Why the U.S. is TRAPPED in the Iran War | Prof. Robert Pape

Added: 2026-05-12

[00:00:00]Since almost the very first bombs fell on February 28th, uh the United States has lost control almost day by day by day. Uh and the Iran has gained control and gained leverage almost day by day by day. Iran has more control over the price of oil than the United States does right now. That's incredibly powerful.

[00:00:22]Twice the control of oil that Russia has at 11%. to just put this in perspective in terms of economic uh power. The second thing is they still do have that enriched uranium. Um and over time over the next year or two if events don't change there's a good chance they're going to acquire nuclear weapons because that's what major powers do.

[00:00:46]>> And welcome to another episode on TMJ's political current podcast. With the latest naval tensions in the straight of Hormuz between the US and Iran, many are questioning whether Washington is actually gaining leverage in this war or slipping deeper into what Professor Robert Pape calls the escalation trap.

[00:01:06]Robert Pate, professor of political science at the University of Chicago, when one of the world's leading experts on deterrence and international security affairs, is joining me today to discuss just that. And for those interested in a deeper dive on the issue, Professor Pap has a live briefing Sunday, May 10th at 5:00 p.m. Eastern on his Substack escalation trap.

[00:01:37]Professor PA, thank you so much for joining me on TMJ News. It's wonderful to have you. Thanks for coming.

[00:01:43]>> Uh, thank you so much for having me.

[00:01:45]>> Of course. And you know, as of today that we are recording this episode, Saturday, May 9th, we know naval clashes have been taking place between the US and Iran in the past around 72 hours.

[00:01:58]So, I want to start with actually the escalation dynamics in this whole situation because we often speak about who's really winning the war and in the winning conversation, usually the first thing that's brought up is, oh, who has more military power? But I think the more important question that I would start like to start with you is perhaps it's more important to ask who is actually gaining key leverage. Which side do you think right now is gaining that key leverage in the situation?

[00:02:25]>> Uh there's no doubt it's Iran who's gaining the key leverage. It's Iran who's uh gaining power. We're now um at approximately day 70 of this war. Uh we're past the beginning. We're we're well past even the end of the beginning.

[00:02:42]We're in the middle part of this war and the middle part can go on for months and then there's the uh actual longer part of the war. So this is um uh a situation where since almost the very first bombs fell on February 28th, uh the United States has lost control almost day by day by day. Uh and that Iran has gained control and gained leverage almost day by day by day. Uh, and I'm glad to break that down in in detail, but the really big picture here is really I really appreciate how you started it, which is we often think who's winning as who has the most standing military force. Uh well that's a very common uh m understanding but it is important to uh qualify this because most people and this is true even in the military they do not have to think hard about this because they are not fighting wars day by day by day uh day by day by day in the military they're feeding their families they're practicing they're doing widgets here uh this is not um sort of a dayby-day thing for me it's day by day that's what that's what I really focus on. So, um the key thing to know is what we really mean by who's winning is who's gaining the strategic outcomes.

[00:04:04]Not just do they have power in a sense of a resource, but are they translating that resource into a real outcome that matters. So, think about it as if you make money uh and you uh don't buy food with that money, you can have all the money in the world and you're going to starve to death. You do have to translate that resource into an outcome.

[00:04:30]And that's what the same thing is with power, okay? Or with military power. So, military power is uh is often a starting place, but it's not the ending place.

[00:04:40]And what we the reason we know Iran is winning and Iran is clearly winning.

[00:04:45]This is not even a close call uh is because uh when the war started Iran had um its nuclear material that it can use to fashion nuclear weapons. That's the enriched uranium. It still has that.

[00:05:00]There's not been a movement of single budge on that. Um before um uh the war uh Iran did not control the straight of Hormuz. And that isn't just a geographic that is equating to economic uh leverage over America's allies in Japan. That's why Japan doesn't want to touch this thing with a 10-ft pole militarily.

[00:05:21]Germany doesn't want to touch this with a 10-ft pole. Increasingly um uh it's why uh Kuwait and Saudi Arabia who are all down for the first few days of bombing, man, they're starting to pull back fast. So what you are what you are seeing here is the straight of for moves is not just a geographic asset like a piece on a chessboard. Uh it is a strategic outcome because it's equating to actual behavioral change by other actors. Now if you look at uh uh the negotiations uh here uh the United States started uh here saying oh they don't really want to negotiate. They want to topple the regime then well no we're going to now negotiate with the ceasefire and now they can't even get Iran in the room. So so this is so far from from achieving like a strategic outcome even in negotiations. I mean literally the fact of negotiations here.

[00:06:14]So I've just gone through these these uh these key areas. And then if you look at the United States, the United States is the on the mere image of this losing all of those uh uh that power uh and that those has not gained a single strategic objective uh since the war began and it's 70 days now uh here we've had multiple different tactical issues, different approaches. So think about it as game plan one topple regime in two days. Check, tried, failed. Game plan two, uh, four-week air campaign. Check, tried, failed. Uh, game plan number three, blockade. Check, tried, failed.

[00:06:55]So, so what we are seeing here is, uh, that, uh, it's it's not just the first plan, but it's now the third plan is failing. And that's the bottom line here of why I I'm so like u uh, you know, clear about who is winning here. Uh it's just not even a close call.

[00:07:17]>> Absolutely. And you know, as you were speaking, I was wondering because you're speaking about the game plans and whatnot. What we also have recently seen come out is this recent CIA assessment that was reported in the Washington Post, if I'm not mistaken, that actually concluded that Iran can actually withstand the current US naval blockade for several more months. I think it was three or four months that was referenced. Some US officials say much longer. The intelligence apparently also showed that Iran has been able to recover and essentially reopen nearly all of their underground storage facilities and have even continued assembling new missiles. So, lots of things that the Trump administration is telling us, you know, their economy is in shambles. They've lost all of their military power, their air power, their, you know, naval power. And yet we continue to see the opposite coming out, especially with even the CIA now coming and saying, "Hey, this is this is concerning. We did not know."

[00:08:13]>> That's right. So, excuse me. Um, so, um, on my Substack, one second, please.

[00:08:23]>> Um, sorry about that.

[00:08:26]>> No worries.

[00:08:26]>> Too much talking today already.

[00:08:29]>> Um, so I'm on the Substack. I now have a fairly large community on the Substack and uh they already knew that weeks ago and the reason is because I gave them very detailed goodness gracious very detailed presentations on these live briefings which are PowerPoint slides really going through all the details here. Most of what you see in um the uh CIA report is open- source information. This is not coming from humans. This isn't because there is a secret agent somewhere in Tehran that is going around counting storage areas or so forth. That's not what's happening. What's happening is uh and I taught for the Air Force in the 90s. I had a clearance. Uh the dirty secret in clearances is 90 plus% of anything that matters is open source. It's not um uh it's analysis uh and it's not secret analysis. There's no uh secret method or handshake to how to do this. So what you're seeing is completely predictable by the government, >> right? the kind of analysis that's coming out uh is contradicting the analysis uh or the claim by say the Trump administration just a few weeks ago and I know because I was on uh the media debating people uh making this argument that well Iran's um uh it was called um uh water coning.

[00:10:05]I don't know if you your folks will even know this this whole thing. So when Trump first put the naval blockade on, this was supposed to bring Iran to its knees in just about a week. And what you're seeing in this assessment is reflecting that there's lots of stock piles and storage inside of Iran.

[00:10:24]There's lots of ways for them to uh lower the uh amount of oil coming out of their uh out of the ground here in order to uh prevent the water coning. There's lots of alternative routes for them to develop because most of the oil in Iran is actually domestically consumed. You wouldn't even know that from the way the the media talks as if well all the oil in Iran is pumped out and then sold. No, twothirds of it is going into G cars in Iran. So they can increase some of that.

[00:10:54]Uh you see what I mean? So there's lots of issues here that you just need to lift the hood. And the problem is uh if we live in a clickbait world where six words and a headline are are enough, well then there's there's uh it's really easy to bamboozle the public for weeks.

[00:11:12]Uh but you can't boo bamboozle them forever because they're seeing the price of gas go up and that's still going up.

[00:11:19]So you can only bamboozle them for so long.

[00:11:23]>> Absolutely. And I know you've also spoken extensively about this whole idea of the escalation trap. I know your Substack you also focus a lot on just the details of that. I want to ask you though I know many analysts as well are saying that this this whole idea of the escalation trap that the US has really been engulfed by it quite literally Persian Gulf.

[00:11:42]>> That's right. The idea is really taken over now. So when I first came out with this I published the first articles uh several days before the bombing started.

[00:11:50]I never had a Substack before. Uh and um so um uh and and I laid out I called it the smart bomb trap. And uh now the truth is in the first couple weeks there were lots of people who were skeptical.

[00:12:03]What do you mean this is going to happen? We have lots of offramps. We have lots of control in the situation.

[00:12:09]Well now uh and then I kept explaining uh well you we can say that but we don't and what's going to happen is we're going to be stuck in a trap. And then lots other people said because they um uh think of it from the especially the Democrat side of the house, they just wanted to walk away. Oh no, all we have to do is simply stop this war and all we have to do is stop the war. Well, notice the Democrats have stopped saying that on TV lately. They're reflecting the escalation trap dynamic. There's a real trap. We can't get out of it. Uh and it is going on and on and they're stunned that we're now in day 70 or near day 70.

[00:12:47]Um, gas prices are going up. Uh, and there really is no game plan to get out of this in the next few weeks. And it's not as as if you put Democrats in charge uh, here. So, if you put Democrats right now in charge of the White House and said, "Okay, you go solve this by June 1st." They're they're not going to have an idea. That's because we're in an escalation trap. And that's what I'm really laying out. So, that's there's there's details underneath that. Uh but what you're really seeing is the world has caught up to that. They're now understand that the escalation trap there. And that's one of the reasons I'm increasingly, you know, here we are on a Saturday and you're my third one and I've got a three-hour um thing to do this afternoon. It's it's because people really do want to now know more in detail. Oh, okay. So So let's see what's really under the hood.

[00:13:37]>> Absolutely. And and you know on this same topic, I know you've also talked about how with this escalation trap, there's a potential that the US pulling out of the war now will actually carry much higher political costs for them than just escalating further and further and you know perceiving that that is somehow going to forcefully force Iran's hand into some kind of surrender. But can you talk a little bit about what those political costs will be for the US?

[00:14:06]>> That's right. So, um there's really four stages I lay out of this trap um to this point. Stage one is we bomb uh and that's February 28 tried to do regime change bombing. Uh stage two is uh that fails if it we hit the target but it fails strategically. Um and Iran um is not doesn't collapse. that lashes back and takes hormones. Then now we're at the stage three, stage four fork in the road. So we now have a fork in the road.

[00:14:41]The dilemma is either we take hormuz uh back and also we put in ground forces to take the uh enriched uranium. We physically take it or we don't. There's no middle ground here. It's not like you're going to take half of Hormuz or take, you know, you're going to go in and just do half of ESPON. That that's not an option here.

[00:15:04]>> Yeah.

[00:15:04]>> So, you either do it or don't on the ground because that's these are ground war options. None of these others are going to do it or you let Iran uh you don't and Iran becomes the fourth center of world power over time. So, it's not there is no going back to February 27, the pre-war status quo. Uh, and um, and many people again thought there would be after just a few weeks. And then I published a big article in the New York Times, April 4th, on Iran as the emerging fourth center of world power to explain what the real fork in the road is. And now, what does it look like for Iran to become the fourth center of world power? Well, that doesn't happen overnight. So I'm not saying Iran is going to join the great power club of US, China and Russia. Iran would be number four. Not going to happen overnight. But you can already see it uh growing in that direction. Uh now so the very first thing is economic control over 20% of the world's energy. Um and that is enormous global power. Uh the United States pumps out 16% of the world's oil. So Iran has more control over the price of oil than the United States does right now. That's incredibly powerful. Twice the control of oil that Russia has at 11%. To just put this in perspective in terms of economic uh power. Um the second thing is they still do have that enriched uranium. Um and over time over the next year or two um uh if there if events don't change there's a good chance they're going to acquire nuclear weapons because that's what major powers do. Uh United States has nuclear weapons. I don't see them surrendering them. China has nuclear weapons. I don't see them surrendering them. Russia has nuclear weapons. I don't see them surrendering them. So why exactly is Iran not going to want to go down that road of nuclear capability?

[00:17:05]It's just the natural step for an emerging power in the world. It's the the next step uh here. So that is what it also means as we go forward uh here.

[00:17:16]Um but then in the near term uh you can see that Iran is using that emerging power already because it's negotiating.

[00:17:26]Um the most recent round of negotiations during the ceasefire weren't with the United States at all. Trump kept saying they're negotiating with him, but they're they're they're barely reading his posts or his tweets and barely responding to anything even coming through Pakistan. What Iran negotiators have done is they've gone to Pakistan physically to meet with the Pakistanis uh here. Uh and why are might they do that? Well, they might want some trade routes here because Pakistan and Iran are physically adjacent to each other.

[00:17:57]Uh, and so they you might want some trade routes to offset some of the economic pressure that the United States is putting on Iran. Um, and then they're going to Russia and there when uh the Iranian diplomats are there, they're talking about a new security architecture in the Middle East. Well, I didn't hear the word uh we want to concede. I hear the word we want to consolidate. You see, so that now then they go to China. Um, and what are they talking about there? A new security architecture in the Middle East. Again, not hearing that word concession here.

[00:18:33]Okay. So, um, what I think they're doing is they are um uh thinking uh strategically or or instrumentally about now they have this new power resource of hormones. They have their uh on the cusp of nuclear weapons already. How is this going to evolve over time for more power? And what will that more power enable them to do? The new security architecture. Well, it probably means toppling the government of Saudi Arabia.

[00:19:04]It probably means toppling the government of UAE. Probably means toppling the government of Kuwait. And then what's happened this week?

[00:19:11]President Trump out of the blue says there's going to be a new effort to uh run the Iran blockade. That was Monday.

[00:19:18]And by Monday um later in the day uh just not even a day as this goes by uh Iran attacks uh the UAE's one um uh area. It's it's a pipeline near this this area called Fyra that's just outside of the straight of Hormuz. So they had a pipeline that almost had two million barrels of oil uh a day still going out uh to the world. Um, and Iran uh is attacking that, basically threatening to completely shut that down. Well, Saudi Arabia has a similar pipeline that goes to the Red Sea right around this general area. So, if they can attack one, they can definitely attack the other. So, what this is done, what this does is uh Saudi Arabia is calling up saying, "No, we don't want anything to do with this. You can't use President Trump, our airspace, our ground space uh for anything like what you're think." And Kuwait makes the similar phone call. So Trump's got to cancel the whole thing. Uh now he's trying to put it back. And so what you're seeing is Iran, not just in a macro sense, but in the detailed sense, is gaining power after power after power. Uh and uh the United States is losing power after power after power.

[00:20:33]>> Absolutely. And you know, professor, in in closing, I kind of want to delve a little bit into we've been talking a little bit about the nuclear deterrence theme.

[00:20:42]>> Everything that we've seen so far with this war, it seems has involved in some ways the rewriting of rules when it comes to modern warfare. For decades, we've been hearing that deterrence really has been centered on and associated with nuclear capability. But this time around, we're seeing that a country that does not yet possess nuclear weapons. I know you mentioned that they are on the cusp of it. But do you think that we are witnessing that change, that whole idea of nuclear deterrence being the only card that superpowers use? Because it seems Iran in this whole war has demonstrated that its deterrence has been focused on many other things that you know, you've extensively discussed. everything from their economic leverage to their maritime leverage um to their missile capabilities and even the whole attrition warfare that we've been seeing from them for so long. So do you think that Iran is now building a new model of deterrence and in many ways rewriting how we understand in the modern world how deterrence itself is going to work?

[00:21:41]>> Yeah. No, there's no new model here. Um so what's really happening uh is that uh people who have only casually thought about the word nuclear weapons over the last 10 or 15 years are now suddenly thinking about it. So the new is not the rules. The new is not nuclear deterrence. The new is not how Iran is suddenly no Iran is is uh taking advantage of America's attack here.

[00:22:11]That's what Iran has done to do something uh here that had they done it on their own, seized Tormuz on their own, the world would have been mad at Iran. Right now, uh Iran's gaining power, the world's mad at the United States and Israel. That's what So Iran's been very very smart about its timing.

[00:22:28]What you're seeing is completely predictable. There is new technology.

[00:22:34]Drones are diffusing. that's having an impact, but it's having an impact in completely predictable ways. The problem here is that the in the White House, uh, you have folks that have done, uh, decades of real estate deals. They have not done decades of studying war. They just haven't done that, uh, here. And that's true with Secretary of uh, uh, Defense, even though he now calls himself the Secretary of War, uh, even though he was um, uh, in the military. I know what the military learns. they learn how to put bombs on targets.

[00:23:06]That's a completely different thing than being at the general three and four star level of running wars. That's not the same thing uh here. And so this is why you're what they're getting is um a crash course in the realities that have always been there. And if we decide we're going to ignore the realities, they come and get us.

[00:23:29]>> Absolutely. will definitely invite everyone watching to join Professor Pap's live briefing Sunday, May 10th at 5:00 p.m. Eastern on his Substack Escalation Trap. Professor Pape, thank you so much for joining me today. It was wonderful.

[00:23:43]>> Thank you for having me and it really is always a great pleasure to talk with you.

[00:23:47]>> If you like what you see here on TMJ News, don't forget to like and share and subscribe to our channel for more interviews. You can also subscribe to our weekly newsletter, the TMJ Insider, for access to all our articles, reporting, interviews, and a special weekly take from our editorinchief. TMJ News is an independent grassroots media outlet, and you can find ways to support us, as well as the links to all our resources in the description below.

[00:24:13]Thank you so much for joining me today, and I hope to see you next time.