Pod Save the World

Snapshot · Pod Save the World

Trump’s Top Spy Has One Job: Revenge

Explore episode Jun 3, 2026

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Iran War: Three Months In, No Deal, and the Strait Is Still Closed

At 24:30 · chapter starts 23:05

Tommy Vietor opens with a cold reality check: three months of war, weeks of siren-emoji tweets about imminent peace deals, and not a single ship is freely transiting the Strait of Hormuz. The US military has escorted roughly 70 ships through over several weeks — compared to 130 per day during peacetime — as nations drain strategic reserves to avoid an economic crash. Tommy details the stalled deal framework: a 60-day fighting pause, unrestricted shipping resumption, and hard follow-on negotiations over the nuclear program; plus a proposed $300 billion post-war investment fund that sounds to him like the JCPOA with Gulf-state laundering. Ben blasts Axios for credulously amplifying leak after leak about imminent deals, calling it a tool of oil market manipulation. He also dissects Trump's Obama obsession: whatever deal eventually emerges will almost certainly mirror the JCPOA's mechanism of releasing previously frozen Iranian assets through third-party countries, and Ben urges journalists to call it out. Trump's own quote — 'I thought they started to get very boring' — captures the incoherence at the center of US policy.

News
Iran War Reality Check: The Strait Is Still Closed

Trump’s Top Spy Has One Job: Revenge · Jun 3, 2026 News

Three months into the Iran war, the Strait of Hormuz is still closed. The 130 ships per day that transited it during peacetime have been replaced by a trickle of ~70 US-escorted ships over several weeks. Countries are burning through strategic reserves to prop up energy markets, but each passing day moves closer to an economic crash that far exceeds any peace-talk headline.

News
Rubio's Lies About Iran's Military

Trump’s Top Spy Has One Job: Revenge · Jun 3, 2026 News

Marco Rubio went to Capitol Hill and claimed Operation Epic Fury had substantially degraded Iran's missile program. Reporting tells a completely different story: over 70% of Iran's ballistic missiles and launchers are intact, the Iranian Navy still controls the Strait of Hormuz, and satellite imagery reveals 20 US military bases were damaged — something the Pentagon has never disclosed to American taxpayers.

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