tly, it's not obvious who they back in the Ukraine-Russia situation because they provided drones to Russia. So you would say, "Oh, they're Russian allies. They gave them drones." But they probably sold them, right? So they made money. So maybe it was just money because they don't care where they're used. But I also understand that Iran's point of view is that Crimea belongs to Ukraine. I'll need a fact check on that, but I read that this morning. Is that true? That Iran backs Ukraine's ownership of Crimea, which is currently in Russian hands? Because that would be as close as you could be to the opposite of an ally of Russia.

So it looks like Iran is trying to play it both ways. In other words, one foot in Ukraine, one foot in Russia, so that they could pivot in either direction as their interests require. So that's the first thing. Now I would look for a fact check on the Crimea part, but it's not like a clean alliance.

The other thing is there's rumors that weapons that were meant for Ukraine are ending up with Hamas. Is that proven? Does anybody think that the Ukraine weapons are ending up with Hamas? I don't think so because unless they got diverted before they got to Ukraine somehow, I don't know how that would happen. So there might be something criminal happening, but I could say for sure Zelensky would not be in favor of giving weapons to Hamas because they need all the weapons they can get. So if in fact it's happening, there's nobody in Ukrainian leadership who wants it to happen. I guarantee that.

But maybe weapons are pretty fungible. You know, one rifle looks like another rifle. So anything could happen in the arms trade and anything could happen anywhere.

I saw one rumor with no belief that it's true that Israel may have given away 80% of its artillery to Ukraine. I guess they would have had to do that quietly if they did it. I don't know. I don't think I believe that. I don't believe that they secretly gave away 80% of their artillery. So I'm going to call BS on that. Doesn't feel true. I mean it's possible, but I'm going to call BS on that.

I also saw a tweet today that there was a known Iranian spy ring in the Obama administration. Even naming names. Is that a real thing? What do we know as of today? Do we know actually that there was an Iranian spy ring as part of the Obama administration? Are you sure that's not just a right-wing story? Has any left-leaning publication confirmed that? Yeah, I see your comments but I don't think, well yeah, all right. I'm not going to name the names you're naming. All right. I don't know if that's true. It seems like it could be, but I don't know enough about it to have an opinion.

All right. Here is my big opinion of the day if you're ready for it. Are you ready for the big opinion of the day? The first thing you should know is that I am no expert on the Middle East. Can we all agree on that? I like to see your agreement that whatever I say about the Middle East you should put that in your grain of salt: idiot who doesn't know anything opinions.

All right. So if we can agree that I have no credibility in this domain and I'm on the same page, then you don't need to remind me of it. I'm just doing it to save you time because I know the NPCs are already spinning. Like as soon as I said I was going to give you a big opinion, the NPCs were like, "Oh, I can't wait to sound in on this. I'm going to say something about you not knowing enough about the region." Oh, so I know you're right on the edge of orgasm, sort of an NPC orgasm, because you see the low-hanging fruit coming, don't you? Like in your mind you're imagining, "Oh, that fruit is going to be low-hanging the moment he weighs in on this. Oh, cartoonist. Let's listen to the cartoonist. I've got my sarcasm ready. Oh, I'm going to unload on him. It's going to be delightful."

So that's how I imagine it. Now that we've completely discredited me, and I think that was appropriate, I'd like to discredit everybody else. So who saw this attack coming? Now I know you're all going to say you did, right? You're all going to say you did. "Oh, I knew it was coming." No you didn't. But I know the NPCs are going to say they did. "Saw it coming from a mile away."

All right. So while we can all agree, including me, that my opinion is worthless and should not be taken seriously, I would like to propose that my opinion is equal to the greatest experts in the field. Also completely worthless. Will you go that far with me? That my opinion is worthless but about equal to all the other professional opinions? And I will go further: equal to all of the military opinions. Do you know how much I know about the military? Less than I know about the Middle East. And I will assert that nobody has any useful opinions over there. It's just all guessing and idiots as far as I can tell. That's the entire landscape.

All right. That said, now we've got a good base here. I give you my opinion. And NPCs, get ready for this low-hanging fruit. It's going to be delicious. All right. I'm just going to read you my long tweet because I said it so perfectly.

I said, like the rest of you, I'm trying to understand the Hamas strategy. Don't you wonder what the hell they're up to? Like when did you have ever a war where you don't know what this side that started the war even wants? I mean other than the destruction of Israel. But does it look like that's going to happen or that they thought that was going to happen? No. There's something else going on.

So let me just read it. On the surface it looks insane. There's no real hope of conquering Israel and no hope it will make anything better for anyone. Would you agree so far? There's no hope that they're going to conquer Israel in the next month, right? And there's no hope that it's going to make anything better for Palestinians. Indeed it's guaranteed to make it worse. Would you agree with those statements? So there's not any obvious gain. So is something else, is something less obvious.

But Hamas seemed, this is my own opinion, Hamas seemed too capable to be dismissed as crazy people. They did mount a very successful operation in their evil domain. And their Iranian handlers, whether or not there was a meeting in Beirut or not, the Iranians are involved. Do the Iranians seem mentally unfit? Do they seem incompetent? They do not. One of the things we worry about is the Iranian security people are actually pretty capable. It's a problem, right?

So if you have people who are operating like they're not crazy, they put together a successful major campaign, what's going on? We can't see their objective and they're not just crazy because crazy people might not have an objective. So if they're not crazy and we can't see what they're up to, what's going on?

So I've ruled out making anything better as an objective. Would you agree their objective is not to simply get hostages back although they might? It's not just to make some attention for their cause although it does. But there's nothing immediately that will get better. Would you agree that there's no way the people in Hamas were thinking, "Oh by next Tuesday we'll have a lot of stuff fixed"? Definitely not making anything better.

All right. So what else? What is going on? Here's what I think. If you eliminate making anything better, what's left? And here's what's left. You could predict that Israel's response will necessarily, because there's no way around it, create civilian hardships in Gaza. There is likely to shock the civilized world. They already turned off the electricity and water in Gaza. Gaza depends entirely for its food from outside sources. In other words, Gaza is entirely supported by the outside. It's like 70% unemployment rate. It's just a basket case.

So Israel will have to do something to get control of Gaza, which means going into Gaza, which means that the bloodshed and the suffering of the citizens of Gaza, who many of them just wanted to mind their own business and stay healthy and happy and were not doing too well on that, but it's going to look bad.

And here's my main point. If that were to happen, it would decrease Israel's primary asset. What is Israel's biggest asset? The Holocaust. The Holocaust is their biggest asset. Now you might say no, it's their economy, it's their military, it's the land of Israel itself, it's the people. You might have lots of different answers. None of them are even close to the value of the Holocaust narrative.

The Holocaust narrative puts them in the victim role and is so horrific that all good people say some version of "never again." Because whether you're Jewish or non-Jewish, you're pretty committed to making sure that doesn't happen again unless you're just the worst person in the world. So I would say that the fact Israel has a country is because of the narrative of the Holocaust. The reason they have a good economy is because they have a country and they have a good military because they have a good economy. Basically 100% of their other assets depend, at least historically but also today, on the fact that when you think of Israel you think of that narrative.

But if Israel can be goaded into doing something so bad to the Gaza residents that observers say to themselves, "Hey, I'm not so sure they were always the good guys," then Hamas will have taken from Israel their biggest asset, which is psychological.

Looks to me as if Hamas is playing a long game. Step one: weaken the Holocaust narrative and gain more militant supporters across the region. Have they done that? Starting to look like maybe they are doing that. Don't know to what extent, but it's certainly directionally they're getting something they wanted, I think. And the only price that Hamas will have to pay is the continued pain and death and suffering of their own residents.

However, how were those residents doing before? If you said, "Hey you Americans or Canadians or Europeans, we'd like you to go from whatever your current lifestyle is to something closer to starvation and living without electricity," well we would say whatever it is you have to do to avoid that, do that. Because I'm not going back to living in a cave. Because there's a gigantic difference between our current lifestyles, the average lifestyles in those countries, and what it could be. So we would try to avoid that at all costs.

However, if you had a 70% unemployment rate, you had been trained that you're being oppressed by one group in particular, and on the ground you see evidence of it like, "Oh I can't travel freely, do any kind of business I want," that sort of thing, and then you're being propagandized and then you don't have your basics like you're struggling for food every day and you're living in very suboptimal living conditions. Under those conditions, Hamas is hoping that if they're taken from a very bad situation to start with and then it gets worse, it can't get that much worse. There's not enough room. Things were bad in the beginning.

Now what's likely to happen is that there will be massive food aid will be provided from the outside. So they probably won't starve. Probably. I can't guarantee that, but they probably won't because I would imagine lots of countries are gearing up to make sure they don't starve already. So from the point of view of Hamas, who believes that suffering to get what they want is just part of their package, it doesn't look like such a big expense. And it looks like they have a lot to gain if they can take Israel down a notch in the public opinion and also maybe get some other people fired up on their side.

So it doesn't look crazy from that perspective. It just looks like people doing things far more extreme than you would because your lives are comfortable. How extreme would you be if your life was completely uncomfortable all the time? I mean some of you probably, you would do a lot more, right? Yeah, you know if I had to feed my family, how extreme would I be to feed my family? Almost anything. Almost anything. So extremism makes sense when people are struggling. It makes a lot less sense when they're not.

All right. And so I want to tell you what a great prediction I made after it already happened. If there's one advice I can give you, if you'd like to be well known for making good predictions, predict things that have already happened. So I made a prediction that I found out was happening at actually the same time I was making the prediction.

So here