Iran Strikes on US Bases Shock World—Here’s What US & Israel Hid
Useful Idiots with Katie Halper and Aaron Maté
Useful Idiots, LLC
4.5 • 4.6K Ratings
🗓️ 8 May 2026
⏱️ 50 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
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Despite recent attacks from both sides, a ceasefire is technically in effect between the US and Iran: Is peace at hand? Or are these shaky truce talks just a break before the return to full-scale military conflict?
What’s likely to move the scale in one direction or another are recent embarrassing headlines that could push President Trump to panic: the Washington Post reports that the CIA “says Iran can outlast Trump’s Hormuz blockade for months,” as opposed to days or weeks, which the administration has been claiming.
Another headline claims that “Iran has hit far more U.S. military assets than reported, satellite images show.” And just this week Marco Rubio announced that the new goal of the war is to reopen the Strait of Hormuz and get everything "back to the way it was" before Trump launched the first attacks.
Will these revelations force Trump into a corner and get him to take the win of a ceasefire, claim victory in Iran, and leave? Or does the embarrassment of losing on the global stage send him and Cartoon Pete Hegseth back out to war?
To analyze all the latest in Iran, from a technical weapons level to the geopolitical ramifications of it all, we spoke with Dr. Sajjad Safei, researcher, lecturer, and analyst specializing in Middle Eastern geopolitics. Plus, we watch the latest right-wing commentator to once again prove the Useful Idiots thesis: “At this point, I think it’s in Israel’s interests to act against Iran in a way that blows up this deal.”
00:00 Intro
03:49 Israel Aims to Sabotage Trump in Iran Peace Deal
06:01 Why no one talks about Israel's nukes
10:57 ADL releases ridiculous list of "antisemitic incidents"
16:09 Dr. Sajjad Safei interview
26:34 Rubio wants Iran to go "back to how it was"
35:01 Trump admin MELTDOWN
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | As President Trump has said, and the facts clearly bear out, the United States of America holds all the cards. But our preference is for these straits to be opened to the way they're supposed to be open, back to the way it was. Anyone can use it. No mines in the water. Nobody paying tolls. That's what we have to get back to, and that's the goal here. So Rubio says we have all the cards. Iran has no cards. |
| 0:21.5 | But then he says we want things to go back to the way it was before. |
| 0:31.3 | Hello and welcome to Useful Idiots. |
| 0:33.1 | I'm Katie Helper. |
| 0:34.1 | I'm Mary Mate. |
| 0:34.7 | Thank you so much for being here. |
| 0:36.1 | Our website is Useful Idiots Podcast.com. Go there to support the show and get bonus content. This week, we look at the |
| 0:43.4 | latest in Trump's regime change war on Iran. Is peace at hand, or are we going back into |
| 0:51.2 | a full-scale military conflict? As so much unravels for Trump, there's been so many |
| 0:58.1 | embarrassing headlines coming out recently. The Washington Post alone reporting that the CIA |
| 1:04.0 | believes that Iran can hold out for months, not like days or weeks as Trump and his allied neocons have been saying. And also that Iran |
| 1:14.9 | inflicted far more damage on the U.S. military bases in the region than was publicly disclosed. |
| 1:20.8 | What a shocker that we relied to in another regime change war in the Middle East. |
| 1:25.1 | Who saw that one coming? All right. Well, we talk a lot on this show about Israel because Israel's been committing genocide for now |
| 1:33.3 | more than two years. |
| 1:35.3 | Aaron, don't be anti-Semitic. |
| 1:37.3 | Well, yes, I'm sure this will get listed in the Anti-Defamation League's annual reports about anti-Semitism. |
| 1:47.0 | But while we're waiting for that, let's talk about a recent tool that we use that helps us sift through the propaganda of corporate news. |
| 1:56.0 | And it's our sponsor, Ground News. They built a program where you can search a specific news story. It shows |
| 2:01.9 | you every outlet that's reported on it, the bias of those outlets, and let you compare headlines |
| 2:06.8 | to see who's actually being factual. So let's take one example here that we found about |
| 2:12.2 | how Israel broke the ceasefire in Lebanon by bombing a suburb of Beirut, claiming that they were targeting a Hezbollah leader. |
... |
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