1 HOUR AGO: After the F-35, US Sent F-16 — Iran Says: We Control What Matters

Added: 2026-05-08

[00:00:00]I want to start today with a number. One shoulder fired missile cost $50,000.

[00:00:06]It just shot down an F-15 E Strike Eagle cost $350 million.

[00:00:13]Okay? And to rescue the two pilots from that plane, the Americans had to scramble 155 aircraft. They lost multiple C-130 transport planes in the process.

[00:00:25]When they couldn't get those planes off the ground, they blew them up themselves so the Iranians couldn't capture them.

[00:00:31]Total damage from a single rescue mission, $300 million. And the Pentagon called that a success. Okay? So, let me ask you a very simple question today.

[00:00:42]If that is success, what does failure look like? Because here is what the mainstream media will not tell you. As of today, May 1st, 2026, the United States of America is losing this war.

[00:00:54]Not on the battlefield necessarily, but on a strategic chessboard. And simple math, very simple math, will show you exactly why. Now, I know some of you are going to push back on that. You're going to say, "Wait a minute. America has three aircraft carrier strike groups in the region. They have fifth-generation stealth fighters. They have the most powerful military in the history of the world. How are they losing?" That's a great question. And that is exactly what I want to explain to you today. Because winning and losing in the 21st century does not look like winning and losing in the 20th century. Okay? The rules have changed. And America, for all its incredible military power, is still fighting the last war. While Iran, for all its very real weaknesses, is fighting the next one. So, let's go through this together. And I promise you, by the end of today's lecture, you will understand this conflict in a way that you absolutely cannot get from watching CNN or Fox News. Because they're not giving you the full picture.

[00:01:52]They're giving you the Hollywood version. And as I will show you today, the Hollywood version is precisely the problem.

[00:02:00]Okay? First, let's give credit where credit is due. Let's talk about what the Americans actually brought into Iran.

[00:02:09]Because it was genuinely impressive on paper. On February 28th, 2026, the United States and Israel launched what they called Operation Epic Fury. Okay?

[00:02:21]And the scale of this thing was breathtaking. Three carrier strike groups. The USS Abraham Lincoln, the USS George H.W. Bush, the USS Gerald R.

[00:02:31]Ford. That is the largest concentration of American naval power deployed anywhere in the world since the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

[00:02:41]Okay? Think about what that means. Each carrier strike group has its own destroyers, its own submarines, its own logistics chain. These are not just ships. These are floating cities that happen to carry nuclear capable aircraft. They brought F-22 Raptors.

[00:02:59]They brought F-35s.

[00:03:02]Fifth-generation stealth fighters that were designed to be invisible to radar.

[00:03:06]They brought B-1 and B-52 strategic bombers that flew directly into Iranian airspace to demonstrate total air dominance. They had satellite surveillance covering every corner of the country. They had precision-guided munitions, bunker-busting bombs capable of penetrating reinforced concrete. And in the first 24 hours of Operation Epic Fury, they dropped over 1,200 bombs on Iran. Okay? 1,200 bombs in one day. Over the entire campaign, the US military struck somewhere between 11,000 and over 12,300 targets inside Iran. That's not a bombing campaign. That's an attempt at complete military obliteration. And they achieved some genuinely significant military objectives. In the opening hours of the war, they killed Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. Okay? The man who had run Iran for 35 years, gone on day one.

[00:03:59]They destroyed most of Iran's declared nuclear facilities. They severely damaged Iran's navy and air force. They struck missile production sites, radar installations, command and control infrastructure. By any conventional measure of military effectiveness, Operation Epic Fury was extraordinarily powerful. So, again, I ask the question, how is America losing? And here is the answer. And this is the most important thing I will say today. Military power and strategic success are not the same thing. They never have been. And in the 21st century, the gap between those two things has never been wider.

[00:04:36]Okay? Let me tell you what Iran was doing before the bombs started falling.

[00:04:41]Because this is the part that almost nobody's talking about. Iran had been preparing for this war for 20 years.

[00:04:47]Okay? 20 years. Think about that. They knew it was coming. They watched what happened in Iraq in 2003. They watched what happened in Libya in 2011. They watched what happened to every government that challenged American military power without a serious strategy for survival. And they said to themselves, "Okay, we need a different approach." So, what did they do? They buried their weapons underground. Now, that sounds simple. And in a sense, it is simple. But the implications of that decision are enormous. Because when you have thousands of ballistic missiles hidden in tunnels carved into the Zagros Mountains, when your most critical military assets are dispersed and concealed beneath hundreds of feet of rock and earth, then it doesn't matter if the enemy drops 12,000 bombs on you.

[00:05:34]They cannot find everything. They cannot destroy what they cannot locate. And US intelligence now confirms exactly this.

[00:05:41]Iran had already dispersed and moved the majority of its missile arsenal before Operation Epic Fury even began. That's why American officials were shocked and frustrated when, even after weeks of intense bombing, Iran still had the capacity to fire salvos of missiles at US military bases across the Gulf region. They hit US facilities in Kuwait. They hit Al Dhafra airbase in the UAE. They hit Prince Sultan airbase in Saudi Arabia. They hit Muwaffaq Salti airbase in Jordan. And they damaged these bases so severely that NBC News, citing six US officials, reported the damage was far worse than publicly acknowledged. The repairs to the US Navy's Fifth Fleet headquarters in Bahrain alone could cost $200 million.

[00:06:27]Now, what about Iran's air defenses?

[00:06:30]This is where things get really interesting. The official American narrative is that Iran's air defenses were neutralized early in the conflict.

[00:06:37]The Pentagon kept saying this, "Iran's radar systems are destroyed. Iran's surface-to-air missile batteries are gone. Iran has no ability to threaten American aircraft. Okay?" So, how do you explain this? On April 3rd, 2026, Iranian forces used shoulder-fired surface-to-air missiles to shoot down an American F-15 E Strike Eagle. Okay? A $50,000 weapon brought down a $350 million aircraft.

[00:07:09]The call sign was Dude 44. Two pilots ejected over Iranian territory. And it gets worse. When the Americans tried to rescue those pilots, Iran shot down an A-10 Warthog that was part of the rescue operation. More planes were lost.

[00:07:25]The entire rescue mission turned into a massive multi-day operation involving, as I mentioned, 155 aircraft and the construction of a makeshift landing strip 200 km from where the pilots went down. Now, think about this. The Americans have been telling us for months that Iran has no air defenses.

[00:07:45]And yet this shoulder-fired missile, this MANPADS, is doing exactly what the Iranians were told they could not do.

[00:07:52]They are threatening American aircraft.

[00:07:54]They are forcing the most powerful air force in the world to constantly adapt and maneuver. And there is also the matter of the F-35.

[00:08:03]The IRGC, Iran's Revolutionary Guard, claimed they used a new air defense system to shoot down an American F-35 over central Iran. Now, CENTCOM denied this. They denied it multiple times. But what they did confirm quietly was that an F-35 made an emergency landing after sustaining suspected damage from Iranian fire. Okay? So, even if we don't accept the Iranian version of events, something happened to that plane. America has also lost at least 16 MQ-9 Reaper drones over Iranian airspace. Each one costs $30 million.

[00:08:40]16 of them gone. And now, during the ceasefire, US intelligence officials are watching something deeply concerning.

[00:08:48]Iran is digging. They're excavating rubble. They are recovering missiles and munitions that were buried or damaged during the bombing campaign. They are reconstituting their capabilities. The ceasefire, from Iran's perspective, is not a path to peace. It is time to reload. Okay? So, here is the pattern that is emerging. And this is the pattern I want you to see clearly. Every time America brings an expensive, sophisticated system to this fight, Iran has found a way to either counter it, avoid it, or neutralize its effectiveness at a fraction of the cost.

[00:09:25]That is the defining dynamic of this war. And it is why, strategically, America is not winning. And this is the most important part of today's lecture.

[00:09:35]Let me ask you this. What was the actual goal of Operation Epic Fury? It was not to bomb Iran. Bombing is a method, not a goal. The actual goal was regime change.

[00:09:47]The goal was to create so much military, economic, and psychological pressure on the Islamic Republic that the government would either collapse from within or be overthrown by a population rising up in revolt. That was the plan. So, let's check the scorecard, shall we?

[00:10:05]They killed Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, and in 72 hours power was transferred to his son, Mojtaba Khamenei. No chaos, no power vacuum, no military defections, no generals switching sides, no crowds tearing down the government. In fact, what we saw was the opposite. The Revolutionary Guard, the IRGC, moved quickly and decisively to consolidate power. US and Israeli intelligence officials had to admit internally that they had launched this campaign without a clear plan for what comes after regime change, okay? I want you to think about that for a moment. They killed the Supreme Leader, and they didn't have a plan for what happens next. That's not strategy, that's a movie plot. You kill the villain in Act II, and you expect the credits to roll, but this isn't a movie, and Iran's political structure didn't collapse. It adapted. And then there is the Strait of Hormuz. This is Iran's master stroke. This is the move that changed everything. 20% of the world's oil and natural gas passes through the Strait of Hormuz.

[00:11:08]20%. This is not just an Iranian waterway, this is a choke point for the entire global economy.

[00:11:15]And Iran, by taking control of that strait, by blockading it, turned a military conflict into an economic crisis of global proportions. Look at the numbers. Oil prices hit $124 a barrel. Gas prices in the United States hit $4.23 a gallon, the highest level since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022.

[00:11:37]In some parts of California, prices went above $5 a gallon.

[00:11:42]Food prices in the Gulf countries, which import approximately 70% of their food through the Strait of Hormuz, increased between 40 and 120%.

[00:11:52]The United Nations Development Programme estimated that this war could eliminate between 120 billion and 194 billion dollars from the total GDP of Arab nations due to trade disruption and export breakdown.

[00:12:06]And here is the brilliant brutal logic of what Iran has done. They understand something that Washington apparently does not. In the 21st century, the most powerful weapon is not a missile or a stealth fighter. The most powerful weapon is a choke point. Control a choke point, and you don't need to win on the battlefield. You just need to make the cost of fighting too high for the other side to sustain. Iran's senior advisor, Mohammad Mokhber, said it very directly.

[00:12:33]He said, "When we control 20% of the world's oil and more than 18 trillion in gas, a naval blockade will not push Iran back to the Stone Age, but will certainly push the system of dominance into an ice age." And he is not wrong.

[00:12:46]Now, let's also talk about Iran's nuclear program, because this is the part of the story that gives the entire war its existential dimension.

[00:12:55]The IAEA, the International Atomic Energy Agency, has confirmed that the majority of Iran's 60% enriched uranium remains intact in reinforced underground facilities at Isfahan. American bombs did not reach it, and because IAEA inspectors cannot currently access those facilities, there is a verification gap.

[00:13:17]Nobody outside of Iran knows with certainty exactly how much enriched material they have, or how quickly they could convert it to weapons-grade material.

[00:13:26]And Iran's parliament speaker has now declared the nuclear issue closed and non-negotiable. It is no longer on the table. Iran will discuss compensation.

[00:13:36]Iran will discuss the terms of passage to the Strait of Hormuz, but the nuclear program, as far as Tehran is concerned, is Iran's sovereign right, and it is not subject to foreign pressure. This is an absolutely critical point. The war has not reduced Iran's nuclear leverage. It may have actually increased it, because the ambiguity itself is a deterrent. The uncertainty about what Iran has and what Iran might do is precisely what makes the United States and Israel unable to push Iran into a corner. And there is one more thing on the strategic scorecard for Iran that people are not discussing openly enough. The Gulf states, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain. They are now deeply frightened, not of Iran per se, but of the fact that the United States could not protect them. These countries hosted American bases. They cooperated with American intelligence. They allowed their airspace and territorial waters to be used to support the campaign against Iran. And in return, Iran hit their oil infrastructure, their desalination plants, their data centers, their power grids. The UAE lost 13 civilians. Kuwait lost 10. Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Oman, all took casualties. Amazon Web hit.

[00:14:59]Qatar's LNG production capacity dropped by 17% after Iranian strikes on its gas facilities.

[00:15:07]And after all of that, the Gulf states looked around and said, "Where is America? America is here, right? They're the ones who said they would protect us." And America could not stop it. That is a strategic disaster for Washington, because the entire architecture of American power in the Middle East is built on the premise that US military presence guarantees the security of its partners. That premise has now been visibly challenged, and the Gulf states are starting to recalculate. All rights.

[00:15:35]Now, I want to talk about something that I think is the deepest problem of all, because everything I've described so far, the failed regime change, the insurgent air defenses, the Hormuz choke point, Iran's resilient nuclear program, all of that can be explained by conventional strategic miscalculation.

[00:15:53]Okay? Planners made wrong assumptions.

[00:15:57]Intelligence was wrong. The enemy adapted better than expected. These things happen in war. But what I'm going to describe to you now is not a miscalculation.

[00:16:07]It is a fundamental disorder in how the American military and political leadership understand the relationship between war and reality. I call this the Hollywood-Pentagon problem. Let me give you the specific examples from this conflict. The White House produced and distributed videos of the bombing campaign, actual footage of air strikes on Iranian targets, and they mixed that footage with images from video games, from action movies.

[00:16:33]They set it to pop music, Kesha, and they circulated these videos on social media as though they were evidence of glorious military achievement, okay?

[00:16:43]Think about what that tells you about the mindset. They took the actual destruction of a country, actual deaths, actual suffering, and they turned it into entertainment content. They turned it into a promotional video. And then there is the FCC. The Federal Communications Commission, under the Trump administration, threatened to revoke the broadcast licenses of television networks that ran negative coverage of the war in Iran, okay?

[00:17:11]They were threatening to shut down American media for doing American journalism. This is not information management, this is the elimination of reality in favor of narrative control.

[00:17:22]And it tells you something profound about how this administration thinks about war.

[00:17:28]They believe that if they can control the story, they can control the outcome.

[00:17:33]That perception is reality.

[00:17:35]That optics is strategy.

[00:17:37]But here is the brutal truth. Optics cannot open the Strait of Hormuz.

[00:17:42]Narrative cannot reconstitute the Patriot missile batteries. A good script cannot prevent gas prices from hitting $4 a gallon. And a viral video with Kesha music cannot change the fact that Iran still controls 20% of the world's oil supply. The market doesn't watch Truth Social. Physics [snorts] doesn't care about your approval rating. And the Iranian Revolutionary Guard doesn't adjust its missile inventory based on what CNN chooses to cover.

[00:18:11]Senator Chris Murphy, a Democrat, said it directly on Capitol Hill. He said, "We are losing this war, not because America lacks military power, but because the United States has no viable exit strategy, no coherent war termination plan, and no political will to sustain the cost that this conflict is imposing on the American economy and the American people, okay? Let me give you the economic reality, because this is where the war comes home, literally.

[00:18:40]Secretary of Defense Pete Hoekstra told the Senate Armed Services Committee that the war has cost 25 billion dollars, okay? 25 billion. Democratic lawmakers, economists, and independent analysts say that number is a significant underestimate. They put the real cost, when you include economic disruption, energy price increases, damage repair to military bases, veterans care, and weapons restocking, at somewhere between 630 billion and 1 trillion dollars.

[00:19:11]Harvard economist Linda Bilmes, who predicted back in 2006 that the Iraq war would cost 3 trillion dollars when the Bush administration was saying 50 billion, says the current Iran war is costing approximately 2 billion dollars a day in direct costs alone.

[00:19:27]And she says wars always cost more than expected, always, because those who start wars are always optimistic about the cost and the duration. Now, the Pentagon is preparing to ask Congress for a supplemental budget of 200 billion dollars just to restock the precision-guided munitions that have been expended in this campaign.

[00:19:46]200 billion dollars for bullets, essentially.

[00:19:50]And on top of that, the Trump administration has already requested a $1.5 trillion defense budget for next year. That is a 42% increase, the largest expansion in American military spending since World War II.

[00:20:05]And what is the American public getting in return? Gas prices at $4.23 a gallon, food prices rising, Trump's approval rating on cost of living at 22%, the lowest of his second term. And on May Day, 8 million people marching in over 3,000 protests across all 50 states.

[00:20:24]This is not a population that believes its government is winning. This is a population that is paying the price of a war they don't understand and weren't asked about. And the legal situation is also deteriorating. May 1st, 2026, the day we are analyzing today, is the 60-day deadline under the War Powers Resolution. Under that law, the president must obtain congressional authorization to continue military operations after 60 days or cease those operations. The Trump administration's response? They argued that the ceasefire means the war has technically terminated and therefore the 60-day clock has been paused or reset. Legal experts, including a former Associate Deputy Attorney General who was present when the War Powers Resolution was passed in 1973, call this interpretation turning the resolution into a paper tiger.

[00:21:18]He said, and I'm paraphrasing, "You cannot go to war for 60 days, stop bombing for 37 minutes, declare it terminated, and then start again. That's not how law works."

[00:21:29]And here is the most damning detail. If Trump actually had the votes in Congress to authorize this war, he would have asked for authorization. He has a Republican majority in both the House and the Senate. He didn't ask, which means he knows he would lose. Which means even his own party does not fully support this war. That is not a position of strength. That is a position of political fragility dressed up in the language of total dominance. Now, let's look at where the diplomacy actually stands because the ceasefire is real in the sense that bombs are not falling right now.

[00:22:06]But calling it a path to peace would be a very serious misreading of the situation.

[00:22:11]Look at Iran's negotiating position as of this week. They are demanding that the United States guarantee it will never attack Iran again. They want full control over the Strait of Hormuz. They want all sanctions removed. They want $270 billion in war reparations. And they want all US combat forces out of the Middle East permanently, okay? That is not a negotiating position from a country that believes it is losing. That is a negotiating position from a country that believes time is on its side. And frankly, I think Iran's reading of the situation is more accurate than Washington's. Here is why. Iran has structured its military defense in what they call the Mosaic Defense. 31 provinces, 31 semi-autonomous cells, each responsible for its own tactics.

[00:22:57]There is no central command that can simply sign a ceasefire and have it mean anything on the ground. Even if the Iranian president and the new supreme leader wanted to end this war tomorrow, the IRGC units in the field would continue fighting because they have been given standing orders to fight to the end. And there is no mechanism to override those orders from the top. This is what one analyst described as a dead man's switch. Kill the Ayatollah and he has already given the instruction to fight on. The Mosaic Defense only stops when one side is completely defeated.

[00:23:28]That means the ceasefire is a pause, a tactical pause, not a strategic settlement, and both sides know it, okay? So, where does this leave us? As of May 1st, 2026, here is the actual strategic situation. Iran has survived a devastating military campaign. Its leadership structure is intact. Its core military capabilities, while damaged, are being reconstituted during the ceasefire. It controls the Strait of Hormuz. It retains nuclear ambiguity.

[00:23:59]And it has demonstrated to every government in the world that American military power, for all its overwhelming size, cannot quickly defeat a determined adversary with a coherent strategy of survival. The United States has demonstrated overwhelming kinetic capability and virtually nothing else.

[00:24:16]It has spent somewhere between $50 billion and potentially $1 trillion.

[00:24:21]It has failed in its primary objective of regime change. It has no viable exit strategy. Its domestic approval is collapsing. Its allies in Europe refused to join the coalition. Even within NATO, Trump's threats to withdraw troops from Germany, Italy, and Spain have created fractures that will not heal quickly.

[00:24:42]Russia and China vetoed a US backed UN Security Council resolution on Hormuz.

[00:24:48]And at home, 8 million Americans marched in the streets on May Day. This is not what winning looks like. And now CENTCOM is presenting President Trump with three new military options: a new bombing campaign on critical civilian infrastructure, a special forces raid on Isfahan to seize enriched uranium, and a ground operation to capture the small islands around the Strait of Hormuz.

[00:25:10]These are escalation options, not exit strategies. And the fact that these are the options being presented tells you that the American military leadership has not yet processed the most fundamental strategic lesson of this conflict, which is this: The problem is not that America hasn't hit Iran hard enough. America has hit Iran very, very hard. The problem is that Iran has a strategy and America doesn't.

[00:25:35]Iran knows what it wants from this war and has a coherent plan to get it.

[00:25:38]America knows what it doesn't want, which is Iran with nuclear weapons, but has no coherent plan for achieving anything beyond that and no vision of what the region looks like after the fighting stops, okay? You cannot bomb your way to a strategic vision. You cannot air power your way to a political settlement. And you absolutely cannot create stability in the Middle East by destroying the one country that is, for better or worse, the central organizing force in regional politics. Now, I want to be fair here. I'm not saying Iran wins this war cleanly. They have suffered enormous damage. 3,400 people killed by American and Israeli strikes.

[00:26:10]26,000 wounded. Entire cities in economic distress. Their currency has hit all-time lows. Their oil exports are blocked. Their power grid has been hit.

[00:26:18]Their bridges have been bombed. The Iranian people are suffering and they will continue to suffer. But suffering is not the same as surrendering. And Iran has consistently demonstrated, from the Iran-Iraq War to 30 years of sanctions, that it has a tolerance for pain that exceeds most governments' willingness to inflict it. Which brings me to the final question, the most important question: Who breaks first?

[00:26:42]Does Iran break first because the economic strangulation becomes too much, the population becomes too angry, and the regime loses the ability to hold things together? Or does America break first because the economic costs at home becomes politically unsustainable, the midterm elections in November punish the party in power, and a new Congress moves to end the conflict? I do not have a certain answer to that question. Nobody does. The honest answer is that we are watching a genuine test of political will. And political will is not something you can model or predict with confidence. But here is what I can tell you. History has never been kind to empires that confuse military power with strategic wisdom. The ability to destroy is not the same as the ability to win.

[00:27:28]And every empire that has learned that lesson too late has paid an enormous price. America has not yet learned that lesson from this war. Whether it will before the cost becomes truly catastrophic is a question that will define the next chapter of this conflict, okay? That's what I have for you today.

[00:27:45]I want to leave you with one question.

[00:27:47]Do you think the ceasefire holds through the summer? Or do you think we see a second round of major military operations before the American midterm elections in November? Leave A if you think escalation is coming. Leave B if you think political pressure forces a deal. And if you have a different view entirely, write it out in the comments.

[00:28:05]I read them. I take them seriously. Now, if this analysis was useful to you, if it gave you something that you cannot get from the mainstream media, then do one thing. Share this. Send it to one person who you think needs to understand what is actually happening in this conflict. Not because I need the numbers, but because the more people who understand how 21st century warfare actually works, the harder it becomes for governments to sell wars on the basis of Hollywood scripts and manipulated narratives. And if you want to continue following this analysis, follow this channel. There is no advertising here, no corporate sponsor telling me what I can and cannot say, just an honest attempt to read the river as clearly as I can and show you where it is going.

[00:28:52]That is all for today. There is no class next week, but we will come back the week after and continue this. I look forward to your questions. Goodbye.