The Iran Crisis is Worsening: WW3 Nuclear Threats

[00:02] could be trying to develop a two types of nuclear weapons. One a Hiroshima style bomb, a big blow one, uh and a second, more of a smaller scale capable of being delivered to, let's say, an American military base or a

[00:17] smaller target, some form of smaller thermonuclear weapon. Now, obviously, we've heard for a long time that Iran is seeking to develop a bomb, but we want to put this all into context of what's actually going on. Uh in addition to

[00:30] what's happening in the Red Sea with insurance rates, what just happened with reporting that Bahrain and Kuwait have now joined in attacking Iran, which sends more of these World War III style vibes. Let's talk about all of this as

[00:44] well as the threats to Donald Trump's Air Force One, which led him, you know, last month to end up taking his old Air Force One. I want to quickly touch on that because a lot of people uh have have heard about this, and they're like,

[00:57] "Oh, is is it because uh the gifted Qatari jet isn't safe because the Qatari has planted surveillance or, you know, secret weapons inside of the plane?" Uh probably not. This is really a plane that was stripped down to its hull uh

[01:11] that was stripped down to its hull uh and renovated on the inside by L3 Harris for 10 months. The problem with the aircraft isn't that it wasn't made as safe as possible in that 10 months. It's actually that in order to truly make it

[01:26] as powerful as a real Air Force One, you can't do it in 10 months. You need to do can't do it in 10 months. You need to do it in 3 to 4 years. That's because every it in 3 to 4 years. That's because every single cable on the real Air Force One

[01:40] gets wrapped in EMF shielding. So, if there's some kind of electromagnetic explosion, you don't end up losing controls for, let's say, your engine power, the fade X that could be controlled by computer signals,

[01:53] depending on the type of aircraft. All right, this is sort of like uh think about it like in the old days you have a a car and you shift the gears and it, grind it, right? You hear

[02:06] you are actually moving that gear into place. A lot of modern electronics are really just the signals. So, a lot of aircraft have a theta that really, when you move that power shift, you're really just sending a computer signal, right?

[02:19] And so, wrapping every single cable on that plane for that computer data to be safe in the event of a nearby explosion is really important, but really time-consuming. And that's just one example. The Qatari donated jet can't

[02:34] midair refuel. That's another retrofit that takes a very long time to do. And that takes a very long time to do. And so, while the 14-year-old Air Force One can basically stay afloat forever because, I mean, you can I mean, they're

[02:47] keep refueling and you have the president and some cabinet members or whatever operating as essentially commander in chief from the sky in perpetuity without needing to land. You can't do that with the new donated jet.

[03:00] So, there are some serious downgrades that the new jet has. Even though it's nice, it also doesn't, supposedly, have the same sort of anti-missile capabilities that the older jet has. So, definitely a lot weaker,

[03:13] especially when we're at war with Iran, leading to Donald Trump and his staff to freak out over, okay, who is leaking all of this to the press that we have these credible Iranian threats. It's actually, apparently, Israeli intelligence, which

[03:27] providing a lot of intelligence to the United States trying to motivate them to change their course of action. And this isn't to cast doubt on the Israeli obviously actors in the region. But anyway, Israeli intelligence apparently

[03:40] being threatened, but a lot of members of the cabinet. And so, even people in Congress are being told, like, hey, like, be safe where you go, what you're doing, uh long you're outside because these people all sort of have targets on

[03:54] their heads, sort of like the United States put targets uh and Israel uh on all the leaders in Iran. Now, this is where we get into some of the problems with uh the leadership in Iran. See, the leadership in Iran, the son of Khamenei,

[04:09] uh he's seen as a little bit more of a hardliner and more hardline aligned than a lot of the other um sort of Iranian leadership of the past. And this is problematic because a lot of people see that they think they

[04:24] are more interested today in pursuing a nuclear weapon than ever before, uh obviously how much the United States has been weakened uh in its show of force over the last uh 3 to 4 months.

[04:38] a motivation for Iran to get their hands on a nuclear weapon now. Uh now, this is a really interesting structure because see, the noob just looks at this and says the US is the biggest military

[04:50] says the US is the biggest military might force in the world. How can we not dominate and just flatten Iran if we wanted to? And the problem looks at this as really a balance of powers question. This has been talked about and

[05:02] researched quite a bit. Uh but really, we basically dismantled our soft power, USAID and a lot of other resources into soft power. This isn't a video to get were some programs that were misappropriately funded this that or

[05:16] whatever. It's just to say we dismantled our soft power, so we're left with hard power, which is military might. Works great in Venezuela, right? But less so in Iran, where what we have is we're a strong power, Israel's kind of seen as

[05:30] region. I shouldn't say neutral, I should say stable, a stable power in the power, the US. You've got Israel, which is a neutral to again, not neutral, stable to stronger power. And then you have Iran, which is historically seen as

[05:44] a relatively weak power. But the problem that's happened over the last year is that's happened over the last year is Iran is actually seen as more powerful in terms of how much it can inflict international

[05:56] market damage, right? Potentially drag us into a Gulf War style, you know, forever war. Well, which obviously ended abruptly in 1991, which was great and allowed the Federal Reserve to cut rates, which was

[06:10] great. Hopefully, we can have that kind of result today, but if we don't, Iran damage, which isn't great. But, Iran knows this and that actually makes them a rising power in the region and given

[06:22] the United States' weakness in resolving this, we're actually seen as a declining power in the region. This is not great, especially now with what we're seeing Now, uh

[06:35] some of this has been misinterpreted. A lot of people are providing insurance coverage in the Red Sea as well." So, basically, the Red Sea Hormuz. This is probably the direction we're

[06:49] going, but it's not actually where we are yet. And I think that that is a very important difference because remember, a lot of that Saudi oil is moving from the lot of that Saudi oil is moving from the Strait of Hormuz side over to the Red

[07:04] Sea side to escape. The Saudis though are the ones that have attacked the Houthis and they're the ones that are not able to get insurance coverage. Chinese linked ships, US, UK linked

[07:17] ships, they're still able to get insurance coverage in the Red Sea. That is a big plus. So, like, let's break this down and then understand some of the implications here. A noob looks at this and says, and I'm

[07:30] somebody who's who's just looking at a surface level headlines, right? We like to go deep on this channel. We like to be like pros. We look for nuance. So, noob looks at this and says, "Look, insurance is dead in the Red Sea. Red

[07:43] well, which is kind of an accurate concern to the extent that shippers don't want a $300 million ship going through a dangerous area without insurance coverage. It's just not worth it. The profit you're making on that

[07:58] thousands of dollars, maybe even if it's a million dollars or the profit you're making is not worth risking a $300 million asset that includes the ship and the assets on the actual ship. So, worth it. You're better off just hanging out

[08:12] So, that's why you need insurance coverage, okay? So, the pro looks at this and says, all right, so the Saudis are hit, but US, UK, and China, they're still able to flow through the Red Sea. And the Houthis themselves are saying

[08:26] the Red Sea is actually still open. That's good for now. It's just an early flex, which is problematic because it suggests, hey, whereas in, you know, the first 2 months of the war between March and April,

[08:39] the beginning of April, we didn't have the Houthi aside involved, which was the Strait of Hormuz. It is now expanding. It is not fully expanded the Red Sea, but it has in part expanded to the Red Sea.

[08:53] in the wrong direction, but it is not completely shut. That's probably why we came off a little bit on oil prices on Friday, but it's still a problem, especially since the hardliners in Iran, they want their nuclear weapons. There

[09:08] Hiroshima-style bomb to basically hold up like a trophy and say, look, we've got the big one, okay? Uh, and, you know, it's got Israel's name on it or looking for developing smaller thermonuclear-style warheads that could

[09:22] be basically minia- miniaturized and placed onto long-range missiles. And the idea there is like, hey, you know, we'll lob this at one of the four Americans, we'll kill 100 Americans, right? That is a problem. And

[09:38] this is why there's such a desire to keep Iran from producing a nuclear increased deaths in the region, which is obviously horrible, and a deepening of the war. Uh and I think this is why the Trump administration is under the the

[09:51] growing impression that the only way to get Iran to comply is by continuing to bombard them, which isn't great because again, it means that this unfortunately has to keep going. Now, there was some talk that overnight the United States

[10:06] actually paused some strikes, which is great. We know we've got the Pakistani uh and Qatari mediators trying to get the United States to the table. Apparently, Iraq even delivered a new peace proposal from the United States to

[10:21] Iran, but I guess Iran supposedly rejected this. There's a lot going on to talk about here, but if you want to track this, what a lot of pros are doing right now, it's totally free, by the way, uh is is you download the Meet

[10:36] Kevin app. You can even use it on the desktop version if you'd like, and get the Alpha Wire terminal, which is really cool uh because it actually gives you point-by-point news uh as as it's coming through. For example, just now, minutes

[10:50] ago, Iraqi air defenses down drone near US consulate. Uh Qatari transport minister says maritime navigation activities to fully maritime navigation activities to fully resume all types of transport from July

[11:03] resume all types of transport from July 26th on. Okay, that's great for them. Uh but again, you know, what does that mean for the rest of the region? Too soon to say, especially since Israel is still pushing into Lebanon because

[11:15] We still have a lot of fronts of this war going on. Uh Yemen's Houthis say they carried out operations against Aramco facilities in the region. Not great, especially now that we're also seeing Iran consider uh and attempting

[11:28] to target desalination desalination plants, which isn't for uh that human Uh let's see what else we have here. I mean, you can go through this. It's the think it's really useful. You can kind of sort by or type in the search for

[11:43] Iran or Israel if you want. Trump says Israeli uh Prime Minister Netanyahu will visit the United States uh next week. That's interesting. Uh Saudi defense uh issuing emergency alerts for certain regions as missiles are coming in. Uh

[11:57] the Saudis are getting involved in striking against the Houthis, and that's why the Houthis are really targeting any kind of Saudi ships in the Red Sea. And that have that East-West pipeline bringing somewhere between 7 to 9

[12:11] billion million barrels of oil a day from uh the side. So, the fact that the Saudis have joined in attacking the Houthis, and the Houthis are now trying to block that oil from flowing out, is less ideal. Now,

[12:25] you can still get out through uh the top, uh but it just means if you're trying to get to China or, you know, wherever else along uh the the southern to eastern side of the world, which it's a circle, so you kind of have to look at

[12:37] it on flat map for that to make sense. Uh it takes a lot longer, right? You're three-Xing the commute to really get there. Uh so, uh this is um uh let's see. Then, we've got Ah, yeah. The Bahraini Bahrain, rather, and Kuwait

[12:51] war planes. This was very interesting. Bahrain and Kuwait this month for the first time actually joined in the fight against Iran uh and struck targets inside of Iran. In my opinion, this is kind of how you start getting into world

[13:03] joining with Iran, which they already are. They manufacture drones uh on behalf of Iran. And Iran, a lot of people don't know this, but Iran uh they interesting. Uh uh Have you seen my shirt, by the way? Look at this.

[13:16] >> [laughter] >> Anyway, Iranis Iranian uh companies, drone manufacture a lot of drones deep inside of Russia, which makes it really hard to

[13:30] strike those drone facilities. As they just get shipped down to, you know, through rivers, and they get shipped down to Iran, and then Iran it continues to have a drone manufacturing capacity because it's not

[13:45] striking, and Ukraine isn't I mean, they're trying to, but they're not able actually hit these facilities, either. It's all been planned out. So, the show could really develop into many countries against Iran, Russia helping Iran, maybe

[14:00] even China. It's not ideal. None of this is great, and the fact that Donald Trump is getting frustrated with, you know, this threat of in. We're going to We're going to go even harder against Iran."

[14:14] even harder against Iran." isn't great. Now, the this is the first time we've seen Kuwait and Bahrain join. Tourism in the region has dried up. We know that. We've talked about the shipping. We've talked about

[14:28] how you'd really need ground forces to get in there, which is not great. We think the current leader, the Ayatollah, is much more aggressive and interested is much more aggressive and interested in nuclear weapon than his father,

[14:41] probably also as a form of revenge, right? Revenge is a dish best served closed. And Donald Trump for people close to Donald Trump argue that Donald Trump is in revenge mode against Iran, and there are

[14:56] very few good options other than just continuing strikes. The United States is also surging forces, medics, and weaponry to the Middle East to give Trump more muscular military options should he choose to escalate. Some top

[15:11] agencies that Iranians are seeking to kill even the top aids in the white in the White House and to stop taking car services like Uber. They didn't specifically say Uber, but they did say car services, which

[15:25] basically is like Uber or Lyft or whatever. Don't sue me, bro. Uber, okay? anyway. All of this is not ideal. So, let's talk and what this actually means for money. So, the the biggest issue that I see is

[15:41] that we have a Federal Reserve that is very unlikely to turn the money printer on. I personally am of the mindset that obviously you rates are this or you know, when when the 10-year Treasury is at 4.7 oil is at

[15:56] 100. But when the conflict ends, uh, if if the conflict lasts, say, a year, right? And uh, oil stays at 100 for a year, and then we start seeing

[16:08] that weakness show up in jobs data, that's already starting, talked about this in a video like 2 days ago. We saw a jobs surge in Q1, probably because we had a little bit of a, you know, sort of brief window where

[16:23] are now illegal." Uh, at the beginning of the war, also companies thought, "You price increases that are going to come from that. Let's hire and produce really quickly." The ISM and uh, S&P PMI numbers warned, "Hey, this is a

[16:38] temporary boost in jobs." We saw that temporary boost in jobs. And now we actually see that tech layoffs are greater in 2026 than all of 2025. So, in other words, temporary boost in jobs that we saw and cheered,

[16:52] then we've already laid off more tech workers in 2026 year-to-date than all of 2025, right? So, like the newbie approach, and again, you're not the

[17:04] noob, right? You you care about nuance. That's why you're here. The noobs who like, "The jobs data is great. Look at unemployment claims." And the pro looks and says, "Don't look

[17:17] lagging data. Look at where the trend is going. And yeah, we had a boost, there explanations for that boost, but it might not be that lasting. And so now, if we stay in this conflict for over a year, you've got a Fed who's really

[17:31] than sit on their hands. So they're likely to be late. Uh and it increases the risks for our market. And Kevin Warsh is highly unlikely uh to print. As a result, this is actually exactly

[17:46] doing very well since Kevin Warsh was chosen. We made that call, uh and it's been consistent. I still maintain that belief that Kevin Warsh isn't going to be here to uh uh to help markets out. Uh and while rates will come down in the

[18:01] future, it probably won't be enough to actually really accelerate us back to time to actually get back to hiring. So I I do worry about that.

[18:13] Uh so uh ideally, this conflict ends rapidly. So far, we're just not seeing any kind of hope, uh mostly because any kind of {quote} deal we get from Donald Trump uh essentially turns into uh something that

[18:28] doesn't last. It's it's a short-term pump and uh it it essentially a longer-term trap. Uh so um you know, how long can this situation last? That's I think the big concern is

[18:41] that we may have just gotten ourselves into another forever war that Donald Trump promised we wouldn't get into. Uh and I hope that's not the case. Uh but strategy. So I think the bottom line is don't get tempted

[18:55] to YOLO into a lot of debt right now. Try whatever you can. Take We've got some green, take some profits, pay off some debt, and just enjoy the shares that you own 100% of companies. Enjoy the real estate that you own 100% of.

[19:08] Enjoy the shares that you you 100% of. That makes you insulated. It makes you impossible to go bankrupt. That's what we're doing with House Hack Reinvest you know, we're not saying don't invest. You should be bullish on Trend America,

[19:22] that you're not going to get taken out if we have a little dippy dippy. And and a big one. Anyway, thanks so much for watching. Goodbye and good luck out watching. Goodbye and good luck out there.