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#073_ STORY INSPIRE: I Simulated the Iran War for 20 Years — Here’s What Happens Next · INSPIRE STORY

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: You've been running simulations on a war with Iran.
• 0:02
  Speaker 2: Yep, every strategy for 20 years. And it's playing out
• 0:05
  Speaker 2: right now. So I can tell you that we are
• 0:07
  Speaker 2: losing control of the situation. Like, we don't know where
• 0:12
  Speaker 2: that nuclear material is. But they have the material for
• 0:15
  Speaker 2: 16 nuclear bombs. And we've given them every incentive to
• 0:20
  Speaker 2: develop them.
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: Professor Robert Pape might be the single most important, credible
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: person we all need to listen to right now.
• 0:27
  Speaker 2: The supreme leader that we took out was against nuclear weapons.
• 0:31
  Speaker 2: The new supreme leader, he's way more aggressive.
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: He's advised two decades of presidents in the White House.
• 0:37
  Speaker 2: President Trump is really stuck, but he thrives in chaos.
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: And spent 30 years building the curriculum that trains the
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: Air Force for the exact type of war that's taking
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: place now in Iran. And one of the most mind-blowing
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: things I've learned is that there are three stages to
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: this conflict. Unfortunately, Professor Robert Pape, who has two decades
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: of being correct with his predictions, gives a 75% chance
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: that Trump is about to escalate to stage three. In
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: this episode, we're going to explain exactly what this means. Guys,
• 1:13
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• 1:15
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• 1:19
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• 1:21
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• 1:24
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• 1:26
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• 1:29
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• 1:32
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• 1:50
  Speaker 1: Thank you so much for being part of this journey.
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: It means the world. And yeah, let's do this. Professor
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: Robert Pate, what the hell is going on in the world? Now,
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: I should ask first, who are you and what have
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: you spent the last several decades of your life studying
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: and doing? And how does that relate to what's happening
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: in the world right now?
• 2:14
  Speaker 2: We are going through a crisis, more and very intense
• 2:18
  Speaker 2: right now, but it's a crisis that we have been
• 2:20
  Speaker 2: through before. 20 years ago with the Iraq war, Even
• 2:25
  Speaker 2: before that, we saw the bombing of Qaddafi. We saw
• 2:29
  Speaker 2: the reactions there. Now, I have been studying military strategy,
• 2:33
  Speaker 2: air power, international terrorism, now terrorism inside the United States,
• 2:38
  Speaker 2: and also political violence in the United States. It's not
• 2:40
  Speaker 2: related to particular groups. So I've been studying political violence
• 2:45
  Speaker 2: for 40 years.
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: What is the headline that people need to be aware
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: of when you've looked at 30 years of these types
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: of wars?
• 2:53
  Speaker 2: That bombs don't just hit targets, they change politics.
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: What does that mean?
• 2:58
  Speaker 2: That means that before the bombs fall, and even as
• 3:02
  Speaker 2: the bombs are falling now, we tend to focus on
• 3:05
  Speaker 2: the tactical success of bombing. We tend to ask, did
• 3:09
  Speaker 2: the bombs hit the targets? And it's with the smart
• 3:12
  Speaker 2: bomb age, it's almost mesmerizing. They hit the target and
• 3:16
  Speaker 2: destroy the target. Crater built, crater dirt, crater concrete, destroy buildings.
• 3:21
  Speaker 2: 90% of the time. The problem is wars are not
• 3:26
  Speaker 2: just about the hardware. They're not just about the military
• 3:30
  Speaker 2: operation of putting a bomb on a target. They're about politics.
• 3:35
  Speaker 2: And when the bombs start to fall, the politics in
• 3:39
  Speaker 2: both the target, the enemy, change, and the politics in
• 3:44
  Speaker 2: the attacker, the initiator, change. And that threshold is the
• 3:50
  Speaker 2: beginning of what I'm calling the escalation trap. Because you
• 3:54
  Speaker 2: get at stage one, tactical success often. What's missing here
• 4:01
  Speaker 2: is the next consideration, which is politics.
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: Who have you advised? And at what level have you
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: advised them on strategy, war, et cetera, et cetera?
• 4:10
  Speaker 2: So when I finished my PhD, right away, we started
• 4:15
  Speaker 2: to fight the first Gulf War, which was an all-air
• 4:17
  Speaker 2: power war. And I found my work from the 1980s
• 4:21
  Speaker 2: suddenly more relevant than ever. I was in the Washington Post,
• 4:25
  Speaker 2: USA Today, Frontline, designing the stories because we didn't have
• 4:30
  Speaker 2: the talking military heads at the time. And then I
• 4:33
  Speaker 2: get a call from the U.S. Air Force. And they're
• 4:35
  Speaker 2: asking me to come in and help not just teach,
• 4:39
  Speaker 2: but to build the curriculum. Then what happens as time
• 4:42
  Speaker 2: goes on, I end up advising every White House from
• 4:46
  Speaker 2: 2001 to 2024 including the first Trump White House.
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: I also heard that you've been running simulations on a
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: war with Iran.
• 4:56
  Speaker 2: Yep, the last class of every strategy for 20 years.
• 4:59
  Speaker 2: In fact, we did it just last May, just before
• 5:04
  Speaker 2: we started the bombing, and 90 minutes. So the class
• 5:08
  Speaker 2: goes a whole quarter, strategy in all kinds of different ways,
• 5:11
  Speaker 2: and we ended with the bombing of Iran. And what
• 5:14
  Speaker 2: did that mean? That meant we looked Took out the
• 5:17
  Speaker 2: whole target. We have the target set laid out. We
• 5:19
  Speaker 2: have the attack plans. We really go through the bombing
• 5:23
  Speaker 2: of Natanz, Fordow, Esafan. There's a number of these facilities
• 5:28
  Speaker 2: and so forth. And then we look at what's going
• 5:32
  Speaker 2: to happen. And what you see right away is 90
• 5:36
  Speaker 2: plus percent. Those B-2s are going to destroy those targets.
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: B-2s being the aircraft.
• 5:41
  Speaker 2: The stealthy aircraft that can penetrate the airspace. Very small
• 5:46
  Speaker 2: risk of loss. And then you see, but we don't
• 5:50
  Speaker 2: know where the nuclear material is. The whole point of
• 5:54
  Speaker 2: this is not to destroy a building. It's to get
• 5:57
  Speaker 2: at the 5%, 20%, 60% enriched uranium that's the material
• 6:04
  Speaker 2: for bombs. And last May, it was very clear they
• 6:08
  Speaker 2: had the material for 16 bombs. 60 nuclear bombs. One, six.
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: Nuclear bombs.
• 6:16
  Speaker 2: Yes, nuclear bombs, not to produce them all in a
• 6:19
  Speaker 2: single week, but over a period of months. And then
• 6:24
  Speaker 2: after we did that simulation, we didn't know where a
• 6:26
  Speaker 2: single ounce was. And we weren't going to know for
• 6:30
  Speaker 2: months after. So at the end of every, I make
• 6:34
  Speaker 2: some predictions. I say, what's going to happen? What's going
• 6:37
  Speaker 2: to happen is after about a year, we are going
• 6:40
  Speaker 2: to panic. because that material could be dispersed anywhere in Iran,
• 6:44
  Speaker 2: anywhere in that country. And that country, look how big
• 6:47
  Speaker 2: that is compared to the United States, could be dispersed
• 6:51
  Speaker 2: anywhere now. And how many of those are actually developing
• 6:56
  Speaker 2: toward a bomb? We will not know. So what will
• 6:59
  Speaker 2: we do? Regime change.
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: From all of your years in, I mean, 31 years old,
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: you start teaching about air power and war in this regard,
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: and you are 65 now.
• 7:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: What is the, from everything you know, 30 plus years
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: studying this stuff, Iran, running simulations on Iran, advising the
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: White House, being a master and probably, arguably, the most
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: informed person in the United States right now about air
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: attacks like the one the US is performing on Iran.
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: What is the headline that you're trying to send to
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: the world at this moment in time? Like, what is
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: it we're missing? Because we're seeing Trump come out and
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: Trump say, it's going well, everything's amazing, we've taken out
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: all their guys. What is, what are we missing?
• 7:39
  Speaker 2: We're missing the We're stuck in a trap of our
• 7:42
  Speaker 2: own making. I'll explain what that trap is. But the
• 7:46
  Speaker 2: key consequence of the trap is we're losing control. We
• 7:50
  Speaker 2: are losing control of the situation. And what you were
• 7:54
  Speaker 2: seeing with President Trump is he's trying to regain control. Now,
• 7:59
  Speaker 2: the problem is that starting not just a week of Saturday,
• 8:05
  Speaker 2: but starting back in June when we took out Natanz Fordow,
• 8:10
  Speaker 2: We started to lose control. And what are we losing
• 8:12
  Speaker 2: control of? Knowing where that nuclear material is. And we
• 8:18
  Speaker 2: now have civilian satellites and you can see them moving things.
• 8:24
  Speaker 2: What would they be moving around the nuclear areas? I
• 8:27
  Speaker 2: wonder you think they're moving the, the, the, the, you know,
• 8:30
  Speaker 2: what are they moving here? It's most likely going to
• 8:33
  Speaker 2: be that nuclear material because their plan there, you can
• 8:37
  Speaker 2: see they have prepared for this war. just as we have,
• 8:42
  Speaker 2: except they've been preparing for how to be resilient, how
• 8:45
  Speaker 2: to now lash back in increasingly aggressive ways. They are
• 8:51
  Speaker 2: winning the escalation part of the war, and that's not
• 8:56
  Speaker 2: an accident. This you can see coming in stages.
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: For anyone that doesn't know, we've got leaders that have
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: different levels of sort of information and knowledge here. I'm
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: going to try and summarize this and butcher it in
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: the most... In a delicate way, possibly can. So earlier
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: last year, last year, the United States suspected that Iran
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: were very close to enriching uranium. They're at 60%. They're
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: at 60 already. If they get to 90%, they have
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: a bomb.
• 9:24
  Speaker 2: Yes, but possibly even with the 60%, Stephen, it depends
• 9:28
  Speaker 2: on just how good their scientists are. And we're not
• 9:30
  Speaker 2: really sure. So there's somewhere, we're at 60%. We're already
• 9:34
  Speaker 2: very worried. You go to 90, it's a gimme.
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: And then the United States dropped these big bunker buster bombs.
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: They flew those B-2 airplanes in, dropped these bombs, smashing
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: up the site. And then it felt like it was over.
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: And then the United States went into negotiations with Iran
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: to try and get some kind of deal done.
• 9:54
  Speaker 2: To get the material we didn't get. You see, why
• 9:57
  Speaker 2: are we even talking to them? If this has really
• 10:00
  Speaker 2: obliterated the program, why are we bothering to talk to them?
• 10:03
  Speaker 2: What exactly are we talking about here? Do you notice
• 10:06
  Speaker 2: the inconsistency here? So when you say we thought it
• 10:09
  Speaker 2: was over, that's the public. Now, the public need to
• 10:13
  Speaker 2: understand they're very busy people. They're paying for the price
• 10:15
  Speaker 2: of eggs. So they're not supposed to be able to
• 10:19
  Speaker 2: be up on this.
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: It's a good point I've never thought about. Why would
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: we be talking to them?
• 10:23
  Speaker 2: Why are we talking to them, you see? So right
• 10:26
  Speaker 2: from the get-go. And by the way, all of the Israelis,
• 10:32
  Speaker 2: we have a thing called the Defense Intelligence Agency. Their
• 10:35
  Speaker 2: reports that were done after the bombing were leaked. And
• 10:39
  Speaker 2: they all say the same thing. which is we created holes.
• 10:43
  Speaker 2: We probably shook these underground chambers. We're not sure because
• 10:48
  Speaker 2: we had no eyeballs on that, but we have no
• 10:51
  Speaker 2: idea where that enriched uranium is. And we have good
• 10:54
  Speaker 2: reason to worry they got them out because we actually
• 10:57
  Speaker 2: have a satellite picture that shows two days before we
• 11:02
  Speaker 2: bombed Fordow, there was a bunch of trucks moving stuff
• 11:06
  Speaker 2: out Gee, what do you think you might move out
• 11:10
  Speaker 2: if America is about to bomb your site? Again, I
• 11:13
  Speaker 2: don't think they're moving out the popcorn. And it's pretty–
• 11:17
  Speaker 2: this material can be moved in what look like large
• 11:20
  Speaker 2: scuba tanks. They call them scuba tanks, but I try
• 11:24
  Speaker 2: to show pictures of this too. They're actually like as
• 11:26
  Speaker 2: large as this table. So you need basically trucks. Trucks
• 11:30
  Speaker 2: like that satellite photography shows that they took out. So,
• 11:34
  Speaker 2: so we can't say for sure, but what you see
• 11:37
  Speaker 2: is these are the indications that you worry they've dispersed
• 11:42
  Speaker 2: the material even before we hit the site.
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: And then we attack.
• 11:46
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: The United States attacks in February, February, 2026, which is.
• 11:49
  Speaker 2: Yep. February, 2026, February, 2028. We start again this time
• 11:54
  Speaker 2: with regime change. Notice we don't go even after the physical,
• 11:58
  Speaker 2: the nuclear material. We don't know where it is.
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: So for the average person, the average person would think
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: if you take out the supreme leader, then the war
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: is over. Drop the bomb on the person and the
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: war is complete.
• 12:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah. So let's talk about your Jenga thing here because
• 12:13
  Speaker 2: what I find, Stephen, so keep in mind, I am advising,
• 12:17
  Speaker 2: teaching some of the most brilliant minds in the country. Now,
• 12:21
  Speaker 2: a lot of these smart people though, they don't know
• 12:23
  Speaker 2: that they've been given like one inch deep briefings, maybe
• 12:28
  Speaker 2: even one sentence briefings. So their image is often like
• 12:33
  Speaker 2: this and it's wrong. This is what they think the
• 12:37
  Speaker 2: regime looks like. And they think that because they've been given,
• 12:41
  Speaker 2: they basically have been consuming probably for years One or
• 12:45
  Speaker 2: two sentences about the structure. They know there's a supreme leader.
• 12:48
  Speaker 2: They might know there's nuclear facilities, missiles command. And so,
• 12:52
  Speaker 2: it looks like, oh, my goodness gracious, that if you
• 12:55
  Speaker 2: could just simply take out the right node, you would
• 13:00
  Speaker 2: be able to make this whole thing fall down.
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: Okay?
• 13:04
  Speaker 2: But that's the wrong image, Stephen. This is the way
• 13:07
  Speaker 2: smart people think. The problem is this is a false
• 13:12
  Speaker 2: image of most regimes, even the bad ones, and certainly
• 13:16
  Speaker 2: the Iranian regime. Let me just focus on the Iranian regime.
• 13:20
  Speaker 2: The Iranian regime is more like a matrix. It's more,
• 13:25
  Speaker 2: it's not brittle the way this is. So you can
• 13:28
  Speaker 2: keep trying to pull things out, but with a matrix,
• 13:32
  Speaker 2: or I think the corporate structures now are built to
• 13:36
  Speaker 2: be adaptive to change because You have so many changes
• 13:41
  Speaker 2: that happen. The structure needs to adapt to change. That
• 13:46
  Speaker 2: is basically the structure of revolutionary regimes going back to
• 13:50
  Speaker 2: before World War I.
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: Okay, I want to ask a dumb question. When they
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: took out the supreme leader in Iran, who's going to
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: give out the instructions?
• 14:00
  Speaker 2: The adaptive system adapts and fills in the holes. It
• 14:07
  Speaker 2: fills in the holes, usually with what's left. And in
• 14:11
  Speaker 2: this case, the supreme leader that we took out, this
• 14:15
  Speaker 2: particular hole, this was the guy who had two fatwas.
• 14:20
  Speaker 2: They're called, these are religious edicts. It's like a people edict.
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: What does that mean?
• 14:26
  Speaker 2: Against nuclear weapons. It's a religious, he's the leader of
• 14:31
  Speaker 2: essentially the religion, a little bit like the Shia Pope. Mm-hmm.
• 14:34
  Speaker 2: And he is actually issuing religious doctrine, and that's called
• 14:40
  Speaker 2: a fatwa. And as a religious doctrine, he issued two
• 14:44
  Speaker 2: that said Iran should not have nuclear weapons. The guy
• 14:48
  Speaker 2: we killed was one of the guardrails against nuclear weapons.
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: How does that– he was developing them?
• 14:56
  Speaker 2: No, no. He's developing the enrichment material. They hadn't been
• 15:00
  Speaker 2: fashioned yet that we know of as nuclear weapons, OK?
• 15:04
  Speaker 2: So we're worried about, again, this enrichment going from 5%
• 15:08
  Speaker 2: to 20% to 60%, but they hadn't actually taken that
• 15:13
  Speaker 2: next step, which is more of an engineering step to
• 15:15
  Speaker 2: develop the nuclear weapon. Now we took out the person
• 15:21
  Speaker 2: who at the very tippy top was balancing the hawks
• 15:24
  Speaker 2: and doves, and he had decided for decades to issue
• 15:28
  Speaker 2: these FOTWAs. He did it not just once, but twice.
• 15:32
  Speaker 2: His son, who took over the new supreme leader, no
• 15:36
  Speaker 2: fatwa yet. That fatwa died with this guy. So, will
• 15:40
  Speaker 2: the new leader come in? It's not clear. He's got
• 15:44
  Speaker 2: the religious authority to do anything like what his father did.
• 15:48
  Speaker 2: This is a very different world. And he's known to
• 15:50
  Speaker 2: be way more aggressive than his father. He's been in
• 15:54
  Speaker 2: charge of the Bazi, basically the The police that like
• 15:59
  Speaker 2: to go and kill the protesters. He's been the guy
• 16:02
  Speaker 2: who's been very, very strongly supporting, if not leading, that
• 16:07
  Speaker 2: particular effort.
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: And last night it was announced that he has been
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: appointed as the new leader of Iran.
• 16:13
  Speaker 2: He's the new supreme leader. Did Trump expect this? I
• 16:17
  Speaker 2: think that he expected it because he kept trying to
• 16:21
  Speaker 2: talk the Iranians out of it. This is what he
• 16:23
  Speaker 2: meant by last week when President Trump was saying, that
• 16:28
  Speaker 2: he wanted not this guy. He specifically said not the son.
• 16:33
  Speaker 2: And then he had a problem because people kept pushing him.
• 16:36
  Speaker 2: And they said, okay, well, if you don't like the son,
• 16:38
  Speaker 2: who would you pick? And he said, well, it is
• 16:41
  Speaker 2: a problem because when we killed the Supreme Leader, we
• 16:44
  Speaker 2: killed around the leader 20 or 30 others who we
• 16:47
  Speaker 2: actually thought were better. So we actually took out the
• 16:50
  Speaker 2: best alternatives when the Supreme Leader was killed. And so
• 16:56
  Speaker 2: everybody's scratching their heads going, what are we talking about here?
• 17:00
  Speaker 2: So we actually helped by killing the competitors to the sun.
• 17:06
  Speaker 2: We made it more likely the sun. And so what
• 17:08
  Speaker 2: I'm trying to explain, Stephen, is this adapts, okay? So
• 17:12
  Speaker 2: that you're not really taking these pieces out. You're rearranging them.
• 17:19
  Speaker 2: And you are moving up. In this case, you're moving up.
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: The next Supreme Leader?
• 17:24
  Speaker 2: Well, there's the supreme leader, but what we're not showing here,
• 17:28
  Speaker 2: you're seeing the target sets that are being discussed. You're
• 17:32
  Speaker 2: not seeing the Revolutionary Guard. What is that? That is
• 17:36
  Speaker 2: part of the army. Iran has a million men in arms,
• 17:41
  Speaker 2: a million. That's as many as we have in our
• 17:45
  Speaker 2: 300 million people. They have 92 million. They have a
• 17:48
  Speaker 2: million in arms. And about 150 or 200,000 of them
• 17:53
  Speaker 2: are what are called the revolutionary guards. These are the
• 17:56
  Speaker 2: most aggressive, the most well-trained. These are the most dedicated
• 18:02
  Speaker 2: to the regime. The son who we just took over
• 18:08
  Speaker 2: is the prime candidate for that group. So when we
• 18:12
  Speaker 2: took out a link here, It's not just being replaced
• 18:15
  Speaker 2: by another cog. It's being replaced by a very aggressive
• 18:19
  Speaker 2: individual who's backed by some of the most aggressive part
• 18:24
  Speaker 2: of that million-man army. So this is what I was
• 18:26
  Speaker 2: trying to explain in my substacks, where when you take
• 18:30
  Speaker 2: out the leader, you may kill the leader, but you
• 18:34
  Speaker 2: get in its place a harder regime, a more resilient regime,
• 18:38
  Speaker 2: a tougher regime that wants to lash back even more aggressively.
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: Because you killed bad people.
• 18:44
  Speaker 2: You killed dad. And also, if you don't lash back,
• 18:48
  Speaker 2: how does the new leader get his credibility with everybody else?
• 18:52
  Speaker 2: If he's a wimp, why doesn't he get a bullet
• 18:55
  Speaker 2: in the back of the head? You see, just because
• 18:57
  Speaker 2: he's appointed a new leader, he's still just like when
• 19:01
  Speaker 2: you're the head of a new company. Let's say you
• 19:04
  Speaker 2: take over. There's a company that's in shambles, and they
• 19:07
  Speaker 2: get rid of their CEO, and they bring you on. Well,
• 19:10
  Speaker 2: you've got to have a plan. You see, and if
• 19:13
  Speaker 2: you don't have a plan to turn that thing around
• 19:15
  Speaker 2: pretty soon, you know, Elon Musk had to have the
• 19:17
  Speaker 2: big plan. If you don't have that plan, guess what?
• 19:20
  Speaker 2: You're out. Same here. So you have incentive structure here
• 19:26
  Speaker 2: for not just replacing, not just wimpy replacements, certainly not
• 19:31
  Speaker 2: pro-American replacements. You have incentives for lashing back against the
• 19:38
  Speaker 2: attacker and Which is why when we tried to kill
• 19:41
  Speaker 2: Qaddafi in 1986, he lashes back and takes out Pan
• 19:46
  Speaker 2: Am Flight 103, killing 271 civilians. 190 Americans. When we
• 19:52
  Speaker 2: try to take out the Milosevic regime to degrade it
• 19:55
  Speaker 2: in March 99, Milosevic lashes back, sending 30,000 ground forces
• 20:01
  Speaker 2: into cleanse, that is, get rid of a million civilians
• 20:06
  Speaker 2: in Kosovo. This over and over.
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: I mean, you have written books about suicide terrorism.
• 20:13
  Speaker 2: That's right.
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: I've got one of them in front of me here
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: called Dying to Win. So, I mean, you know a
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: lot about this subject. And this is one of the
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: concerns that actually my fiance had said to me. She said,
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: I explained to her, I was like, you know, Iran,
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: they really just have drones at the moment. So, I
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: think that's fine. And then she posed a question to me.
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: She was like, yeah, but what about suicide terrorism? Let
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: me just explain.
• 20:31
  Speaker 2: So, here we are. It is, here is, of course, Iran.
• 20:36
  Speaker 2: And imagine it's back in June. So I'm going to
• 20:38
  Speaker 2: start the story in June. This is the beginning of
• 20:41
  Speaker 2: the smart bomb, the escalation trap. Stage one. We hit Fordow,
• 20:46
  Speaker 2: which is right around there. And then we hit Natanz
• 20:49
  Speaker 2: and some other sites right around here. And what does
• 20:52
  Speaker 2: Iran do here? They lash back. And who are they
• 20:56
  Speaker 2: lashing back against? Israel here. They have their missiles focused
• 21:02
  Speaker 2: on Israel. They're not really hitting our bases here. They're
• 21:05
  Speaker 2: hitting Israel, and they send 3,000 Israelis to the hospital,
• 21:11
  Speaker 2: the most since the 73 War. So a long time.
• 21:15
  Speaker 2: That is stage one, okay? Now what happened in February 28th?
• 21:21
  Speaker 2: February 28th, they're lashing back a bit against Israel for sure,
• 21:26
  Speaker 2: but now they're at stage two. This is why I
• 21:29
  Speaker 2: published this piece today in Foreign Affairs today. about how
• 21:32
  Speaker 2: Iran's winning the escalation war. So it just came out
• 21:34
  Speaker 2: just a few hours before we came on. And what's
• 21:37
  Speaker 2: happening here is called, I call it horizontal escalation. Because
• 21:41
  Speaker 2: what they're doing now is they're using drones, mostly a
• 21:44
  Speaker 2: few missiles, but mostly drones. This was almost all missiles,
• 21:48
  Speaker 2: no drones. And they're using their drone capacity, which they
• 21:51
  Speaker 2: have a lot of, and it's precision. These drones are
• 21:55
  Speaker 2: like precision-guided weapons. They go right to the target. And
• 21:59
  Speaker 2: what they're trying to do is break this coalition.
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: For anyone that can't see at the moment, they counted
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: with horizontal escalation against Saudi Arabia, the UAE.
• 22:09
  Speaker 2: The coalition that had been formed against them, they're trying
• 22:13
  Speaker 2: to break the coalition, you see. And they may well
• 22:17
  Speaker 2: do that.
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: Why would they want to break that? My friends are
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: escaping Dubai at the moment. I've got friends staying in
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: my house in Cape Town because he doesn't want to
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: be there.
• 22:23
  Speaker 2: Because they want these countries to kick the Americans out
• 22:27
  Speaker 2: of their country. Get rid of the embassies. Get rid
• 22:31
  Speaker 2: of the bases. Then we don't have the platforms to
• 22:35
  Speaker 2: plaster them. You see, these are our basically ground-based aircraft carriers.
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: I thought they were attacking Saudi Arabia, for example, because
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: that will make Saudi Arabia call Trump and say, listen, stop, please.
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: We're losing our tourism. We're shutting our airports.
• 22:50
  Speaker 2: Well, they do want to. They are threatening the tourism,
• 22:53
  Speaker 2: hitting the economic nodes. They're hitting hotels. They're hitting the airports.
• 22:59
  Speaker 2: What they are trying to do is by threatening tourism,
• 23:03
  Speaker 2: which varies from 5% to 10% of the GDP of
• 23:09
  Speaker 2: these countries. This is not trivial amounts here. They're basically
• 23:13
  Speaker 2: trying to drive wedges between these countries and America. And
• 23:19
  Speaker 2: America right now, I don't see any movement through Congress.
• 23:22
  Speaker 2: Where is this $ 100 billion going to the region to
• 23:25
  Speaker 2: make up for their lost tourism? I don't remember seeing
• 23:28
  Speaker 2: that bill come through Congress last week. So I'm just
• 23:31
  Speaker 2: putting it a little humorously to point out these countries
• 23:34
  Speaker 2: are losing a fair bit right now. And that tourism
• 23:37
  Speaker 2: may not come back for a while.
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: I've got friends that have moved. I've got friends that
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: one of my friends was thinking about leaving is now
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: in my house in Cape Town. And he's been there
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: for five years. He's leaving and he's going to move
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: to America. I've got so many friends that I've called.
• 23:52
  Speaker 2: And imagine that we have 500,000 American citizens here and
• 23:56
  Speaker 2: we have the State Department on CNN. Call this number.
• 24:00
  Speaker 2: We'll help you escape.
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: Even the media in the UK, you see it. It's
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: like they're showing like the BBC showing like evacuations of
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: UK citizens as they're being greeted in the airport, putting microphones.
• 24:09
  Speaker 2: So this is putting a lot of pressure here and–
• 24:13
  Speaker 2: There's something else that's not widely known, which is there's
• 24:17
  Speaker 2: a big gap between what the leaders of the countries want,
• 24:20
  Speaker 2: willing to support the U.S. and Israel and their publics.
• 24:24
  Speaker 2: You see, this coalition that's been built against Iran here
• 24:29
  Speaker 2: is not clearly going down well with publics. These are publics.
• 24:34
  Speaker 2: They may not like Iran. They may be Sunni and Iran-Shia.
• 24:38
  Speaker 2: but they don't want to be part of an Israeli
• 24:40
  Speaker 2: expansion plan where Israel is going to conquer more and
• 24:43
  Speaker 2: more territory and so forth. And so, this is where
• 24:47
  Speaker 2: the soft underbelly here of this. This isn't just about
• 24:51
  Speaker 2: the tourism. That's the short term. The longer term is
• 24:56
  Speaker 2: bottom-up pressure. Sadat, he was a leader of Egypt in
• 25:00
  Speaker 2: the 1970s. He cut a deal with Israel. It's called
• 25:04
  Speaker 2: the Camp David Accords, peace for land, but it was
• 25:09
  Speaker 2: very favorable. Well, after Sadat did that, the president of Egypt,
• 25:13
  Speaker 2: in 1981, in a military parade, his own security guards
• 25:17
  Speaker 2: at the military parade marched with their guns, came up
• 25:22
  Speaker 2: to his place, and they shot him dead. So you don't,
• 25:27
  Speaker 2: this is the real world here. So this is very,
• 25:29
  Speaker 2: very dangerous for these leaders. Now, that's stage two. Now,
• 25:34
  Speaker 2: what happens if we decide to have one of these
• 25:37
  Speaker 2: limited ground deployments here? Because after all, we still don't
• 25:42
  Speaker 2: know where this material is.
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: What does that mean? So for anyone that doesn't know
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: anything about the world, what does a ground deployment mean?
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: Because I saw Trump being asked about this on the
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: plane yesterday, and he didn't seem to deny it was
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: going to happen.
• 25:52
  Speaker 2: It means you try to control a limited amount of space,
• 25:56
  Speaker 2: say the space around Fordow or the nuclear facility that
• 26:00
  Speaker 2: you bombed in June. And you would send the, say,
• 26:04
  Speaker 2: 82nd Airborne in to control the space.
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: What's this? I don't know what any of this stuff is.
• 26:09
  Speaker 2: Oh, I see. So, 82nd Airborne is a division that
• 26:12
  Speaker 2: we have that's especially equipped to go into hostile area
• 26:18
  Speaker 2: and land and control, say, airports, control space. Think about
• 26:23
  Speaker 2: controlling all the size of LAX. So, if you want
• 26:26
  Speaker 2: to control LAX, you bring in the 82nd Airborne. They
• 26:29
  Speaker 2: will have 5,000 men and women, not just guys now,
• 26:33
  Speaker 2: and they will come in and they will control that
• 26:35
  Speaker 2: space LAX. But they will also be doing this probably
• 26:39
  Speaker 2: not for a day, not for even a week. They're
• 26:42
  Speaker 2: going to have to spend weeks and weeks to search
• 26:45
  Speaker 2: for that material because we don't know where it is.
• 26:49
  Speaker 2: And it's all deeply buried. And a lot of the
• 26:52
  Speaker 2: stuff has been, the entrances have been blown up. So
• 26:57
  Speaker 2: this means long-term presence there. You might also take some
• 27:00
  Speaker 2: of the oil fields to cut off some of the
• 27:03
  Speaker 2: money here for the regime. That is where that book
• 27:08
  Speaker 2: comes in.
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: Do you think it's likely that America will put boots
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: on the ground, American soldiers in Iran?
• 27:15
  Speaker 2: I think it's at least 50-50, if not immediately. So
• 27:18
  Speaker 2: people keep expecting the escalation to be continuous. And then
• 27:23
  Speaker 2: when there's a pause— As there was between June and February,
• 27:28
  Speaker 2: they think, oh, it's over. I'm going to go now
• 27:30
  Speaker 2: worry about something else. And believe me, there's plenty else
• 27:32
  Speaker 2: to worry about. We've got Minneapolis. We've got plenty to
• 27:36
  Speaker 2: worry about here, even with violence. But that's not how
• 27:39
  Speaker 2: escalation operates. Escalation can have a ratchet effect that's spaced
• 27:47
  Speaker 2: out by months of what seems like peace, only to
• 27:52
  Speaker 2: come right back. And you're stuck in that escalation momentum.
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: Which is what we've seen.
• 27:58
  Speaker 2: Which is exactly what we've seen. And for the reason
• 28:01
  Speaker 2: I'm telling you, we don't know where that nuclear material is.
• 28:06
  Speaker 2: That has been the $ 64, 000 weakness in this entire idea
• 28:13
  Speaker 2: of using air power, not just in the last 10 days,
• 28:16
  Speaker 2: going back to June. It's not just even about the
• 28:19
  Speaker 2: regime change. It's about how are you going to get
• 28:22
  Speaker 2: that nuclear material out? We had a deal, this deal
• 28:26
  Speaker 2: with Obama. Trump did not like it. But with that deal,
• 28:30
  Speaker 2: that held and Iran took out almost all, virtually just
• 28:36
  Speaker 2: only a tiny bit was left, not enough for a bomb,
• 28:39
  Speaker 2: all out of the country. And we watched it. We
• 28:41
  Speaker 2: monitored it. We had 24-7 cameras to monitor this. We
• 28:46
  Speaker 2: had human on-site inspections to monitor this. 2018, Trump just
• 28:51
  Speaker 2: ripped it up, walked away unilaterally. And from that point on,
• 28:55
  Speaker 2: it's been peddled to the metal by Iran in upgrading
• 28:59
  Speaker 2: that enriched uranium. And that's how you got to that
• 29:02
  Speaker 2: material that would be enough for the 16 bombs. And
• 29:05
  Speaker 2: right now, we don't know where that is.
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: So, stage one is.
• 29:11
  Speaker 2: Okay, stage one, you are beginning the escalation trap. In
• 29:15
  Speaker 2: this case, it's a smart bomb trap, because it's with
• 29:18
  Speaker 2: smart bombs, where you have tactical success near perfect. Call
• 29:24
  Speaker 2: it 100%, because it really is. But that doesn't mean
• 29:28
  Speaker 2: you have strategic success. Tactical success plus strategic failure. Then
• 29:36
  Speaker 2: that strategic failure weighs on you over time because the
• 29:40
  Speaker 2: enemy still got the thing that you wanted to get
• 29:42
  Speaker 2: in the first place. Now you do stage two, which
• 29:45
  Speaker 2: is regime change. Because after all, You've already hit the targets.
• 29:50
  Speaker 2: You can make the rubble bounce, but what more? That's
• 29:53
  Speaker 2: why we didn't bomb them in the last 10 days.
• 29:55
  Speaker 2: We might go back and bomb Ferdows some more, okay?
• 29:58
  Speaker 2: But we already bombed it. So there's more watching the bubble.
• 30:01
  Speaker 2: But now we're in stage two because what are your options?
• 30:04
  Speaker 2: The only other option is, well, let me get rid
• 30:06
  Speaker 2: of the regime because then the regime I will control
• 30:10
  Speaker 2: and the next regime will just give us the material.
• 30:14
  Speaker 2: That's not working now. And you hear today, Trump is dancing,
• 30:18
  Speaker 2: trying to figure out what to say. He doesn't want
• 30:20
  Speaker 2: to say the war's over. Okay. He doesn't want to
• 30:23
  Speaker 2: say the war's going on. But the bottom line is,
• 30:25
  Speaker 2: he won't even be clear about why we're fighting the
• 30:28
  Speaker 2: war anymore. And I'm telling you, there's a real problem.
• 30:31
  Speaker 2: The nuclear material is still there, and it can still
• 30:35
  Speaker 2: be fashioned into those 16 bombs over time. So this
• 30:39
  Speaker 2: is where then you get this horizontal escalation where now
• 30:43
  Speaker 2: they're really, really working on this because now it's a
• 30:45
  Speaker 2: long war.
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: They start attacking their neighbors.
• 30:48
  Speaker 2: And try to make it a– the consequences go on
• 30:51
  Speaker 2: for months. So just imagine, when are your friends exactly
• 30:53
  Speaker 2: going to move back? So let's say the war is
• 30:56
  Speaker 2: over tomorrow. Are they moving back tomorrow? And when was
• 30:58
  Speaker 2: the last time– have you started to plan for your
• 31:01
  Speaker 2: next vacation in Dubai? I've been to Dubai.
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: I was planning speaking there in a month's time, but
• 31:05
  Speaker 1: it's been canceled already.
• 31:06
  Speaker 2: Well, yeah, just start to think about that. And a
• 31:08
  Speaker 2: minor thing like a drone attack could suddenly come out
• 31:11
  Speaker 2: of nowhere. You're not even– you think it's– I'm just
• 31:13
  Speaker 2: trying to point out that this is the world now
• 31:15
  Speaker 2: that a lot of people– this was a luxury market.
• 31:19
  Speaker 2: This was the playground of the rich and famous here.
• 31:22
  Speaker 2: This is really now– And it may come back a
• 31:25
  Speaker 2: year or two from now, but it took two years
• 31:28
  Speaker 2: for air travel to come back after 9-11. Just think
• 31:31
  Speaker 2: about that. Now, we haven't gotten to Stage 3 yet,
• 31:34
  Speaker 2: which gets to your girlfriend's point.
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: How do we move from Stage 2 to Stage 3?
• 31:38
  Speaker 2: Oh, well, because you still don't know where the nuclear
• 31:40
  Speaker 2: material is. And we don't have to move to Stage
• 31:45
  Speaker 2: 3 this week. We could do it a month from now,
• 31:50
  Speaker 2: six months from now. The problem is we've now put
• 31:53
  Speaker 2: in place a much more aggressive leadership, much more aggressive regime.
• 31:58
  Speaker 2: We've taken away some of what may have been guardrails.
• 32:01
  Speaker 2: We can't say for sure for the nuclear weapon. This
• 32:04
  Speaker 2: new regime. Much more likely. And we've given them every
• 32:07
  Speaker 2: incentive to develop the nuclear bomb. We're killing them. So
• 32:12
  Speaker 2: what exactly is their incentive? Their best way to survive
• 32:18
  Speaker 2: is to have a nuclear weapon. And you'll say, well,
• 32:19
  Speaker 2: we're going to kill them. Well, we're already killing them.
• 32:22
  Speaker 2: So we've taken away their incentive not to have a
• 32:25
  Speaker 2: nuclear weapon. So we will start to worry as each
• 32:30
  Speaker 2: week goes by, not because we have great intel, not
• 32:34
  Speaker 2: because our human, it's because of the opposite. We don't
• 32:38
  Speaker 2: have the exquisite intelligence we had with the Obama deal
• 32:41
  Speaker 2: to know we had frozen the program. Now that we
• 32:46
  Speaker 2: have Swiss cheese at best and what we will see
• 32:49
  Speaker 2: in the holes of the Swiss cheese is are indications
• 32:52
  Speaker 2: of nuclear development. And that will make us worry because
• 32:56
  Speaker 2: what happens with a nuclear weapon? Is it going to
• 32:58
  Speaker 2: go to Hezbollah? And is Hezbollah going to help put
• 33:01
  Speaker 2: it in Haifa? What's going to happen with these? Are
• 33:06
  Speaker 2: they going to give it to the Houthis? So these
• 33:08
  Speaker 2: are the kind of worries we will have that will
• 33:11
  Speaker 2: push us to the ground options. And that is with
• 33:17
  Speaker 2: stage three the retaliation approaches the homeland.
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: Is that realistic?
• 33:26
  Speaker 2: If ISIS with its 30,000 to 40,000– remember, ISIS was
• 33:30
  Speaker 2: not a state. Iran is an actual state with 92
• 33:33
  Speaker 2: million people. So if ISIS can foment command-directed, inspired suicide
• 33:40
  Speaker 2: attacks and other attacks in San Bernardino, just to kind
• 33:44
  Speaker 2: of bring it a little bit closer to home here,
• 33:46
  Speaker 2: across the United States. Paris, remember the big Paris attack?
• 33:50
  Speaker 2: So why exactly is Iran not, I mean, ISIS was
• 33:53
  Speaker 2: a lot weaker than Iran.
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: Do you think in Iran at the moment, they're working
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: on that? They're working on a terrorist attack?
• 34:01
  Speaker 2: Well, I don't, I think that my work tells me
• 34:04
  Speaker 2: that it's most likely to come with the presence of
• 34:08
  Speaker 2: the ground forces by us. Doesn't mean it's a necessary condition,
• 34:12
  Speaker 2: but it's just most likely. Russia in 96th, With our help,
• 34:17
  Speaker 2: we played a trick on him, assassinated the Chechen leader.
• 34:20
  Speaker 2: It's a leader of its Republican in Russia called Chechnya, Dudayev.
• 34:25
  Speaker 2: Only a million people. And Russia killed the guy. And
• 34:30
  Speaker 2: we actually have pictures of him seeing the missile hitting
• 34:33
  Speaker 2: him because we can put the cameras right in the
• 34:35
  Speaker 2: nose cone. Then the new guy took over. His name
• 34:39
  Speaker 2: was Baziev. And he launched within three months, not the
• 34:44
  Speaker 2: next week, Operation Jihad. And his Operation Jihad was much
• 34:50
  Speaker 2: more vicious tactics. Kicked the Russian forces. Russia is a
• 34:56
  Speaker 2: big country. Almost 200 million people compared to this little
• 35:00
  Speaker 2: province of a million. Kicked the Russians out after three months.
• 35:04
  Speaker 2: Launches waves of suicide attacks. Massive kidnappings here. This really
• 35:11
  Speaker 2: went on for years and years. So when you say,
• 35:14
  Speaker 2: are they planning it? I don't think it's quite right, Stephen.
• 35:18
  Speaker 2: It's not like they have the detailed plan they're about
• 35:21
  Speaker 2: to execute. They have the next wave of possibilities, which
• 35:27
  Speaker 2: would come, I think, most likely with stage two, stage three.
• 35:30
  Speaker 2: So as this is expanding, as the war expands, it
• 35:34
  Speaker 2: will go global.
• 35:35
  Speaker 1: Really? Yeah.
• 35:36
  Speaker 2: You are already seeing it global with the supply chain
• 35:38
  Speaker 2: and you're seeing it with the oil. So that's already happening.
• 35:41
  Speaker 2: So what Iran said today, the response to Trump's press
• 35:46
  Speaker 2: conference today that just literally happened before we came on is, OK,
• 35:51
  Speaker 2: we will allow Gulf states your oil tankers to come
• 35:55
  Speaker 2: through if you kick the Americans out. So kick the
• 35:58
  Speaker 2: Americans out and we'll let you pass.
• 36:01
  Speaker 1: If you don't.
• 36:01
  Speaker 2: If you don't, we got drones. So they didn't put
• 36:04
  Speaker 2: that in there, but everybody knows they got drones.
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: And again, if you were explaining this to a 16-year-old,
• 36:09
  Speaker 1: just to keep it super simple, there's this passageway across
• 36:13
  Speaker 1: the water where a lot of the oil tankers go.
• 36:16
  Speaker 2: Yep, it's straight of Hormuz.
• 36:18
  Speaker 1: Hormuz?
• 36:18
  Speaker 2: Yep.
• 36:19
  Speaker 1: And it sounded like the tankers are refusing to go
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: through there at the moment.
• 36:22
  Speaker 2: Oh, sure, because one has been hit. But it only
• 36:25
  Speaker 2: takes one to be hit with a drone. Only one, because...
• 36:29
  Speaker 2: The people driving those tankers here, they're doing it for
• 36:32
  Speaker 2: a paycheck, not a bullet. They're not really wanting to
• 36:35
  Speaker 2: die for this. This isn't a nationalist cause to ship
• 36:38
  Speaker 2: the oil.
• 36:40
  Speaker 1: Explain why it matters to the world. If oil doesn't
• 36:42
  Speaker 1: go through this straight of Hormuz, what happens?
• 36:45
  Speaker 2: Yeah, well, we can talk about it in like technical terms,
• 36:49
  Speaker 2: but the big thing to say is this is what's
• 36:51
  Speaker 2: going to increase the price of gas at the pump.
• 36:54
  Speaker 2: And it's already gone up. When you cut the flow
• 36:57
  Speaker 2: of the oil- It has global effects. It doesn't just
• 37:02
  Speaker 2: affect this little region here. It doesn't just affect China
• 37:06
  Speaker 2: over here. It affects everybody. And that's why the Europeans
• 37:10
  Speaker 2: are starting to freak out because every government worries about–
• 37:15
  Speaker 2: we talk about affordability. That's about to change.
• 37:18
  Speaker 1: And is this your point about how it changes the
• 37:20
  Speaker 1: politics at home? Because people– someone goes to the pump today.
• 37:23
  Speaker 1: They go, why is the oil higher?
• 37:25
  Speaker 2: That's right. Why is the, we just came, we now
• 37:29
  Speaker 2: have 4.4% unemployment. If we, and President Trump was trying
• 37:34
  Speaker 2: to say it's all getting better, the interest rates are
• 37:36
  Speaker 2: going down. Well, that all predicated on us not having inflation.
• 37:41
  Speaker 2: You see, when the oil is cut, the inflation goes up.
• 37:46
  Speaker 2: The affordability becomes a problem. That is what is panicking
• 37:52
  Speaker 2: a lot of the businesses right now because they're going
• 37:54
  Speaker 2: to lose business. And it's a problem of risk. It's
• 37:59
  Speaker 2: not just about the damage. So a few of these
• 38:02
  Speaker 2: drones can have an inordinate effect on risk. Now, let's
• 38:08
  Speaker 2: bring in another piece, which is Russia, we find out,
• 38:13
  Speaker 2: is providing targeting intelligence to Iran, much the way we
• 38:18
  Speaker 2: provide targeting intelligence to Ukraine to hit targets in Russia.
• 38:23
  Speaker 2: And what does that mean? That means those drones, which
• 38:27
  Speaker 2: are precision guided, now can more easily find exactly which
• 38:31
  Speaker 2: ship to hit. Do we know that Russia are doing that?
• 38:34
  Speaker 2: We've got it pretty well confirmed. Yeah, you would hear
• 38:37
  Speaker 2: much more pushback here. And what you're hearing from Secretary
• 38:42
  Speaker 2: Hegseth is not, it's not happening. You're saying, oh, no, well,
• 38:45
  Speaker 2: it's not over worrying. No, it's happening. And they're worried
• 38:48
  Speaker 2: because that's the That's, again, the dancing around. They're not
• 38:52
  Speaker 2: denying the fact that it's actually happening.
• 38:55
  Speaker 1: I think Trump actually, when asked, said something, words to
• 38:58
  Speaker 1: the effect of, I wouldn't blame them because that's what
• 39:00
  Speaker 1: we do to them.
• 39:01
  Speaker 2: Exactly. Exactly. And why is he talking to Putin today?
• 39:05
  Speaker 2: He's not talking. He was just on the phone with
• 39:07
  Speaker 2: Putin before he did his press conference. What's he talking
• 39:09
  Speaker 2: to Putin about? That intel, I'm sure. And maybe cutting
• 39:13
  Speaker 2: a deal, which is, We'll deny the Ukrainians the intel
• 39:17
  Speaker 2: if you deny it. You see, this is the cascading
• 39:22
  Speaker 2: effects of the politics dominates the tactics.
• 39:27
  Speaker 1: And that's exactly what Trump said. He said on March
• 39:29
  Speaker 1: the 7th, when asked about Russia teaming up with Iran
• 39:33
  Speaker 1: on intelligence, he said, if we asked them, they'd say
• 39:37
  Speaker 1: we do it against them. Wouldn't they say that? We
• 39:40
  Speaker 1: do it against them? It's almost justifying it.
• 39:44
  Speaker 2: Trump often just speaks his mind. Sometimes he kind of
• 39:47
  Speaker 2: hides things, but often he speaks his mind. And what
• 39:50
  Speaker 2: you're seeing here is this is the natural thing. Russia
• 39:55
  Speaker 2: is what's good for the goose, good for the gander.
• 39:58
  Speaker 2: They're doing the same thing to us that we've done
• 40:00
  Speaker 2: to them, and they're doing it to hurt us, you see.
• 40:05
  Speaker 2: So rather than just spasmodically or spasm response here, which
• 40:10
  Speaker 2: we often think the The foes we're up against are stupid.
• 40:13
  Speaker 2: We essentially think they're dumb. We call that irrational. But
• 40:17
  Speaker 2: what's really happening, Stephen, is since the Vietnam War, we
• 40:22
  Speaker 2: have been up against foes that have understood something about America,
• 40:25
  Speaker 2: which is the way to get at us is politically.
• 40:29
  Speaker 2: Make it a long war. play the politics. You can't
• 40:34
  Speaker 2: go toe-to-toe with us on the battlefield. We'll just clean
• 40:36
  Speaker 2: their clock over and over. They don't often try. They
• 40:40
  Speaker 2: don't go toe-to-toe with us. We lost the Vietnam War
• 40:44
  Speaker 2: with never losing a battle. How did we lose? We
• 40:48
  Speaker 2: lost the long game. 58,000 dead, no end in sight,
• 40:53
  Speaker 2: a forever war. What are we doing this for? That
• 40:57
  Speaker 2: is how the North Vietnamese won. And that's how The
• 41:01
  Speaker 2: Afghan Taliban won. That's how the bad guys typically beat us.
• 41:06
  Speaker 2: They don't always win, but the bottom line is we
• 41:09
  Speaker 2: have a soft underbelly. It's not the military.
• 41:14
  Speaker 1: Much of the reason most people haven't posted content or
• 41:17
  Speaker 1: built their personal brand is because it's hard and it's
• 41:20
  Speaker 1: time consuming and we're all very, very busy. And if
• 41:22
  Speaker 1: you've never posted something before, there's so many factors in
• 41:26
  Speaker 1: your psychology that stop you wanting to post. what people
• 41:29
  Speaker 1: will think of you. Am I doing this right? Is
• 41:31
  Speaker 1: the thing I'm saying absolutely stupid? All of these result
• 41:35
  Speaker 1: in paralysis, which means you don't post and your feed
• 41:38
  Speaker 1: goes bare. I'm an investor in a company called Stan Store,
• 41:42
  Speaker 1: which you've probably heard me talk about. And what they've
• 41:43
  Speaker 1: been building is this new tool called Stanley that uses AI,
• 41:47
  Speaker 1: looks at your feed, looks at your tone of voice,
• 41:49
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• 41:51
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• 41:54
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• 41:57
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• 41:59
  Speaker 1: a post for our social media channels is inspiration. Building
• 42:02
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• 42:05
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• 42:07
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• 42:10
  Speaker 1: what you think. All you have to do is search coach.stan.store
• 42:13
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• 42:16
  Speaker 1: business can do is build like a bigger company without
• 42:20
  Speaker 1: actually hiring like one. But the problem we all face
• 42:23
  Speaker 1: is that most companies don't have every skill in house.
• 42:25
  Speaker 1: So when I look at the businesses seeing real success today,
• 42:28
  Speaker 1: the consistent pattern with all of them is how quickly
• 42:31
  Speaker 1: they move. They bring in specialists with skills and emerging
• 42:34
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• 42:36
  Speaker 1: spent the last year pulling in talent across areas like
• 42:39
  Speaker 1: AI native strategy, no-code builds and product workflows. And we
• 42:43
  Speaker 1: find this talent through our long-time partner, Fiverr Pro. Their
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• 42:49
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• 42:52
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• 42:55
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• 42:58
  Speaker 1: internal team. And most importantly, they'll keep up with the pace.
• 43:01
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• 43:03
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  Speaker 1: of skills in your business, head to pro.fiverr.com to find
• 43:08
  Speaker 1: pioneering talent to fill your business's gaps. That's pro.fiverr.com. What
• 43:14
  Speaker 1: do you think happens next? If you had to, no
• 43:17
  Speaker 1: fence sitting.
• 43:18
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 43:18
  Speaker 1: If you had to predict what you think happens next,
• 43:21
  Speaker 1: what would you do?
• 43:21
  Speaker 2: Well, I say this at the end of the Foreign
• 43:23
  Speaker 2: Affairs article that just literally came out a couple hours ago,
• 43:26
  Speaker 2: which is President Trump is on the horns of a dilemma.
• 43:30
  Speaker 2: And he has no golden off-ramp. He's looking for off-ramps.
• 43:34
  Speaker 2: But there's no golden one where he comes out politically ahead.
• 43:37
  Speaker 2: So he's got a choice, sometimes called a Hobson choice,
• 43:42
  Speaker 2: where you cut your losses, accept political loss now. And
• 43:47
  Speaker 2: right now, if he pulls back, and what does it
• 43:49
  Speaker 2: mean to pull back? you got to pull your forces back.
• 43:52
  Speaker 2: It's not enough to say you're just doing a pause.
• 43:55
  Speaker 2: If you want to stop, if you want to stop
• 43:57
  Speaker 2: for real, you take those aircraft carriers and you send
• 44:01
  Speaker 2: them out somewhere. You send them to Asia. You send
• 44:03
  Speaker 2: them here. You got to actually make, you got to
• 44:05
  Speaker 2: do something here. So choice one is you stop your
• 44:09
  Speaker 2: bombing campaign. You cut your losses. You do your best
• 44:12
  Speaker 2: to say, we just wanted to destroy missiles, even though
• 44:14
  Speaker 2: nobody will believe it.
• 44:16
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 44:17
  Speaker 2: But that means you accept a modest loss now Or
• 44:22
  Speaker 2: the other is you double down and you go on
• 44:25
  Speaker 2: for more weeks, go on for more weeks, hoping you'll
• 44:28
  Speaker 2: kill this leader and maybe the next one won't be
• 44:31
  Speaker 2: so bad. Or you'll have some other sort of outcome
• 44:35
  Speaker 2: that you can't imagine. And Trump is nothing. I call
• 44:38
  Speaker 2: him a chaos kid. He thrives in chaos. And he
• 44:42
  Speaker 2: often comes out of this with something happening, like when,
• 44:46
  Speaker 2: you know, sort of down the road, you didn't expect it.
• 44:48
  Speaker 2: He probably didn't expect it. But in this case, the
• 44:51
  Speaker 2: price is more likely going to be a political failure
• 44:55
  Speaker 2: of the first order because we have the midterms coming.
• 44:57
  Speaker 2: So if he's got a choice, stop now, cut your losses,
• 45:02
  Speaker 2: accept a limited political defeat, or double down, go on
• 45:06
  Speaker 2: for a few months, go through more stages of this
• 45:09
  Speaker 2: smart bomb trap I'm explaining, and you're really now in
• 45:13
  Speaker 2: Lyndon Johnson territory. Remember I mentioned before we're in Vietnam now.
• 45:17
  Speaker 2: he kept escalating, kept moving up the escalation ladder every rung.
• 45:21
  Speaker 2: He said, well, no, we have escalation dominance. We're just
• 45:24
  Speaker 2: going to double down. We're going to hit them harder
• 45:25
  Speaker 2: the next time. We're going to do this the next time.
• 45:28
  Speaker 2: Sound familiar? And then what happened is it became absolutely
• 45:32
  Speaker 2: clear that this was going nowhere and the 68 election
• 45:37
  Speaker 2: was coming. And Lyndon Johnson's own Democrats said, Mr. President,
• 45:43
  Speaker 2: we can't ride your horse into that. We got to
• 45:45
  Speaker 2: do something. And the problem is they didn't pull the
• 45:47
  Speaker 2: plug fast enough. That's how they lost. They don't pull
• 45:52
  Speaker 2: the plug fast enough. So you end up having a
• 45:54
  Speaker 2: bigger loss later.
• 45:55
  Speaker 1: When you talk about the underbelly that the United States
• 45:59
  Speaker 1: has where they can't prolong these wars, am I right
• 46:01
  Speaker 1: in thinking this is basically a function or a consequence
• 46:04
  Speaker 1: of living in a democracy?
• 46:07
  Speaker 2: I think it's a function of a war of choice.
• 46:10
  Speaker 2: So when we were attacked in Pearl Harbor, we were attacked.
• 46:15
  Speaker 2: We were reluctant to get in World War II. And
• 46:19
  Speaker 2: we were, we didn't get in until we were actually
• 46:21
  Speaker 2: struck at Pearl Harbor. That was enough to really make
• 46:25
  Speaker 2: us angry. We were pissed off as a country.
• 46:28
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 46:28
  Speaker 2: And we were going to get payback, not just for
• 46:31
  Speaker 2: a month, but we were getting some real payback here.
• 46:33
  Speaker 2: And that's how vicious that island hopping campaign was and
• 46:36
  Speaker 2: why it was so vicious. And that went on and on.
• 46:40
  Speaker 2: And when we ended the war in dropping those atomic bombs,
• 46:45
  Speaker 2: 22% of the American public wanted us to forget the
• 46:48
  Speaker 2: Japanese surrender and drop more atomic bombs.
• 46:51
  Speaker 1: 22%.
• 46:51
  Speaker 2: We were that angry. So when we are attacked first,
• 46:57
  Speaker 2: we have the politics in our advantage. When we do
• 47:02
  Speaker 2: a war of choice, we can make up all the
• 47:05
  Speaker 2: reasons why it was a good idea to start, throw
• 47:07
  Speaker 2: the first punch. They were going to hit us. We
• 47:09
  Speaker 2: were going to. But when we throw that first punch first,
• 47:13
  Speaker 2: that's a war of choice. And this puts the politics
• 47:16
  Speaker 2: in the other camp's advantage. And that's the problem that
• 47:21
  Speaker 2: we're facing here. Iran didn't hit us first. They didn't
• 47:25
  Speaker 2: hit us first in June. They didn't hit us first
• 47:27
  Speaker 2: before that.
• 47:29
  Speaker 1: So on this point of war of choice.
• 47:31
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 47:35
  Speaker 1: And there's really two questions I front of mind.
• 47:37
  Speaker 2: One is.
• 47:38
  Speaker 1: Was Trump right that if he didn't attack, then they
• 47:41
  Speaker 1: would have enriched uranium, they would have made a nuclear weapon,
• 47:44
  Speaker 1: and that would have put not just the region, but
• 47:46
  Speaker 1: the world at danger, in your view? And then the
• 47:49
  Speaker 1: second one is this sort of ongoing debate around the
• 47:52
  Speaker 1: role of Israel in this war. And I think it
• 47:55
  Speaker 1: was Marco Rubio that came out and I think maybe
• 47:59
  Speaker 1: accidentally said that the reason why they attacked Iran was
• 48:03
  Speaker 1: was because they heard that Israel were about to attack Iran.
• 48:07
  Speaker 2: So let's go back to the Friday, the day before
• 48:10
  Speaker 2: we start the bombing campaign. This is February 27, literally 3.15
• 48:15
  Speaker 2: Washington time. That's when Trump makes the go decision. But
• 48:19
  Speaker 2: what is he choosing between? He has an offer on
• 48:24
  Speaker 2: the table from Iran for a better deal than the
• 48:28
  Speaker 2: Obama deal for America. And it is, uh, it's not
• 48:31
  Speaker 2: absolutely perfect. They still want to have some minor enrichment to,
• 48:36
  Speaker 2: but that, uh, verificate lots of things here. Now, maybe
• 48:40
  Speaker 2: it's still not perfect, but president Trump has a choice
• 48:44
  Speaker 2: on that Friday afternoon. He can go back and he
• 48:47
  Speaker 2: can work this deal. He can, you know, after all
• 48:50
  Speaker 2: deal maker, right? Let's, let's assume he's good at deal making.
• 48:54
  Speaker 2: So we can go back and work the deal. But
• 48:56
  Speaker 2: that's not what he does. What he does is he
• 48:58
  Speaker 2: throws that deal away. And also the Supreme Leader, when
• 49:03
  Speaker 2: he killed that, the Supreme Leader was on board with
• 49:05
  Speaker 2: that deal too. And what do we do instead? We
• 49:08
  Speaker 2: go through regime change. So the choices here, Stephen, were
• 49:14
  Speaker 2: before we got to stage two, we were in stage one,
• 49:19
  Speaker 2: stage one, we had hit Fordow, there were negotiations, and
• 49:25
  Speaker 2: Iran's coming up with a better deal than the Obama deal.
• 49:28
  Speaker 2: And what does he do? He goes to stage two instead.
• 49:32
  Speaker 2: So I don't think this story you're hearing, they were
• 49:37
  Speaker 2: going to do X, Y, or Z, there was a
• 49:40
  Speaker 2: deal on the table.
• 49:42
  Speaker 1: And why did Rubio say that then? Why did he
• 49:44
  Speaker 1: say that they attack because Israel were going to attack?
• 49:47
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 49:47
  Speaker 1: I want to play this video, which is what I'm
• 49:49
  Speaker 1: referring to. Okay.
• 49:52
  Speaker 3: If we stood and waited for that attack to come
• 49:54
  Speaker 3: first before we hit them, we would suffer much higher casualties.
• 49:58
  Speaker 3: And so the president made the very wise decision. We
• 50:01
  Speaker 3: knew that there was going to be an Israeli action.
• 50:03
  Speaker 3: We knew that that would precipitate an attack against American forces.
• 50:07
  Speaker 3: And we knew that if we didn't preemptively go after
• 50:09
  Speaker 3: them before they launched those attacks, we would suffer higher
• 50:12
  Speaker 3: casualties and perhaps even higher those killed. And then we
• 50:15
  Speaker 3: would all be here answering questions about why we knew
• 50:17
  Speaker 3: that and didn't act.
• 50:19
  Speaker 2: So what that shows you is that it's the tail
• 50:23
  Speaker 2: wagging the dog, that Israel is going to attack, as
• 50:27
  Speaker 2: I'm saying, just happened in June. It's a replay of
• 50:30
  Speaker 2: what happened in June. Israel may well have, we don't
• 50:33
  Speaker 2: know why Israel decided to attack and kill the Supreme Leader.
• 50:36
  Speaker 2: It was actually Israeli bombs who killed the Supreme Leader
• 50:39
  Speaker 2: and also those other replacement leaders as well. But Israel
• 50:43
  Speaker 2: may well have been thinking that, my goodness, Trump is
• 50:46
  Speaker 2: getting too close to a deal. That's what happened in June.
• 50:49
  Speaker 2: Trump was on the edge of a deal with Iran.
• 50:52
  Speaker 2: And then Israel goes and kills the negotiators, you see.
• 50:55
  Speaker 2: So just think about that for a moment. Trump is
• 50:59
  Speaker 2: negotiating with the Iranians. And then they say, well, OK,
• 51:04
  Speaker 2: come back the next day. And what is there the
• 51:06
  Speaker 2: next day? Israeli bombs killing them.
• 51:09
  Speaker 1: So, I mean, that's not a good, that's not a
• 51:10
  Speaker 1: great way to handle a partnership.
• 51:12
  Speaker 2: Well, it's just showing you we had another choice. We
• 51:15
  Speaker 2: could have told Israel not to do it. We could
• 51:17
  Speaker 2: have told Israel, if you do this, we're going to
• 51:19
  Speaker 2: cut off all your military aid for the next three years.
• 51:22
  Speaker 2: That would put some pressure on Israel. Now, then Trump
• 51:25
  Speaker 2: would have to pay a price politically. So I'm not
• 51:28
  Speaker 2: saying that's an easy thing to do. Don't get me wrong.
• 51:30
  Speaker 2: But we need to understand that Trump, these are the
• 51:34
  Speaker 2: pressures for escalation in the escalation trap. So I'm trying
• 51:40
  Speaker 2: to explain why this isn't just randomly happening, Steve. And
• 51:45
  Speaker 2: it's not like, oh my goodness, I can't follow what's occurring.
• 51:48
  Speaker 2: So that's why when Trump says in today's briefing, talks
• 51:52
  Speaker 2: about stopping the air campaign, is he going to stop
• 51:55
  Speaker 2: Israel's campaign? That's the question that did not come up today.
• 51:59
  Speaker 2: It's in my, I put it on my accent. One
• 52:01
  Speaker 2: of the big questions that did not come up is,
• 52:04
  Speaker 2: President Trump, are you going to call Netanyahu and tell
• 52:08
  Speaker 2: him to stop bombing Iran?
• 52:09
  Speaker 1: Does Trump control Netanyahu, in your view?
• 52:12
  Speaker 2: Well, again, it's about pressures here. It's about what are
• 52:16
  Speaker 2: the ways you don't. It's not about a matter of
• 52:19
  Speaker 2: like a personal loyalty relationship. This is politics of the
• 52:22
  Speaker 2: first order. That's what I'm trying to explain. So for
• 52:25
  Speaker 2: President Trump to stop Netanyahu from doing this, this will
• 52:29
  Speaker 2: be paying a price. There are a big part of
• 52:33
  Speaker 2: his MAGA constituency is very pro, not just Israel, pro-Netanyahu
• 52:38
  Speaker 2: version of Israel. So this is the tension in the
• 52:42
  Speaker 2: politics that I'm trying to explain, which is why you
• 52:44
  Speaker 2: don't really want to start the trap in the first place.
• 52:48
  Speaker 1: And I asked you a second ago, no fence-sitting. What
• 52:52
  Speaker 1: happens next in this world based on everything you've studied
• 52:54
  Speaker 1: for the last 30 years, the 20 years of doing simulations?
• 52:56
  Speaker 2: I think it's more likely than not that maybe not
• 52:58
  Speaker 2: in the next week or two. I've said on my sub-sec,
• 53:01
  Speaker 2: it's more likely than not we will get to a
• 53:04
  Speaker 2: limited ground deployment here because of the fizzle, because of
• 53:08
  Speaker 2: the enriched material that is floating around. And we know
• 53:14
  Speaker 2: it's dispersing. We know it's dispersing. We don't know where
• 53:18
  Speaker 2: it is. And there could be literally hundreds of rooms,
• 53:23
  Speaker 2: not much bigger than this size, maybe two or three
• 53:25
  Speaker 2: times this size that we're in, that could be used
• 53:28
  Speaker 2: to fashion a fat man style A-bomb. Not to miniaturize
• 53:35
  Speaker 2: it to put on a warhead. That would be more sophisticated.
• 53:38
  Speaker 2: But if what you want to do is you want
• 53:39
  Speaker 2: to have a Hiroshima bomb that can kill 75,000 people
• 53:42
  Speaker 2: in a second, or 10 seconds. That is what they
• 53:48
  Speaker 2: are in the, that's what we're talking about here. We're
• 53:53
  Speaker 2: not talking about, can they put, miniaturize the bomb to
• 53:56
  Speaker 2: put it on the nose cone of a war, of
• 53:59
  Speaker 2: a missile? This is, they don't need it. That's very
• 54:01
  Speaker 2: sophisticated stuff. We couldn't do that for 10 years.
• 54:05
  Speaker 1: So I guess there's two, there's two questions that come
• 54:07
  Speaker 1: to mind. The first is, To understand someone's behavior, you
• 54:11
  Speaker 1: have to understand their motivations. And I think a lot
• 54:14
  Speaker 1: about where Trump is in his career, legacy, how much
• 54:22
  Speaker 1: that matters to him. It appears, from what I've seen...
• 54:25
  Speaker 1: the whole thing around him wanting to win the Nobel
• 54:26
  Speaker 1: Peace Prize, the Peace Board, being the president that stops
• 54:30
  Speaker 1: all the... It appears that he's thinking about how he's
• 54:32
  Speaker 1: going to be remembered. And when I'm looking at some
• 54:34
  Speaker 1: of his interviews recently, he's saying things like, I don't
• 54:37
  Speaker 1: want it to be the case that in 10 years'
• 54:38
  Speaker 1: time or in five years' time, the US have to
• 54:41
  Speaker 1: go back in again because I didn't do a good job.
• 54:44
  Speaker 1: And it made me start to believe that actually one
• 54:47
  Speaker 1: of the reasons why we might escalate this war further
• 54:50
  Speaker 1: from a United States perspective is because... Legacy changes in hindsight.
• 54:57
  Speaker 1: And if we think about George W. Bush.
• 54:58
  Speaker 2: I think you're putting your finger on it, Stephen.
• 55:00
  Speaker 1: George W. Bush's legacy now is like completely tarnished because
• 55:03
  Speaker 1: of this one war and actually how it ended.
• 55:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 55:07
  Speaker 1: It's a mistake in hindsight.
• 55:08
  Speaker 2: But also now mirror image that to the Iranians. Why
• 55:12
  Speaker 2: aren't they thinking about their legacy? Think about that for
• 55:15
  Speaker 2: a moment. Why would the Supreme Leader, 86 years old,
• 55:20
  Speaker 2: decide he's not going to take too many more precautions?
• 55:23
  Speaker 2: How many more months does he have cancer, apparently? How
• 55:26
  Speaker 2: many more months does he got? How does he want
• 55:27
  Speaker 2: to go out? How does he really want to go out?
• 55:29
  Speaker 2: What's he want to be remembered for? A coward? Or
• 55:32
  Speaker 2: does he want to be remembered as somebody who stood
• 55:35
  Speaker 2: up for Iran, the revolution, the whole thing he built
• 55:38
  Speaker 2: his whole life for? You talk about Trump. So when
• 55:41
  Speaker 2: I get into behind, when the cameras go off. And
• 55:46
  Speaker 2: I get a chance to, again, let's just say go
• 55:48
  Speaker 2: to the West Wing. I'm not seeing people being picky, minor, petty.
• 55:54
  Speaker 2: I see them worried about their legacy. The national security advisors,
• 56:00
  Speaker 2: their assistants, they're worrying about their legacy. Do they want
• 56:04
  Speaker 2: to go down in the history of American history as X, Y,
• 56:09
  Speaker 2: or Z? And this is how humans are. It doesn't
• 56:13
  Speaker 2: stop a With like, how much money do you have?
• 56:16
  Speaker 2: It's what's going to happen with your legacy.
• 56:19
  Speaker 1: So with that in mind, if you think Trump is
• 56:22
  Speaker 1: legacy motivated, does that increase the probability? In part.
• 56:25
  Speaker 2: I want to be careful. In part. It's always a balance.
• 56:27
  Speaker 1: He can't be reelected. So I'm like, that's not motivating him. Because,
• 56:29
  Speaker 1: you know, you play differently if you think you can
• 56:31
  Speaker 1: win a second term, which I knew would be important
• 56:33
  Speaker 1: to him. But if he is legacy motivated now, when
• 56:36
  Speaker 1: you think about which direction he's going to go in,
• 56:39
  Speaker 1: it does appear on the balance of things that he's
• 56:42
  Speaker 1: not going to want it to be left a mess.
• 56:45
  Speaker 2: And the biggest mess that could really embarrass him and
• 56:48
  Speaker 2: his legacy with international is if Iran has a nuclear
• 56:53
  Speaker 2: bomb and they detonate a test, say, next September. Let's
• 56:59
  Speaker 2: just imagine what would happen next September. So people need
• 57:03
  Speaker 2: to think about, see, the discussion of Iran and nuclear
• 57:06
  Speaker 2: bombs here is not very strategic. It's to scare you. It's, oh,
• 57:11
  Speaker 2: they're going to get a bomb and the first one's
• 57:13
  Speaker 2: going to go on Tel Aviv. The second one's going
• 57:15
  Speaker 2: to go on New York. I don't think that's the sequence.
• 57:19
  Speaker 2: Why would they, if they're willing to commit suicide to
• 57:23
  Speaker 2: take out Tel Aviv, they don't need 16 bombs. Okay.
• 57:26
  Speaker 2: If they're willing to have their entire population destroyed by,
• 57:29
  Speaker 2: they just need one bomb, take out Tel Aviv, they're done, right?
• 57:33
  Speaker 2: That's not what's going on. They're following the North Korea plan.
• 57:36
  Speaker 2: The North Korea plan that North Korea figured out when
• 57:39
  Speaker 2: we went through this with North Korea in the 90s, okay,
• 57:42
  Speaker 2: the very same thing, except we didn't do the bombing
• 57:44
  Speaker 2: because we avoided the trap. What they want is multiple
• 57:50
  Speaker 2: bombs at the same time. So what they want to do,
• 57:53
  Speaker 2: if they can do this, is have, say, five bombs
• 57:58
  Speaker 2: working at the same time. And the first bomb goes
• 58:01
  Speaker 2: off as a test in the mountains. in the mountains.
• 58:06
  Speaker 2: And then what do we say? Oh, they blew it.
• 58:08
  Speaker 2: They're stupid. They blew their one test. And then they
• 58:11
  Speaker 2: do a second test still in their mountains.
• 58:15
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 58:16
  Speaker 2: When we dropped the first bomb on Hiroshima, it wasn't
• 58:20
  Speaker 2: clear we had any more. When we dropped the second one,
• 58:23
  Speaker 2: nobody needed to wait for a third or fourth. Nobody really,
• 58:27
  Speaker 2: they knew more would come. You see what I mean?
• 58:29
  Speaker 2: So with Iran, the, this is again, we're talking about now, um,
• 58:35
  Speaker 2: you know, let's call it the brown belt or black
• 58:37
  Speaker 2: belt strategy here that they are, and notice they have
• 58:40
  Speaker 2: been very smart in their escalation. What you would do
• 58:45
  Speaker 2: is the North Korea strategy, which is, again, you want
• 58:48
  Speaker 2: multiple bombs and then you want to do some tests.
• 58:51
  Speaker 2: And even if one doesn't quite work, you want to
• 58:53
  Speaker 2: have another. You want to have multiple bombs so that
• 58:56
  Speaker 2: you can do multiple tests, you see. And that is
• 59:01
  Speaker 2: how North Korea basically stopped Trump trying to kill the leader.
• 59:06
  Speaker 2: So notice that Trump wants to say it was just
• 59:09
  Speaker 2: his win. personality because, you know, Trump is so charming here.
• 59:14
  Speaker 2: But North Korea now has 60 working nuclear weapons, as
• 59:18
  Speaker 2: best we can tell. And the idea that we're going
• 59:21
  Speaker 2: to start killing leaders in North Korea anytime soon, I'm
• 59:25
  Speaker 2: not sure that's going to happen.
• 59:26
  Speaker 1: They're kind of immune now, right?
• 59:27
  Speaker 2: Well- And notice that Ukraine had a bunch of nuclear
• 59:31
  Speaker 2: weapons in the 90s, gave them up. And there's a
• 59:33
  Speaker 2: lot of people in Ukraine right now are saying, boy,
• 59:35
  Speaker 2: I wish we had those nuclear weapons back or else
• 59:37
  Speaker 2: we wouldn't be fighting this war. So you start to
• 59:40
  Speaker 2: look at the history. Why does America have nuclear weapons here?
• 59:43
  Speaker 2: Are we an evil country? And the reason we have
• 59:46
  Speaker 2: is because we're evil. We want it for our security.
• 59:49
  Speaker 2: So why doesn't Iran want it for their security? So
• 59:52
  Speaker 2: this is the strategy part that we have to– the politics, Steve,
• 59:57
  Speaker 2: and I keep trying to talk about.
• 59:58
  Speaker 1: So you're saying your prediction is that we're going to
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 1: move to stage three where Trump– OK. I'll go 75-25.
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 1: 75 percent which way?
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 2: That we will put– we will send in some ground
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 2: forces to get that dispersed material. The only 25 percent
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 2: would be if somehow magically the Iranians gave it to us.
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 2: So that's where the 25% comes from because there is
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 2: some chance that there's some– I don't want to– I
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 2: mean we live in the real world here. But I
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 2: think the problem we're going to face is it's going
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 2: to become more– if you're in Iran right now, exactly
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 2: why aren't you fashioning the nuclear weapon? We're already killing you.
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 2: We can pause for months and say we won't kill
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 2: you and then you wake up one day and you're dead.
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 2: We've done this movie now several times on Iran. Your
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 2: best chance of survival is a nuclear weapon. And so
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 2: we now know that. Our intel knows that. Israel now
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 2: knows it. We've taken these options. So unless Trump will
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 2: make a deal, that's that 25%. So I think if
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 2: he makes a deal, then there's a chance that Iran
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 2: will go forward here.
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 1: If the 75% path plays out.
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 1: We put boots on the ground.
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 2: Yep.
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 1: What happens then?
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 2: Now we're at stage three. Now we've moved to stage
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 2: three because we have to search very– not just– so
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 2: we will start by deploying ground forces in a very
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 2: limited area. Say we're going to go to Esafon, it's called.
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 2: That's the– Do we have a.
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 1: I mean, you could try and write on that. Does
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 1: that work?
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 2: The thing I'm trying to explain– yeah, assume this is Iran. Yeah.
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 2: We will start by putting in a small footprint. And again,
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 2: we have several options here to do it. And so
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 2: the hunt will be for the enriched material. But let's
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 2: say that we even find it, Stephen. How do we
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 2: know– that in the intervening almost a year since the bombing,
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 2: 10 months since the bombing, how do we know they
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 2: haven't enriched more somewhere else? Because this is what happened
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 2: with the WMD and Iraq and Saddam Hussein in the
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 2: 90s through 2003. We had inspectors in. We could never
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 2: be sure. There wasn't material. And the problem was over time,
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 2: The fear got worse and worse and worse. And the
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 2: fear is a nuclear handoff or the radiological handoff. You
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 2: hand off some of that material to Hezbollah, to the Houthis.
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 1: Who are Hezbollah and the Houthis? They're like terrorist groups?
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 2: We call them terrorist groups. And Hezbollah, which is this
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 2: famous terrorist group, started in 1982. How did Hezbollah start?
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 2: Where did it come from?
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 1: Is it the CIA again?
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 2: No, it's Israel. Israel invades southern Lebanon in June of
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 2: 82 with 78,000 combat soldiers, 3,000 tanks and armored vehicles.
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 2: So think about that. That's like invading Chicago with 78,000.
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 2: So just– or LA with 78,000, okay? So they invade
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 2: southern Lebanon with 78,000. Israel does. One month later, Hezbollah
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 2: is born as a resistance movement. So Hezbollah was born
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 2: out of resistance to Israel. They have hated Israel from
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 2: the beginning because that's how they were born, you see.
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 2: So what you have is you have a group that's
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 2: been radical since and since 82. This has been going
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 2: on since 82. Israel just can't put that country, that
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 2: Hezbollah group out of business. And what are they doing
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 2: literally this week? They're trying to depopulate this Beirut, the
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 2: city of Beirut. Because what happens when you go up
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 2: against terrorist groups, which we haven't described, but the terrorist
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 2: group here is like a group that's in a sea
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 2: of people, okay? And you keep saying, all I want
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 2: to do is get rid of that terrorist group. The
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 2: problem is that in all that effort, military effort to
• 1:04:18
  Speaker 2: get rid of the terrorist group, you do kill them,
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 2: but they regenerate. And they regenerate and they regenerate just
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 2: as Hezbollah has for, God, 45 years almost. Okay. And
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 2: so what do you then push to do? Get rid
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 2: of all the people.
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 1: So you think, oh, just genocide.
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 2: I don't want to use those terms because I've written
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 2: about that. That has certain very specific– so that's a
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 2: whole conversation here. But I just want to point out,
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 2: how is it that Israel got itself into the idea
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 2: they were going to cleanse, expel large portions of the
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 2: two million out of Gaza? That happened because they got
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 2: into stage three of the escalation trap in Gaza. So
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 2: this isn't just about America. So we're only talking about
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 2: the escalation frameworks with respect to this one conflict, really.
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 2: It applies much more broadly. I've developed these since I
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 2: taught for the Air Force because I needed to find
• 1:05:15
  Speaker 2: a way to help our government, our military, understand how
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 2: the transition from the bombing or the military piece to
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 2: the outcome. And what's in the middle is The military,
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 2: the bombs change politics. They change politics in the enemy.
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 2: They change politics for us. For us, we don't want
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 2: to lose. And that's why we got stuck in two
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 2: forever wars. And now we may well just get right
• 1:05:50
  Speaker 2: back into another. Not because Trump wants to. He's being
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 2: sucked into it. So what happens after stage three? After
• 1:05:58
  Speaker 2: stage three? This is what America has faced in Vietnam,
• 1:06:02
  Speaker 2: and President Biden faced this in spades here. When you
• 1:06:07
  Speaker 2: try to pull out after you're in stage three and
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 2: end these ongoing conflicts here, usually it ends poorly for
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 2: your legacy. And you saw that with Lyndon Johnson, and
• 1:06:18
  Speaker 2: you saw that with President Biden. Actually, President Trump is
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 2: the one who was negotiating with the Taliban to pull out,
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 2: but President Trump wouldn't leave, not leave. He didn't leave before.
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 2: Who did he hand it off to? He handed it
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 2: off to Biden. Biden pulled out. And what has Biden's
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 2: legacy been? It's been negative ever since. If you look
• 1:06:40
  Speaker 2: at his opinion polls, President Biden, you will see he
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 2: was riding high until he withdrew from Afghanistan and he
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 2: never recovered. Yes, inflation hurt too. The bigger hit was
• 1:06:53
  Speaker 2: the Afghanistan problem. And this is why President Trump is
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 2: really stuck. You see, he's on that horns of the dilemma.
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 2: Does he want to accept the short-term price, which is real,
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 2: or does he want to go and double down and
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 2: then you face the potential long-term price of becoming LBJ
• 1:07:14
  Speaker 2: and President Biden?
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, pretty smart.
• 1:09:19
  Speaker 1: Presumably Trump knew this stuff or someone around him knew that,
• 1:09:24
  Speaker 1: by the way, when you drop bombs, these sort of
• 1:09:26
  Speaker 1: very specific bombs we have now that can hit a
• 1:09:29
  Speaker 1: very narrow target and take out a leader, you get
• 1:09:33
  Speaker 1: into an escalation trap. Surely he knew this.
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 2: I believe General Kane told him almost this in so
• 1:09:40
  Speaker 2: many words. I believe it. I don't have the exact
• 1:09:42
  Speaker 2: evidence for it, but we have some inklings of it.
• 1:09:44
  Speaker 1: What do you think he thought was going to happen?
• 1:09:46
  Speaker 2: I think he, I've described Trump as the ultimate chaos kid.
• 1:09:52
  Speaker 2: There are people who thrive in chaos. They feel the
• 1:09:55
  Speaker 2: best when they're in a chaotic situation. And I think
• 1:09:59
  Speaker 2: that he believes he can navigate the chaos better than
• 1:10:03
  Speaker 2: anybody else.
• 1:10:04
  Speaker 1: So what I want to, the answer to the question
• 1:10:06
  Speaker 1: I was looking for is, what did he think was
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 1: going to happen? Did he think I'll drop these bombs?
• 1:10:11
  Speaker 1: Khomeini will be out, someone else will come in, then
• 1:10:13
  Speaker 1: we'll negotiate with that guy, and then we'll get a
• 1:10:15
  Speaker 1: better deal.
• 1:10:15
  Speaker 2: I think that's not quite– I think that's too specific.
• 1:10:18
  Speaker 2: People keep looking for that. And my experience here, it
• 1:10:21
  Speaker 2: also is that's too narrow of a way to understand
• 1:10:25
  Speaker 2: what I think happened here. And again, we're reading quite
• 1:10:28
  Speaker 2: a bit into very few tea leaves here because this
• 1:10:30
  Speaker 2: will come out over time. But I believe that what
• 1:10:34
  Speaker 2: you're seeing with President Trump is he likes to do
• 1:10:37
  Speaker 2: what's called mixing it up. He wants to get the
• 1:10:39
  Speaker 2: chaos going. And then he reads the chaos very well.
• 1:10:44
  Speaker 2: And when it's a media storm, man, there's very few
• 1:10:48
  Speaker 2: people that have beaten him. Just think about that. That's
• 1:10:51
  Speaker 2: why he's president twice. He's beaten quite a few black
• 1:10:54
  Speaker 2: belts at this, right? But this is a different story.
• 1:10:57
  Speaker 2: So if you take that same MO and you apply
• 1:11:00
  Speaker 2: it to political violence, now you have these other actors.
• 1:11:04
  Speaker 2: You have this other set of momentum. You have Israel
• 1:11:08
  Speaker 2: playing this big role. You have the Iranians playing a
• 1:11:11
  Speaker 2: big role. You suddenly now have more players that can
• 1:11:15
  Speaker 2: trap you in the chaos. And this is, I think,
• 1:11:19
  Speaker 2: what has happened. Now, with Venezuela, he also went through
• 1:11:24
  Speaker 2: the first stage of the trap. And notice that with Venezuela,
• 1:11:29
  Speaker 2: he just said, oh yeah, we're just going to forget
• 1:11:31
  Speaker 2: about developing the oil. No second stage. Okay. So with Venezuela,
• 1:11:35
  Speaker 2: there's a reason why that has paused. It's because he
• 1:11:39
  Speaker 2: didn't go to stage two because the oil company said,
• 1:11:42
  Speaker 2: we're not going to die for you to build that oil.
• 1:11:45
  Speaker 2: So he is basically– he took out one person, just
• 1:11:48
  Speaker 2: literally one person. That person is not even dead yet.
• 1:11:51
  Speaker 2: And he's not really developing any of those oil fields
• 1:11:54
  Speaker 2: in Venezuela. They're just not being developed.
• 1:11:57
  Speaker 1: He said he has a good relationship with the Venezuelan
• 1:11:59
  Speaker 1: government now that.
• 1:12:00
  Speaker 2: As long as– because he's not doing any– the Venezuelan government,
• 1:12:04
  Speaker 2: he's leaving them in place. He's basically declaring victory and
• 1:12:08
  Speaker 2: moving on.
• 1:12:09
  Speaker 1: He removed Maduro, kept the others in, and it sounds
• 1:12:12
  Speaker 1: like– And kept the regime. It sounds like that might
• 1:12:15
  Speaker 1: have somewhat inspired his move to bomb Iran because it
• 1:12:18
  Speaker 1: appears on the surface that Venezuela kind of didn't go
• 1:12:21
  Speaker 1: too badly. It kind of was a political victory.
• 1:12:25
  Speaker 2: Chaos kid. Chaos kid.
• 1:12:27
  Speaker 1: Snatched him out of bed with his wife.
• 1:12:29
  Speaker 2: But then he stopped. So this would be, the equivalent
• 1:12:32
  Speaker 2: would be last June. So last June, okay, he went
• 1:12:37
  Speaker 2: through stage one and he tried to stop. What? made
• 1:12:41
  Speaker 2: the difference here? It wasn't Trump. It was the intel
• 1:12:44
  Speaker 2: he got from Netanyahu, the phone call from Netanyahu, which
• 1:12:48
  Speaker 2: is President Trump getting ready. We're about to assassinate the
• 1:12:51
  Speaker 2: Supreme Leader and about 20 of his associates and other
• 1:12:54
  Speaker 2: leaders here. You decide how you want to handle this,
• 1:12:57
  Speaker 2: but we're taking off. And so that did not happen
• 1:13:01
  Speaker 2: with the Maduro regime. So just imagine that there was
• 1:13:05
  Speaker 2: another country that had, after Trump took out Maduro, decided
• 1:13:10
  Speaker 2: they were going to keep assassinating the regime in Venezuela,
• 1:13:15
  Speaker 2: now you would be in a different story.
• 1:13:18
  Speaker 1: You made a quite famous prediction, Professor. You predicted in
• 1:13:22
  Speaker 1: 2009 that America's era as the world's only superpower was ending.
• 1:13:26
  Speaker 2: Oh, yes. And I think that is true. We haven't
• 1:13:28
  Speaker 2: talked about China, but I believe that since Trump has
• 1:13:31
  Speaker 2: come into office, he's making China number one. His tariffs
• 1:13:35
  Speaker 2: have done nothing but... help China. China's been on charm
• 1:13:41
  Speaker 2: offensive since the tariffs have been, and they're picking up
• 1:13:44
  Speaker 2: all the pieces. I was just spent two weeks in
• 1:13:47
  Speaker 2: China in June while we were bombing Iran. I said
• 1:13:51
  Speaker 2: I had to learn how to do social media. I
• 1:13:53
  Speaker 2: toured advanced industries in China for two solid weeks, one
• 1:13:59
  Speaker 2: of the most amazing trips I've ever had in my
• 1:14:02
  Speaker 2: whole career. And it was stunning. So, Stephen, since COVID,
• 1:14:08
  Speaker 2: almost nobody has gone to China. Now, if they have,
• 1:14:12
  Speaker 2: they've gone to Beijing or Shanghai. They haven't gone to Wuhan.
• 1:14:16
  Speaker 2: They haven't gone to Shenzhen, visited the BYD electric car factories,
• 1:14:22
  Speaker 2: seen the robots that are now doing the metallurgy. And
• 1:14:26
  Speaker 2: you can't see it very well on the web because
• 1:14:28
  Speaker 2: China's keeping it to themselves. They don't want to brag
• 1:14:31
  Speaker 2: about it. They're motoring ahead. So Wuhan, to give you
• 1:14:36
  Speaker 2: an example, Wuhan is kind of like Pittsburgh. It's a
• 1:14:39
  Speaker 2: bigger version of Pittsburgh. It's an old steel area. That's
• 1:14:43
  Speaker 2: not Wuhan today. Wuhan today is the AI. It's developing
• 1:14:49
  Speaker 2: not just a robotic company. They're uplifting 9 million people
• 1:14:55
  Speaker 2: in Wuhan. Their medicine is improved. Their infrastructure is improved.
• 1:15:02
  Speaker 2: They have more construction jobs than ever before because they
• 1:15:06
  Speaker 2: have to build so much to uplift the whole 9
• 1:15:09
  Speaker 2: million people. This is what Pittsburgh should have been and
• 1:15:14
  Speaker 2: hasn't been. And I know. I'm from western Pennsylvania. It's
• 1:15:17
  Speaker 2: heartbreaking to me to watch what's happened to Pittsburgh over
• 1:15:20
  Speaker 2: the last 30 or 40 years. Wuhan, exactly the same trajectory,
• 1:15:25
  Speaker 2: an old steel city, is now one of the leaders here.
• 1:15:30
  Speaker 2: And they have a robotic Silicon Valley there that I
• 1:15:33
  Speaker 2: visited and so forth.
• 1:15:35
  Speaker 1: And why does this matter? Why does it matter if
• 1:15:37
  Speaker 1: the US are no longer the world's superpower? What then
• 1:15:39
  Speaker 1: does history tell us is the consequence of that?
• 1:15:42
  Speaker 2: The consequence is, first of all, you get enormous tension
• 1:15:47
  Speaker 2: here for violence. So when you see big hegemonic shifts,
• 1:15:54
  Speaker 2: that means when one leader, the world's number one, becomes
• 1:15:59
  Speaker 2: replaced by another. bad things happen. This is what happened,
• 1:16:03
  Speaker 2: how you got the wars between Britain and France. When
• 1:16:06
  Speaker 2: they were fighting those wars, this is how you got
• 1:16:10
  Speaker 2: essentially World War I because of the rise and fall
• 1:16:13
  Speaker 2: of Germany versus Russia versus Britain. So these rising and falling,
• 1:16:20
  Speaker 2: they make a huge difference. It doesn't always happen. The
• 1:16:23
  Speaker 2: one time it was peaceful was when America replaced Britain
• 1:16:27
  Speaker 2: as number one. So just think about that. But other
• 1:16:30
  Speaker 2: times have been Very tense.
• 1:16:32
  Speaker 1: So how does China feel that the U.S. are now
• 1:16:34
  Speaker 1: at war with the Middle East?
• 1:16:36
  Speaker 2: So what's interesting is to get ready for coming on here,
• 1:16:39
  Speaker 2: I listened to the All In podcast, and I hope
• 1:16:41
  Speaker 2: that's okay to talk about.
• 1:16:42
  Speaker 1: Oh, I love that.
• 1:16:44
  Speaker 2: I think they're brilliant, by the way. I love it.
• 1:16:46
  Speaker 2: But what they said, just in the most recent, is
• 1:16:48
  Speaker 2: that Trump's playing a game for China. What they said
• 1:16:51
  Speaker 2: is China's shaking in its boots. And that what this
• 1:16:54
  Speaker 2: is about is it's kind of Venezuela plus Iran is
• 1:16:58
  Speaker 2: all about to cause Xi to be shaking in his
• 1:17:00
  Speaker 2: boots in April so that he will somehow make some
• 1:17:04
  Speaker 2: bigger deal with Trump. I think this is just wrong.
• 1:17:07
  Speaker 2: I think that it may be that there's some, you know,
• 1:17:11
  Speaker 2: China does absolutely buy 90% of Iran's oil. There's no,
• 1:17:15
  Speaker 2: we're not disagreeing with the facts of the matter. It's
• 1:17:18
  Speaker 2: the interpretation and the consequences for who's going to be
• 1:17:22
  Speaker 2: number one down the road. So my assessment here is
• 1:17:27
  Speaker 2: China is probably thrilled that we're on the verge of
• 1:17:31
  Speaker 2: getting into another quagmire in the Middle East and that
• 1:17:35
  Speaker 2: they would gladly give up. They have about 20% of
• 1:17:39
  Speaker 2: their GDP that turns the energy, not GDP, 20% of
• 1:17:42
  Speaker 2: their energy. It's a much smaller fraction of their GDP
• 1:17:44
  Speaker 2: that turns on the oil issue. Most of their energy
• 1:17:48
  Speaker 2: is not generated through, through oil. And so I think
• 1:17:51
  Speaker 2: they would really, if they had to give all of
• 1:17:53
  Speaker 2: the Middle Eastern oil up to suck us in to
• 1:17:57
  Speaker 2: another forever war with Iran that would go on for
• 1:18:00
  Speaker 2: years and years, oh my goodness gracious. Because they see
• 1:18:03
  Speaker 2: themselves as growing through Asia and spreading their wings through Asia.
• 1:18:11
  Speaker 2: And so to get us pinned down in the Middle
• 1:18:14
  Speaker 2: East with an even bigger problem than we had with Iraq,
• 1:18:19
  Speaker 2: This is mana from heaven for China. And that's what
• 1:18:22
  Speaker 2: I saw when I was there.
• 1:18:24
  Speaker 1: If I was Putin or if I was running China,
• 1:18:26
  Speaker 1: based on everything you've said and based on everything I know,
• 1:18:27
  Speaker 1: I would really want this war to go on for
• 1:18:30
  Speaker 1: a long time.
• 1:18:31
  Speaker 2: Oh, for sure.
• 1:18:32
  Speaker 1: So I'd really be helping Iran prolong this thing. And
• 1:18:36
  Speaker 1: also because Russia are in their own situation at the
• 1:18:38
  Speaker 1: moment with Ukraine. So it's quite a distraction from whatever
• 1:18:43
  Speaker 1: Putin's objectives are in Ukraine. No one's really talking about
• 1:18:45
  Speaker 1: Ukraine this week.
• 1:18:47
  Speaker 2: And it's bad for the Ukrainians because what's happening is
• 1:18:50
  Speaker 2: by the little bit that Putin has gotten himself involved here,
• 1:18:54
  Speaker 2: there is a chance he set the stage for a deal,
• 1:18:57
  Speaker 2: which is, again, America stops the intel to the Ukrainians
• 1:19:01
  Speaker 2: if Russia will stop the intel to Iran. That is much, much,
• 1:19:05
  Speaker 2: much to Putin's advantage with Ukraine. So I think that
• 1:19:09
  Speaker 2: you have a situation here, Stephen, where Putin, it's not
• 1:19:12
  Speaker 2: so much he's itching to get in the fight. He's
• 1:19:15
  Speaker 2: trying to do it in ways that he gets something
• 1:19:17
  Speaker 2: out of it in his relations war with Ukraine. Think
• 1:19:22
  Speaker 2: about that with President Xi. I don't think the Chinese
• 1:19:24
  Speaker 2: want to get in the fight. I think, in fact,
• 1:19:27
  Speaker 2: right now, if I'm assessing this correctly— they're probably not
• 1:19:32
  Speaker 2: wanting to get in the way of an enemy who's
• 1:19:33
  Speaker 2: shooting himself in both feet. So right now, America's damaging
• 1:19:38
  Speaker 2: itself a lot more than China could. And if China
• 1:19:41
  Speaker 2: inserts itself, there's a very good chance then that would
• 1:19:44
  Speaker 2: help Trump, again, pull a rabbit out of a hat.
• 1:19:47
  Speaker 2: I don't think they want to do that. I think
• 1:19:49
  Speaker 2: right now, you just look at this from, we're running
• 1:19:52
  Speaker 2: out of what's called standoff PGM. Remember, Secretary Hegseth said, well, yeah, okay,
• 1:19:56
  Speaker 2: we're running out of standoff PGMs, but we're going to
• 1:19:59
  Speaker 2: do something from the the bombs that we can drop
• 1:20:02
  Speaker 2: more over country. Well, that's the problem for a problem
• 1:20:06
  Speaker 2: for Taiwan. If we're going to defend Taiwan, we've got
• 1:20:09
  Speaker 2: to do this with long standoff precision weapons. And we all,
• 1:20:14
  Speaker 2: everybody who studies this knows that. So if we're really
• 1:20:17
  Speaker 2: running low on standoff precision weapons, she's just licking his
• 1:20:22
  Speaker 2: chops saying, my goodness, how much better does this get?
• 1:20:27
  Speaker 1: If Trump was listening. Probably not the case. I think
• 1:20:31
  Speaker 1: he just watches CNN and Fox News. But if Trump
• 1:20:34
  Speaker 1: was listening, what would you say to him? What I
• 1:20:36
  Speaker 1: would tell him is take the deal. I would say
• 1:20:38
  Speaker 1: stop right now and do everything possible to go back
• 1:20:41
  Speaker 1: to the deal you rejected the day before you started bombing.
• 1:20:45
  Speaker 1: And what your goal should be is to get as
• 1:20:48
  Speaker 1: much of the 60% enriched uranium out of the country
• 1:20:52
  Speaker 1: as possible. If You could also get the 20% enriched
• 1:20:56
  Speaker 1: uranium out. That would be good too.
• 1:20:59
  Speaker 2: But you're probably not going to get as good a
• 1:21:01
  Speaker 2: deal because the Supreme Leader you were dealing with is gone.
• 1:21:05
  Speaker 2: And you now have a much tougher... So you might
• 1:21:08
  Speaker 2: have to accept President Trump a worse deal.
• 1:21:10
  Speaker 1: Are we just kicking the can down the road here?
• 1:21:12
  Speaker 1: Because if you're an Iranian, like you've said, you've watched
• 1:21:14
  Speaker 1: bombs drop. You've realized that the reason why you are
• 1:21:17
  Speaker 1: such a target is because you don't have these nuclear weapons.
• 1:21:20
  Speaker 1: So is there not an element where Iran getting nuclear
• 1:21:23
  Speaker 1: weapons is inevitable in some way?
• 1:21:26
  Speaker 2: So, Stephen, this is the myth of 100% security. So,
• 1:21:30
  Speaker 2: we see this in not just America, but in lots
• 1:21:33
  Speaker 2: of conflicts in history where the idea that you don't
• 1:21:36
  Speaker 2: have 100% security leads you to essentially do things that
• 1:21:41
  Speaker 2: look like suicide for fear of death. So, we know
• 1:21:45
  Speaker 2: that there is a long-term problem out there. And Sometimes
• 1:21:50
  Speaker 2: a really good solution is to freeze it for 20 years,
• 1:21:54
  Speaker 2: just freeze it for 20 years. And you know what?
• 1:21:57
  Speaker 2: It's you're right. You didn't permanently take it off the table.
• 1:22:00
  Speaker 2: But if you can freeze a problem for 20 years,
• 1:22:03
  Speaker 2: that's actually a lot of, you might get lucky. You
• 1:22:06
  Speaker 2: might get something good like the Soviet Union might just
• 1:22:09
  Speaker 2: fall apart on you. You know, out of the blue,
• 1:22:11
  Speaker 2: it might just fall apart on you. And not because
• 1:22:13
  Speaker 2: you did anything. It's just because something else changed in
• 1:22:16
  Speaker 2: the world. So the way to think about this, Stephen,
• 1:22:19
  Speaker 2: is not this idea that we're going to take an
• 1:22:21
  Speaker 2: action and have 100% security. This is how big powers
• 1:22:26
  Speaker 2: lose wars, right? Big powers are up against these little countries.
• 1:22:32
  Speaker 2: And think about how often they lose. We lose to Vietnam.
• 1:22:37
  Speaker 2: That's how I got into this business in the first place.
• 1:22:39
  Speaker 2: I wanted to understand that. And so this idea of
• 1:22:42
  Speaker 2: the search for perfect security is often getting us into trouble.
• 1:22:47
  Speaker 2: Kick a can down. You're right. It's only 20 years.
• 1:22:51
  Speaker 2: I'll take that. That's better than where we are right now.
• 1:22:54
  Speaker 1: Professor Robert Pape, of all the things that we've talked about.
• 1:23:01
  Speaker 2: Which has been a wonderful conversation, by the way.
• 1:23:03
  Speaker 1: And very diverse, but really focused on this subject of
• 1:23:05
  Speaker 1: what's going on in the world at the moment with
• 1:23:06
  Speaker 1: Iran and Trump and America's decline. What is the thing
• 1:23:09
  Speaker 1: that we should have talked about that we didn't talk about?
• 1:23:12
  Speaker 2: The big thing, we're finally getting to it at the end,
• 1:23:16
  Speaker 2: is the real consequence of what President Trump has done
• 1:23:21
  Speaker 2: since coming into office. The real consequence of the tariffs,
• 1:23:26
  Speaker 2: the real consequence of not just threatening discussion of Greenland,
• 1:23:31
  Speaker 2: but becoming very aggressive with our European allies on Greenland,
• 1:23:35
  Speaker 2: being very aggressive to the point of taking out a
• 1:23:40
  Speaker 2: leader from Venezuela, which is in our Western hemisphere. So
• 1:23:43
  Speaker 2: it's creating, what this is really doing is it's threatening
• 1:23:48
  Speaker 2: America's primacy. So I am a big believer that America
• 1:23:53
  Speaker 2: should be the strongest, most secure state on the planet.
• 1:23:56
  Speaker 2: I think that is good for us. That means that
• 1:24:00
  Speaker 2: it is valuable to be the top dog, to be
• 1:24:04
  Speaker 2: the number one strongest economic military power. But in order
• 1:24:09
  Speaker 2: to do that, you have to be the world's number
• 1:24:11
  Speaker 2: one economy for real. And with $ 40 trillion in debt, Um, with, uh,
• 1:24:18
  Speaker 2: us pushing away our trading partners with us, uh, engaging
• 1:24:23
  Speaker 2: in hostile actions here, which are scaring the rest of
• 1:24:26
  Speaker 2: the world to further drift away from us and maybe
• 1:24:30
  Speaker 2: not side with China, but be neutral. Oh my goodness gracious. And,
• 1:24:35
  Speaker 2: and again, as I said before, China is motoring ahead
• 1:24:38
  Speaker 2: on the AI revolution. We're talking AI. But are we
• 1:24:43
  Speaker 2: really doing Wuhan? Are we up to Wuhan? I think
• 1:24:47
  Speaker 2: it would be interesting for folks to go to Wuhan
• 1:24:52
  Speaker 2: and actually visit or go to Shenzhen and visit or
• 1:24:56
  Speaker 2: go to Hangzhou and visit and see where Alibaba is
• 1:25:00
  Speaker 2: and see that it's not just one company here. It's
• 1:25:05
  Speaker 2: not just Deep Seek, that there's clusters that are being
• 1:25:09
  Speaker 2: built that are uplifting 10 million people at a swath.
• 1:25:14
  Speaker 2: And my goodness, why aren't we doing that in America?
• 1:25:17
  Speaker 2: We certainly need that in the rest.
• 1:25:19
  Speaker 1: We're too distracted.
• 1:25:20
  Speaker 2: We're too distracted, which is what I'm trying to say
• 1:25:23
  Speaker 2: is to China's advantage. And I think this is the
• 1:25:27
  Speaker 2: real long-term price, which is, are we actually eroding our
• 1:25:33
  Speaker 2: position as the world's number one? And I think our
• 1:25:38
  Speaker 2: primacy is in danger.
• 1:25:41
  Speaker 1: Professor Robert Pape, we have a closing tradition on this
• 1:25:43
  Speaker 1: podcast where the last guest leaves a question for the
• 1:25:44
  Speaker 1: next guest, not knowing who they're leaving it for. Ah.
• 1:25:49
  Speaker 1: The question left for you is, what is the prediction
• 1:25:52
  Speaker 1: you have for the future that most people do not
• 1:25:55
  Speaker 1: want to hear?
• 1:25:59
  Speaker 2: Well, this is going to lead into the conversation. So
• 1:26:02
  Speaker 2: I have a book coming out in September called Our
• 1:26:04
  Speaker 2: Own Worst Enemies. As bad as all this problem is, Stephen,
• 1:26:09
  Speaker 2: as bad as it is, I have spent the last
• 1:26:12
  Speaker 2: several years focusing on what's happening with political violence in
• 1:26:17
  Speaker 2: the United States and its normalization. And the biggest danger
• 1:26:24
  Speaker 2: that we face, even bigger than Iran and all the
• 1:26:28
  Speaker 2: problems we've just talked about, is the normalization of political
• 1:26:32
  Speaker 2: violence in our own country.
• 1:26:34
  Speaker 1: And by political violence, you mean?
• 1:26:36
  Speaker 2: I'm talking about in the last 10 years, We have
• 1:26:40
  Speaker 2: seen a surge of violent riots. We have seen a
• 1:26:45
  Speaker 2: surge of political assassinations that we haven't seen since the 1960s.
• 1:26:51
  Speaker 2: On top of that, we've just had Operation Midway Blitz
• 1:26:55
  Speaker 2: in my city, Chicago. That is the surge of militarized
• 1:27:02
  Speaker 2: immigration enforcement, which surged ICE, which surged into neighborhoods Over,
• 1:27:09
  Speaker 2: over almost 300 times, not just a small, and then
• 1:27:13
  Speaker 2: what happened after they left, um, uh, Chicago is they
• 1:27:18
  Speaker 2: did even more of that in Minneapolis. So these, this trajectory.
• 1:27:26
  Speaker 2: Steven that we're on where we are seeing the incredible
• 1:27:30
  Speaker 2: normalization of political violence. And it's happening on both the
• 1:27:34
  Speaker 2: right and the left. I'm not trying to make moral equivalence,
• 1:27:36
  Speaker 2: but it is– and the book will explain this– is
• 1:27:40
  Speaker 2: probably the greatest danger that we face because if we
• 1:27:44
  Speaker 2: are our own worst enemies, think of what that means
• 1:27:49
  Speaker 2: for us. being that great power that is so important
• 1:27:54
  Speaker 2: for us and the great future we want for our
• 1:27:56
  Speaker 2: families and our communities here. We are in danger of
• 1:28:02
  Speaker 2: becoming our own worst enemies, not for a day, not
• 1:28:05
  Speaker 2: for a month, but for years.
• 1:28:08
  Speaker 1: Professor, thank you so much. If anyone wants to go
• 1:28:10
  Speaker 1: and read more about many of the things we've talked
• 1:28:12
  Speaker 1: about today, where do they go? Substack?
• 1:28:14
  Speaker 2: I would go, you can read my books on it.
• 1:28:17
  Speaker 2: You can get them from Amazon. I would go to
• 1:28:19
  Speaker 2: Substack and then And that's the escalation trap. And I
• 1:28:23
  Speaker 2: would also just be aware that there will be more
• 1:28:26
  Speaker 2: discussion of political violence. So it's not just political violence
• 1:28:29
  Speaker 2: abroad and it's not just political violence at home. It
• 1:28:32
  Speaker 2: is both happening at the same time. Professor, thank you
• 1:28:35
  Speaker 2: so much. Thank you very much. Really, really enjoyed it.
• 1:28:38
  Speaker 2: Thank you so much.
• 1:28:39
  Speaker 1: It was fantastic. YouTube have this new crazy algorithm where
• 1:28:42
  Speaker 1: they know exactly what video you would like to watch
• 1:28:45
  Speaker 1: next based on AI and all of your viewing behavior.
• 1:28:48
  Speaker 1: And the algorithm says that this video is the perfect
• 1:28:52
  Speaker 1: video for you. It's different for everybody looking right now.
• 1:28:54
  Speaker 1: Check this video out. I bet you, you might love it.