IRGC’s open letter to American voters: it blames the CIA, Israel and Wall Street, but never once names the British. From Mosaddegh in 1953 to Suez in 1956, here’s what that omission gives away.
Two systems faced off this week: an American mine-to-mill build-out, and a British system that hoards diesel and sells a country for parts. The pump is not the ballot.
Why “super” and not “artificial”? Brian Lantz shows SI at work in an Arizona copper mine, aimed at a nuclear-powered Moon, and in service of new forms of human creativity. Watch the full class.
IRGC’s open letter to American voters: it blames the CIA, Israel and Wall Street, but never once names the British. From Mosaddegh in 1953 to Suez in 1956, here’s what that omission gives away.
Susan Kokinda opens with the 26-page open letter Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps addressed to the American people weeks before the midterms, which the State Department dismissed as desperate and the Daily Wire read as a call to vote Democrat. She argues the letter tells a bigger story than anyone is reporting: it names the CIA, Israel and the military-industrial complex, but never once the British. After President Trump’s “easy way or the hard way” remark on Iran, and his statement at the U.N. that the election won’t influence his Iran policy, the episode revisits the 1953 overthrow of Mohammad Mosaddegh, whom the letter calls an “Americanophile,” after he nationalized the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, today’s BP, and cites National Security Archive documents showing the British Foreign Office approached the Truman administration in late 1952 to propose a coup. It then turns to a Foreign Affairs newsletter citing the 1956 Suez crisis as a parallel to the war with Iran, President Eisenhower’s refusal to back Britain and France at Suez, and Gamal Abdel Nasser’s 1955 Foreign Affairs article on how the British ran Egypt. It closes with Richard Haass on Morning Joe, the morning after Trump’s U.N. speech, calling it “the end of 80 years of American foreign policy,” Chatham House director Bronwen Maddox on Europe having to defend itself against the U.S., and Mark Carney telling the New York Times he spent the past year preparing for the “extreme tail risk” of U.S. military action against Canada.
00:00 The Monday Brief - IT'S OVER: IRGC Mistake Confirms Trump's Hit on the British Empire - October 5, 2026
01:15 The Easy Way or the Hard Way
05:52 Suez and Hormuz
09:00 Serious, Serious Stuff
Barbara Boyd
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Barbara on the diesel squeeze: Ukraine's strikes on Russian refineries, Trump's threat to halt U.S. exports unless Europe released emergency stocks, and a G7 release of 100 million barrels as the start of a 35-day economic offensive into the midterms.
A steel plant broke ground in Iowa. South Korea signed on to LNG and eight nuclear plants. Trump killed the phrase artificial intelligence. Meanwhile the other side wants you staring at the pump.
Today's show is over. Please check the replay and join us live next week. Iowa’s steel mill Monday. Alaska LNG and Korea’s energy package Wednesday. Same fight: will America build a productive system — or keep staring at the pump? Bring your questions.
Susan contrasts Trump’s Iowa mega mill and first U.S. iron ore mine in 50 years—tariffs, EXIM credit, mine-to-mill—with Carney’s summit: airport concessions, raw exports, and only 8 non-military factories.
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