Shadowing Practice: The REAL Reason Trump Started The Iran War - Learn English Speaking with Video
Creating lesson...
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What is going on?
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Really take me back to the beginning.
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What did Trump think was going to happen?
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How is this linked to Venezuela?
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Why would he do this after saying that he was the president that was going to stop all the wars?
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What is the big picture here?
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And literally one of the eight wars that he said that he had stopped was with Iran.
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This was not what he was voted in on.
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He was voted in.
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He ended the war in Afghanistan.
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I mean, he cut the deal with the taliban was it a great deal yeah for the taliban it was pretty good
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but it got the americans out 20 years a trillion dollars fought on the backs of the afghan people
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and of americans not wealthy americans not people like trump
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that could find a way out of service but poor americans
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and europeans yeah and europeans who fought side by side with the americans when the americans asked them to, almost all of them sending troops,
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and many of them wounded and dying in the same numbers, the same percentages, just as courageous as the Americans were.
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So Americans wanted an end to that.
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Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, what the hell are you guys doing?
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We're not benefiting from that.
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Stop it.
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Trump stopped it.
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So why did he do this?
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Why did he do this?
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I think there are three reasons why he did it.
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I'll take you through.
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First reason, you said Venezuela, wait, not on this map, shouldn't be relevant to this map.
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Turns out it's relevant to this map.
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Trump had plans to take out Maduro.
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He's got a lot of people inside his administration that see this guy as a real problem.
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And by the way, a problem for the region, 8 million Venezuelan refugees destabilizing the region, lots of drug export destabilizing the region.
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So he had been planning to do something.
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Was it also linked to the oil? it was relevant they
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have the world's largest oil reserves it is going to take
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far more years than trump will be in office to make
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that meaningful so it sounds good from a branding perspective
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and you're going to see a few hundred thousand more barrels a day
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but it's it's going to be years if you saw
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that um testimony by the ceo of exxon mobil who said you know venezuela is not investable today
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and trump was angry at him
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and all the other energy ceos like thank you for saying that we're not saying anything like him.
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Look at him.
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Look at him.
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Not much courage among those CEOs publicly.
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So the oil is a great headline for Trump.
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It doesn't matter much for Trump's presidency.
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Just to get some color on that, is that because they have to build up lots of infrastructure to be able to extract it?
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Oh yeah.
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And because all their engineers are gone, most of them in the oil patch up in Canada, which has similar geology to it, because they've destroyed so much of their infrastructure.
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It's broken down because the governance structure isn't there yet.
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They don't have people that are capable of actually ensuring
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that there will be contracts that you would follow through on engaging people
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that still have huge lawsuits that need to be resolved, right?
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So all of this stuff, but to get to your, I don't want to lose sight of your, why did Trump do this in Iran?
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So the first point is beginning of the year, Trump goes in to Venezuela, right?
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It is the most successful military operation you can possibly imagine.
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Not a single American serviceman or woman is killed.
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They go in, they take Maduro out.
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They don't kill him.
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They don't injure him.
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They bring him to a jail in Brooklyn, right here in New York, outer borough, but still counts New York City, right?
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Extraordinary.
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And he's facing justice.
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And meanwhile, Delcy Rodriguez, right?
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Right.
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Suddenly vice president becomes acting president.
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It's like, sir, we want to work with you guys.
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We don't want any of that.
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Right.
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And so you've got a new government that is, has a different trajectory, but it's basically the same regime.
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And they say, whatever you want, we will work on.
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You want, we'll open our oil sector.
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We'll open our mining sector.
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We'll have better regs.
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We'll try to improve the economy for the average Venezuelan.
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I mean, they're starting to become popular.
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In another year, if they had elections in Venezuela, it is not inconceivable that she would win.
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In a democratic election, which is like blows your mind, right?
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Whole hundreds of political prisoners, they've released.
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I talked to leaders all over South America.
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They all think this was a success.
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This is enormously popular among the populations in those countries because they care about security.
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That's what they've been voting on.
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Their elections have been about the economy and local security
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and venezuela has been a problem for them right i mean
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they're exporting people causing crime colombia peru brazil this chile right this has been a serious issue
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so trump trump is hugely feeling great successful
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and now he's like i can do
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that in iran i can do it even bigger
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so that's the first reason that's the i said three reasons
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that's the first reason second reason this is not trump's first rodeo with the iranians In his first presidency,
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the Iranians were engaging in strikes.
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against the americans directly
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and with proxies uh bases in iraq other places also were
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taking on strikes against the biggest refinery in the world in
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saudi arabia those drone strikes you may remember the saudis
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and the emiratis were telling the americans
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when you can do something we need to take some action
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trump didn't want to do anything they're getting angry right finally the end of his presidency, he orders, pretty bold move,
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the assassination of this incredibly charismatic military leader, Qasem Soleimani, the head of the Quds Force, as it was called in Iran.
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And Iran was so angry.
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And they were going to destroy the United States, death to America.
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What do they actually do?
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Nothing.
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And then last June,
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Iranians are developing their ballistic missiles they're developing their nuclear enrichment enrichment they're like stockpiling at higher levels 60
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and the israelis want to go in trump's providing intelligence he
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doesn't want to go kind of dangerous the israelis go in
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it's enormously popular it's going well succeeding trump's like i want a part of
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that that's successful
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so he joins in second time israel took casualties about 100 killed i think in the course of
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that 12 -day war the united states iran talk big, did not hit the Americans.
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They threw some missiles at that Al -Adaid base in Qatar, the biggest US base.
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They warned the Americans through Iraq before the missiles were launched.
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So it was very clear the Iranians didn't want any part of that fight.
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So Trump is thinking to himself, this is going to be awesome because I'm going to go in, I'm going to pull Venezuela in Iran.
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I know they don't want to fight me.
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I killed the Supreme Leader, 86 years old.
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He's going to die anyway.
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He's not that popular among the Iranian, the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, the IRGC, because they're the ones that really run the country.
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I'm going to have this huge military force that shows what I'm capable of doing.
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Then the rest of the Iranian leadership, they're going to want to work with me just like they did in Venezuela.
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So that was reason number two.
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And then the most important reason, the most important reason is that unlike Trump's first term where he had people around him
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that were patriotic first and foremost to the country and
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when they had disagreements with trump they let him know
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and they leaked
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and they also um were willing occasionally to do what they could to undermine an incompetent decision
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that would hurt the country and we saw
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that whether it was with mike pompeo or or
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or mad dog mattis right all of these people who were
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much more independent strong actors this time around trump has some really good advisors people like marco rubio
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and scott besson he also has some staggeringly incompetent advisors like pete hegseth for example
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but what they all share is that they are first and foremost loyal to
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the president and they will not tell him they won't push back
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and what he hears from them is shaded towards how brilliant he is.
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And that makes him think that he will be more successful even when the military thinks this is a horrible idea.
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And we just saw this with the reporting from the head of the Joint Chiefs, Dan Cain, who clearly thinks that this is a really bad idea
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and understands that the military scenarios are super dangerous and that the Iranians will be able to shut down the strait.
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And every military in the U .S for the last 20, 30 years has gamed out how the Iranians could shut down the strait in a major conflict.
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And Trump hears very little of that.
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And he's taking away.
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I'm incredible.
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I'm confident.
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I'm going to make this happen.
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Those are the reasons he went in.
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And so he thought it would be take out the supreme leader, then they'll negotiate.
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We'll get a better deal.
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We'll have a political system there or political leader there
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that is obedient to us yeah it'll be
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and it'll be maybe it won't be a day
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but it's not going to be a month and what actually happened
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that did not happen what actually happened is um the americans
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took out well the israelis took out the supreme leader
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and also took out a lot of the military leadership
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that the americans had been speaking to which is why trump came out
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and he said well a lot of the guys we're talking to are dead now
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so we don't really know who to work with he said
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that in the not even if it's true
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and it was you don't want the president saying
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that right he has no filter um so which is
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which is one of the more interesting things about this presidency
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what happened is the iranian leadership was taken out the response
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was immediately what they call this mosaic situation where they decentralized the um military decision making to local commanders
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because they were worried that the high level commanders if they were on cell phones if they were engaging with other commanders, the Israelis would know where they were and they'd be able to assassinate them.
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So then suddenly the Iranians were taking shots at Gulf states.
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at critical infrastructure and stopping transit from the street.
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This is one of the questions I had is, in several interviews that Trump has done, he alludes to the fact that he thinks he's talking to the right people.
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Do you really believe, I know there was a meeting recently in Pakistan where they sent J .D.
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Vance in to negotiate with Iran.
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Do you think anyone is running Iran at the moment?
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Is there leadership in Iran?
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Is it possible to negotiate and control all of these dispersed forces at the moment?
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First, the honest answer is it's impossible to know
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because this is right now the internal decision making of Iran is extremely buttoned up
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and they ain't talking to anyone about that.
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But it's very easy to assess two things.
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First, that their ability to make centralized decision plans and implement them is real.
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So when their biggest gas field is hit and they say, we're going to hit you back in return, they are able to implement on that in short order.
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So we've seen a number of occasions in the last five
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weeks where Iran has gone from statement made by the foreign ministry
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and by spokespeople to action taken by local commander in Iran, which implies that there is a centralized structure.
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We also see toll taking on the strait by individuals that are being ordered by the central Iranian government to do that.
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They're not operating by themselves.
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So in that regard, the fact that the Iranians showed up in Islamabad, in Pakistan, with significant leadership,
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with the foreign minister, also the speaker of the parliament,
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but also a team of experts who had briefs on negotiating on a number of different points on the strait
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and on ballistic missiles and on support of proxy actors and on the nuclear issue, which proved the most divisive in those 21 hours of talk.
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shows that this regime is still very much functioning despite all of the israeli
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and the american efforts to say
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that you know they've done all this incredible damage this regime is still very much in place
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and they couldn't get a deal so trump announced
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that he's going to block the strait of humus himself just hours ago i think that
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that is also overstated you have 21 hours of talks led
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by the vice president of the united states i assure you if these talks were a disaster
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they don't last 21 hours two or three
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and then they're out 21 hours means very substantive conversations on the entire range of topics
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that were of importance to the americans the iranians
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trump did not get the outcome he wanted ultimately i'm not super surprised
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because the iranians feel like they have more leverage right now than the united states thinks they do
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and this frustrates trump immensely and so at the end remember he's calling
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and talking with vance more than 10 times over the course of this entire conversation.
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They're in regular contact.
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At that point, Trump says, okay, I'm blockading the street.
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But just before markets opened on Monday, you also see reporting that, well, these talks that were a disaster, we're going to engage in further talks.
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So maybe it wasn't such a disaster.
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Maybe what's really going on here is Trump wants to show
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that he still has more leverage to use against the Iranians because he's lost a lot of his leverage.
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He gave a speech to the American people, one speech so far about Iran, primetime speech.
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In that speech, he said, war's almost over, two to three weeks, max, we're done.
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If I'm the Iranians and I hear that, I'm like, great.
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The Americans can't take this pain anymore.
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They can't take it.
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He keeps saying, not my problem, straights, let them take care of it.
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I hear that.
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I'm the Iranians great he can't take this economic pain he knows he doesn't have a military solution
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so it's not
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that the iranians are only hearing for trump i'm going to destroy your civilization they're seeing what he's actually doing
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and he seems to change his mind a lot
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or not follow through on some of the threats
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that he makes right of course and then they also will be aware
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that he's becoming increasingly unpopular on this issue specific on this
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issue on this issue specifically he is underwater just like he
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was on greenland where he eventually completely did a 180 he was going to puts tariffs on all the Europeans
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that supported Denmark.
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He had to take Greenland.
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Those things went away.
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So you're sat there, you're Iran, you're going, Trump's own people are pressurizing him to get the hell out of here.
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He's unpopular day by day.
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It's hurting his economy.
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His midterms, elections that are coming up, he's going to be severely hurt and he's going to lose power in that regard.
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So actually the Iranian leaders, I mean, they might be incentivized just to wait it That's right.
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Because they don't think they have to wait it out for months.
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It's a democracy.
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So he's going to be unelected at some point in a couple of years.
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They saw China.
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China did this last year.
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Liberation Day, as Trump called it, where he puts tariffs on all these countries.
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He puts these high tariffs on China.
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They hit back.
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He does it again.
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They hit back again.
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He's like, I'm going to do export controls.
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I said, well, we're going to shut down your critical minerals.
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Suddenly, CEOs are going to Mar -a -Lago.
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They say, you got to deal with the Iranians or we're going to shut down our factory lines in red states.
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Trump has to back down, right?
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So we've already seen that when a country has leverage over Trump and they can hit him, he has the most strong military in the world, but he also has a glass jaw.
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He can't take a hit the way that unelected non -democracies can.
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The Chinese and now the Iranians over the strait.
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So what Trump is doing with announcing the blockade, and by the way, he hasn't broken the ceasefire.
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So even though a blockade is an act of war, he still hasn't said, okay, you guys have to start hitting the Iranians again right now.
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So this is still de -escalated compared to a week ago.
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A week ago, this looked much more dangerous than it looks today.
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He's saying to the Iranians, hey, I'm willing to cut off your source of funds.
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I'm willing to stop you from exporting oil and making money off of it.
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Same Trump that suspended those sanctions on Iran because he wanted to keep the prices down.
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So that's what's happening right here.
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Iran also, again, I'm trying to put myself in the mind of the incentive structure of the Iranian leaders,
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they can't let it be seen or known that dropping bombs on us made us pander to you.
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Because if they set that precedence, then for the next couple of decades, every American leader is going to know, okay, if you want Iran to play ball, all you do is take out their leadership, you drop loads of bombs on everything they have,
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and then they come and negotiate with you and give up their nuclear weapons and everything else.
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So I imagine there's element of the iranians now going
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if we buckle here then for the rest of time america
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are going to repeat this playbook i hear what you're saying i i would put it slightly differently i think
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that after the 12 -day war last june the iranians understood
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that their deterrent capacity had failed they were incapable of preventing the americans
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and the israelis from hitting them and their proxies whenever they want it.
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We've talked a lot about Iran.
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We haven't talked at all about Lebanon.
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There's another war going on in Lebanon right now.
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The Israelis are hitting the Lebanese very hard.
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There's over a million displaced people in the last several weeks.
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Why?
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What is this war?
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Well, Hezbollah, which is a terrorist organization as recognized by Israel and the United States,
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though not everybody, continues to have the ability to engage in strikes against Israel.
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Nowhere close to the strength of the Israeli military, but the Lebanese government promised to disarm them.
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They have not done that.
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And so Hezbollah has been able to continue to engage in missile strikes,
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relatively small numbers of missile strikes into the north of Israel where Israeli citizens lived.
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There was a period of time after the October 7th attacks by Hamas, where over a hundred thousand Israelis had to evacuate from their homes
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and their schools and the rest for like a year because Hezbollah was making their lives hell, right?
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So what Israel is now doing is they're going to take territory about five to seven kilometers of Lebanese land.
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They're going to occupy it as a buffer zone to protect
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those Israeli civilians from Hezbollah being able to hit them with their weapons.
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That is the intention here.
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And so what Iran understands is that their ability to deter Israel from hitting Hezbollah, Hezbollah at the beginning, in October 7th,
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Hezbollah was the most powerful non -state military in the world.
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No one else was close.
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And today, Hezbollah has shown that their leadership gets targeted and destroyed, assassinated across the board by the Israelis,
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that their military is incapable the critical infrastructure can be disrupted
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and that israel can also hit beirut the capital lebanon
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and no one can do anything in return to israel
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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson
This speaking lesson is built on the video “The REAL Reason Trump Started The Iran War”. The speaker keeps coming back to these words: trump, iranian, iran. This video has 297 sentences and 3474 words to shadow. The speech runs for 19:26. The speaker talks at a natural 179 words per minute, close to everyday conversation. 86% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English; the rest is worth studying before you start.
Key vocabulary in this video
15 words from the video worth learning, with pronunciation and meaning:
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| engage verb | /ɪnˈɡeɪd͡ʒ/ | To engross or hold the attention of; to keep busy or occupied. |
| missile noun | /ˈmɪs.aɪl/ | Any object used as a weapon by being thrown or fired through the air, such as stone, arrow or bullet. |
| strait noun | /stɹeɪt/ | A narrow channel of water connecting two larger bodies of water. |
| negotiate verb | /nəˈɡəʊ.ʃi.eɪt/ | To confer with others in order to come to terms or reach an agreement. |
| infrastructure noun | /ˈɪnfɹəˌstɹʌkt͡ʃə/ | An underlying base or foundation for a building, organization, or system. |
| export noun | /ˈɛks.pɔɹt/ | Something that is exported. |
| presidency noun | /ˈpɹɛzɪdənsi/ | The office or role of president. |
| leverage noun | /ˈlɛv.(ə.)ɹɪd͡ʒ/ | A force compounded by means of a lever rotating around a pivot. |
| disaster noun | /dɪˈzɑːs.təː/ | An unexpected natural or man-made catastrophe of substantial extent causing significant physical damage or destruction, loss of life or sometimes permanent… |
| regime noun | /ɹəˈʒiːm/ | Mode of rule or management. |
| proxy noun | /ˈpɹɑk.si/ | An agent or substitute authorized to act for another person. |
| blockade noun | /blɑˈkeɪd/ | The physical blocking or surrounding of a place, especially a port, in order to prevent commerce and traffic in or out. |
| regard noun | /ɹɪˈɡɑːd/ | A steady look, a gaze. |
| implement verb | /ˈɪmpləmənt/ | To bring about; to put into practice; to carry out. |
| advisor noun | /ædˈvaɪ.zə(ɹ)/ | One who offers advice. |
Phrasal verbs you will hear
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| take out verb | To remove. | |
| shut down verb | To close, terminate, or end; to stop operating, either permanently or temporarily. | |
| hit back verb | To retaliate | |
| back down verb | To take a less aggressive position in a conflict than one previously had, or has planned to have. | |
| break down verb | To stop functioning. | |
| build up verb | To erect; to construct. | |
| come out verb | /ˌkʌm ˈaʊt/ | To be discovered; to be revealed. |
| come up verb | To emerge or become known, especially unexpectedly. |
Sentences worth repeating
Short, complete lines from the video that you can reuse in everyday conversation:
- We're not benefiting from that.
- We don't want any of that.
- You want, we'll open our oil sector.
- We'll open our mining sector.
- I mean, they're starting to become popular.
Grammar in this video
The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:
| Structure | In the video |
|---|---|
| Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now | they've destroyed · they've released · have been |
| Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it | was voted · be resolved · is killed |
| Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing | Canada, which has · election, which is · people who were |
Pronunciation to watch
The speaker uses 92 contractions and reduced forms, such as I'm, they're, don't. Say them the short way, as you hear them.
- The “sh” and “zh” sounds: negotiate /nəˈɡəʊ.ʃi.eɪt/, regime /ɹəˈʒiːm/, occasionally /əˈkeɪʒənəli/, occasion /əˈkeɪ̯ʒən/, intention /ɪnˈtɛnʃn̩/
- Long words — get the stress right: negotiate /nəˈɡəʊ.ʃi.eɪt/, infrastructure /ˈɪnfɹəˌstɹʌkt͡ʃə/, presidency /ˈpɹɛzɪdənsi/, incompetent /ɪnˈkɒmpətənt/, occasionally /əˈkeɪʒənəli/
How to practise with this video
- Listen to the whole video once without speaking and note the words you do not know.
- Start at 0.75× speed, shadow it sentence by sentence, then go back to normal speed once it feels easy.
- Record yourself and compare with the original, paying attention to words like engage, missile, strait.
What is the Shadowing Technique?
Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.