Trump's Russia & Iran Nuclear Problems are Worsening

People were wondering why defense stocks

are down. It's because once again, we

are reducing our weapon shipments to

Ukraine, which is really interesting

because Russia over the past few weeks

has actually been ramping up their

attacks on Ukraine, the more distracted

the world has become with Iran. And the

more Putin is visually trying to

showcase himself as the mediator of

hostilities around the world, like,

"Hey, Trump, I'll help you with Iran.

It's all good." And and trying to play

nice to reduce sanctions on Russia.

Russia has been amplifying their attacks

on Ukraine, not only with drone strikes

or air strikes or more aggressive

incursion into Ukrainian territory, but

at the same time, the US is now quote

halting key weapons for Ukraine in a new

sign of weakening support for Kiev. And

frankly, Putin is jumping on this,

withholding Patriot air defenses. What

else do we have here? Let's see.

Washington. The US has stopped the

delivery of air defense interceptors and

other weapons intended for Ukraine and

is using them instead to beef up the

Pentagon's stockpile. So, this could be

either to build up an iron dome in

America. It could be to send them to

Israel, which uh you know, Israel

probably only had uh you know, at least

what what we're hearing, maybe 8 days of

munitions left to defend against Iranian

missiles, which was why there was such a

an anxiety to bomb as much of the

Iranian launcher sites as possible.

But the US move to withhold arms uh

deliveries earmarked for Ukraine

reflects the Trump administration's

slackening commitment to Kiev in its

defense against Russia. Uh we've

stressed the need for threats from China

and more immediately the needs of the

Middle East. Again, yes, supplying

Israel. decision was made to put

America's interest first, which I always

think is an interesting thing to do or

or to say because technically you have

people who say

America's interests are in weakening

Russia.

And in doing so, the CIA provides

targeting guidance and strike decisions

for Ukraine with American weapons. So,

it's American intel, American weaponry,

Ukrainian bodies, basically, which

sounds very insensitive to phrase it

like that, but it's true. By the way, if

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That said, uh the

this this is a very common branding

strategy of like, oh, why is the United

States involved in all this foreign

stuff like let Ukraine handle Ukraine or

let Europe support Ukraine? And Europe

has been rallying around supporting

Ukraine. And through this sort of

strategy, you kind of got to give Trump

credit. A lot of the NATO members are

now talking about increasing their

defense spending to 5% of GDP, which is

awesome because I think what what do we

spend of our GDP? I think we are ah

we're actually less than that. We're

only about 3.6%

of our uh GDP goes to defense and

Trump's demanding 5% from NATO

countries. So, you know, essentially

other countries picking up the slack uh

in in Europe, if you will. Uh meanwhile,

you know, the the whole intention of

weakening Russia is that it's supposedly

a proxy war that's good for Americans in

the long term because Russia is deemed

to be a proxy or one of the axes of evil

in coordination with North Korea, Iran,

and China. Obviously, Iran manufacturing

drone weaponry for Russia, both in Iran

and in Russia. shipments in Poland. Uh

uh shipments were in Poland when they

were being halted. Well, that's

interesting. They were already in

Poland, which is your conduit for

getting into Ukraine. That's

interesting. Uh the secretary didn't

address uh secretary for policy at the

Pentagon didn't address the decision as

to why, but they they said that was with

the goal of bringing this tragic war to

an end. Obviously, we know that this war

has been a lot harder. Donald Trump

says, "Oh, you know, both Zalinsky and

Putin have been more stubborn in ending

this war. Kev hasn't received official

notice yet." Well, they're going to read

the newspaper and see it. "Uh, they do

want to have anti-missile missiles

called Patriots, and we're going to see

if we can make them available," Trump

said in response. "They're very hard to

get." Well, the thing is the defense

contractors have massive backlogs

for these

facil these units because the defense

contractors on purpose don't

hypermanufacture these because they know

there are these massive up and down

cycles of like, oh, now we're going to

manufacture a lot of this weaponry. Now

we're going to manufacture very little.

And so the defense contractors basically

say, "Well, we'll just have a backlog

and that way we could have steady

manufacturing and we don't have vacant

manufacturing lines, busy manufacturing

lines, vacant manufacturing lines,

right?" And this back and forth.

So in response to the question of why

are defense stocks down, that's probably

one of the reasons why. Now, Foreign

Affairs has a piece on how Ukraine can

still win. Uh, in my opinion, it's going

to take a lot more Trump support than

we're seeing right now, but we'll see.

Uh, as a Ukraine's foreign defense

minister noted in foreign affairs in

late May, neither Russia nor Ukraine has

much of an incentive to stop the

fighting. Ukraine refuses to surrender

its sovereignty, and Russia will not

accept anything less than capitulation.

This is unfortunately what makes the war

very challenging to end because Ukraine

also doesn't want to just slice off a

bunch of its territory and give it to

Russia, especially since a lot of that

energy rich territory is is towards the

Russian side. This conclusion, however,

does not mean all is lost. Russia is

much weaker economically than many

analysts realize, and hard-hitting

sanctions and export controls can still

its war economy. Ukraine is

fighting smartly and could turn the tide

on the battlefield with more high-end

drones, air defense systems, and

long-range missiles and munitions.

Again, though, the problem with this is

the balance somewhat swings towards the

favor of Russia uh when when we weaken

the support for Ukraine.

Uh much of the premature optimism about

a settlement earlier this year sprang

from the prevailing belief that Ukraine

was losing and would soon be forced to

negotiate out of desperation. Trump

stoked this narrative by asserting that

Zalinski had no cards left to play. JD

Vance took it a step further, declaring

that Ukraine and its foreign backers

never had a pathway to victory. That was

JD Vance's POV, citing Russia's

superiority in manpower and weapons.

Vance argued that if the US kept up its

security assistance, it would only

postpone the inevitable defeat of

Ukraine. So, you could see where the

sort of like desire is in in the Trump

administration to kind of like, all

right, like we promised to end this war,

like maybe if we just withhold some

weapons, they'll end up getting

defeated. But again, it's weird because

our CIA is so heavily involved in

actually fighting this.

Uh, the CIA, former CIA analyst

describes Putin as allin and personally

invested in keeping Ukraine from

becoming a European democracy. makes

sense, especially since a lot of people

think that if this war settles, it would

have to come with the settlement that

Ukraine promises to never be a member of

NATO, but people think it would become a

deacto member of NATO, sort of like an

unofficial member of NATO with the

promise. And because like if you give

Ukraine security guarantees from

Europeans, you're basically saying

they're a member of NATO. So this is why

Russia doesn't want Ukraine to have

security guarantees even if they promise

not to be a member of NATO because the

whole point of being a member of NATO is

to have security guarantees.

So you know an attack on one is attack

on all right it's a security guarantee

assumptions meanwhile rest on the narrow

reading of battlefield dynamics and a

limited understanding of the policy

options available to Ukraine. Despite

significant constraints on aid that

Europe and the United States have

offered, Ukraine has in achieved

impressive victories, it repelled the

initial push last year. It's repelled

pushes. Ukraine shocked the world by

pulling off operation spiderweb just

weeks ago. A surprise attack using cheap

drones to inflict substantial damage on

Russia's long range aviation. This is

when they attacked the various different

airfields deep inside of Russia by

basically moving lorries or semi-truckss

deep inside of Russia and launching uh

the here we should look at some pictures

operation spiderweb uh launching drones

from uh you know various different

lorries

autonomously and then destroying a

substantial portion of the Russian fleet

uh airfleet. So, if you look around a

little bit, it was a covert drone attack

carried out by the Security Service of

Ukraine, the SBU, deep inside of Russia

on June 1st, so a month ago. The

coordinated strikes targeted the Russian

Air Force's assets at five different

bases using drones concealed in and

launched from trucks inside of Russian

territory, employing 117 drones.

According to Ukrainians, about 20

aircraft were hit, 10 of which were

destroyed.

This is basically a cheap operation for

Ukrainians. A very expensive loss for

the Russians. And this is kind of how

this is the roof of a truck. It's a

little hard to see, but this is the roof

of a truck. And they put these metal

barricades on this to limit like thermal

imaging from satellites or UK or Russian

drones to sort of reflect imaging

imaging into what was in the trucks. And

then the the roof would slide back and

these drones could autonomously launch

or like locally launch from, you know,

spec ops or whatever and then go hit

their targets. Really an impressive poll

here.

Uh, so

what's consistently hindered Ukraine's

war effort was not Kiev's lack of

manpower, but rather an insufficient

supply of military capabilities. So in

other words, Ukraine fights really well.

The problem is they don't have as many

weapons and that's why this halting of

weapons here uh from the US, it just

hurts Ukraine more. Again, a lot of

Americans are like, "Good. We should be

out of this." But again, we're literally

the ones guiding a lot of this with our

US intel on purpose to weaken the axis.

So, it's sort of like an interesting

play like position. Like, okay, what's

the right answer? That's what makes

makes foreign policy so hard.

When some of the systems did finally

arrive, Ukraine was prohibited from

using them on strikes inside of Russian

targets until the United States relaxed

the rules in mid 2024. basically because

the CIA can sort of gate, you know,

where you're able to to target these

weapons. When it comes to punitive

economic measures against Russia,

international response has been somewhat

halfbaked. United States and the G7

crafted sanctions and EP export controls

that were thought to pack a powerful

punch, but in fact had so many

mitigations built in that they were

robbed of their full impact. Basically,

Russia's been able to export uh their

oil, their fertilizer

uh continuously and and they've been

able to keep a wartime economy going.

Okay, so we talk a little bit about the

economy here. Ukraine's using every tool

in their toolkit. I was looking into

this a little bit yesterday, but I want

to look at the China portion. So, yet it

is also important to recognize that

China is no longer waging war alone. It

has found steady backing from a

coalition of autocratic states. backing

that has allowed it to weather the bite

of western sanctions. Yeah. Like

exporting oil to China. As sanctions

hold and component shortages mounted,

Kremlin was the Kremlin was forced to

ration weapons. Oh, and North Korea,

mind you. Uh by the fall of the year,

however, Iran began supplying Russia

with drones. By 2023, China emerged as a

primary supplier of weapons and North

Korea provided long range ballistic

missiles and later troops.

This makes sense because the axis of

aggressors they call it want do not want

to see Russia defeated because it keeps

Russia strong with China and North Korea

and Iran. This is why this is so

complicated. Turning the tide. Putin's

ambitions to dominate Ukraine is

unlikely ever to diminish even as

Russian casualties approach a million.

It's just crazy how this keeps going.

This is why there's this desire to keep

it as a forever war. Ukrainian allies

have a choice. They can continue the

current approach of of still born

diplomacy while in the background

sending weapons or you basically just

give up on on Ukraine and they fail

which

strengthens the axis or you increase

your efforts which does not seem popular

with JD Vance or Trump right now because

again there's the policy of America

first. So what happens potentially is a

strengthening

of Russia and the axis which is not

great as well because you know now if we

look at what's going on in Iran

uh and the new satellite imagery that's

coming out when you look at what the

Wall Street Journal was talking about

actually just yesterday you could say

that for Iran their nuclear program uh

where was it? It was one of the stories

we saw.

We saw Iran suspense cooperation with

the IAEA. That's old news. But there's

also in one of these Wall Street Journal

articles over just the last few days,

we've been talking about how new data is

showing cranes at the Ford facility

potentially to

unbear what's going on at Fordo. Cranes

at Fordo, Wall Street Journal. They were

just talking about this yesterday.

Anyway, there's satellite imagery of

cranes at Fordo and basically the

Iranians starting to excavate to assess

how bad the damage was. And now the

question is, what if it's not that bad?

Is Iran going to want to are they going

to be motivated to get back to work? And

were they only set back weeks? Again,

strengthens the axis, right? Uh, so all

of this not the easiest when it comes to

figuring out what's going on

geopolitically and with foreign affairs.

But all of this really spawned by

somebody's question over, "Hey Kevin,

why are defense contractors falling?"

Well, it's because we don't have this

blank check anymore for Ukraine. Here it

is. Satellite images capture activity at

Iran's Fordo sites after strikes.

and the images released during the

debate of the extent of damage of US air

strikes followed days of strikes by

Israelis.

President Trump says that the sites were

obliterated. An initial in assessment by

the DIA suggests that maybe we only set

them back a few months. Now what we're

finding is excavators and cranes are at

the site. This is a zoomed-in picture of

Fordo and vehicles basically buy the

impact sites and tunnels and this is

evidence that the Iranians want to

understand what they have and that's

potentially why we're seeing a delay in

negotiations now because the Iranians

are going to go unberry you know their

facilities to see all right how much

damage did you actually do because if

you didn't do a lot of damage your

leverage to negotiate maybe isn't as

strong as you think it is so this

Iranian problem while it feels over

right now and the ceasefires is holding

may not be over. And it really ties in

to what's going on with Ukraine as well.

It's crazy. Why not advertise these

things that you told us here? I feel

like nobody else knows about this. We'll

we'll try a little advertising and see

how it goes. Congratulations, man. You

have done so much. People love you.

People look up to you. Kevin Pra there,

financial analyst and YouTuber. Meet

Kevin. Always great to get your take.