Danny Haiphong
Apr 25, 2026 #trump #iran #islamabad
Iran is not backing down to Trump, no matter how much his administration begs for talks in Islamabad. The US is once again flying to Pakistan, and Iran's response was devastating. Danny Haiphong provides updates on the latest news from the Iran war as he travels across China via high-speed
Transcript
Hey everyone, welcome back. I am actually on a highspeed rail right now in China from Chong Sha to Beijing. We're going 350 kilometers an hour. I thought I would update some news for you as you get to see what's happening outside in China, as we move across this vast distance, in this massive country. But let's get to some news right now.
Iran has just dropped a bombshell on the Trump administration around the strait of Hormuz. As you all know, the United States is right now attempting to blockade Iran's blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, and the Trump administration's consistency on the war is waffling and wavering the longer this war goes on. But Iran has not been wavering one bit. And actually its parliament has now prepared the new rules entirely legislatively for the strait of Hormuz. These rules are as follows:
1. payment of a fee in reales before obtaining a permit to pass
2. mandatory use of the name Persian Gulf in all contracts.
3. Payment of compensation in addition to the fee, by ships of countries that participate in the war against Iran.
4. Passage of the strait is permanently prohibited for ships associated with Israel, countries imposing sanctions against Iran, or participating in the blocking of Iranian assets, military ships of hostile states including the United States.
Now this is not the only part of this. However, Iran has said categorically that the strait of hormuz will be blocked until there is a release of 11 trillion dollars of Iranian assets released due to sanctions. And there will be absolutely no discussion of even allowing any relief around the strait of hormuz unless the United States stops its blockade. And unlike in prior wars that the US has fought, now it's the country that's being attacked which is setting ultimatums. In fact, Abbas Aragchi, the foreign minister of Iran, has just said that if this does not happen within 48 hours, then the ceasefire altogether will end.
Of course, the initial ceasefire has expired. There were talks about talks. Now, there might be a Sunday deadline, but there's no clarity for the Trump administration about how it wants to talk to Iran, when it wants to talk to Iran, and whether it's going to come to Iran with terms that Iran will accept to even engage in talks, because right now there is no basis for Iran to talk to the United States. And this is subtly and underneath the surface driving the Trump administration mad, even as it tries to play the powerful military victor as Trump has said over and over and over again to the media, that it doesn't even matter if Iran talks, that Iran has been obliterated, destroyed, its leadership is in complete disarray. I mean all of these absolute lies to cover the fact that the United States is actually in disarray. And right now that's what Israeli media is reporting. Israel has said it's ready to strike now. And of course, Israel is now defenseless. They weren't even able to intercept 20% of Iranian missiles by the latter part of hostilities before the ceasefire went into place. But still, this is Israel's number one project to get rid of Iran, so that there's no state impediment to the greater Israel project. So, Israel is pushing to go back to open conflict, but it cannot do so without the United States.
So, Israeli media channel 12 News, is reporting actually that there is no cohesiveness. There is no unified message coming out of the Trump administration about what it wants to do. Does it want to go back to war? Does it want to conduct massive air strikes now, or later, or never again, while Israel is the one that is chomping at the bits to make this happen.
And now there's a big problem because the United States is conducting a blockade right now on Iran. And this blockade is failing massively. There's a big problem with trying to enforce a blockade when you have a military adversary, you have a country, that is able to strike back. One of the big problems that these naval ships that are blockading Iran have, is they have to stay very far from the Iranian coast, and they cannot directly intervene into the strait of hormuz without being targeted with drones, missiles, and even that vaunted Iranian navy that's supposed to be under the sea. Those fast attack ships are ready and willing to interdict and strike and destroy anyone who comes into the pathway of the strait of Hormuz. Iran has already done this to one tanker that tried to exit without following the rules. And of course, they docked two ships in recent days.
But it gets even worse for the United States because the Chabahar port has just been spotted to have nine Iranian oil tankers there. This means that the Iranian Navy was able to escort these oil tankers to pass through this blockade, which demonstrates that yes, the Iranian Navy is absolutely not destroyed. It just so happens that recent reports in CBS say that actually about 60% of the air force, the Navy, etc. remain intact. That's probably a conservative estimate from US intelligence.
So overnight there was actually activity from Iran's air defenses, and it was unclear what exactly was going on. Or was Iran just testing out its air defenses? Or was there a hostile attack by some force likr Israel, the United States, attempting to restart this war? Well, FAR's news agency reported that they detected small and lightweight drones in Iranian airspace, and they have not revealed the source of these drones. They added that some drones identified were orbiter type aircraft detected at multiple locations across the country. We will have to see what is happening there. But overall, we don't know exactly who was the perpetrator. Maybe it was internal. We know that the US and Israel, especially Israel, has attempted to build up forces inside the country, and they tried to conduct a coup right before the February 28th hostilities. There were months from December into February where massive numbers of Israeli backed proxies were wreaking havoc on the country of Iran.
So now Trump is trying to portray Iran right now as the weak one, especially when it comes to a new framing of Iran's leadership in complete disarray. Iran has rejected this. He's said this in numerous tweets by Donald Trump. I'm just going to read one here. He says,
"Iran is having a hard time figuring out who their leader is. They just don't know. The infighting between hardliners who have been losing badly on the battlefield and moderates or not moderate at all, but gaining respect, is crazy. We have control of the strait of Hormuz. No ship can enter or leave without the approval of the US Navy. It is sealed up tight until such time as Iran is able to make a deal. Thank you for your attention to this matter.
So the Trump administration, Donald Trump himself, is trying to turn reality on its head here, and this is how Iran responded to this, and this should just tell you exactly where this war is, that it's not going well for the United States, the empire, or its unipolar hegemony. They rejected this push to portray Iran as having unstable leadership. The parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf and Masoud Pezeshkian stated at the same time on social media in Iran,
"There's no such thing as hardliners or moderates. We are all Iranian and revolutionary with the iron unity of the nation and state. In full adherence to the supreme leader, we will make the criminal aggressor regret this. One God, one nation, one leader, and one path. The path to victory for Iran is dearer than life."
Foreign Minister Seyed Abbas Araghchi then chimed in saying, "Israel's actions have instead reinforced cohesion." He said, "The failure of Israel's terrorist killings is reflected in how Iran's state institutions continue to act with unity, purpose, and discipline. The battlefield and diplomacy are fully coordinated fronts in the same war. Iranians are all united more now than ever. And the judiciary chief Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Eje'i said, "The president of the United States must know that the term hardliners and moderates are meaningless and baseless words in western political discourse. In the Islamic Republic of Iran, all factions and groups are ultimately united and aligned under the leadership of the Supreme Leader. One God, one nation, one earth, one path. The path of Iran's victory dearer than life. The criminal aggressors will regret it.
They all chimed in saying the same thing. You might think that is just for show. But if it were, then there would be a lot more disagreement about how to handle the Strait of Hormuz, about how to handle these talks with the United States. But at this time, Iran has maintained a level of firm rejection of any kind of capitulation terms. They want the United States to deal with Iran on the basis of what Iran is saying it is, and that is the side that is victorious. What did Abbas Araghchi say? That the United States has been trying to gain in talks what it could not gain in the battlefield, and that is just absolutely not going to happen. Iran is going to keep pushing its demands, and whether the US attacks again or not, whether Israel and the US attack again or not, it hardly matters. The position is not changing.
So this is a huge deal, especially since this strait of hormuz is hitting the United States' unipolar order in a massive way, doing a kind of dollar swift-free fiscal endurance lifeline, extending this out to the rest of the world, and providing a possible experiment as to what it will look like to trade and operate one of the most important waterways in the world without the US dollar's interference and weaponization. It has brought Iran a unique leverage which is not going away unless the United States and Israel are able to destroy Iran and get rid of its leadership, and install a leadership that is compliant to them. The strait of Hormuz will remain under the dictat of Iran. Which means that every time the US has to deal with Iran, it is going to have to deal with the possibility of what happens to the strait of hormuz, and how that will affect the global economy as a whole. It's a game changer.
And now we have oil going back up to $106 a barrel with this inconsistency of the Trump administration not knowing what it's going to do, whether it's going to come back and bomb. And Trump recently just said, "I'm going to bomb all their oil infrastructure. I'm going to bomb everything that Iran has." That just signals a continuation of the war, and the oil markets are very unhappy, because they know, despite all the short-term windfall profits, all this talk about LG dollar, oil, the petro dollar making a comeback because of this war, they know that the longer this goes on, the closer the whole world gets to a global depression, and the suffering that people will go through because of this, will cause such cataclysmic impact on the global economy that these windfall profits will be short-term pleasures amidst a longterm pain.
And just get this, it's just been announced by a defense official within the Pentagon, and this is absolutely shocking. I think the United States has utilized, get this, almost 50% of everything it has, defensive munitions, and offensive munitions. I mean, we're talking about in a matter of weeks, not even 2 months of hostilities, the United States has used 50% of all of its patriot interceptors, 50% of all of its THAAD interceptors In the first days alone. The defense official has said that in the US-Israeli war, $5.6 billion of ammunition was used in the first two days of hostilities, including 1,200 Patriot missiles at $4 million a piece. So, we're talking about a massively costly war.
And we're talking about a situation now where the Trump administration has signaled basically an indefinite ceasefire, and that there is very little interest in imminently going back to strikes. But Iran is very much aware of the surprise element, cuz what has the United States done in the past? The United States can't talk to Iran right now, but that doesn't mean that it doesn't want to behave in the way that it has behaved over the course of its long arc of war on Iran. Because remember, this didn't start February 28, just like the Ukraine conflict didn't start February 22nd, 2022. And February 28th, 2026, was not the beginning of the US war in Iran. It began in earnest in 1979 really, but really 1953, when the CIA collaborated with BP in the UK to overthrow Mohammad Mosaddegh. But 1979 was when the active modern form of this war launched sanctions, and of course numerous attempts at regime change by many different means. So we can't expect that the United States may go for war. Some are saying it's possible in the next weekend. But nonetheless, there's obviously a lot of doubt about what military strikes can accomplish, what the United States can accomplish if it goes along with this.
So, Donald Trump, he is now saying that he doesn't want to be rushed. Okay, can you believe this? So him and his administration, the United States empire, wreak havoc on the Iranian population, they wreak havoc on the Lebanese population, Israel is breaking the ceasefire and continuing to fire on civilians, and we know how devastating and brutal the impact of Israel's genocidal campaign in Lebanon has been. In Gaza, they're still fighting a conflict. Now they're trying to squeeze Iran by preventing it from being able to ship oil and import what it needs as well. So there's a huge campaign of punishment going on. And here's Donald Trump saying that when he's asked when is this actually going to end, and when are you going to respond to Iran's unwillingness to talk right now based on current terms, this is what he said. Don't rush me. He told the media, don't rush me. We were in Vietnam 18 years. We were in Iraq many, many years. And then he goes, I've been doing this for 6 weeks. Well, mind you, the war is much older than 6 weeks. Actually, we are actually in week number eight. And this war only continues to age, and age very poorly.
But that's the the least of it. to even invoke Vietnam, to invoke Iraq, signals that the Trump administration, the United States, are more than willing to make this a forever war. But that's what all US wars always are. The US doesn't stop and start and then start again and stop. No, even when hostilities, when airstrikes end, the aim that the United States has for Iran is the same. They want Iran to be destroyed. They want its key strategic location as the key to Eurasia, for China, for Russia, for the multipolar world. They want that to be destroyed. They want Israel to have unfettered expansion throughout the region in greater Israel. They want to ensure that there is no threat to the US empire in the region. They see Iran as really the last domino to fall. So, they're not going to stop;
But nonetheless, Donald Trump is signaling that this war is something that they are willing to lose, and be defeated in, for a very, very long time. Similar to Vietnam, similar to Iraq, except this time I believe the defeat that lays bare for the United States, will be far more devastating than any of those wars prior mentioned. Vietnam was a horrific war, right? It was horrific. It killed hundreds of thousands of Americans, millions and millions and millions of Vietnamese people. But nonetheless, the United States could high-tail out of there and claim that it had at the very least, been able to fight communism, and move on to the next thing, because it was strong enough to suppress the will of people to understand what the situation is actually at the moment. So Vietnam was a major defeat, with ramifications that really did change the global order as well.
However, this time we are no longer in a period where the United States can look at the world and say, well, we can still chip away at the Soviet Union; we can still chip away at China. And if we can get one of those dominoes to fall, if we can continue on our path of proxy wars and coups, etc., eventually we may end up the only power in the world to determine geopolitics, to determine economic development, etc. But that's no longer the case, right? The United States is a waning power. It's a declining empire.
And what we are seeing with Iran is that with every subsequent day and week that this war goes on, this war has changed from a military game changer with Iran, retaliating in a manner historic in nature, and wide ranging, in terms of its impact, into a war that has changed the global order, where Iran now dictates terms in the strait of Hormuz. And now Iran has become a regional and global power in all spheres.
So with each passing day and week, this gets worse for the United States. And the United States has no answer for it. The only answer the United States is going to have now and into the future is an attempt to utilize talks as a potential weapon against Iran, to rebuild its forces to the extent possible, and maybe continue to engage in these periodic strikes which are meant to degrade Iran, but are unable to destroy Iran.
And maybe there are some forces in the Pentagon that believe this could eventually lead to Iran's downfall. Well, they said the same about Russia with Ukraine, that this would eventually lead to Russia's downfall. Well, political capital in Russia, the ruling party, Vladimir Putin, they've all gained massive prestige in the Ukraine conflict. In Iran, the same has gone for it, except many-fold, many many many more-fold, because Iran was supposed to fold. Iran was not supposed to do this.
So this is a very interesting time right now. The US has been defeated, Israel has been defeated, and they are now trying to desperately figure out what they are going to do from here, in order to keep the pressure on Iran going, and to make some kind of headway in achieving their ultimate objectives that have failed in this war, and will likely fail from here on out.
So I'm here in China, and I have to say that this war has had no impact on China. Look, Iran is an ally of China, and China has helped Iran quite significantly with Radar systems, economic development, etc. And that's all going to continue. However, it's a miscalculation, and really not true, that the Iran war has put China on notice that it has to intervene even more than it has up until this point. No one in China feels like this. China has such a robust renewable energy sector, electrical grid, as well as energy reserves, which basically put China in a very favorable position for many years to come, in a war in which the United States does not have years. The United States can't do this for years because if they even think about doing this for years, the United States will deplete everything it has militarily, and it will be unable to achieve what is its wet-est dream, which is to confront China, and ultimately get rid of Russia.
So there are major problems afoot for the United States' empire. But for China, just look behind me. This is what China is trying to build. It's trying to build development; it's trying to better the lives of its people; and it's trying to better the lives of people all around the world, as well, with its development. And that is going to be its focus. These wars ultimately only serve to strengthen China's position in the world, and we are seeing that in a huge way.
So yeah, I hope you enjoyed the train ride. I can give you a little bit more of what it looks like here. Yeah, it's really nice. I invested in a business class seat for the first time because I wanted to get that experience. It was about 300 USD, which is quite expensive actually here in China. Nut for the distance, no train stops, at the speed of 350 km per hour, and the amenities, it's basically nicer than going on a plane, but better and more comfortable, with all of the first class amenities.
So that's what I want to show you all today. That's why I want to talk to you all today and tell you that the world has changed. It's a game changer. The US has lost. This is game over when it comes to this war.
Now, it's just a matter of what the world will look like from here on out, and how the United States is going to continue on its path of trying to obliterate Iran, in a moment where it seems like doing so only obliterates itself, the US empire.
All right, everybody. That's all I have for today. Hit the like button before you go. If you are not subscribed here, do subscribe. I have the video description as all the places you can go to to support this show. Patreon, substack, and much more. Be with you soon.
