This War Will FAIL" - Military Expert Prof Robert Pape

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Stage one was of the escalation trap was the abominable tactical success where you do

destroy the facility as an industrial uranium enrichment production center and that then would

lead to stage two. That's when you'd get the regime change more. Stage three which is likely coming

in the next week or two we would take ground forces. Well the Marines are already on the way to the

middle. Oh yeah they're pathway there. What President Trump is really facing is he's facing two

terrible choices. They're terrible for the world. They're terrible for his presidency.

So we are now in the regime change war. Yep. Yep. What's next? There will be a four and five to the

escalation trap. This episode is sponsored by our friends at Hillsdale College. Right after this

episode go check out their incredible online courses which are absolutely free at Hillsdale.edu

slash trigger. Professor Robert Paid welcome to Trigonometry before we get into the war in Iran

the escalation trap all the rest of the good stuff just tell us who you are your journey through life

and how you came to be sitting in this chair. My name is Robert Pape a professor at the University

of Chicago. When I was in high school my mother had this great idea. I should spend a summer with

the German family and I did that in West Germany and I came back thinking I should be an interpreter

at the UN. So I went to University of Pittsburgh as an undergrad and I started taking all these

language classes. Well that then I wanted to become a foreign service officer because I thought

well that might even be better. So then I thought I was actually quite good in school so I wanted

to get a PhD and I said to myself I actually want to get a real PhD as I called it I didn't want

to get a sort of credential so I ended up going to the University of Chicago to get a PhD in the

1980s and I was heading to the foreign service. I said to myself what am I going to write on for my

dissertation and I said well I'm going to go represent our country we had just you know 15 years

ago had this disastrous war in Vietnam I should find out why we lost and so I wanted to know how

could we lose the Vietnam war with all this power all this air power. So I had no real background

in the military this was not coming from war gaming or anything like that and so I ended up

going to the library and I wanted to find the book that had all the air campaigns in history

and explained why the one in Vietnam didn't work out there was no book well that became my dissertation

and then when the after I finished I wanted to do what a lot of people that I wanted to publish an

article before I went to the foreign service so that was just me wanting to do that the Cold War

and what happened when the Cold War ended the first Gulf War which was heavily air I mean

completely different than the Cold War and suddenly all of this work I had done and I'm just

the young kid at this point I'm in the front pages of the USA today because we have no talking

heads at that point and I know generals and so forth shortstop was the only one who was really

on television and for six months really I was really just amazingly in the media and that

just surprised me because I could help design and structure what was the air power debate even

about and then the US Air Force called me up and I had no idea this was going to happen it's

out of the blue I mean who would think the US Air Force they're bombing Baghdad it literally

the month we're bombing Baghdad with the F 117s I get the phone call professor tape would you

please come down to Maxwell Air Force Base this is where we do our middle-level officer not the

undergrad the middle-level officers we're going to stand up a brand-new school that's going to

focus on air strategy so okay well I'll try I'll go down and I get there and here the chief

the staff of the Air Force other four-star generals what I'm being told is they thought the reason

we lost the Vietnam War again they're thinking why lose the Vietnam War was because we didn't

understand air power I mean that was the whole reason I've been working on my dissertation was

I couldn't believe it it was and so I come back I tell my family you're not going to believe this

I think we should go to Montgomery Alabama Maxwell Air Force Base I mean this is I'm a Northern

I mean this is just a very very unusual and it was tremendous because here I am teaching the best

pilots in the world they know how to put bombs on a target that's when I really discovered my true

contribution was in between what happens when bombs hit targets and the political outcome

which I call mechanisms in my book bombing to win that became the frameworks of escalation

in this sub-stack I called the escalation draft I started developing these 30 years ago I teach

them now at the University of Chicago the University of Chicago I do have some military students but

I mostly am telling people when you go on the NSC and I have folks who have been on the NSC

senators staffs etc etc these are the frameworks of escalation you need to understand because

it's not a military strategy is not just about putting a bomb that's tactics what's the real

strategy the actual strategy of strategy is in between the tactics of military force hitting things

and political outcomes and that is these you stages I lay them out but it's this middle that's

very hard to get a grip on and that's really what I've been doing for better part of 30 years

is focusing on I call it the escalation dynamics and that's true in all of my work really not just

the air power part of my work and that's one of the reasons I've advised every when I worked for

the Air Force I got in big debates about bombing strategy to end the Bosnian Civil War and I was

very strongly showing the limits of leadership decapitation which was becoming the Air Force's

favorite way to use precision air power and the bombing strategy that stopped the Bosnian Civil

War had no leadership decapitation it was almost pure hammer and anvil it's right almost right

out of bombing to win and that was my first time of actually having any real contribution I would

say and then as time went on that just continued from 2001 to 2024 I've advised every White House

including that includes two Republican two Democrat I don't take a president I advise about the

best what I the best way to manage these escalation dynamics for the good of the country and so I

hope that gives you some sense of where I've come from why I'm here and and I used to joke I was

just still studying for the Foreign Service Exam pretty sure I've aged out of this way so

so I think I'm sort of stuck as an academic I love being an academic by the way it's the perfect

place for me so professor we've been really looking forward to this conversation yeah and there's a

lot of people in the UK America right around the world who woke up saw the strikes happening and

going why did this happen this doesn't seem to make any sense yeah so could you just explain

what you think is the American strategy for this war and why they why they started well I can

I can also try to explain why these strikes I couldn't have to say the date but why they were

almost inevitable that they were going to happen so I've been modeling the bombing of Iran for 20

years and it's important to understand that starting in 2002 the relationship between the United

States and Iran fundamentally changed now for decades before that there was political tension

absolutely there was issues of Israel absolutely but what happened in 2002 is that's when

we discovered the American government discovered that Iran was going to enrich uranium that became

the Natanz issue and they were getting equipment from Pakistan so this was 2002 well in 2002 these

were just holes in the ground think of it as giant football fields underneath the ground about a

hundred feet that were being dug out if you well by 2005 they actually had some concrete facilities

and they were actually starting to put centrifuges in that's when I started to model the bombing of

Iran right from the Gica right from the beginning I did this I do this in my on my strategy class at

the University of Chicago which I'm about to teach again and I taught last spring and I teach

every spring and the last day is 90 minutes simulation of the bombing of Iran and what's going to

happen I've been doing that for now it'll be 21 years and so and also right from the Gica I was very

familiar with the idea of double tap attacks in fact I think I may be the first person on print to

talk about that in a Cyherch article so Cyherch was a reporter for the New Yorker did a lot of pieces

of the New Yorker and he called me up one day because we had worked talked me on other things

and he said Bob I really think that we're going to use a nuclear weapon attack new to take out

and it's on us and I said Cy I realized you're always looking for a controversial angle

here because that's what he made his whole living on and I said but that's just not what we're

going to do and he said what do you mean I said we're going to do double tap attacks with precision

weapon he said what do you mean I'm calling the airflow they're no we's talking about this and I

said no let me explain to you Cy so you know that GPS exists and that is how we guide our bombs

what you may not know is GPS is not too dimensional it's three dimensional so we even know in history

we have never done this I said I said what we're going to do is we're not going to want to use a

tactic and it's just not where we're going to go well what the necessity is going to create the

mother of invention and even though we've never done this in history and there may be no plans in

the Pentagon to do this we're going to do double tap attacks and what and he said what do you mean

Bob I said we're going to take 2,000 pound bombs which we we had at the time JDAMs are called

and these create radii of between a blast we're endured it's about 50 feet in concrete it's

about 25 feet so just to give you a sense of the radius we're talking about and what we're going to

do is we're going to target Natons and we're going to have one bomb hit the first the first

top of Natons and we're going to time the second bomb to come in 15 to 30 seconds later we're not

going to wait to do bomb damage assessment we're literally going to plan the double tap and we're

going to estimate how deep the first one went and then we'll plant have the second bomb hit just

about 25 feet or so deeper then we'll have a third bomb hit and we're going to get into those

centrifuges well he published that it's either 2004 they're around in the New York or your

folks and listeners can go find it well that is how I started to model the bombing of Iran so I

said we're going to take these B2s where we've got here's the target set here's what we can find

uh now as I'm doing this um Iran is uh is developing from Natons to Fordo and there's a whole

discussion of that I can give you um and then we too are when Fordo came on we build the Moab which

is the 30,000 pounder so so all the way along the way every year I'm updating or now that's like

the details of this of the first of the of the actual um on paper but what does it mean in terms

of the attack what's the what's the strategic reality so right from the beginning it was always

going to be clear that we the Americans would be able to attack Natons Natons in Fordo with 90

plus percent tactical success meaning the bombs would hit their targets um we would kill scientists

so I went through all the different targets here that we were going to destroy um but we would

and we would be able to do that um more effectively by far than the Israelis because we could carry

in our bombers bigger payloads than they could um and so what you would end up with is high degree

of tactical success in stage one of the escalation but very little strategic success and why is that

because these this tactical success would not destroy disabled meltdown the enriched uranium

that is the actual strategic why not because you couldn't be sure you would ever you might be able

to disrupt the centrifuges so so just to give you a sense of the way these uh uh this is set up so

let's just pick Natons just for one here so Natons is like a football field here so it's a hundred

meters you know by 25 meters across and you've got rows of centrifuges here which are about the

size of us maybe a little shorter than us except there's thousands of them in these rows so when

you do the double tap attacks you are always likely even if you didn't quite get to the chamber

itself to cause earthquake and that earthquake was going would would always likely to be so this is

the you know having study bombing and for a long time it's not it's it's it's the there's a blast

effect you see what I mean so the blast effect itself was very likely to disable maybe 50 70

maybe even 90% of these centrifuges in which case you would stop the industrial production enrichment

of the uranium okay but the problem is that you wouldn't necessarily even cause fires down there

you you would just you would you would be shaking everything up more or less now maybe you might

cause fire you wouldn't really know uh for sure I'm not saying it none of it could have been destroyed

what I'm saying is that you what you could be sure of is the shaking of the centrifuges that would

be the BDA the bomb damage assessment from on fire would give us high confidence we had created

the earthquakes you see what I mean what you wouldn't be able to see and this was always the

uncertainty always was what happened to the enriched uranium now I'm not saying for sure none of

it would have been damaged that's not the problem the problem coming out of this is that enriched

uranium uh especially as the quantities grew over time you say um you would you would only need

portions of that to produce nuclear weapons you would also need even smaller portions of that for

radiological weapons which I'll say more about down the road so right from the beginning there was

stage one of escalation so in my escalation trap that I published before the war started I laid out

three stages of escalation we were going to go through and this is days before the war all three

stages and we're now about on stage three stage one was uh of the escalation trap was the

abomin tactical success and we'll go back to June in Fordo Natanz where you do destroy the

facility as an industrial uranium enrichment production center just as I'm describing okay

and it's 90% plus likely that happened so well that that is true but you wouldn't know what happened

to the uranium itself and that then would lead to stage two and I always said about a year later

two years later actually it happened about eight months a little bit sooner that's when you'd get

the regime change war and uh the reason so there had been regime changes called for your you know

from Israel for how would you actually get America behind the regime change war you would start by

going after Fordo and Natanz once you did that you started the trap because you did you triggered

and you you did destroy but you probably triggered you wouldn't know for sure but you probably

triggered dispersal of that material you see dispersal and we saw some satellite evidence of that

and I have that on my sub stack so we actually have some civilian so if we have that in the civilian

world and guarantee you there is humans say again there's a lot of more and in fact he would just

thinking logically given the 12-day war President Trump said the obliterated everything destroyed

the fact that there is now a follow-up is clear evidence of the fact that President Trump and his

team believed that material is still there and they in President Trump it's I cannot get inside his

head I'm not going to put him on the couch but notice even after the 12-day war what did we do

right back to negotiating with the Iranians now if we had actually destroyed all that enriched

uranium the thousand pounds of 60 percent the 10 thousand pounds of five and 20 percent what are

we talking to them about okay I mean what is there actually to discuss you see if you're in gold

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So stage one is the United States hit them there's no trigger of dispersal possible and then over

the months you're Intel you have no more IAEA which was your best intelligent so people think oh

it must be the CIA and Musad who are the best well they can turn individuals James Bond style but

there's nothing like going into just like you're asking me to ask me to come here there's nothing

like being on site and actually look at right across and if I have the IAEA I want to actually

measure you as the enriched uranium and actually get my measurements out there's nothing that's

going to beat that you see what I mean so once you bombed tooth you you did you were number one

tactically successful but you're strategically at a minimum uncertain likely failed and it's

dispersing and then number three your Intel is terrible terrible so that's going to put you

in a situation of over time panic because you will get little drops and drips and drabs of

additional intel of this and that happening with that material and we will just simply panic I mean

we will now we won't say we're panicking because we want to exude control but we're losing control

here and that's what then sucks that I always said would lead to stage two which was the regime

change war so just just I'm asking questions just to make it very extra simple your explanations

are brilliant but I always like to clarify things for our audience even more so concentrating it's

perfect okay so what you're saying is stage one they have nuclear facilities and material you

try and take them out but it was unlikely to fully work it clearly didn't work so stage two is you

and we know this from some of the things that are being revealed about the negotiations the

Jared Kushner Steve Whitcombe with the Iranians the Iranians claim to have the ability to make the

weapon they said right they're talking smack across the table this is what the Iranians are saying

we've got the nuclear material to make a bunch of bombs yeah and your argument is well that's

when everybody basically panics and so I'm saying they were probably were incrementally panicking

along the way because that material in June was enough for between 10 and 16 bombs right so and

that is with high degree of confidence that's the IAEA's estimate we know that the time to

make those bombs and so forth it's not a few days it's more like finishing the enrichment is a

few weeks that's when President Trump's talking about the few weeks but then it's probably six

months after that to actually fashion the bomb so we have some idea of this of their actual

dimensions and so I'm not saying that that it's literally the foreign minister of Iran's comment here

that the package of information we're getting from intel from the negotiations altogether that

creates a picture it creates a panicky picture because it's Swiss cheese some pieces are hard

like this a lot of it is empty like that right and the problem and you are concerned because

there's so much of that material now you see this isn't just tiny amounts it's not the 300

kilograms of five percent that was there with the Obama deal now we have fantastic amounts more

and so even portions of that can be really really concerning and it doesn't even have to be for a

nuclear bomb so you're now seeing the precision drone capabilities of Iran which I have to say I'm

a bit surprised was not taken more seriously ahead of time because Iran produced 55,000 of

those precision drones in 2025 and gave them to Russia so so the idea that that you're not take

and I don't know if we have any idea how many thousand they have I'm not saying that but I'm saying

the idea that you wouldn't think they would have a lot of thousands here for themselves and they

just given everything to to Russia I think this is this is kind of foolish okay but then but then

but put the radiological material on the tip of a drone yes now that's going into doa that's going

into Dubai now take some of that material and hand it off to Houthis pezbollah now you have the

possibility of radiological bombs and Tel Aviv these are radiological they're not the same as in

nuclear but this will probably if these things happen you're going to see evacuations like you have

not so you think it's been you know people panic now this is probably one of the things that's

becoming it's very concerning as what I'm saying that's this intel spreads and I've been saying

to in the assessment for 20 years that these are the ways that we that this is the politics of the

situation not just the mechanics of the so my work is looking at the mechanics of things as it

intersects with politics and the politics is what's left out here in these discussions of escalation

dynamics and was what I taught for the Air Force as well that again pilots in the Air Force

best in the world putting bombs on target they're told I want political and state victory how do

you get there you got to go through politics and the politics is the is what I'm laying out in the

escalation trap stage by stage and so I'm fusing I'm discussing the interaction understood so stage

two is you didn't get all the nuclear material you go back for regime change you and why do you

why do you go why can't you just keep bombing or trying to use intel oh you I would say I said

you'll do the negotiate well how are you going to get a grip on that material the in the nuclear

material that is now you're worried is going to have some nefarious purpose and I've given you

a number of them you only have two choices one the Iranian regime will negotiate it away that's

what happened with the Obama deal but with once we went through the and I always argued for something

I didn't know it was a deal mama deal but that was I was I was arguing that that would be the

best thing we could do even before we had a thing called the Obama deal and there's a whole story

about the the kind of linkages there that when I was on Obama's primary team I was recommending for

for that so if you want to if you're interested in that but I mean the point is that the reason you

go for regime change constantine is because you're desperate and you think well okay the negotiations

aren't given me a big enough deal they still want to keep their 3.5 enriched uranium they're not

given the whole thing up like they did for Obama so what do you left with your left with trying to

take out the regime and it's not because it's a great option it's not history will show it's not

and but the fact of the matter is you're you're getting more and more desperate here and I think

that's really what led to stage 2 and that's what I said this is how you will get the regime change

war by the United States it will be an air war and it will also fail it will fail because in 100

years air power alone has never toppled a regime I always went through the modeling of the regime

itself I do this on my sub stack glad to do it here there is nothing special about this regime

that makes it more likely to collapse with air and fact it's the other way around and I'm glad to

explain all that but the fact of the matter is you're you're going down this road and then the

trigger when would you push the go-to-go for regime change well in history this was in 2003 as well

in other cases America typically goes the hour it has eyeball sighting of the leader at once to kill

not general idea okay not vague idea but often eyeballs on the target and then there's a gap

because you have eyeballs on the target maybe a sat phone here well it takes about six or eight

hours to get those bombers there f 117s be two's whatever it's going to take a little bit of time

to get there no matter how fast you think you can make that happen in 2003 this is when CIA director

tenet ran into the Oval Office with George Bush somewhere around the 20th or 20th or 20th or 22nd

March 2003 and there's and he writes just in his book so there's nothing classified here this is

all been made public and he says to present Bush we've got Sonoma in our sites he's at Tarnac

farms he's right there we've got our human agent in the basement and Sonoma is going to have dinner

there tonight again he was there last night for dinner he's coming again for dinner and we have our

agent there with the satellite phone and he is telling us this is happening so that's when George

Bush to that March 2003 orders the f 117s to go and it takes about you know but they timed it right

for the dinner and also just so you know we didn't tell the human agent so that we left the human

agent in the basement and we bombed the farm destroy that kill the agent as well and just so turned

out that Saddam just decided not to go there not not for any you know it's just the randomness of

history of luck here so that's why we didn't kill him at that time but this is and I said the most

likely way reason you would what would trigger the regime change in a very tactical sense is you'd

have some probably human eyeballs on the leader that you want to kill and I didn't know would be

the supreme leader but that makes perfect sense under this I'm not saying it's a good idea but

that's what they I can see the the tactical reasons for this and I think that's what happened I

think what you had is you had this you had this pressure here of essentially fear of what was

happening with the runs dispersing nuclear material and what could happen with that over time mixed

with this very exquisite intelligence about this day this hour this leader this group is right there

and it's not one or the other it's it's it's all of those coming together and I'm fusing it here

for your your listeners because I can understand why they're confused they're they're getting sound

bites of six seconds here six seconds there this is why I wanted to talk to you to give a

four picture of why yeah so we are now in the regime change war yep yep what's next well the

the regime change war is failing and it's failing strategically not tactically just want to be

super clear again our smart bombs are hitting their targets 90 plus percent of the time our

military is hyper professional at making those bombs hit those targets the military is not failing

here the strategy is failing that we have to be super clear and why is the strategy failing it's

because at this stage stage two the goals are number one topple the regime meaning positive

regime change where this regime goes away and a new leaders come in who are more

amenable to what president trump wants that's what I mean by positive regime change well that's not

happening and it's not happening because what you're seeing is the pattern of history over 100 years

this has never happened just to be super clear not rarely it's never happened and that's what my

book show and and so forth but why not it's because when you kill the leaders as as we're

was we did here and as we've done before as we kill the leaders um the replacement leaders all the

incentives are for the replacement leaders to come in more aggressive than before some of its

age just because they're younger it's like my graduate students are more aggressive than I am okay

that's all true okay um but some of it is just plain organizational so just just imagine that when

you um have a situation where there's a two-actor game the society versus the regime society versus

the regime now you bring in this third outside actor the foreign military power that's a godzilla

this isn't some little pipsqueak where are the americans where are the um on the powerful

american military and on top of that in 1953 long time ago but still historically will be remembered

it was the united states that toppled a democratic leader with it the CIA controlling

pieces of the iranian military it was a military coup that we orchestrated uh so didn't use

air power literally made the military do it well that's when we put in the shaw a dictator not

democratic and the savak the savak was the secret police and the secret police were right up there

with joe stall and secret police so this is not a nice situation so this is what the this gorilla

this this godzilla is over here this changes the politics here and it changes the politics because

suddenly whatever the tensions were here the gap which is which is real just like you know 40%

of america supports donald trump today uh there's a gap between america and our government

well does that mean that if iran assassinated trump and we know they're trying that you're going to

get the democrats here in time square they're gonna come out we're gonna have they're gonna have a

party in time square and they're gonna invite the iranians to come on over for the party that's

not gonna happen you see same dynamics here so the pro the government you can see the leaders who

are taking over now much more likely to be hawkish uh because of the issue here with the uh we

have to fight godzilla you got to fight godzilla and the godzilla is gonna eat us here if we

either fight them now or fight them later but we got to fight godzilla but even the pro democracy

movement starts to create pro it starts to create problems because now you are a traitor to your

country you're you're you're you're not getting self-determination and when president trump says uh well

we will pick who will be your leader uh the former shawas son not not good enough well that that's

probably a good i'm not saying he would be a good choice what i'm saying is that notice that it's

the president of the united states who's picking who the leader of iran is again so no matter how

we describe this no matter how much we try to put a velvet glove over this this is the use of force

to dominate iran's society and that is what then takes away self-determination it shrinks the pro

democracy movements here it builds nationalism which confuse parts of this and not instantly i

want to make it clear that politics takes time to work itself out so um now what is this going to

mean in stage two lash back lash back so you're likely going to see not just a hard hardened

regime but a more a regime that's still very capable they'll take more risks and that's what you

saw with the horizontal escalation uh i published a piece in foreign affairs literally days after

the moment how could i do that because i had it ready to go that this was very likely going to be

iran's lash back because they they had drones they have mines those drones have precision on them

this was always likely coming could i be a hundred percent sure of course not that's why i didn't

publish before but once it started and i saw in the saturday that uh the pentagon was saying well

these aren't serious attacks by iran these are just the spasms of the dying body that's when i

knew that there was a lot of i thought misunderstanding of what the politics and the way this would work

itself out uh so history there's a lot of cases that are similar to this in history i could explain

to you not with drones but with the lashing back in an orchestrated way and i i had a sense of

what iran's capabilities were because again i'm focused on air power and and iran had a lot of

precision drones they were giving to russia why wouldn't they use them in their own defense uh here

and this was a the regional escalation strategy is a is a reasonable uh lash back for them that's

a rational approach and now we're coming to the end of stage two here or or we started to move to

a new stage because that horizontal escalation strategy hasn't just been a retaliation strategy

iran has gained power with that horizontal escalation strategy so let me explain that which is that

so we are now in a situation where before the war iran controlled 4% of the world's oil

4% of the world's oil today it controls 20% of the world's oil so five times more of that's a

big increase by closing the strata from us well by controlling the strata because they still

let chinese and indians through right no they let their oil through yeah so just to also be clear when

i say control there this actually quite a bit of control you see it's not just damage it's controlled

damage where what they are controlled disruption is probably a better phrase what they're doing is

they are uh hitting about 20 tankers so far almost one a day um from that are coming from the

uh do buy i'm sorry from a u a e or salio rabia or some of the other golf states and that has

totally scared that so that traffic is almost down to zero but they have had about uh at least 14

tankers these are the ones you're describing that are flagged by india or we're we're China

and these are carrying a ronnie in oil a ron is actually slightly export exporting slightly more oil

now than before the war started slightly more and so now that's somewhere around 15 million

barrels of oil which is about a billion and a half dollars at today's prices okay so they are

making money on this war they are that money is sitting in chinese banks that money can be used

as collateral for all kinds of bad purposes here and all kinds of it could be used for reconstruction

but also a lot of other things and so this is what i mean now let me also put this in a little more

of a historical context uh uh which is uh since the 1970s the number one goal of america in the

middle east what was the number one goal of america since the 1970s not israel preventing an oil

hegemon what is an oil hegemon one state controlling all the oil that would come out of the middle east

for all that time 50 years the soviet union never became an oil hegemon we prevented that in

different ways um a rock never became an oil hegemon that's why we fought the 91 war with over

Kuwait um a ron up until now never been an oil hegemon the these puddles of oil there are four

puddles of oil here it's it's a ron a rock Kuwait and Saudi Arabia these four puddles of oil have

been set carved you know compartmentalized essentially now they've been unified under the control

of ron who's now got a more dangerous regime and not just an enemy but an arch enemy now of

the united states uh say nothing of an arch enemy of israel of course but arch enemy of the united

states uh we have caused the number one art uh that one of the number one enemy here to now

become an oil hegemon so think about that for a moment is this is what this is part and notice

that the trap gets it's not just stages of escalation i call this trap for a reason every stage it

has been harder for president trump to walk away if you understood that good but i'm gonna repeat

myself if you didn't here's what i said if you want to actually understand the language you

need to hear how people speak it not work through textbooks i grew up speaking russian and what

makes a language stick isn't grammatiles it's immersion the rhythm of how people actually talk

the slang the way a sentence lands in a real conversation rather than on a printed page that's

the whole logic behind lingo pie it's a language learning platform built around watching real tv

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to learn dot lingo pie dot com slash trigonometry that's learn dot lingo pie dot com slash trigonometry

let me ask one more quick question before francis takes takes over i guess the key discussion in

relation to the closure of the stray farmers is how permanent or long term this is i before before

we started i was looking at the kalshi odds and the kalshi odds for it being opened by first of

may are very low it's like low 30s i think as we sit here today but june and i think july i think

july first is like 78% or something yeah these are all the smart money here and i deal with

the smart folks all the time and they make all the smart mistakes so so you just got to understand

i i definitely understand people with 120 150 IQs are super smart and they go through lots of calculations

their computers and their brains move very very quickly and they can make an enormous amount of

money really fast so i got that that's not strategy okay so this is again weaving out a

whole lot of different stages here and i don't do i don't have any money in those markets i'm not

playing the money game here because that's not what i do i do risk assessment i'm not now

you're quite right though about the it but let me just back up one stage here because you're

trying to get to again this calculation like you would bet on it all right but let's just back up

for a second notice that at stage one and stage two america is losing control and we've had the

illusion of control going through you see at each stage i call it the illusion of precision

control because the precision weapons they're so precise you can marry that with this hyper

precise intelligence we can do it now on our phones really with you know signal chat and

everything i mean we can do this so exquisitely it's not just creating tactical success it creates

the illusion of escalation control when it's actually slipping away now why is it slipping away

it's because the uh you could see what in uh when present trump does the bombing in last June um he

i think for his own you know political purposes and from what he just said i think he really did

just want to walk away okay but he himself is continuing the negotiations he knows he can't walk

away because tactical obliteration does not equal strategic stopping of the of the nuclear material

just doesn't and i suspect he knows that because he said as much as as as that and now we're at the

stage where after the regime changed stage two of the escalation trap now Iran is an oil

hegemon so the idea that he's gonna walk away when all this enriched material is now dispersing

and all those problems on top of that now it's an oil hegemon and that billion and a half dollars

will come in every two weeks every two weeks you see what i mean so now you're getting a bigger

and bigger they won't be a godzilla okay uh but they're gonna be bigger than bambi maybe they'll

be a bear versus godzilla but it's there there won't be godzilla i just want to be super clear

but you've changed this this is now Iran is gaining power here relative power that is that's the

pole here for present trump to go to stage three which is um likely coming in the next week or two

not three months from now but now in the near term uh which i called um before the war started

the limited territorial um option and what i mean by that is we would take ground forces uh and

they would be um limited ground force that's how it will be called and they will be limited uh

here at first um sorry to interrupt professor when you say limited what's the number what

what does that mean in terms of yeah no i do weigh all this out yeah and i also did it in a video

briefing afterwards and on march 8th that your your listeners can go find on the sub stack um so

what we're talking about are the um if once you know that your opponent has become more powerful

and it's about oil and gas in this transit here you're going to try to take the uh that power away

and but your options bear power you if you could do it with air power this would not even happen

so you're going to be forced to go to ground power options um same with also the um the nuclear

material so what is that going to look like that's going to look like taking karg island uh that's

going to look like taking coastal areas right on the um on the iranian coast right on the other

side of the ua here so if you just if we had a map you would see that the straight-of-form

mooses here that's kind of a narrow point to bias here iran is here but then there's the larger

part of the Persian Gulf well you are going to want to control this whole uh at least big parts

of this coast because that's where the a lot of missiles are coming from not all hope is i'll explain

but this will make perfect sense to start talking about uh as we're doing and then karg is up here

and so uh and it's because if you're really uh if you're really going to open these um

straits in a way that you can have the flow of the ua e saudi and all the other Gulf states

not just oil but food other things coming through here you're going to need a fair bit uh a fair

bit of control and these are marine missions so we have one marine division this is about a marine

division uh sort of problem here um in terms of the size of the territory to control uh that's why

we're moving marine so if not at all surprise we're moving the marine this is exactly what you would

do here it's not a there's nothing secret or classified about this and this is just if you know

about operations you know that this would happen um the iranians i think are well prepared for this

and why do i say that it's because they hit Azerbaijan on day two now why did they hit Azerbaijan

when that happened i i didn't hear anybody on any of the cable channels be able to explain this okay

well once you would look at a map as uh from this perspective which is assume that if you're a

ron you're studying this for 20 years you're planning that if they do regime change we're going

to do something like this we're going to become an oil hedge mine okay uh what is the next move in

the chess game it's the ground where would you stage the ground from well you're going to come

you're going to have to come on the you're on the sea Azerbaijan is a great staging place

it's a great staging place and once i saw that they hit Azerbaijan uh here as a brushback pitch

that told me they were right on it that told me they are studying this appropriately it's like

people studying old chess games for 20 years they're going down the natural uh routes because

they're persuading uh they're telling Azerbaijan don't even think about letting American

ground forces use you as an aircraft carrier as a staging area here and Azerbaijan got the message

yes sir ron we're not doing that okay we got the we got the message and so far that's been the way

it is so you start to see right away that the the stage three of these uh limited territorial

conquests here these options lead to military control routes that are start to become pretty

predictable and that is what we're facing right now so we're now at the cusp of moving into stage

three and as we move into stage three um for uh this this will be a another you know sort of a

you know sort of a shock to the public and to the world because ground force oh my goodness gracious

you know this was the one thing that President Trump was never supposed to to have done and uh

and of course we've just come out of these forever wars uh and uh and there's still more

issues with ground forces i'll describe but in this situation the amphibious uh uh uh uh

assaults that we're talking about these are some of the most dangerous military operations ever

here and the fact we're at Godzilla this this this big uh huge we're we're still talking about

exposure here um so uh what i am explaining i just did a substack last night on this where i'm

trying to explain uh that we're about to transition from disruption costs that are temporary

relatively quickly you can uh reverse them to damage costs which are much more difficult to

reverse and that's what this stage three is really about it's not just military operations

we're moving to a different uh equilibrium of the escalation this is this is a a whole threshold

we're crossing and it's a threshold of the type and length of the costs that we're talking about

uh so professor saying all that i mean what you're saying in lineman's terms is effectively

boots on the ground are inevitable and 75% that i've said this before i when i you there's nothing

mechanistic frances just so you know yeah and i know people when i and i'm talking very very directly

as much as i can and so it's it's fair for people to say oh professor paypes being just too

mechanistic about the world i i do want to qualify even myself i'm i'm not saying anything is

100% inevitable of course so what you're seeing is the trap and it's 75% likely that's the way i

would well the marines already on the way to the middle oh yeah they're halfway there and they

should be there you know sort of end of next week so this is a friday here the 20th i would expect

by the 27th they'll be there they might need a few more days uh we don't know exactly here um

but it's we're not far from the cusp of a decision point by the president at this point he's

planning putting pieces in place uh again after being um you know sort of west wings here uh for

different administrations uh i don't believe presidents really commit in advance i believe

what they do is they bring pieces together and then only at the very last second do they actually

know what they're going to do okay because i think this is just the way president's are i don't

think it's just Donald Trump and i think he he is coming to a pretty clear point of decision

called a d-day uh here and um and i don't know when that'll be exactly but it's going to be in the

next week or two but that's going to be a political catastrophe for Trump isn't it because he ran

on a platform of there's going to be there's going to be no more wars there's going to be no more

forever wars i'm not going to get involved i'm not going to sacrifice any more american lives

in the middle east what if he does that he's going back against every one of his promises yeah

and that means that he will potentially not a not only alienate voters but also the base itself

yes so so he is on the horns of a dilemma frances where there is no golden off ramp here the idea

of the golden off ramp uh here that's that we're long past that so um what president trump is really

facing is he's facing two terrible choices and he's going to have to choose between two terrible

choices they're terrible for the world they're terrible for his presidency so these are not like

uh one is good for the world and i do i would argue one is better but they're not they're not

golden the one that you're describing as he goes forward and crosses this threshold of phase three

and uh you're explaining this what what people will be talking about next week there will be a four

and five to the escalation trap i have not even put on the sub-stack yet that i'll be talking about on

my next life briefing on sunday so there's more coming here we're not done with the stages of

the escalation trap but you're right he is going to be creating an enormous political liability

for himself uh right now um uh you know that uh Tucker Carlson making kelly others he's just had

the first rake the nation from his administration of very high level here breaking away from this

this is a these are pro trump people these are these are people who who who who campaigned for

prison trump these are these are not you know loosely come well these are and so you're seeing

this fracture here but he's got another problem on the other side and i think this is why he's going

back and forth which is if he doesn't go forward then a run is going to be an oil hedgerma

20% of the world's oil it's going to keep it so it's not as if uh prison trump has an out where

okay eran um i'm going to declare victory and now i'm going to pull all my forces out

i'm going to take uh i'm going to cancel the the marine amphibious i'm going to send that back to

Japan i'm going to take the aircraft carriers put them back over to uh then as well i'm going to

do Cuba okay so i'm going to go get myself pinned down in Cuba um and so let's say he does that

option which i think is he's been thinking that over eran is not going to look at that and simply

say here's uh your oil back you a here's your oil back there with the supreme leader statement

here is has been quite was quite clear it's it's uh i grade people um every year and i did this

in the air force as well air force officers on their coercive strategies the logic and quality

of their coercive strategy the leader statement is there's a b plus a minus okay it's not perfect

but this is not a c student this and i'm not saying he wrote it either okay um but i've seen c

students okay this is not a c student okay he real they're they really understand the pressure points

here and how they're using and i'm glad that i can unpack that for you but what i'm what i'm

trying to tell you is there is no sign i see that if president trump picks up his the the armada

and says i'm just going to now get bogged down in a different work over here with Cuba

that eran's going to say oh man glad that's over and so here's uh all the oil back i don't think

that's happening here and so you're going to have a situation with these are the two choices here

that he's facing so um uh and eran will start to make a real geopolitical pay out of this you say

the oil hegemon if it's only been a few weeks that they've had this control uh we're not seeing

yet how this is going to play out with we see the beginning but not fully with china in the uh

russia uh other gulf uh of the gulf states here um this has the cape of the potential

to fracture the gcc coalition that uh trump and uh Jared Kushner have been spending years to build

with the Abraham Accords against eran this has i'm not saying that they will all fracture all at once

but you just saw the first fracturing uh in president trump's orbit in washington so

what i'm expecting here is these multiple different gulf states they're going to start to go

their own way you see they're going to have slightly different interests here and also eran

has been very very smart in that what they're effectively doing with their propaganda and this

can be turned up many notches is they're telling the gcc and not just the leaders but the publics

this is all a war for israel and what it means to be a war for israel is israel's conquest of you

you see so so you're going to just sit back for a second and people are going to start scratching

their heads and saying why exactly is is is am i paying costs here to help israel take me later

you you see this is what what eran has seen and that's why i say it's a it's a b plus a minus in

terms of the the course of strategy it's not perfect but it's a it's a pretty strong approach

and there's no reason to think they're just going to give up 20% of the world's oil because

there's real geopolitical hay to make it's somehow much i don't know how that happened either

but here we are and i still have the same goals i had in january which is the good news the bad

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only and thank you to hul for supporting trigonometry but if you take so if you take your point

about israel and the propaganda yeah well look at what happened to katar the gas filter wrestler

fan which produces around 15 to 20 percent of the liquid natural gas of all the the globe needs

in order to continue functioning i mean that got bombed and effectively shut down for between

three to five years and katar a furious i mean they're not going to be pro-iron at this point

oh well let's talk about this so first of all that was in retaliation for israel right um and what

happened here the katar is uh said their statement exactly is um we're mad but just so you know

everybody we're not getting in this fight we're going to stay diplomatic just so you know

so so they they reinforce neutrality here is a result of this um uh even president trump said

he's not happy with what israel did and it's been been promised not to do it anymore right well

yeah i wouldn't count on i don't think it was count on that i what what i'm trying to get at is your

point which is this was a retaliation for israel striking iran's gas facilities which even

president trump didn't want to happen that's right and so that means president trump can't end

this war on his own he can pull out on his own yeah but that's not going to end the war because

it's not going to end israel's um attacks it's not going to end uh rushes uh intelligence to

Iran and it's not going to end iran's control the straight of our moves and therefore 20 percent

of the of the world's oil so what you have is a situation where as i'm getting back to this

president trump is on the horns of a real dilemma because it's it's uh lose here lose there and so

it's a matter not of where is there a gain versus a loss it's a matter of assessing where uh which

loss are you it's pick your poison which lost you want to take and just to be clear Bob uh

option one which you've described in quite a bit of detail is you pull out now you leave

Iran with control of the straights of our moves you leave the current regime in place you still

haven't got control of their nuclear material yeah and that doesn't seem like a win

but well it's actually hugely risky of course there's all kinds of risks related to that

the other option the other option is what we started talking about which is you put marines

on carg island you put marines on the coast of of of the person gulf to try and control it

can that work uh it's going to have that that's what i was talking about earlier

Constantine about we're shifting from disruptive costs that we're paying to damaging costs that

are not reversible we're taking casualties and well you're going to take the amphibious operations

this is saving private Ryan so let's talk about that military dimension so um the

principle here because i know you have very smart audience here is exposure that's the key thing

and i'm sure you used to risk exposure so same thing with the military tactics the attacker

in order to take ground always has to get up and expose themselves over the ground they want to take

the defender can be in foxholes and be behind things and camouflage and so forth so that's why

the defender always has a three to one advantage at the tactical level it has to do with this issue

of exposure well that issue of exposure is that it's maximum in amphibious operations

because the water is there's no cover on the water okay um and um you've got the now Russian

intelligence can't even exacerbating that you see what i mean and then when you get up to the

territory um there's um uh some of the shows i've been on here the uh the the cliffs the actual

terrain this is this is some of the most difficult terrain to try to control because you've got mountains

you've got stretches of beach so for the defender there's all kinds of crevices and crannies and

things like that uh here um but for the attacker here the the the uh side that has to actually take

the territory the exposure is at its maximum now we will absolutely have the best professionals in

the world working this prop i i spoke to the army work college about a week before this kicked off

i have military officers coming in their PhDs under me i really have nothing but the greatest

respect for our military really they're really quite good at what they do that said um there's only

so many let's take karg island for example there's only so many ways you can approach karg island

and that will have been assessed not just by the us military for decades but by the ironian

military and they will know their terrain better than anybody else as much as we think we will be

able to assess their terrain they will know their terrain so if there's a possibility i'm not saying

there is for uh surprises here uh we will have some tricks up our sleeve they may have tricks up

their sleeve but overall it's about length of time of exposure the longer the time of exposure

the transit time to go from like the straight-of-form moves up to um karg is going to be I don't know

somewhere between a dozen and twenty hours here for the amphibious those big and they're big

hunks of metal uh these are the things that uh you're going to be able to eat the most easy

targets to find our big hunks of metal in open water um so they're going to be exposed for long periods

of time you will do everything possible to defend them without a doubt um but that's a lot of time

and then when they get there there's going to be hours uh to get on and actually control before

they can get under cover so if you watch the opening of saving private rye and it's very similar

you've got to cross the open area and be exposed then when you get on the other side

now you can go pillbox to pillbox and you got some cover too so it's not as if you can't and so i'm

fully expecting we're gonna win i'm not saying we won't take the ground it's really a matter of the

cost and i and i don't can't give you a number we haven't done any amphibious landing like this

in so long up against really at this kind of a determined enemy it's it's going to be very

difficult to put numbers on this i think this will be hard for general king uh our joint chief he

will be fort he will be asked by president trump how many are going to die and i think it's going

to be hard for him not because he's he's going to be uh you know sort of a dovish or not want to

give the numbers it's just going to be hard because he's going to have to go back too well even when

we did this in world war two i mean where are you going to go to find the good actual deep analysis

of this you see and part of the calculus i imagine in any president's mind at this point is

what happens afterwards it is i hope it is which is we we'll take hundreds of marines as casualties

god forbid now well and then let me say the next piece so we've only focused on the military

casual tee piece as this is happening from a ron's perspective this is now a much bigger threat

to actually achieve now we're bringing ground forces in so remember i've said air power alone

has never toppled a regime that's over a hundred years sometimes you put ground forces and you

can do that okay so a ron's going to know that and they're going to you know they don't know

what they're certainly going to feel it right away so once this even starts even though it'll be

you know described as limited they're not going to tear ron we'll say all that i'm sure okay that's

not how the other side is going to see this they're going to see this as the beach head like normandy

to the end of germany you see which even though that was a year later or 10 months later

so did the germany everybody understood even though there's a lot of miles to cover once you get

the americans especially but the americans the british on shore here germany is in real trouble

same here with with ron so what's going to happen is they're likely to be very willing to

destroy the oil infrastructure in response just to be very blunt so why would they destroy

the oil infrastructure it's because they're going to want to impose long-term damage here

and they're not going to be concerned that they would want to use it for themselves because

for them they may be dead i mean as a regime in six months so this isn't even they're not even

probably worrying about that once you go down this row you are you are increasing pressure

on the regime chances you may actually topple it not in a day but over time and also then more

risky strategies by them here which will have costs on us it'll there'll be damaging costs

because when you destroy the infrastructure these are special made pipelines regs in the 90s

where i really got into this was when i was teaching for the air force and the the the

leadership decapitation crowd in the air force who who were my bosses okay they're literally my

bosses the actual architects of all of this so i know all their arguments really really well

they really like the idea of electric power targeting so they brought in people from the electric

power industry to teach us how to take down electric power plants and grids and so forth and

and nothing classified so there's nothing this was not a secret briefing or anything

and and so we and i had students here who wrote master's thesis on how to destroy electric

that are still available that you could still say the big thing i learned is that in an electric

power grid you can take out the transformers which are like the fuse boxes in your house and

that knocks out it causes a brown out like when you overload the system when there's too much you

know it's too hot and there's too many electric i'm sorry air conditioners and that is a problem for

a week or two because you can fix the fuses okay but if you go after the the actual infrastructure

which is the generating halls and you destroy the generator halls they're out for a minimum of

six months maybe a year because those larger pieces of equipment that are the actual infrastructure

this would be the equivalent of these transmission pipelines that are going from the land to the

tankers and things like that these are special design there's not bunches of them laying around

so when you start to destroy that and that's what's happening in cutter so what what happened in

cutter is they didn't just hit a little a little lng they they went after some of the infrastructure

and this is again moving up the escalation ladder to damage and that's why the cataries are mad

because that is out for a minimum of a month maybe three months because and that assumes they're

even going to fix it because if they fix it Iran could do it again so you've got a situation where

the damage here is not reversible like the shipping could be reversed because Iran will just simply say

oh you can pass once you start not taking out and destroying the actual big pieces of the infrastructure

this is months and that starts to dovetail with what the economists are now telling us in the

newspaper which is you don't have to worry about the price of oil until it stays that way for a

month or two then you'll get a recession and everybody's oh that's so comforting because we know

it could go right back down right not if you destroy the infrastructure once the infrastructure is

taken out now you're in that months period and I can't give you a more precise estimate because I

don't know exactly what the damage will be but I'm trying to lay out the principles here there's

nothing you just need to to have spent 30 years to figure it out to take down economies and what

that looks like for real and and this is what this looks like here and this is also by the way not

something that is you do when you're a pilot in the Air Force you don't spend six months a year five

years studying the enemy oil and gas grid and so forth what happens is once you get in the crisis

you bring in you know people to give you advice and you try to do your best by staying up and pulling

all nighters so so again I've spent I'm spent long periods of time thinking about how air power and

other military instruments actually interact with economies and this is what I'm trying to explain

which is we're about to move from what I call disruption to lasting damage and that is put

going to put us in the OPEC 73 territory so that's why you see me really really geniusing up

of coming on your your show I've been on I think you know why am I you know spending 18 19 hours

a day doing this I'm extremely concerned because as much as this has been dangerous so far we're

we're going to cross the next threshold which will be which which will be much more difficult I'm

worried and so I'm going to do everything I can to explain that here because crossing this threshold

I think is going to lead to now the beginning of truly lasting reversible over several months at

quickest cost not just a day or two where Iran will just simply decide oh sure your ship's

can pass because what you're essentially talking about is economic warfare and then the knock on

effect of that is that it's going to affect not only economies it's going to also affect politics

right the way through the west it's going to change how people vote it's going to change how

people see particular leaders how people see the right the left now you see why the Europeans

don't want to touch us with a ten-foot pole because as these costs start to accumulate in

this way if they're part of the coalition causing it they then face being toppled by their own

people because over because as if this goes down is in this in this trajectory here those costs

are going to be by dynamics where we had nine percent inflation this is going to be nothing

okay we're we're we're we're and it's going to be that way the ground war is not just something

that you can do and then take back your what you're doing is you are sending the most credible

signal that you intend to use ground forces to topple this regime you can say oh you want

you're never going to do that okay if you're on the other side and it's your survival that's on

a state you don't believe this from just like when we laughed about Netanyahu promising not to bomb

so you're really going to take President Trump at his word that he would never think about using

never think about doing it no you're not going to do that you are going to see that what's coming

at you is not just one hand of the gorilla which was the air power but now it's the other hand

and both legs of the gorilla starting to get really again d-day safe and private Ryan Normandy

you know June 1944 reads to May 1945 and it's also not only going to affect the

reputations of certain politicians at home this is really going to damage Israel's international

reputation because there's a lot of people from both sides of the political spectrum who are

looking at Israel and going you started this is your fault do you agree with that I think the

blame game has already started because when you know a victory has a thousand fathers you know the

defeat is an orphan well that's what you're seeing here so everybody's now starting to try to

attack to what they should because they're seeing which which direction this is going and who

were you going to blame well I don't think you can easily blame the US military I mean there may

be some people who try to do that but I don't see how you blame them they've been like tactically

superb through this they've saluted when the president has said jump they said yes sir and so

first I don't see how you blame the military I don't see how you blame the democrats here they have

no power and they were blindsided by this whole thing so I don't see how you you say well they

are the ones who wreck the whole thing so I don't see how you blame them so I think it's going to

basically start to come down to Israel and President Trump and the republicans which have there's

always been this this this division inside of maga you know about half against foreign wars and

the other half you know more on the other side and that you saw that with Ukraine well this

is the same thing it's the same split within maga magas holding together at the moment in the

opinion polls only because they're supporting Trump you know and that that's but as this unfolds

and as you get into the midterms and in the summer I the way I say this is that I think Trump

is going to start to have an LBJ problem so if he crosses this Rubicon and he goes down this road

I see that this stage is going to go on for quite some time and I think that's why the 200 billion

dollar request is coming through they want to put that request through now because if you

cross this Rubicon not saying he's going to do it but I think it's 75% likely you're going to need

to spend 200 billion more this is going to be very expensive so you're going to have all this war

is going to go on and as that war goes on this is where the the real problems for the senators and

the House members are going to face when they run for reelection in the midterms and so you you

already had a situation before this where there was a likely a blue modest blue wave coming where

the Democrats would win the House and maybe a few seats in the Senate not quite where they would

take the Senate here in this situation you could see a much bigger blue wave coming and why do those

House members and those senators want to just go home I don't think they're going to and so I don't

they will each make just like the Gulf states this will fracture the coalition of mega and it won't

be necessarily cleanly in a division it'll be more like what I'm describing when when coalitions

fracture typically what happens is the actors that are part of it start to go their own way

and it's not clear that it'll all break in one way I'm not saying they'll all break against Trump

either it's going to be probably seat by seat state by state but it's not going to be the unified

situation it is today it's going to be this more fractured situation and so I those are the real

political costs that are coming and I would say by June 1st June you know now we're going through

the primaries here and we haven't crossed the Rubicon yet of stage 3 but as that were to unfold I

would say it won't take long you won't have to wait till August for this this will LBJ when when

the bottom fell out of LBJ's presidency it was March 1968 so he had prompt that we're very much

in a similar like escalation trap here where LBJ had been promising that just one more run up the

escalation ladder we get them out of the escalation trap everybody realized by um end of 67 we were

in an escalation problem because the VC were getting stronger and stronger and taking territory

actually literally taking territory and then what happened is he kept promising it and there was

a there was a spectacular event called the Tet Offensive the 10 offensive was was at the end of

January 1968 and what the VC did is they over a period of just a few days they did a parallel attack

across multiple different uh fronts at the same time multiple different of our bases at the same

time and they lost each and every one of the individual battles 25,000 of them died uh apparently in

just these weeks or so to do this offensive this led to the political bottom falling out of the

Vietnam War so as I've often said we lost we won every battle in the Vietnam War including in

the Tet Offensive we lost the war because what they did was a political strategy similar to the

horizontal escalation strategy that Iran is doing this is a strategy where the end point is political

fracture not gained territory and the political fracture is the soft underbelly of America that's

how our enemies beat us remember I said I wanted to know how we lost the Vietnam War it was because

we didn't understand the politics of the situation it wasn't we didn't understand the military it's

we didn't understand how militaries and politics fit together and that's what I've been doing for the

last 30 some years so coming back to the military side of it uh I get the sense that you certainly feel

that even though it's a terrible option pulling out and not continuing the escalation would be the

right I want to I want to well it's fair but I want to pose a third uh at least a variant of that

which is so what's what I think once you see these these terrible choices here then you're you're

quite right um Constantine that that you're going to want to take your losses now because you

might be able to recover your presidency if you wait then you're in wind and Johnson where it's

unrecoverable your presidency is just gone you're a lame duck with two years to go but but so you're

right this is where I would I would advise uh uh the West Wing uh here um but what I would say is

that the price you're going to have to pay the politics price here is it's not enough to just pull out

because then you're leaving this this behind if you really want to um uh take option one you're

going to have to cut a deal with Iran you're going to have to go back and you're going to have to

cut a deal with Iran now before the bombing started here's what the deal looked like at 315

eastern time in the Oval Office with uh Whitkopf and Kushner and we know this because this is exactly

what they said which is that Iran will not give up its its enrichment it wants to keep its 3.5

percent and it's promising to meld together the 60 and 20 percent to 3.5 and President Trump said

just just not good enough well in order to cut a deal now with Iran you're going to have to accept

that right away okay so that's number one number two you're going to have to um probably accept

the oil sanctions coming off and given the price of oil is going up notice that uh

Besson is already talking about doing that okay so they're already doing that if that that

issue is already on the table um but number three there's a very good chance that you're going to

have uh Iran will not reopen the straits here um on a consensual basis will not reopen the straits

unless there's pressure put on Israel because Israel is that bombing card Israel has been uh

remember the 12-day war wasn't started by the United States bombing for doe that happened in the

middle it was started by Israel this war the tactical intelligence for killing the supreme leader

and the bombs that killed the supreme leader were Israeli so we need to understand that that uh

I don't think we're in a situation anymore where you're going to get a deal here without pressure

on Israel to do what uh I think the most likely thing just to be very specific is that um uh

Trump would have to force Israel to sign the non-proliferation treaty uh the non right now um

what Israel wants is uh Iran to have no nuclear weapons and to have all this on-site inspection

well Israel has all these nuclear weapons and no on-site inspection because it's not part of the

non-proliferation treaty so I think that what um is likely going to be the thing that will be

discussed will be that um Trump will force Israel to sign the NPT which means

tit for tat on-site inspection if there's on-site inspection and for doe there's on-site

inspection and some of the nuclear sites in Israel so think about that so Israel would have to give

up this nuclear weapon uh no no no no no no it would have to it would have to say so just be

mine so we are a signatory of the non-proliferation treaty and we still have nuclear weapons

here's the way that works constantly and this has been going on since 1970 which is when you sign

you promise you will eventually give up your nuclear weapons and notice how America has signed

and we still got a lot of nuclear weapons just like everyone else just like everyone so so that

part is not real right the real part is the on-site inspection which is intel that is the actual

teeth in the NPT you say so that's the part that Israel is it's not actually giving up its nuclear

it may say that but it's not the reality the reality is that there will then be tit for tat um

and present Trump this is going to be a big political cost yeah I was going to say I mean you

started a war because you wouldn't do a deal that you now have to do a worse deal yep that's

a humiliation I mean there's not your ways about that that is the political that's what I'm saying

you pick your poison so it's either that but what I also would like to and you can possibly save

your presidency or you don't and you can't save your what I'm saying is there's no option here

to come out the the victor here like gladiator where everybody's cheering okay for the new general

that's not happening in this situation uh and if if we keep waiting for that then what it is

is Lyndon Johnson that's there these are the real choices I think in front of the president

and what I'm saying is you're you're absolutely right but I'm this is why we have to put this

bluntly out here because people from your program will be listening to people in the

left wing will be listening and and this means very directly that they will have to put pressure

on Israel and that pressure will be threatening to cut off the military aid for real not just kind

of uh now he can try to guess it up and by the way president Trump I do believe just to put

something here about why uh he might be able to do this it's it's not just because of his

relationship with Israel but but president Trump is uh the best PR politician we've had certainly

at the equal volbana certainly the equal of Reagan uh some of my friends who don't like from don't

like it when I say this I think he's better he just think about this he did January 6 and got

reelected he just think about this for a moment that we have not seen I think this level of

understanding the media and how to he understands the media better than the media understands the

media here so if there's somebody who can recover his presidency even with all these lie abilities

I believe it is president Trump um he can sell this deal as an actual victory to at least his base

and enough time will pass he'll find other we have time he has time to recover you take this down

where we're still talking about this who not just talking but fighting this war in July that

that's gone see that space he needs space for the PR this PR is not something he can

genie up overnight let's talk about the because temperamentally I wonder you know your assessment

of 75% just from it just judging characters I imagine he would be quite tempted to go with a hard

option potentially well sure because he he he he he's faced with these horns of a dilemma and he has

some hope but I also think he put pressure on Netanyahu to stop um the ethnic cleansing in Gaza in

September uh and um I was one of the people um who was thinking that he might well do that

and it's for the good of Israel because I didn't believe that it was in Israel's interest

to cleanse the Netanyahu may think that but I didn't think it was in Israel's interest and I was on

podcast in this city uh uh Norm Dorfman does the comedy sower here and so yeah yeah yeah he's

I'm sorry I said the name norms now now now he's gonna be mad at me no uh but no yeah no please no

no um but uh you can go and listen and and and he uh he and I had a what's called a feisty

our discussion about this in August and I kept saying uh that no what you're not seeing is I

believe that in fact um uh President Trump himself may see the wisdom of going down this road

and uh I don't know if that at all he you know I'm not saying there was any uh connection here

whatsoever um but what I am saying is that I do think that um that the President Trump has uh

he has the power and I think he he may well have the interest he may see that what I'm saying

here is is the best for the country the world the region and his own presidency uh

Bob I want to come back to the other option which we haven't followed up the military option

the Marines on cargo are left controlling the coast you've hinted that there are more stages to

this if that option is pursued so so far we got to let's say they get the Marines dangerous operation

very high risk let's say it's successful with casualties their Iranians begin to destroy their

own all facilities and I imagine likely the other uh Gulf states as well at the same time

at this point I am not a great strategist but I imagine the temptation from

Israel and America is to so I look how terrible these Iranians are we got to go harder

so let me let me um uh to give you your you and the listeners some uh framework here for the

last 30 years my scholarship has been about air power economic sanctions lots of book you know

books on air it books not articles on sanctions and suicide terrorism and we have not talked about

the third shoe terrorism so after 9-11 I compiled the first database of all suicide attacks around

the world is real did not have this database uh they had to tax database who is attacking them

that was 20 percent wrong and I show them and they fixed it um so the um I compiled this database

and it produced a finding and I've published two books on this lots of articles but it produced

a finding which is that 95 percent of all suicide attacks are not due to religion there's a half

of them at that point in 2001 where to buy secular folks the Toml Tiger is in Sri Lanka um but 95

percent were in response to foreign ground forces ground forces it's not that you didn't have any

of those attacks before it's that when you put the military the foreign ground forces in they

went up 20 times just to give you a sense many many cases of this well I um before this was even

published uh I knew Paul Wolfwoods he was our deputy secretary of defense and knew him from the 90s

I had other connections with the uh with the Pentagon I gave secretary Wolfwoods here um uh the

studies here um and this was somebody coming from me um basically a liberal republican you could I

had all these friends in the NSC you could imagine that I was you know possibly going down that road

here well this is why I never went down that road it's because um I was showing them rather directly

that if they invaded a rock and I said this in so many words to them if they invaded a rock they

would touch off the largest suicide terrorist campaign in modern times they would produce more

attacks on western targets I didn't know London was coming a few years later but things like that

they were not stopping the next 9-11 they were assuring things like that would happen in the future

came back this was in november 2002 from the uh and again nothing classified here but it was it's not

been widely known um from Andy Marshall and some of the listeners here will know who that person is

highly credible conduit that um we're we're we're not going to take a rock off the table Bob

but what we are going to do is pull our forces out of uh Saudi Arabia that's how we opened iud

and cutter so that's how that happened because of this analysis that's what led to iud being open

that's what Marshall told me well then we did um watch the war in a rock and six months after the war

five months after the war the largest suicide terrorist campaign of modern times actually happened

just just as i was explaining here and who started my center the Chicago project this was in

february 2004 i had uh the the wolfowitz rumsfeld defense department reached out they wanted more

work on suicide terrorism i had to create a center so my center at the university of Chicago

was at first called the the university of Chicago project on suicide terrorism over the years i've

kept the acronym C post but i've morphed to Chicago project on security and threats so to expand

it a little bit but i've kept C post so it's so ironic but it was the it was the the very people that

i was telling were doing exactly the wrong thing that started the center and then wolfowitz left

and eggland became the next deputy and there was all these interactions because as he said the

nsc really wanted to know how good was papest data because there were other places we're thinking

of putting armies and and we never put those armies there so there's a whole set of stories about

that so when i say advised and so forth this is some of the this is this was my experience so

so i've had experience where people that i have disagreed with here and this was public so i

knew then i was never being hired by an nsc here and once you once you go down these these roads

notice that no nobody's really going to want to want to hire you because they're you can't you

you're i'm not a card carrying democrat i'm not a card carrying republican i'm a professor who's

laying out the escalation dynamics and willing to talk to anybody to try to get the better outcome

for the country so what are the escalation dynamics of present trumps pursues the marine

again the ground forest risk so the number one risk here to produce large amounts of anti-american

terrorism and we've seen little bits now but with nothing like could happen is going to be

ground military presence and and especially the idea that it would lead to regime change so so

even if we try to take that off the table the other side's not going to believe that and that

also means the 92 million people in Iran are going to believe that some will be hopeful some will

be opposed to that uh here that's going to mean uh others in the region here you're going to see

all what we call the tentacles of Iran you know the all the groups that they're the proxies so to

speak here you're you're going to stir up a hornet's nest of terrorism not on day one it took

about five months before it really got going here with uh and so we we can't met we can't put a

time we can't do it to the to the day that's what everybody would like they'd like to precisely

time it so they can put money on polymarket or whatever all right but the bottom line is we

know the direction it's like moving a super tanker uh and it's you know five months you know seven

eight months down the road you can expect a pretty good amount of um and this and this terrorism

could be pretty serious so just coming on this flight here i didn't have to take my shoes off

okay um we didn't do that on not after 9-11 until the first shoe bomb you see so so we're talking

we're not talking about the the the shooting sprees of you know 10 or 15 people being killed so if

this goes down this road the kind of indiscriminate terrorism we're talking about here um we're we're

talking about malls airplanes uh we're talking about those are the targets that that will come up

immediately uh think about it as ISIS potentially on steroids because ISIS was a group who did that

who did those kinds of attacks uh here ISIS was a group of just 30 or 40,000 well the uh

revolutionary guards uh and also the biology that's a million okay so already um

Iran is already very good at propaganda they're a state they're not a group and they will have

plenty they already do cyber they'll have plenty of ability to go on telegram they'll have

plenty of ability to do things that we're not even so when we uh we don't even know i think how a

a state as powerful as Iran would be able to use the internet and propaganda to inspire attacks

and that's why i think it will happen i i i think there may be some sleeper cells and some command

directed but what ISIS showed is the power of what you can do when you inspire attacks and you

explain that the attacker should take one or two weeks to prepare and you you can give them some

ideas for how to prepare but once ISIS started to explain you should take some time and prep

this they did this better than al-Qaeda i'll kind of try to do this but that's what ISIS really did

it wasn't so much the tactics of the car ramming i don't believe that i'm in studying terrorism

here in detail eight thousand suicide attacks one by one by one with research teams at my set

so i've looked at quite a few of these over time i believe that the issue is preparation how much

time does the would-be attacker put into it um the attacker in uh in texas here on uh was quick just

right off the bat killed two wounded about another dozen here um but that didn't that's not

somebody who spent a week or two preparing hey crux the guy who went after trump here he looks

like he's spent a week or two and look how much closer he got uh here unfortunately he he missed

unfortunately trump turned his head um but what i'm what i'm saying is that it's the preparation that's

the issue and the longer the preparation uh you know certainly oh two weeks here if you have a

two week period of time somebody's willing to put that much time in there's just a lot more

possibilities here of the bad things happening and that is what i'm worried about as we go forward

just a very quick aside uh before francis takes back over uh you said it uh it's not really about

religion and it's about ground troops but why aren't Ukrainians blowing themselves up

oh because they don't need to it's success so there have been a couple of instances that uh

were reported in the news as suicide attacks and we've drilled into it and we don't think so

so my books explain all all all this so the issue here is um last resort so if it's all about

religion what should be happening is these all these islamic groups they should be uh i kind of

put it is uh looking for the first excuse to get the quick trip trip to heaven so any old excuse

they should all be committing uh doing this uh that's not what you see is the patterns of these

suicide campaigns that's not what hezbollah's pattern was that's not what Hamas's pattern was

so in my books i gray out the pattern over time that's what these big books are doing they're

they're studying the trajectories of the campaigns and also how they begin with non-suicide campaigns

and then they often begin with political protests like the first inephata leads to which was

which was more like throwing Molotov cocktails that is the beginning of Hamas not suicide attacks

so Hamas right off the bat is islamic fundamental so they want all the stuff that you hear they want

the end of Israel well that was all true in 1987 and the charter their suicide attacks don't start

until years later and then it's not really going until you get to the second inephata which is

after 2000 so what you see here is that what it's uh what this what the trajectory of the terrorism is

is the tactics get more desperate and more deadly uh over time so Ukraine um they are uh they've held

the russians so except for the first like three days of the war okay so go back to the first three

days of the war that this is by the way the the smart bomb trap from the russian side they they fell

into the escalation trap um uh and and it's a very parallel to what's happened to us so stage one

they thought they had a quick and decisive victory strategy uh it's with air and ground powers and not

just air power um and um uh they get right to the airport in keef uh here so right to the gates of

keves they get very very close but the fact is they they don't have they couldn't get over the edge

here um and then within just a few days and and by the way i said this to some some congress folks who

came literally right out of a briefing a classified briefing telling me that they had just been told

that keves gonna fall in three days i said it's not gonna fall it's 90 percent like i'm not

but Bob you haven't been in the briefing i'm telling you they've got too much wherewithal here um and

and so the bottom line is they they don't fall and what do they do they lash back they take back over

so from march april may 2022 they're recovering lashing back and who's holding on by their fingernails

it's putin you see until he then fires all his mill you know this is when he's doing all the

rearranging of his staffs and so forth to go to stage three so stage one had the quick and decisive

stage two the lash back stage three for putin was the war of attrition and right now there's

barely been any movement since June of 2002 you're talking about a handful of miles 22

22 yeah oh i'm sorry yeah 22 yeah thank you since June 2022 uh three and a half years plus

here barely any movement of the line of contact so why would Ukraine do so and what they had is

they've come up with other ideas like drones you know and you've got uh donors some of them from

Chicago uh Jennifer Pritzker is one who was given all this money to you the Ukrainians to build

these drone factories and uh the drones are are really making it difficult for uh Russia to gain

any territory and so what does Russia do they've got their drone factories in Iran and they've

made it difficult for the Ukrainians to take territory so you've got basically a stalemate like

Korea that's occurring so they don't need suicide uh this isn't this would make it's not it's a

my book is called dying to win the strategic logic of suicide terrorism and it's explaining

it's not a religious logic the way most people think it's strategic and that explains the ebbs

and the flows the origins and the ends of the campaigns religion everything should just be a constant

look there's gonna be a lot of people who are listening to you professor who are thinking to

themselves they're looking at the strategies particularly that the Americans are pursued

straight of hormones and they're thinking to themselves why is it that they haven't predicted

what is going to happen why they've got some of the most intelligent people they've got access

some of the most brilliant military minds in the world military strategies etc why is it that they

haven't predicted what's going to happen i call it the illusion of precision control

Francis so i've been in the rooms when very very senior super smart people um and there's no cameras

on uh are getting these briefings about what air power can get and from people with stars on

their shoulders it is um amazing to watch and this can be republican democrat this is not about

party this is about human beings you put people in these rooms uh here and i and i show you and

you really believe not just maybe these bombs will hit their targets 90 95 percent of the time

but it's going to be the reality it's two things are inescapable number one immediately the

mind goes what leader can i kill and me even if the briefer is not talking about that by the way

immediately the mind goes to that because the briefer is explaining and again these people many

stars generals um that the bombs will hit within you know five to fifteen feet they'll talk about

them the winds and they'll talk about all these different conditions and you will then it'll be

immediately well that's about the size of this room and who would i like to take out from this

on the other side uh here so number one that's where the leadership decapitations idea really

come from but there's a second thing that the mind goes to that i've seen and and again i think

this is just human nature i don't think it's any deeper than that which is the illusion of control

of the escalation after that because i can have this exquisite opening it's like a chess game where

i have the exquisite opening in chess it may be the absolute perfect exquisite opening in chess

but it's still just the opening it's not the middle game which is really where all the strategy

and chess is all about here it's like territory and the moves and the faints and so forth and then

it's not the end game so you can't and so just like um uh uh in chess you can study end games but you

can't really think about what end game strategy to have until you get through the middle you see so

strategy here with the smart bombs i call this in with the smart bombs in particular a smart bomb

trap because what happens is it's like an opening in chess you are so absolutely mesmerized by the

accuracy of what you're about to do and the perfection of that opening that you're really

imagining you can totally control the middle game you can control the escalation from that point on

and even if the the the briefer here and and and i i know reason to think general cane would not have

been cautioning present trump uh starts to give caution about what might don't don't over read that

opening sir and you know there's the middle game even if they do that the the seeing that

and and seeing it so close and believing it's true here um i think it creates the illusion of control

and that's why i think you've seen this with uh when president ragan dropped bombs to assassinate

kudafi in april 1986 um we the bombs hit there that was the very first precision decapitation

campaign uh we hit his tent uh killed his family some of his family he just stepped out of his

tent literally he was sleeping in a tent literally just for a second um and uh but two years later

he brought down pan am flight 103 killed 271 civilians 190 americans as his retaliation um present

Clinton we pick a democrat uh march 1999 president clinton wants to negotiate for the pro-democracy

movement in cassava um and he wants to tilt the talk in the dove balance in the serbian government

who's the on the other side so uh he launches a three day well supposed to be a three day air

campaign uh hitting 51 targets in and around belgrade uh in order to shift the hawks and dove shake

if not degrade if not topple the molosevic regime um and the bombs hit their targets perfectly

but what happened is the serbian regime did not fall it was hardened and molosevic countered

by ordering 30,000 troops into cassava and he expelled that is ethnically cleansed a million

post-avars from the country that's 50% of all the civilians from that province uh and we had to

fight 78 days and put a ground army there to we didn't we we didn't have to actually conquer it

but to take it if he didn't back off and that's what led molosevic to give up it was

it was a disaster that we only pulled out at the end by putting in the ground forces here

so um this is what we're up against with the smart bomb trap now i talked to on the nsc

um uh present clinton's brief read the person on the nsc i won't say the name whose job it was to

give the all the worst case scenarios and he showed me um the four hundred page briefing this was

a year later because i interviewed out of sorry the president then i spent a lot of time studying

these not just kind of casually um and so uh he he showed me the briefing of still mark top secret

well he wrote it so he could show somebody to have a clearance um and he he he just said to me he

said Bob uh it never occurred to me that the serbs would be that vicious even though they described

it as one of the most vicious regimes ever he said it just never occurred to me or to us

we just couldn't imagine that level of evil professor so all of that being the case the one

question we haven't asked you strikes me as kind of important is yeah it's academic but also kind

of important if we agree i don't know if we agree but i imagine we agreed that iran shouldn't

get nuclear weapons yeah what should president trump have done uh he should have gone back to um

the jcp o a the obama deal um because if you can push this problem off ten fifteen twenty years

do it uh it's not the best it's still a problem deal but it is uh that deal what what once

president trump broke the deal and withdrew we saw that iran put pedal to the metal and it took

years not just a month day or two it took years before it could start to really rebuild its

um enrichment program so the deal actually with all its words was actually a good deal and it also

provided twenty four seven camera level inspection of everything uh here and i think this is what he

should have done he should have um uh i think taken versions of the deal that's been on offer

as imperfect as it was and he would have to sell it as uh he found a way to say it's better than

and people a lot of people just believe him i'm just thinking from a strategic perspective and

there's probably gaps in my thinking about it but if iran and other countries know that we effectively

cannot use air power or indeed ground power for the reasons you've articulated to deal with the

nuclear threat wouldn't there be perfectly logical for them to pursue nuclear weapons irrespective

of any deal that we do well now we're teaching them very strongly that they they must have nuclear

weapons um i think that's why the i want to come back to what i said is the offset with uh

israel so if you can offer iran um the possibility that israel will be contained containing

israel that's worth quite a bit that's worth quite a bit um because you really

as much as i'm laying all this out notice i'm saying things are seventy five of that means

there's still 25% over here and that's so so you are if i was advising iran uh here i would say

if you can get the containment of israel you take it and what does that mean okay you keep

your three point five enriched uranium but you open yourself back up to the iEA you open

yourself up to twenty four seven inspection you're gonna get some tit for tat where you're gonna

get some inspection of israel now too so this is not just you who's up for this but this what i

would say is if you want to maximize your survival here and your iran that's what i would do because

there is some chance that we're gonna go down these roads and as much as we're saying we'll never

put a hundred thousand troops in iran think about this right now jadey vant said we're never putting

ground troops in iran and what are we talking about doing next week is ground troops here at the

beginning now still limited but um there's no way that iran can really be sure we're not gonna

come at them with some multi division uh attack on the road and that they'll be able to offset that

so i would still say that the bottom line here is uh containing israel for iran that that's

something i think they would be foolish to give that up to to to surrender that because this

isn't uncertain world the first arabic paper it's been an absolute pleasure thank you so much

for coming on the show thank you guys man great questions thank you so much no worries at all

final question is always the same what's the one thing we're not talking about that we really

should be uh we we still haven't talked as much as we should have about the enriched uranium that's

floating now dispersing uh we think it's dispersing we some inside of iran it could be dispersing

outside of iran and so we've talked about stage one two and three i told you stage four i'm

worried about the terrorism there is a stage five in the fall which is um that dispersed uranium

finding its way into bad things happening here so so i i see a lot of bad possibilities here

that get worse that's why i've been putting out images on x of the funnel getting worse here

over time um and i and i think that uh i'm hoping we won't have to have those

sunday briefings where i go through those an hours i'm hoping we can talk we can stop it here

that's us thank you so much thank you appreciate it relax relax this is not a mad

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