Shadowing Practice: 'VIRTUALLY ALL' US Missiles USED In Iran War - Learn English Speaking with Video
Creating lesson...
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Turning now to Iran, major breaking news as of this morning.
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Let's put it up here on the screen.
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The United States per Reuters is now running out of virtually all long-range precision missiles during the Iran war per Reuters.
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This is an internal U.S government assessment
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that has been passed around now for the last week
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and reportedly was one of the main reasons that Donald Trump decided not to go through with that full-scale attack on Iran, not some fake peace talks that were not actually happening.
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I'm going to read from some of this story because there's so vitally important.
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The United States Army has now used much of its stockpile of highly accurate long-range missiles during its five-month war with Iran.
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The missiles are principally the Army surface-to-surface weapons known as the Army Tactical Missile System, the AT-CAMS, and precision strike missiles, the PRISMS.
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The U.S has, quote, used virtually all of these weapons.
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The degree to which the military is running out of these specific missiles has not yet been previously reported.
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The long-range munitions were an important part of the military arsenal before the war allowing accurate strikes from a safe distance.
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The U.S supplied weapons have now played a key role also in the war in Ukraine, where they currently are asking the United States for more of them.
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However, as we now know, virtually all of them have been used.
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According to this reporting, Crystal, Reuters says that CENTCOM actually used all of the missiles that they had in their domain and have had to draw down,
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as we saw previously with the THADs and others from virtually all the other theaters around the world.
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The next time that the PRISM missile, which is replacing the ATKAM missile, will come online to the United States in production is 2027.
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So we will have to wait a full year before new ones will begin to enter the arsenal.
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This is honestly, I mean, look, we knew it was bad.
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Didn't know it was this bad.
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They also actually, I just want to say, it's not just these land missiles that are vitally important for the United States.
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It's the tomahawk supplies as well, something that has not been covered nearly as much because we do have more of them.
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But approximately 50 percent have now been used in the war with Iran.
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Again, it takes years in order to just make even a few dozen
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or so of these things from a single factory here in Arizona, just to demonstrate the billions of dollars
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that have now been expended in terms of the munitions in this war and the tradeoffs that will be needed.
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Last thing that I do think is so vitally important
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and also shows the strategic problem that we face is
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that they note inside of this U.S government assessment
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that the reason why that we're running so low on these weapons
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and we've been
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so heavily reliant on them is we did not want to
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risk manned pilots dropping many of those other types of munitions over Iran out of fear that they would get shot down,
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which means that the United States does not have the total air supremacy over Iran
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and that they remain afraid
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that we would have more shoot downs as we saw in the final days of the war before the seas
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or the full scale war before the ceasefire broke out.
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So overall, a vitally, vitally dire position for the United States to be in.
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Can't emphasize enough how important these missiles obviously were in the course of the war
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and in terms of the war plans for all of the other different theaters, including Russia and China.
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So the number one determining factor, it appears, as to whether the United States even can resume a full-scale all-out war against Iran, even if it wanted to.
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Just five months is all it took to basically expend most of them.
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Absolutely insane.
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And as people have been covering this for years at this point, it is shocking just how bad the situation is.
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I mean, what can you even say about this?
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Where does all the money go?
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What have you people spent all of our tax dollars on?
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I mean, we fund the Pentagon more and more and more every single year, whether it's a Democratic or Republican administration.
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The last time we had any sort of cuts was actually under Obama with that sequestration deal with the Republicans.
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Outside of that, the line just continues to go up.
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Pete Hegseth is demanding $1.5 trillion.
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What is the money going to?
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Complete insanity.
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So to your point, look, what we did in the initial round of the wars, we used a lot of these precision long range weapons.
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Why?
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Because our planes kept mysteriously falling out of the sky.
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Remember those claims in the early days that there were like three fighter jets that were down by friendly fire?
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Yeah, I'm sure we all believe that one.
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In any case, we're having all kinds of problems being able to establish that air superiority.
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So we're using these long range missiles in order to hit targets.
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That is no longer an option.
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So next time Trump goes out there and says, oh, we're going to bomb their bridges, we're going to commit all these war crimes, we're going to bomb their water infrastructure, et cetera. With what?
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What are you going to use for that?
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So it just underscores once again, there is no military solution to the problem of Iran.
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The only solution is a negotiated diplomatic solution.
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The only solution is to surrender, is to admit defeat.
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That's where we're at.
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I mean, it's completely insane that the U.S military, which had all this projection of strength
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and all of this money spent way more on it than any other country in the entire world, cannot even sustain this long of a conflict and is thoroughly defeated.
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So, you know, as things go on, we were lucky to get the terms of the original MOU.
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That MOU is no longer on the table.
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The Iranians are going to drive a hard bargain because they're reading this reporting.
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They know the situation.
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They know that we have no real options to turn this thing around.
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So it just underscores What a dire, dire situation Donald Trump has gotten us into.
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I really just can't even like, look, we knew the situation was bad.
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CSIS has a good handle.
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Again, you can go and look at all their methodology.
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Ben Shapiro looking at you.
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Apparently, he thinks he knows better than the people who are
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literally connected to the war industrial base funded by them in many respects.
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But OK, so where we are right now is
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that CSIS had previously pegged it around 45 percent of all of them expended.
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We now know that that's not even the case.
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It's even more.
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And it appears that because of their ability to estimate methodology, they can actually undercount the number of missiles used.
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The internal assessment really matters in terms of what they're pointing out, especially because with those prisms,
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for example, I believe the number was fewer than 100 that we even had before going into the war.
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Another 120 will take about a year or so to come online.
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The tomahawks as well, I've talked about this to many ends, especially about the factories and the initial process and the way that it's all there.
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You could spend all the money in the world and it still wouldn't work.
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But it does still show you we have been spending all the money in the world.
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We had years to plan for exactly a crisis moment like this from 2022 onward.
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Biden squandered all of that.
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He basically gave the entire barn over to Ukraine.
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And now we've got nothing left, especially with Ukraine, with their hands out today for all of these even more critical missile systems.
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And the bottom line remains the United States is afraid of being able to take casualties in the air over Iran.
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So they're heavily reliant on this.
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And now we're going to be in a situation where if the war does have to escalate or not have to, but if they want to escalate it again, a lot of people's lives are going to be seriously at risk,
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both from the interceptor stockpiles being so low that they have to ration
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and a lot of pilots may be at risk up in the air.
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And we already saw the F-35, the so-called friendly fire shutdowns.
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There's two tankers that allegedly ran into each other.
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So there are all kinds of sketchy situations that are all happening here.
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But it does explain all of Trump's BSing behavior
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because he remains totally committed to this idea that we are going to have some sort of talks.
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And in fact, we have here saying that talks are underway by Donald Trump.
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This is his claim yesterday in the Oval Office.
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B2, let's take a listen.
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Are the talks with Iran now off?
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And are air strikes back on?
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No, they're on.
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They're going on right now.
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It's an amazing thing.
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We have a little problem with Iran because we have many talks that will say we have or we don't have, you know, we're straight about it.
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But they deny it, but they're not denying it now.
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They just put out a statement, not denying it.
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But for some reason, they, when they're talking, They don't like saying that they're talking.
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They're censors.
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So they called me and they said, please don't attack.
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We'll make a deal.
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That's the real truth.
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And everyone knows it.
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And who wouldn't call?
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So that's the real truth.
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Meanwhile, the actual truth, let's put B3 up here on the screen, per Wall Street Journal and the Iranian Foreign Ministry.
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Here's what they say.
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Iran's Foreign Ministry, there are no discussions underway with the United States.
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There are no plans to have any discussions.
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The only discussions are currently with Oman, which continue on managing traffic through the passage.
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Trump calls Tehran unbelievably duplicitous.
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And in fact, what we already see is
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that even these talks with Oman about some sort of managed
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route for the future through the Strait of Hormuz is not a guarantee.
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We have had multiple vessels, including, again, maybe an hour or so before we even began this show, of another one
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that was just hit by an Iranian projectile in the Strait of Hormuz trying to transit in a different manner.
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The current estimate is that there's a lot of black market traffic that is moving through the strait, approximately 5 million barrels a day or so.
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They're called ship-to-ship transfers, where it comes on one ship and a blockade runner takes it and takes it to another ship.
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Hyper inefficient, very, very expensive.
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Obviously, with the current price of oil, some people are willing to risk it, but it pales in the 20 million barrels a day that were originally moving through the straight-up-form moves and explains why,
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even with oil prices, quote, down around $80, $85 per barrel, it is still going to be punishingly high at the gas station for all of us.
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And to that point, by the way, Trump now basically abandoning, even trying to get oil prices down by increasing the supply,
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is now saying that the oil companies are making too much money.
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B1, let's take a listen.
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Exxon and Chevron integrated all U.S.
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Just announced record profits second year.
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Unbelievable.
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For Exxon, for instance, 14 million house, they've had an over decade.
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For Chevron, for the quarter, highest in history.
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By 12 times.
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On the back.
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You saw that.
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Yes.
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I mean, it's unbelievable.
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On the backs.
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I don't like it.
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Workers paying higher debts.
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Yeah.
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Whatever is our.
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They're making too much money.
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Okay, based on a shortage, they're making too much money.
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I don't like it.
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And I should be the last one to say, because I'm a big free enterprise guy.
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Nobody bigger.
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And, you know, you're going to see oil when we're finished with Iran.
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You're going to see the prices drop through the floor.
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But they made too much money.
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Too much money.
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Chevron, too much money.
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ExxonMobil, too much.
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Too much money.
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when you look at one company where they made 12 times what they made the year before
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they're going to give some of that back to the public
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and they better cut the retail price the consumer price too
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much money you're surprised i'm saying it i'll say it loud
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and clear i'm not happy about it he's not happy about it uh you know he's going to tell them
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or send them a very strongly worded truth to tell them uh to drop their price
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so i mean first of all you know there's A lot of funny things you could say about free enterprise
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and all of that.
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But, you know, look, is he actually going to do anything to tell them not to do that?
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No, he can't actually because of where things are today.
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He could try the export ban.
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It would be a disaster in the long run and probably lead to outright shortages, probably destroy the global oil market as we know it.
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And in the long run would actually make oil prices much higher for everyone.
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There's only one thing you can do, which is end the war.
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You end the war, then yeah, okay, we can have some oil that's going to go through, but still not accepting it.
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As of this morning, retail gasoline average $4.08 a gallon around the nation, still well over $5 in California.
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So that's where things are.
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Well, one other breaking news, we've got Scott Besant on Fox News saying that we may have a deal within the next day or two.
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I'll just read you what he says.
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We've seen President Trump last week threaten what would have been the largest military campaign since World War II against the Iranians.
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Now, because of that, we are in talks with the Iranians.
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I think there's a chance we may have a deal today or tomorrow to open the straight saga.
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So this is, you know, we have no long-range precision missiles.
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All we have left is like jawboning, market manipulation, lies, and propaganda.
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That is effectively the only tool that's left in our arsenal.
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So that's what Trump has deployed to his credit.
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I think he deploys it very effectively.
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The markets are loving this new Scott Besson comments.
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We'll see if today or tomorrow we have a deal to open the strait.
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And if you guys think that's really going to happen, the Iranians, as Sagar has told you before, have said, we're not negotiating.
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No, why would we do that?
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And the sentiment within Iran, as Professor Mirandi, when we had him on discussed with us, is no negotiations.
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Why would we do that right now?
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We have the upper hand.
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And there's a report that they may have attacked our base in Kuwait.
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They still have plenty of weapons that they can deploy.
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They feel they're in a very strong position.
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And so unless Trump is truly ready to accept the defeat that has been rendered on the battlefield, then we're going to continue in this kind of limbo state.
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Yep, exactly.
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And look, last thing, to that point, so there may be a deal.
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But that deal is not between the United States.
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That deal is between Oman, Qatar, and Iran.
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So there was allegedly some final draft, which is being, you know, coming through.
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It will actually institute some kind of a surrender of what we're talking about, which is we will say, okay, chips, go through the Iranian side,
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exit the Omani side, some payment or something like that is going to have to go through.
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And that will be an alleged framework to get to the point where we can have talk
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so we can get back to the memorandum of understanding, so we can get back to a potential nuclear deal, just to show how far we are away from all of this.
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So whether there's a quote deal or not to open the strait, we already literally had one.
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This will still be an Iranian and an Omani understanding, which we then assent to and accept.
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Last point here from Donald Trump before, let's put it up here on the screen.
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He had said previously, Iran's leadership is unbelievably duplicitous.
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They'd ask for a meeting.
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Some would say beg that talks began with more scheduled in the immediate future.
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They're saying openly and proudly.
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They're not having any discussions.
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They then go to give their usual blather in saying the Strait of Hormuz will be operated by them
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when it's already completely controlled by the United States, the U.S.
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Wall of Steel blockade, et cetera.
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Nothing gets through to Iran unless we want it to, and nothing will get through unless a deal or total surrender is accomplished.
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So he had said previously a couple of times, this is the last chance.
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I mean, he's also said that many times before.
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So take the Scott Besant news, this truth, all of that with a great assault.
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The one thing you can count on, the hard fact, is that we're basically completely run out of some of these missiles.
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We have very few of the other types left before we have to full-blown start rationing and enter a bad situation.
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So maybe, you know, Besant is right that a, quote, deal is on the horizon, but it is not going to be one even remotely floated or any of that by the United States.
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We'll remain in sea, and obviously will remain and keep everybody updated.
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But let's get to Gaza.
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Hey, if you liked that video, hit the like button or leave a comment below.
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That's right.
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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson
This video has 243 sentences and 3084 words to shadow. The speech runs for 15:32. The speaker talks fast, about 199 words per minute, so expect linked and reduced sounds. 87% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English, so the vocabulary is easy to follow.
Key vocabulary in this video
15 less common words from the video, with pronunciation and meaning:
- missile /ˈmɪs.aɪl/ (noun) — Any object used as a weapon by being thrown or fired through the air, such as stone, arrow or bullet.
- strait /stɹeɪt/ (noun) — A narrow channel of water connecting two larger bodies of water.
- virtually /ˈvɚ.t͡ʃə.wə.li/ (adverb) — Almost but not quite.
- precision /pɹɪˈsɪʒ.ən/ (noun) — The state of being precise or exact; especially, both exact and accurate.
- assessment /əˈsɛsmənt/ (noun) — The act of assessing or an amount (of tax, levy or duty etc) assessed.
- deny /dəˈnaɪ/ (verb) — To disallow or reject.
- arsenal /ˈɑːsənəl/ (noun) — A military establishment for the storing, development, manufacturing, testing, or repairing of arms, ammunition, and other war materiel; an armoury.
- barrel /ˈbæɹəl/ (noun) — A round (cylindrical) vessel, such as a cask, of greater length than breadth, and bulging in the middle, made of staves bound with hoops, and having flat ends…
- surrender /səˈɹɛndə(ɹ)/ (verb) — To give up into the power, control, or possession of another.
- deploy /dɪˈplɔɪ/ (verb) — To prepare and arrange (originally military unit or units, i.e., to array troops) for use.
- dire /ˈdaɪ̯ə(ɹ)/ (adjective) — Warning of bad consequences: ill-boding; portentous.
- insane /ɪnˈseɪn/ (adjective) — Exhibiting unsoundness or disorder of mind; not sane; utterly mad.
- enterprise /ˈɛntəˌpɹaɪz/ (noun) — A company, business, organization, or other purposeful endeavor.
- theater /ˈθi(ə)tɚ/ (noun) — A place or building, consisting of a stage and seating, in which an audience gathers to watch plays, musical performances, public ceremonies, and so on.
- commit /kəˈmɪt/ (verb) — To give in trust; to put into charge or keeping; to entrust; to consign; used with to or formerly unto.
Phrasal verbs you will hear
- go through (verb) — To travel from one end of something to the other.
- look at (verb) — To observe or watch.
- get back to (verb) — Return to (an activity)
- go on /ˈɡoʊˌɒn/ (verb) — To continue in extent.
- ask for (verb) — To request; to order.
- break out (verb) — To escape, especially forcefully or defiantly.
- come on /ˌkʌm ˈɒn/ — Come along with me; join me in going.
- come through (verb) — To come into a room or other space through a door or passageway.
Pronunciation to watch
The speaker uses 62 contractions and reduced forms, such as they're, we're, don't. Say them the short way, as you hear them.
- The “th” sounds: theater /ˈθi(ə)tɚ/, methodology /ˌmɛθ.əˈdɑ.lə.d͡ʒi/, thoroughly /ˈθʌɹ.ə.li/, threaten /ˈθɹɛt.n̩/
- The “sh” and “zh” sounds: precision /pɹɪˈsɪʒ.ən/, negotiate /nəˈɡəʊ.ʃi.eɪt/, shortage /ˈʃɔː(ɹ)tɪd͡ʒ/, establish /ɪˈstæb.lɪʃ/, shock /ʃɔk/
- Long words — get the stress right: virtually /ˈvɚ.t͡ʃə.wə.li/, unbelievable /ˌʌnbɪˈliːvəbl̩/, allegedly /əˈlɛdʒ.ɪd.li/, negotiate /nəˈɡəʊ.ʃi.eɪt/, methodology /ˌmɛθ.əˈdɑ.lə.d͡ʒi/
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 missile, strait, virtually.
Grammar in this video
The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:
| Structure | In the video |
|---|---|
| Present perfect continuous have/has been + -ing — an action that started earlier and is still going on | have been covering · have been spending |
| Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now | has been passed · have now played · have been |
| Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it | has been passed · has not been covered · been expended |
| Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing | missile, which is · people who are · draft, which is |
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.