Iran War Update; Stablecoin Regulation; ICE | Yaron Brook Show
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Schedule your visit today at brighthorizons.com. The radical fundamental principles of freedom, rational self-interest, and individual rights. This is the Yaron Brook Show. All right, everybody. Welcome to Yaron Brook Show on this Tuesday, June 17th. Another incredibly suspenseful day, but the suspense was mostly in Washington, D.C. A lot of suspense today about what Donald Trump would actually do

Not much suspense about what's going on in Iran. That's pretty straightforward and knowledgeable. Anyway, this morning, well, before we get to that, as you know, yesterday, Donald Trump declared that he had to go to Washington, left the G7 meeting in Canada, all in a huff and a puff, and got on a helicopter and shoot off, I guess, Air Force One or whatever, and returned quickly to Washington, D.C.,

And meetings today with his National Security Council and everything. This morning, Trump tweeted an amazing statement. He tweeted, we now have complete and total control of the skies over Iran. Iran had nothing.

good sky trackers and other defensive equipment and plenty of it, but it doesn't compare to American-made, conceived and manufactured stuff. Nobody does it better than good old USA. And you know, okay, but everybody was wondering, what does he mean by we, Americans flying in Iran? Have they entered the war? Does the US Air Force now have complete control of the skies?

And the answer was, well, no, not in that sense. That is, no American planes are flying up there. So who is the we? And he was asked, you know, the ask in the White House came out with a statement. He said, we means America. So no credit to these Israeli Air Force, no credit to the planners, no credit to the

to the, you know, to the diligence, no credit to the fact that almost all the airplanes flying above Iran were modified by Israel. But really, you know, beyond the equipment, the equipment's amazing, the best in the world, American-made stuff. I mean, maybe this is just a message to China, don't mess with us. But we now have complete control of the skies over Iran.

Taking credit for other people's stuff. That's great. That's part of the cause for Trump. So this is perfect vis-a-vis Trump. And again, how did they get all the trackers and defensive equipment? How did they get all the air defense systems gone? It wasn't just the equipment. It was great strategy, great planning, great flying equipment.

You know, and it was it was a lot of that equipment was taken out by the Mossad with drones on the ground. Those drones are probably not U.S. drones made in Israel. Maybe the little ones made in China. So I don't know. I don't think I don't think Donald Trump and America more broadly is is ready, should be ready yet to take full credit for everything that's happened in Iran. But I

This is Donald Trump, and he is going to. And I told you, he's waiting. He's not going to intervene until he feels like it's 100% safe. There's no downside, and he'll get all the credit. He'll get all the credit. I mean, as all these debates during the day were going, will he, won't he, will he intervene, won't he intervene, will he send the B-2s, won't he? I mean, it was like very mixed feelings. On the one hand, it would be great if the United States came in. It would make it faster, quicker, easier.

And regime change probably happens quicker. But on the other hand, I was going, Israel should just finish it. And because if the U.S. goes in, we will hear forever. Israel can't get it done. It needs American help. You know, without American help, it can't nothing. You know, it's just not it's almost not it's almost sure it's not, but it's almost not worth it.

that that actually happened. Anyway, that wasn't the last tweet, although that was the big one that took a lot of credit. Then about an hour later, Trump tweets one tweet, unconditional surrender, all caps, best tweet Trump maybe has ever tweeted.

You know, somebody knows a better tweet that Trump has tweeted. Let me know. But unconditional surrender. Yes, that is the spirit. That's the kind of spirit we want America to resurrect, to bring back. Yeah, Iran needs to unconditionally surrender. That is the that is the appropriate outcome for what is going on right now. And they followed it up.

With this, again, kind of, I don't know. We know exactly where the so-called Supreme Leader is hiding. He is an easy target, but is safe there. We're not going to take him out, in parentheses, kill. At least not for now. But we don't want missiles shot at civilians or American soldiers. Our patience is wearing thin. Thank you for your attention on this matter. Yeah.

You know how this mind thinks. I have no idea. Anyway, he's not allowing Israel to take out Khamenei. He's not directly saying he will take out Khamenei unless missiles are shot at civilians. They've been shot at civilians now every night since the war began or American soldiers. And I think that's the key. American soldiers have not been harmed yet.

Anyway, he tweeted these and people in Israel got very excited and people online got very excited. And there was there was basically speculation that this was it, that Trump had made the decision given his running away from or leaving G7 in a flurry. People decided, yeah, he's made the decision. This is it. The United States is going to answer the fray. B2s.

A photo is done. Khamenei potentially is done. One bunker busting bomb on his bunker and he's finished. And people are getting quite excited about this. And then Trump had his entire national security team at the White House and they were talking and the meeting went on and on. And then rumors had it that as soon as the meeting ended,

It was ending. Trump was going to make a statement, was going to make a statement. My expectation by everybody was he was going to make the statement announcing that the U.S. is in. The U.S. is coming in. And then there were then then the rumors were rumors, I guess. I guess news was Netanyahu and Trump had spoken while this meeting was going on. There was a phone call between Netanyahu and Trump. And then the meeting ended.

And I'm like, refreshing my Twitter feed and refreshing news feeds. Where's the Trump statement? He's going to announce any minute now that, you know, U.S. is joining. And nothing, nothing. Indeed, a while after the meeting ended, the White House announced that nothing, Trump would not make any announcements until Wednesday. So, you know, it's not going to happen. Oh, it's not going to happen now. Who knows what he'll do tomorrow? Nobody knows what he'll do tomorrow exactly.

But it's a classic Trump again. There is a lot of disagreement in his cabinet. There's a lot of disagreement in MAGA. And he's paying attention. I'm sure he's reading Twitter, reading other places, watching the disagreements on MAGA. Those who say he should he should join the those who say he should not. In some ways, he's closer to those who say he should not.

And it's back and forth. And I'm sure in the debates inside the Security Council, I'm sure J.D. is against it. And...

Hex says I don't know, probably four. He's pretty anti-Islam. Rubio is probably four getting in. Hex says there's probably neutral. And I don't know where anybody else is. But I'm pretty sure JD Vance is on the no side, on the kind of MAGA side. So who knows? Will he? Won't he?

Willie sent in the B-2s and warning. Now, what's interesting about this is it's the last two days they've been moving pieces from all over into the Middle East region. So they moved massive quantities, large numbers of refueling airplanes into Europe in close proximity to the Middle East. They've moved F-22s, F-35s, F-16s.

They moved all these airplanes there. The Nimitz should be arriving in the area soon, if it's not already there. Should be arriving really, really soon. And the pieces are all there. They evacuated the airbase in Qatar. It's empty.

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All the American troops in different bases in Syria and in Iraq, those troops that Trump in his first term told us that he was going to bring back home and never did, those troops, well, they're in bases in Syria and Iraq. They're on full alert, you know, in case Iran goes after them. And so far, nothing.

Nothing. It'll be interesting to see what happens in the morning and what he says in the morning and then what he does, because those are not the same thing, what he ultimately what he ultimately does. But in many respects, at least with regard to the nuclear program, Trump could end this very quickly. I don't know how many 30,000 pound bombs you need to take out Fordo, but I

you know, some and probably more than one, less than five. I don't know. I don't know. But that would that would it that would finish it in terms of the Iranian nuclear program. Israel's taking out pretty much everything else. And then I don't know what Israel needs the U.S. Air Force for other than that. It's like Israel was going to

I mean, no official was doing this, but Israelis online were going, just lend us the plane. You know, just a couple of hours. Just lend us a B-2 and a couple of bombs and we'll do it. You don't have to. You don't have to do it. We'll just land lease, whatever, the B-2 and we'll take care of it. You know, you don't need to get involved. Just stay home. It's fine. Sadly, you know, can't do that.

And I don't know if Israel has a pilot who can pilot the B-2. You know, I don't know. I have no idea. Anyway, everybody's sitting and waiting, basically. I know in Israel they're sitting and waiting. In the meantime, I did want to mention this related to, you know, to Trump. And J.D. Vance put out a long tweet, kind of a long tweet, which is,

you know, really interesting. First of all, you know, he can write as compared to Trump and he's not bombastic and ridiculous. Obviously, he's much more of an intellect. But it's also funny because of how fawning it is, right? You know, it's like we've got to just let Donald Trump will decide and whatever Donald Trump would decide will be good because I trust Donald Trump and I'm completely...

trusting Donald Trump. I mean, here's what the final three paragraphs worth reading the whole thing. It's up online. Meanwhile, the president has shown remarkable restraint in keeping our military focus on protecting our troops and protecting our citizens. I don't know what that even means. You know, I don't know what. Anyway, we may decide he may decide he it's all about him. He may decide he needs to take further action to end Iranian enrichment.

That decision ultimately belongs to the president. And of course, people are right to be worried about foreign entanglement after the last 25 years of idiotic foreign policy. But I believe the president has earned some trust on this issue. And having seen this up close and personal, I can assure you that he is only interested in using the American military to accomplish the American people's goals. Whether he does, that is his focus. So I guess...

Trump has not taken the night off. He will go meditate and decide whether he is going to do it or not. In the meantime, Israel continues to bomb targets all over western Iraq and some even in the northeast. But primarily in western Iraq, it is bombing several targets in Tehran itself.

Indeed, they have evacuated a number of neighborhoods and bombed within those neighborhoods. And outskirts of Tehran, in the hills around it, there is a massive blaze going on. Supposedly, this is a factory that produces the ballistic missiles, that makes the ballistic missiles. The idea now is that the Israeli Air Force continues to attack Tehran.

launches and ballistic missiles getting ready to fire at Israel. But it is also now a key focus of theirs to destroy Iran's capacity to build more ballistic missiles. Anyway, they hit this factory. It's a massive fire going up in the hills up above Tehran. They also hit a petrochemical plant, a petrochemical plant that specialized in

in producing the kind of fuel that the ballistic missiles require in order to launch and fly all the way to Israel. So they are...

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Schedule your visit today at brighthorizons.com. They are taking out, you know, all the infrastructure that is needed to build ballistic missiles. Other thing they did today, which was interesting. You remember a few years ago,

Israeli Mossad actually broke into the archives of the Iranian nuclear program. They don't house their archives online on a computer because they're afraid Israel will hack it and steal it. They housed it in a physical location.

And Israel a few years ago basically broke in and made copies of everything. And Netanyahu was showing them off and learned a lot about the nuclear program, learned the names of the scientists, learned where all the locations are, learned a lot about the progress they were making. Anyway, Iran continued to

to house all the documents relating to the nuclear program in this archive. They didn't digitalize it. There's one copy, and it's in this archive. Well, today Israel destroyed that archive. And I think the logic there is if they ever want to resurrect the nuclear program, no blueprints, no plans, no whatever is in that archive exists. They won't have it. It's gone forever.

It is being blown up. It's unclear what some of the other targets have been today. Not a lot of information coming through in terms of the particular targets. Israel's just, you know, planes again, whereas Trump said we control their space. The reality is that Israel has complete control. The Israeli Air Force has complete control over the airspace above Tehran and above all of really Western countries.

Western Iran. I mean, this fire above Tehran is, if you can find a picture of it, it's quite spectacular. It's quite big. It's impressive. That's a ballistic missile. It's called the Khojir Garrison Aerospace Complex. And it's one of the largest sites manufacturing ballistic missiles. So I assume they're going after the other sites.

And they're just destroying capabilities. And again, they're attacking government infrastructure within the city of Tehran. Generally, photos out of the city of Tehran show it. It looks like a ghost town. A lot of people have left. I think a majority of the population has left. Sixteen million people living in greater Tehran. And many, many, many of them, I don't know if majority, but many, many, many of them have left Tehran.

The city, Baikal, go stay with relatives. Some of them have homes outside in other parts of Iran. What else happened today in terms of this? Oh, yeah. I mean, Iran continues to send ballistic missiles into Israel. It continues to launch them. But what is really, really, really interesting is the numbers. I mean, the numbers have been huge.

ridiculously, I mean, in a positive way, ridiculously low, 3, 10, most 15. Now, the thing about these numbers is that these numbers, Israel should be able to knock them all down, if not all of them, almost all of them. And the amount of damage that can be done is probably minimal. And indeed, most of the most recent launches have resulted in

No damage, no casualties. They've even either the bombs have either either fallen in empty spaces or be shot down by Israeli air defense. So there is absolutely no question now that Israel, you know, has degraded dramatically. I'd say degraded Iran's capacity to launch ballistic missiles in its direction. The number of missiles dropped.

is ridiculously small again remember that the fear in israel was that iran would launch three to five hundred missiles out at once or even more and and just overwhelm the system and cause dozens if not hundreds of casualties i mean uh in israel and the fact that even on the first night they could only get 200 in there then it went down to 100 then there was like 50 now it's anywhere from 3 to 15

And again, an amazing testament to the ability of the Israeli Air Force to locate these things, destroy them. And again, a testament to the fact that they have complete control over the skies and can fly anywhere and chase these things down and destroy them. I mean, right now, it's more of a hassle that every couple of hours, the air raid sirens, you have to go into the shelter and

Then come out and then you go back to sleep. And then two hours later, there's an hour. So it's more that. It's more, you know, Israelis suffering from lack of sleep and stress and all the emotion that goes along with it rather than I think the worst of the damage has already been done. And we will see if Iran can muster anything more. All evening today, the Iranians distributed propaganda videos saying,

They claimed that they were going to hit Israel today with weapons that you cannot even imagine, weapons that are far more sophisticated, better, could evade the defense systems, bigger bombs. They even hinted that they might have a nuke. So all evening they were doing this and then

So every time you get a barrage of ballistic missiles, I think some people certainly feared, oh, do they have something different? Do they have something more powerful? Do they have something, you know, more substantial that is going to cause damage? And so far, all of that's just been propaganda. As I've often told you, if you listen to the show regularly, as I've often told you, authoritarian regimes as weapons are typically not that great.

And they might tout it. They might advertise them. They might claim the greatest and best ever. But when it comes down to real performance, they're just not that great. And I think that's what we're seeing, at least partially seeing with Iran right now. They have large numbers, but the weapon systems are primitive, are bad, are not sophisticated. And all their promises for these latest generations, greatest than ever,

As far as we know, if they've launched any, they'd be knocked down. And it's not clear they've launched any. All right. Let's see. Just checking to see if there's anything happening right now. Yeah, I mean, here's the Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard. They made a statement a little earlier and they said this is what they said. Right now, this is primarily this is for internal consumption.

And for Tucker Carlson and Dave Smith and all the other idiots who believe everything they read coming out of authoritarian regimes. Quote, tonight's missile attack showed that we have gained complete control over the skies of the occupied territories and that its residents have become completely defenseless against Iranian missile attacks. So, yeah, believe anything you read from the

revolutionary God with skepticism. But I'm sure there's a bunch of MAGA people out there and libertarians out there saying, yeah, yeah, yeah, as if we can believe the Israelis. We can't believe it.

That's their moral and just the equivocation that they make. But the reality is, yeah, you can probably believe the Israelis because the Israelis are going to be second-guessed and checked by their own media and everything else. One of the fun things that is going on here. Oh, I told you Khamenei just posted, we must give a strong response to the terrorist Zionist regime. We will show the Zionists no mercy.

He's 80-something years old. He's a little delusional. One of the funny things that's going around in these videos is they've got Khamenei giving a speech, and they overlay it with saying something completely different. And it's really, really funny, right? About, you know, he has no generals, the army's dead. I mean, there are a number of different versions of this, but it's pretty hysterical. Yeah. Yeah.

Oh, Mario Nafal actually has some, you know, his take on what's going on after interviewing all these experts. Now, he's interviewed a lot of experts who are not experts, who know nothing. But let's see what Mario Nafal, Mario Nafal is like the guy who does all the news on on on X on Twitter.

Iran is running out of missiles and missile launches to strike Israel. The attacks have dropped 90% based on the numbers of missiles per wave. Absolutely. Israel is complete air dominance over Tehran and Western Iran, probably more. And Mossad has infiltrated the Iranian military and government. Absolutely. Iran is trying to end the war, seeking a deal with the U.S. and trying to avoid getting the U.S. involved in the war. Absolutely. You know, one of the ways you know Iran is

is really trying not to escalate vis-a-vis the Americans. The straits of Hormuz are still open. As I told you, 25% of all the global oil supply flows through the straits. You get oil from Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, Iraq, Iran, all goes to the straits. The

they could mine the Straits. They have, uh, mines, sea mines. They have, uh, they have practiced this. They've trained for this. Israel has not taken out the Iranian Navy. I, you know, I'm not sure why exactly. Maybe they, they, they, they don't want to encourage them to go, to go close the Straits of Hormuz, but Israel's not yet, you know, completely eliminated the Iranian Navy. Um,

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Come visit one of our Bright Horizons centers in the greater Chicago area and see for yourself how we turn wonder into wisdom. Schedule your visit today at brighthorizons.com. And of course, it's not eliminated the ability to export oil yet and doesn't look like they're going to. Probably at the request of Trump, I think it's a cowardly act. I think it should have been one of the first things they did. But anyway, but they haven't closed those Straits of Hormuz yet.

And it could be the Saudis asked Israel not to attack the oil facilities. It could be, you know, Arab countries and the Abraham Accord countries have all asked Israel not to do that because it'll hurt their economies if Iran closes the straits. So the fact that they haven't closed the straits means they're trying not to—they're trying to cut a deal with the U.S. They think they'll get better terms from Trump than they will from Netanyahu. And one of the reassuring things today—

supposedly, was when Trump tweeted unconditional surrender. I think a lot of Israelis took that as, yeah, no deal, complete surrender, or the U.S. is coming into the war. That hasn't happened yet, but that was the hope, at least. All right, let's see what else. A threat against the assassination of civilian leader Ayatollah Khamenei, either a bluff to force Iran to agree to a deal equivalent to surrender or a genuine threat with the aim of regime change.

That's pretty good. I mean, it's either bluff or it's not a bluff. I mean, it could be seven other possibilities, but it's one of those two, it turns out, according to Mario. Wow, that's insightful. The U.S. could get involved in a limited strike solely on Iran's nuclear facilities. Iran's response to this attack will dictate whether the U.S. escalates into involvement. So they could attack

The the nuclear facilities and then do the Iranians attack U.S. facilities in the Middle East? They supposedly have all the missiles lined up to do that. They're saving those. They're saving some missiles for, you know, for the for the Americans. They're not using them on Israel. And then, you know, so there's there's that. And then if they attack the U.S., then the idea is the U.S. would get more involved in the war.

And then finally, if Israel seeks an Iranian regime change, this will be devastating for Iran and potentially the region. What? That is such a stupid take. If their objective is simply to end and enter Iran's nuclear program and not a regime change, then the mission will be accomplished very soon, possibly this week. Historically, regime changes almost never go as planned.

But this is the real crazies, right? The real crazy stuff. Stability is a value. Everything, you know, you can't destabilize. Let's say it doesn't go to plan. They kill Khamenei. They kill the mullahs. And a civil war breaks out in Iran. Right?

Why is that a bad thing? I mean, from the perspective of national security, from the perspective of American interest and Israeli interest, why is that a bad thing? Why is instability in Iran a bad thing? What is the likelihood that the next regime...

Whoever wins this supposed civil war, I don't see how a civil war breaks out, but let's play it out. There's chaos. Everybody's afraid of chaos. They hate chaos. Chaos is terrible. They prefer order under an authoritarian evil thug than chaos. Even though that chaos is likely to lead to a better outcome because chaos won't sustain itself in Iran. Iran will coalesce around something.

Now, will that something be worse for America and Israel than the current regime? I can guarantee the answer is no. Is there a decent likelihood? I don't know how much probability to put on it, but a decent likelihood that the new regime, whatever it is, is actually democratic, relatively free.

friendly to the United States, or at least attempting to be friendly. I think the likelihood is pretty good for that. So let's shake it up and see what happens. I mean, it's going to be better. So why not go for regime change and accept the fact that it might be messy? But Israel is far away from Iran. It really is.

The United States is really far away. What is the threat that instability in Iran poses to Israel or the United States? I say go for regime change. Go all out for regime change. And I mean, short of putting troops on the ground, no troops on the ground. Regime change from the air. No troops on the ground. What's the downside? So...

This is the kind of appeasing, compromising, cowardly attitude that too many Americans and experts, particularly military experts, incompetent military experts have. Oh, you know, if they try regime change, there'll be instability and things won't go the way they want. Yeah, maybe they'll go better. And you know what? The beauty of going for regime change, the beauty of going for regime change is

is that it places the responsibility for what happens to Iran with Iranians. Let them fight it out. Let them figure out what they want. Let them determine their future. Isn't that something we should all want? This is not an environment, Iran, in which ISIS will arise. They are Shiites. They just had an ISIS running the country. They don't want another ISIS running the country.

Now, could the regime be, ooh, maybe the new regime, I mean, this is probably what scares the Trump administration. Maybe the new regime will be woke. Maybe they'll have DEI programs. Oh, my God. Oh, my God, we'll miss the days of the mullahs. I mean, what is the possibilities here? What could happen? I think that was a pretty good joke. I think somebody there, still in the center, is laughing aloud. I think that was a pretty good joke with the woke stuff. Anyway, yeah.

So all this analysis and everything, even if they get the facts right, their prescription is completely wrong. Take Khamenei out. Take the Supreme Leadership Council, whatever they call themselves, out. Take the mullahs out. Take the regime apparatuses that make it possible to oppress the Iranian people out and let the Iranians figure out how they want to deal with the rest.

Don't put anybody in the ground. I mean, here's a few things that might happen. There are rumors today. I have no idea if these are true or not, that military, certain military officers in the Iranian army have been contacting the son of the Shah of Iran,

to tell him that they are willing to be at his side to help him take control of Iran. And they would like him to come and they will work with him. Now, I don't know if that's true or not, but that's the kind of things that could happen, that you could start seeing happen. As a shift now, a lot of people won't be happy with the Shah of Iran coming back.

They'll want somebody else. And there'll be discussions. Maybe there'll even be riots. Maybe there'll even be violence. But it'll be inside Iran in order to determine Iran's fate. Why are we afraid of that? Why won't we nudge it along? Why don't we view that as a positive? Lindsey Graham likes the idea, right? Here we go. I would like to see the regime fall. If we don't take out the nuclear program now, we'll all regret it. We're very close.

Be all in, Mr. President, in helping Israel finish the job. And this is, you know, this is Charlie Cook's response. Charlie. Well, I love Charlie, right? Charlie Cook. This is what he says. This is insane. Insane. Regime change will result in a bloody civil war, killing hundreds of thousands and creating another massive Muslim refugee crisis.

Topping a leader is never as easy as you think. It almost always results in further involvement, a civil war, and chaos. Resist this.

Charlie Cook, an expert on Middle East politics, an expert on revolutions, an expert on civil wars in the Middle East, and an expert on Iranian culture and Iranian history, has now declared that regime change will result in bloody civil war, killing hundreds of thousands of people. I think this is the same Charlie Cook, I might be wrong, who's affiliated with that part of MAGA that was just a couple of days ago saying, World War III, this is going to cause World War III, of course.

I mean, isn't it obvious? All these countries are going to come and aid Iran. Well, Pakistan has closed the border off with Iran. Russia has basically explicitly said, we're not going to help Iran. China is just silent, not talking. We know Saudi Arabia is not going to help them. World War III breaks. Oh, the Brazilians are sending a platoon. The Brazilians and the South Africans are each sending a platoon.

That's the level of expertise that these people have. They're so ignorant. Charlie, you should go back to listening to my talks and mimicking my talking points like you used to do on capitalism. You don't know what you're talking about. I mean, complete ignorance. Bloody Civil War killing hundreds of thousands. Where does he even get this? Who's the expert feeding him this stuff? Who are the factions in the Civil War that are going to kill hundreds of thousands? Now, I'm not saying there won't be a Civil War.

But the panic and hysteria and certainty that they have, they know. They know. I don't know what will happen if you topple Khamenei and you get rid of the mullahs. Maybe there'll be a civil war. Maybe they won't. Maybe the Kurds in the north will take Kurdish territory and declare a Kurdish independent state. Maybe take advantage of the chaos. Maybe some other minority groups in other part of Iran will try to establish their own little states. Who cares?

Maybe one day when whoever gets control of Tehran decides to reunify Iran, there'll be some skirmishes around there as they take back their territory. Who cares? Maybe the different factions within Tehran would like to take control and they'll fight in the streets. Who cares? Hundreds of thousands. Well, what they don't want is a massive refugee crisis.

Why don't they want a massive refugee crisis? Charlie Koch cares about refugees. Really? He doesn't care about refugees. What doesn't he want? He doesn't want them emigrating to Europe. That's what they're really afraid of. You create chaos and then people emigrate to Europe and then a bunch of new Muslims in Europe. Anyway, interesting. So, yeah, that is MAGA take. That is panic, hysteria, panic.

They just want America to do nothing. Just be afraid. Don't touch the world. If you touch it over here, something really awful will happen and we'll all die. World War III. Remind you guys, we have a $250 goal for the first hour. We're short. A lot of $5 questions, $2 $10 questions, lots of $5 questions. How about some $20 or $50 or $100 questions just to get us closer to that goal?

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Two bucks. Three bucks. Just do a sticker. There's a dollar sign at the bottom of your screen there. You can do it. All right. President Trump is scheduled tomorrow to have a closed press, no press, lunch. So a secret press, a secret lunch meeting tomorrow in the cabinet room with Field Marshal Asim Mounir. This is maybe why he's waited, because he wants the advice.

of Asim Munir, who is the chief of the army staff of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan. Pakistan, by the way, is the only Muslim country in the world that has nukes. They definitely have nukes, mostly targeted at India. But who knows? Maybe this is World War III. Anyway, Trump and Field Marshal Munir from Pakistan will...

I guess decide the fate of you on tomorrow in the closed luncheon. At Bright Horizons, infants discover first steps, toddlers discover independence, and preschoolers discover bold ideas. Our dedicated teachers and discovery-driven curriculum nurture curiosity, inspire creativity, and build lasting confidence so your child is ready to take on the world.

Come visit one of our Bright Horizons centers in the greater Chicago area and see for yourself how we turn wonder into wisdom. Schedule your visit today at brighthorizons.com. Interesting. All right. Let's see what is going on here. I don't know what that is. All right. I have not seen the supposed additional post that Trump did earlier. Yeah. All right.

Yeah, I mean, people, you know, Mario has interviews that are so anti-Israel. And they're so, yeah, I mean, it's so bad. And just incompetent. Incompetent. You know, more fake videos. Lots of fake videos. Cool. Here's, yeah. All right. Let's see. Here's Charlie. Charlie.

He goes through this whole analysis. Charlie Koch goes through the whole analysis of, you know, the two elements pulling Trump in different directions to intervene or not to intervene. There are two extremes. And this is what he writes. President Trump is not an ideologue. He's a pragmatic and he prizes common sense. He rejects both extremes and tries to find an America first middle ground.

When he came down the escalator 10 years ago, he was clear on two things. The Iraq war was a disaster and Iran should never have a nuclear weapon. For the past 10 years, he has remained firm on both positions. And here's the kicker. I don't know if President Trump will choose to involve America against Iran, but he is a man I trust to be making that decision.

So don't worry, whatever the considerations or anything, World War III, whatever the considerations, it's Donald Trump. I mean, he's infallible and he will make the right decision and things are going to be amazing. Things are going to be fantastic. All right. Let us see. Let us see. Let us see.

Yeah, I mean, oil prices, surprisingly stable. I mean, they're high, but they're stable. Above 70, but stable. You know, as long as the oil continues to flow out of the Strait of Samoa, oil prices are not budging. And I think the markets are basically signaling that they believe that the Saudis, the Americans have basically placed constraints on the Israelis, that Israel will not do anything to jeopardize the straits.

and therefore that the flow of oil globally is safe. There was a moment earlier today, a tanker full of oil collided with an empty tanker. A tanker full of oil is ablaze, so there's a big fire in the Persian Gulf, and everybody was afraid that that was somebody had lit it, maybe the Iranians had attacked it or something like that. But no, it turned out just to be an accident, an accident probably caused by

all the activities going on around there. So it's, it's probably not irrelevant what is going on to this, but, uh, that the tank was not hit by military operations. All right, let's see. Uh, so yeah, so far financial markets primarily, uh, uh, uh, oil markets are taking the whole thing pretty well. Crude is, um, you know, is $75, uh,

which is still reasonable. You'd expect that if they really thought the state of home oils were in real danger and could be shut, crude would be over 100. So it's about up about 20% from, what is it, the low 60s? Yeah, low 60s. It's up about 20% since the war started. But that's not a huge amount, given what's at stake here and given what's possible and given how much of the world's oil, again, flows around.

just through that area and how much of, yeah. So it was 63. It's now 75, you know, quite reasonable. All right. Stablecoin regulations. Stablecoin regulations. So the Senate today passed a stablecoin bill.

which will regulate the stable coin industry. And it's considered this is considered a big win for crypto industry. Now, I'm not sure what you know about if you know how stable coins work. But basically, what a stable coin is, is it's a digital it's a digital currency or it can be used as a currency. It's a digital representation of money. And the reason it's called stable coin is for every

coin that is issued digitally, there is a dollar to back it up. So it's stabilized by a reserve of dollars. Think about the gold standard, how the gold standard used to work, right? There were dollars and then there was gold. And then there were dollars issued that were redeemable into that gold. And you had to keep a reserve of gold, right?

To give credibility to the dollars that you were issuing. Now there's fractional reserve. But let's assume no fractional reserve. There's just gold, dollars. Every dollar is exchangeable into gold. A stable coin is the same thing. Just instead of gold, you're using dollars. And then you've got these coins that are always exchangeable to dollars. You can go to the exchange. The exchange...

The biggest exchange right now for stablecoins is Tether. The problem with Tether is Tether is not based in the United States. So it's not clear that these regulations will, that Tether will qualify under these regulations. And it might be, there might be limited use in the United States for Tether regulations.

for the stable coins. I mean, maybe this is one of the reasons the Senate passed this bill, because it was lobbied for by Circle, which is the largest U.S.-based stable coin issuer. Circle recently went public. And they want regulations because they want

rules of game, which I think they can abide by often incumbents in a field like regulations, because they hope to keep out competition. And they also take away the uncertainty, you know, is this, is she going to come after us? They're not going to come after us. What's, you know, what counts, what doesn't count.

So today we got rules for what a what these stable call companies can do. You know, what kind of reserves do they have to have? They don't literally have to hold dollars if they literally had to hold dollars. Then, you know, they they would they could not make money. Right. It would be one to one. So instead of dollars, they're going to be allowed to hold dollars.

treasury securities so they can make interest on the treasury securities right now that interest is pretty good you know they can make three four percent on these treasury securities these treasury securities incredibly liquid so anytime you go and redeem your stable coin you will get dollars because they'll sell one of those treasury securities um the problem of course with this is as long as interest rates are decent like they are right now i mean relatively high

That's fine. But what happens when interest rates, if interest rates ever go back to zero, then all these stable coin companies go out of business because they can't make any money because they buy treasuries. The treasury is not yielding anything. Then then what they start doing and this is what happens and this is what this bill is trying to control is.

Then what happens is they start taking on risk. Instead of just buying treasuries, short-term treasuries, they buy long-term treasuries, which they can sell. But long-term treasuries can lose value if interest rates go up, and then they can lose money. So these regulations are trying to make this safe. Government regulations almost never do this effectively without creating distortions and perversions and...

conflicts of interest and moral hazard and a bunch of other things. Now, why would you want this? Because you can buy anything with dollars. Well, imagine if you're Amazon or Walmart. Now, note that both Amazon and Walmart are actually exploring issuing their own stable coins. Now, what's interesting is this regulation has special burdens on

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Schedule your visit today at brighthorizons.com. Amazon and Walmart and non-financial companies and not crypto companies to do this. So it's going to be more difficult for them. They're going to be more heavily regulated. Why? Because companies like Sokol don't want to compete with Amazon and Walmart. But imagine you're Amazon. And every time somebody uses a credit card to buy something, you have to pay, I don't know, 2% to Visa and MasterCard, 2.5% to make an expense.

something right but you could take stable coins not pay anything and just convert the stable coin it's a dollar immediately at the exchange at the circle exchange or if it's amazon's exchange it's your own exchange you can issue stable coins to americans like if i have a prime account with amazon they tell me you know we'll you know we'll take your money we'll buy treasuries with it

And we'll issue you stable coins. And that'll make it much easier for you to buy stuff on Amazon. And because we're not having to pay Visa and MasterCard, whatever, 2%, we're going to give you, we're not going to pay you interest on the money you deposited for the stable coin, but we are going to give you a discount of 2%, 2%, 5%, something on everything you buy using the stable coin. And it'll just make transactions easier.

And simpler. You know, for years, people have talked about digital wallets. Well, stable coins can facilitate digital wallets. You know, they can facilitate small denominations. So there is an actual use case here. This is one of those crypto uses that might catch on. Again, more likely to catch on if interest rates are reasonably high. Now, Amazon...

And Walmart can do this even if interest rates are zero because they can offer you a discount because they didn't get charged by Visa and MasterCard. They could also give you a higher discount because they're also getting interest on the money you gave them that they put in treasuries. They maybe get 3% there. They get 2% from Visa. Now, they've just saved 5% and give you a 5% discount. That's a significant discount on everything you buy.

So lots of different ways to do this. Visa and MasterCard, of course, realize this is competition. So Visa and MasterCard are going to try to get into the sector. They're going to be the competitors to Circle. And I think ultimately they will probably dominate this, but we'll see. Sometimes it's a new up-and-comer that figures out how to do this better.

The other thing that is big in terms of stable coins is moving money, again, across countries. Instead of buying Bitcoin, let's say you're in Egypt and you want to get money out of Egypt and the capital controls. So you buy Bitcoin, you move the Bitcoin to the US and you sell it. But in transferring the money and going through all of that, you could gain or lose, I don't know, 2%, 3%, 5% because Bitcoin is so volatile.

Stable coins you don't lose. So you could move the money as a stable coin and you know you're going to have exactly the same number of dollars on the other side of the transaction as you did at the beginning of the transaction. So again, very, very useful for moving money around, for moving money around. So this is cool. It's a cool industry. I haven't read the regulation, but I'm always suspicious of

of these kinds of regulations and kind of the incentives that they provide. Republicans overwhelmingly voted for this. They got a number of Democrats to vote as well. So it passed 68, I think, to 32. So a lot of Democrats were on board. The left wing of the Democratic Party was against it. Elizabeth Warren was against it. That gives me a little bit of

of more confidence in it. Elizabeth Warren, you know, what did she say? I had it here a second ago. Ah, the quote disappeared on me. The Genus Act lacks the basic safeguards necessary to ensure that stable coins don't blow up our entire financial system. That's Elizabeth Warren's World War III. But she's very anti-crypto, very anti-anything to do with crypto. So how to take her seriously?

Kristen Gilbert, who is a Democrat for New York, who's considered more of a moderate, got behind it after some tweaks were made to make it harder for non-financial companies to issue stable coins. These are the tweaks that will make it harder for Amazon and Walmart. So she wanted to, I don't know, protect whom? Protect Visa and MasterCard from competition from Walmart and Amazon. So there's kind of wheeling and dealing going on.

My guess is there's still enough there that Amazon and Walmart could still issue their own coins. Of course, there is one other elephant in the room, if you will. There is a company called World Liberty Financial. You might have heard of it. It launched in September and it is going to issue its own stablecoin.com.

At Bright Horizons, infants discover first steps, toddlers discover independence, and preschoolers discover bold ideas. Our dedicated teachers and discovery-driven curriculum nurture curiosity, inspire creativity, and build lasting confidence so your child is ready to take on the world.

Come visit one of our Bright Horizons centers in the greater Chicago area and see for yourself how we turn wonder into wisdom. Schedule your visit today at brighthorizons.com. Oh, it's already issued its own stable coin earlier this year. Guess who owns World Liberty Financial? You won't be able to guess who owns World Liberty Financial. Yeah, I mean, nobody's guessed it on chat yet, but it's Trump, the Trump organization.

Not Donald Trump, but the Trump organization. They own World Liberty Financial. Now, the bill mandates the regulators supervise issuers of large stablecoins in some of the same ways they regulate banks. Stablecoin issuers would need to comply with anti-money laundering rules and sanctions to help ensure that they aren't used by criminals. It also requires them to hold $1 reserve cash or treasury bills for every dollar of stablecoin. Yep, I mean, that makes sense.

And then it also prohibits executive branch officials and lawmakers from issuing stable coins. And then the question is, what about World Liberty Financial? And of course, the Trump organization is saying, dad's not involved. It's just the kids. It's the kids. It's their venture. Dad is not involved. The money goes to him, but he is not going to use it while he's president. He'll use it afterwards. So he's not involved. It doesn't count.

Yeah. So there you go. So it is, I'm all for making, I think stable coins at the end of the day, you know, some of the more likely uses of crypto. It's not real crypto in the sense of, you know, what people mean by Bitcoin and stuff, but it is a...

Probably under the right circumstances, an increase, potential increase efficiency in our payment system, which is not very efficient in the United States. Although not bad if you think about Venmo and PayPal. All right. Finally, you remember last week Trump put out this tweet saying, you know, he's talked to a number of people.

In industry, and it's really not good for ICE to go after people in the agriculture, hotel, and restaurant industries. You know, they're good workers. They've been there a long time. And it was actually like this movement to have ICE stop doing that. ICE supposedly for a few days stopped doing that. They stopped going to agricultural businesses. They stopped going to hotels, restaurants.

They stopped going to restaurants because, you know, Trump thought it was a bad idea and so on. Anyway, so that happened last week. Trump had the tweet and then he told ICE to stop it. And supposedly they did. Well, the problem is they can't reach the numbers. They got numbers. They can't reach the numbers. So officials from the Immigration and Customs Enforcement, including its Homeland Security Investigation Divisions,

told agency leaders in a call Monday that agents must continue conducting immigration raids at agricultural businesses, hotels, and restaurants, according to two people familiar with the call. The new instructions were shared in an 11 a.m. call to representatives and 30 field officers across the country. So this is Miller, Evo Miller, you know, basically exerting his influence on

And getting them to reverse the policy and getting them to go after those evil, hardworking immigrants working in the fields and everywhere else. So this just shows you the power of MAGA.

ICE and HSA field office supervisors began learning about a likely reversal of the exemption policy on Sunday after hearing from DHS leadership that the White House did not support it, according to one person with knowledge of the reversal. Again, this is Miller.

An official from DHS had sent an email Thursday telling the agents to hold on all worksite enforcement investigation operations in agriculture, including aquaculture and meatpacking plants, restaurants and operating hotels. That message went out hours after Trump suggested he was sympathetic to concerns raised by farmers and hospitality execs about his deportation plans.

This is from, again, this is all from the Washington Post. Quote, there will be no safe spaces for industries who harbor violent criminals or purposely try to undermine ICE efforts. The Assistant Secretary of the DHS said Monday, worksite enforcement remains a cornerstone of our efforts to safeguard public safety, national security, and economic stability. Yeah, it's very economically stable.

to throw up millions of workers from the country. Just all at once, just throw them up. And the businesses are going to be very, very, very stable. White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, there he is, said last month that the administration wants ICE to make a minimum of 3,000 arrests a day. 3,000 lives are being destroyed on a daily basis. In an interview last week,

Trump Bordasar, Tom Holman, told The Post that arrests had increased around 2,000 a day. Not high enough. They're not making that 3,000 a day. Anyway, Trump had been pulled in two directions on the issue, recently coming under pressure from executives in agriculture and hospitality industries to loosen up on sweeping deportation policy and was costing them migrant workers. You know, so he wrote, remember, he wrote that tweet. Miller said,

an architect of much of Trump's aggressive immigration policy, had privately opposed carving out exemptions for certain industries that rely heavily on workers without legal status, according to two people with knowledge of the advocacy in recent days against the measure. Brooke Rawlins, the agricultural secretary, meanwhile was on the opposite side of the issue, stressing to Trump the concerns that those in the farming industry had raised about losing workers. Note,

The workers themselves have no voice here. Nobody cares about the workers. Nobody cares about these human beings. They're just pieces of meat. Yeah. Some immigration experts say ICE would need to ramp up worksite enforcement to meet administration's ambitious arrest quotas. Past raids at meatpacking plants, for instance, have led to hundreds of arrests at once. Other labor-intensive industries, including farms, factories, and clothing manufacturers, have

The June 12th memo acknowledged that avoiding these large scale employees would hinder ICE officers efforts, saying we acknowledge that by taking this off the table that we are eliminating a significant number of potential targets. Miller wins liberty, freedom in this country and business owners and workers, people who work lose, lose. Here's a post, by the way.

that was posted by a MAGA guy, you know, during when Trump, you know, said no to enforcing this in industry. He says, the United States is the only country on earth where corporate profits are prioritized over national interests. Corporations that employ illegal aliens to work in their farms and hotels should be fined heavily. I'm surprised he is not calling for the execution.

Why not? We should call for the execution of employers. I mean, they're doing something illegal, very illegal, very illegal. World War III illegal type. They should really suffer the consequences, I think. Anyway, that is the news for this June 17th as we wait for Donald Trump to make up his mind. Will he or won't he join Israel in its attack on Iran? All right.

Let me remind everybody that this is a viewer listening supported show. That means you have to support the show. You get the value of listening, watching the show. You pay for it. Return Express, the trade that is involved by doing a super chat, doing a sticker, or going to Patreon, patreon.com.

And putting in your own book show and making a monthly contribution. So I will be answering questions now. There's a bunch of them here, mainly two, five, and $10 questions, a couple of 20s. We need a lot more 20s. We're way behind today. Not sure what's going on. And so I remind you of that. Also a reminder that Alex Epstein is the sponsor of the show. AlexEpstein.substack.com is...

The, you know, the most knowledgeable substack you will find, most knowledgeable anything you will find on, for example, the grid, energy, electricity. Right now, what's relevant? Subsidies to subsidies to solar and wind and, you know, unreliable energy sources like that. And what the current big, beautiful bill is and what Republicans are offering in the Senate versus the House.

If you're all of that, if you're interested. At Bright Horizons, infants discover first steps, toddlers discover independence, and preschoolers discover bold ideas. Our dedicated teachers and discovery-driven curriculum nurture curiosity, inspire creativity, and build lasting confidence so your child is ready to take on the world.

Come visit one of our Bright Horizons centers in the greater Chicago area and see for yourself how we turn wonder into wisdom. Schedule your visit today at brighthorizons.com. And what's happening? Alex is your source of information and source of talking points. You will become a so much better communicator if you subscribe to Alex's Substack. The Ironman Institute is hosting a July 4th event where there will be a special talk about how to complete the American Revolution.

What we need to complete the American Revolution is a moral revolution, a talk about how to engage in a moral revolution, how to defeat altruism. This is the most important thing we could be doing, is going after altruism, going after the sacrificial morality of altruism. And you can sign up for this talk. I think it's free. I'm pretty sure it's free. So you can do that by going to...

einrand.org, einrand.org, slash start here. The talk is by Ben Bear. And, you know, it's going to be a fun talk. It's going to be exciting. There'll be a live audience at Ocon. You can watch on the internet. You can sign up for that. einrand.org, slash start here. einrand.org, slash start here. All right. It's free. Michael Frost says it's free. You just have to sign up. That way you'll get the link and you'll get the information.

And it is indeed free. All right. Final reminder, step up, ask a question, or just support the show with a sticker. Michael, will this be Israel's last war? Hamas is gone. He's gone. And with Iran cooked, more Arab countries will sign the Abraham Accords. We'll see the beginning of a sustained peace and prosperity in the Middle East.

Well, I mean, you know, that is one very optimistic view of what could happen. You know, Hamas might be gone, but Palestinians on the West Bank and in Gaza have not accepted the existence of the state of Israel. They're not friendly towards Israel. Now their allies are slowly disappearing. So they're going to struggle. I think it is a it's going to be a unique opportunity over the next few months, years to kind of deal with the Palestinians one way or the other.

to pacify them and to have a deal with them. I think that, yes, I think, as I said, Iran is like the fall of the Berlin Wall. Remember, though, the fall of the Berlin Wall, ultimately, we got Russia with Putin. So I agree with you in the short and medium term, short and medium term, for the next 20 years, I think Israel has bought itself peace. I think we're going to have peace in the Middle East, basically, for 20 years now. Now,

A lot of work is going to have to be done to eradicate whatever Islamist elements still around. ISIS and al-Qaeda are quite strong in North Africa, in just the Sahel, which is just the southern part of the Sahara Desert. They're very strong there. We've got Pakistan with nukes and an Islamist-leaning situation.

You still got Taliban in Afghanistan. But yeah, the real threats to Israel, the direct, certainly the direct threats to Israel will be gone. And Israel can enjoy a pretty lengthy period of, I think, peace, of peace. And the West now has to, you know, get some balls and finish the job and destroy these Islamist organizations wherever they are.

So, that'll pacify Europe. It'll pacify the Muslims in Europe. It'll, you know, eliminate their incentives towards Islamism. I mean, the defeat of Iran is a big step in that direction. The West will have to pick it up beyond that. And so...

Yeah, I mean, this is monumental. As I've said, this is the biggest geopolitical event since the fall of the Berlin Wall. But the fall of the Berlin Wall was not, in spite of a certain book that was written, it was not the end of history. Conflict did continue. We saw Russia. We saw the rise of China. We saw the rise of Islamism. And there's still some problems. I mean, what if...

What if the leader of Saudi Arabia is taken out? What is Turkey's ambitions? What does Turkey do now that Iran is out and Turkey becomes maybe the strongest military in the Muslim part of the Middle East? What has Turkey learned from this? So a lot of challenges, but a lot of upside, huge amount of upside. And I think, yes, short to medium term,

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and build lasting confidence so your child is ready to take on the world. Come visit one of our Bright Horizons centers in the greater Chicago area and see for yourself how we turn wonder into wisdom. Schedule your visit today at brighthorizons.com. Peace for Israel and the potential for real prosperity, which will, of course, depend on the kind of economic policies they embrace. Igal Arbel, can you recommend a book summarizing ideas of key philosophers?

Well, I mean, I'd recommend Leonard Peikoff's book on the history of philosophy or his lecture series on the history of philosophy. There's a number of other books that have been recommended over the years. I mean, none of them is perfect. Let's see, what do I have here? I need to find that section. Yeah. You know, here's one if you can find it. It's a history of philosophy by William Wildenbande.

You know, Will Durant has a history of philosophy that is very accessible. So I think that Will Durant's that one. There are probably others. And maybe when we have a philosopher on week, it's a good question to ask one of our philosophers who might have kind of more recent and recommendations about

for books that have come out more recently. A lot of these books are very old. And this one, the one I showed you, is probably very hard to find. Will Durant is good, but again, it was written a long time ago, and they might be better scholarship today. The best thing is to ask somebody like Jason Rines or Greg Salmieri what they would recommend. But Leonard Peikoff's is very accessible book.

And it's done definitely from an objectivist perspective. So you have to take that into account. These are done with the attempt of, you know, I don't think the authors have a strong philosophical perspective of their own. Graham, here's a 20, although it's Canadian, just saw a post saying Trump is going to have a chat with a Pakistani field marshal. I mentioned that on the show today.

I'm not sure what to think about that, but maybe he's going to tell them, don't worry, them, don't worry, Pakistan. You know, I don't know why he's having this chat. The guy must be in Washington, D.C. for other stuff. I don't think he came especially because of the war in Iran. And it's, I think he's going to certainly tell Pakistan to stay out of it. I think they've got a lot of issues to do with the war between Pakistan and India, but

And to sustain that ceasefire, I think that's part of the reason for the chat. And maybe he'll get his opinion about whether the United States should enter the war with Iran because he's looking for different opinions from different people and how the Muslim world will feel about the United States entering the war on the side of Israel. All right. Let me thank Ori for the sticker. Martin for the sticker.

And I just saw Anthony. Anthony from Australia, thank you for the sticker. Really, really appreciate your support, guys. We're slowly chipping away at the first hour goal. We haven't even started on the second hour goal. But anyway, Justin, this he posted yesterday. Justin Wolf, he says, I started reading your essay, Just Worth Theory, as you recommended it.

I recommended it. He was, he tweeted about a civilian casualties in war. And I said, if you really want to get my views on that, go read this essay. I mean, really Twitter is not the place to analyze if a difficult philosophical question, like what to do about a civilians in war. So he says, I started reading your essay, just what theory has you recommended? If any of the listeners have not read it yet, uh,

Search it now and read it. I second that recommendation. It is a really, really good essay. I think it's an important essay. As we are at war, it's a crucial essay. So please go ahead and read it. You know, I haven't done an update about the Ukraine war in a while. I'll have to do that. I mean, Russia's pounding civilian population centers in Ukraine. I mean, just without any attempts to

to target military or anything like that, just pounding the cities. It's just horrific. Michael, by the way, I do want to say this. I didn't say this in our analysis. If Trump decides to go in on the side of Israel and attack Iran, I definitely think, definitely think he needs to go to Congress and ask for authorization. I think that that would be such a positive step, too.

of putting us on a footing of constitutional government. Trump shouldn't just unilaterally decide to go bomb a country as much as I think it would be great if he did. You know, I'm mixed about whether I think it's great or not. But because I want Israel to get all the credit, I think Trump is going to steal all the credit from Israel. But the way to do it, the proper way to do it in America is to go to Congress for approval. Go to the Senate tomorrow morning,

Ask them to rush a approval for military operations in Iran. Let's see who votes for and against it. I think some Democrats will vote for it. Some Republicans vote against it. But we'll get a majority, go to the House, get a majority in the House, and then do it. Let's have constitutional government. That would be cool.

Richard, Richard, I haven't seen you in a long time. Hey, Richard, it's good to see you. Thanks for being here. I have no idea what's going on with your career, where you are. Are you still with the same firm? What happened? Anyway, Richard asks, is there a valid reason for the U.S. should not unilaterally attack Iran with nuclear weapons? Yeah, I mean, nuclear weapons are a big tool in the toolkit.

which I don't think is necessary here. The regime is on the verge of collapse. The nuclear program can be destroyed with bunker-busting bombs. Nuclear means radiation that could take years and years and years to clear. A lot of people dying, I guess, unnecessary in a country that I think at least...

is ready to depose these mullahs and to actually establish a country that is friendly to the United States. This is not the case where, which it was, I think, maybe 20, 25 years ago, where this is a uniformly hostile country and they have to be brought to their knees, like the Gazans have to be brought to their knees in order to recognize their failure. I think they know they failed. They know they failed. They're ready to

to change path. They just need the nudge for us to get rid of this regime. And that can be done easily and effectively because of what Israel's done without the use of nuclear weapons. That would be my view. You know, less than five bunker busting bombs and this is over. They should, though, kill the political leaders of Iran. They should go after the political leadership. The fact that they haven't is a massive failure and a sign of weakness.

Thank you, Richard, and it's good to see you here. Michael, Chinese cargo planes enter Iraq after turning off tracking devices, arms transfers. Maybe, you know how to tell exactly what's going on there? Maybe getting sensitive Chinese equipment out of Iran? I don't know, but if it was really significant arms, I'm sure Israel was monitoring everything that came off that plane, and if it was significant, they would have destroyed it.

I don't think Iran wants to get into the middle of this. So I don't believe it was weapons. I don't think it was weapon systems. I don't know what it was. It might very well be stuff that China wants to get out of there. Or it might be a way to evacuate people. But it is, it's a mystery. And we haven't heard from anybody. I haven't heard anybody. But it is, but I really, really, really doubt it's arms weapons. And we haven't seen any.

Andrew, Tucker Carlson infuriated that Ted Cruz wants the regime to collapse into Iran, despite not knowing the exact population of Iran, not its ethnic makeup. Tucker, so scared of what might happen. I'm all for taking the chance. Yeah, I mean, it's not a big chance. Population of, you know, Iran is 90 million. It's a big country. 90 million, much bigger than Iraq. It is...

ethnically, it's religiously united, mostly Muslims, although the fastest growing religions in Iran are Zoroastrianism, something like that, which is the ancient religion of the Persians, and Christianity. A lot of Muslims leaving Islam and converting to those religions, but overwhelmingly Muslims, but a lot of different ethnic groups. For example,

In the north of Tehran, about a third of Iranian population, maybe a fourth, put it this way, somewhere between 20 to 33 percent of the population is Azeri. Azeri, I don't know what that means, but it's a different ethnic group than the rest of the main group in Iran. And there is an Azeri country. It's called Azerbaijan. Azerbaijan is Azeri. And there's been, you know, some...

fear among Iranians that, you know, the Azeris would rather be ruled by Azerbaijan. Now, Azerbaijan is an authoritarian state, but it's a secular authoritarian state with a lot of personal freedoms allowed in the state, even though it is authoritarian. So, you know, people might be worried that

The Azeris might want their own, might want the state that's affiliated with Azerbaijan instead of Iran. There are other ethnic groups. There's the Kurds, obviously, in the northwest. There are others in the south. There's some Arabs. You know, these are all groups that are Persian. There's the Arabs who might want to be more linked to Saudi Arabia. But the reality is that Persia is an ancient civilization. It's an ancient country.

While borders have shifted through the many, many, you know, thousands of years, hundreds and hundreds and thousands of years, Iran has always there's always been anyone. And, you know, it'll figure it out. They'll figure it out. And if that means war, that might mean a civil war. That means some war.

You know, some minority groups creating their own little states. So be it. So be it. I'm not sure why that is something America needs to worry about or why that's something Tucker Carlson really worries about. He doesn't sleep at night because there might be a civil war in Iran. Oh, my God. But the reality is over 50 percent of the population hate this regime. One is gone.

And once the regime is even weaker, that number will rise. By the time the regime falls, 90% of the population will want it to fall. They'll all claim they were always in opposition. And something else will rise. Whatever rises will be better. That I can guarantee. It will be better. Richard, coming back with another $50. Thank you, Richard. Single-handedly going to get us that goal tonight.

Why do you think people in client-facing companies are so hesitant to tell client bad news to the point of concealing facts from the clients, like inability to make optimistic deadlines? It seems profoundly irrational to do this, but seems common. Yeah, I mean, I think the idea of honesty and being honest with clients, not honesty to the point of telling clients bad

irrelevant stuff or stuff they don't need to know. But just dealing with them honestly in terms of providing them with the relevant information, it's just rare. People are afraid of being honest. They're afraid of disappointing people and they turn to pragmatism. And pragmatism says, do whatever you can get away with in the short run. And this is kind of whatever works. Cut corners if it works. And yeah, so there's...

Not so much explicit lying, but there's smoothing of the edges. There's avoiding confrontation. And there's avoiding the blatant truth. I think this harms, generally harms businesses. They're less successful, less profitable because of it. I think it hurts people's careers to do that. You know, ambitious people who are going to be incredibly successful are brutally honest.

I mean, Steve Jobs did not play games with people. If you did screwed up, you were told you screwed up. If you didn't, you know, if you did well, you were rewarded for doing well. So, yeah, so they do it because honesty is a dogma. Nobody's taught them that honesty is in their self-interest.

At Bright Horizons, infants discover first steps, toddlers discover independence, and preschoolers discover bold ideas. Our dedicated teachers and discovery-driven curriculum nurture curiosity, inspire creativity, and build blasting confidence so your child is ready to take on the world.

Come visit one of our Bright Horizons centers in the greater Chicago area and see for yourself how we turn wonder into wisdom. Schedule your visit today at brighthorizons.com. Nobody's explained to them that self-interest, their own happiness, depends on being rational. And being rational depends on being honest. Nobody's taught them the virtue of justice and why it's in their self-interest. People have told them you've got to be honest. Why? Because you've got to be honest. I mean, there's a commandment somewhere.

I shall not lie. You just have to do it. So, you know, it's something that holds companies back and something that the better companies struggle with. Okay, but what information, what does honesty mean? How much information do I need to give my clients? And finding that, you know, what does honesty require of you in terms of disclosure is tricky. It's not obvious.

I think some things are straightforward and easy. Like you can't meet a deadline. You can't meet a deadline. That's it. Let them know. You're not going to escape the consequence of that one. Might as well get it over with. Yeah, it's pragmatism and the lack of moral teaching. Moral teaching as this is in your self-interest. This is what you gain from it. Michael, is Iran on the verge of collapse or readjusting their strategy to fire more rockets?

closer to the verge of collapse than firing more rockets. They don't have more rockets. They don't have more launches. There's nothing for them to, there's no new strategy they can do. They are struggling to figure out how to survive. The collapse may take weeks, but they are struggling to figure out how to survive. And it could take days. Liam, is China the same type of paper tiger Iran turned out to be? Probably not. Well, I mean, I always thought Iran was a paper tiger.

Always. For decades, I've been saying Iran's a paper tiger. So Iran's paper tiger Ness was zero surprise to me. China's not a paper tiger to this extent. China has legit tech companies. It has legit capabilities. It has a legit defense industry. You know, I think it's better than Russia. It's just I don't think it's as good as America. I don't think it's as good as Israel.

But I think it's better than Iran and Russia. There's only one. People talk about the axis of evil. There's only one potential superpower out there to compete with the U.S., and that is China. Russia is nothing. And I think in some respect, Putin's war is an act of desperation to kind of try to prove to himself and prove to the people around him that Russia still has it. And it doesn't. It just doesn't have it.

Think about what Israel has done to Iran, which was supposed to have this mighty force, and what Russia has done to Ukraine, where Ukraine has never had a mighty force, was not supposed to have anything. Russia is four times larger than Ukraine. Israel is one-tenth of the size of Iran in terms of people, and one-hundredth the size of Iran in terms of size. It's just...

Unbelievable when you compare those two differences. Russia is a zero, a nothing, a non-entity when it comes to military force as compared to the West. And Israel is, you know, superpower. It's not because it doesn't have the numbers. You know, Israel has 650 airplanes, I think. The United States has 14,000 airplanes. 14,000. You can't match that. Harper Campbell, is Trump's behavior the downstream effect of the moral character of the country?

Well, I think the fact that he is the president is the downstream effect of the mall character of the country. His behavior, the fact that he can get away with his behavior is the downstream effect of the culture. But he is the effect of his own choices, the effect of his upbringing and his choices and the kind of human being he is. He has no excuse. Nobody caused him to be like this.

Is the MEK a large organization in Iran? They give great speeches in English, but in Farsi, they talk about how the mullahs don't go far enough. Source Iranian-American friends who listen to Lida live in D.C. There is an organization, I think it's the MEK, which is Islamist, which is radical Islamist and is anti-Muhammad.

The mullahs, because they're not Islamist enough, they don't follow Sharia. So MEK is more like the Taliban, which forces them to cover their face. Women can't talk in public. They don't go to school in Iran. Women do go to school.

At Bright Horizons, infants discover first steps, toddlers discover independence, and preschoolers discover bold ideas. Our dedicated teachers and discovery-driven curriculum nurture curiosity, inspire creativity, and build lasting confidence so your child is ready to take on the world.

Come visit one of our Bright Horizons centers in the greater Chicago area and see for yourself how we turn wonder into wisdom. Schedule your visit today at brighthorizons.com. So there is a more radical, but they're not popular. They're not big in Iran. They also combine kind of a Marxist economics. So they're leftist Islamists. I don't think they're a real force.

I don't think they will force anyone. I don't think they are expected to be one of the main players over there, although, you know, they might be organized. They might be a player. But I don't think there's a chance they achieve power. I mean, Iranian people don't want to replace one set of mullahs with another. Not your average algorithm. If all humans suddenly lost ability to lie, what industry would collapse first?

I mean, if you lost ability to lie, you'd lose your free will and all industry would collapse. I mean, you can't just lose your ability to lie out of context. I don't know what industry relies on. I mean, politicians, politics and related fields, parts of the law, parts of government contractors, but mainly politics. I don't think any business business relies on lying. Even used car salesmen.

I don't really rely on lying at the end of the day. Notchavish algorithm, could the iron dome potentially stop a nuclear warhead? Well, not the iron dome, but the arrow system could, yes. These are air defense systems that hit the ballistic missile before it enters the atmosphere.

And you're probably going to get more powerful lasers in the future that can also hit real hypersonic missiles. These are missiles that go at five Mach plus and maneuverable. But lasers could probably deal with that as well. But the Iron Dome is specifically targeted to intercept something at very low altitudes.

and therefore would not be appropriate for a nuclear bomb, because if you intercepted it there and it blew up at low altitudes, it would cause more damage, not less. Gail, what is your general opinion of the Abraham Accords? You know, I'm positive, but I'm not super enthusiastic, because I think these regimes have to be watched, and you have to be careful with them, and they're all authoritarian. But I think for Israel to do it was a positive step. It just wasn't this, the world has changed completely.

everything's going to be peaceful and nice and friendly and everybody's kumbaya, love each other from now on. I think as long as these countries are ruled by Islam, even though it's not Islamism, it's still Islam, and rulers who are still committed to Islam, it's a problem. And now maybe they're moving away from that, but I don't see any of them becoming liberal democracies or liberal countries in a classical liberal sense.

So I'm suspicious. But I wouldn't turn away from them. I would just say, you know, be careful. Be careful. Supkasky, Chrissy Noem has been hospitalized. Her dog spirit has come back for revenge. Yeah, I think she had an allergic reaction to something. Clark, Iran was a lot of bluster without ability. However, they would have gotten their ability with nukes. So it was crucial to deal with them now. Absolutely.

You don't need a lot of ability once you have nukes. And nukes provide you with the ability to threaten. And then people don't even know if you have the ability or not. Yeah, let's see. Clock. There must be a lot of behind-the-scenes reasoning why Israel decided to do this at this particular moment that we won't find out for months. Yeah, and we might never find out. We might never find out in any kind of reasonable time frame. And...

But, yeah, I mean, it's a combination of intelligence that really did suggest to them that Iran was getting close to a bomb and potential fears that Trump was going to stab them in the back by signing some kind of deal with the Iranians would be my guess. But I'm only guessing because I have no inside information. Richard, back again. I think this makes it, yeah, this makes it $200. Thank you, Richard. Wow.

Was there an alliance between leftists and Islamists in the Middle East during the Cold War? Is there a link with the Muslim Brotherhood? Such alliances existed in a few countries. The Iranian Revolution was a fusion of left and Islam. Are they still common? Well, I wouldn't say the Iranian Revolution was a fusion of left and Islam in the sense that Ayatollah Khomeini conned the leftists to support his revolution. And then once he established power, he killed them all.

and destroyed them and eviscerated them, right? They were gone. So it was a con game. Aitul Khamenei used to distribute these cassette tapes. That's how he became popular in Iran. People used to listen to his sermons. And he used to sprinkle in his sermons lots of kind of Marxist phrases and leftist propaganda items, talked about colonialism and talked about exploitation and alienation and all the keywords for the leftists.

And they got very, very excited and they supported the revolution. They hated the Shah. I don't know that I'd call it an alliance because at the end of the day, they were gone. With regard to Muslim Brotherhood, no, I mean, there was never an alliance really other than in attempting to eliminate existing status quo regimes. The Muslim Brotherhood were not supported by the left in Egypt, as far as I can tell, and

You know, they grew out of an Islamist tradition that rejects everything secular. So I don't know of an alliance between them and the left. You know, in Syria, it is kind of the fascists who took control. In Iraq, it was the fascists, the Ba'ath Party, that took control. But I don't think there's a lot...

I mean, the only thing in common between the leftists and Islamists, for the most part, except in MEK and Iran, is the hatred of the status quo, the hatred of the existing authoritarian regimes in the Middle East, the hatred of the Saudi regime, of the regime everywhere. And usually what happens is they unite to overthrow the regimes. I think this happened recently.

In Tunisia, during the Arab Spring, generally, the Arab Spring was a unity of the Islamists and the leftists. But I wouldn't call it an alliance. They just came together to overthrow the existing order. But then what happened is that it turns out that the Islamists are more popular than leftists. The Islamists took over and they marginalized the leftist groups that demonstrated with them.

So it's not that they ally themselves in governance. They ally themselves in opposition to the regimes. I hope that's helpful. James, is the MAGA phenomena unwinding in its first six months in the White House? No, I mean, I don't think so. Trump is still there. He's still MAGA. J.D. Vance. There's still a lot of MAGA people out there talking, talking, talking and putting influence. You can see how Trump, you know,

Took away the exemption for the ICE going after people who are working in certain industries because MAGA spoke up. I mean, in the end of the day, MAGA does influence control what Trump does. He is very much attuned to their demands, their wishes, their whims. And he folds and he folded on the immigration stuff. Armin, thank you, Armin. Armin just came in with $100. Really, really appreciate it.

And Ahmed says, imagine waking up on Christmas morning and discovering Santa is real. That's how many Iranians feel today. My generation grew up in Iran, wondering if the mullahs would ever face justice. We thank Israelis for giving us today. Well, it's not quite today yet, but I think your today, your Christmas morning is

is coming. It's getting very, very close. And I think people are starting to sense that it's getting very, very close and starting to celebrate that. But absolutely, Amin, it is amazing to see what potentially could happen in Iran once the mullah is gone, once the councils, all the religious councils are gone, and Iran has the opportunity to live up to its

you know, the people of Iran have the opportunity to live up to their potential, live up to their, you know, potential as individuals and live up to their potential as a nation. I mean, again, this is a country with an ancient, ancient civilization. A civilization that was at the forefront of science and medicine when Europe was in the dark ages. And, you know, Islam is,

This idea of taking Islam seriously degrades civilizations, destroys civilizations, and what it needs is to continue the secularization trend that started in the 50s and went through the Shah and needs to be resurrected today, just this time, without a Shah, without a king, but establishing a true kind of liberal society.

a republic, a democracy, anything, it'd be better than what they have today and what they had with the Shah. So, yeah, I mean, this is truly, I mean, this is exciting, as I said. It's like the liberation that I think the communists felt when the Berlin Wall fell and the Soviet Union broke apart. This is the equivalent for, I think, the Iranians. But I actually think this is far, has consequences.

far beyond Iran, because I think this impacts the entire Muslim world. I think this takes away the aura of Islamism. It takes away the invisibility of the mullahs, takes away the idea that Allah is with them. And this opens a new dawn, I think, potentially for many other Muslim countries that can hopefully embrace Islam

Kind of a moderate Islam. At Bright Horizons, infants discover first steps, toddlers discover independence, and preschoolers discover bold ideas. Our dedicated teachers and discovery-driven curriculum nurture curiosity, inspire creativity, and build lasting confidence so your child is ready to take on the world.

Come visit one of our Bright Horizons centers in the greater Chicago area and see for yourself how we turn wonder into wisdom. Schedule your visit today at brighthorizons.com. Amin is saying, we hope I'm daydreaming about moving back and rebuilding the country. Yeah, I mean, that would be super exciting. Somebody was asking me yesterday about whether it would be an exciting investment opportunity right now in Iran.

And I think give it give give give everything give it some time to stabilize, you know, give it give it time for, you know, for for for a new order to emerge. But once you get some stability there, once a new order does emerge, I think it's an enormous opportunity to invest in Iran. Iran is a highly educated, can be an incredibly productive place.

And, you know, I think that once they give up on this theocratic regime, there's a lot of money to be made. There's a lot of industry to be built. There's a lot of business to be done in Iran. So, you know, Amin, all the best to you. I really, really hope that the daydreaming comes true, that Christmas morning comes, the actual Christmas morning where you see the mullahs, you know, not there, put it that way,

And that you get a chance to go back and to build something there. Build something there. I mean, I think that it could be something really powerful. Thanks, Armin.

Richard says, awesome as always. Thank you, Iran. I declare a righteous jihad on the two-hour goal. Everyone watching should donate or, you know, just support. Just, yeah. Alex, thank you, Richard. Really, really appreciate it. Haven't seen you in a long time. Thank you for jumping in here with $300. That is fantastic.

It's good to have you back. I guess you've been listening all along. But thanks for being back and supporting. Alex says, Richard, it's not a donation. It's a trade. Value for value. Yes, it's a trade at the end of the day. But it's very much appreciated because it's very much a voluntary. It's one-sided until you guys reciprocate. And that reciprocation is unbelievably appreciated. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

James, why was it always been American policies to cut deals, saving terrorism so it has a chance to fight another day? I mean, it's the nature of pragmatism. America is a land of pragmatism. American philosophers were pragmatists. Dewey, James and others, this idea of

Principles don't matter. You just do what works and what works in the short run. And who knows what will happen in the long run? You've seen that with so many commentators. We don't know what will happen in Iran if it fails. So the safer path is stability. And people have been grown up on that. And pragmatism is the dominant philosophy in the U.S.,

Cut deals, kick the can down the road. Look at our Social Security. Look at our government deficits. Look at Medicare. Look at government spending. Look at all of that. That's all the same thing. Cutting deals rather than actually facing the problem and fixing it. And did your Peterson Academy prep go well today? It did. I'm still like a week behind, but it did. Tomorrow I fly, so I'll work on the plane all the way there.

And every morning I'll just wake up very early in the morning and work on the classes that I have to do that morning. But I like my outline now. Today I finally got my outline right. And if I can get the outline right, usually everything else falls into place. So I think I've got the outline right. I mean, there's still a lot of details to flesh out the outline and fill it in. But I think I've got the basic flow of the course right.

And now I just have to work on hour by hour, lecture by lecture, the content. And some of the challenges in some of the content is historic. And with history, I don't remember dates and I don't remember names of people. And so after the history, a lot of it I have to write down in bullet points so I can keep track of it. So a lot of that work still has to be done.

And I'm using a couple of books as my main sources. And so I have to go back and forth with the books and type stuff. So there's a lot of work still to do, but I'm feeling okay. Thanks, Anne, for asking. Harper Campbell, if the Muslim socialist becomes the mayor of New York City, would you recommend people leave? You know, I don't know.

I mean, you'd have to ask a New Yorker who lived through de Blasio's period. This might be worse. How bad did it really get versus the benefits of living in New York? You know, I don't know. I don't know. Mike, just getting here. I'll watch tomorrow. Thanks, Mike. Appreciate the support. Mary Benz asked me how I'm motivating the class. I'm motivating the class basically by saying,

Everything we have here is a product of business, of corporations, of this legal creation called the corporation. And yet everybody hates them. And I've got a lot of good quotes and a lot of, you know, left, right, even libertarians hate corporations, the creatures of the state and all kinds of myths like that. What's going on here? What's up?

And how did we get so rich? How did we get so rich? How did these creations get us so rich? And yet we're trying to break them apart. So I'm going to talk, the course will include a lot of talk of antitrust, a lot of talk on government's attempts to do industrial planning all the way up to today with Trump and Biden. Of course, we'll also include a lot on regulations and how governors try to control whole industries. Think about how government tried to control industries

I mean, literally try to control every aspect of it. I mean, FM radio came out a couple of decades after it should have because the government wouldn't allow it. And it still controls the bandwidth. I mean, it's still bandwidth. Imagine if bandwidth was all privately owned and could be sold and traded. We might have had mobile phones much earlier. We might have had

All kinds of goodies much, much earlier than we actually did. But anyway, I'm going to get into all of that as part of the course. So it's a history of business in many respects. And I'm motivating by emphasizing the importance of business to the current quality and standard of living. And yet, at the same time, the hostility that exists towards business and corporations.

And we're going to get into the weeds about the legal status of corporations and what they represent and the objective problems that might exist in the corporations and how the markets solve it and how governments intervene and prevent the solutions from actually coming through. And there's a ton of different issues that I think are really interesting. But yeah, you have to love this stuff. And I'm going to try to help you love it by showing you how it affects corporations

The life you live. Um, Adrin, do you think Israel will get all the weapons needed to finish this job? Can Trump stop Israel, this entire military operation in order to make a deal? I think Trump could probably get Israel to stop. I don't think he will, but he could. Can Israel get the whole job done by itself? I think the answer is yes. Will it get all the weapons it needs? I don't think it needs any weapons to get. I think it just needs weapons.

The time and the space to do it, the weapon that would make this quick is the big mother of all bombs, the bunker buster. Israel's not going to get that. It doesn't have a delivery mechanism for that. And it's going to have find other ways to get rid of Fordo. You know, I think probably by putting troops in there and blowing it up from within. But that's difficult, dangerous, super dangerous, super difficult situation.

Super, super risky. They will only do that once they're convinced Trump is not going to do it. Trump will not bomb the place. So that's they're going to delay, delay, delay until until they're convinced Trump's just not going to come. And then they will take care of it without Trump. Friend Harper, I'm listening through Peacock's podcast show and I got far enough to hear your first episode, episode 240 ish.

Uh, here's $10 in celebration. I would do more, but O'Connor soon. Thanks for it, Harper. I appreciate that. And there's still a lot more episodes, uh, that I did, uh, for the Leonard Peikoff show. Uh, Jason says, uh, Penn Jillette had a great quote about Trump with repeating for $15 quote, trying to explain art to Donald Trump is like trying to explain art to Donald Trump. Uh,

I get it. I get it. That's a Penn Jillette joke that fits him. Neo, do you think there will ever be a time where all countries will be in peace and militaries will no longer be needed? Well, I don't know if militaries will no longer be needed, but yeah, I do think one day the world will live in peace. That is the day where objectivism wins, where people on planet Earth are focused on their own individual happiness and

It's the day where the morality of egoism wins. It's the day where selfishness wins. Selfish people don't want to go to war. War is a way of ending your life. It's not good for you. So I think yes, but objectivism, or at least objectivist morality, has to win first. All right, everybody. No show tomorrow. I'm traveling, traveling all day.

So no show tomorrow. After that, it really depends on how the course is going. If I have plenty of time and, you know, have no prep to do, which is unlikely, very unlikely, I'll try to do shows on Thursday and Friday. No show on Saturday. But the most likely scenario is, I'm warning you, the most likely scenario is, unless there's kind of breaking news and I just have to.

No show Wednesday, no show Thursday, no show Friday, no show Saturday. I'll try to be back on Sunday. Now there's a war going on. So there's a, there's a chance that I won't be, won't be able to resist coming on and letting you know what I think, particularly if there's something exciting that's happening. Uh, so we will see, maybe I'll do short shows, just quick updates or something, but, uh, that will depend on really what's going on and how dramatic, uh, dramatic it is. Um,

Supposedly, Israel is striking targets at the Imam Hussein University campus. Maybe there's some labs there that they want to take out. And the headquarters of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in District 4 of Eastern Tehran, which is a district they asked be evacuated. All right. Thank you, guys. Thank you all the super chatters. You were great. In particular, thank you to Richard and Amin. But thank you to everybody. And I will see you all soon.

Sunday, but probably earlier than that. We'll see. Bye, everybody. At Bright Horizons, infants discover first steps, toddlers discover independence, and preschoolers discover bold ideas. Our dedicated teachers and discovery-driven curriculum nurture curiosity, inspire creativity, and build lasting confidence so your child is ready to take on the world.

Come visit one of our Bright Horizons centers in the greater Chicago area and see for yourself how we turn wonder into wisdom. Schedule your visit today at brighthorizons.com.