Robert Pape: "Trump Has Fallen Into A TRAP In Iran"

[00:00:00]It's completely I've seen this for decades with the Clinton administration.

[00:00:03]This is not unique to President Trump, but he has fallen into the met being mesmerized by the power of the exquisite power of our military into thinking it's omnipotent, that it can do any achieve any strategic objective. The fact of the matter is we have failed strategically and we're getting deeper into the trap, which is why none of those allies you just pointed out, perhaps maybe the UK we'll see, want to go down the tubes with us here. This is a very very very serious problem.

[00:00:37]>> One of the single biggest arguments against war, besides the cost in dollars and in lives, is the chaos of unintended consequences. Big changes happen fast and sometimes things are never the same again. President Trump was quick to dismiss America's allies, none more so than Keir Starmer and the UK, by saying he didn't need our help. He's now demanding help from the UK and NATO to help secure the straight of Hormuz, warning the alliance faces a very bad future if it doesn't comply.

[00:01:08]>> Now, it would have been nice if they said to the Prime Minister of the UK, who sort of was reluctant to put his two aircraft carriers into harm's way. That would be 2 weeks ago.

[00:01:20]And as soon as we demolished essentially pretty much demolished them, not over yet, but pretty much, we're in great shape, let's put it that way. Everybody knows.

[00:01:29]He said, "We'd like to send our aircraft carriers." I said, "I don't want them after we win the war. I want them before we start the war." So, whether it's whether we get support or not, but I can say this and I said it to them, we will remember.

[00:01:46]>> Well, Trump's flip on NATO is not the only irony here. Far from being swept away in a revolution, the Iranian regime is now making side deals with India and China over safe passage for their oil.

[00:01:58]The US is sending multi-billion dollar naval vessels to fire $3 million missiles at $300 Iranian drones. And the US is now asking Ukraine for help with those drones after earlier rejecting a deal to buy their drone technology and telling President Zelensky he held no cards. It's also a fact that the US also sent or sold many of the weapons it now needs in Iran to support Ukraine's war against Russia. And by lifting oil sanctions on Russia to stabilize gas prices, it's essentially paying Putin to make weapons it can use against its own weapons in a war that was supposed to be end after 24 hours of presidency.

[00:02:37]Well, amid all this turmoil, it's increasingly difficult to see how the US and Israel can plausibly declare victory anytime soon. Iran's regime, on the other hand, has a singular mission, survival. By that measure, whether we like it or not, it may be that Iran is currently doing the winning.

[00:02:55]Well, my excellent panel is standing by to discuss all this. We'll begin today's coverage with Robert Pape. He's a leading professor of political science at University of Chicago and the founder and director of the Chicago Project on Security and Threats. Mr. Pape, welcome to Uncensored.

[00:03:10]>> Uh thank you very much for having me, Piers.

[00:03:12]>> So, you know, my kind of overview, sitting here in London at the moment, uh back in my studio actually for the first time in 8 weeks since I managed to be extremely foolish and fall over a step at a restaurant break my femur and need a new a new hip. It's good to be back.

[00:03:28]Uh nothing to do with you, Robert Pape, but it's good to be back uh in my old studio. Um it seems to me, sitting here and looking at everything that's happened in the last 2 weeks, that two things can be true at the same time. One is that militarily, the combined American and Israeli military, I mean, I would imagine arguably the most powerful in history, uh has affected enormous damage on Iranian uh, military. Uh, and over time would be overwhelmingly obviously able to defeat it. However, the Iranians are fighting a slightly different war, it seems to me.

[00:04:04]They're fighting an economic war in which they have effectively closed the Strait of Hormuz, where 20% of the world's oil flows through on a daily basis, and they've systematically targeted uh, a lot of places in the neighboring Gulf states that would deter tourists, for example, or expats living in those places from wanting to stay there or visit there. And the combined effect of this is having a very significant dramatic effect on the global economy. Uh, and those two things can be true at the same time.

[00:04:36]>> You've got it exactly right. So, Piers, just so you know, I have spent years teaching for the US Air Force, helped them stand up an entire school dedicated to air strategy. Uh, just a week before the bombing started, I was giving a presentation to the US Army War College.

[00:04:53]I spend my uh, years, I have military officers coming in in their PhD under me. So, I spend a lot of time here with the US military. We are as a military performing superbly at the tactical level. And I want to just emphasize that. And you see, in the smart bomb age, it's especially true that bombs will hit their targets within about 5 m 90 plus percent of the time, which means you will destroy the missile launchers, which means you will kill the leaders. But, that does not guarantee strategic success. And in this case, the goal was to take down the regime, not just simply kill leaders. Uh, the goal was to weaken Iran, uh, its power. And what we see after 17 days of war is the regime is resilient and more dangerous than ever than it was before the bombing and Iran is now more powerful than it was. In fact, Iran has just achieved what we have spent 50 years in the US military in America trying to prevent which is control of the Straits of Hormuz. That was the number one goal of American grand strategy in the Middle East, not Israel. This was the number one goal and this is a catastrophic failure and it is the what I call the escalation trap appears.

[00:06:21]It's completely I've seen this for decades with the Clinton administration.

[00:06:25]This is not unique to President Trump, but he has fallen into the met being mesmerized by the power the exquisite power of our military into thinking it's omnipotent that it can do any achieve any strategic objective. The fact of the matter is we have failed strategically and we're getting deeper into the trap which is why none of those allies you just pointed out perhaps maybe the UK will see want to go down the tubes with us here. This is a very very very serious problem and I don't say this with any glee. If I could just say one more thing. This is one of the worst regimes we had in history. So I have no I have no way supporting this regime in Iran.

[00:07:13]In fact, I've been offered many trips to go to Iran. I refuse to go. So this is not coming from some you know sort of dovish support or something. I support many many uses of force. My book's called bombing to win. I titled the sub stack the escalation trap and it's not it's a tragic trap and I'm trying to be clear so that we can stop making mistake after mistake after a >> Now let me paint another scenario to you of how this may have played out. And I base it almost exclusively on what the Secretary of State Marco Rubio said before he was probably rudely corrected by the administration, maybe his own boss, into reversing his position dramatically in 24 hours. But he was caught on camera saying that the reason the Americans had preemptively attacked Iran was because they got information that another country, clearly Israel, was about to attack Iran and that Iran's response to that would be very likely to attack American interests, the bases in the Gulf states, whatever it may be, and therefore because of that knowledge of the Israeli attack, the Americans would have to preemptively go in to protect themselves from whatever retaliation came back, which seemed a very convoluted excuse for a preemptive strike. But if that is what happened here, and we know from the former Secretary of State Anthony Blinken that Netanyahu had tried to persuade both Obama and Biden to do the same, saying, "I'm about to go in." And then when they said no, he didn't go in. That potentially and possibly Donald Trump got played by Netanyahu here in the same way he tried to play Biden and Obama. And that the reason why Israel might be more relaxed about how this all plays out is that really what they want is a bit different to what America needs out of this.

[00:09:15]Israel just wants to cause maximum damage to Iran, to its regime. They'd be quite happy with chaos as they were when it happened in Syria. Whereas chaos in Iran, if it involves closing the Straits of Hormuz or attacking the Gulf states next to them or whatever, that does not suit America. So it may be, and I don't know the answer to this. I'm just hypothesizing based on what I heard coming out of Marco Rubio's mouth. If that was why the Americans joined this, uh then it may be that Netanyahu has taken America into something where he is quite comfortable about this going on for a long period of time, but it won't suit the American national interest.

[00:10:01]>> Yeah, let me just make two points about this. Now that this is becoming a strategic disaster, it appears the blame game is already in full throttle here.

[00:10:09]So, you're going to see that. And and I don't do politics, okay? So, I and I but nonetheless, the second point, which is let's assume you're right uh here.

[00:10:18]That's not a good enough excuse for launching a disastrous campaign. Um so, what that means to what that tells me is we really thought we had escalation dominance. We really thought they couldn't do anything. Even when apparently General Keane warned President Trump they would take the Strait of Hormuz. Even though that was our number one planning scenario for 50 years here, 45 years here. Um he dismissed that. Um so, and yes, uh maybe Netanyahu's on the phone, but let me point out last fall, he President Trump came down hard on the President on Netanyahu's plan to cleanse Gaza of hundreds of thousands of people. So, if President Trump wants to, he can stand up to Israel. In this case, we have to do something that's strategically smart.

[00:11:06]>> Yeah, I mean look, I and it may be that that Donald Trump when he was informed the Ayatollah was with all his top people in a place that could be hit, uh took a view that a bit like with Venezuela and Maduro that he could get in, they could take out the leadership, it would it would dramatically change the dynamic perhaps if he got somebody who wasn't quite as fanatical replacing the Ayatollah. But of course, even if you take that argument, which might well be the case.

[00:11:32]Um you know, I'm not saying for a moment that I think Donald Trump can be easily railroaded by Netanyahu, but if he got if he got involved for that purpose, very quickly he said, "Look, we want regime change.

[00:11:45]Uh we want to see the people rise up."

[00:11:47]He spoke directly to them. We've seen none of that. Uh probably because the people remember being slaughtered in the street when they protested in January, and there are loads of bombs flying over the streets, so why would they risk their lives? Um we've also not seen uh well, we believe the supreme leader has been replaced by his son, but there's no sign of this son still being alive. There are reports he's gone to Moscow to have urgent surgery, uh all sorts of stuff about this guy, whether he's alive or not, we don't know yet.

[00:12:18]But either way, there's no doubt the regime remains intact. The people are not arising up, and uh so you're left with looking back at what Donald Trump said in the immediate aftermath of launching the missile attacks, and none of that is manifesting itself. So, I I I just think if I was advising Donald Trump, I'd be like, "Look, you know, you've got to do something quickly here because your original mission statements simply aren't happening, and they're probably unlikely to happen."

[00:12:46]>> So, it's important to know, Piers, that I've studied every air campaign since World War I. I've modeled the bombing of Iran for 20 years, so I know quite a bit about all these details, and it's important to know that in over 100 years, air power alone has never, and I'm choosing my words carefully here, never toppled a government. The usual normal response, such as when Ronald Reagan tried to decapitate Gaddafi in 1986, or when Bill Clinton tried to smash Milošević's regime in March 1999, the usual response is a lashing back on the schedule of the uh of the target.

[00:13:29]And so what you were seeing here is the normal failure of leadership decapitation attacks, including in the precision age. And the problem is not that the bombs failed to kill the leader. The problem is the replacements become much more aggressive because that's how they get legitimacy inside their inner circles, Pierce. So just imagine you're fighting for the next rung up, right?

[00:13:55]And if you're not aggressive, you're going to get a bullet in the back of the head. That's the real issue here.

[00:14:02]>> Well, also, if the new supreme leader is the Ayatollah Khamenei's son, uh as has been, you know, reported from Iran, if that is the case and he is alive, this is somebody who's just seen his parents and his wife and as many as two of his children killed in the initial strikes. Uh and if that's not an incentive to wreak havoc and revenge against the Americans and Israelis, I don't know what will be. So I completely concur.

[00:14:30]>> in in in recall, Pierce, we we we said that President Bush, uh the son, wanted revenge for assassination attempts against President Bush, the father. So we understand this. You don't need to be Islamic to think you want to defend your father and your family. We have really, um elevated This is why I say this isn't just a rearranging of deck chairs. This is a more dangerous regime. Uh the Revolutionary Guards are more in control, and what you see is they have also been preparing. They had their plan mosaic for how to handle the death of their leaders. It's gone according to plan. They have a what I call horizontal escalation strategy. They're using precision guided drones. These are not just haphazardly attacking targets. You effectively have two precision air forces going at each other.

[00:15:27]And that's not happened before. So, we're really seeing an Iran that has been preparing just as we in the military have prepared our strategy for 20 years, which we have. Um they're we prepared the tactical strategy. They're picking up a North Korean I'm sorry, North Vietnamese version. Long war, go at the soft underbelly, which is politics. And they may be trying to bring down President Trump's presidency, which is why I don't think they're going to give up the straits just say, "Oh yeah, we're going to stop now."

[00:16:02]>> No, I mean they might they may well sense an opportunity to drag this out long enough that Donald Trump in the November mid-term elections loses both the House and the Senate, becomes the lamest of lame duck presidents, and then has two pretty powerless years, which would drive him completely nuts. Um just before >> just saying this for years.

[00:16:20]>> years. I've warned about this before the war. I started the Substack with all these detailed scenarios before the war.

[00:16:26]As the war unfolded, I've warned here in Foreign Affairs, our most read magazine, explaining President Trump has a choice.

[00:16:35]Get out now or get deeper in where the pri- political price. And so, I'm not here with taking any glee about what is happening to America right now. More the opposite. I want us to to to do better, but we're not going to do better with victory narrative because victory narrative is meeting escalation reality.

[00:16:57]And we've got to push aside these victory narratives because we need to be much much more serious about what we're up against.

[00:17:04]>> 100%. I just want to just finally mention that there's some interesting kickback coming now from within. David Sacks, President Trump's artificial intelligence and cryptocurrency czar, has warned on the podcast All-In that quote Israel could get seriously destroyed and then you have to worry about Israel escalating the war by contemplating using a nuclear weapon.

[00:17:26]Uh I mean it's a pretty apocalyptic uh fear he's raising there but that is one of Donald Trump's top people.

[00:17:33]Um is that a potential scenario?

[00:17:36]>> So so I laid out on my Substack a 30-minute video focusing on the uranium enriched uranium that may well be dispersing inside of Iran. That is 1,000 lb of 60% 10,000 lb of 5 and 20%.

[00:17:53]There's no guarantee that will only disperse inside of Iran. So if you saw thought of radio I don't mean nuclear atomic bombs but radiological bombs in Tel Aviv now we're talking really escalating this up. So I don't know what Mr. Sachs is talking about I've never met him I haven't talked to him but I know I know what I have studied for 20 years in the modeling here and the modeling is there are a lot more cards for Iran to play and the idea that maybe Netanyahu could be tempted maybe Netanyahu could be tempted to use a tactical nuclear weapon but that will have blowback radiation blowback in the Gulf.