US-Iran Conflict: Strategic Risks and Global Realignments

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Apr 13, 2026
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Air campaigns have knocked out many above‑ground targets in Iran, yet they have not reached the deeply buried assets or the enriched uranium that powers the nuclear program. Iran’s leadership has concluded that the United States cannot “beat” them, which has lifted morale and spurred a surge in drone attacks. The United States now faces a stark “fork in the road”: either launch a full‑scale ground invasion or accept Iran as an emerging fourth center of world power. As the host notes, “We’re not weakening Iran. We have strengthened Iran.”
Geopolitical Realignments

The U.S. military presence in the Gulf is no longer acting as a reliable security guarantor, prompting regional allies such as Saudi Arabia to explore partnerships with Pakistan. Iran’s control of the Strait of Hormuz gives it leverage that is reshaping Asian calculations; India and Japan are drifting away from reliance on U.S. protection. Meanwhile, Russia and China are deepening cooperation with Tehran, creating an axis that could threaten roughly 30 % of global oil supplies.
Israel as a Diplomatic Spoiler

Israel repeatedly undermines U.S. diplomatic overtures by assassinating key Iranian negotiators during sensitive windows, most notably the killing of Ali Larijani. Israeli public rhetoric paints Iran as a “paper tiger,” a claim that clashes with the reality of Iran’s growing military capabilities. This discord fuels a conflict between U.S. strategic interests and Israeli actions, complicating any chance of a negotiated settlement.
Domestic and Humanitarian Impact

The Iranian population of 92 million bears a heavy psychological and physical toll. Threats to “end a civilization,” as voiced by the U.S. president, have paradoxically mobilized Iranian nationalism and pushed the pro‑democracy movement toward supporting the regime. Targeting the top ten nodes of Iran’s electric grid would collapse the network for 6–18 months, halting life‑saving medical procedures and sparking widespread hunger. In the United States, prolonged conflict risks rising inflation and higher interest rates on the national debt, while 36 % of the public may still back a war even after troop casualties mount.
Mechanisms Behind the Escalation

The “Escalation Trap” unfolds in four stages: (1) leadership decapitation or heavy bombing, (2) horizontal escalation such as seizing the Strait of Hormuz, (3) ground operations, and (4) a long‑term shift in regional power. Air campaign limitations stem from the fact that bombing industrial facilities does not destroy the “enriched material” – the gold – which remains shielded in deep bunkers. Domestically, the “Legitimacy Shock Cycle” describes how extreme swings between Republican and Democratic policies alienate the middle, worsening societal outcomes.
“Iran has figured out that we can't beat them.”
“The political reactions by the population often are overwhelming the tactical military effects.”
“This is the most declared statement of genocidal intent we've ever seen from an American president.”
“NATO is for all practical purposes dead and what happens next.”
“The politics of the death of our troops in battle does not lead to we cut and run. It leads to we double down for the honor of the troops.”
Takeaways

Air campaigns have destroyed surface targets but failed to neutralize Iran's deep‑buried nuclear assets, prompting a strategic dilemma for the United States.
Iran's control of the Strait of Hormuz and its growing ties with Russia and China are reshaping Asian alliances and threatening a large share of global oil supply.
Israel’s assassinations of Iranian negotiators and its public dismissal of Iran as a "paper tiger" undermine U.S. diplomatic efforts and fuel regional tension.
Targeting Iran’s power grid could cause a six‑to‑eighteen‑month humanitarian crisis, while the U.S. faces rising inflation and debt costs from a protracted war.
The four‑stage Escalation Trap and the domestic Legitimacy Shock Cycle explain how military actions can spiral into long‑term regional power shifts and political polarization.
Frequently Asked Questions

What is the 'Escalation Trap' in the context of the US‑Iran conflict?

The Escalation Trap is a four‑stage process that begins with leadership decapitation or heavy bombing, moves to horizontal escalation such as seizing the Strait of Hormuz, proceeds to ground operations, and ends with a long‑term regional power shift. Each stage raises the stakes and makes de‑escalation increasingly difficult.
Does this page include the full transcript of the video?

Yes, the full transcript for this video is available on this page. Click 'Show transcript' in the sidebar to read it.
Helpful resources related to this video

If you want to practice or explore the concepts discussed in the video, these commonly used tools may help.
Books On Modern Military Strategy And Warfare Recommended
Provides deeper context on the air campaigns and geopolitical strategies discussed by Professor Pape.
Amazon →
Books On Middle East Geopolitical History
Offers historical background on the US-Iran relationship and the shifting alliances in the Gulf region.
Amazon →
Books On International Relations And Global Politics
Explains the broader power dynamics between the US, China, Russia, and regional powers mentioned in the brief.
Amazon →
Links may be affiliate links. We only include resources that are genuinely relevant to the topic.
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Full Transcript YouTube

Iran has figured out that we can't beat
them. We're not weakening Iran. We have
strengthened Iran and we can't stop
their drone attacks. And what you're
seeing is far more chaotic
decision-making is happening in the
White House than is happening in the
government of Iran and it's evidence
Trump is losing power. So when I look
through the response to the last
conversation, the audience had lots of
different types of questions. Like
there's 90 odd million people stuck
right in the heart of this that often
don't really have a voice. What do you
think happens next for them and what is
Israel's role in this?
>> Well, Israel is playing two roles here
that have not helped us correctly assess
the situation and we'll talk about that.
>> And then what do you think happens with
Europe?
>> NATO is for all practical purposes dead
and what happens next.
>> So for 21 years, I laid out what a
hypothetical bombing campaign of Iran
would look like. And when I was here
last time, every single thing we talked
about unfolded in the first several
weeks of the war.
>> So when you did this 21 years of
modeling these attacks, how did America
come out of this situation?
>> So there was a consistent set of
findings and America can bomb them,
attack them. We could even threaten to
murder all 92 million of them. But the
bottom line is
that is the real danger for us.
This is super interesting to me. My team
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Let's get on with the show.
Professor Robert Pabe, good to see you
again.
>> Great to see you again, Stephen.
>> It's been 4 weeks since we sat down and
talked about everything that was
happening in the war and it's all moved
at light speed. You made some
predictions then. Many of them have come
true already and many of them still
unfolding. But I wanted to get you back
to talk about what the hell is going on.
And I think that's kind of how I started
last conversation. But there's so much
that's being said and I get the sense
that there's a truth that sits
underneath there somewhere because when
you look at what the Iranians are
saying, when you look at what the
Israelis are saying, when you look at
what Trump and America are saying, and
then you look at reality, at some level,
I feel like we're not being told the
truth. My first question to you,
professor, is who are you and who are
you to speak on this subject matter?
>> I am a professor at the University of
Chicago. I have been there for 26 years
almost 27 years and before that I was a
professor who taught for the US Air
Force. I taught conventional targeting
and I thought I was going to go into the
foreign service. I wanted to understand
how we lost the Vietnam War and this
became the origins of bombing to win
>> which is your book I have here in front
of me.
>> That's bombing to win in 1985. I've just
finished all my classes and I have to
pick a topic for my PhD. I wanted to
find the book that laid out all the air
campaigns and that explained why Vietnam
was a loser. Where did that L come from?
When you say air campaigns, for someone
that knows nothing about military
conflict, what do you mean by air
campaigns?
>> What I mean with an air campaign is when
you have military aircraft who were not
just doing a single raid bombing one
target one day, but doing a campaign
over days, weeks, months. in the case of
Vietnam over years.
>> And you wanted to figure out why
countries that do these military
campaigns, which is pretty much what's
going on now in the Middle East, why
they don't tend to win.
>> Why they don't win when they're so
strong? Why is it that when a strong
power really gets its act together, it's
not careless, it's really thinking hard,
it then applies this force, a campaign
overtime and comes out a loser.
>> And you modeled for 20 years a war with
Iran versus the United States.
>> That's exactly right. I imagined uh in
class for 90 minutes I laid out what a
hypothetical bombing campaign of Iran
would look like starting with the
bombing of its nuclear enrichment sites.
There's multiple sites. There's uh Ford
which is an industrial enrichment where
there are centerfuges. There's Natans
also centuges. There's Esphon where you
have gasification of the ore so you can
make the centurfuges more efficient. So,
it's not just one target. There's a
whole target set, a complex of targets.
And so, what I would do is I would lay
out here are the aircraft that could be
used. Uh, here are the likely results at
a tactical level.
Ah, yes, just for context. So, we're
looking at a map of Iran and we're
looking at the Persian Gulf. And um Iran
of course is to the east of the of the
Persian Gulf and Thran is up to the
north middle. Right in the middle are a
whole series of these nuclear sites. You
have Sagad which is where the uranium
ore actually comes from. They don't have
to bring in ore. They have plenty of
ore, but the ore has to be distilled so
that you can get the tiny bits of
uranium 235 you need for uh enriching
the uranium for either nuclear reactors
or bombgrade uranium. That's first none
at esphon to gasify the ore so that when
it spins in the centerfuge uh facilities
at Natans and Ford, you can get the
purity of the uranium 235. That's what
we're talking about here when we say
it's enriched.
>> So when you did this 21 years of
modeling these attacks, how did the
model show
America came out of this situation?
>> There was a consistent set of findings
you just couldn't ignore, Stephen, which
is our bombers would always be able to
destroy the target, the industrial
facility that was enriching the uranium.
The problem always was, no matter uh
which year we did this, you wouldn't be
able to destroy the enriched material,
the actual gold. So, if you're panning
for gold, you see what I mean? And
you've got the gold. Uh you can destroy
the pan, you can even destroy the river,
you can't get the gold. So, let me
repeat that back to you in layman's
terms, and you tell me if I'm correct.
So they they could bomb these sites
where they're making the enriched
uranium, but it wouldn't destroy the
enriched uranium. It would just put it
underneath a bunch of rubble.
>> That's right.
>> So you can bomb it, but you're basically
just kicking the can down the road
because at some point they can go back
and get it. It's undamaged. And then
they can carry on their process.
>> That's right. And and Stephen, they
might even anticipate the bombs coming
because they might get some indications,
you know, we're building up and then
disperse in advance. And the at the end
of last year they did operation midnight
hammer where they bombed the sides with
these incredible
>> exactly as we did in class. Literally I
had just modeled it for the students
three weeks before and almost exactly
the platforms I mean on you know the B2s
the MOAB I mean every single thing we
talked about if unfolded just as we had
modeled in class.
>> So what is going on now? I want you to
help me cut through all of this noise
and all of this propaganda. What's going
on now is uh we're not weakening Iran in
a sense where Iran will be weaker a year
from now, two years from now. We have
strengthened Iran and we're
strengthening Iran in multiple ways. So
far, we've just been talking about bombs
on target. My real specialty, Stephen,
is the interaction of military action
and politics. You're not just hitting an
industrial target. people in the
country, the population, the regime,
they're reacting to that politically.
And that reaction is tremendously
important. And that's what I discovered
in my work studying Vietnam in the
1980s. The why the bombing campaign was
failing, the political reactions by the
population
often are overwhelming the tactical
military effects. So you can hit the
target, you can destroy the industrial
facilities um and in fact you can
energize the population to work even
harder to overcome all that damage and
sometimes they have tremendous
geographic advantages. In Vietnam, there
was an area called the Ho Chi Min Trail,
which was a where the logistics where
the ammo for the um Vietkong guerrilla
fighters in the south were getting their
ammo. And in the 1960s, we knocked out
80 plus% of the throughput of that
pipeline, of that trail. You know what?
It wasn't enough. And we ended up not
being able to stop that little itty
bitty bit of throughput that can't still
could get through and incentivize even
more to get it through because they knew
we couldn't stop it. And that is what
fueled the VC and ultimately uh the
Vietkong the gorillas that were uh we
were really up against in Vietnam. That
is what ultimately bolstered their
morale. They knew we couldn't beat them.
Even though we whittleled them down by
80%, we couldn't get that last 15 or
20%. And that was what was energizing
their morale.
>> So, how does that apply to what's going
on now? In simple terms, what's going
on?
>> Iran has figured out that uh we can't
beat them. That's what's going on,
Stephen. They are figuring out that we
can't beat them. We can bomb them. We
can um attack them. We could even
threaten to murder all 92 million of
them, which is the civilization threat
by uh by President Trump. And the bottom
line is that we can't get to that final
10 20% of um drones and missiles.
>> Okay.
>> Okay. That Iran has and it's probably
bigger than that that we can't knock
out. See, we're able to knock out
anything that's above ground. that
there's a launcher and it's above
ground, we can see it. We can see it
with satellites. We can see it with
other sensors as well. That thing is
going to be gone in a few days. And
that's what the air campaign that you've
watched for 40 days is doing. When
Secretary Hegth or General Kaine talk
about hitting 11 12,000 targets, these
are targets, most of the almost all of
them that are very clearly visible and
above ground. This is true of the Navy
ships as well. Well, guess what? The
Iranians knew that was always going to
be vulnerable. So what they've been
doing is they have been not just deeply
uh burying their industrial enrichment
facilities, they've been deeply burying
their arsenals of drones, deeply burying
their arsenals of missiles. And so they
are in a position where even though we
are unleashing enormous amounts of air
power against them and we are
technically superior, we can't stop
their drone attacks against the ships in
the straight of Hormuz. They know it.
They can use that to their advantage.
And boy are they using it to their
advantage enormously. Yesterday, the
Secretary of War, Pete Hegsth, did a
press conference, and one of the
reporters said to him, "There's been a
ceasefire announced, but it appears that
Iran is still attacking neighboring
countries." Hegth's response to the
reporter was, "Iran would be wise to
find a way to get their carrier pigeon
to the troops out in remote locations to
let them know not to shoot any longer.
It can sometimes take time for
ceasefires to take hold, which was
really alarming to me because it
suggests that there is actually not a
centralized leadership structure in
Iran. And actually, if there's not a
centralized leadership structure, how
does one negotiate a ceasefire if
there's lots of different factions doing
lots of different things? Now, is that
true?
>> I would say it's probably decentralized.
I think he's probably right about that.
>> I'm trying to figure out who in Iran is
negotiating with America and why it
doesn't seem to be the case that whoever
is negotiating control the fact that
people are still firing.
>> Oh, I see. I see. Yeah. decentralization
means chaotic and they can't actually
make decisions. That's just not the
case. The more you move up the chain of
command, the more the leader can give
pre-delegated orders. If X happens, do
do Y. Those can hold for hours and days.
Uh and that's true in every
organization. That's why leaders can go
on vacation uh for a week and come back
and they're worried of course when they
come back. But the bottom line is that
the leaders are setting the strategic
direction.
>> Who is the leader?
>> Oh, it's definitely the supreme leader,
the son of the one we just killed. Oh,
without a doubt. I think this idea that
that he's not there, there's absolutely
no evidence of that. Yes, it's
decentralized in the sense it's hard to
find them, to target them. But by the
way, Stephen, I think the reason that
we're trying to talk smack about the
Supreme Leader, is he is he alive? Is he
dead? is we're trying to goat him into
revealing his location so we can kill
him. But that's not working. So, and
it's also not stopping Iran from putting
out 10 points to Pakistan uh in the
negotiations. It's not stopping Iran
from having messages that go through
Pakistan to um the White House.
President Trump is then agreeing to the
10 points that are coming from Iran, you
see. And then um later on, of course,
President Trump is taking it back. But
the bottom line is um what you're seeing
in terms of chaotic decisionmaking
far more chaotic decision-m is happening
in the White House in the United States
than it's happening in the government of
Iran. They're rising power in the region
as our power is is declining
precipitously.
>> What do you think happens next?
>> We are at a fork in the road. When I was
here last time, uh, I was walking you
through the three stages of the
escalation trap and you kept pushing me,
tell me more, tell me more. Notice I I
was a little bit reluctant to do that.
Well, there is a stage four. For anyone
that didn't hear that episode, could you
give us a one sentence on stage one?
>> And yes, stage one is America bombs,
does leadership change bombing. We hit
targets, kill leaders, but the regime
actually evolves and is stronger than
before. Uh stage two is that then
stronger regime lashes back with
horizontal escalation and takes the
straight of horos at least initially
takes the straight of horos. And then
stage three is that's the ground option
to start to take the straight of Hormuz
back. And that's exactly what you saw
play out in the first several weeks of
the war. Stage three was about the
Marines. The Marines hadn't even moved
yet. And I'm telling you, the Marines
are likely going to move. There's going
to be movement to ground options in
stage three uh here very rapidly in this
war. At that point in time when we had
our first discussion, you wanted to push
for the future. I said, "No, we we need
to wait." And the reason, Stephen, is
because what you're not seeing with me
is throwing random darts at the future.
I'm doing risk assessment out about as
far as you uh you can have stable
predictions. And in war, that usually
means 2 3 4 weeks. It doesn't mean we
can say where we'll be a year from now.
Here though, now that we're in 40 days,
we're at a different point. We've
clearly passed stage one. We're past
stage two where they uh control the
straight of form moves. We've bellied up
to stage three, the ground operations.
Now we're at a branch, a fork in the
road. There's no way to go back to
February 27, which is the pre-war period
that many people would love to go back
to. I too would like to go back to
February 27th. That's not the future.
What happens at this point on in the
modeling and the is a branch either we
go through with the ground war or Iran
becomes an emerging not right away
fourth center of world power. That is
the branch that we face now. This branch
is becoming more evident hour by hour.
>> Explain that to me. So everybody now
knows that Iran is uh controlling the
straight of form and controlling
shipping. That's selective blockade. I'm
taking it a step further. That's not
just about insurance rates of shipping.
That's generating political power for
Iran to get other states to cowtow to it
to accept its objectives.
What are those objectives? So let's talk
about how this affects say Asia. So I'm
going to get into global and then we'll
come back to the Gulf itself. So the
shipping that goes through the straight
of H for H for H for H for H for H for H
for H for H for H for Hormuz 80 to 90%
of it is going right to Asia. The power
that comes with that is with say India.
India is not siding with the United
States. India is at best neutral and
maybe even a little bit more uh uh
edging toward Iran. Well, before this,
you could imagine that the United States
and India would be much more cooperative
here. That's not what's occurring. And
why is that? It's because that oil
that's going into Asia for India, this
isn't just about the price of oil. This
is about the supply of oil. When you
lose literally all the supply, that is a
greater cost than simply having to pay
more for it. So India is in a much more
difficult situation than Europe and the
United States right now. Now look at
Japan. Notice in the Oval Office,
President Trump brought in uh the leader
of the head of state of Japan and
basically browbeat her and she still
wouldn't budge. She still would not
cowtow to Trump here uh and actually
provide military support. What did she
do? She's distancing herself from the
United States. That's exactly what Iran
wants out of America's Asian allies.
This is geopolitical power and it's
rooted in the control of Hormos. It's
rooted in the selective military
blockade. That selective military
blockade produces vulnerability to
India, vulnerability to Japan. And that
is what the we call it the leverage. But
the leverage is is not enough of a I
think a full description. This is
reorienting America's allies in Asia.
Now, let's talk about what's happening
in the Persian Gulf itself. Before the
war, February 27, there was essentially
a balance in the Persian Gulf where you
had Iran on one side and you had this
growing collection of Gulf states that
were part of an emerging web. They're
cooperating with Israel more and more on
different um on different issues.
President Trump is bringing in his AI
billionaires to sort of grease this
cooperation so that there's some
material benefits. Well, that was
effectively a counterbalancing
coalition to Iran. Now, what's happened
after 40 days is this is breaking down
fast. America has military bases in
Qatar, has military bases in uh
Baharrain, has military bases in Kuwait.
I'm just picking a few. Had military
base of course in in Saudi Arabia. These
military bases, they are producing
little leverage here against Iran. In
fact, our aircraft carriers are not
anywhere near the Persian Gulf. They're
a thousand miles away. These bases are
big fat targets.
They are above ground. Iran's precision
drones can hit things above ground and
they're doing it on those bases. That
was their immediate retaliation. What is
what's happening number one is the
anchor the military anchor of this
coalition started to disappear within
hours of the bombing on February 28th.
>> What do you mean by the military anchor?
In order to have this coalition work,
>> which is like Saudi Arabia, Qatar,
>> Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the UAE, Kuwait,
somebody has to be the LA the the
guaranter of protection. It's like the
Ma boss who protects everybody else.
That is the United States. And that is
what our military bases were supposed to
do. They become the military anchor that
allows then for there to become
political counterbalancing against Iran.
That was the Kushner idea in the first
Trump administration. And it seemed to
work and it seemed to uh bring some of
these states together who wouldn't
necessarily think you would cooperate
with with Israel. Well, this is now this
war is torpedoing this whole idea.
President Trump is not even willing to
do much to actually defend our own
bases, much less Saudi Arabia, much less
UAE. What he's telling them is you go
out there and start defending yourself.
Well, that's not a guaranter of
security. The next thing that's
happening is the three these states
which were operating more in concert are
starting to break down and operate in
three pools. You have Iraq which is now
complaining more and more about milit US
military presence there. They're
distancing themselves from American
military presence. And remember we
installed that government in 2003. So
they're not siding with us. They're
distancing themselves uh from us. Then
you have Qatar and you have uh Oman. Uh
what Iran's doing is saying, you know,
we should share some of these uh t these
tolls with Oman. They're moving Oman
into their camp. So you have Iraq moving
closer to Iran. Oman moving closer.
Qatar is trying to keep its head down as
much as possible. They're not they're
not trying to get their nose in this
anymore. And who is what's the third
pool? The third pool is Saudi Arabia, uh
the UAE. These are the states that are
most under threat. And what has Saudi
Arabia done just in the last week?
They've gone to cooperate more with
Pakistan. They have a security deal with
Pakistan. What does that mean? They're
looking to Pakistan as much or maybe
even more than the United States as
their guaranter of security. So all of
this coalition, it's not all siding with
Iran right now. It's fragmenting. And
that's weakening America.
>> So what happens next?
>> You know, as President Trump wants to
do, call the war off. That's not going
to put us back to February 27. Iran has
20% of the world's oil. It's going to be
able to have uh 75 billion hundred
billion of of revenues here over the
next year. And also those deeply buried
caves and tunnels where they have their
drones uh that can be used to fashion
nuclear weapons. within a year Iran
could have nuclear weapons and we can't
stop it. So if we pull back you can
start to see that Iran's power is going
to grow internally. Uh but then even
more than that its relationships with
Russia, its relationships with China
will start to move closer together
against America.
And you see this happening from the
moment almost the first several days of
the war. Russia almost immediately
offered Iran military targeting
information to target US ships. That's
why our our carriers are so far away.
It's because Russia has the ability to
see those carriers, tell Iran where they
are, and if those carriers get too
close, man, they're going to be smashed.
But it can get worse than that, Stephen,
because as this power grows over time,
as these incentives for uh China,
Russia, and Iran to cooperate against
America grow over time, Iran has control
now of 20% of the world's oil. Russia
has 11% of the world's oil. That means
there can be either formal or tacic
cooperation to take 30% of the world's
oil off the global market. Let China
soak up a whole lot of that. And that
can truly produce mega economic
consequences for America, for Europe.
And why are they not going to do that?
Because they're nice guys. Is that
really what we're counting on now?
Russia, Putin is not going to want to
wreck America's economy because he has a
a a bond with Donald Trump. What do you
think the fundamental
flawed assumption was at the start of
all of this from the United States?
>> That Iran was was was weak on its last
legs and all we had to do was uh push it
over the edge of a cliff and it was just
a matter of just one more push
>> and then the people would rise up and
>> yeah, we have painted a picture of Iran
um as beaten down as the reason it's not
retaliating very much is they have no
capability to retaliate. And I tell you
tell you this um Stephen, so I' I've
been in big debates here at uh the
Council on Foreign Relations in New York
where I've literally been the only
person on the stage to stand up and warn
that this picture of Iran is is is way
too negative. There was a a widpread, I
think, false assumption across the
foreign policy community. no one willing
to really stand up and challenge it very
strongly that Iran was basically
collapsing on its own. This was always
in my view underestimating the power of
Iran. And you say, well, where does my
view come from? It came from the
modeling of the bombing. What would
happen as this went forward? And none of
these elements of Iran's power were ever
knocked out. When I look through the
response to the last conversation, the
the audience had lots of different types
of questions. So, I'm going to try and
represent some of the audience's
questions to try and bring them into the
conversation. One of them was about
Israel's role in this. And I thought it
might actually link to what you just
said about where we get our intelligence
from that informs the decisions we make
because there are some people that are
skeptical that the intelligence is
coming from Israel and that therefore
that it might not be as accurate as if
it was coming from our own sources. I
would say Israel has been playing the
role of diplomatic spoiler. So in the
12-day war when last June when the US
bomb fore we've been focusing on that
that happened in the middle of the
12-day war. Donald Trump said he was
going to negotiate with a certain set of
Iranians and literally the next day uh
36 hours later Israeli air power killed
them
killed the negotiators. we were set to
negotiate with. This was totally
spoiling the idea of a diplomatic
outcome because they were dead. So, you
couldn't have a negotiated outcome. Now
if we come to February 28, who dropped
the first bombs that killed the supreme
leader that uh killed those other
several dozen doves that he was meeting
with?
>> Donald Trump um as as many of our
governments have um describes that you
had a balance of hawks and doves inside
of the Iranian government. And uh the
idea here is with leadership
decapitation is well if you kill uh the
hawks then the doves will just be the
ones left. We did the opposite or more
correctly the bombing was started by
Israel on February 28. we came in
behind. And in fact, Secretary Rubio,
our Secretary of State, explained a few
days later that um uh Israel basically
backed us in a corner because Israel
said, "We're going to kill that Supreme
Leader whether you like it or not, and
that is going to maybe lead to attacks
on your military bases, so you better
prepare an air campaign to come behind."
and Rubio said that's what happened
because again just before the 20
February 28 bombing we're negotiating
with Iran and we're killing the very
people that Trump was saying are the
ones we wanted to negotiate with the
ones who were going to help move Iran
closer to the American position that was
Israel as spoiler
>> so there's this individual called Ali
Laurajani the former secretary of Iran's
supreme national security council and he
was killed killed in an Israeli le air
strike on March 17th, 2026. Trump
claimed on True Social that I can't say
his name, but I'm going to try.
>> Ljani
>> was the primary contact for a 10-point
peace proposal that Trump had called
workable and a basis for a real
agreement. Trump suggested that the
strike was poorly timed when Israel
killed him and complained that Israel's
lone wolf actions were complicating his
ability to wrap up the war on his own
terms. He famously posted that he was
inches away from the biggest deal in
history before the assassination reset
the clock.
>> So this would be the third instance then
of Israel as diplomatic spoiler. What
you're hearing from Trump's own mouth is
he thought he uh was close to a working
relationship maybe not a full deal with
a certain set of individuals in this
case Ojani. And what did Israel do when
they found out about it? They killed
that person. And yes, I I understand
there's issues of intelligence, but you
know, most of us don't have a clearance,
so we can't talk about that. So, let's
talk about the actual public description
that we've heard from. Prime Minister
Netanyahu over the last several years.
The public description is that Iran is
simply a paper tiger. That that um
Israel has been dominating Iran,
knocking out its air defenses, launching
other attacks here in 2024.
The rhetoric that's coming publicly has
been painting the picture of Iran as a
weak and and not just weaken but
basically It's down on its last
legs and all you need is a final
coupigra. That has been Prime Minister
Netanyahu's language.
>> The other thing that the audience wanted
to know is they wanted more specifics on
stage three.
>> Yes. Yes.
>> And is stage three happening? We talked
last time about ground troops. It's very
important and I I've been saying this on
the Substack and my and my ex to follow
the key indicators here of deployment,
not follow just what's occurring with
the rhetoric of our leaders. Um, and the
key thing to to know is that if you're
going to um weaken Iran with ground
power, there's only a few ways you can
get that ground power into Iran. You
could try to come through Pakistan, but
Pakistan actually is Iran's ally who
gave Iran the 600 centerfuges in 2002 to
start developing its enrichment program.
So, and Pakistan has 100 nuclear weapons
or so. So, I don't think we're doing
this uh here. You could try to do it
with Afghanistan, but notice you'd have
to get all the troops in Afghanistan.
That's not working. You could also go to
Azerbaijan. That's up there. Notice on
the first day of the war there was a
missile that hit Azerbaijan and people
on CNN there weren't what what's going
on here. It's just a random in fact I
think uh our our our public statement on
that day was this shows how how
incoherent uh the Iran leadership is.
That's not what I saw. What I saw is
they understood that Azeraijan was
always thought to be a staging area to
go to Thran. And so if you're going to
take Thrron with a division or two, you
would really want to have your forces
start here from Azerbaijan. Now, so far
though, that's not happening. Azarbaian
said, "Nope, don't count on us. We're
not getting in the middle of this." Now,
we're back to why would you start to
think about Marines uh to take territory
here on the coasts of Iran? So inside
Iran where the straight of Hermuz is
>> that's the that's the beginning of it.
You would start there around inside Iran
around the straight of Hormuz as a beach
head.
>> There's some photos which I'll throw up
on the screen showing what the terrain
around the straight of Hormuz looks like
and it's it is quite shocking.
>> It's it's a moonscape and what you can
see is that this is the most difficult
terrain for amphibious operations to
operate in.
>> What is amphibious operations? uh where
you have troops that are on ships on
landing vessels. Uh just like Saving
Private Ryan, they go from the water
onto the beach. You would also then have
um some air power with some Osprey, but
they're doing essentially the same
thing. They're coming onto the same
beach.
>> What's an Osprey?
>> Uh an Osprey is a specialmade plane that
we've made for the Marines. And it's a
plane that is a hybrid between a
helicopter and a jet. And so the
propellers on the plane are able to
rotate. So they can fly as a propeller
plane um here or a uh a cheapman's jet
or they can actually um like a
helicopter. And that's really great if
you want to fly fast to a beach and then
go straight down.
>> So are you saying that you think they
will put boots on the ground in the
straight of Hammoose?
>> Let me just fill out this a little bit
more. Okay. So the other big thing that
that the folks need to know is where is
the oil? Iran's oil and here I'm drawing
a circle here. Iran's oil is all in this
uh southwestern part almost all of it is
in the southwestern part of um of Iran.
Kuwait's oil is all right here. Iraq has
couple puddles of oil. It has a big
puddle of oil right here. Saudis oil is
all right here. You might uh try to land
forces of division here in Iraq, in
Kuwait, uh in Saudi Arabia and come
around this way. This is why knocking
out these bases as truly platforms here.
This was why they I think they start on
day one. This wasn't just to hit the
bases in retaliation. They are weakening
our ability. They're taking away
different axes of attack. And this is
why in the uh Substack I published three
days before the war, I'm specifically
talking about Marines moving in limited
areas to take coastal regions as beach
heads.
>> What's a beach head?
>> A beach head is where you have a a
foothold, a tow hold, where you're going
to funnel in more forces after that. And
you are going to very likely want to
control an area that's at least about
100 miles by 20 m in order to get behind
all this uh this this mountainous
terrain. And what does that look like?
The oil fields. Stephen, this is what
President Trump is almost surely talking
about when he says he's going to take
Iran's oil fields. What he is probably
um being given options for is how you
could start in a limited way with an
amphibious, submarine, a limited assault
to take a a small set of stretch of
beaches and then you would want to
follow and take if you're going to start
this at all, you're almost surely going
to want to just start to take the oil
fields. And President Trump's been
talking that way for years really. He
also said in a recent interview that if
it was up to him, he would go and take
the oil. But he said the American people
weren't like that. And he said it once
and then he said it again and then he
said it again. This was during a press
conference on Monday, April 6th. He
said, "If it were up to me, I would take
the oil. I would keep it all for
ourselves and make a lot of money
because to the victor belong the spoils.
But people in the country sort of say
just win and come home." And I'm okay
with that too. And he said that from the
interview that I was watching twice,
which made me think that he really wants
to go take the oil. But if he does put
troops on the ground in Iran,
>> it just creates a clearer target for
those drone strikes. It creates a
clearer target for those drone strikes.
But what people maybe are not fully
understanding is the political
consequences of the deaths of those
Marines. Yeah,
>> most people are assuming if those
Marines go in and die, this will make
America run away. It'll be like a punch
in the face and we'll run away. That's
not likely to be what happens. Again,
this is my area of what happens when you
have military force in politics come
together.
You need to understand that when those
Marines go in and say hundreds die or or
so over time, there will be 36% of the
public that will have supported that.
That 36% is going to see those Marines
died for them. That 36% is likely to
double down in their commitment because
otherwise they died for nothing. Now,
the 50% 59% excuse me, who's opposed to
the war, they'll still be pretty hotly
opposed to the war. I'm not saying
they're going to move toward the war,
Stephen. What I'm saying is you have a
Republican president supported by 36% of
of the Republicans here, almost no
Democrats. If you start to actually have
deaths here, this is going to lead to a
bigger version of we can't withdraw now.
we must quote finish the job otherwise
they will have died for nothing. This is
what happened in Vietnam. In Vietnam in
the early stages you will see that it's
sticky up the support for the war. It
takes a while to go down. And why does
it take so long to go down? It's because
of exactly what I'm saying. The politics
of this of the death of our troops in
battle does not lead to we cut and run.
It leads to we double down for the honor
of the troops. That's why I'm saying we
start this even in a small way. Even
car. It doesn't really matter where you
start it, but once you have those ground
forces go in and they start to take
casualties, you're probably in for the
sixmonth ground war minimum. It looks
like they're going to try and avoid that
outcome. It looks like they're doing
everything in their power, America, to
avoid a scenario where they have to send
troops in. The the threats that have
come out of Donald Trump's truth social
posts really talk about I mean, look,
I'll read this one here. It says, "A
whole civilization will die tonight,
never to be brought back again. I don't
know what will happen, but it probably
will." Um, and all a lot of the tweets
are
>> Can we just focus on that one, the
civilization, because it's much that was
a few days ago. A lot of people are
already trying to move past it. This has
much more importance and endurance than
I think we're understanding now. So,
first of all, that statement that
President Trump said that he will end an
entire civilization in one night, uh, we
need to understand this is not a drunk
at a bar. This is the president of the
United States who has at his disposal
thousands of nuclear weapons that could
in fact achieve that. And let me just
explain how hair triggered these are. We
have 500 Minutemen 3 missiles. They have
warheads between 100 kilotons and 300
kilotons which is multiple times more
powerful than Hiroshima Nagasaki each
one of them. and they can be retargeted
within 45 minutes. That's what it takes
to retarget the gyroscopes. And then it
takes about 25 minutes for them to hit
Iran. So when the president of the
United States is saying this, he's only
one of a handful of people in the world
who could pull who could actually make
this credible. Second point is that is
the most declared statement of genocidal
intent we've ever seen from an American
president. No American president has
threatened to end a civilization before,
which is at the heart of the genocide
treaties in 1948. The intent to commit
genocide. Harry Truman, people will say,
"What do you mean? We had Harry Truman.
We bomb we we bombed Hiroshima
Nagasaki." Go and look at his statement
on Hiroshima. Harry Truman. He did not
say he was ending Japan as a
civilization. He pulled back and said it
was about to destroy Japan's military
power. What President Trump has done by
making those statements is he's
persuading all 92 million Iranians that
he is willing to kill them and he has
the power to kill them. And yes, he
pulled back from killing them on
Tuesday. And yes, he may not have used
nuclear weapons on Tuesday, but if any
other leader had said that, if imagine
Vladimir Putin stands up and says he's
going to end American civilization
tonight, he's got the weapons to be able
to do that. Are we just going to sit
back and say, "Oh, yeah, he didn't do
it. He must not have meant it." No. That
would mobilize enormous anger against
Vladimir Putin in the United States,
even among Democrats. And my point here,
Stephen, is before uh this war started,
we had a real pro-democracy movement in
Iran. And on your show, I told you this
was going to fade. This was one of the
predictions I made to you said this is
going to fade over time. You're going to
see nationalism bonding the society and
the regime closer together. President
Trump is bonding them together like
never before. If you're one of the
pro-democracy
individuals here, movement in Iran,
where are you going to go for
protection? Are you going to go to
Donald Trump who's threatening to kill
you with essentially nuclear weapons? Or
are you going to go to your own
government? This is going to hasten the
support, increase the support for Iran
developing nuclear weapons. the
pro-democracy movement is now likely to
support this.
>> On that point, one of the questions and
one of the points raised by the audience
last time we had the conversation was
really we didn't spend enough time
talking about the 90 plus million people
that live in Iran.
>> Yeah.
>> That are often many of them caught
amongst all of this absolute chaos. And
I I was looking at a bunch of messages
from people that are living in Iran. Um
I'll read some of them from ordinary
citizens. Um, I'm not great at math, but
where will the money, the resources, and
the experts come from to build a country
that ordinary people spent decades
trying to build?
>> From the This is a different person.
From the beginning of the war until
today, we have been bombarded. Not only
are we not one step closer to freedom,
from what I can see, we are miles away
from it. From another person in Iran, a
whole civilization will die tonight,
never to be brought brought back again.
This has deeply terrified me.
It's it's it raises really the question
a lot of this disc discourse doesn't
speak much to 90 plus million people
that are living there and that are
having to exist under this terror. And
like the best way that I could
conceptualized it is I I I imagined if I
had woken up one day and Vladimir Putin
or some other leader around the world
had said that they were potentially
going to end the civilization that I
live in, the country that I live in
tonight, how would I be feeling? And if
I was hearing bombs go off all the t
time, how would I be feeling? Um, and if
things were escalating when me and my
family lived, how would I be feeling?
And it is chilling to think about. It's
chilling because this is now moving the
needle inside of Iran to make the
ordinary person on the street uh even
the pro-democracy movement willing to
tolerate Iran killing Americans
because we're killing them and we're
saying we're going to do it even worse
and we're say even beyond that we're
saying at the whim of a president who
wakes up thinking Maybe this will help
his save his presidency. He is willing
to uh uh kill the entire civilization of
a country because he thinks maybe this
is going to be his off his golden uh
offramp to get out of this problem for
himself personally. And by the way, we
we in our country when al-Qaeda attacked
us on 9/11, there was tremendous fear.
There would be more attacks by al-Qaeda
in the weeks afterwards. There was just
much fear. And I've done the studies of
the American public opinion on this.
It's the fear of Muslims killing
Americans that's driving the support for
the Iraq war. If this is happening to
Americans, you can only imagine what's
going to happen to the ordinary
Iranians. And they've been subjected not
to just one attack, 40 days of attack.
>> So for the average Iranian person that
opposes the regime in Iran and has been
living under terror and oppression for
many, many decades.
What do you think happens next for them?
They're they're the group of people that
I that I think about and care about the
most in this equation. We spend a lot of
time talking about US power and we talk
about lots of these other regional
partners, but there's like 90 odd
million people stuck right in the heart
of this that often don't really have a
voice.
>> Their life expectancy will go down in
measurable years. So if we had taken out
the electric power, so this is something
I know quite a bit about in the 1990s. I
was uh working for the Air Force
literally under uh my boss was John
Warden, the leader of the leadership
decapitation school. And he brought in,
not classified at all, he brought in
engineers of electric power plants to
teach us how to take down electric
power. The electric power grid in Iran,
it looks like a network. And that
network has big nodes. That's what
President Trump said he would he's going
to take off the big power plants that
produce uh in the 10 20 30 uh megawws uh
range. And they're probably about 130
nodes altogether. But if you just take
out the top 10, you're probably going to
take down the entire network because the
top 10 nodes are distributed in the
right places to support different uh
electric power in different regions of
the country. You have two choices in a
target in targeting sense. You can take
out the transformers in which case you
knock it out for a week or two and it is
inconvenient. And yes, there will be
some people who will die. There were
human chains around those targets by the
way. those people would die. But if you
took out the hulls, the generating
hulls,
>> what's that?
>> That's the giant turbines that are huge.
There is no backup to those. Each of
those is specially made. You will be
knocking the out that generation for 6
months, 12 months, maybe 18 months at a
minimum. What that's going to do is stop
all dialysis in the country. that's
going to stop all um the uh heart
surgeries and other life-saving
surgeries that are going to happen in
the country. It's going to take out all
the food refrigeration in the country.
So, you know, when power goes out in
your house and goes out for 10 minutes
or or or an hour, it's not so bad. You
don't really notice it. But when it goes
out for 2 days or 3 days or a week, all
the food in your refrigerator spoils and
you can't eat it fast enough. you can't
give it away fast enough because it's
happening to everybody on your block.
Well, that's what would happen across
the country. So, there's going to be an
enormous amount of spoilage of food and
that refrigeration then is not going to
be available to come back. And so,
you're going to have enormous hunger
problems here. So, people that were
already malnourished, they are going to
be susceptible to more disease. So you
will end up lowering the life expectancy
in a measurable way of that population.
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Enjoy. So, there's been a lot of talk in
the recent days about a ceasefire and
Trump said he was going to he said tweet
these horrific things about ending a
whole civilization tonight and then at
the final hour said that they had
proposed a 10-point plan and that there
was going to be a twowe ceasefire. What
do you think was actually going on
there?
>> The collision of stages three and four.
So what you are now seeing is we can we
we are now understand we're in it for
the long haul which means we can't go
back to February 27. We can't undo the
last 40 days. It's just not going to be
possible. So there's only two futures
going forward. Future number one is that
ground war option and we've talked about
how terrible that is and of course
that's obviously bad bad cost. But
future number two is Iran as an emerging
fourth center of world power. And that
is incredibly damaging to America's
power. And that is going to be damaging
to President Trump's legacy.
>> Is there not another option where Iran,
their leadership says, "Okay, we won't
make nuclear weapons. Okay, we'll be
friends. Okay, it's all over. Please
stop bombing us. Let's go for peace."
So, so my response to that is I've been
studying the history of international
politics for over 35 years. I know quite
a bit about uh great power politics and
regional power politics going back 300
years. I have never seen a country at
the regional level or at the great power
level surrender power. Did America after
World War II decide, well, yes, uh, we
we have the capability to build nuclear
weapons, but, you know, we want to get
along with the Russians who helped us
defeat Germany. So, what we're going to
do is we're going to actually have a a a
deal, an arms control agree. In fact,
this was proposed, by the way, um, and
we rejected it, which is we're just
going to not go down that road. We're
going to surrender the power advantage
that we have uh here so that we can be
cooperative with the Soviets who had
just worked with us to defeat Nazi
Germany.
>> So that's not going to happen.
>> We there's no evidence in history in our
history. We've never surrendered power
even when it might have been a good
idea. We haven't done that. They're not
going to do this.
>> They're not going to do that.
>> No, they're not going to do this. You
already see this in the in why the uh
the ceasefire is breaking down. so fast.
It's breaking down so fast because
essentially President Trump, he didn't
just declare victory. He said that
Iran's uh not going to have all this
power that I'm explaining to you. And
what Iran did is almost immediately
assert, oh yes, we are. They they've
come right back right away. If President
Trump is expecting that out of the
goodness of their heart, they're gonna
surrender emerging world power,
this is this is just a fantasy. Uh it's
not going to happen. Uh he wouldn't
surrender power. Why is he going to
expect Iran's going to surrender power?
>> So, I'm looking at this apparent
10-point proposal submitted by Iran.
Mhm. Um, and you you got to take this
with a pinch of salt because there's
different reports about what this
10point proposal looks like, but it says
that based on official releases from the
Iranian state news agency, the IRA and
international reporting, the 10-point
proposal from Iran to the United States
was for a permanent ceasefire, number
one, end attacks on allies, a complete
halt to Israel and US strikes across the
region, specifically Lebanon, Iraq, and
Yemen. Number three, reopen the Straight
of Hummos. Iran will allow safe passage
through the Straight of Hongos. collect
tolls. Iran will charge a fee,
reportedly $2 million, for each ship
passing through the straight. Revenue
sharing with Aman, which is toll
revenues, will be split with Oman as
custodians of the strait. Number six,
lift the sanctions, the complete removal
of all US primary and secondary
sanctions. Release assets. Number seven,
the immediate return of all frozen
Iranian funds held abroad. Number eight,
the right to enrich uranium. US
acceptance of Iran's right to domestic
uranium enrichment while Iran commits to
not seeking nuclear weapons. Number
nine, war reparations, full compensation
paid to Iran for reconstruction costs
from the bombing. And lastly, number 10,
the termination of all UN resolutions
against the regime and a new binding UN
Security Council resolution to enforce
this deal. Now, listen, I don't know a
lot about what I'm talking about, so
that's the disclaimer. However, it
sounds like a good deal for Iran in many
respects. on every single point and it
also validates Iran as an emerging world
power. So all of those points in the
details if you think of them as a flow
diagram all 10 of them are adding up to
validation of Iran as uh top in the
hierarchy in the Persian Gulf. So why is
it so important to be the number one
strongest state in the world? It's
because in the last 300 years, whether
it was Britain, the United States, or
whether it's China in the future, the
number one state typically dictates the
rules of how the world systems operate.
Well, what you're seeing with Iran is
they want to dictate the rules in the
Persian Gulf. And that's what that is.
Now, if we pull this over, which I love
your props, uh here, that is good. So
right now you see that even though it's
the United States is just um uh that
lone flag it has this higher weight and
what this is reflecting is uh the United
States as uh the number one country in
the world the most powerful. Now if you
also then add um this over here. So this
would be Israel. You can see this is the
world that Netanyahu is depicting um
before on February 27th. But the actual
world I just want to point out is a
little bit different. The actual balance
of power is closer to this. It's closer
to the United States and then we have
China and we have uh Russia. There are
three centers of world power and in 1990
um it used to be by the way uh just the
United States and the Soviet Union. Then
Russia, the Soviet Union collapses. This
is when the United States is the sole
superpower, the unipolar moment. It
immediately shifts like this from 1989
to 1992. Dramatic shift. However, along
the way in the last 30 years, you see um
this changing. And what's changing?
Russia actually still is weak. It's
still about 2% of the world's GDP.
That's not really what's changing.
What's really changing is is China is
now much much much more powerful. It's
still not as powerful as the United
States, but notice that we were here in
1990 and now the balance is starting to
be uh to come like this. Well, if we
start to add Iran as a center of world
power, uh, now we're starting to change
this in a much different way. Now these
three powers are starting together in
concert to become more powerful than the
United States uh especially with respect
to energy and energy matters so much
because it's an underlying component for
our economic growth that GDP the way um
uh we measure uh great power Stephen for
decades and decades we've used static
indicators GDP how big is your military
How many nuclear weapons you have that
all rests on the productive capacity of
your country which is why the productive
capacity is so important. What does that
turn on? It turns a lot very heavily on
oil. Oil today is the commodity. If you
lose access to oil within weeks or a
month and a half, this has dramatic
cliff effects on your economy. Now, if
you lose access to semiconductors,
pharmaceuticals, that's bad. And it's
bad over time in particular, you lose
access to oil. This is a cliff that you
we go off over six weeks, eight weeks
because there's not enough uh storage
capacity of anybody in the world to make
up for 20% 30% loss of world oil.
>> So on this point of oil, the US don't
get their oil from the straight of
Hammoose.
>> We don't. But it's a global market and a
lot of the uh price of oil that we're
going to pay is going to be determined
by the global price of oil because oil
is a funible commodity. It's like a uh
water that runs through the whole
system. When there's a shortage, it
drives the price of all of us up.
>> Okay. So, I've got a graph here showing
the price of oil. And you can see I'll
throw it up on the screen. You can see
it's been climbing ever since the 27th
of February. So, this will impact
Americans at the pump as well.
>> Oh my gosh. And you see it in the pump
already. Where I am in Chicago, I'm
paying some I was paying something like
310 a gallon. Now, the last time I I
filled up, it was 460. It's a bit of a
misnomer to think that we can as America
get away scot-free with everybody else
losing oil and we're not going to we're
not going to pay a price. Now to be
clear, we will have supply of oil. The
price will go up. This will increase
inflation. This will probably increase
bond prices over time. Uh the bond
price,
>> the bond is the loans that essentially
any uh corporation companies or the
University of Chicago takes out to
borrow money to operate. So the
University of Chicago borrows uh has has
10-year bonds. This is essentially we're
borrowing money and then we have to pay
back that money plus an interest rate.
That's what the bond rate is. It's an
interest rate on on borrowed money.
Well, if that interest rate goes from 4%
on a 10-year bond um to 5% or 6 or 7%
the costs of the interest just goes up
massively
>> and everybody will feel that in various
ways. the US government right now, the
biggest uh budget item in the US
government budget is the cost of
interest for the debt of the $40
trillion in debt. We're going to have to
shrink social security. You're going to
have to shrink Medicaid. This is not
notional, Stephen. Iran and uh Russia
together could have a tremendous impact
on America's economy. This this is the
real thing. So with your balance of
power analogy, this is where we where we
could get to.
>> This is where we could get to with the
next several years. I would say um
probably two years out. I would say that
America has an edge. And I'm trying to
depict it as it's like about a 25 or 30%
edge from the combination of China and
Russia today. And China is gaining, but
still it's actually slow yearbyear. So
you'll see a little bit of an uptick. So
maybe going I'm trying to depict from
say a third advantage for the United
States to maybe uh 30% 28% in the next
four or 5 years. You add Iran to this
and then especially these combinations
I'm describing where they can do things
together. Now in the next several years
you're actually talking about uh the
scales where these three are much are
stronger than America where I'm not
talking about just America's losing it
incrementally. You're getting abrupt
changes in the world balance of power.
>> So, what happens now if Trump just pulls
out?
>> This is the world. Iran is an oil
hegeimon in the Persian Gulf. Uh, within
a year or so, they're very likely to
have nuclear weapons. I'm saying the
pro-democracy movement is going to be
pounding the table to get nuclear
weapons. They're going to want to deter
any uh idea from Trump of hitting them
again. Um, and then I'm saying beyond
that, you have the possibility of Iran
and Russia deciding to cooperate here to
strangle uh and coers the United States.
And if the United States doesn't cowtow
to them, then they can pull that oil off
the market.
>> So, what should
Trump do? Do you think if you were
president of the United States, what
would you do right now? So when I was
here 40 days ago, we had the same
question. And what I said was we needed
to accept uh that there would be a deal
and we were going to have to accept that
the deal that Iran was offering us on
February 27 where they would get to keep
their 3.5% enriched uranium wasn't going
to be good enough. We were going to have
to lift oil sanctions. We're going to
have to do various things to sweeten the
deal, so to speak. Well, notice actually
Scott Besson did some of that. He did
lift the but the power of Iran has grown
so much Stephen that's not good enough
and that's what you're seeing with why
this deal is the ceasefire is starting
to break down from Iran's side. So what
would you offer Iran? I think a enforced
military containment of Israel would be
a serious uh card that America could
play that I think Iran would get Iran at
least in a serious discussion. I don't
know if it would be enough. I want to be
careful here that I don't say, "Well,
this will certainly uh be the deal Iran
will take." But we have to imagine if
Iran has world power, what is it going
to take to get Iran to surrender some of
that? Well, one thing would be to have
confidence that Israel is not going to
keep attacking it or its allies.
>> But then they're not going to believe
that after what's happened.
>> Well, it would have to go through. You'd
have to make it enforceable. It's not
going to be good enough to try to
promise that. What thing President Trump
could do since the Republicans control
both houses of Congress is President
Trump could push through a bill through
Congress that says if Israel attacks
Iran or uh could even extend to to
Lebanon, but let's at least start with
Iran. Um all funds for Israel, both
military and economic, will be cut off
through the end of Trump's presidency.
Now, that passes through uh both
chambers of Congress. President Trump
signs it. Now you're talking. Now we
actually have as much teeth as you could
ever have of a military containment of
Israel.
>> So presumably in such a scenario, Iran
would continue to enrich uranium because
they've now had a taste of what can
happen to them if they're powerless.
>> Well, let me extend this um a little bit
more. So let's talk about article two of
the deal that's going to go through the
Congress. Israel joins the NPT and that
is the quidd proquo for getting Iran to
accept the on-site inspections of its
3.5% enriched uranium. So, Israel gets
to have um its Deamona nuclear power
plant where it has plutonium for its
nuclear weapons that's measured by the
non-prololiferation treaty, the IAEA.
Those are the inspectors. And Iran
will have on-site inspections at the
various locations we're talking about.
But the second part of this, Stephen,
would be quit proquo. If Iran is going
to be subject to on-site verification,
on-site monitoring, Israel, which is now
not part of the non-prololiferation
treaty, already has nuclear weapons.
It's going to have to accept that this
can't be a one-sided deal going forward.
It's going to have to be a more balanced
situation when it comes to monitoring um
nuclear weapons capabilities.
>> So, what does that mean specifically
that Iran would be able to monitor
Israel's nuclear weapons
>> uh through the IAEA? That's right. That
would be the material for the weapons,
not the weapons themselves. So,
>> they already have weapons. So, what's
there to monitor?
>> Oh, no, no, no. Right now, the number of
Israel's uh Israel's nuclear weapons is
not known. We have vague counts. The
reason Israel is not part of the NPT is
not because it doesn't matter. It
provides the kind of calc the kind of
detailed information through the IAEA
that would be useful for estimating the
size of Israel. Israel Netanyahu is
going to want to give that information
to Iran.
>> This isn't about want to anymore.
Stephen, what we're talking about is
what are the offer? You've asked me the
hard question. What is an offramp to
this tradeoff between the ground war and
Iran as the fourth center of world
power? And I said, okay, there is an
actual off-ramp here. But notice that
the hesitation now is politics. And
that's what I'm trying to explain that
that I study the interaction of military
action and politics. And I'm with you. I
I don't think Israel will likely they've
been trying to spoil these other deals.
I don't think Israel is going to allow
this to occur. But now then we're right
back to the tradeoff that nobody wants
to confront. So
>> So what do you think is going to happen?
What I think is that we are going to go
back and forth between stage three and
stage four for months.
>> What's stage three and stage four?
>> So stage three are preparations for the
ground war.
>> Yep.
>> And Iran emerging as a force center of
world power. I think both of these are
likely to go on for months. I think that
uh for stage three, the ground war
option to truly be taken off the table,
you would need to see America
withdrawing its military forces. You
would need to see all the carriers leave
the region and go back to uh other parts
of the world. You would need to see the
Marines that have been moved to the Gulf
go back to Camp Pendleton in California,
go back to uh Japan. You would need to
see the hundreds of aircraft like the
F-35s, for example, that have been moved
to the region. They all need to go back
to their pre-war locations. So, we're
going to bounce between stage three and
stage four.
>> Yep. That's the diagram. So, the new
diagram I'm trying to
>> we just um I think there's still, if you
pushed me on this last time, I still say
there's a 70% chance that we're going to
start a ground operation. And it's not
because President Trump wants it. It's
not because he's not trying to avoid it.
It's because there's a trap. And the
trap that he's gonna face is, is he
really willing to be the president where
under his presidency, Iran detonates a
nuclear weapon to demonstrate it has
nuclear power? From his rhetoric, and
listen, these are just the tweets. It
seems like the alternate option he's
considered when he talks about bombing
the infrastructure and bridges and roads
and power plants is just completely
decapitating the country and I think in
his own words, sending it back to the
stone ages. will come back. This will
come back, but it would be as I believe
the precursor to more ground operations,
Stephen. So, I don't think that this
will be a case where you do the electric
power targeting and then it's done.
Finally, he's satisfied. He's pounded
them enough and walk away because you do
the electric power targeting. You have
further incentivized 92 million. They
still have the enriched uranium. You
have 92 million people desperate now for
not just getting a nuclear weapon for
deterrence, but for payback. And so you
will find the pressure for the ground
war will be even more intense in the
aftermath of all of that. This idea
they're going to be bombed back to the
stone ages where we won't worry about
them anymore. um they're going to be
this minor country that we will just
ignore. As long as they have 1,000 lb of
60% enriched uranium, 10,000 lb of five
and and 20% enriched uranium, um this is
this will just not be the case.
>> So, you still think the most plausible
probable outcome is that Trump ends up
sending ground troops in specifically to
do two things? I think I remember you
saying last time. One of them is to go
and get the uranium. Yep.
>> And the second, I believe, is to defend
the straight of Hormuz.
>> Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep. I think I think
these are the two things that are on the
table.
>> And you think it's going to it's
probably going to take several months.
>> I think it could go on Yes. for months
because I think that you were going to
see that there's going to be uh this
back and forth. And the way to monitor
this so you can see is the timeline
speeding up or slowing down is literally
the movement of the deployed troops.
Don't track this by what the
negotiations are. Don't track this by
what comes out of President Trump's
mouth or even the Iranians mouth. Track
this by the movement of forces. That is
the best indicator of what's going to
come.
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I will speak to you then.
on this point where you said you don't
think Trump would want to be the
president that presided over Iran
releasing a nuclear weapon. Is that
because if he pulled out now they would
enrich the uranium and then maybe
demonstrate it under his
>> that that's right. So the scenario that
I have laid out I've laid this out to my
classes for years. The idea of what Iran
would do with nuclear weapons a lot of
people have an image and it's coming
from the public so I understand why they
have it. People have been a lot of
people have said this image where Iran
gets a a nuclear weapon or two and that
what they do immediately is they blow up
Tel Aviv with the first one and maybe
New York with the second one. This is
just highly unlikely because what would
happen is we would retaliate with
nuclear weapons under that. uh here much
more plausible and everything I'm seeing
from Iran has been completely supporting
the idea that they're thinking this
through um uh uh strategically is you
would want not to just have one working
nuclear weapon or even two. You want
five. Ideally, you want 10, maybe even
15. This is what happened with North
Korea. Because once you have, let's even
say five, the most rational thing to do
is you detonate the first one as a
detonated test. You test it on your own
territory and then you listen for a week
while everybody says, "Well, they only
had one. They were stupid. They don't
have dot." And you detonate the second
one. And once you detonate the second
one, just like when we hit Nagasaki
after Hiroshima,
everybody will assume there's a lot more
there. And that is how you actually
deter the United States from attacking
you. And by the way, that's what
effectively North Korea did. When
President Trump took office in 2016,
North Korea was a major problem. We were
talking about bombing North Korea and so
forth. And there's multiple reasons, but
the big issues are that North Korea has
a lot of nuclear weapons. We're not
going to be able to get them all. They
have some other things they can do too
like like artillery on soul. But this
isn't just North Korea and Trump decided
to be, you know, sort of best buds here.
>> So the other route that played out in my
mind was that Trump would just keep
bombing Iran to keep them weak. But
again, that doesn't solve the straight
of Hammoose problem.
>> Doesn't solve the uranium problem and
doesn't solve the straight of Hormuz
problem because if we knew where that
material was and we could just bomb it
out of existence. I'm talking about the
enriched uranium material. We would have
done this already.
>> Which leads all roads to really the only
solution being some kind of deal.
>> Absolutely. That's why the best thing to
do is a deal with the military
containment of Israel. That's deal.
>> The problem you have with such a deal if
when you're going into that deal is the
enemy know that you don't really have a
plan B. You don't have a plan B. That's
right.
>> And so your negotiation position is very
weak. That's why you That's why you're
they're going to keep their 3.5%
enriched uranium no matter what. The
problem we face here is if we were ever
going to get the 3.5% enriched uranium
um to go away, we should never have
ripped up the Obama nuclear deal by
Trump in 2018. They've been developing
ever since the Biden administration. He
Trump one couldn't figure out how to
stop the enriched uranium by by Iran.
Biden couldn't figure out how to stop
it. Trump now has been trying to figure
out how to stop it. And you know what?
It's not stoppable. It's not stoppable
short of these options I'm laying out.
There's no way to get that material
without ground forces, Stephen. And
you're not going to send those ground
forces in just a thousand guys to get be
it some postage stamp of an area for a
month or two trying to find that
enriched uranium. This is just not
realistic. Going to be a bigger option.
>> I think it's clear to me, you know, I do
this podcast and ask these questions and
have people on because I'm actually
really trying to find answers for
myself. And I think if I've arrived at
any conclusion from everything I've
learned over the last couple of weeks,
it's that I think Trump made a really
big mistake. Um pro and that mistake
probably started when he ripped up
Obama's deal.
>> That's right.
>> But it's clear that
>> Foraux was the really really big one.
>> I think I think he's stuck.
>> He is stuck.
>> I think he's stuck. I think he's facing
several bad options going forward. So I
really have no idea what's going to
happen. And
>> well what you're going to what you will
also watch Stephen back to politics here
is uh Trump right now we're not it's not
just paper anymore who's saying he's
lost control he's losing power the world
is saying that and this is going to
start to become the Republican party is
going to say that and what this is going
to do is it's going to incentivize Trump
even more probably to become more
belligerent not to become calmer so as
Trump is becoming the lamest of lame
ducks going forward because it's evident
he's losing power and as he loses power
here on the international scene this
will mean he will lose power
domestically as well and we'll never go
to zero but it will be a slow decline
this is where the real sort of future is
here why this is not simply a steady
state now this is why I won't make a
prediction of what's going happen in
September. We are not at a steady state.
It is an unstable balance here between
three and four. Three and four.
>> What do you think happens with Europe? I
feel like Europe, you know, Europe
aren't on either side of your scale
here. You've got Iran, Russia, and China
on one end of the scale scale. You've
got the US on the other. Europe and
NATO, what happens? Are they going to
>> NATO is for all practical purposes dead?
We're just writing its obituary. It's a
body in the morg already. Most people
don't think that NATO is a political
alliance. NATO is much more than that.
If there's an article 5, what that
means, Stephen, is there's a military
operation with an American general at
the top. And with article 5, the
American general tells the other count's
militaries, including their nuclear
weapons, what to do. Now, if you're
Britain and you have nuclear weapons and
or even if besides the nuclear weapons,
if you're Germany, you don't have them,
are you going to follow uh uh General
Kane's orders on anything at this point?
I don't think so.
>> So, article 5 is the document that all
the NATO countries have signed. No, it's
the part of the NATO treaty which says
if there's a NATO operations like in
Afghanistan,
it's American general who orders all the
other countries militaries what to it's
a hierarchy. So it's not a um a
collection where the countries get
together and they have these big like uh
cooperative decisions. No, the Americans
run the plan. They are the ones who
organize the military operation. they
run the plan and they just assign the uh
other countries uh roles the way they
would um the army, the navy and the air
force inside of the Pentagon. What I'm
saying is what you just saw with Iran is
such a a horrible catastrophic failure
within just weeks. The idea that any
Europeans are going to follow the orders
of an American general and and I don't
even think this is going to be just
under Donald Trump. I mean, I think for
years, I think this is just laughable.
>> Trump was quite angry and scathing with
his words about NATO. He said, "It's a
paper tiger and referred to them as
cowards." And as we've been sat here
today, you might be aware that NATO were
meeting with Trump today in Washington
DC. And the NATO Secretary General Mark
Root said, "When it came time to provide
the logistical and other support to the
United States needed in Iran, some
allies were a bit slow, to say the
least. In fairness, they were a bit
surprised. To maintain the element of
surprise for the initial strikes,
President Trump opted not to inform us
ahead of time. But what I see when I
look across Europe today is allies
providing a massive amount of support
nearly without exception. Allies are
doing everything the United States is
asking. They have heard and are
responding to President Trump's request.
So, it sounds a little bit like an
apology tour coming from NATO. Um, and
the German chancellor has also made made
a comment saying that they do not want
to split NATO.
>> Well, they don't want American troops to
leave the um uh the European continent
because that provides some deterrent to
Russia. That's what you're hearing
there. But NATO was always had an
anchor. Remember we talked about
anchors. The anchor in NATO was
America's protection of European
security. What you're seeing when
President Trump creates a problem, a
catastrophe the for the world and says
he won't send American uh forces in to
the straight of Hormuz, but he wants the
Europeans to send their forces into the
straight of Hormuz. This is the opposite
of protection. He's making NATO
countries or European countries
vulnerable and they're reacting to that
by saying we won't do it.
>> According to diplomats, NATO secretary
briefed member capitals today that Trump
is demanding concrete commitments within
the next few days from NATO to help to
secure the strait of Hormuz, which would
only make sense if you were doing phase
three, the ground operation. So you
cannot secure the straight of H for H
for H for H for H for H for H for H for
H for H formuz only with air power. We
if we could we already would. You can't
secure it only with naval power. If you
could we already would. We have a much
bigger navy, much bigger air forces than
any of those countries individually or
even combined. The only reason you would
really want those uh forces from NATO is
uh because you're planning on a bigger
ground operation and you're that's what
you're seeing right there. And I don't
think Europeans, let's not even talking
about the word NATO. I don't think the
Europeans are likely to do it because
you're seeing why would they, if they're
ever going to do it, Stephen, they would
want Trump out of office. The number one
thing that I don't think is going to
happen here is anybody's going to bail
out Trump.
>> It's political suicide really for a lot
of the European leaders.
>> Political suicide for the Democrats to
bail out Trump in our country. It's
going to start to become political
suicide for even Republicans to bail out
Trump. That's what you're going to start
to see in the fall. And it's going to be
political suicide for the Japanese, for
the Indians. This is the problem. Trump
caused the problem.
He's, as I said on your show last time,
he's going to become LBJ if he doesn't
uh take a deal soon. Well, that was 40
days ago, Stephen, and he still hasn't
taken the deal. Not really. And he's
becoming LBJ. Nobody's going to want to
be associated with him.
>> Here in the UK, we have Karma as the
prime minister. And it appears to me
that since he's come out and started
saying that he won't support Trump's
war, he we won't send troops to the
Middle East, it appears that that's
actually driven up his favorability
amongst certain people. And it makes me
think that actually, as we say, it's
it's political suicide for European
leaders to send troops there because
they will be they will lose the next
election in their country.
>> I I think you put it exact excellent,
Stephen. I I really can't improve on
that. Let me just say that a year ago
with the tariffs um I started to do a
study of tracking how European support
for America was starting to go into the
tank and that was with tariffs. Now what
Trump has done is he's driven up the
price of oil. He's hurting their
economies in a serious way and as that
actual damage occurs and it's still in
the pipeline. it hasn't hit as strong as
it likely will in the next month. You
are likely going to see that the publics
in Europe are going to become
anti-American
and it's not just going to be can't
support Trump anymore coming here. I had
to pay the the visa the ETA and it it
took forever and what's happening here.
We're getting some payback here on
Americans. I think this next next time I
come to London, I'm not going to be
surprised that the price of that visa is
doubling or tripling.
>> What is your closing highlevel remark
about all this stuff? And I guess I
really want to focus it on on the
average person who is going about their
life as a normal civilian in any of
these countries that are affected. What
is the highle point of view here that we
we need to close upon? The high level
point of view is we're about to start
think think seriously about the election
and what we need to do is not just
choose bounce back and forth between uh
Republican and Democrat and actually
Britain is a is a case study of what can
happen if you bounce back and forth
here. We need to start to really support
strong stable policies that will empower
the middle. The problem that we face,
Stephen, is we're moving back and forth
from really uh ideas here that uh one
year we we really don't like what
Biden's doing and now we have the
radical wing on the other side and we
certainly don't like that. Well, if we
keep going back and forth here between
two uh extreme alternatives, we'll just
get different versions of bad outcomes.
And it's not making things better. It's
a cycle that's making it solution.
>> The solution is the public needs to hear
that every election, every choice, we
are uh we have an opportunity here to
focus on the more centrist candidates.
And this is something that we really can
make decisions about. And it's just
simply the case that if we don't do
that, what you're going to get is you're
going to get back and forth bouncing
around. And I don't think a third party
here, these ideas are really very
meaningful. This really comes down to
talking to the public. And it's one of
the big reasons, Stephen, I'm going to
the podcast world because you remember I
I've advised every White House and so
forth. We've got to get beyond that.
We've got to actually talk to real
people and this is what you do and
increasingly I'm doing it and I really
believe that the podcast network is an
opportunity to do that. But it doesn't
mean that it forces people to vote
Democrat or Republican. We've got to
understand that we we can't just keep
thinking about uh well, okay, now we're
really mad at Donald Trump and we're
going to get the independents and now
they're going to vote with the Democrats
if all we do is end up getting another
extreme on the other side because what
you're going to do is you're going to
keep pissing off the middle and they're
going to keep bouncing back and forth.
And round after round, we've been doing
that now um for years in the United
States. And what does it look like? It
keeps getting worse. keeps getting
worse.
>> What are you suggesting the solution is?
Vote for the centrist candidate
>> all the way through. Yes. Yes. It's a
very simple thing, but it's not going to
happen unless we talk about this because
it does mean that sometimes the centrist
candidate is the person, the woman on
the other side. And if we're not willing
to do that, then we're really condemning
ourselves to this cycle. I'm going to
explain more about it. It's it's a
version of the escalation trap gone
domestic. It's called the legitimacy
shock cycle and I'll be talking more
about this in September. So the trap I'm
talking about here with violence and
politics isn't just international and
you end up with traps here domestically
as well. And I'd like to close with a
few thoughts for the people in Iran. I
think ever since I've put myself
mentally um in a situation where there
was a world leader saying that they were
going to annihilate my civilization and
there was bombs going off. You know,
we're currently filming this in our
London studio, but if there was bombs
going off around the studio and there
was threat that someone was going to
annihilate civilization, it's quite
unthinkable for me how I would I would
be functioning. And it immediately, I
think, shines a light on the the mental
health and psychology of the people in
Iran right now and how they must be
feeling. So, I think that's probably an
important message to share cuz we can
sometimes get a little bit caught up in
the hypotheticals of war and strategy
and all these kinds of things, but at
the end of the day, there's 90 plus
million people in Iran that are right in
the middle of this and we we're sat in
this very warm, cushy London studio. So,
>> well, there's a bond that is occurring
between the middle 60% of the American
public and the 92 million in Iran. Yeah,
>> they don't like the radicalism
and on on either side. And what you were
what you were vocalizing, Stephen, is
the frustration that our politics has
been locked up by the extremes. And I
suspect the 92 million in Iran are
feeling almost exactly the same thing.
Their choices now are being locked into
extremes. And that is that bond here
that you're trying to vocalize. I
believe it's valuable to vocalize it
because this is what it means to empower
the people and this is what it means to
be a democracy which is that we actually
talk about not just the other side is
bad and we're always good is we we talk
about where the future really should go
and the idea that we're even imagining
the possibility of a $40 trillion in
debt country getting rocked by um Iran
and Russia here who have their own
reasons for wanting to hurt us. We may
not fully realize that, but but we
really hurt Russia in the '9s here with
our ideas of shock therapy, and we made
out like bandits, by the way. Uh so that
the we we really do have some uh real
growing bonds at the social level.
>> Professor Robert P, thank you so much.
It's a pleasure to speak to you once
again. And uh this is such an evolving
situation, so I feel like we might end
up talking again at some point in the
future when things play out. Hopefully,
you know, one can only hope uh for peace
for for everybody situation
>> every day. That's my number one thing.
Just ask my wife. And by the way, will
you stop being so charismatic? Because
my wife, when we listen to this, she
turns my voice off. All she wants to do,
Stephen, is listen to you.
>> Is she American? I think Americans.
>> I'm just You have And you've made me up
my game.
>> That's so funny. Well, thank you so much
for your time and uh you've put a lot of
time into explaining this to layman's
like me and it's really helped turn the
the lights on to some degree. I'll I'll
be honest, it's turn the lights on and
with the lights on I am
confused. I'm confused about
which path is
productive and most beneficial to
society and humanity. And even though I
can see more clearly now about the
dynamics of all of these potential
pathways, none of them seem that great.
So that's where I'm going to leave it
for today. But we'll pick up this
conversation again soon when more
information comes in.
>> That's right. And let's hope it's not as
much as a trap as as I'm as I'm painting
it. But if it is, then it's really even
more important that when we get to the
fall, we don't mislead ourselves into
into thinking that this is just um
temporary, that it's all going to be
solved quickly. We need to understand
that we're going down some major major
roads here. And this situation, as bad
as it is, notice that it's actually
worse than it was a month ago when we
were here. It's worse, Stephen. And the
reason it's worse is we didn't head it
off enough at the past 40 when we when I
was here four weeks ago. If President
Trump had taken some of the deals that
we were talking about then we wouldn't
be anywhere near where we are today. So
as bad as that negotiating position I'm
say of can militarily containment of of
Israel I realize people are saying oh my
god could never happen. Well think about
the things that could never happen that
are happening right now. This is the
better pathway now. And if we don't take
this pathway now, we come back in a
month or two, it will be worse.
>> Thank you, Robin.
>> We're done.
>> Thank you.
>> Thank you so much.
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