Pape Says US Air Campaign Strengthens Iran as War Enters Final Stage
The Diary Of A CEO
A decades-long escalation model shows Washington faces a choice between a prolonged ground war in Iran or accepting Tehran as an emerging global power center alongside Russia and China.
## Background
This episode was published by The Diary Of A CEO on YouTube on April 13, 2026. It features political science professor and military strategy expert Robert Pape discussing the escalating war between the United States and Iran, exploring why previous military predictions came true, the economic and nuclear risks, and what could happen next if neither side backs down.
## TL;DR
Professor Robert Pape analyzes how the U.S.-Iran conflict has progressed into the critical fourth stage of an escalation trap, where neither returning to the pre-war status quo nor achieving a quick victory is possible. He details how U.S. air campaigns have failed to destroy Iran's deeply buried nuclear stockpiles and instead strengthened Tehran's domestic political resolve while disrupting global energy markets and fracturing Western alliances. Ultimately, the U.S. faces a stark choice between launching a high-risk full-scale ground invasion or accepting Iran as a newly fortified fourth global power center alongside the U.S., China, and Russia.
## Atmosphere & style
The conversation carries a grave, urgent, and deeply analytical atmosphere, balancing rigorous military strategy with humanizing reflections on civilian suffering. Host Steven Bartlett sets a somber, inquiring tone, while Professor Pape delivers candid, unflinching assessments with the measured authority of a veteran war-game strategist. Watching or listening feels like stepping behind closed doors into a high-level intelligence briefing—tense, sobering, and acutely aware that geopolitical decisions could trigger global economic shocks or catastrophic escalation.
## Key takeaways
- [04:38](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pDKlaJM_vys&t=278s) Academic war games over the past two decades predicted that airstrikes alone cannot eliminate Iran's nuclear material, as bombing buries rather than destroys enriched uranium inventory.
- [08:02](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pDKlaJM_vys&t=482s) Overwhelming U.S. air campaigns historically fail to break an opponent's resolve and often trigger nationalistic unification and asymmetric adaptation rather than regime collapse.
- [14:58](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pDKlaJM_vys&t=898s) The conflict has entered 'Stage 4' of an escalation trap, forcing the U.S. to choose between an unwanted full-scale ground war or accepting Iran as a fourth global power center.
- [17:22](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pDKlaJM_vys&t=1042s) Iran is leveraging a selective blockade of the Strait of Hormuz to pressure Asian energy consumers and disrupt America's Asian alliance network.
- [20:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pDKlaJM_vys&t=1200s) The pre-war U.S.-backed Persian Gulf security alliance has collapsed, leading regional states like Saudi Arabia, UAE, Iraq, and Oman to seek new security arrangements or neutral stances.
- [24:14](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pDKlaJM_vys&t=1454s) Tactical coordination between Iran and Russia—who together control over 30% of global oil supplies—presents severe risks of a worldwide energy shock.
- [26:24](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pDKlaJM_vys&t=1584s) U.S. strategic miscalculations were exacerbated by Israeli strikes that targeted Iranian diplomats and negotiators, interrupting potential peace negotiations.
- [32:06](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pDKlaJM_vys&t=1926s) Logistical constraints render overland invasions of Iran unfeasible, leaving highly dangerous coastal amphibious operations as the primary option for ground forces.
- [36:11](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pDKlaJM_vys&t=2171s) A U.S. ground intervention near key Iranian coastal oil fields would face significant public opposition yet risk long-term political entrapment due to domestic pressure to 'finish the job.'
- [40:23](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pDKlaJM_vys&t=2423s) Threatening extreme destruction against Iran unites ordinary citizens behind the regime and accelerates national resolve toward securing a nuclear deterrent.
- [44:19](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pDKlaJM_vys&t=2659s) Targeting Iran's core power grid nodes creates long-term infrastructure damage that causes severe humanitarian crises and civilian hardship rather than rapid capitulation.
- [55:43](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pDKlaJM_vys&t=3343s) Iran's 10-point peace proposal demands full sanctions relief, transit tolls in the Strait of Hormuz, and nuclear rights, signaling its intent to establish regional dominance.
- [01:05:08](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pDKlaJM_vys&t=3908s) Achieving lasting diplomatic resolution would require enforceable commitments, such as containing military escalation and integrating Israel into the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).
- [01:15:46](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pDKlaJM_vys&t=4546s) Iran's strategic approach to nuclear acquisition would likely follow the North Korean playbook of conducting multiple tests to establish a credible deterrent against foreign attack.
- [01:21:28](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pDKlaJM_vys&t=4888s) The operational collapse of NATO's unified command structure is accelerating as European allies resist participating in military escalation in the Middle East.
- [01:28:27](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pDKlaJM_vys&t=5307s) Domestic political extremism in Western nations creates a 'legitimacy shock cycle,' highlighting the need for centrist foreign and domestic policies to break dangerous escalation traps.
## Detailed walkthrough
### [00:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pDKlaJM_vys&t=0s) Intro: The Reality of the Iran Escalation Trap
The conversation opens with a stark assessment of the unfolding conflict between the United States and Iran. Contrary to official narratives suggesting that Western airpower is crippling Tehran, Iran has recognized a fundamental vulnerability: the United States cannot decisively defeat them or halt their persistent drone and missile strikes. Rather than being weakened by decapitation strikes and heavy bombardment, Iran has emerged politically and strategically strengthened. In contrast, the decision-making process within the White House appears increasingly chaotic, signaling a broader erosion of American influence and control.
Host Steven Bartlett highlights the human toll of the conflict, pointing out that over 90 million ordinary civilians trapped in the region lack a voice in these geopolitical games. Moving beyond the immediate combat zone, the discussion frames the expanding scope of the crisis, touching upon Israel’s problematic role in shaping Western intelligence, the practical collapse of NATO, and the realization that the initial weeks of the campaign unfolded precisely according to decades of military war-gaming models.
---
[04:38](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pDKlaJM_vys&t=278s) 20 Years Of War Games Predicted This Conflict
Professor Robert Pape outlines his background as a political science professor at the University of Chicago for nearly 27 years and a former instructor for the U.S. Air Force specializing in conventional targeting. His academic focus originated from a desire to understand why overwhelming military superpowers lose conflicts—a quest that led to his seminal 1996 book *Bombing to Win*. An air campaign, Pape explains, is not a isolated single-day raid; it is an extended, systematic operation sustained over days, weeks, months, or years.
For over two decades, Pape ran a 90-minute exercise in his classes modeling a hypothetical U.S. air campaign against Iran's nuclear infrastructure. Rather than consisting of a single facility, Iran’s nuclear program is a complex network of targets:
* **Saghand:** The primary mining location where natural uranium ore is extracted internally.
* **Isfahan:** The conversion facility where uranium ore is gasified into uranium hexafluoride ($UF_6$).
* **Natanz and Fordow:** Deeply fortified enrichment facilities housing centrifuges that spin the gas to yield weapons-grade or reactor-grade Uranium-235 ($^{235}U$).
When modeling these strikes, the tactical and strategic results yielded a consistent, troubling pattern. While U.S. bombers can reliably destroy above-ground industrial structures and centrifuge halls, airstrikes cannot destroy the enriched nuclear material itself. Pape uses the analogy of panning for gold: a bomb can destroy the pan and obliterate the riverbed, but the gold remains in the rubble.
During operations such as "Operation Midnight Hammer"—which closely mirrored Pape's classroom simulations utilizing B-2 Stealth Bombers and Massive Ordnance Penetrators (MOABs)—the strike physically buries the enriched material under massive debris. However, the underlying inventory remains intact for future recovery, effectively delaying the enrichment process without eliminating the long-term proliferation risk.
---
[08:02](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pDKlaJM_vys&t=482s) How US Pressure Strengthened Iran
Beyond tactical bombing, Pape’s primary field of expertise is the intersection of military action and domestic politics. The psychological effect of an air campaign often triggers nationalistic unification rather than regime collapse. Drawing a historical parallel to the Vietnam War, Pape notes that during the 1960s, U.S. bombing campaigns successfully interdicted over 80% of the supply throughput along the Ho Chi Minh Trail. Despite this massive destruction, the remaining 15% to 20% of supplies was sufficient to sustain Viet Cong guerrilla operations in the south.
Instead of breaking the enemy's resolve, the inability of the U.S. to sever the final 20% of the logistics pipeline drastically boosted Viet Cong morale. They realized that a superpower using peak technology could not completely defeat them. In the current Middle Eastern context, Iran has reached the exact same realization regarding U.S. capabilities.
- **Civilian Population:** A state under attack often rallies around the flag, overriding domestic grievances against the ruling regime.
- **Underground Arsenals:** While U.S. intelligence and satellite tracking can destroy any launcher exposed above ground, Iran has spent decades constructing deeply buried underground networks for its missile and drone fleets.
- **Asymmetric Interdiction:** Despite deploying thousands of precision munitions and striking over 11,000 to 12,000 targets, the U.S. Navy and coalition forces cannot stop cheap Iranian drone attacks against commercial and naval vessels in the Strait of Hormuz.
---
[12:19](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pDKlaJM_vys&t=739s) Iran’s Hidden Power Structure Revealed
Addressing a press conference statement by Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth—who suggested Iran should use "carrier pigeons" to communicate ceasefires to decentralized frontline units—Pape clarifies the actual command structure of the Iranian regime. While tactical execution is decentralized to survive decapitation strikes, strategic decision-making remains highly centralized under the Supreme Leader (the son of the late Supreme Leader following his assassination).
Pape argues that U.S. public rhetoric questioning whether the Supreme Leader is alive or dead is a psychological tactic designed to bait him into communicating and exposing his location for targeted strikes. Despite severe leadership losses, the Iranian diplomatic and military apparatus continues to function, issuing 10-point negotiation frameworks transmitted via Pakistan directly to the White House. Pape notes that the decision-making process inside the White House appears significantly more reactive and erratic than the calculated posture maintained by Tehran.
---
[14:58](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pDKlaJM_vys&t=898s) The Final Stage Of The Escalation Trap
The conflict has progressed through a predictable framework that Pape terms the "Escalation Trap." In previous discussions, he outlined the initial phases of the war, which have now fully played out over the first 40 days of operations:
1. **Stage 1 (Decapitation & Bombing):** The U.S. launches air campaigns targeting regime leadership and infrastructure; the target regime adapts, hardens its resolve, and survives politically stronger.
2. **Stage 2 (Horizontal Escalation):** The resilient regime retaliates across new fronts, leveraging asymmetric geography—such as clogging or closing the Strait of Hormuz—to disrupt global energy supplies.
3. **Stage 3 (Ground Mobilization):** To secure critical maritime passages like the Strait of Hormuz, the attacking power is forced to commit ground forces, such as the U.S. Marine Corps, escalating the intervention.
4. **Stage 4 (The Critical Fork in the Road):** The war reaches a point where returning to the pre-war status quo (such as late February 2026) becomes impossible.
```
Stage 1: Decapitation & Strategic Air Campaign
│
▼
Stage 2: Horizontal Escalation (Strait of Hormuz Closure)
│
▼
Stage 3: Ground Force Deployment (U.S. Marines & Coastal Operations)
│
▼
Stage 4: Structural Power Shift OR Full-Scale Ground War
```
---
[17:31](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pDKlaJM_vys&t=1051s) Iran As The Fourth Global Power Center
Having reached Stage 4, the international system faces a definitive strategic junction. The U.S. must either commit to a full-scale, bloody ground war inside Iran to forcibly dismantle its capabilities or accept that Iran will solidify its status as an emerging fourth center of global power alongside the United States, China, and Russia.
Pape stresses that short-term air power can no longer alter this trajectory. If the U.S. retreats or settles for an inconclusive stalemate, Iran’s control over vital global choke points and its hardened nuclear assets will cement its role as a major pole in international security affairs.
<ElicitationsGroup message="Explore further analysis on the strategy, economic risks, and nuclear implications of the conflict:">
<Elicitation label="Analyze the economic impact of Iran controlling the Strait of Hormuz" query="Explain how Iran controlling the Strait of Hormuz impacts global oil prices, shipping lanes, and the wider world economy based on Robert Pape's analysis."/>
<Elicitation label="Detail Stage 4 ground war scenarios and military risks" query="What are the specific military risks, troop requirements, and strategic consequences if the US enters a full-scale ground war with Iran in Stage 4?"/>
</ElicitationsGroup>
[17:22](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pDKlaJM_vys&t=1042s) How Iran Uses Selective Blockades to Reshape Global Alliances
The escalation in the Strait of Hormuz is no longer merely an issue of rising maritime insurance rates; it has evolved into a mechanism for generating coercive political power. Iran is using a selective military blockade of the strait—through which 80% to 90% of Asia’s oil supply flows—to compel foreign nations to accede to its geopolitical objectives. This strategy directly targets major Asian economies, altering their alignment with the United States. India, for example, has moved away from cooperating with Washington, adopting a neutral or slightly pro-Iranian posture because losing its physical energy supply represents a far more catastrophic risk than simply paying higher oil prices.
<Image alt="Strategic map of the Strait of Hormuz showing oil shipping lanes and regional proximity" caption="The Strait of Hormuz shipping corridor" src="image_agent_tag_1"/>
Similarly, Japan has resisted American demands for direct military support. During a high-profile Oval Office meeting, the head of state of Japan refused to yield to President Trump's pressure, opting instead to distance Tokyo from Washington's military campaign. By exposing Asian powers to acute energy vulnerabilities, Iran is leveraging the Strait of Hormuz to systematically break up America's Asian alliance network.
---
* **Asia's Dependency:** 80% to 90% of all oil passing through the Strait of Hormuz is destined for Asian markets.
* **Diplomatic Realignment:** India has shifted toward neutrality/Iran, while Japan has resisted US pressure to contribute military support.
[20:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pDKlaJM_vys&t=1200s) The Collapse of the US-Backed Persian Gulf Security Coalition
Prior to the outbreak of major hostilities on February 27, the Persian Gulf maintained a delicate balance of power. Iran stood on one side, counterbalanced by a growing coalition of Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states cooperating increasingly with Israel—a framework heavily promoted during the first Trump administration by Jared Kushner and sweetened by American tech investments. However, 40 days into the conflict, this US-guaranteed security web has completely fractured.
```
PRE-WAR BALANCING COALITION
[USA (Security Anchor)] <---> [Israel] <---> [Gulf States (Saudi, UAE, Qatar)]
VS
[Iran]
│
▼
POST-ESCULATION FRAGMENTATION (40 DAYS)
┌───────────────────────┬──────────────────────────┬────────────────────────┐
│ Pro-Iran Shift │ Neutral / Head Down │ Seeking New Anchors │
├───────────────────────┼─────────────────────────┼────────────────────────┤
│ • Iraq (demands US │ • Qatar (keeping quiet) │ • Saudi Arabia & UAE │
│ withdrawal) │ • Oman (sharing toll │ (signed security │
│ │ revenues with Iran) │ pact with Pakistan) │
└───────────────────────┴──────────────────────────┴────────────────────────┘
```
The US military bases in Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia were supposed to act as the ultimate "mafia boss" security guarantee for the region. Instead, these fixed, above-ground facilities have proven to be vulnerable, "big fat targets" for Iran's precision drone strikes. With American aircraft carriers positioned over a thousand miles away to avoid Russian-assisted targeting, Washington has signaled an unwillingness to defend these installations, telling Gulf partners to defend themselves. As a result, the regional states have fragmented into three distinct blocs:
1. **Iraq:** Distancing itself from Washington and increasingly demanding the removal of US military forces.
2. **Oman and Qatar:** Oman is cooperating with Iran to share toll revenues from the strait, while Qatar is attempting to remain non-aligned and keep a low profile.
3. **Saudi Arabia and the UAE:** Left exposed without an explicit US umbrella, Saudi Arabia has turned to Pakistan, formalizing a defense agreement to secure external military backing.
[24:14](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pDKlaJM_vys&t=1454s) The Threat of a Global Energy Shock and Russian-Iranian Alignment
Even if President Trump sought to unilaterally call off the war, the geopolitical landscape cannot revert to its pre-February 27 baseline. Iran controls 20% of the world’s oil reserves and is positioned to generate between $75 billion and $100 billion in annual energy revenues. Furthermore, its deeply buried underground bunker network shelters drone production facilities and centrifuge cascades that could allow Tehran to produce nuclear weapons within a year without effective external intervention.
```
GLOBAL OIL CONTROL (30%+ COMBINED)
┌──────────────────────────┬──────────────────────────┐
│ Iran Reserves │ Russia Reserves │
│ 20% Global Supply │ 11% Global Supply │
└─────────────┬────────────┴─────────────┬────────────┘
└──────────────┬───────────┘
▼
[Tactical/Formal Market Restriction]
│
▼
[Reroute Supply to China / Asia]
│
▼
[Economic Crisis in US & Western Europe]
```
Simultaneously, the conflict has deepened military cooperation between Tehran, Moscow, and Beijing. Russia provided Iran with real-time targeting intelligence to track American warships, forcing US aircraft carriers to stay far out at sea. Together, Iran (20%) and Russia (11%) command over 30% of global oil production. Tactical coordination between Moscow and Tehran to restrict oil exports to Western nations while diverting supplies to China could trigger severe economic consequences across North America and Europe.
[26:24](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pDKlaJM_vys&t=1584s) Miscalculations, Israeli "Spoilers," and Leadership Decapitation
The fundamental assumption underlying US policy was that Iran was on its last legs and required only one final push to induce internal collapse. This assessment was widely shared across the Western foreign policy establishment, but it miscalculated Iran's structural resilience and subterranean military assets.
> "There was a widespread, I think, false assumption across the foreign policy community... that Iran was basically collapsing on its own. This was always in my view underestimating the power of Iran."
This structural miscalculation was exacerbated by Israel acting as a "diplomatic spoiler" to prevent negotiated settlements:
* **June 12-Day War:** After President Trump announced negotiations with specific Iranian figures, Israeli airstrikes killed those exact diplomats within 36 hours.
* **February 28 Attacks:** Israel initiated the strikes targeting Iran's Supreme Leader and dozens of moderate officials right as Washington was engaged in back-channel talks.
* **March 17, 2026:** An Israeli strike killed Ali Larijani, the former secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council. Trump publicly complained on Truth Social that Larijani was his primary contact for a "10-point peace proposal" and that Israel's unilateral action reset negotiations when a deal was "inches away."
[32:06](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pDKlaJM_vys&t=1926s) The Logistics of Ground Invasions and Coastal Amphibious Warfare
A military expansion into Stage 3 (ground intervention) presents severe geographical and logistical barriers. Invading Iran overland through neighboring countries is functionally unfeasible: Pakistan possesses roughly 100 nuclear weapons and maintains historic ties with Tehran (having supplied 600 centrifuges to Iran's enrichment program in 2002); Afghanistan lacks the infrastructure for troop staging; and Azerbaijan explicitly refused to allow its territory to be used as a launching pad for a division-scale push toward Tehran following early missile strikes.
Consequently, any ground campaign would likely require Marine amphibious landings along the southern coast near the Strait of Hormuz or the energy-rich southwestern Khuzestan province. However, the coastal terrain around Hormuz consists of jagged, mountainous topography—a desolate "moonscape" highly disadvantageous for landing craft and V-22 Osprey tiltrotor aircraft. Furthermore, Iran's initial strikes against regional bases were designed to neutralize the exact staging areas in Kuwait, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia that the US would need to launch a multi-divisional land operation.
---
<ElicitationsGroup message="Explore related aspects of this conflict analysis:">
<Elicitation label="Analyze the economic impact of a 30% oil supply drop" query="What are the specific economic impacts on global markets if Iran and Russia remove 30% of global oil supply?"/>
<Elicitation label="Examine the technical capabilities of V-22 Ospreys in combat" query="Explain the design, operational role, and tactical limitations of the V-22 Osprey in amphibious assault operations."/>
</ElicitationsGroup>
Here is a detailed, faithful walkthrough of this part of the conversation:
[36:11](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pDKlaJM_vys&t=2171s) The Logistics of Ground Invasion and Taking the Oil Fields
Robert Pape explains that executing a ground invasion of Iran requires establishing a beachhead—a tactical foothold measuring roughly 100 miles by 20 miles to bypass Iran’s formidable mountainous terrain and funnel in follow-on forces via limited amphibious and submarine assaults. Pape highlights that when President Donald Trump speaks publicly about "taking Iran's oil fields," he is reflecting specific military options presented to him. Citing Trump's press conference on Monday, April 6th, Pape recounts Trump’s repeated remarks: *"If it were up to me, I would take the oil. I would keep it all for ourselves and make a lot of money because to the victor belong the spoils. But people in the country sort of say just win and come home."* While Trump acknowledged the public’s desire to avoid long-term entanglements, Pape notes that the President's repeated emphasis reveals a genuine desire to target Iran's petroleum infrastructure.
However, placing ground troops inside Iran creates easy targets for Iranian drone strikes and unleashes complex domestic political dynamics. Countering the popular assumption that American casualties would trigger an immediate U.S. retreat, Pape argues that the political intersection of military force and public opinion usually yields the opposite result. Drawing on historical parallels like the early years of the Vietnam War, he points out that even if 59% of the American public opposes the conflict, the core 36% supporting the administration will view dead Marines as martyrs whose sacrifices must be honored. With a Republican president backed by his base, initial casualties force leaders to double down and "finish the job" to ensure troops did not die in vain, effectively committing the U.S. to a minimum six-month ground war.
- **Beachhead dimensions:** U.S. forces would need to secure an area approximately 100 miles long by 20 miles wide behind mountainous terrain.
- **Key date cited:** Donald Trump's press conference on Monday, April 6th.
- **Public sentiment dynamics:** A U.S. ground intervention would face ~59% public opposition, but the remaining ~36% base support creates strong political pressure to double down rather than withdraw.
---
[40:23](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pDKlaJM_vys&t=2423s) Deciphering the Rhetoric of "Civilization" Threat and Nuclear Readiness
Steven Bartlett shifts the focus to one of Donald Trump's recent Truth Social posts, reading it aloud: *"A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again. I don't know what will happen, but it probably will."* Pape stresses that the public must not treat this post as idle rhetoric from a "drunk at a bar," but as a statement of intent from a U.S. commander-in-chief holding ultimate command over thousands of nuclear weapons. He details the extreme hair-trigger nature of America's nuclear posture, specifically highlighting the arsenal of 500 Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missiles. These missiles carry warheads ranging between 100 and 300 kilotons—each many times more destructive than the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Pape notes that their gyroscopes can be retargeted within 45 minutes, after which it takes roughly 25 minutes for them to reach targets across Iran.
```
Minuteman III ICBM Target & Launch Timeline:
[Retarget Gyroscopes: 45 Min] ➔ [Flight Time to Iran: 25 Min] ➔ [Total Execution: ~70 Min]
```
Pape frames Trump’s declaration as unprecedented in modern American history, calling it the most explicit statement of genocidal intent ever uttered by a sitting U.S. president under the framework of the 1948 Genocide Convention. Contrastingly, when President Harry S. Truman announced the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, he carefully framed the action around destroying Japan's military capacity rather than eradicating Japanese civilization. Even though Trump pulled back from striking on Tuesday, Pape contends that threatening 92 million Iranians with total destruction produces severe geopolitical unintended consequences. Just as a similar threat from Vladimir Putin would instantly unite Americans across party lines, Trump's rhetoric alienates Iran's pro-democracy movement. Instead of turning to Washington, ordinary Iranians and democracy activists are driven by national survival to rally around their own government and support the rapid development of a nuclear deterrent.
---
[44:19](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pDKlaJM_vys&t=2659s) The Humanitarian Cost to Ordinary Iranians and Infrastructure Destruction
Steven Bartlett reflects on messages received directly from citizens living in Iran, who describe the terror of hearing constant bombardment, feeling miles away from freedom, and living under the shadow of losing their country overnight. Responding to these concerns, Pape outlines the catastrophic impact that targeting Iran's civilian infrastructure would have on its 90-plus million residents. Drawing on his work during the 1990s with Air Force strategist Colonel John Warden—a leading architect of leadership decapitation and infrastructure targeting—Pape explains how electric power grids function as interconnected networks. Iran’s grid relies on approximately 130 main nodes producing power in the 10-to-30-megawatt range; knocking out just the top 10 key nodes would cause the entire nationwide system to collapse.
Pape contrasts two methods of attacking a power grid:
* **Transformer Strikes:** Knocking out transformers creates temporary outages lasting one to two weeks, causing severe disruption and civilian casualties near targets, but allowing for relatively quick recovery.
* **Turbine Hull Strikes:** Destroying the massive, custom-manufactured generating turbine hulls causes irreversible long-term damage. Because replacement turbines have no off-the-shelf backups and take 6 to 18 months to manufacture and install, taking down these hulls leaves the grid dark for up to a year and a half.
Pape warns that a prolonged grid blackout would immediately halt life-saving medical procedures, such as dialysis and heart surgeries, across Iranian hospitals. Furthermore, the total loss of commercial and home refrigeration would result in widespread food spoilage within days, sparking severe nationwide hunger and exposing malnourished populations to disease, ultimately measurably lowering the life expectancy of ordinary Iranians.
---
[52:33](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pDKlaJM_vys&t=3153s) The Escalation Trap and the Emerging Global Order
Following a brief sponsor interlude, Steven Bartlett brings up reports of a potential ceasefire and Trump's sudden proposal of a 10-point plan alongside a suggested two-week ceasefire following his extreme social media warnings. Pape analyzes this sequence as the sharp collision of "Stage Three and Stage Four" of the escalation trap. He emphasizes that the world cannot simply reset to the status quo that existed before February 27th, as the preceding 40 days of war have permanently altered global dynamics.
Looking forward, Pape argues that the United States faces only two realistic long-term futures:
1. **The Ground War Option:** Entrenching U.S. armed forces in a costly, bloody ground conflict in the Middle East.
2. **Accepting Iran as a Global Power Center:** Allowing Iran to solidify its position alongside Russia, China, and the West as a distinct fourth center of global power—an outcome that deeply damages American influence and severely undermines President Trump's political legacy.
<ElicitationsGroup message="To explore these geopolitical outcomes further:">
<Elicitation label="Examine the mechanics of Iran's 10-point plan" query="What are the specific details and conditions outlined in Iran's 10-point plan mentioned in the interview?"/>
<Elicitation label="Analyze Iran's role as a fourth global power center" query="How does Iran controlling energy routes alongside Russia create a fourth global power center?"/>
</ElicitationsGroup>
[53:36](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pDKlaJM_vys&t=3216s) Why Nations Never Surrender Power
When asked if Iranian leadership might simply declare peace, stop building nuclear weapons, and plead for an end to the bombing, Robert Pape draws upon three centuries of international politics to explain why states never voluntarily surrender power. Throughout history, neither regional powers nor great powers have given up strategic advantages out of goodwill.
He points to post-World War II American history as a prime example. After defeating Nazi Germany alongside the Soviet Union, the United States had the capability to build nuclear weapons. Although arms control proposals were made to forgo that path to maintain cooperation with Moscow, Washington rejected them and chose to retain its power advantage. Iran will act no differently. This reality explains why current ceasefire efforts deteriorate so quickly: while President Donald Trump declared victory and asserted that Iran’s influence would be stripped, Tehran immediately reasserted itself on the regional stage. Expecting Iran to surrender its emerging status out of goodwill is purely a fantasy.
[55:43](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pDKlaJM_vys&t=3343s) Iran’s 10-Point Proposal and Regional Hegemony
Steven Bartlett reviews the details of an Iranian 10-point peace proposal reported by the Iranian state news agency (IRNA) and international media. The proposal outlines a comprehensive framework designed to secure Tehran's position:
1. **Permanent Ceasefire:** A total end to hostilities.
2. **Halt to Regional Strikes:** Complete cessation of Israeli and US military actions across Lebanon, Iraq, and Yemen.
3. **Reopening the Strait of Hormuz:** Guaranteeing safe passage for maritime trade.
4. **Transit Tolls:** Charging a fee—reportedly around $2 million per vessel—passing through the strait.
5. **Revenue Sharing with Oman:** Splitting toll proceeds with Oman as joint custodians of the waterway.
6. **Lifting Sanctions:** Complete removal of all primary and secondary US economic sanctions.
7. **Unfreezing Assets:** Immediate return of all frozen Iranian funds held internationally.
8. **Nuclear Enrichment Rights:** Official US recognition of Iran’s right to domestic uranium enrichment, paired with an Iranian commitment not to build nuclear weapons.
9. **War Reparations:** Full financial compensation paid to Iran for reconstruction following the bombing campaign.
10. **UN Resolution Overhaul:** Termination of existing UN resolutions against the regime, replaced by a binding UN Security Council resolution enforcing the new agreement.
Pape notes that this proposal serves as a structural validation of Iran as the top power in the Persian Gulf hierarchy. Just as Britain, the United States, and China have historically dictated global rules, Iran aims to dictate the operational rules of its immediate region.
[57:34](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pDKlaJM_vys&t=3454s) Shifting the Global Balance of Power
Using visual props representing world powers, Pape illustrates the ongoing transformation of the global balance of power. While Washington long operated under the assumption of unipolar dominance—a moment that emerged following the collapse of the Soviet Union between 1989 and 1992—the actual distribution of power today involves multiple competing centers.
```
1990s Unipolarity Current Multi-Polar Shift
[ U.S. ] [ U.S. ] [ China ]
| \ /
(Sole Superpower) \ /
[ Russia ]
|
[ Iran (Emerging) ]
```
China has grown significantly more powerful over the last three decades, while Russia remains structurally weak at roughly 2% of global GDP. However, if Iran consolidates its position as a fourth global power center, the combined weight of China, Russia, and Iran—particularly in controlling energy markets—could begin to tilt the scales against the United States.
- National power ultimately rests on productive economic capacity, which remains deeply reliant on oil.
- Unlike supply chain disruptions in semiconductors or pharmaceuticals (which cause damage over a longer horizon), an energy disruption causes immediate "cliff effects" within six to eight weeks.
- Global storage capacities are insufficient to compensate for a sudden 20% to 30% loss of world oil supply.
[01:01:13](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pDKlaJM_vys&t=3673s) Economic Consequences for American Consumers
Although the United States does not import its primary oil supply directly through the Strait of Hormuz, oil operates as a unified global commodity. A restriction in global supply drives prices up universally.
Pape highlights the direct domestic impact, noting that gas prices in Chicago jumped from approximately $3.10 per gallon up to $4.60 per gallon following the onset of regional escalations on February 27. Beyond gas pumps, sustained high oil prices fuel broader inflation, which forces interest rates on 10-year bonds upward.
- Rising bond rates increase borrowing costs across the economy, affecting university budgets, corporate operations, and government spending.
- The single largest item in the US federal budget is interest payments on its $40 trillion national debt.
- Higher baseline interest rates threaten to squeeze funding for domestic programs like Social Security and Medicaid.
While the United States currently holds roughly a 25% to 30% power edge over combined competitors, the addition of Iran into a coordinated bloc with Moscow and Beijing could rapidly accelerate changes in the global order over the next few years.
[01:05:08](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pDKlaJM_vys&t=3908s) The Enforceable Peace: Containing Israel and the NPT
When asked what steps President Trump should take to navigate the crisis, Pape explains that previous diplomatic concessions—such as Scott Bessent's efforts to ease oil sanctions—are no longer sufficient because Iran's regional leverage has grown.
To entice Iran into surrendering its emerging strategic advantages, Washington would need to offer a credible, legally binding mechanism: the military containment of Israel.
> "President Trump could push through a bill through Congress that says if Israel attacks Iran... all funds for Israel, both military and economic, will be cut off through the end of Trump's presidency."
Because Republicans control both houses of Congress, passing such legislation would grant the administration maximum leverage.
Furthermore, a comprehensive compromise would require a diplomatic quid pro quo under Article II of an international agreement:
- **Israel Joins the NPT:** Israel would be required to sign the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and submit its Dimona nuclear facility to regular monitoring by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
- **Reciprocal Verification:** In exchange for Iran accepting strict on-site IAEA monitoring of its low-enriched (3.5%) uranium stockpiles, Israel's nuclear arsenal capacity would no longer remain uncounted and unmonitored.
While this offers a realistic diplomatic off-ramp, political resistance—particularly from Israeli leadership under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu—makes its adoption highly unlikely, pushing the conflict back toward direct escalation.
[01:09:57](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pDKlaJM_vys&t=4197s) Oscillating Between Ground War and World Power
Pape predicts that the situation will not resolve quickly; instead, the conflict will cycle back and forth between Stage 3 (preparations for an American ground invasion) and Stage 4 (Iran cementing itself as a fourth center of global power) for months.
For Stage 3 to be genuinely taken off the table, the United States would have to execute a visible, large-scale military withdrawal from the Middle East.
- **Carrier Strike Groups:** Naval carrier groups would need to depart regional waters for other global theaters.
- **Marine Deployments:** Marine units moved to the Persian Gulf would have to return to home bases such as Camp Pendleton in California or stations in Japan.
- **Air Assets:** Hundreds of deployed strike aircraft would need to be redeployed out of the region.
Because Washington is unlikely to execute such a withdrawal while Tehran refuses to abandon its strategic gains, both powers remain locked in a prolonged, dangerous cycle of escalation.
<FollowUp label="Want me to cover the next part of the transcript on nuclear deterrence and Trump's options?" query="Please provide the detailed walkthrough for the next part of the transcript covering nuclear deterrence, Trump's options, and global economic impacts."/>
[01:10:47](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pDKlaJM_vys&t=4247s) Bouncing Between Stages and the 70% Ground War Probability
Addressing the mechanics of military posture, Robert Pape clarifies that as assets like F-35 fighter jets are repositioned back to their pre-war locations, the situation naturally fluctuates between Stage 3 (massive air and missile strikes) and Stage 4 (regional escalation). Assessing the likelihood of a full-scale invasion, Pape reiterates his estimate that there is still a 70% chance the U.S. will initiate a ground operation. He stresses that this outcome is not driven by President Donald Trump's personal desire—noting that Trump wants to avoid it—but rather by an inescapable escalation trap. The ultimate trap for Trump is whether he is willing to go down in history as the American president under whose watch Iran detonates a nuclear weapon to prove its capability.
Analyzing Trump's public statements and social media activity, Steven Bartlett suggests that the administration's alternative strategy appears to be targeted infrastructure destruction—bombing bridges, roads, and power plants—to "decapitate" the country and, as Trump put it, send Iran "back to the Stone Age." Pape contends that crippling Iran's electrical grid will not resolve the conflict; instead, it will act as an immediate precursor to ground operations. Bombing power infrastructure does not destroy enriched uranium, but it does leave 92 million desperate Iranians seeking both nuclear deterrence and direct payback.
- Iran's stockpile includes approximately 1,000 lbs of 60% enriched uranium, alongside 10,000 lbs of 5% and 20% enriched uranium.
- The two primary objectives compelling U.S. ground forces are securing/seizing the enriched uranium and physically defending the Strait of Hormuz.
- Pape advises observers to ignore political rhetoric and diplomatic negotiations, tracking instead the physical movement of deployed troops as the single true indicator of whether the conflict's timeline is accelerating or slowing down.
---
[01:13:50](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pDKlaJM_vys&t=4430s) Mid-Episode Announcements: Ketone IQ and DOAC Inner Circle
Steven Bartlett pauses the discussion to share a personal recommendation for Ketone IQ by HVMN, explaining that around 35% to 40% of his team considers it a daily essential. He recounts how he first tried the product after finding a sample box on his desk sent by his team member Lily, leading him to invest as a co-owner and take them on as a podcast sponsor due to the notable boost in his focus, energy levels, and productivity.
Bartlett also announces the launch of "DOAC Circle," an exclusive, private inner community limited to the first 10,000 members. He explains that members will gain direct access to him, unreleased podcast clips, behind-the-scenes footage, full interviews that never aired, and the actual research briefs on his iPad during recordings.
---
[01:15:46](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pDKlaJM_vys&t=4546s) The North Korea Blueprint: How Iran Would Use a Nuclear Breakout
Clarifying popular misconceptions surrounding nuclear acquisition, Pape addresses the common public fear that Iran would immediately launch a first strike against Tel Aviv or New York upon obtaining a weapon. He explains that such a move would be irrational because it would trigger immediate, total nuclear retaliation from the U.S. Drawing on his university lectures, Pape outlines how a strategic state actually handles a nuclear breakout: rather than relying on one or two weapons, Iran would aim for a modest arsenal of 5 to 15 warheads, following the playbook established by North Korea.
Under this strategic framework, a nation tests its first nuclear device on its own territory, allows western analysts to debate whether it was a fluke or a single prototype, and then detonates a second weapon shortly after. Referencing the psychological impact of Nagasaki following Hiroshima, Pape explains that a second test convinces the world that a robust arsenal exists, effectively establishing nuclear deterrence against U.S. attacks.
```
IRAN'S STRATEGIC BREAKOUT PLAYBOOK
[ Stockpile 5-15 Warheads ] ──> [ Underground Test #1 ]
│
[ Effective U.S. Deterrence ] <── [ Detonate Test #2 ]
```
- Trump's strategy of continuous air strikes fails to eliminate the threat because heavily fortified nuclear material cannot be "bombed out of existence" without precise ground access.
- Pape notes that a military containment agreement alongside Israeli defense guarantees would be ideal, but negotiating leverage is exceptionally weak without a credible non-diplomatic Plan B.
- Ripping up the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA / "Obama nuclear deal") in 2018 enabled unchecked Iranian uranium enrichment that neither Trump nor Biden could halt.
- With Trump facing an array of bad options, world leaders and political allies are increasingly concluding that the White House has lost control of the conflict, creating an unstable dynamic between Stages 3 and 4.
---
[01:21:28](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pDKlaJM_vys&t=4888s) The Death of NATO and the Strait of Hormuz Crisis
Examining the geopolitical fallout for Europe, Pape delivers a grim assessment of the transatlantic alliance, declaring, "NATO is for all practical purposes dead. We're just writing its obituary." He clarifies that NATO is far more than a political pact; under Article 5 military operations, an American general assumes direct command over all allied forces, including their nuclear and conventional assets. Pape questions whether European nations like Britain or Germany would realistically follow American military commands following what he characterizes as a disastrous policy failure in the Middle East.
Addressing recent statements by NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte—who acknowledged that allies were surprised when Trump launched initial strikes without advance warning, yet maintained that European members are now responding to U.S. requests—Pape views the diplomatic maneuvering as an attempt to keep U.S. forces stationed in Europe to deter Russia. However, he points out the inherent contradiction in American strategy: Trump created a global crisis, refused to send U.S. ground troops into the Strait of Hormuz, and then demanded that European nations send their own forces instead.
- Securing the Strait of Hormuz cannot be accomplished by air or naval power alone; U.S. naval and air superiority far exceeds allied capability, yet remains insufficient without ground control.
- U.S. demands for concrete NATO commitments within days signal preparations for a broader Phase 3 ground operation.
- Pape notes that European leaders view sending troops into Hormuz as political suicide, making it highly unlikely that foreign allies or domestic political opponents will bail out the administration as political pressure mounts in the fall.
[01:26:38](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pDKlaJM_vys&t=5198s) The Political Fallout for Western Allies
The discussion begins with the severe political repercussions faced by international leaders who attempt to align themselves with U.S. military actions. Professor Robert Pape reiterates his earlier prediction that Donald Trump risks becoming another Lyndon B. Johnson—trapped in an escalating conflict—if he fails to secure a diplomatic deal. Observing events over the last 40 days, Pape notes that because no viable deal was taken, Trump is increasingly isolating himself internationally, as no foreign leader wants to be linked to a disastrous military campaign.
```
Escalation Trap
┌───────┐
│ U.S. │
└───┬───┘
│ Drives up oil prices & inflation
▼
┌─────────────────────────────────┐
│ European Allied Publics │
└────────────────┬────────────────┘
│ Rejects military involvement
▼
┌─────────────────────────────────┐
│ Domestic "Legitimacy Shock" │
│ (Voters bounce between extremes)│
└─────────────────────────────────┘
```
Steven Bartlett points to the UK as a primary example, noting that Prime Minister Keir Starmer's vocal refusal to support Trump’s war or deploy British troops to the Middle East actually boosted his popularity among the electorate. Both agree that supporting military intervention in the Middle East is currently "political suicide" for European, Japanese, or Indian leaders, as doing so virtually guarantees losing their next domestic election.
Pape shares findings from research he initiated regarding how U.S. trade tariffs had already begun eroding European support for America. By driving up global oil prices and further straining European economies, Trump is pushing public sentiment across Europe beyond merely opposing the administration toward becoming broadly anti-American. On a lighter, personal note, Pape jokes about experiencing retaliatory friction firsthand when applying for his UK Electronic Travel Authorisation (ETA), predicting tongue-in-cheek that the visa fees for Americans visiting London will likely double or triple soon.
- **Analogy:** Donald Trump's potential geopolitical trap is compared directly to Lyndon B. Johnson's entangling experience with the Vietnam War.
- **UK Prime Minister:** Keir Starmer's refusal to send troops to the Middle East is cited as a move that boosted his domestic favorability.
- **Economic Pressure:** Rising oil prices triggered by U.S. actions are placing heavy economic strains on European households, compounding existing anti-American sentiment.
---
[01:28:27](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pDKlaJM_vys&t=5307s) The "Legitimacy Shock Cycle" and Breaking Political Polarization
Addressing how regular citizens should navigate this turbulent geopolitical climate, Pape stresses the necessity of breaking out of the destructive cycle of political extremism. He argues that swinging back and forth between radical right and radical left options—a phenomenon evident in both the U.S. and the UK—only leads to different versions of bad outcomes. Instead of offering genuine solutions, this constant swinging pisses off the middle class and perpetuates a compounding crisis.
Pape labels this domestic dynamic a "legitimacy shock cycle"—an extension of the international escalation trap applied to internal politics. To resolve it, he urges the public to actively support and vote for pragmatic, centrist candidates across all elections, even when that candidate happens to belong to the opposing political party. He highlights that this desire to speak directly to the public and bypass rigid political echo chambers is the primary reason he is shifting his focus toward podcast appearances over traditional White House advising.
- **Concept:** The *legitimacy shock cycle* describes how domestic politics becomes trapped as voters bounce back and forth between ideological extremes out of frustration.
- **Core Recommendation:** Voters must actively prioritize centrist, moderate candidates to stabilize domestic politics and international policy.
- **Role of Podcasts:** Long-form podcasting provides a direct channel to engage the public directly without partisan framing.
---
[01:31:56](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pDKlaJM_vys&t=5516s) Humanizing the Crisis: The Shared Bond of the Middle
Reflecting on the human cost of war, Bartlett takes a moment to step back from strategic calculations to highlight the psychological strain endured by everyday people. He imagines what it would be like if bombs were detonating outside their comfortable London studio while a foreign leader threatened their civilization with destruction, emphasizing the deep anxiety felt by the 90+ million civilians living in Iran.
Pape responds by identifying a profound, implicit bond connecting the middle 60% of the American public with the 92 million ordinary citizens of Iran. Neither group supports the religious or political radicalism dominating their respective leaderships, yet both find their destinies locked into decisions made by ideological extremes.
```
┌───────────────────────────┐ ┌───────────────────────────┐
│ U.S. Middle Class │ ◄──[ Shared ]──►│ Iranian Public │
│ (~60% Voters) │ Frustration │ (~92M Citizens) │
└─────────────┬─────────────┘ └─────────────┬─────────────┘
│ │
Locked out by extremes Locked in by regime
│ │
▼ ▼
┌───────────────────────────┐ ┌───────────────────────────┐
│ Political Polarization │ │ Regional Conflict & War │
└───────────────────────────┘ └───────────────────────────┘
```
He cautions that an economically fragile U.S.—carrying over $40 trillion in national debt—is severely vulnerable to protracted conflicts with adversary coalitions like Iran and Russia, who harbor historical grievances over past Western policies such as 1990s "shock therapy."
- **Demographics:** Over 92 million Iranian civilians are caught in the middle of the escalating geopolitical conflict.
- **Shared Sentiment:** A parallel is drawn between the middle 60% of Americans frustrated by domestic political extremes and ordinary Iranians trapped by their government's radicalism.
- **U.S. Debt Risk:** A national debt exceeding $40 trillion leaves the United States financially exposed during long-term global conflicts.
---
[01:34:08](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pDKlaJM_vys&t=5648s) Final Reflections: A Trap Getting Worse
As the interview concludes, the conversation turns candid and reflective. Pape jokes about the host's charisma, mentioning humorously that his wife turns off his own voice to listen to Bartlett when they listen to the show together. Bartlett admits that while the detailed walkthrough has "turned the lights on" regarding military and geopolitical dynamics, it leaves him deeply troubled, as none of the realistic pathways forward appear positive or clean.
Pape reinforces the severity of the moment, warning that the overall situation is noticeably worse than when he appeared on the show four weeks earlier because key diplomatic off-ramps were ignored. He asserts that while options like containment or regional agreements with Israel might seem politically difficult or unthinkable to some, they represent far better alternatives than allowing the escalation to proceed unchecked. He closes with a stark warning: if these diplomatic pathways are rejected today, the conflict will be significantly worse when re-evaluated in a month or two.
- **Status Update:** The conflict has degraded significantly in the 40 days since Pape's previous appearance due to missed diplomatic opportunities.
- **Warning:** Failing to act on realistic diplomatic compromises immediately guarantees a far more dangerous situation in the coming months.
---
<FollowUp label="Want to explore the historical parallels between the Vietnam War (LBJ) and current U.S.-Iran dynamics?" query="Explain the historical parallels between Lyndon B. Johnson's handling of the Vietnam War and Donald Trump's current situation with Iran, focusing on the domestic and geopolitical consequences."/>
## Notable quotes
> [36:06](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pDKlaJM_vys&t=2166s) If it were up to me, I would take the oil. I would keep it all for ourselves and make a lot of money because to the victor belong the spoils. But people in the country sort of say just win and come home. — Donald Trump
> [40:23](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pDKlaJM_vys&t=2423s) A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again. I don't know what will happen, but it probably will. — Donald Trump
> [26:24](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pDKlaJM_vys&t=1584s) There was a widespread, I think, false assumption across the foreign policy community... that Iran was basically collapsing on its own. This was always in my view underestimating the power of Iran. — Robert Pape
> [01:05:08](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pDKlaJM_vys&t=3908s) President Trump could push through a bill through Congress that says if Israel attacks Iran... all funds for Israel, both military and economic, will be cut off through the end of Trump's presidency. — Robert Pape
> [01:21:28](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pDKlaJM_vys&t=4888s) NATO is for all practical purposes dead. We're just writing its obituary. — Robert Pape
## Mentioned
The Diary Of A CEO, Steven Bartlett, Robert Pape, Donald Trump, Pete Hegseth, John Warden, Harry S. Truman, Lyndon B. Johnson, Keir Starmer, Mark Rutte, Scott Bessent, Ali Larijani, Benjamin Netanyahu, Jared Kushner, University of Chicago, U.S. Air Force, U.S. Marine Corps, NATO, IAEA, UN Security Council, IRNA, Truth Social, Bombing to Win, Our Own Worst Enemies: America and the Age of Violent Populism, Operation Midnight Hammer, B-2 Stealth Bomber, Massive Ordnance Penetrator, Minuteman III, V-22 Osprey, F-35, Wispr, Vivobarefoot, Ketone IQ, HVMN, DOAC Circle, Saghand, Isfahan, Natanz, Fordow, Khuzestan, Strait of Hormuz, Persian Gulf, Dimona, Camp Pendleton
Political scientist Robert Pape argues that U.S. airstrikes cannot eliminate Iran's deeply buried nuclear stockpile or suppress its asymmetric drone and missile networks. Consequently, Washington has fallen into an escalation trap that leaves only two realistic outcomes: committing to a protracted, high-casualty ground war or accepting Iran as an entrenched fourth global power center alongside the United States, China, and Russia.
The Limits of Bombing Nuclear Infrastructure (4:38)
Drawing on decades of conventional targeting analysis and military war games, Pape asserts that strategic air campaigns cannot halt Iranian nuclear capabilities. While precision strikes by B-2 stealth bombers deploying Massive Ordnance Penetrators can destroy centrifuge cascades and above-ground facilities across Saghand, Isfahan, Natanz, and Fordow, airstrikes merely bury enriched material under rubble rather than destroying it. Pape estimates Iran retains roughly 1,000 pounds of 60% enriched uranium and 10,000 pounds of 5% and 20% stockpiles, which remain recoverable from subterranean complexes.
Pape draws a historical parallel to the Vietnam War, where interdicting over 80% of supplies along the Ho Chi Minh Trail proved insufficient to halt guerrilla operations. Similarly, Iran's decentralized command structures and buried launch sites sustain asymmetric drone and missile operations despite thousands of coalition strikes. Pape argues that sustained aerial bombardment unifies ordinary citizens behind the state and accelerates incentives for a North Korean-style nuclear breakout, wherein Tehran would detonate two tests from a small 5-to-15 warhead arsenal to lock in permanent deterrence.
Four Escalation Stages and Ground War Barriers (14:58)
Pape models the conflict through a four-phase escalation trap: initial decapitation and strategic bombardment (Stage 1), horizontal retaliation closing the Strait of Hormuz (Stage 2), coastal ground force deployment (Stage 3), and an irreversible strategic junction (Stage 4). He calculates a 70% probability that the U.S. initiates a ground intervention. This momentum, in Pape's assessment, is driven not by presidential intention but by the political pressure to secure enriched uranium, clear maritime passages, and honor early troop casualties, which historically pushes administrations to double down rather than withdraw.
However, Pape identifies insurmountable logistical barriers to an invasion. Ground routes via Pakistan, Afghanistan, or Azerbaijan are unavailable due to diplomatic refusals and nuclear risks. An amphibious assault would require securing a 100-mile by 20-mile beachhead across the jagged, mountainous terrain of southern Iran. Such operations would leave landing craft, V-22 Ospreys, and troops vulnerable to localized drone barrages, especially after Iranian strikes damaged forward staging infrastructure in Kuwait, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia.
Chokepoint Coercion and Global Realignment (17:22)
Iran's selective blockade of the Strait of Hormuz—which carries 80% to 90% of Asia's imported oil—has transformed into a coercive tool that fractures Western-aligned coalitions. India has adopted a neutral-to-pro-Iranian stance to protect vital fuel supplies, Japan has resisted U.S. demands for direct military involvement, and the Persian Gulf security architecture has unraveled. Iraq has demanded the expulsion of U.S. forces, Oman has agreed to split maritime transit tolls with Tehran, and Saudi Arabia has turned to Pakistan to formalize bilateral defense guarantees.
Furthermore, Russian satellite intelligence has tracked American naval movements, forcing U.S. aircraft carriers to operate over 1,000 miles offshore. Pape notes that Iran controls 20% of global oil reserves, while Russia holds 11%. Tactical energy coordination between Moscow and Tehran to withhold Western supplies while servicing China exposes consumer economies to acute price shocks. In the U.S., higher pump prices and inflationary pressures elevate 10-year bond yields, raising the cost of servicing the $40 trillion national debt while straining transatlantic cooperation, leading Pape to describe NATO's operational cohesion as effectively broken.
Diplomatic Off-Ramps and Political Impediments (65:08)
A durable resolution requires binding structural agreements rather than temporary sanctions relief. Tehran's 10-point proposal outlines a framework including a permanent regional ceasefire, commercial tolls, the release of frozen assets, and formal recognition of enrichment rights. Pape suggests a viable U.S. diplomatic off-ramp would require conditioning all U.S. military and economic funding to Israel on halting unilateral strikes, paired with reciprocal nuclear transparency under the Non-Proliferation Treaty—requiring Israel to open its Dimona complex to IAEA monitoring while Iran caps enrichment at 3.5%.
However, Pape considers such compromises politically remote. He characterizes Israeli strikes as diplomatic spoilers that have repeatedly dismantled back-channel diplomacy, citing operations that killed Iranian negotiators, including former security official Ali Larijani during active talks on a 10-point framework. Domestically, both the U.S. and allied nations remain trapped in a legitimacy shock cycle, where ideological polarization punishes centrist de-escalation and pushes leadership toward continued military entanglement.
Pape concludes that the failure to seize early diplomatic compromises has permanently foreclosed any return to the pre-war status quo. The United States must now choose between committing to an exhausting regional ground war or managing the strategic realities of an autonomous Iranian power pole integrated with Russian and Chinese energy corridors.
[36:06] Donald Trump: If it were up to me, I would take the oil. I would keep it all for ourselves and make a lot of money because to the victor belong the spoils. But people in the country sort of say just win and come home.
[40:23] Donald Trump: A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again. I don't know what will happen, but it probably will.
[26:24] Robert Pape: There was a widespread, I think, false assumption across the foreign policy community... that Iran was basically collapsing on its own. This was always in my view underestimating the power of Iran.
[65:08] Robert Pape: President Trump could push through a bill through Congress that says if Israel attacks Iran... all funds for Israel, both military and economic, will be cut off through the end of Trump's presidency.
[81:28] Robert Pape: NATO is for all practical purposes dead. We're just writing its obituary.
Original transcript
[0:00] Iran has figured out that we can't beat
[0:03] them. We're not weakening Iran. We have
[0:05] strengthened Iran and we can't stop
[0:09] their drone attacks. And what you're
[0:11] seeing is far more chaotic
[0:13] decision-making is happening in the
[0:15] White House than is happening in the
[0:16] government of Iran and it's evidence
[0:18] Trump is losing power. [music] So when I
[0:21] look through the response to the last
[0:22] conversation, the audience had lots of
[0:24] different types of questions. Like
[0:25] there's 90 odd million people stuck
[0:26] right in the heart of this that often
[0:28] don't really have a voice. What do you
[0:29] think happens next for them and what is
[0:31] Israel's role in this?
[0:32] >> Well, Israel is playing two roles here
[0:34] that have not helped us correctly assess
[0:37] the situation [music] and we'll talk
[0:38] about that.
[0:39] >> And then what do you think happens with
[0:40] Europe?
[0:40] >> NATO is for all practical purposes dead
[0:45] and what happens next.
[0:46] >> So for 21 years, I laid out what a
[0:48] hypothetical bombing campaign of [music]
[0:51] Iran would look like. And when I was
[0:53] here last time, every single thing we
[0:55] talked about unfolded in the first
[0:57] several weeks of the war.
[0:59] >> So when you did this 21 years of
[1:00] modeling these attacks, how did America
[1:03] come out of this situation?
[1:04] >> So there was a consistent set of
[1:07] findings and America can bomb them,
[1:09] attack them. We could even threaten to
[1:11] murder all 92 million of them. But the
[1:14] bottom line is
[1:16] that is the real danger for us.
[1:23] This is super interesting to me. My team
[1:25] gave me this report to show me how many
[1:26] of you that watch this show subscribe.
[1:28] And some of you have told us according
[1:30] to this that you are unsubscribe from
[1:32] the channel randomly. So favor to ask
[1:34] all of you. Please could you check right
[1:35] now if you've hit the subscribe button.
[1:37] If you are a regular viewer of the show
[1:38] and you like what we do here, we're
[1:39] approaching quite a significant landmark
[1:41] on this show in terms of a subscriber
[1:43] number. So, if there was one simple free
[1:45] thing that you could do to help us, my
[1:47] team, everyone here, to keep this show
[1:49] free, to keep it improving year over
[1:51] year and week over week, it is just to
[1:53] hit that subscribe button and to double
[1:54] check if you've hit it. Only thing I'll
[1:55] ever ask of you, do we have a deal? If
[1:58] you do it, I'll tell you what I'll do.
[1:59] I'll make sure every single week, every
[2:02] single month, we fight harder and harder
[2:03] and harder and harder to bring you the
[2:04] guests and conversations that you want
[2:05] to hear. I've stayed true to that
[2:07] promise since the very beginning of the
[2:08] D of Co, and I will not let you down.
[2:11] Please help us. Really appreciate it.
[2:13] Let's get on with the show.
[2:16] [music]
[2:22] Professor Robert Pabe, good to see you
[2:24] again.
[2:24] >> Great to see you again, Stephen.
[2:26] >> It's been 4 weeks since we sat down and
[2:28] talked about everything that was
[2:29] happening in the war and it's all moved
[2:31] at light speed. You made some
[2:33] predictions then. Many of them have come
[2:35] true already and many of them still
[2:37] unfolding. But I wanted to get you back
[2:38] to talk about what the hell is going on.
[2:41] And I think that's kind of how I started
[2:43] last conversation. But there's so much
[2:47] that's being said and I get the sense
[2:49] that there's a truth that sits
[2:51] underneath there somewhere because when
[2:53] you look at what the Iranians are
[2:54] saying, when you look at what the
[2:55] Israelis are saying, when you look at
[2:56] what Trump and America are saying, and
[2:57] then you look at reality, at some level,
[3:00] I feel like we're not being told the
[3:01] truth. My first question to you,
[3:03] professor, is who are you and who are
[3:06] you to speak on this subject matter?
[3:08] >> I am a professor at the University of
[3:10] Chicago. I have been there for 26 years
[3:13] almost 27 years and before that I was a
[3:16] professor who taught for the US Air
[3:18] Force. I taught conventional targeting
[3:21] and I thought I was going to go into the
[3:22] foreign service. I wanted to understand
[3:25] how we lost the Vietnam War and this
[3:28] became the origins of bombing to win
[3:30] >> which is your book I have here in front
[3:31] of me.
[3:32] >> That's bombing to win in 1985. I've just
[3:34] finished all my classes and I have to
[3:36] pick a topic for my PhD. I wanted to
[3:39] find the book that laid out all the air
[3:41] campaigns and that explained why Vietnam
[3:44] was a loser. Where did that L come from?
[3:47] When you say air campaigns, for someone
[3:49] that knows nothing about military
[3:50] conflict, what do you mean by air
[3:52] campaigns?
[3:52] >> What I mean with an air campaign is when
[3:55] you have military aircraft who were not
[3:58] just doing a single raid bombing one
[4:00] target one day, but doing a campaign
[4:04] over days, weeks, months. in the case of
[4:07] Vietnam over years.
[4:09] >> And you wanted to figure out why
[4:12] countries that do these military
[4:13] campaigns, which is pretty much what's
[4:15] going on now in the Middle East, why
[4:17] they don't tend to win.
[4:19] >> Why they don't win when they're so
[4:21] strong? Why is it that when a strong
[4:25] power really gets its act together, it's
[4:28] not careless, it's really thinking hard,
[4:31] it then applies this force, a campaign
[4:35] overtime and comes out a loser.
[4:38] >> And you modeled for 20 years a war with
[4:40] Iran versus the United States.
[4:42] >> That's exactly right. I imagined uh in
[4:46] class for 90 minutes I laid out what a
[4:49] hypothetical bombing campaign of Iran
[4:52] would look like starting with the
[4:54] bombing of its nuclear enrichment sites.
[4:57] There's multiple sites. There's uh Ford
[5:00] which is an industrial enrichment where
[5:02] there are centerfuges. There's Natans
[5:05] also centuges. There's Esphon where you
[5:08] have gasification of the ore so you can
[5:10] make the centurfuges more efficient. So,
[5:13] it's not just one target. There's a
[5:15] whole target set, a complex of targets.
[5:18] And so, what I would do is I would lay
[5:20] out here are the aircraft that could be
[5:22] used. Uh, here are the likely results at
[5:25] a tactical level.
[5:28] Ah, yes, just for context. So, we're
[5:30] looking at a map of Iran and we're
[5:32] looking at the Persian Gulf. And um Iran
[5:35] of course is to the east of the of the
[5:38] Persian Gulf and Thran is up to the
[5:40] north middle. Right in the middle are a
[5:43] whole series of these nuclear sites. You
[5:46] have Sagad which is where the uranium
[5:49] ore actually comes from. They don't have
[5:51] to bring in ore. They have plenty of
[5:53] ore, but the ore has to be distilled so
[5:56] that you can get the tiny bits of
[5:57] uranium 235 you need for uh enriching
[6:01] the uranium for either nuclear reactors
[6:04] or bombgrade uranium. That's first none
[6:07] at esphon to gasify the ore so that when
[6:11] it spins in the centerfuge uh facilities
[6:15] at Natans and Ford, you can get the
[6:19] purity of the uranium 235. That's what
[6:22] we're talking about here when we say
[6:23] it's enriched.
[6:24] >> So when you did this 21 years of
[6:26] modeling these attacks, how did the
[6:28] model show
[6:31] America came out of this situation?
[6:33] >> There was a consistent set of findings
[6:36] you just couldn't ignore, Stephen, which
[6:40] is our bombers would always be able to
[6:43] destroy the target, the industrial
[6:46] facility that was enriching the uranium.
[6:49] The problem always was, no matter uh
[6:52] which year we did this, you wouldn't be
[6:55] able to destroy the enriched material,
[6:58] the actual gold. So, if you're panning
[7:01] for gold, you see what I mean? And
[7:03] you've got the gold. Uh you can destroy
[7:05] the pan, you can even destroy the river,
[7:08] you can't get the gold. So, let me
[7:10] repeat that back to you in layman's
[7:12] terms, and you tell me if I'm correct.
[7:14] So they they could bomb these sites
[7:16] where they're making the enriched
[7:17] uranium, but it wouldn't destroy the
[7:19] enriched uranium. It would just put it
[7:21] underneath a bunch of rubble.
[7:22] >> That's right.
[7:23] >> So you can bomb it, but you're basically
[7:24] just kicking the can down the road
[7:26] because at some point they can go back
[7:27] and get it. It's undamaged. And then
[7:29] they can carry on their process.
[7:30] >> That's right. And and Stephen, they
[7:32] might even anticipate the bombs coming
[7:35] because they might get some indications,
[7:37] you know, we're building up and then
[7:39] disperse in advance. And the at the end
[7:41] of last year they did operation midnight
[7:43] hammer where they bombed the sides with
[7:46] these incredible
[7:47] >> exactly as we did in class. Literally I
[7:49] had just modeled it for the students
[7:51] three weeks before and almost exactly
[7:53] the platforms I mean on you know the B2s
[7:56] the MOAB I mean every single thing we
[7:58] talked about if unfolded just as we had
[8:01] modeled in class.
[8:02] >> So what is going on now? I want you to
[8:06] help me cut through all of this noise
[8:07] and all of this propaganda. What's going
[8:09] on now is uh we're not weakening Iran in
[8:12] a sense where Iran will be weaker a year
[8:16] from now, two years from now. We have
[8:18] strengthened Iran and we're
[8:21] strengthening Iran in multiple ways. So
[8:24] far, we've just been talking about bombs
[8:26] on target. My real specialty, Stephen,
[8:29] is the interaction of military action
[8:33] and politics. You're not just hitting an
[8:36] industrial target. people in the
[8:38] country, the population, the regime,
[8:41] they're reacting to that politically.
[8:44] And that reaction is tremendously
[8:47] important. And that's what I discovered
[8:49] in my work studying Vietnam in the
[8:51] 1980s. The why the bombing campaign was
[8:54] failing, the political reactions by the
[8:56] population
[8:58] often are overwhelming the tactical
[9:02] military effects. So you can hit the
[9:06] target, you can destroy the industrial
[9:08] facilities um and in fact you can
[9:12] energize the population to work even
[9:16] harder to overcome all that damage and
[9:20] sometimes they have tremendous
[9:22] geographic advantages. In Vietnam, there
[9:25] was an area called the Ho Chi Min Trail,
[9:28] which was a where the logistics where
[9:31] the ammo for the um Vietkong guerrilla
[9:34] fighters in the south were getting their
[9:36] ammo. And in the 1960s, we knocked out
[9:40] 80 plus% of the throughput of that
[9:43] pipeline, of that trail. You know what?
[9:46] It wasn't enough. And we ended up not
[9:49] being able to stop that little itty
[9:51] bitty bit of throughput that can't still
[9:53] could get through and incentivize even
[9:55] more to get it through because they knew
[9:58] we couldn't stop it. And that is what
[10:00] fueled the VC and ultimately uh the
[10:04] Vietkong the gorillas that were uh we
[10:06] were really up against in Vietnam. That
[10:08] is what ultimately bolstered their
[10:11] morale. They knew we couldn't beat them.
[10:15] Even though we whittleled them down by
[10:17] 80%, we couldn't get that last 15 or
[10:20] 20%. And that was what was energizing
[10:24] their morale.
[10:25] >> So, how does that apply to what's going
[10:26] on now? In simple terms, what's going
[10:28] on?
[10:29] >> Iran has figured out that uh we can't
[10:32] beat them. That's what's going on,
[10:34] Stephen. They are figuring out that we
[10:36] can't beat them. We can bomb them. We
[10:39] can um attack them. We could even
[10:41] threaten to murder all 92 million of
[10:44] them, which is the civilization threat
[10:46] by uh by President Trump. And the bottom
[10:48] line is that we can't get to that final
[10:53] 10 20% of um drones and missiles.
[10:57] >> Okay.
[10:58] >> Okay. That Iran has and it's probably
[11:01] bigger than that that we can't knock
[11:03] out. See, we're able to knock out
[11:06] anything that's above ground. that
[11:07] there's a launcher and it's above
[11:10] ground, we can see it. We can see it
[11:12] with satellites. We can see it with
[11:13] other sensors as well. That thing is
[11:16] going to be gone in a few days. And
[11:18] that's what the air campaign that you've
[11:19] watched for 40 days is doing. When
[11:21] Secretary Hegth or General Kaine talk
[11:24] about hitting 11 12,000 targets, these
[11:27] are targets, most of the almost all of
[11:29] them that are very clearly visible and
[11:32] above ground. This is true of the Navy
[11:34] ships as well. Well, guess what? The
[11:36] Iranians knew that was always going to
[11:38] be vulnerable. So what they've been
[11:40] doing is they have been not just deeply
[11:43] uh burying their industrial enrichment
[11:45] facilities, they've been deeply burying
[11:48] their arsenals of drones, deeply burying
[11:51] their arsenals of missiles. And so they
[11:54] are in a position where even though we
[11:58] are unleashing enormous amounts of air
[12:00] power against them and we are
[12:02] technically superior, we can't stop
[12:06] their drone attacks against the ships in
[12:10] the straight of Hormuz. They know it.
[12:13] They can use that to their advantage.
[12:15] And boy are they using it to their
[12:17] advantage enormously. Yesterday, the
[12:20] Secretary of War, Pete Hegsth, did a
[12:22] press conference, and one of the
[12:24] reporters said to him, "There's been a
[12:26] ceasefire announced, but it appears that
[12:29] Iran is still attacking neighboring
[12:31] countries." Hegth's response to the
[12:34] reporter was, "Iran would be wise to
[12:36] find a way to get their carrier pigeon
[12:40] to the troops out in remote locations to
[12:43] let them know not to shoot any longer.
[12:45] It can sometimes take time for
[12:47] ceasefires to take hold, which was
[12:49] really alarming to me because it
[12:51] suggests that there is actually not a
[12:53] centralized leadership structure in
[12:54] Iran. And actually, if there's not a
[12:55] centralized leadership structure, how
[12:57] does one negotiate a ceasefire if
[12:58] there's lots of different factions doing
[13:00] lots of different things? Now, is that
[13:02] true?
[13:02] >> I would say it's probably decentralized.
[13:04] I think he's probably right about that.
[13:05] >> I'm trying to figure out who in Iran is
[13:07] negotiating with America and why it
[13:09] doesn't seem to be the case that whoever
[13:11] is negotiating control the fact that
[13:12] people are still firing.
[13:13] >> Oh, I see. I see. Yeah. decentralization
[13:16] means chaotic and they can't actually
[13:18] make decisions. That's just not the
[13:21] case. The more you move up the chain of
[13:23] command, the more the leader can give
[13:27] pre-delegated orders. If X happens, do
[13:30] do Y. Those can hold for hours and days.
[13:34] Uh and that's true in every
[13:35] organization. That's why leaders can go
[13:37] on vacation uh for a week and come back
[13:41] and they're worried of course when they
[13:42] come back. But the bottom line is that
[13:45] the leaders are setting the strategic
[13:47] direction.
[13:48] >> Who is the leader?
[13:49] >> Oh, it's definitely the supreme leader,
[13:51] the son of the one we just killed. Oh,
[13:52] without a doubt. I think this idea that
[13:54] that he's not there, there's absolutely
[13:57] no evidence of that. Yes, it's
[13:59] decentralized in the sense it's hard to
[14:01] find them, to target them. But by the
[14:03] way, Stephen, I think the reason that
[14:05] we're trying to talk smack about the
[14:07] Supreme Leader, is he is he alive? Is he
[14:10] dead? is we're trying to goat him into
[14:12] revealing his location so we can kill
[14:14] him. But that's not working. So, and
[14:18] it's also not stopping Iran from putting
[14:20] out 10 points to Pakistan uh in the
[14:23] negotiations. It's not stopping Iran
[14:25] from having messages that go through
[14:28] Pakistan to um the White House.
[14:31] President Trump is then agreeing to the
[14:33] 10 points that are coming from Iran, you
[14:35] see. And then um later on, of course,
[14:37] President Trump is taking it back. But
[14:39] the bottom line is um what you're seeing
[14:41] in terms of chaotic decisionmaking
[14:44] far more chaotic decision-m is happening
[14:46] in the White House in the United States
[14:48] than it's happening in the government of
[14:50] Iran. They're rising power in the region
[14:54] as our power is is declining
[14:57] precipitously.
[14:58] >> What do you think happens next?
[15:00] >> We are at a fork in the road. When I was
[15:02] here last time, uh, I was walking you
[15:05] through the three stages of the
[15:07] escalation trap and you kept pushing me,
[15:10] tell me more, tell me more. Notice I I
[15:13] was a little bit reluctant to do that.
[15:15] Well, there is a stage four. For anyone
[15:17] that didn't hear that episode, could you
[15:19] give us a one sentence on stage one?
[15:20] >> And yes, stage one is America bombs,
[15:23] does leadership change bombing. We hit
[15:26] targets, kill leaders, but the regime
[15:29] actually evolves and is stronger than
[15:32] before. Uh stage two is that then
[15:34] stronger regime lashes back with
[15:37] horizontal escalation and takes the
[15:40] straight of horos at least initially
[15:42] takes the straight of horos. And then
[15:44] stage three is that's the ground option
[15:47] to start to take the straight of Hormuz
[15:49] back. And that's exactly what you saw
[15:52] play out in the first several weeks of
[15:54] the war. Stage three was about the
[15:56] Marines. The Marines hadn't even moved
[15:58] yet. And I'm telling you, the Marines
[16:00] are likely going to move. There's going
[16:02] to be movement to ground options in
[16:04] stage three uh here very rapidly in this
[16:07] war. At that point in time when we had
[16:09] our first discussion, you wanted to push
[16:11] for the future. I said, "No, we we need
[16:13] to wait." And the reason, Stephen, is
[16:14] because what you're not seeing with me
[16:16] is throwing random darts at the future.
[16:19] I'm doing risk assessment out about as
[16:21] far as you uh you can have stable
[16:24] predictions. And in war, that usually
[16:28] means 2 3 4 weeks. It doesn't mean we
[16:30] can say where we'll be a year from now.
[16:33] Here though, now that we're in 40 days,
[16:36] we're at a different point. We've
[16:38] clearly passed stage one. We're past
[16:40] stage two where they uh control the
[16:43] straight of form moves. We've bellied up
[16:45] to stage three, the ground operations.
[16:48] Now we're at a branch, a fork in the
[16:50] road. There's no way to go back to
[16:53] February 27, which is the pre-war period
[16:56] that many people would love to go back
[16:58] to. I too would like to go back to
[17:00] February 27th. That's not the future.
[17:04] What happens at this point on in the
[17:06] modeling and the is a branch either we
[17:11] go through with the ground war or Iran
[17:14] becomes an emerging not right away
[17:18] fourth center of world power. That is
[17:22] the branch that we face now. This branch
[17:26] is becoming more evident hour by hour.
[17:31] >> Explain that to me. So everybody now
[17:34] knows that Iran is uh controlling the
[17:38] straight of form and controlling
[17:39] shipping. That's selective blockade. I'm
[17:41] taking it a step further. That's not
[17:43] just about insurance rates of shipping.
[17:47] That's generating political power for
[17:50] Iran to get other states to cowtow
[17:54] [clears throat]
[17:54] to it to accept its objectives.
[17:58] What are those objectives? So let's talk
[18:00] about how this affects say Asia. So I'm
[18:04] going to get into global and then we'll
[18:05] come back to the Gulf itself. So the
[18:08] shipping that goes through the straight
[18:10] of H for H for H for H for H for H for H
[18:10] for H for H for H for Hormuz 80 to 90%
[18:12] of it is going right to Asia. The power
[18:14] that comes with that is with say India.
[18:17] India is not siding with the United
[18:20] States. India is at best neutral and
[18:23] maybe even a little bit more uh uh
[18:25] edging toward Iran. Well, before this,
[18:28] you could imagine that the United States
[18:30] and India would be much more cooperative
[18:33] here. That's not what's occurring. And
[18:35] why is that? It's because that oil
[18:38] that's going into Asia for India, this
[18:41] isn't just about the price of oil. This
[18:44] is about the supply of oil. When you
[18:47] lose literally all the supply, that is a
[18:52] greater cost than simply having to pay
[18:55] more for it. So India is in a much more
[18:58] difficult situation than Europe and the
[19:01] United States right now. Now look at
[19:03] Japan. Notice in the Oval Office,
[19:05] President Trump brought in uh the leader
[19:07] of the head of state of Japan and
[19:09] basically browbeat her and she still
[19:12] wouldn't budge. She still would not
[19:14] cowtow to Trump here uh and actually
[19:17] provide military support. What did she
[19:20] do? She's distancing herself from the
[19:22] United States. That's exactly what Iran
[19:26] wants out of America's Asian allies.
[19:29] This is geopolitical power and it's
[19:33] rooted in the control of Hormos. It's
[19:36] rooted in the selective military
[19:38] blockade. That selective military
[19:41] blockade produces vulnerability to
[19:44] India, vulnerability to Japan. And that
[19:49] is what the we call it the leverage. But
[19:51] the leverage is is not enough of a I
[19:54] think a full description. This is
[19:56] reorienting America's allies in Asia.
[20:00] Now, let's talk about what's happening
[20:01] in the Persian Gulf itself. Before the
[20:04] war, February 27, there was essentially
[20:07] a balance in the Persian Gulf where you
[20:10] had Iran on one side and you had this
[20:14] growing collection of Gulf states that
[20:17] were part of an emerging web. They're
[20:19] cooperating with Israel more and more on
[20:22] different um on different issues.
[20:24] President Trump is bringing in his AI
[20:27] billionaires to sort of grease this
[20:30] cooperation so that there's some
[20:32] material benefits. Well, that was
[20:34] effectively a counterbalancing
[20:36] coalition to Iran. Now, what's happened
[20:39] after 40 days is this is breaking down
[20:44] fast. America has military bases in
[20:47] Qatar, has military bases in uh
[20:49] Baharrain, has military bases in Kuwait.
[20:52] I'm just picking a few. Had military
[20:53] base of course in in Saudi Arabia. These
[20:56] military bases, they are producing
[20:59] little leverage here against Iran. In
[21:03] fact, our aircraft carriers are not
[21:06] anywhere near the Persian Gulf. They're
[21:09] a thousand miles away. These bases are
[21:13] big fat targets.
[21:15] They are above ground. Iran's precision
[21:18] drones can hit things above ground and
[21:20] they're doing it on those bases. That
[21:22] was their immediate retaliation. What is
[21:24] what's happening number one is the
[21:26] anchor the military anchor of this
[21:29] coalition started to disappear within
[21:31] hours of the bombing on February 28th.
[21:33] >> What do you mean by the military anchor?
[21:35] In order to have this coalition work,
[21:38] >> which is like Saudi Arabia, Qatar,
[21:40] >> Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the UAE, Kuwait,
[21:44] somebody has to be the LA the the
[21:47] guaranter of protection. It's like the
[21:49] Ma boss who protects everybody else.
[21:53] That is the United States. And that is
[21:56] what our military bases were supposed to
[21:59] do. They become the military anchor that
[22:03] allows then for there to become
[22:06] political counterbalancing against Iran.
[22:09] That was the Kushner idea in the first
[22:12] Trump administration. And it seemed to
[22:15] work and it seemed to uh bring some of
[22:18] these states together who wouldn't
[22:20] necessarily think you would cooperate
[22:22] with with Israel. Well, this is now this
[22:24] war is torpedoing this whole idea.
[22:28] President [snorts] Trump is not even
[22:30] willing to do much to actually defend
[22:32] our own bases, much less Saudi Arabia,
[22:35] much less UAE. What he's telling them is
[22:37] you go out there and start defending
[22:38] yourself. Well, that's not a guaranter
[22:40] of security. The next thing that's
[22:43] happening is the three these states
[22:45] which were operating more in concert are
[22:47] starting to break down and operate in
[22:50] three pools. You have Iraq which is now
[22:54] complaining more and more about milit US
[22:57] military presence there. They're
[22:58] distancing themselves from American
[23:01] military presence. And remember we
[23:02] installed that government in 2003. So
[23:06] they're not siding with us. They're
[23:07] distancing themselves uh from us. Then
[23:10] you have Qatar and you have uh Oman. Uh
[23:14] what Iran's doing is saying, you know,
[23:16] we should share some of these uh t these
[23:19] tolls with Oman. They're moving Oman
[23:23] into their camp. So you have Iraq moving
[23:26] closer to Iran. Oman moving closer.
[23:29] Qatar is trying to keep its head down as
[23:31] much as possible. They're not they're
[23:33] not trying to get their nose in this
[23:35] anymore. And who is what's the third
[23:37] pool? The third pool is Saudi Arabia, uh
[23:40] the UAE. These are the states that are
[23:43] most under threat. And what has Saudi
[23:46] Arabia done just in the last week?
[23:48] They've gone to cooperate more with
[23:50] Pakistan. They have a security deal with
[23:53] Pakistan. What does that mean? They're
[23:56] looking to Pakistan as much or maybe
[23:59] even more than the United States as
[24:02] their guaranter of security. So all of
[24:04] this coalition, it's not all siding with
[24:07] Iran right now. It's fragmenting. And
[24:11] that's weakening America.
[24:14] >> So what happens next?
[24:15] >> You know, as President Trump wants to
[24:16] do, call the war off. That's not going
[24:19] to put us back to February 27. Iran has
[24:22] 20% of the world's oil. It's going to be
[24:24] able to have uh 75 billion hundred
[24:27] billion of of revenues here over the
[24:30] next year. And also those deeply buried
[24:33] caves and tunnels where they have their
[24:34] drones uh that can be used to fashion
[24:36] nuclear weapons. within a year Iran
[24:39] could have nuclear weapons and we can't
[24:40] stop it. So if we pull back you can
[24:44] start to see that Iran's power is going
[24:47] to grow internally. Uh but then even
[24:50] more than that its relationships with
[24:53] Russia, its relationships with China
[24:56] will start to move closer together
[24:58] against America.
[25:01] And you see this happening from the
[25:03] moment almost the first several days of
[25:05] the war. Russia almost immediately
[25:08] offered Iran military targeting
[25:10] information to target US ships. That's
[25:13] why our our carriers are so far away.
[25:15] [laughter] It's because Russia has the
[25:17] ability to see those carriers, tell Iran
[25:20] where they are, and if those carriers
[25:22] get too close, man, they're going to be
[25:24] smashed. But it can get worse than that,
[25:26] Stephen, because as this power grows
[25:30] over time, as these incentives for uh
[25:33] China, Russia, and Iran to cooperate
[25:36] against America grow over time, Iran has
[25:40] control now of 20% of the world's oil.
[25:42] Russia has 11% of the world's oil. That
[25:46] means there can be either formal or
[25:50] tacic cooperation to take 30% of the
[25:53] world's oil off the global market. Let
[25:57] China soak up a whole lot of that. And
[26:01] that can truly produce mega economic
[26:07] consequences for America, for Europe.
[26:10] And why are they not going to do that?
[26:13] Because they're nice guys. Is that
[26:15] really what we're counting on now?
[26:16] Russia, Putin is not going to want to
[26:19] wreck America's economy because he has a
[26:22] a a bond with Donald Trump. What do you
[26:25] think the fundamental
[26:28] flawed assumption was at the start of
[26:29] all of this from the United States?
[26:30] >> That Iran was was was weak on its last
[26:33] legs and all we had to do was uh push it
[26:36] over the edge of a cliff and it was just
[26:38] a matter of just one more push
[26:40] >> and then the people would rise up and
[26:41] >> yeah, we have painted a picture of Iran
[26:45] um as beaten down as the reason it's not
[26:49] retaliating very much is they have no
[26:51] capability to retaliate. And I tell you
[26:54] tell you this um Stephen, so I' I've
[26:56] been in big debates here at uh the
[26:58] Council on Foreign Relations in New York
[27:00] where I've literally been the only
[27:02] person on the stage to stand up and warn
[27:05] that this picture of Iran is is is way
[27:07] too negative. There was a a widpread, I
[27:11] think, false assumption across the
[27:13] foreign policy community. no one willing
[27:16] to really stand up and challenge it very
[27:18] strongly that Iran was basically
[27:22] collapsing on its own. This was always
[27:26] in my view underestimating the power of
[27:29] Iran. And you say, well, where does my
[27:31] view come from? It came from the
[27:34] modeling of the bombing. What would
[27:36] happen as this went forward? And none of
[27:39] these elements of Iran's power were ever
[27:41] knocked out. When I look through the
[27:44] response to the last conversation, the
[27:46] the audience had lots of different types
[27:48] of questions. So, I'm going to try and
[27:50] represent some of the audience's
[27:51] questions to try and bring them into the
[27:53] conversation. One of them was about
[27:54] Israel's role in this. And I thought it
[27:56] might actually link to what you just
[27:57] said about where we get our intelligence
[28:00] from that informs the decisions we make
[28:02] because there are some people that are
[28:03] skeptical that the intelligence is
[28:05] coming from Israel and that therefore
[28:06] that it might not be as accurate as if
[28:08] it was coming from our own sources. I
[28:09] would say Israel has been playing the
[28:11] role of diplomatic spoiler. So in the
[28:14] 12-day war when last June when the US
[28:17] bomb fore we've been focusing on that
[28:19] that happened in the middle of the
[28:20] 12-day war. Donald Trump said he was
[28:22] going to negotiate with a certain set of
[28:24] Iranians and literally the next day uh
[28:29] 36 hours later Israeli air power killed
[28:34] them
[28:36] killed the negotiators. we were set to
[28:39] negotiate with. This was totally
[28:42] spoiling the idea of a diplomatic
[28:44] outcome because they were dead. So, you
[28:47] couldn't have a negotiated outcome. Now
[28:50] if we come to February 28, who dropped
[28:54] the first bombs that killed the supreme
[28:56] leader that uh killed those other
[28:58] several dozen doves that he was meeting
[29:00] with?
[29:01] >> Donald Trump um as as many of our
[29:04] governments have um describes that you
[29:08] had a balance of hawks and doves inside
[29:11] of the Iranian government. And uh the
[29:14] idea here is with leadership
[29:16] decapitation is well if you kill uh the
[29:19] hawks then the doves will just be the
[29:21] ones left. We did the opposite or more
[29:24] correctly the bombing was started by
[29:26] Israel on February 28. we came in
[29:29] behind. And in fact, Secretary Rubio,
[29:32] our Secretary of State, explained a few
[29:34] days later that um uh Israel basically
[29:38] backed us in a corner because Israel
[29:40] said, "We're going to kill that Supreme
[29:42] Leader whether you like it or not, and
[29:45] that is going to maybe lead to attacks
[29:47] on your military bases, so you better
[29:50] prepare an air campaign to come behind."
[29:52] and Rubio said that's what happened
[29:54] because again just before the 20
[29:57] February 28 bombing we're negotiating
[29:59] with Iran and we're killing the very
[30:03] people that Trump was saying are the
[30:05] ones we wanted to negotiate with the
[30:08] ones who were going to help move Iran
[30:10] closer to the American position that was
[30:13] Israel as spoiler
[30:14] >> so there's this individual called Ali
[30:17] Laurajani the former secretary of Iran's
[30:19] supreme national security council and he
[30:21] was killed killed in an Israeli le air
[30:23] strike on March 17th, 2026. Trump
[30:26] claimed on True Social that I can't say
[30:29] his name, but I'm going to try.
[30:30] >> Ljani
[30:32] >> was the primary contact for a 10-point
[30:34] peace proposal that Trump had called
[30:36] workable and a basis for a real
[30:37] agreement. Trump suggested that the
[30:39] strike was poorly timed when Israel
[30:41] killed him and complained that Israel's
[30:43] lone wolf actions were complicating his
[30:46] ability to wrap up the war on his own
[30:48] terms. He famously posted that he was
[30:51] inches away from the biggest deal in
[30:53] history before the assassination reset
[30:56] the clock.
[30:57] >> So this would be the third instance then
[30:59] of Israel as diplomatic spoiler. What
[31:02] you're hearing from Trump's own mouth is
[31:04] he thought he uh was close to a working
[31:08] relationship maybe not a full deal with
[31:10] a certain set of individuals in this
[31:12] case Ojani. And what did Israel do when
[31:16] they found out about it? They killed
[31:17] that person. And yes, I I understand
[31:20] there's issues of intelligence, but you
[31:22] know, most of us don't have a clearance,
[31:24] so we can't talk about that. So, let's
[31:25] talk about the actual public description
[31:28] that we've heard from. Prime Minister
[31:30] Netanyahu over the last several years.
[31:32] The public description is that Iran is
[31:35] simply a paper tiger. That that um
[31:38] Israel has been dominating Iran,
[31:41] knocking out its air defenses, launching
[31:43] other attacks here in 2024.
[31:46] The rhetoric that's coming publicly has
[31:50] been painting the picture of Iran as a
[31:54] weak and and not just weaken but
[31:57] basically It's down on its last
[31:59] legs and all you need is a final
[32:02] coupigra. That has been Prime Minister
[32:04] Netanyahu's language.
[32:06] >> The other thing that the audience wanted
[32:07] to know is they wanted more specifics on
[32:10] stage three.
[32:11] >> Yes. Yes.
[32:12] >> And is stage three happening? We talked
[32:14] last time about ground troops. It's very
[32:16] important and I I've been saying this on
[32:18] the Substack and my and my ex to follow
[32:20] the key indicators here of deployment,
[32:23] not follow just what's occurring with
[32:25] the rhetoric of our leaders. Um, and the
[32:28] key thing to to know is that if you're
[32:31] going to um weaken Iran with ground
[32:35] power, there's only a few ways you can
[32:38] get that ground power into Iran. You
[32:42] could try to come through Pakistan, but
[32:44] Pakistan actually is Iran's ally who
[32:47] gave Iran the 600 centerfuges in 2002 to
[32:51] start developing its enrichment program.
[32:53] So, and Pakistan has 100 nuclear weapons
[32:56] or so. So, I don't think we're doing
[32:57] this uh here. You could try to do it
[32:59] with Afghanistan, but notice you'd have
[33:01] to get all the troops in Afghanistan.
[33:02] That's not working. You could also go to
[33:04] Azerbaijan. That's up there. Notice on
[33:06] the first day of the war there was a
[33:08] missile that hit Azerbaijan and people
[33:11] on CNN there weren't what what's going
[33:12] on here. It's just a random in fact I
[33:15] think uh our our our public statement on
[33:18] that day was this shows how how
[33:20] incoherent uh the Iran leadership is.
[33:23] That's not what I saw. What I saw is
[33:25] they understood that Azeraijan was
[33:28] always thought to be a staging area to
[33:30] go to Thran. And so if you're going to
[33:33] take Thrron with a division or two, you
[33:37] would really want to have your forces
[33:39] start here from Azerbaijan. Now, so far
[33:42] though, that's not happening. Azarbaian
[33:44] said, "Nope, don't count on us. We're
[33:46] not getting in the middle of this." Now,
[33:48] we're back to why would you start to
[33:50] think about Marines uh to take territory
[33:55] here on the coasts of Iran? So inside
[33:59] Iran where the straight of Hermuz is
[34:01] >> that's the that's the beginning of it.
[34:03] You would start there around inside Iran
[34:06] around the straight of Hormuz as a beach
[34:08] head.
[34:09] >> There's some photos which I'll throw up
[34:10] on the screen showing what the terrain
[34:12] around the straight of Hormuz looks like
[34:13] and it's it is quite shocking.
[34:15] >> It's it's a moonscape and what you can
[34:17] see is that this is the most difficult
[34:21] terrain for amphibious operations to
[34:23] operate in.
[34:24] >> What is amphibious operations? uh where
[34:26] you have troops that are on ships on
[34:28] landing vessels. Uh just like Saving
[34:30] Private Ryan, they go from the water
[34:33] onto the beach. You would also then have
[34:35] um some air power with some Osprey, but
[34:38] they're doing essentially the same
[34:39] thing. They're coming onto the same
[34:40] beach.
[34:41] >> What's an Osprey?
[34:42] >> Uh an Osprey is a specialmade plane that
[34:45] we've made for the Marines. And it's a
[34:48] plane that is a hybrid between a
[34:50] helicopter and a jet. And so the
[34:52] propellers on the plane are able to
[34:55] rotate. So they can fly as a propeller
[34:58] plane um here or a uh a cheapman's jet
[35:02] or they can actually um like a
[35:04] helicopter. And that's really great if
[35:06] you want to fly fast to a beach and then
[35:08] go straight down.
[35:09] >> So are you saying that you think they
[35:12] will put boots on the ground in the
[35:14] straight of Hammoose?
[35:15] >> Let me just fill out this a little bit
[35:17] more. Okay. So the other big thing that
[35:20] that the folks need to know is where is
[35:23] the oil? Iran's oil and here I'm drawing
[35:27] a circle here. Iran's oil is all in this
[35:31] uh southwestern part almost all of it is
[35:34] in the southwestern part of um of Iran.
[35:38] Kuwait's oil is all right here. Iraq has
[35:42] couple puddles of oil. It has a big
[35:45] puddle of oil right here. Saudis oil is
[35:48] all right here. You might uh try to land
[35:52] forces of division here in Iraq, in
[35:55] Kuwait, uh in Saudi Arabia and come
[35:57] around this way. This is why knocking
[36:00] out these bases as truly platforms here.
[36:04] This was why they I think they start on
[36:06] day one. This wasn't just to hit the
[36:08] bases in retaliation. They are weakening
[36:11] our ability. They're taking away
[36:13] different axes of attack. And this is
[36:16] why in the uh Substack I published three
[36:19] days before the war, I'm specifically
[36:22] talking about Marines moving in limited
[36:25] areas to take coastal regions as beach
[36:27] heads.
[36:28] >> What's a beach head?
[36:29] >> A beach head is where you have a a
[36:31] foothold, a tow hold, where you're going
[36:33] to funnel in more forces after that. And
[36:37] you are going to very likely want to
[36:39] control an area that's at least about
[36:42] 100 miles by 20 m in order to get behind
[36:46] all this uh this this mountainous
[36:48] terrain. And what does that look like?
[36:51] The oil fields. Stephen, this is what
[36:53] President Trump is almost surely talking
[36:55] about when he says he's going to take
[36:58] Iran's oil fields. What he is probably
[37:01] um being given options for is how you
[37:05] could start in a limited way with an
[37:08] amphibious, submarine, a limited assault
[37:11] to take a a small set of stretch of
[37:13] beaches and then you would want to
[37:16] follow and take if you're going to start
[37:17] this at all, you're almost surely going
[37:19] to want to just start to take the oil
[37:21] fields. And President Trump's been
[37:23] talking that way for years really. He
[37:26] also said in a recent interview that if
[37:28] it was up to him, he would go and take
[37:31] the oil. But he said the American people
[37:33] weren't like that. And he said it once
[37:35] and then he said it again and then he
[37:36] said it again. This was during a press
[37:38] conference on Monday, April 6th. He
[37:40] said, "If it were up to me, I would take
[37:42] the oil. I would keep it all for
[37:44] ourselves and make a lot of money
[37:45] because to the victor belong the spoils.
[37:48] But people in the country sort of say
[37:51] just win and come home." And I'm okay
[37:53] with that too. And he said that from the
[37:55] interview that I was watching twice,
[37:56] which made me think that he really wants
[37:57] to go take the oil. But if he does put
[38:00] troops on the ground in Iran,
[38:02] >> it just creates a clearer target for
[38:05] those drone strikes. It creates a
[38:08] clearer target for those drone strikes.
[38:10] But what people maybe are not fully
[38:12] understanding is the political
[38:14] consequences of the deaths of those
[38:17] Marines. Yeah,
[38:18] >> most people are assuming if those
[38:20] Marines go in and die, this will make
[38:23] America run away. It'll be like a punch
[38:25] in the face and we'll run away. That's
[38:28] not likely to be what happens. Again,
[38:30] this is my area of what happens when you
[38:32] have military force in politics come
[38:36] together.
[38:37] You need to understand that when those
[38:40] Marines go in and say hundreds die or or
[38:43] so over time, there will be 36% of the
[38:46] public that will have supported that.
[38:49] That 36% is going to see those Marines
[38:53] died for them. That 36% is likely to
[38:58] double down in their commitment because
[39:00] otherwise they died for nothing. Now,
[39:04] the 50% 59% excuse me, who's opposed to
[39:08] the war, they'll still be pretty hotly
[39:10] opposed to the war. I'm not saying
[39:11] they're going to move toward the war,
[39:13] Stephen. What I'm saying is you have a
[39:15] Republican president supported by 36% of
[39:19] of the Republicans here, almost no
[39:21] Democrats. If you start to actually have
[39:24] deaths here, this is going to lead to a
[39:28] bigger version of we can't withdraw now.
[39:32] we must quote finish the job otherwise
[39:35] they will have died for nothing. This is
[39:38] what happened in Vietnam. In Vietnam in
[39:41] the early stages you will see that it's
[39:43] sticky up the support for the war. It
[39:46] takes a while to go down. And why does
[39:49] it take so long to go down? It's because
[39:52] of exactly what I'm saying. The politics
[39:55] of this of the death of our troops in
[39:58] battle does not lead to we cut and run.
[40:02] It leads to we double down for the honor
[40:05] of the troops. That's why I'm saying we
[40:08] start this even in a small way. Even
[40:11] car. It doesn't really matter where you
[40:13] start it, but once you have those ground
[40:16] forces go in and they start to take
[40:18] casualties, you're probably in for the
[40:20] sixmonth ground war minimum. It looks
[40:24] like they're going to try and avoid that
[40:25] outcome. It looks like they're doing
[40:27] everything in their power, America, to
[40:29] avoid a scenario where they have to send
[40:31] troops in. The the threats that have
[40:33] come out of Donald Trump's truth social
[40:35] posts really talk about I mean, look,
[40:38] I'll read this one here. It says, "A
[40:39] whole civilization will die tonight,
[40:40] never to be brought back again. I don't
[40:42] know what will happen, but it probably
[40:43] will." Um, and all a lot of the tweets
[40:46] are
[40:46] >> Can we just focus on that one, the
[40:48] civilization, because it's much that was
[40:51] a few days ago. A lot of people are
[40:53] already trying to move past it. This has
[40:56] much more importance and endurance than
[41:00] I think we're understanding now. So,
[41:03] first of all, that statement that
[41:05] President Trump said that he will end an
[41:08] entire civilization in one night, uh, we
[41:12] need to understand this is not a drunk
[41:13] at a bar. This is the president of the
[41:16] United States who has at his disposal
[41:19] thousands of nuclear weapons that could
[41:22] in fact achieve that. And let me just
[41:24] explain how hair triggered these are. We
[41:27] have 500 Minutemen 3 missiles. They have
[41:31] warheads between 100 kilotons and 300
[41:34] kilotons which is multiple times more
[41:37] powerful than Hiroshima Nagasaki each
[41:39] one of them. and they can be retargeted
[41:43] within 45 minutes. That's what it takes
[41:45] to retarget the gyroscopes. And then it
[41:48] takes about 25 minutes for them to hit
[41:51] Iran. So when the president of the
[41:53] United States is saying this, he's only
[41:55] one of a handful of people in the world
[41:57] who could pull who could actually make
[41:59] this credible. Second point is that is
[42:02] the most declared statement of genocidal
[42:05] intent we've ever seen from an American
[42:08] president. No American president has
[42:11] threatened to end a civilization before,
[42:14] which is at the heart of the genocide
[42:16] treaties in 1948. The intent to commit
[42:19] genocide. Harry Truman, people will say,
[42:22] "What do you mean? We had Harry Truman.
[42:23] We bomb we we bombed Hiroshima
[42:25] Nagasaki." Go and look at his statement
[42:27] on Hiroshima. Harry Truman. He did not
[42:29] say he was ending Japan as a
[42:32] civilization. He pulled back and said it
[42:34] was about to destroy Japan's military
[42:37] power. What President Trump has done by
[42:41] making those statements is he's
[42:43] persuading all 92 million Iranians that
[42:47] he is willing to kill them and he has
[42:50] the power to kill them. And
[42:52] [clears throat] yes, he pulled back from
[42:54] killing them on Tuesday. And yes, he may
[42:56] not have used nuclear weapons on
[42:59] Tuesday, but if any other leader had
[43:02] said that, if imagine Vladimir Putin
[43:05] stands up and says he's going to end
[43:08] American civilization tonight, he's got
[43:11] the weapons to be able to do that. Are
[43:14] we just going to sit back and say, "Oh,
[43:15] yeah, he didn't do it. He must not have
[43:17] meant it." No. That would mobilize
[43:20] enormous anger against Vladimir Putin in
[43:23] the United States, even among Democrats.
[43:26] And my point here, Stephen, is before uh
[43:29] this war started, we had a real
[43:31] pro-democracy movement in Iran. And on
[43:34] your show, I told you this was going to
[43:36] fade. This was one of the predictions I
[43:38] made to you said this is going to fade
[43:40] over time. You're going to see
[43:42] nationalism bonding the society and the
[43:45] regime closer together. President Trump
[43:48] is bonding them together like never
[43:50] before. If you're one of the
[43:52] pro-democracy
[43:54] individuals here, movement in Iran,
[43:56] where are you going to go for
[43:57] protection? Are you going to go to
[44:00] Donald Trump who's threatening to kill
[44:02] you with essentially nuclear weapons? Or
[44:05] are you going to go to your own
[44:06] government? This is going to hasten the
[44:10] support, increase the support for Iran
[44:12] developing nuclear weapons. the
[44:15] pro-democracy movement is now likely to
[44:18] support this.
[44:20] >> On that point, one of the questions and
[44:22] one of the points raised by the audience
[44:23] last time we had the conversation was
[44:25] really we didn't spend enough time
[44:26] talking about the 90 plus million people
[44:28] that live in Iran.
[44:29] >> Yeah.
[44:30] >> That are often many of them caught
[44:32] amongst all of this absolute chaos. And
[44:35] I I was looking at a bunch of messages
[44:37] from people that are living in Iran. Um
[44:40] I'll read some of them from ordinary
[44:41] citizens. Um, I'm not great at math, but
[44:44] where will the money, the resources, and
[44:46] the experts come from to build a country
[44:48] that ordinary people spent decades
[44:50] trying to build?
[44:51] >> From the This is a different person.
[44:52] From the beginning of the war until
[44:53] today, we have been bombarded. Not only
[44:56] are we not one step closer to freedom,
[44:58] from what I can see, we are miles away
[45:00] from it. From another person in Iran, a
[45:03] whole civilization will die tonight,
[45:05] never to be brought brought back again.
[45:07] This has deeply terrified me.
[45:09] [clears throat]
[45:10] It's it's it raises really the question
[45:12] a lot of this disc discourse doesn't
[45:14] speak much to 90 plus million people
[45:17] that are living there and that are
[45:19] having to exist under this terror. And
[45:20] like the best way that I could
[45:21] conceptualized it is I I I imagined if I
[45:23] had woken up one day and Vladimir Putin
[45:26] or some other leader around the world
[45:28] had said that they were potentially
[45:30] going to end the civilization that I
[45:32] live in, the country that I live in
[45:34] tonight, how would I be feeling? And if
[45:37] I was hearing bombs go off all the t
[45:39] time, how would I be feeling? Um, and if
[45:42] things were escalating when me and my
[45:44] family lived, how would I be feeling?
[45:46] And it is chilling to think about. It's
[45:51] chilling because this is now moving the
[45:55] needle inside of Iran to make the
[45:59] ordinary person on the street uh even
[46:02] the pro-democracy movement willing to
[46:05] tolerate Iran killing Americans
[46:08] because we're killing them and we're
[46:12] saying we're going to do it even worse
[46:13] and we're say even beyond that we're
[46:15] saying at the whim of a president who
[46:18] wakes up thinking Maybe this will help
[46:21] his save his presidency. He is willing
[46:24] to uh uh kill the entire civilization of
[46:28] a country because he thinks maybe this
[46:31] is going to be his off his golden uh
[46:33] offramp to get out of this problem for
[46:36] himself personally. And by the way, we
[46:38] we in our country when al-Qaeda attacked
[46:42] us on 9/11, there was tremendous fear.
[46:45] There would be more attacks by al-Qaeda
[46:48] in the weeks afterwards. There was just
[46:50] much fear. And I've done the studies of
[46:53] the American public opinion on this.
[46:55] It's the fear of Muslims killing
[46:58] Americans that's driving the support for
[47:02] the Iraq war. If this is happening to
[47:04] Americans, you can only imagine what's
[47:07] going to happen to the ordinary
[47:09] Iranians. And they've been subjected not
[47:10] to just one attack, 40 days of attack.
[47:14] >> So for the average Iranian person that
[47:18] opposes the regime in Iran and has been
[47:20] living under terror and oppression for
[47:24] many, many decades.
[47:27] What do you think happens next for them?
[47:29] They're they're the group of people that
[47:30] I that I think about and care about the
[47:32] most in this equation. We spend a lot of
[47:33] time talking about US power and we talk
[47:35] about lots of these other regional
[47:36] partners, but there's like 90 odd
[47:38] million people stuck right in the heart
[47:39] of this that often don't really have a
[47:40] voice.
[47:41] >> Their life expectancy will go down in
[47:43] measurable years. So if we had taken out
[47:45] the electric power, so this is something
[47:47] I know quite a bit about in the 1990s. I
[47:50] was uh working for the Air Force
[47:52] literally under uh my boss was John
[47:55] Warden, the leader of the leadership
[47:56] decapitation school. And he brought in,
[47:58] not classified at all, he brought in
[48:01] engineers of electric power plants to
[48:03] teach us how to take down electric
[48:06] power. The electric power grid in Iran,
[48:09] it looks like a network. And that
[48:11] network has big nodes. That's what
[48:14] President Trump said he would he's going
[48:16] to take off the big power plants that
[48:18] produce uh in the 10 20 30 uh megawws uh
[48:22] range. And they're probably about 130
[48:25] nodes altogether. But if you just take
[48:27] out the top 10, you're probably going to
[48:29] take down the entire network because the
[48:33] top 10 nodes are distributed in the
[48:35] right places to support different uh
[48:38] electric power in different regions of
[48:40] the country. You have two choices in a
[48:42] target in targeting sense. You can take
[48:44] out the transformers in which case you
[48:46] knock it out for a week or two and it is
[48:49] inconvenient. And yes, there will be
[48:51] some people who will die. There were
[48:52] human chains around those targets by the
[48:54] way. those people would die. But if you
[48:56] took out the hulls, the generating
[48:59] hulls,
[48:59] >> what's that?
[49:00] >> That's the giant turbines that are huge.
[49:04] There is no backup to those. Each of
[49:06] those is specially made. You will be
[49:10] knocking the out that generation for 6
[49:12] months, 12 months, maybe 18 months at a
[49:15] minimum. What that's going to do is stop
[49:18] all dialysis in the country. that's
[49:21] going to stop all um the uh heart
[49:24] surgeries and other life-saving
[49:26] surgeries that are going to happen in
[49:27] the country. It's going to take out all
[49:29] the food refrigeration in the country.
[49:32] So, you know, when power goes out in
[49:35] your house and goes out for 10 minutes
[49:38] or or or an hour, it's not so bad. You
[49:40] don't really notice it. But when it goes
[49:42] out for 2 days or 3 days or a week, all
[49:44] the food in your refrigerator spoils and
[49:47] you can't eat it fast enough. you can't
[49:49] give it away fast enough because it's
[49:51] happening to everybody on your block.
[49:54] Well, that's what would happen across
[49:56] the country. So, there's going to be an
[49:58] enormous amount of spoilage of food and
[50:02] that refrigeration then is not going to
[50:05] be available to come back. And so,
[50:07] you're going to have enormous hunger
[50:10] problems here. So, people that were
[50:12] already malnourished, they are going to
[50:14] be susceptible to more disease. So you
[50:17] will end up lowering the life expectancy
[50:22] in a measurable way of that population.
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[52:32] Enjoy. So, there's been a lot of talk in
[52:35] the recent days about a ceasefire and
[52:37] Trump said he was going to he said tweet
[52:40] these horrific things about ending a
[52:42] whole civilization tonight and then at
[52:44] the final hour said that they had
[52:46] proposed a 10-point plan and that there
[52:48] was going to be a twowe ceasefire. What
[52:51] do you think was actually going on
[52:53] there?
[52:53] >> The collision of stages three and four.
[52:56] So what you are now seeing is we can we
[52:59] we are now understand we're in it for
[53:02] the long haul which means we can't go
[53:04] back to February 27. We can't undo the
[53:07] last 40 days. It's just not going to be
[53:09] possible. So there's only two futures
[53:12] going forward. Future number one is that
[53:14] ground war option and we've talked about
[53:16] how terrible that is and of course
[53:18] that's obviously bad bad cost. But
[53:21] future number two is Iran as an emerging
[53:24] fourth center of world power. And that
[53:28] is incredibly damaging to America's
[53:31] power. And that is going to be damaging
[53:34] to President Trump's legacy.
[53:36] >> Is there not another option where Iran,
[53:40] their leadership says, "Okay, we won't
[53:42] make nuclear weapons. Okay, we'll be
[53:44] friends. Okay, it's all over. Please
[53:47] stop bombing us. Let's go for peace."
[53:49] So, so my response to that is I've been
[53:52] studying the history of international
[53:54] politics for over 35 years. I know quite
[53:57] a bit about uh great power politics and
[53:59] regional power politics going back 300
[54:02] years. I have never seen a country at
[54:04] the regional level or at the great power
[54:07] level surrender power. Did America after
[54:10] World War II decide, well, yes, uh, we
[54:13] we have the capability to build nuclear
[54:16] weapons, but, you know, we want to get
[54:18] along with the Russians who helped us
[54:20] defeat Germany. So, what we're going to
[54:22] do is we're going to actually have a a a
[54:25] deal, an arms control agree. In fact,
[54:27] this was proposed, by the way, um, and
[54:29] we rejected it, which is we're just
[54:31] going to not go down that road. We're
[54:33] going to surrender the power advantage
[54:35] that we have uh here so that we can be
[54:38] cooperative with the Soviets who had
[54:41] just worked with us to defeat Nazi
[54:43] Germany.
[54:43] >> So that's not going to happen.
[54:44] >> We there's no evidence in history in our
[54:48] history. We've never surrendered power
[54:51] even when it might have been a good
[54:53] idea. We haven't done that. They're not
[54:55] going to do this.
[54:56] >> They're not going to do that.
[54:57] >> No, they're not going to do this. You
[54:59] already see this in the in why the uh
[55:01] the ceasefire is breaking down. so fast.
[55:03] It's breaking down so fast because
[55:06] essentially President Trump, he didn't
[55:08] just declare victory. He said that
[55:12] Iran's uh not going to have all this
[55:14] power that I'm explaining to you. And
[55:16] what Iran did is almost immediately
[55:19] assert, oh yes, we are. They they've
[55:22] come right back right away. If President
[55:25] Trump is expecting that out of the
[55:27] goodness of their heart, they're gonna
[55:29] surrender emerging world power,
[55:33] this is this is just a fantasy. Uh it's
[55:36] not going to happen. Uh he wouldn't
[55:38] surrender power. Why is he going to
[55:40] expect Iran's going to surrender power?
[55:43] >> So, [snorts] I'm looking at this
[55:45] apparent
[55:46] 10-point proposal submitted by Iran.
[55:49] Mhm. Um, and you you got to take this
[55:51] with a pinch of salt because there's
[55:52] different reports about what this
[55:53] 10point proposal looks like, but it says
[55:55] that based on official releases from the
[55:57] Iranian state news agency, the IRA and
[56:00] international reporting, the 10-point
[56:02] proposal from Iran to the United States
[56:04] was for a permanent ceasefire, number
[56:06] one, end attacks on allies, a complete
[56:09] halt to Israel and US strikes across the
[56:11] region, specifically Lebanon, Iraq, and
[56:13] Yemen. Number three, reopen the Straight
[56:14] of Hummos. Iran will allow safe passage
[56:16] through the Straight of Hongos. collect
[56:19] tolls. Iran will charge a fee,
[56:21] reportedly $2 million, for each ship
[56:22] passing through the straight. Revenue
[56:24] sharing with Aman, which is toll
[56:26] revenues, will be split with Oman as
[56:28] custodians of the strait. Number six,
[56:31] lift the sanctions, the complete removal
[56:33] of all US primary and secondary
[56:34] sanctions. Release assets. Number seven,
[56:37] the immediate return of all frozen
[56:39] Iranian funds held abroad. Number eight,
[56:42] the right to enrich uranium. US
[56:45] acceptance of Iran's right to domestic
[56:48] uranium enrichment while Iran commits to
[56:51] not seeking nuclear weapons. Number
[56:53] nine, war reparations, full compensation
[56:55] paid to Iran for reconstruction costs
[56:57] from the bombing. And lastly, number 10,
[56:59] the termination of all UN resolutions
[57:02] against the regime and a new binding UN
[57:04] Security Council resolution to enforce
[57:06] this deal. Now, listen, I don't know a
[57:08] lot about what I'm talking about, so
[57:10] that's the disclaimer. [laughter]
[57:11] However, it sounds like a good deal for
[57:13] Iran in many respects. on every single
[57:15] point and it also validates Iran as an
[57:18] emerging world power. So all of those
[57:20] points in the details if you think of
[57:23] them as a flow diagram all 10 of them
[57:26] are adding up to validation of Iran as
[57:31] uh top in the hierarchy in the Persian
[57:33] Gulf. So why is it so important to be
[57:36] the number one strongest state in the
[57:39] world? It's because in the last 300
[57:41] years, whether it was Britain, the
[57:43] United States, or whether it's China in
[57:45] the future, the number one state
[57:46] typically dictates the rules of how the
[57:50] world systems operate. Well, what you're
[57:52] seeing with Iran is they want to dictate
[57:54] the rules in the Persian Gulf. And
[57:55] that's what that is. Now, if we pull
[57:58] this over, which I love your props, uh
[58:01] here, that is good. So right now you see
[58:03] that even though it's the United States
[58:06] is just um uh that lone flag it has this
[58:11] higher weight and what this is
[58:13] reflecting is uh the United States as uh
[58:17] the number one country in the world the
[58:19] most powerful. Now if you also then add
[58:23] um this over here. So this would be
[58:25] Israel. You can see this is the world
[58:28] that Netanyahu is depicting um before on
[58:32] February 27th. But the actual world I
[58:36] just want to point out is a little bit
[58:39] different. The actual balance of power
[58:40] is closer to this. It's closer to the
[58:44] United States and then we have China and
[58:47] we have uh Russia. There are three
[58:49] centers of world power and in 1990 um it
[58:54] used to be by the way uh just the United
[58:56] States and the Soviet Union. Then
[58:59] Russia, the Soviet Union collapses. This
[59:01] is when the United States is the sole
[59:03] superpower, the unipolar moment. It
[59:06] immediately shifts like this from 1989
[59:10] to 1992. Dramatic shift. However, along
[59:14] the way in the last 30 years, you see um
[59:18] this changing. And what's changing?
[59:20] Russia actually still is weak. It's
[59:22] still about 2% of the world's GDP.
[59:24] That's not really what's changing.
[59:25] What's really changing is is China is
[59:28] now much much much more powerful. It's
[59:30] still not as powerful as the United
[59:32] States, but notice that we were here in
[59:34] 1990 and now the balance is starting to
[59:36] be uh to come like this. Well, if we
[59:40] start to add Iran as a center of world
[59:43] power, uh, now we're starting to change
[59:45] this in a much different way. Now these
[59:48] three powers are starting together in
[59:51] concert to become more powerful than the
[59:54] United States uh especially with respect
[59:57] to energy and energy matters so much
[60:01] because it's an underlying component for
[60:04] our economic growth that GDP the way um
[60:08] uh we measure uh great power Stephen for
[60:12] decades and decades we've used static
[60:14] indicators GDP how big is your military
[60:18] How many nuclear weapons you have that
[60:20] all rests on the productive capacity of
[60:25] your country which is why the productive
[60:27] capacity is so important. What does that
[60:30] turn on? It turns a lot very heavily on
[60:34] oil. Oil today is the commodity. If you
[60:39] lose access to oil within weeks or a
[60:43] month and a half, this has dramatic
[60:46] cliff effects on your economy. Now, if
[60:49] you lose access to semiconductors,
[60:51] pharmaceuticals, that's bad. And it's
[60:54] bad over time in particular, you lose
[60:57] access to oil. This is a cliff that you
[61:00] we go off over six weeks, eight weeks
[61:04] because there's not enough uh storage
[61:07] capacity of anybody in the world to make
[61:10] up for 20% 30% loss of world oil.
[61:14] >> So on this point of oil, the US don't
[61:16] get their oil from the straight of
[61:17] Hammoose.
[61:18] >> We don't. But it's a global market and a
[61:22] lot of the uh price of oil that we're
[61:25] going to pay is going to be determined
[61:28] by the global price of oil because oil
[61:31] is a funible commodity. It's like a uh
[61:34] water that runs through the whole
[61:36] system. When there's a shortage, it
[61:38] drives the price of all of us up.
[61:41] >> Okay. So, I've got a graph here showing
[61:42] the price of oil. And you can see
[61:44] [clears throat] I'll throw it up on the
[61:44] screen. You can see it's been climbing
[61:46] ever since the 27th of February. So,
[61:48] this will impact Americans at the pump
[61:50] as well.
[61:51] >> Oh my gosh. And you see it in the pump
[61:53] already. Where I am in Chicago, I'm
[61:55] paying some I was paying something like
[61:57] 310 a gallon. Now, the last time I I
[62:00] filled up, it was 460. It's a bit of a
[62:03] misnomer to think that we can as America
[62:07] get away scot-free with everybody else
[62:10] losing oil and we're not going to we're
[62:13] not going to pay a price. Now to be
[62:15] clear, we will have supply of oil. The
[62:18] price will go up. This will increase
[62:21] inflation. This will probably increase
[62:23] bond prices over time. Uh the bond
[62:26] price,
[62:26] >> the bond is the loans that essentially
[62:29] any uh corporation companies or the
[62:32] University of Chicago takes out to
[62:34] borrow money to operate. So the
[62:36] University of Chicago borrows uh has has
[62:39] 10-year bonds. This is essentially we're
[62:41] borrowing money and then we have to pay
[62:43] back that money plus an interest rate.
[62:46] That's what the bond rate is. It's an
[62:47] interest rate on on borrowed money.
[62:49] Well, if that interest rate goes from 4%
[62:52] on a 10-year bond um to 5% or 6 or 7%
[62:59] the costs of the interest just goes up
[63:03] massively
[63:04] >> and everybody will feel that in various
[63:05] ways. the US government right now, the
[63:08] biggest uh budget item in the US
[63:11] government budget is the cost of
[63:13] interest for the debt of the $40
[63:16] trillion in debt. We're going to have to
[63:18] shrink social security. You're going to
[63:20] have to shrink Medicaid. This is not
[63:22] notional, Stephen. Iran and uh Russia
[63:25] together could have a tremendous impact
[63:28] on America's economy. This this is the
[63:31] real thing. So with your balance of
[63:33] power analogy, this is where we where we
[63:35] could get to.
[63:35] >> This is where we could get to with the
[63:37] next several years. I would say um
[63:39] probably two years out. I would say that
[63:41] America has an edge. And I'm trying to
[63:44] depict it as it's like about a 25 or 30%
[63:48] edge from the combination of China and
[63:51] Russia today. And China is gaining, but
[63:54] still it's actually slow yearbyear. So
[63:57] you'll see a little bit of an uptick. So
[63:58] maybe going I'm trying to depict from
[64:00] say a third advantage for the United
[64:02] States to maybe uh 30% 28% in the next
[64:06] four or 5 years. You add Iran to this
[64:09] and then especially these combinations
[64:12] I'm describing where they can do things
[64:14] together. Now in the next several years
[64:17] you're actually talking about uh the
[64:19] scales where these three are much are
[64:22] stronger than America where I'm not
[64:24] talking about just America's losing it
[64:27] incrementally. [clears throat]
[64:28] You're getting abrupt changes in the
[64:29] world balance of power.
[64:31] >> So, what happens now if Trump just pulls
[64:32] out?
[64:33] >> This is the world. Iran is an oil
[64:36] hegeimon in the Persian Gulf. Uh, within
[64:39] a year or so, they're very likely to
[64:41] have nuclear weapons. I'm saying the
[64:42] pro-democracy movement is going to be
[64:44] pounding the table to get nuclear
[64:46] weapons. They're going to want to deter
[64:47] any uh idea from Trump of hitting them
[64:50] again. Um, and then I'm saying beyond
[64:52] that, you have the possibility of Iran
[64:55] and Russia deciding to cooperate here to
[64:59] strangle uh and coers the United States.
[65:02] And if the United States doesn't cowtow
[65:04] to them, then they can pull that oil off
[65:07] the market.
[65:08] >> So, what should
[65:10] Trump do? Do you think if you were
[65:12] president of the United States, what
[65:14] would you do right now? So when I was
[65:15] here 40 days ago, we had the same
[65:17] question. And what I said was we needed
[65:19] to accept uh that there would be a deal
[65:22] and we were going to have to accept that
[65:24] the deal that Iran was offering us on
[65:26] February 27 where they would get to keep
[65:28] their 3.5% enriched uranium wasn't going
[65:31] to be good enough. We were going to have
[65:32] to lift oil sanctions. We're going to
[65:34] have to do various things to sweeten the
[65:37] deal, so to speak. Well, notice actually
[65:39] Scott Besson did some of that. He did
[65:41] lift the but the power of Iran has grown
[65:44] so much Stephen that's not good enough
[65:48] and that's what you're seeing with why
[65:49] this deal is the ceasefire is starting
[65:51] to break down from Iran's side. So what
[65:54] would you offer Iran? I think a enforced
[65:58] military containment of Israel would be
[66:02] a serious uh card that America could
[66:06] play that I think Iran would get Iran at
[66:09] least in a serious discussion. I don't
[66:11] know if it would be enough. I want to be
[66:13] careful here that I don't say, "Well,
[66:15] this will certainly uh be the deal Iran
[66:17] will take." But we have to imagine if
[66:20] Iran has world power, what is it going
[66:23] to take to get Iran to surrender some of
[66:26] that? Well, one thing would be to have
[66:28] confidence that Israel is not going to
[66:31] keep attacking it or its allies.
[66:35] >> But then they're not going to believe
[66:36] that after what's happened.
[66:38] >> Well, it would have to go through. You'd
[66:39] have to make it enforceable. It's not
[66:41] going to be good enough to try to
[66:43] promise that. What thing President Trump
[66:45] could do since the Republicans control
[66:47] both houses of Congress is President
[66:49] Trump could push through a bill through
[66:51] Congress that says if Israel attacks
[66:54] Iran or uh could even extend to to
[66:56] Lebanon, but let's at least start with
[66:58] Iran. Um all funds for Israel, both
[67:02] military and economic, will be cut off
[67:04] through the end of Trump's presidency.
[67:06] Now, that passes through uh both
[67:09] chambers of Congress. President Trump
[67:10] signs it. Now you're talking. Now we
[67:13] actually have as much teeth as you could
[67:16] ever have of a military containment of
[67:19] Israel.
[67:20] >> So presumably in such a scenario, Iran
[67:22] would continue to enrich uranium because
[67:25] they've now had a taste of what can
[67:26] happen to them if they're powerless.
[67:28] >> Well, let me extend this um a little bit
[67:30] more. So let's talk about article two of
[67:32] the deal that's going to go through the
[67:34] Congress. Israel joins the NPT and that
[67:38] is the quidd proquo for getting Iran to
[67:41] accept the on-site inspections of its
[67:44] 3.5% enriched uranium. So, Israel gets
[67:48] to have um its Deamona nuclear power
[67:52] plant where it has plutonium for its
[67:54] nuclear weapons that's measured by the
[67:57] non-prololiferation treaty, the IAEA.
[68:00] Those are the inspectors. And Iran
[68:03] will have on-site inspections at the
[68:06] various locations we're talking about.
[68:09] But the second part of this, Stephen,
[68:10] would be quit proquo. If Iran is going
[68:13] to be subject to on-site verification,
[68:16] on-site monitoring, Israel, which is now
[68:19] not part of the non-prololiferation
[68:20] treaty, already has nuclear weapons.
[68:24] It's going to have to accept that this
[68:26] can't be a one-sided deal going forward.
[68:29] It's going to have to be a more balanced
[68:32] situation when it comes to monitoring um
[68:35] nuclear weapons capabilities.
[68:37] >> So, what does that mean specifically
[68:38] that Iran would be able to monitor
[68:39] Israel's nuclear weapons
[68:41] >> uh through the IAEA? That's right. That
[68:43] would be the material for the weapons,
[68:45] not the weapons themselves. So,
[68:46] >> they already have weapons. So, what's
[68:47] there to monitor?
[68:48] >> Oh, no, no, no. Right now, the number of
[68:51] Israel's uh Israel's nuclear weapons is
[68:53] not known. We have vague counts. The
[68:56] reason Israel is not part of the NPT is
[68:58] not because it doesn't matter. It
[69:00] provides the kind of calc the kind of
[69:02] detailed information through the IAEA
[69:06] that would be useful for estimating the
[69:09] size of Israel. Israel Netanyahu is
[69:12] going to want to give that information
[69:13] to Iran.
[69:14] >> This isn't about want to anymore.
[69:15] Stephen, what we're talking about is
[69:17] what are the offer? You've asked me the
[69:19] hard question. What is an offramp to
[69:22] this tradeoff between the ground war and
[69:26] Iran as the fourth center of world
[69:28] power? And I said, okay, there is an
[69:30] actual off-ramp here. But notice that
[69:33] the hesitation now is politics. And
[69:36] that's what I'm trying to explain that
[69:38] that I study the interaction of military
[69:40] action and politics. And I'm with you. I
[69:44] I don't think Israel will likely they've
[69:46] been trying to spoil these other deals.
[69:48] I don't think Israel is going to allow
[69:50] this to occur. But now then we're right
[69:52] back to the tradeoff that nobody wants
[69:56] to confront. So
[69:57] >> So what do you think is going to happen?
[69:59] What I think is that we are going to go
[70:02] back and forth between stage three and
[70:04] stage four for months.
[70:05] >> What's stage three and stage four?
[70:07] >> So stage three are preparations for the
[70:09] ground war.
[70:10] >> Yep.
[70:10] >> And Iran emerging as a force center of
[70:12] world power. I think both of these are
[70:15] likely to go on for months. I think that
[70:18] uh for stage three, the ground war
[70:20] option to truly be taken off the table,
[70:22] you would need to see America
[70:25] withdrawing its military forces. You
[70:27] would need to see all the carriers leave
[70:30] the region and go back to uh other parts
[70:33] of the world. You would need to see the
[70:36] Marines that have been moved to the Gulf
[70:40] go back to Camp Pendleton in California,
[70:42] go back to uh Japan. You would need to
[70:45] see the hundreds of aircraft like the
[70:47] F-35s, for example, that have been moved
[70:50] to the region. They all need to go back
[70:53] to their pre-war locations. So, we're
[70:55] going to bounce between stage three and
[70:57] stage four.
[70:57] >> Yep. That's the diagram. So, the new
[70:59] diagram I'm trying to
[71:02] >> we just um I think there's still, if you
[71:05] pushed me on this last time, I still say
[71:08] there's a 70% chance that we're going to
[71:11] start a ground operation. And it's not
[71:14] because President Trump wants it. It's
[71:16] not because he's not trying to avoid it.
[71:18] It's because there's a trap. And the
[71:20] trap that he's gonna face is, is he
[71:23] really willing to be the president where
[71:26] under his presidency, Iran detonates a
[71:29] nuclear weapon to demonstrate it has
[71:31] nuclear power? From his rhetoric, and
[71:33] listen, these are just the tweets. It
[71:35] seems like the alternate option he's
[71:38] considered when he talks about bombing
[71:40] the infrastructure and bridges and roads
[71:42] and power plants is just completely
[71:45] decapitating the country and I think in
[71:47] his own words, sending it back to the
[71:48] stone ages. will come back. This will
[71:51] come back, but it would be as I believe
[71:53] the precursor to more ground operations,
[71:56] Stephen. So, I don't think that this
[71:58] will be a case where you do the electric
[72:01] power targeting and then it's done.
[72:03] Finally, he's satisfied. He's pounded
[72:05] them enough and walk away because you do
[72:08] the electric power targeting. You have
[72:11] further incentivized 92 million. They
[72:13] still have the enriched uranium. You
[72:15] have 92 million people desperate now for
[72:18] not just getting a nuclear weapon for
[72:20] deterrence, but for payback. And so you
[72:23] will find the pressure for the ground
[72:25] war will be even more intense in the
[72:28] aftermath of all of that. This idea
[72:31] they're going to be bombed back to the
[72:32] stone ages where we won't worry about
[72:35] them anymore. um they're going to be
[72:37] this minor country that we will just
[72:39] ignore. As long as they have 1,000 lb of
[72:43] 60% enriched uranium, 10,000 lb of five
[72:46] and and 20% enriched uranium, um this is
[72:51] this will just not be the case.
[72:52] >> So, you still think the most plausible
[72:54] probable outcome is that Trump ends up
[72:57] sending ground troops in specifically to
[72:59] do two things? I think I remember you
[73:00] saying last time. One of them is to go
[73:01] and get the uranium. Yep.
[73:03] >> And the second, I believe, is to defend
[73:05] the straight of Hormuz.
[73:06] >> Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep. I think I think
[73:08] these are the two things that are on the
[73:10] table.
[73:10] >> And you think it's going to it's
[73:12] probably going to take several months.
[73:13] >> I think it could go on Yes. for months
[73:15] because I think that you were going to
[73:17] see that there's going to be uh this
[73:21] back and forth. And the way to monitor
[73:23] this so you can see is the timeline
[73:25] speeding up or slowing down is literally
[73:28] the movement of the deployed troops.
[73:32] Don't track this by what the
[73:33] negotiations are. Don't track this by
[73:36] what comes out of President Trump's
[73:38] mouth or even the Iranians mouth. Track
[73:41] this by the movement of forces. That is
[73:45] the best indicator of what's going to
[73:48] come.
[73:50] >> You know, every once in a while you come
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[74:51] to yourself. I'm inviting 10,000 of you
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[75:36] daccircle.com.
[75:39] I will speak to you then.
[75:46] on this point where you said you don't
[75:47] think Trump would want to be the
[75:48] president that presided over Iran
[75:50] releasing a nuclear weapon. Is that
[75:52] because if he pulled out now they would
[75:54] enrich the uranium and then maybe
[75:56] demonstrate it under his
[75:58] >> that that's right. So the scenario that
[76:00] I have laid out I've laid this out to my
[76:02] classes for years. The idea of what Iran
[76:05] would do with nuclear weapons a lot of
[76:07] people have an image and it's coming
[76:09] from the public so I understand why they
[76:11] have it. People have been a lot of
[76:12] people have said this image where Iran
[76:14] gets a a nuclear weapon or two and that
[76:17] what they do immediately is they blow up
[76:19] Tel Aviv with the first one and maybe
[76:21] New York with the second one. This is
[76:23] just highly unlikely because what would
[76:26] happen is we would retaliate with
[76:28] nuclear weapons under that. uh here much
[76:31] more plausible and everything I'm seeing
[76:34] from Iran has been completely supporting
[76:36] the idea that they're thinking this
[76:38] through um uh uh strategically is you
[76:42] would want not to just have one working
[76:45] nuclear weapon or even two. You want
[76:47] five. Ideally, you want 10, maybe even
[76:51] 15. This is what happened with North
[76:53] Korea. Because once you have, let's even
[76:56] say five, the most rational thing to do
[76:59] is you detonate the first one as a
[77:01] detonated test. You test it on your own
[77:03] territory and then you listen for a week
[77:06] while everybody says, "Well, they only
[77:07] had one. They were stupid. They don't
[77:09] have dot." And you detonate the second
[77:11] one. And once you detonate the second
[77:13] one, just like when we hit Nagasaki
[77:16] after Hiroshima,
[77:18] everybody will assume there's a lot more
[77:22] there. And that is how you actually
[77:25] deter the United States from attacking
[77:28] you. And by the way, that's what
[77:30] effectively North Korea did. When
[77:32] President Trump took office in 2016,
[77:35] North Korea was a major problem. We were
[77:37] talking about bombing North Korea and so
[77:39] forth. And there's multiple reasons, but
[77:42] the big issues are that North Korea has
[77:45] a lot of nuclear weapons. We're not
[77:47] going to be able to get them all. They
[77:49] have some other things they can do too
[77:51] like like artillery on soul. But this
[77:54] isn't just North Korea and Trump decided
[77:56] to be, you know, sort of best buds here.
[77:59] >> So the other route that played out in my
[78:01] mind was that Trump would just keep
[78:03] bombing Iran to keep them weak. But
[78:05] again, that doesn't solve the straight
[78:06] of Hammoose problem.
[78:07] >> Doesn't solve the uranium problem and
[78:09] doesn't solve the straight of Hormuz
[78:11] problem because if we knew where that
[78:13] material was and we could just bomb it
[78:16] out of existence. I'm talking about the
[78:18] enriched uranium material. We would have
[78:20] done this already.
[78:21] >> Which leads all roads to really the only
[78:24] solution being some kind of deal.
[78:26] >> Absolutely. That's why the best thing to
[78:28] do is a deal with the military
[78:31] containment of Israel. That's deal.
[78:34] >> The problem you have with such a deal if
[78:37] when you're going into that deal is the
[78:38] enemy know that you don't really have a
[78:41] plan B. You don't have a plan B. That's
[78:43] right.
[78:44] >> And so your negotiation position is very
[78:45] weak. That's why you That's why you're
[78:47] they're going to keep their 3.5%
[78:49] enriched uranium no matter what. The
[78:52] problem we face here is if we were ever
[78:55] going to get the 3.5% enriched uranium
[79:00] um to go away, we should never have
[79:03] ripped up the Obama nuclear deal by
[79:06] Trump in 2018. They've been developing
[79:09] ever since the Biden administration. He
[79:12] Trump one couldn't figure out how to
[79:13] stop the enriched uranium by by Iran.
[79:16] Biden couldn't figure out how to stop
[79:18] it. Trump now has been trying to figure
[79:20] out how to stop it. And you know what?
[79:22] It's not stoppable. It's not stoppable
[79:25] short of these options I'm laying out.
[79:27] There's no way to get that material
[79:29] without ground forces, Stephen. And
[79:32] you're not going to send those ground
[79:33] forces in just a thousand guys to get be
[79:37] it some postage stamp of an area for a
[79:40] month or two trying to find that
[79:42] enriched uranium. This is just not
[79:45] realistic. Going to be a bigger option.
[79:47] >> I think it's clear to me, you know, I do
[79:48] this podcast and ask these questions and
[79:50] have people on because I'm actually
[79:51] really trying to find answers for
[79:52] myself. And I think if I've arrived at
[79:54] any conclusion from everything I've
[79:55] learned over the last couple of weeks,
[79:57] it's that I think Trump made a really
[79:58] big mistake. Um pro and that mistake
[80:01] probably started when he ripped up
[80:03] Obama's deal.
[80:04] >> That's right.
[80:05] >> But it's clear that
[80:07] >> Foraux was the really really big one.
[80:10] >> I think I think he's stuck.
[80:12] >> He is stuck.
[80:12] >> I think he's stuck. I think he's facing
[80:16] several bad options going forward. So I
[80:18] really have no idea what's going to
[80:20] happen. And
[80:21] >> well what you're going to what you will
[80:22] also watch Stephen back to politics here
[80:25] is uh Trump right now we're not it's not
[80:29] just paper anymore who's saying he's
[80:31] lost control he's losing power the world
[80:34] is saying that and this is going to
[80:37] start to become the Republican party is
[80:40] going to say that and what this is going
[80:42] to do is it's going to incentivize Trump
[80:44] even more probably to become more
[80:46] belligerent not to become calmer so as
[80:50] Trump is becoming the lamest of lame
[80:53] ducks going forward because it's evident
[80:56] he's losing power and as he loses power
[81:00] here on the international scene this
[81:02] will mean he will lose power
[81:04] domestically as well and we'll never go
[81:06] to zero but it will be a slow decline
[81:10] this is where the real sort of future is
[81:13] here why this is not simply a steady
[81:16] state now this is why I won't make a
[81:18] prediction of what's going happen in
[81:20] September. We are not at a steady state.
[81:22] It is an unstable balance here between
[81:26] three and four. Three and four.
[81:28] >> What do you think happens with Europe? I
[81:29] feel like Europe, you know, Europe
[81:30] aren't on either side of your scale
[81:32] here. You've got Iran, Russia, and China
[81:34] on one end of the scale scale. You've
[81:36] got the US on the other. Europe and
[81:38] NATO, what happens? Are they going to
[81:41] >> NATO is for all practical purposes dead?
[81:45] We're just writing its obituary. It's a
[81:48] body in the morg already. Most people
[81:51] don't think that NATO is a political
[81:54] alliance. NATO is much more than that.
[81:56] If there's an article 5, what that
[81:59] means, Stephen, is there's a military
[82:01] operation with an American general at
[82:03] the top. And with article 5, the
[82:06] American general tells the other count's
[82:09] militaries, including their nuclear
[82:11] weapons, what to do. Now, if you're
[82:14] Britain and you have nuclear weapons and
[82:17] or even if besides the nuclear weapons,
[82:20] if you're Germany, you don't have them,
[82:21] are you going to follow uh uh General
[82:24] Kane's orders on anything at this point?
[82:27] I don't think so.
[82:28] >> So, article 5 is the document that all
[82:31] the NATO countries have signed. No, it's
[82:33] the part of the NATO treaty which says
[82:36] if there's a NATO operations like in
[82:38] Afghanistan,
[82:40] it's American general who orders all the
[82:43] other countries militaries what to it's
[82:45] a hierarchy. So it's not a um a
[82:49] collection where the countries get
[82:51] together and they have these big like uh
[82:54] cooperative decisions. No, the Americans
[82:57] run the plan. They are the ones who
[82:59] organize the military operation. they
[83:01] run the plan and they just assign the uh
[83:03] other countries uh roles the way they
[83:06] would um the army, the navy and the air
[83:08] force inside of the Pentagon. What I'm
[83:10] saying is what you just saw with Iran is
[83:13] such a a horrible catastrophic failure
[83:17] within just weeks. The idea that any
[83:20] Europeans are going to follow the orders
[83:24] of an American general and and I don't
[83:26] even think this is going to be just
[83:28] under Donald Trump. I mean, I think for
[83:29] years, I think this is just laughable.
[83:32] >> Trump was quite angry and scathing with
[83:34] his words about NATO. He said, "It's a
[83:36] paper tiger and referred to them as
[83:39] cowards." And as we've been sat here
[83:40] today, you might be aware that NATO were
[83:42] meeting with Trump today in Washington
[83:45] DC. And the NATO Secretary General Mark
[83:48] Root said, "When it came time to provide
[83:50] the logistical and other support to the
[83:52] United States needed in Iran, some
[83:54] allies were a bit slow, to say the
[83:57] least. In fairness, they were a bit
[83:59] surprised. To maintain the element of
[84:01] surprise for the initial strikes,
[84:02] President Trump opted not to inform us
[84:05] ahead of time. But what I see when I
[84:07] look across Europe today is allies
[84:09] providing a massive amount of support
[84:10] nearly without exception. Allies are
[84:12] doing everything the United States is
[84:14] asking. They have heard and are
[84:16] responding to President Trump's request.
[84:19] So, it sounds a little bit like an
[84:21] apology tour coming from NATO. Um, and
[84:23] the German chancellor has also made made
[84:24] a comment saying that they do not want
[84:26] to split NATO.
[84:27] >> Well, they don't want American troops to
[84:30] leave the um uh the European continent
[84:34] because that provides some deterrent to
[84:37] Russia. That's what you're hearing
[84:39] there. But NATO was always had an
[84:44] anchor. Remember we talked about
[84:45] anchors. The anchor in NATO was
[84:48] America's protection of European
[84:51] security. What you're seeing when
[84:54] President Trump creates a problem, a
[84:56] catastrophe the for the world and says
[84:59] he won't send American uh forces in to
[85:02] the straight of Hormuz, but he wants the
[85:05] Europeans to send their forces into the
[85:07] straight of Hormuz. This is the opposite
[85:10] of protection. He's making NATO
[85:13] countries or European countries
[85:15] vulnerable and they're reacting to that
[85:18] by saying we won't do it.
[85:20] >> According to diplomats, NATO secretary
[85:22] briefed member capitals today that Trump
[85:25] is demanding concrete commitments within
[85:28] the next few days from NATO to help to
[85:30] secure the strait of Hormuz, which would
[85:33] only make sense if you were doing phase
[85:36] three, the ground operation. So you
[85:38] cannot secure the straight of H for H
[85:40] for H for H for H for H for H for H for
[85:40] H for H formuz only with air power. We
[85:42] if we could we already would. You can't
[85:45] secure it only with naval power. If you
[85:47] could we already would. We have a much
[85:49] bigger navy, much bigger air forces than
[85:51] any of those countries individually or
[85:53] even combined. The only reason you would
[85:56] really want those uh forces from NATO is
[86:00] uh because you're planning on a bigger
[86:02] ground operation and you're that's what
[86:05] you're seeing right there. And I don't
[86:06] think Europeans, let's not even talking
[86:08] about the word NATO. I don't think the
[86:10] Europeans are likely to do it because
[86:12] you're seeing why would they, if they're
[86:14] ever going to do it, Stephen, they would
[86:16] want Trump out of office. The number one
[86:18] thing that I don't think is going to
[86:20] happen here is anybody's going to bail
[86:23] out Trump.
[86:24] >> It's political suicide really for a lot
[86:25] of the European leaders.
[86:27] >> Political suicide for the Democrats to
[86:29] bail out Trump in our country. It's
[86:31] going to start to become political
[86:32] suicide for even Republicans to bail out
[86:34] Trump. That's what you're going to start
[86:36] to see in the fall. And it's going to be
[86:38] political suicide for the Japanese, for
[86:40] the Indians. This is the problem. Trump
[86:43] caused the problem.
[86:46] He's, as I said on your show last time,
[86:48] he's going to become LBJ if he doesn't
[86:50] uh take a deal soon. Well, that was 40
[86:52] days ago, Stephen, and he still hasn't
[86:54] taken the deal. Not really. And he's
[86:57] becoming LBJ. Nobody's going to want to
[86:59] be associated with him.
[87:01] >> Here in the UK, we have Karma as the
[87:02] prime minister. And it appears to me
[87:06] that since he's come out and started
[87:08] saying that he won't support Trump's
[87:10] war, he we won't send troops to the
[87:12] Middle East, it appears that that's
[87:13] actually driven up his favorability
[87:16] amongst certain people. And it makes me
[87:18] think that actually, as we say, it's
[87:19] it's political suicide for European
[87:21] leaders to send troops there because
[87:22] they will be they will lose the next
[87:24] election in their country.
[87:26] >> I I think you put it exact excellent,
[87:28] Stephen. I I really can't improve on
[87:30] that. Let me just say that a year ago
[87:33] with the tariffs um I started to do a
[87:36] study of tracking how European support
[87:39] for America was starting to go into the
[87:41] tank and that was with tariffs. Now what
[87:46] Trump has done is he's driven up the
[87:48] price of oil. He's hurting their
[87:49] economies in a serious way and as that
[87:53] actual damage occurs and it's still in
[87:56] the pipeline. it hasn't hit as strong as
[87:58] it likely will in the next month. You
[88:01] are likely going to see that the publics
[88:04] in Europe are going to become
[88:06] anti-American
[88:07] and it's not just going to be can't
[88:09] support Trump anymore coming here. I had
[88:12] to pay the the visa the ETA and it it
[88:15] took forever and what's happening here.
[88:18] We're getting some payback here
[88:19] [laughter] on Americans. I think this
[88:22] next next time I come to London, I'm not
[88:23] going to be surprised that the price of
[88:25] that visa is doubling or tripling.
[88:27] >> What is your closing highlevel remark
[88:30] about all this stuff? And I guess I
[88:32] really want to focus it on on the
[88:33] average person who is going about their
[88:35] life as a normal civilian in any of
[88:38] these countries that are affected. What
[88:39] is the highle point of view here that we
[88:41] we need to close upon? The high level
[88:43] point of view is we're about to start
[88:46] think think seriously about the election
[88:50] and what we need to do is not just
[88:52] choose bounce back and forth between uh
[88:56] Republican and Democrat and actually
[88:58] Britain is a is a case study of what can
[89:00] happen if you bounce back and forth
[89:02] here. We need to start to really support
[89:06] strong stable policies that will empower
[89:11] the middle. The problem that we face,
[89:14] Stephen, is we're moving back and forth
[89:18] from really uh ideas here that uh one
[89:21] year we we really don't like what
[89:23] Biden's doing and now we have the
[89:25] radical wing on the other side and we
[89:26] certainly don't like that. Well, if we
[89:28] keep going back and forth here between
[89:31] two uh extreme alternatives, we'll just
[89:34] get different versions of bad outcomes.
[89:36] And it's not making things better. It's
[89:38] a cycle that's making it solution.
[89:41] >> The solution is the public needs to hear
[89:45] that every election, every choice, we
[89:48] are uh we have an opportunity here to
[89:52] focus on the more centrist candidates.
[89:55] And this is something that we really can
[89:58] make decisions about. And it's just
[90:02] simply the case that if we don't do
[90:04] that, what you're going to get is you're
[90:06] going to get back and forth bouncing
[90:09] around. And I don't think a third party
[90:11] here, these ideas are really very
[90:13] meaningful. This really comes down to
[90:16] talking to the public. And it's one of
[90:17] the big reasons, Stephen, I'm going to
[90:19] the podcast world because you remember I
[90:22] I've advised every White House and so
[90:24] forth. We've got to get beyond that.
[90:26] We've got to actually talk to real
[90:28] people and this is what you do and
[90:32] increasingly I'm doing it and I really
[90:35] believe that the podcast network is an
[90:38] opportunity to do that. But it doesn't
[90:40] mean that it forces people to vote
[90:42] Democrat or Republican. We've got to
[90:44] understand that we we can't just keep
[90:47] thinking about uh well, okay, now we're
[90:50] really mad at Donald Trump and we're
[90:51] going to get the independents and now
[90:53] they're going to vote with the Democrats
[90:54] if all we do is end up getting another
[90:57] extreme on the other side because what
[90:59] you're going to do is you're going to
[91:00] keep pissing off the middle and they're
[91:02] going to keep bouncing back and forth.
[91:04] And round after round, we've been doing
[91:06] that now um for years in the United
[91:09] States. And what does it look like? It
[91:12] keeps getting worse. keeps getting
[91:14] worse.
[91:14] >> What are you suggesting the solution is?
[91:15] Vote for the centrist candidate
[91:17] >> all the way through. Yes. Yes. It's a
[91:19] very simple thing, but it's not going to
[91:20] happen unless we talk about this because
[91:24] it does mean that sometimes the centrist
[91:27] candidate is the person, the woman on
[91:29] the other side. And if we're not willing
[91:31] to do that, then we're really condemning
[91:33] ourselves to this cycle. I'm going to
[91:35] explain more about it. It's it's a
[91:37] version of the escalation trap gone
[91:39] domestic. It's called the legitimacy
[91:42] shock cycle and I'll be talking more
[91:44] about this in September. So the trap I'm
[91:47] talking about here with violence and
[91:49] politics isn't just international and
[91:52] you end up with traps here domestically
[91:54] as well. And I'd like to close with a
[91:56] few thoughts for the people in Iran. I
[91:58] think ever since I've put myself
[92:00] mentally um in a situation where there
[92:03] was a world leader saying that they were
[92:04] going to annihilate my civilization and
[92:07] there was bombs going off. You know,
[92:08] we're currently filming this in our
[92:09] London studio, but if there was bombs
[92:11] going off around the studio and there
[92:12] was threat that someone was going to
[92:14] annihilate civilization, it's quite
[92:16] unthinkable for me how I would I would
[92:18] be functioning. And it immediately, I
[92:20] think, shines a light on the the mental
[92:22] health and psychology of the people in
[92:23] Iran right now and how they must be
[92:24] feeling. So, I think that's probably an
[92:26] important message to share cuz we can
[92:29] sometimes get a little bit caught up in
[92:31] the hypotheticals of war and strategy
[92:34] and all these kinds of things, but at
[92:35] the end of the day, there's 90 plus
[92:36] million people in Iran that are right in
[92:39] the middle of this and we we're sat in
[92:40] this very warm, cushy London studio. So,
[92:43] >> well, there's a bond that is occurring
[92:45] between the middle 60% of the American
[92:49] public and the 92 million in Iran. Yeah,
[92:53] >> they don't like the radicalism
[92:57] and on on either side. And what you were
[93:00] what you were vocalizing, Stephen, is
[93:03] the frustration that our politics has
[93:06] been locked up by the extremes. And I
[93:09] suspect the 92 million in Iran are
[93:12] feeling almost exactly the same thing.
[93:13] Their choices now are being locked into
[93:16] extremes. And that is that bond here
[93:19] that you're trying to vocalize. I
[93:21] believe it's valuable to vocalize it
[93:24] because this is what it means to empower
[93:26] the people and this is what it means to
[93:27] be a democracy which is that we actually
[93:30] talk about not just the other side is
[93:33] bad and we're always good is we we talk
[93:37] about where the future really should go
[93:39] and the idea that we're even imagining
[93:41] the possibility of a $40 trillion in
[93:44] debt country getting rocked by um Iran
[93:48] and Russia here who have their own
[93:51] reasons for wanting to hurt us. We may
[93:52] not fully realize that, but but we
[93:55] really hurt Russia in the '9s here with
[93:57] our ideas of shock therapy, and we made
[93:59] out like bandits, by the way. Uh so that
[94:02] the we we really do have some uh real
[94:05] growing bonds at the social level.
[94:08] >> Professor Robert P, thank you so much.
[94:10] It's a pleasure to speak to you once
[94:11] again. And uh this is such an evolving
[94:13] situation, so I feel like we might end
[94:14] up talking again at some point in the
[94:16] future when things play out. Hopefully,
[94:18] you know, one can only hope uh for peace
[94:20] for for everybody situation
[94:22] >> every day. That's my number one thing.
[94:24] Just ask my wife. And by the way, will
[94:26] you stop being so charismatic? Because
[94:28] my wife, when we listen to this, she
[94:30] turns my voice off. All she wants to do,
[94:32] Stephen, is listen to you.
[94:34] >> Is she American? I think Americans.
[94:36] >> I'm just You [laughter] have And you've
[94:39] made me up my game.
[94:40] >> That's so funny. Well, thank you so much
[94:42] for your time and uh you've put a lot of
[94:44] time into explaining this to layman's
[94:45] like me and it's really helped turn the
[94:47] the lights on to some degree. I'll I'll
[94:49] be honest, it's turn the lights on and
[94:51] with the lights on I am
[94:55] confused. I'm confused about
[95:00] which path is
[95:02] productive and most beneficial to
[95:05] society and humanity. And even though I
[95:07] can see more clearly now about the
[95:09] dynamics of all of these potential
[95:11] pathways, none of them seem that great.
[95:15] So that's where I'm going to leave it
[95:16] for today. But we'll pick up this
[95:17] conversation again soon when more
[95:19] information comes in.
[95:20] >> That's right. And let's hope it's not as
[95:22] much as a trap as as I'm as I'm painting
[95:24] it. But if it is, then it's really even
[95:27] more important that when we get to the
[95:29] fall, we don't mislead ourselves into
[95:33] into thinking that this is just um
[95:35] temporary, that it's all going to be
[95:37] solved quickly. We need to understand
[95:39] that we're going down some major major
[95:42] roads here. And this situation, as bad
[95:45] as it is, notice that it's actually
[95:47] worse than it was a month ago when we
[95:48] were here. It's worse, Stephen. And the
[95:52] reason it's worse is we didn't head it
[95:54] off enough at the past 40 when we when I
[95:57] was here four weeks ago. If President
[95:59] Trump had taken some of the deals that
[96:01] we were talking about then we wouldn't
[96:03] be anywhere near where we are today. So
[96:06] as bad as that negotiating position I'm
[96:08] say of can militarily containment of of
[96:11] Israel I realize people are saying oh my
[96:13] god could never happen. Well think about
[96:15] the things that could never happen that
[96:16] are happening right now. This is the
[96:19] better pathway now. And if we don't take
[96:21] this pathway now, we come back in a
[96:23] month or two, it will be worse.
[96:27] >> Thank you, Robin.
[96:28] >> We're done.
[96:29] >> Thank you.
[96:29] >> Thank you so much.
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