# WarTalk with Ely Ratner on Iran War Peace + the 'BS' US-China Stalemate Page: https://stenobird.com/podcast/chinatalk-4124281/wartalk-with-ely-ratner-on-iran-war-peace-the-bs-us-china-stalemate Text version: https://stenobird.com/podcast/chinatalk-4124281/wartalk-with-ely-ratner-on-iran-war-peace-the-bs-us-china-stalemate.md Podcast: [ChinaTalk](https://stenobird.com/podcast/chinatalk-4124281) Published: 2026-06-19T16:25:00+00:00 Episode link: https://pscrb.fm/rss/p/traffic.megaphone.fm/CHTAL9907715453.mp3 Audio file: https://pscrb.fm/rss/p/traffic.megaphone.fm/CHTAL9907715453.mp3 Processing state: not_requested JSON: https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/chinatalk-4124281/episodes/wartalk-with-ely-ratner-on-iran-war-peace-the-bs-us-china-stalemate Duration seconds: 4671 ## Resource Ely Ratner, former Assistant Secretary of Defense for Indo-Pacific Security Affairs and now a principal at the Marathon Initiative, joins Jordan, Bryan Clark, and Justin to make sense of the Iran ceasefire and where US-China competition goes next. We discuss: Why the MOU reads as a loss: the blockade comes down first, Iran keeps its missiles and its "nuclear dust," and a younger, harder regime learns it can take American firepower and wield an oil weapon The "bullshit détente" with Beijing and whether reindustrialization can carry a China-competition message without sounding hawkish Output metrics over input metrics, the seven-year force-posture problem, and what Ratner wishes he'd moved into the "break glass" category at the Pentagon RoboCom: the pros and cons of standing up a new combatant command Plus Crassus at Parthia, and why chasing parades is a bad idea unless you're the ny knicks suno song: https://suno.com/s/scu8twGj01AIOYSL Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices ## Actions - request_transcript: `POST https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/chinatalk-4124281/episodes/wartalk-with-ely-ratner-on-iran-war-peace-the-bs-us-china-stalemate/transcription-requests` — Idempotently request low-priority transcript generation for this episode. - read_markdown: `GET https://stenobird.com/podcast/chinatalk-4124281/wartalk-with-ely-ratner-on-iran-war-peace-the-bs-us-china-stalemate.md` — Read the agent-friendly Markdown representation of this episode resource. A page view does not enqueue transcription. Agents should invoke `request_transcript` explicitly when they need this episode processed. ## Transcript Full transcripts are not published on public pages unless there is a clear rights basis.