packs. These are collections of our favorite episodes on topics like persuasion and negotiation.
Psychology and geopolitics, disinformation, China, North Korea, crime, and cults and more. That'll help new listeners get a taste of everything we do here on the show. Just visit Jordan harbinger.com/start or search for us in your Spotify app to get started today, an out of the loop episode on Iran and Israel.
It's been a while since we did one of these, and it's on the same topic as one recently, but the Israeli [00:01:00] attacks on Iran might actually present an amazing opportunity for a sustained peace deal in the Middle East. Jason P of the Disorder podcast. Joins us today to share his expertise on Iran, Israel, Iran's nuclear program, the war in Gaza, and a whole lot more.
Here we go, out of the loop on Israel and Iran with Jason Pak.
Jason, thanks for joining me, man. I appreciate it. I know it's short notice and late where you are.
Jason Pack: My pleasure, Jordan.
Jordan Harbinger: So you speak four languages, you've been kidnapped twice. Jason, you don't have to copy my bio just to get on the show. Yeah, I'm flattered, but it really wasn't necessary. What languages do you speak?
Jason Pack: My Arabic used to be quite good, particularly when I lived in Syria because you couldn't get around with English there. Once you know Arabic, Hebrew is like almost the dialect of Arabic. It's quite easy. The grammar rules are simpler, the vocabulary is much smaller. And then for my graduate work, I worked at the archives in France and.
I liken me some Coke, [00:02:00] deur, and some fine wine. So I've tried to work on it.
Jordan Harbinger: Nice. All right. And so where did you get kidnapped? I don't wanna focus really on this, but I know people are probably curious 'cause people ask me that all the time.
Jason Pack: It's funny that you mention that because I had not told the details of the story until just recently, Wendy PKK, which is essentially the Kurdish.
Workers party, the Liberationist Kurds in Eastern Turkey, they decided to give up their struggle against Turkey just earlier in the spring of 2025. And then I told that story in the Spectator, but I took a cab in Aleppo with a Fulbright buddy of mine. We were going to Beirut. I had this big date with Sophia.
And what do you know? We didn't make the date. They smuggled this illegal pipe. From Syria to Lebanon, they were doing illegal drilling in the Lebanese mountains, and we were asked to give a voluntary donation while we were detained by gentlemen with AK 40 sevens and out of the [00:03:00] kindness of my heart, I voluntarily donated.
Okay.
Jordan Harbinger: Interesting. But you missed your day. That was, well, it was a pretty good excuse. I would say to miss a date. She actually didn't believe me. Surprise, surprise. Never been friends after that point. Oh, really? Like she never believed
Jason Pack: you. It was just like, all right, you're a liar. Bye. We met the day after.
Okay. And she's, I can't believe you didn't let me know. And I'm like, you know, but I only had my Syrian chip in my phone. This is back in 2004 in the Lebanese mountains. There's no signal on your Syrian chip.
Jordan Harbinger: Also, I feel like when you're getting kidnapped by guys with AK 40 sevens, why didn't you text me?
Falls a little bit. Like there's a few reasons I didn't text you. Namely, I didn't wanna get shot in the face with an AK 47, you said at a cafe all night while I was being held at gunpoint.
Jason Pack: Yeah. I think that she just fundamentally didn't believe the story because there are some wild elements, and again, I don't know if we should get off on this tangent, but it is not the traditional kidnapping sort.
Let's put it that way.
Jordan Harbinger: You've lived in Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Egypt, Israel, Palestine, Oman, which I heard is really nice actually. And Gaddafi [00:04:00] era. Libya. What is it like to live in Gaddafi's, Libya and Assad, Syria for that matter? Because aren't dictatorships like police states, aren't they kind of safe because all the criminals are either dead or running the government.
Jason Pack: That's exactly right. They're terribly safe, but they're two incredibly different places to start with Libya. When I was there in 2008, picture Cuba, in other words, rusting 1970s infrastructure, but a place that was really wealthy. In other words, you have falling apart, but fancy hotels, and then everyone is really afraid to talk about things.
And Syria, very much the opposite. Syria vibrant cafe life. You have to keep in mind that both Damascus and Aleppo are among the oldest constantly inhabited cities and beautiful Ottoman palace restaurants, and very green and quite multicultural, and Libya. I wouldn't recommend the culture, let's put it that way.
Jordan Harbinger: Interesting. Okay. Well, that's a bummer. You'd like to think these places are all nice to hang out, but [00:05:00] I suppose now that there's a civil war in actual slave markets in Libya, maybe it's not exactly a good hang. If it ever was. Alright, let's dive into the Iran stuff, 'cause that's why people have tuned in.
I'd love a brief overview of what's been happening between Israel and Iran over the past couple of weeks. Obviously we can't go all the way back to whatever, 1948 or whatever with Israel and Iran, but I would love to hear about the latest volleys, why these are happening. So for people who don't follow the news, what has been going on because now they're hearing mumblings about Iran and they're not sure what's going on and they know Israel's involved.
And maybe that's it.
Jason Pack: Sure there was a 12 day war, which was initiated by Israel because they launched a secret attack with drones and airstrikes. But in a way, the war was initiated by Iran because Iran has backed Hamas, the Houthis, Hezbollah, and these are terrorist proxy militias that have attacked Israel from before October 7th.
But. Double down on their attacks after [00:06:00] October 7th. So the Israelis had been preparing, and I kid you not for decades to attack Iran's nuclear facilities, Iran's nuclear scientists and key infrastructural nodes. For example, there were some missiles that were smuggled by the Mossad. Iran in 2008 and sat in a truck until they were used on the sneak attack on June 13th
Jordan Harbinger: Wow.
Of 2025. So these missiles have just been sitting there, basically getting old enough to enlist in the military themselves at this point. Or vote, whatever, depending on which jurisdiction you're in. And then somebody's been babysitting these things and then just opened the garage door and let 'em fly.
That's crazy to me.
Jason Pack: Well, essentially, the Mossad had a multi-decade long operation, not only to compromise the highest I. Echelon of the Iranian government, but to spy on every aspect of its infrastructure and nuclear [00:07:00] program. And then to catch it by surprise. And for those who haven't paid attention to this kind of meta dynamic, it's that there was good cop, bad cop going on between the Israelis and Americans on negotiations with Iran because Trump tore up.
Obama's Iran deal known as the J-C-P-O-A, and then he was trying to negotiate his own deal with his Middle East envoy. Steve Witkoff and Witkoff had tempted the Iranians into another round of negotiations on Sunday, and it was the Thursday before the Sunday that the Israelis attacked. And it appeared that those last rounds of negotiations were a ruse and it showed that Trump could actually keep a secret and he could good cop, bad cop the Iranians.
Jordan Harbinger: This attack was pretty devastating. You hear that a bunch of commanders died, a bunch of nuclear scientists died. I mean, they kind of seemed to know where everyone lived, and there was one story that I heard elsewhere. I. Outside of a news source, but from another [00:08:00] source. Somebody being interviewed from Israel and they said something like, the Israelis were able to essentially create a mandatory meeting for all of the top brass of Iran's Air Force and missile command.
They got invited by the right people. They got the email. They all cleared their schedules. It was in the place of Israel's choosing, and then everyone showed up and immediately got whacked and died.
Jason Pack: This was some medieval shit, like, yes, I call you to the Knight's Council. Where we will be having the reconciliation meeting with your brother, and then all the knight go to the council and they're locked in the room and it was set on fire like Game of Thrones.
This is the classic, yes. Intel bait and switch tactic. And you may say, well, this is very immoral, or it's whatever, except the Iranians have armed hhy and Hezbollah proxies, which. Have been bombing Israel for no reason since October 7th, so they got there just desserts. Or as my father likes to say, when he hears about something like an Iranian nuclear scientist falling out of a [00:09:00] window, couldn't happen to a nicer guy.
There's a lot of people
Jordan Harbinger: online saying Iran has a right to defend itself. But I think that when you look at it that way, it's okay. As long as we don't count the Houthis, we don't count Hezbollah, and we don't count Hamas. Iran is defending itself, but if you count all the proxies they use to attack other people, they're attacking other people and this is them getting smacked across the face.
I think what's weird is a lot of people online. They'll go, it's okay, it's a proxy war. It's this and this and this. But once you start being really effective with how many people you kill that are important, like a bunch of commanders and a bunch of scientists, it's like, wait, you're not playing fair?
You're supposed to shoot missiles and like miss and then hit farms and you're supposed to shoot rockets and they're supposed to get intercepted by the Iron Dome and everybody looks tough and it's like you're actually doing a bunch of damage to us. Now we're gonna cry on Instagram and have all of our supporters cry online.
It's odd to me. It's like, are we fighting a war or are we just like flexing our biceps in the mirror? I.
Jason Pack: I am a creature of the center left, but one of the things I found about the left is that it loves a loser and that is quite [00:10:00] self-destructive. We've picked political candidates both in the UK and US who are hapless, and then we tend to like basket case countries.
Oh, but they're the underdog and too much success. That must be immoral. They must have rigged the system. I wanna point out though that this Israeli sneak attack. As successful as it was, and as much as it succeeded in drawing the American patron to finish what Israel could not, it hasn't entirely decimated the Iranian nuclear program.
Therefore, we can tell funny stories about how the Israeli commanders outwitted many people, but they didn't likely finish the job. And it is propaganda to say, oh, the Israelis won this 12 day war. It's not as simple as that.
Jordan Harbinger: I read this today in the Times I think they've taken out a lot of top brass and important people, but they set the nuclear program back in Iran, something like three months.
I mean, it's probably hard to get an exact date or a number of [00:11:00] digits, but if we're timing Iran getting nukes and single digit numbers of months, that seems pretty tenuous and dangerous. You know, if. Oh, we bombed Fordo with their, uh, capacity where they enriched uranium and we blew up all these launchers.
They're gonna be gone for it. It's like, you know, one guy raises his hand and says, three years. Another person says, no way. Five years. It's gonna take all this time to retrain people and another person's 12 weeks. Yeah, but that sounds about right. It's like, geez, man, it takes longer to manufacture the weapons we used in the attack.
Then we'd set them back. Or did we simply set them back that number of months? But they're still, I don't know, 10 years away from the bomb itself. That's what I'm confused about.
Jason Pack: I wanna say that these are known unknowns. You are referring to the American classified intelligence report that was leaked on the successfulness of B two attacks, and particularly those bunker busted bombs that hit Forea, naans and esfahan.
No one knows. It may be that those in specific set them back three to six months, but the Israeli actions decapitating various scientists, set them back two or three years. [00:12:00] I was always a proponent of a multilateral sanctions regime with carrots and sticks like the Iran deal under Obama. But in the absence of that, I do think that what Trump did.
Established excellent deterrence and therefore it almost doesn't matter if it was militarily successful in hitting the enrich uranium because we weren't trying to hit the enrich uranium. We were trying to show we have the will to attack. If you're gonna try to break out, deterrence is a state of mind.
More than it is a physical
Jordan Harbinger: thing. Interesting. Yeah, that was another question I had, which is why does he warn them, Hey, we're gonna blow up this facility. So then they move all the uranium, and I read somewhere in this, again, fog of war, but they had filled all of the tunnels up with poured concrete a few days prior.
Well, actually that's a good question. Why would you pour concrete in tunnels of something that's to prevent them from collapsing
Jason Pack: to the
Jordan Harbinger: Oh, I see. You think they're just gonna go and dig this stuff out at some point and then reopen the facility, but surely they [00:13:00] moved the uranium. And also that was part of the idea, is maybe we don't want a plume of enriched uranium in the air in the middle of Iran.
Jason Pack: And again, I am someone who mostly loathes Trump. But as we say on my disorder podcast, we like to call a spade a spade. I advocate for order. If Trump said to them, we're gonna attack these facilities, please move the enriched uranium because we don't want the water table to become radioactive and we don't want the environmental disaster of this good on him because that's the right thing to do.
And this seems to have been something that the Iranians respected because when they launched their symbolic counter attack against the American airb base in Qatar, which is only a very short distance from Iran. Go. If there was no warning, they could have really hit American service personnel there. The Iranians gave Trump the ability to make sure that none of our service personnel were were hurt, and that the majority of the missiles were shot down.
So I think that choreography is really [00:14:00] good and you can establish deterrence without killing people, and you might even be able to set back the Iranians and make them wanna negotiate a better deal. Without having to blow up their uranium enrichment facilities. So again, I don't know how the diplomacy will play out from here, but there is a case to say that the combination of carrots and sticks and forewarning and surprise was actually quite elegant.
Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, it's interesting. I'm sure they moved all their personnel out of that plant too before we bombed it. I guess. Suppose nice of them, is that what we say? To have us remove our service personnel from that military base so they didn't get hit by incoming missiles. How come a country like Iran doesn't just buy technology and uranium from places that already have it, like North Korea, right?
Why don't they just say, Hey guys, you want a couple billion dollars, we know you're broke as hell. You have nukes. Send people over here and help us. Or do they already do that? And if they already do that, can't they just buy uranium from North Korea? Or is uranium so valuable and hard to enrich that?
North [00:15:00] Korea is only selling expertise and not raw material?
Jason Pack: Is a great question. I wanna point out, I'm a Middle East expert and I am not a NU nuclear scientist. However, what I understand is that the Pakistanis incepted, the Iranian program, right? They had this scientist AQ Han, who was incredibly famous as the mass proliferator of nuclear knowledge, and he actually was relevant for the North Korean program.
He was training the Libyans when they got caught red-handed trying to smuggle uranium. And that's one of the things that got kadafi to finally pay for the Lockerby bombings and to give up his program. So the Pakistanis were massive proliferators and they sold expertise uranium. Can be shipped and smuggled, but it can also be detected.
And we know where the Pakistanis have theirs and we know where the North Koreans have theirs, and North Korea and Iran are not near each other. It could easily be intercepted and it's a risky transaction. And I think that states don't give away these [00:16:00] sovereign capacities because they're always afraid that the state that they might give it to.
Will not have exactly their interest. So if we look at Pakistan and Iran, obviously Pakistan is a SUNY country and it's alive to Saudi Arabia and Iran is a Shia country and it's Revist and it's against Saudi Arabia. So the Pakistanis and a Yukan was going rogue and he helped them in some ways, but he wasn't gonna give them the enrich uranium because what if there was a war and then the Shia had a bomb?
The Sunnis are quite happy that the Shia don't have a bomb. So I wanna point out on this note. America does not let Britain have the missiles which launch the British nuclear deterrent. And America and Britain are arguably the two strongest allies in the world. It's not just that Britain is America's closest ally, I would say the intelligence sharing relationship, the political relationship and the economic relationship is the deepest relationship between two countries, and yet we do not allow Lockheed Martin to sell the [00:17:00] missiles to Britain.
We only lease. Them so that the lease can be terminated. So something relating to nuclear is such a critically important sovereign capacity that states are unlikely to want to part with something like weapons grade U rich uranium.
Jordan Harbinger: I see. Well, you never can trust those Brits anyway. They've shown that time and time again.
No, I'm just pissed off a double digit percentage of the listenership. No, I'm I kid. Okay. Why is now a great opportunity for Trump to show how. Five D chess that he's playing and end this war because. You and I were talking offline yesterday and you wrote a piece for the Boston Globe that was really clear, like, Hey, it doesn't really matter if you don't like Trump or you do like Trump.
Now is the time to actually put something into action because, I don't know, maybe Iran is a little bit on the back foot. Israel's looking for an excuse maybe to stop the war, hopefully, and Trump would love to look good for stopping it, and everybody in the world is maybe we can stop shooting missiles at each other.
So if this does seem like the timing is good, I'd love for you to [00:18:00] explain what that would look like.
Jason Pack: Sure. I think that there are multiple layers here. Let's start with the ceasefire layer, then get to the permanent piece layer, and then get to the whole regional reconfiguration. On the ceasefire level, I'm not sure that the timing is perfect, right?
Because the Israelis established complete aerial dominance over the skies of teran so that they could operate a full 1500 miles, 2000 kilometers from their country and hit targets against the nuclear program or against the regime, and therefore to be stopped and curtailed just as they had achieved that they might've felt we couldn't complete the job.
Conversely, from the Iranian side, the Iranians might have felt, oh, we were just figuring out how to more break through the Israeli iron dome and we depleted their arrow and Thad missiles, which is part of the Patriot system, which blocks the missiles. If we had had more time, we could have brought them to [00:19:00] their knees and caused more civilian casualty.
So there's a balance there, but a ceasefire is always the right time if it saves people's lives. So that's what's going on in the ceasefire. Level. What Trump did was by interjecting America the hegemonic global top orderer superpower into the conflict. He could then say, look to Israel. I helped you with this thing that you couldn't do by yourself.
I now won't tolerate any more attacks. And then Iran, I won't tolerate more retaliations because then we can come in much harder. We wanna make sure that the Persian Gulf is open. We wanna make sure that oil is flowing. I don't want the bad poll numbers that this war will have going on, and again, I have to tip my hat to him.
I believe that the markets are not biased and the stock market soared oil price went down. $10 a barrel for Brent crude and WTI, almost to the levels from before the war [00:20:00] started. And you can't rig that. If the markets think that the ceasefire isn't gonna hold, or this is not sustainable, then the oil futures will be high.
But the markets believe that he pulled off a tremendous coup. And again, this gets back to deterrence theory, Jordan still on the ceasefire level. I gotta hand it to the guy. If your adversaries don't know what you might do, if you violate a thing, you have one of the core elements of deterrence.
Jordan Harbinger: You don't have mutually assured destruction.
You have a wild card that people aren't really in the mood to flip over all the time because it might not be good
Jason Pack: for you. Interesting. So just having a ceasefire between Iran and Israel does nothing. It neither gets rid of the initial casas belly from the Israeli perspective, which is that Iran is neutralizing.
So as the destroy Israel. Iran is supporting proxies and these are these militias that are like almost states within a state in Lebanon and Yemen. In Yemen, the state within a state runs the state. In Lebanon, the state within a state runs its [00:21:00] own army and own institutions and education. That's Hezbollah.
The Hezbollah and the Houthis. Yeah, exactly. Okay, so those casas belly have not been addressed If you just have a ceasefire. Then from the Iranian side, they say Israel oppresses the Palestinians. It occupies Palestinian lands. It's a regional hegemon, which supports our Sunni enemies, particularly Saudi and the UAE.
And over time, Israel has gone more and more to supporting those Sunni Gulf states and the Iranians feel more cornered, for lack of a better term, and therefore, just having a ceasefire doesn't address either side's grievances. I happen to believe that there is this unique historical moment. It has to do with the wild card of Trump, but more so it has to do with the regional geometry, for lack of a better term, being reconfigured.
There had been a balance between the Shia Crescent and the rest of the SUNY Middle East and Israel, and that Shia Crescent has been destroyed because since October [00:22:00] 7th. The access of resistance, as it's called, and those are Iran. Its proxies who are mostly either Shia or allied. With the Shia, they have been weakened and degraded.
Your listeners may remember the Hezbollah pager attack where the Israelis introduced micro bombs into pagers in Lebanon that decapitated a lot of the leadership there. The Houthis have been bombed not only by Biden, but by Israel and by Trump. And therefore that there's this new balance of power where the axis of resistance, the Shia Crescent is weakened, and then Syria flipped.
Syria was run by the Assads. I lived there when Bashar Assad first came to power, and they are from the Allo White sect, which is a kind of hetero Shia, and they are backed by Iran. Recently, they were turfed out of power, and we have a Sunni Islamist. Known as Elani who runs the country. So that essentially took one piece of the chessboard and flipped it, and then [00:23:00] Trump did something genius, which is that he said, oh, great, I'm gonna lift the sanctions and we can do business with Syria.
Whereas the Europeans were not willing to lift those sanctions until he did it. So the chess board is able to be reconfigured in a way that favors our SUNY allies in the Gulf. And favors a kind of Anglo-American Israeli position on how to work with moderate allies in the region and to potentially constrain Iran.
And it may be that Trump and Whitcoff are too transactional and shortsighted to bring this about, and they haven't done anything to achieve it yet, but maybe they've cleared the ground and I think that the Europeans need to step into this void because Trump is very bad at the long term, even if he is sometimes genius at the transactional short term.
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Jordan Harbinger: If you're wondering how I managed to book all these great authors, thinkers, and creators every week, it is because of my network, the circle of people I know I and trust. I'm teaching you how to build your network for free over@sixminutenetworking.com.
It's all practical. It's very easy down to earth. You can meet folks who have underground bunkers that you can sleep in for the rest of your life. Uh, your short, radioactive life. It takes a few minutes a day. That's all it really takes to build, maintain relationships in a way that is non cringey. Super easy and many of the guests on our show already subscribe and contribute to the course.
Come on and join us. You'll be in smart company where you belong. You can find the course again, all free, not shenanigans, over@sixminutenetworking.com. Now, back to out of the loop on Iran and Israel with Jason Pak. It just seems to me like it isn't Iran going to go. All right, we're still gonna try and come out with a bomb here.
Why would we stop? Especially if you set us back [00:27:00] a couple of months or maybe a few years, that just proves to us that we need a bomb Because you never would've hit us if we had one. A
Jason Pack: hundred percent. We are speaking on June 25th. Yes. Of 2025. And this morning the Iranians said, guess what? We are gonna go immediately for a bomb because we understand that if we had the bomb, we'd never been able to get attacked like this.
And you invoke the North Korea lesson. It's sometimes called in the Middle East, the Libya lesson because Kaddafi decided to give up his program as well as his anthrax and other biological weapons. And what do you know? Then the West could support a popular uprising against him and. He got killed in a ditch.
So what's called the Libya lesson is that if you nuclearized, you're in power forever, and your sons get to inherit the throne, just look at North Korea as opposed to Libya. The Iranians, of course, are thinking that, but if we have the whole region on board, in other words, if we could actually get. The major European countries [00:28:00] and Trump's America and our regional allies in the SUNY Gulf plus Turkey.
It won't matter if China and Russia support the regime, they could really put the screws on the Iranians economically, and they could have a system whereby it would be very, very unlikely that the Iranians could. Nuclearized, and we could give security guarantees to Israel, which is that if the Israelis and the war in Gaza commit to a Palestinian state, they could get a peace treaty with Saudi Arabia.
Something like the Abraham Accords 2.0, which Biden worked on and Trump and Jared Kushner worked on. And we would give them a commitment if the Iranians were getting close to a breakout in the nuclear program, oh, we will support you in a military option. So it would be essentially a multilateral approach.
To the denuclearization of Iran as part of achieving many regional objectives.
Jordan Harbinger: I see. And so you think Iran will eventually just be exposed as kind of [00:29:00] this militarily defeated morally bankrupt? I. Nation. I mean, their whole thing is, hey, we're against imperialist aggression. Even though they're throwing proxies all over the Middle East and doing the exact same thing, it seems like they've always calculated the west is gonna back down.
Do we think they can learn that? That's a mistake? 'cause it's their whole, we're gonna go straight to the bomb. Doesn't really sound like they've learned that lesson.
Jason Pack: I love how you put that, Jordan. They calculated that Trump always chickens out and they calculated it because Biden and Obama didn't exactly push maximally to get the best deal.
I. With the J-C-P-O-A, and I love the Iran deal, but it had some bad provisions and I don't wanna get into the details, but maybe now we're in a position of greater strength and unity and we could negotiate a better deal. And that's exactly what deterrent says. So I wanna make it analogy with Russia and Ukraine.
I will blame Obama in 2014 [00:30:00] for not enforcing the Budapest memorandum when Putin annexed Crimea. That's what allowed Putin to miscalculate in 2022. Oh, I can invade the rest of Ukraine and I'll get away with it. No one will do anything because in 2014, the sanctions were not tough enough. However, if we defeated them into war and then we're negotiating again, they know that we mean business because we've spent all these billions.
We've developed this drone army, we did this, we did that. NATO countries upped their defense spending to 5%, and now if we look at the Middle East, the Iranians were shown as completely incompetent. Not even able to keep their kind of signal messages private, and then their entire leadership and think of how funny this is.
They knew that. The Israelis wanted to attack at a certain time. Their leadership was blown up in their own beds. They weren't even sleeping underground the night of the attack. It's mind blowing.
Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. Interesting. They kind of just thought, oh, this isn't gonna happen. [00:31:00] This is ridiculous. They're just bluffing.
Oops.
Jason Pack: But even if it isn't gonna happen, you live in the Middle East, you're an IIA nuclear scientist. You sleep underground.
Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. Every night. Not just on nights where Israel says they're gonna attack, but every night. Exactly. Okay, so who needs to be in the room for this to be really, you said the major European leaders.
Who else needs to be in the room to get this deal? Signed, obviously the Ayatollahs and the Israelis and the Americans, Germany, France.
Jason Pack: I think that the Cuties are the key here. Okay? Right. So if we look at regional diplomacy in the last five years, everything happens in Doha. When you need to get Israeli hostages released, you go to Doha.
When you need to get the Russians to give back Ukrainian children that they kidnapped, you go to Doha. When we were making a deal with the Taliban, which was a disgraceful deal. Where did we do it in Doha? I wanna point out that when we got the ceasefire that Trump announced, the only people that could get the Iranians to honor the ceasefire were the Qataris.
So if we can [00:32:00] make a deal where the QRIS wanna mediate this, and then the Europeans wanna actually do the economic bits.
Jordan Harbinger: We are in business. Okay. How do we cut the chain between Iran and these proxies though, right? Because they've got Hezbollah, they got the Houthis, they got Hamas.
Jason Pack: You're gonna be shocked to hear the answer.
Doha, that's the answer. Doha, because all of the money for Hamas to build the tunnels in the period 2006, after they won that election till October 7th, that money was sitting in bank accounts in Doha. And it wasn't that it was money that the cuties paid for terrorism. And I hate when people to my right, the kind of SDD crowd.
We're talking the real Republican Zionist neocons say the QRIS funded terror, and that's not true. It's that the QRIS were told you need to pony up money to rebuild houses in Gaza and rebuild education there. [00:33:00] Hamas happens to use that money to build tunnels and stockpile weapons, so we can do things with the cuties to have more anti-money laundering and to have pressure on certain Hamas leaderships and certain Houthis and Hezbollah leaderships.
The reason why it's all in Doha is Turkey doesn't have exactly the financial heft that the Cuties have. In Iran, you're disconnected from the financial system. So yes, there are Hamas leaders who are in Iran, but they can't transact multi-billion dollar business to resuscitate their empire.
Jordan Harbinger: Okay. What about Netanyahu?
I mean, someone's gotta tell him, okay, time to end the war, even though your whole brand is strength and survival. Good luck with that because as in he's maybe a little worried that he is gonna get prosecuted for things and he, he staked it all on this. It's not only that he's
Jason Pack: worried Jordan, he has carved out a position for himself that so long as the war continues, he can stay in [00:34:00] power.
And if he's not in power, as you alluded there, he may face corruption charges or there could be an election and he'll lose because he is unpopular. That said, he achieved his life ambition and will go down as a hero for most Israelis. Not a hero for me because. The corruption, the war mongering some of the hatred against Arabs, which was completely unnecessary, even while trying to achieve strategic goals.
His dalliance is with Putin. That stuff I think, for many Israelis is loathsome and they loathe him. They just wanna see the back of him. But guarantees can be carved out here. Netanyahu is not a dictator, but I'm gonna refer to something called the dictator's dilemma. Jordan, the dictator's dilemma is so long as you're in power.
You're not gonna die in a ditch, but as soon as you are not in power, your enemies are going to use the secret services or you know the courts and they're gonna prosecute you, and you're gonna either end up in jail or die in a ditch. I [00:35:00] think a political solution can be made with Israel and its allies whereby Netanyahu.
Rides off into the sunset. He gets some kind of prize for what he's achieved. And it's not that the corruption cases are dropped, but he's an old man and his wife is very old. She's the one who's at the kind of linchpin Sara Netanyahu of these corruption cases. And if they do the right thing, what do you know?
America makes a place for them in Florida or something has worked out here because we can't let one man's personal motives hijack a
Jordan Harbinger: whole region. There's something that I either missed or didn't understand. So we're calling for Iran's, full denuclearization, no civilian program, decades of inspections.
What gets them to say yes, cash security? Aren't they gonna look at again, the Libya lesson, the Ukraine lesson, and say, no thanks. People who give up nukes, they get wrecked. That
Jason Pack: is the paradox in the conundrum. They have their feet to the fire, or as some people might say, they have their [00:36:00] balls in the vice.
They are really prostrate now, and what I would say is, guess what? We are not gonna stomach regime change if you do X and Y and Z, or if you. Ever block the inspectors from coming in. The war restarts and the sanctions restart. There's a term here called snapback sanctions. These existed prior to the J-C-P-O-A and prior to some of the parts of the Obama, Iran deal, which I think were in error.
We can create a legal regime where it incentivizes the Iranians, not only the leadership, but the people and the scientists to wanna comply with the. Inspectors, and you may say it's impossible, but a lot of things have happened in the last 10 years in the Middle East, which are quote unquote impossible.
I think that solving this is actually among the more possible things, and the Iranians, the qris, and the Saudis in the plan that I put forward, can equally take a victory lap. We [00:37:00] ended the war in Gaza and saved these babies from dying. We got the Israelis to commit to a Palestinian state. Yes, of course the Israelis are gonna get bribed with American investments into their high tech sector, and the Israelis are gonna get bribed with more student visas for people to go to Silicon Valley.
But Gaza and Iranians are gonna get bribed with visas to study in Europe and with a. Billions and billions to regrow their economy. So I mean, there's an ability to bribe all these peoples. And I wanna say the thing that the peoples of this region share is human capital. Iran is not only a rich civilization culturally, I.
It's amazing the technical and human capital skill that exists in that place relative to how oppressive the government is. It's in Europe's interest to wanna open up and create these programs. And the gulfies understand this. They know that so long as Iranians or Palestinians are not a security threat for them.
They're very happy to work with them and have them staff their economies.
Jordan Harbinger: [00:38:00] Yeah, it's very interesting. I've gotten a lot of messages on Instagram and an email from Iranians in the past week or two, and I was just like, oh, sorry for what's going on? And they were like, we're so mad. And I was like, yeah, it's a really complicated situation.
And they're like, one guy said something, I'm so angry. And I was like, I'm sure you are. And he goes, we really want them to keep bombing. And I was like, wait, where? Where are you? And he's Iran. And I was like, you want Israel to keep bombing? And he's like, yes. And I did a double take. 'cause I was like, wait a minute.
What
Jason Pack: I wanna point out that I have a girl I dated in New York. She a elite Iranian woman. She wants the Israelis to keep bombing. I know people in the Shah orbit in la, in Sweden, elsewhere, they'd like the job to be finished. It's mostly a social class thing if you're elite in the level that did well under the Shah.
You've been suppressed by the AYAs, and they think that if the regime collapses, there will be an inversion and the old elites will come back and it'll be good for them. If you're more a [00:39:00] lower middle class person, particularly from a rural background, the Shah was quite oppressive. Not that the AYAs are great, but you don't want the Israelis.
To finish the job because you're gonna lose your social standing. And I don't think that we can impose regime change. It didn't really work very well in Iraq or Afghanistan. And therefore if the Iranian people wanna do that, they can do that actually much better when we've stopped bombing.
Jordan Harbinger: That's right.
I agree with that. I just thought that was an interesting sort of counterintuitive thing to see in my Instagram inbox, which is that the people in Iran are like, keep it going. And I'm like, wait the hell, what? Let's talk about Gaza. The Saudis, are they potentially willing to bankroll Gaza's reconstruction?
I mean, I, I think it would take a multinational effort here, but first of all, somebody's gotta pay for this. Who's gonna do that? And I. Who is administering the hospitals, who's doing the police thing in Gaza and the border patrol and all this stuff. Because when I was in Gaza, this is [00:40:00] like 25 years ago, the police that I talked to, 'cause they were friends who were Hama supporters, actually turned out and they worked for the Palestinian Authority, reconcile that one, but we went and talked to their police friends and they were joking about torturing people and like chasing women and.
Putting bottles up people's butts and stuff like that. These are not good police officers. These are not people that treat citizens with respect. These are people that are also working with Hamas and things like that. Like the whole thing is rotten to the core and the people who live there are just dealing with this crap on a daily basis.
You can't just have somebody in a government office that says, this is how it works. You gotta replace the police and the border patrol and all the security officials and possibly all those other civil servants too.
Jason Pack: I love how you've brought it down to the level of corruption. Gaza is a very corrupt place, and corruption undermines people's morals.
No one trusts anyone, and hence there is a reversion to an almost primordial clan like [00:41:00] structure. If he's not my brother's friend, I can't trust the guy, and it's very difficult, even with all the ideological and Islamist and antisemitic. Layers on top when trust is so broken down. But to go back to your question of who bankrolls it, the answer is that it's gonna be who's always bankrolled the rebuilding of Gaza, the Europeans, and the Gulfies.
The Cuties, after the 2006 Gaza War, they rebuilt all the hospitals and the roads. The Europeans send billions there. Pretty much every year they send billions, even though they know that a lot of those billions end up in the correct pockets of some police official who has a brother in Switzerland who's laundering the money for him.
That's why my plan, which I'm the first to say, it may not work. It has some pie in the sky elements, but all I wanna say is you show me a better one because we are in something I would call the enduring disorder, where all solutions look bad. There's every reason why people with the same interests don't coordinate together.
So I wanna create a [00:42:00] situation where we have mutual incentives, and that's to get Gulf Arabs, regional states, Israelis, Dias, Jews, and the West, as well as Russia and China to have similar interests. They're never gonna be the same, but if our interest can be 80% the same, we can work together.
Jordan Harbinger: Those AYAs might never build a nuke, but they can get ahold of some of the bomb deals on the fine products and services that support this show.
We'll be right back. This episode is sponsored in part by open phone. If you're running a business, whether you're solo or managing a growing team, every missed call is money left on the table. Think about the last time you needed something fixed, fast, a plumber, hvac, whatever. Did you wait around for the first person to call you back?
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Jordan Harbinger: This episode is sponsored in part by Airbnb. At one point, Jen and I decided to try our hand at being Airbnb hosts.
Not just staying in places, but opening up our own home. And honestly, it turned out to be way more rewarding than we expected. When we were building our place here in Silicon Valley, bay area, we actually designed a separate guest [00:44:00] suite. It's got its own private entrance. That was a hundred percent inspired by some of the awesome Airbnbs we'd stayed at over the years.
We figured, why not create the kind of experience we always appreciated? Maybe even level it up a little. So we left a cheat sheet with our go-to spots, good coffee, legit dumplings, favorite pizza, joint, you know, stuff locals actually eat. And the guests, we had some really cool guests. One guy was staying long term.
We ended up inviting him to a family barbecue, which is kind of funny. It's wild how hosting can turn into a real connection like that. We hit pause when the kids were little, but we definitely plan to host again down the line. It's just such a great way to stay connected to the world. And if you're thinking about hosting, I say go for it.
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We are happy to surface codes for you. It is that important that you support those who support the show. Now, back to out of the loop. Do you think it'll have to start off as a police state to keep Hamas from infiltrating through all the structures that are being rebuilt?
Jason Pack: I'm gonna say something which is unpopular.
It has to [00:46:00] start off as a neo-colonial state. The key point here is that administration that I call for, and I've been calling for this since October 7th, I've briefed US congressmen. I've written pieces in the Boston Globe. Foreign policy about a Cuttery led quartet of Arab states to administer Gaza.
Administer means police borders, hospitals, scholarships. It has to be neo-colonial because there is no authority in Gaza, which is neutral. The Palestinian authority is rotten through the core. Hamas is gonna try to reconstitute itself. And then you have either the clans or the militias that the Israelis have funded, which are like rival gangs, right?
They have drug wars, they smuggle aid. And does a neo-colonial solution sound good to me? No. However, it might be the best of the alternatives, and it's gonna be a solution which prepares for elections in five or 10 years to hand off first at the local level, [00:47:00] to train to have scholarships, to really create a best practices transparency system.
And it's not Trumpian pie in the sky that it's gonna be a Riviera. It isn't. It's gonna be a tough slog, and it may have aspects, not of a police state, but of a neo-colonial juggernaut, which is not necessarily gonna be fair, but it's gonna be the way that things worked in the 19th century, which is order was imposed and there were carrots at the end of the line so that people's living standards could improve.
And then if you have the hope. Your kids are not gonna be living in this shit hole. I think people are gonna want to take the steps to get there.
Jordan Harbinger: I hope so. I feel bad for everybody in this situation. Let's say China or Russia. I. Spoils the deal or aims to what are the pressure points that the west still holds?
Because I know with Iran, China wants Iranian oil, right? So they're not clamoring to screw up any [00:48:00] deals. They want the strait of MOUs open. They want Iranian oil. They don't want it being bombed all the time. They might be in on this, but what if they're trying to spoil the deal with Gaza and other things like that?
What are the levers the west has that we might need to pull?
Jason Pack: Jordan, allow me some more flattery here because I learned from Trump. Flattery always works. You are asking excellent questions because my theory of the enduring disorder is that some powers in the 21st century simply want to disorder the world without having an alternative order, and that makes Russia today different than Stalinist Russia or Khrushchev Russia.
I might not have loved communism, but it was an order. Here's the economic textbook. Read your marks, do this, translate this book from Russian. It was an order. What Putin wants is that Gaza and Libya are just completely disordered and the Iranians have a batshit crazy economy. And they can [00:49:00] sell their oil at a discounted price, so he may actually want to spoil something which is working in Gaza, just to spoil it so that the west can't be on the same page.
The reason that Putin loves for the Sahil countries, and those are the ones just south of the Sahara Desert to be completely basket cases, is then they emit migrants who go to Europe. That drives European populists to the anti-migrant, Neo populist, right? And then they are disordered because they don't wanna be a part of the EU and they don't wanna do this with nato.
And that driving to neo populism, just disorders things, he doesn't have any other reason for their to be these crazy migrant flows. So the reason that he will be against a genius solution. Like getting the Saudis to want to rebuild Gaza and making a deal with Israel and having the Iranians get a lot of rebuilding assistance for giving up their nukes would [00:50:00] begin to order the Middle East, and then it would be unleashing a region that has human capital, oil wealth, and a great geostrategic location.
And the Russians would be like, oh no. All of a sudden there's all this economic growth and oil is being produced and we're not a part of that. So he very much might wanna spoil that. My solution there is. Putin isn't gonna be there forever. We need to defeat him. And this may sound very controversial. How can you defeat the leader who sits atop the world's largest nuclear arsenal?
I think that we will defeat him. We may not win immediately. I. But if we make sure that the Ukrainians don't lose the war, eventually Putin will either die or collapse, and the new Russian regime may look more like the Yeltsin regime, which was willing to do business with the west or corrupt, but not so.
Ideologically bent on Disordering, and then we could be in a world where we can actually [00:51:00] work together.
Jordan Harbinger: God, I don't know. That seems like it might be hinging a little too much on idealism that the next guy who comes in isn't gonna be as bad as Vladimir Putin or just another flavor of that same thing.
But I'm no Russia expert, and I know that's a little bit of a tangent. How much runway do we have to lock down this sort of Gaza, Iran deal? Is this something that you think, Hey, we better do this in 2025? What sort of event would you be looking to that says, uh oh, it's too late. Would it be another Israeli attack on Iran?
Would it be another kind of breach of the ceasefire? What are we looking for?
Jason Pack: Let's go back to these three levels again, because the ceasefire is very tenuous. Trump has not spelled out what the punishment is for. He will drop a few FBOs on live TV if you it, but what else is he gonna do? I would like him to spell out some carrots and sticks.
It may be that he's done that behind the scenes and if so, good on him and whitcock that they've thought that through. [00:52:00] But I don't see that America or Trump is going to broker this kind of deal of the century. Trump says that he does deals of the century, but if you look at what he did in North Korea, he's only willing to go and have the meeting.
He's not really willing to do the sacrifices to say, get a deal with North Korea over the line. This is where. Experts come in and who has the experts? It's the Europeans and the UN and the Gulf allies who've been working on this stuff and have the top academic and diplomatic expertise. That's not how Trump does this transactionalism.
So I think that we have only a few number of weeks. I wish it wasn't the case, but the deal will break down if the underlying root causes, which led for there being this war are not treated right. I like to use a divorce analogy here, Jordan. I do think that a lot of diplomacy and a lot of things that are going on in the Middle East [00:53:00] are like human relationships, and I wanna quote Robert Kaplan here.
Politics is all about interests until it's all about Shakespeare and in the Enduring Disorder, everything is about Shakespeare, meaning the human relationships, the jealousies, the flattery, the revenge. In a marriage, if you and the wife love each other, but you can't stand when she calls her mom and uses her mom's advice and not yours, and then you guys have an argument and you make up, and then you make love and you're happy, but you didn't deal with, it's not okay.
When you call your mom and then she convinces you to buy something with my credit card, that's the unallowed behavior. You're just like, oh, I'm sorry. I love you. Let's go out for a romantic date. And it's solved. And we're in a situation now where Trump has excellently figured out a way to get the Israelis and Iranians to fear his hegemonic power.
To make [00:54:00] nice publicly, but he hasn't dealt with any of the underlying issue, and I almost feel that he can't. And that's why we need Starr and Macron and maybe specifically merits. Germany has traditionally been loathed to put itself forward in foreign policy. It usually follows the EU follows what France does, but I see that there's an opportunity with this new German chancellor for a range of historic reasons that.
He could work together with others to actually initiate.
Jordan Harbinger: I see. So you think Europe's in a key position here. It'd be great to see some leadership from them. Maybe something that Washington can't or won't provide.
Jason Pack: Here's a key thing here, which everyone knows, but usually you can't articulate. America is biased towards Israel.
It's just the truth. It's not anti-Semitic to say this. It's that said, there are many European countries which are biased towards the Palestinians, Ireland. Spain, [00:55:00] Norway, we know it. It's not just in how they recognize the Palestinian state. It's where their donations go. It's where their protests go. It's how their diplomats are trained.
This is not a bug. This is a feature we can have. The Europeans put forward a pro-Palestinian approach and counterbalance with. Where we know the Americans are at, and that's what went wrong with all the rounds of Oslo and the J-C-P-O-A. These things have tended to be done in an America first framework.
And that's probably not what we can deal with in today's enduring disorder where so many polls are pulling in opposite directions. We need to coordinate together.
Jordan Harbinger: Yep. That makes a heck of a lot of sense to me. Jason. I hope that people seize this opportunity right now because, pardon me, for not being super hopeful about peace in the Middle East in my lifetime.
But yeah, I would love to see something actually work out for once
Jason Pack: [00:56:00] and talk about some of the great things that unite. Personal development with diplomacy. Okay, so I talk about ordering the disorder and ordering the disorder is bringing my interests and my adversary's interests into some sort of alignment.
And when you talk about personal growth, you're frequently talking about understanding certain things psychologically, and then changing my behavior pattern. And I love the way that you frame that, the disorder that I want to order. Is to get Iranians and Israelis, Gazen and Lebanese, and Europeans, and Americans, and Saudis and Qs, to realize, I may disagree with you on this, but 80% of our interests are the same.
We want our kids to go to university. We wanna have a better livelihood. We don't want the planet to be blown up by nukes or to have so much climate change. And in that region it's a little bit different than with Russia. [00:57:00] The Russians do have a genuine interest in spoiling at the global level because they're a declining power.
They're constantly gonna be weaker because of where their economy is at. This is different in the Middle East. I think that we have so many rising powers and people who. Are going to say the future is ours. Hey, we can actually put aside some of these grievances. So the role here for diplomats is actually like the role of the marriage counselor to get people to see these shared interests put aside all that bs.
It's been weighing you down, buddy.
Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, I look man, from your lips to God's ears. I suppose with this Middle Eastern peace deal potentially happening, I mean, it would be absolutely mind blowing if something like this would actually work out for once. I think all of us share that.
Jason Pack: Hey, Steve Whitcoff, you can call me.
That's right. I'm willing to go to Doha for you. Starmer. I live only eight miles from you. See you in Westminster.
Jordan Harbinger: Knock on his door, man. See how that goes out. That might get us attention. Man, thank you for coming [00:58:00] on the show. I really appreciate it. I know this is short notice. I know it's like the middle of the night where you are.
No, this was really great, Jordan. Thank you, man. I hope the Europeans pick up the ball on this one. The next few weeks will really be a good indicator of how serious we are about solving this issue. I'm not gonna hold my breath, but man, would it be nice to see some change in this world? All things Jason Pak will be in the show notes on the website, advertisers deals, discount codes, and ways to support the show.
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