Iran Has Put America in a No-Win Scenario | Robert Pape

[00:00:00] Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the At the Water's Edge Podcast, where we look for insights beyond the headlines and take a practitioner's view on national security and geopolitics. It's the 1st of September, 2026, and we are back with Professor Robert Pape from the University of Chicago. He's going to be talking about how Iran has put the U.S. and the Gulf States into a no-win situation, and it's not getting better anytime soon, though it might get a hell of a lot worse pretty fast.

[00:00:24] Anyway, if you've enjoyed this series, please be sure to like, subscribe, and share with a friend. It really helps get the show out to more people. You can subscribe to the Professor's Substack. Links will be in the show notes below and in the first pinned comments on YouTube. And be sure to check out the new content series channel is launching every Friday morning, where we talk about one of the most pressing issues in international relations that week. New videos every Friday. With that, let's get to the Professor. Well, good morning and welcome back. How are you doing today, sir?

[00:00:54] I'm doing great, Scott. It's always great to talk to you. Pleasure is always. It's an interesting time in the war because there's a lot going on, but a lot of it doesn't seem to be very acute, but there's like so many threads getting pulled in different directions. Just over the past week, you know, we started bombing around again. Iran bombed us back. We initially heard all the way out in Jordan. Now it turns out their regional reach is much bigger than we expected.

[00:01:17] The 82nd Airborne Division formally announced that they've been extended for up to a year in the Middle East all the way through March, which happens to be through the midterms, through the seating of a new Congress. And I'll just point out the easiest thing for Congress to do is absolutely nothing. So they're hunkered down for at least until March of next year. And that matters because they are going to be the prime force to go in if Iran starts to move toward testing nuclear weapons.

[00:01:45] Yes. And key thing there, too, is that the headquarters is there. They also have the entire sustainment brigade there. And you don't have a sustainment brigade in theater to support a headquarters. You have a sustainment brigade to support a division if they show up later. Yeah. Fun fact. And then we had the Army Secretary resign, which is just very interesting. A lot of tension in the ranks at the moment.

[00:02:06] Yeah. So what you are seeing is this is not even though it seems like there's only modest amounts of kinetic action here. What you are seeing is the turning of a super tanker and you're seeing different pushing and pulling on the steering wheel of that super tanker.

[00:02:26] And so quite clear to me is that Secretary Hegseth, he wants things to go in one direction. Others in the building that is in the Pentagon don't want things to go in that direction. Some are resigning. Some are vocally.

[00:02:46] That is the serving military general leadership are now doing things such as saying they do not concur, meaning there will be an order to continue the war in Iran, essentially. But they don't think it's a good idea. And then somewhere in that chain of staffers, this gets leaked out into the media. So and I don't think that's an accident.

[00:03:11] And I don't think that's just just generally happening out of out of randomness. What you are seeing is there is super tanker is moving. And then there's think of it as different people pulling on the steering wheel different ways. And that's why you're getting the wobbliness here in the in the super tanker. Now, what we saw this week was was a really quite interesting. It wasn't really tit for tat.

[00:03:39] It was the United States trying to respond to what appeared to be an effort by the Iranians to attack some tankers, to continue to squeeze the oil in the Strait of Hormuz. And then the United States hit just what appeared to be a couple of pinprick targets on this very small little island, Larig Island. And then that provoked a much greater response.

[00:04:07] And in fact, that response was essentially hidden for a day. So that's really striking because I do these breaking analyses. I think you get them on the escalation trap. And the first one was essentially a modest still in and over, you know, upping the anti escalation by the by Iran. But what really happened was more than that. They didn't just hit Jordan. They also hit the UAE or at least tried to.

[00:04:36] And there was some video circulating that gives some credibility. They might have even done more than that. Although the big issue here is how hard it is to understand just how much the Iranians have done because. But what does this really mean? What this means is that Iran isn't just playing tit for tat. Iran isn't just playing. I'm going to do two tits for a tat.

[00:05:06] I'm going to up the ante on you like in a game of of poker here. Iran is sending a really powerful message, especially to the Gulf states. But a generally powerful message, which is you're in. A no win situation. A no win situation.

[00:05:32] Which is if Iran squeezes your oil coming out of the Strait of Formos militarily, you can allow Iran to squeeze the oil, in which case you don't win. Or you can go along with some retaliation, this time with the United States, and you don't win again.

[00:05:59] This is a no win scenario. This is. Yeah, go ahead. Yes. Process this. This is what's really happening right now. Yeah. So I'm trying to think, is it inevitable that everyone in the region just goes ahead and bandwagons to Iran? But I was actually reading through your book. I got it right here. I'll put it up. I'm taking notes, bombing to win. Everyone go get your copy. And you try to understand the framework of the book.

[00:06:28] Real quick, if we look at this from Iran's perspective, are they in a situation right now where they are pursuing coercion to get states to change their behavior? And if so, does them going after economic infrastructure, would that be a failing strategy based off your framework? Hey, folks, quick note. If you're enjoying this content, please be sure to check out the podcast new series published every Friday morning this week at the Water's Edge,

[00:06:53] where I go through one of the most important and misunderstood stories in international relations and security affairs that week. New episodes every Friday morning. Back to the professor. It's a failing strategy if done on its own, according to the Pape framework. So Pape laid out these words, punishment versus denial.

[00:07:15] Now, those words had existed before I wrote bombing to win, but they had not really been used in a very prominent way for many, many decades. So I want to give Glenn Snyder due credit for the word denial. But nonetheless, this really was the book that really made a lot of sense of this for coercion, getting states to change their behavior.

[00:07:37] And what the book shows, both with logic and also with systematic case study and evidence, is that punishment alone, when you punish your foe, whether that's hitting their economy, attacking their people indirectly, attacking their people directly, all these different forms of punishment,

[00:08:02] no matter how sophisticated, no matter how sophisticated, how smart, on its own, it doesn't work very well. What really works is denial. And what denial is all about is persuading your rival that you're trying to coerce. They have no winning strategy. They can't win at any price. So there's no point.

[00:08:23] Once your target of coercion comes to believe they can't win, then what's the point of paying any price at all? See, as long as you think you have a reasonable chance of winning, then you can absorb a whole lot of punishment. And that's what Iran is doing right now. People are wondering, why is it the case that Iran's not buckling? And President Trump asks this question, what, once a week anyway.

[00:08:52] And the reason is because of bombing to win. The answer is right there, which is Iran thinks it has a reasonable chance of winning, and probably even more than a reasonable chance at this point. So they will absorb that punishment because they think at the end of the day they're going to come out on top, you see? And so that punishment means you're paying punishment for a victory.

[00:09:19] On the other side, though, if you don't have that winning strategy, that's what denial is all about, persuading the enemy they're denying them a winning strategy. If you don't have that winning strategy, there's no point paying any price at all. Now, does that mean that when you coerce a state, you only go after their strategy? Now, sometimes you also hit punishment. So what the book shows is that what doesn't work is punishment alone.

[00:09:44] And it doesn't matter whether it's air power, economic sanctions, blockades, any of those forms of punishment since World War I. So there's a break point in the book. It explains all that. But what works is denial, either on its own or in combination with a punishment strategy. And so that is what Iran is doing. They're doing fundamentally denial. You see what I'm saying? And this is the key, you see.

[00:10:15] And so leadership bombing is another form of a kind of punishment strategy. The book explains where leadership bombing is in this. So but at the end of the day, what you are seeing is Iran is pursuing denial. And what is denial? Putting the Gulf states and I'm going to get to the United States in a no win scenario. A no win scenario where they do. They respond one way.

[00:10:44] They lose. They respond another way. They lose. In other words, a no win scenario is where it's lose, lose, whatever you do. And that is called denial. It is what crushes the hope out of the target government, people, military. You can talk to your blue in the face. This is one of the biggest problems Secretary Hagseth has right now. Our military is much of it. Maybe not all of it.

[00:11:14] Admiral Cooper might be different, but much of it from what I see on the outside is thoroughly persuaded that we're in a no win scenario. And they're looking at these leaders are called. What are you talking about, boss? What you want me to die for? What exactly am I sacrificing my family, my kids? All what exactly am I doing this for? It's not they're not they're not tough enough to sacrifice. This is where the mistake comes in.

[00:11:42] We've got the toughest people here. This is not about, you know, mono we mono toughness here. OK, that's not been the problem. In fact, I was a little surprised when Secretary Hagseth came in that he thought somehow our military wasn't tough enough. I mean, I don't know. I mean, when I was running with them on the bases, I couldn't keep up. And maybe, you know, I'm just a doughboy. I mean, whatever. I mean, because they would pick on me and call you. You know how this goes. OK, I don't know what you're talking about.

[00:12:10] They're always polite, always professional, completely courteous. That's what is this you're referencing to? I don't know. I'm just saying. Don't turn your back on those female troops. Anyway, the but we're Iran is putting us in a no win scenario. A lose lose, which is effectively denial. And that is what is taking the wind out of our sails.

[00:12:39] That's the thing that we feel here. And that's why there's the push and pull on the super tanker that on the steering wheel, because you've got one side, Secretary Hagseth's side here and others. So I think it's possible. Admiral Cooper is just directly on board with this trying to steer more into the pain.

[00:13:02] And you've got the other side saying, but bosses, we're not seeing the winning scenario here. So how is it this is actually worth anything? And they're not there. They're still patriotic. They're still in love with the country. This is not they've lost their love of the country, any of that stuff. This is about punishment versus denial.

[00:13:25] This is about how you actually coerce for real, not just sort of give happy talk about how we're the biggest, baddest dudes on the block, all that talk and smack. No, bombing to win is really getting into the actual nitty gritty meat of this stuff. And that's what I did when I taught for the U.S. Air Force here is I was really teaching how do you actually win? What does it mean to win? You see, and that's what the book is really showing.

[00:13:54] And that's what you're seeing play itself here. And so and I think, Scott, this is once you see that that Iran has got us now and you saw it this week in the early part of the week. And also, it's going to be really interesting to see. Does President Trump honor this promise he made on Monday? Monday, it's about 24 hours ago. He said last night he was going to bomb hard. He hit back hard. He didn't do it.

[00:14:19] And you start to see, I mean, he's got he's also got to see to some extent that he's in a no win scenario. So he's got to be wondering himself with regardless of his advisors. He's got to be seeing certain patterns here, which is if he does X, he comes out weaker. If he does Y, he comes out weaker.

[00:14:38] And I think that's what you're seeing with this, what appears to be discombobulated strategy on the part of Washington or appears to be chaotic strategy. It's because Iran's got has established a no win scenario. And this shows no sign of really changing in the coming in the coming weeks and months.

[00:15:04] And there's a real sort of goal here, I think, for Iran. So what mommy twin also explains is it really does matter what your objective is. What does victory mean? You've got to identify an objective here. And that sounds simple. This is like professional military education, PME 101. No, no.

[00:15:33] You've got to be a black belt to understand objectives here. This is this is not undergraduate study. This is not master student study. It's not Ph.D. student study. Those are that's that's white, green, brown belt. OK, we're talking about actual black belt stuff here. This is what's really tough. And what Iran is doing.

[00:15:56] Is they have this denial strategy, and I think they're pushing on a very clear goal in I think it was June 15th. I laid this out in the escalation trap paper about Iran's period of maximum leverage coming. What would be Iran's goal? And that is to knock our forces out of the Persian Gulf. It seems like they're doing a pretty good job of that.

[00:16:25] Well, that's what I'm going to just lay out. So you might say, oh, my God, we're so strong, you know, a trillion dollar military and everything. But let's look at what's happened in the six months of this war. OK, so we start this war. And we've got 50,000 troops in the Persian Gulf, not just in the Middle East, now in the Persian Gulf. And we've got something like 13 bases. It could be 18, depending on how you count the bases.

[00:16:54] But let's just go with somewhere around a half dozen bases in the front line Persian Gulf states. Well, what's happened is through the course of this six months is we have been forced to pull those forces back further and further round after round. At first, they got smashed with missile and drone attacks. Weren't expect. Then it just continues.

[00:17:24] Those bases themselves are being smashed. So then what happens? Well, we did have naval forces there. And so we pull back the naval forces so that they're out of missile, out of at least drone range here. So they're more into the Indian Ocean, so further away. And then what's happened, and just to sort of telescope this so it doesn't become a long lecture, we start to pull back even our air power into Jordan.

[00:17:53] And I believe that in early July, what President Trump was likely talking to Turkey about in this trade with the F-35s may have been trying to use Incirlik, the air base at Incirlik here. Because, again, we're pulling back further and further. And it's not that we're not able to hit targets anymore. It's that what's happening is we're pulling back.

[00:18:22] We may now even be pulling back further into Europe. And as we pull back, that greater distance means a lot less sorties. It means a lot less power, military, brute force, quantitative power to bring to bear.

[00:18:43] Because the reason you want those land bases is so that you can launch multiple sorties a day with your aircraft. And if you've got to fly further, just the nature of physics, you reduce the quantity of sorties per day.

[00:19:02] I actually did a calculation on Professor Pape Substack on this a couple months ago to get a sense of what your, what your, the quantity here as you pull back to get a sense of power projection. When you have to really be global reach, it's a lot less oomph when you have to go a longer way. Bottom, no surprise, but it's useful to see the math. And that's what's happening, Scott. We're being knocked out of the Middle East, of the Persian Gulf.

[00:19:33] And I think they're, they're, they want a sphere of influence beyond narrowly the Persian Gulf itself. But I think they're really concentrating on truly becoming the regional hegemon in the Persian Gulf. Now, I don't say the Middle East in general. That's a lot. That would mean you have to take into account Israel and Turkey and Pakistan, okay?

[00:19:57] No, that, again, I'm, I'm trying to use my words carefully here to define this a little bit more tightly so we can understand what's actually occurring. And I think that what Iran is, it wants to be is the fourth center of world power where they're the regional hegemon in the Persian Gulf. That then will have a sphere of influence beyond that area. And in order to do that, what do they have to be? The preeminent power in the Persian Gulf.

[00:20:27] Who do they have to knock out of the Persian Gulf to do that? You see, that, see, Scott, and so I think once you hear this logic, you can look back over all these papers in the escalation trap, Professor Pape, and you say, oh, I see, I see. He's not just responding to some of these events in some, like, random commentary way. He's actually explaining the logic based on his books, his articles, his teaching.

[00:20:56] This is what we do with my strategy class. We actually do strategy. You see, we're not just commenting on current events. We're doing it with frameworks. And that's what I'm trying to bring to basically the world through social media is what are the key frameworks to really help us think strategically better? And that's what I think we're really missing here.

[00:21:22] This isn't about locker room smack talk, okay? That's fine when you're 22 to 32. And it does matter, okay? I'm not saying that does not matter. And I do believe our military commanders are, from what I have seen, I've been very well aware of how command works and the need for really understanding morale of the troops and et cetera, et cetera.

[00:21:50] But there is a thing called strategy, and that does not equal just simply, you know, smack. Yeah. Well, let me throw a hypothetical wrinkle into your framework and see how things play out. Yeah, yeah. Because you mentioned before, you know, going in to try to seize the nuclear material, how, yeah, a lot of special operations personnel would be involved in that. But you really need the 82nd Airborne just from a manpower standpoint.

[00:22:17] Well, if our air powers pushed all the way back to Jordan and Iran can actually reach out and touch our staging areas in Jordan, staging a division-level airborne assault is absolutely massive. Even if you had to fly them all the way from Pope Armory Airfield in North Carolina to Iran, which on paper is feasible, but we've lost so many refueling tankers early on in the war when Iran was targeting those assets in the region. Some of us were doing some back-of-the-envelope map.

[00:22:44] It's not clear that the 82nd Airborne going in is even a credible course of action at this point. So, them going in to get fissional material might no longer even be something that we can consider. And one of the things we were looking at when we saw, okay, 82nd Airborne's been there for six months now. Why is it that another division wasn't on standby to go in, take over that mission set, keep doing what they're doing? Because you could actually have different headquarters there. You don't need the 82nd headquarters.

[00:23:10] Even if you're going to do airborne operations directly, it might be that we can't physically swap out troops in the area anymore. That's right. That's right. So, there's the limited ground power options, and I want to talk about that. Then there's division level. Okay? So, I understand. Maybe from the Pentagon's perspective, just one division level seems still limited. So, maybe there's still the sixth division level. Okay.

[00:23:34] But let me just break this down into brigade, what you would send a brigade in to do versus what you would send one or more divisions in to do, and how this would actually play itself out militarily if you were actually going to do these things. So, I think whether this is their mission or not, I really don't care what's on paper because it's about the incentive structure and it's about what they're going to be ordered to do, regardless of what they have on paper, Scott.

[00:24:00] So, I definitely get – when I was in 2007, February 2007, one of the biggest honors of my life is I was brought in to brief the 3rd Infantry Division before it went into Baghdad. The intel folks told me what their mission was on paper. I tried to explain to them in two hours, talking to their top general and leaders and 150 of their officers, why they should have a slightly different mission. And it appeared, whether it was because of me or not, they did have that other slightly different mission.

[00:24:28] So, whatever is on paper doesn't mean that is exactly what you're going to do. So, anyway, back to this issue. There's a real issue here with Iran and nuclear weapons. Even though we're not talking about it in the media, it doesn't mean that somehow the fizzle material isn't there, and it doesn't mean Iran somehow doesn't have some pretty important capability to move forward to actually test a nuclear device.

[00:24:55] So, there's a process to developing a nuclear weapon. And from Iran's perspective, what matters the most is a test or multiple tests. I think we've talked about this on your show before. And that's where the political coercive power comes from and the deterrent power comes from.

[00:25:16] Now, under that situation, a brigade, even if it is a brigade that is ultimately going to take enormous losses here, there's, I think, a very good chance that if our intel picks up that Iran is about to do that, we're going to send that brigade in there even at the loss of the entire brigade here. And that may be like, look like Desert One.

[00:25:42] That's a, you know, sort of a story from Jimmy Carter days. But it's a pretty big deal under this situation to have Iran testing nuclear weapons and to truly have indicators that's about to happen and do nothing here. I think very, very, very, I think that's difficult. So, I think that's what would be a – now, you could also imagine some brigade-level missions

[00:26:09] related to beach fronts, beach heads on certain parts, certain islands or so forth. So, I don't want to say this is the only one. But that's what I think. Now, if you want to go bigger and we're talking about division level, this is where almost surely this is what would lead to the massive infrastructure bombing of Iran.

[00:26:35] So, and then also the counterinfrastructure bombing by Iran as well. So, this is not going to be a pretty site. This is going to be – we're now talking of truly moving into, you know, bombing Germany in World War II a la style bombing here. We're really talking about massive bombing where the Germans launched back as much as they could against the British Isles while that was going on here.

[00:27:02] And the reason is because you need to suppress everything in Iran as much as possible if you're actually going to start, as you said, staging those divisions. And you're going to look at Azerbaijan. This is where Turkey probably almost surely would be critical. It's no one area is absolutely critical, but there will be multiple areas here. I doubt we're going to lean on Pakistan to come in that way.

[00:27:31] Pakistan does have nuclear weapons. That's probably not what we're going to do. But nonetheless, the war games from, say, 2003 or 2004 – and at some point if we get close to this, I'll be – I have the maps from the war games. So I'll show where the axis of attack is. But you would – and they're unclassified. You would – but you would start this with this massive infrastructure bombing,

[00:27:57] even if there's massive bombing going back here. So this is why when I explain the escalation trap before the war, what I'm talking about in Stage 3 are these limited issues here. That's what I identify specifically as the limited ground power dilemmas. And those are just not going away. I don't think they're going to go away.

[00:28:22] And that's what – and they could lead to escalation mission creep. But you wouldn't just have mission creep on your own for all the reasons you're saying, Scott. This is where we will really – we will really target the entire electrical grid of Iran. We'll target all the bridges in Iran. That's what that's all about. Massive suppression.

[00:28:47] And I'll – air war plan one. That's the first air war plan in World War II. People can go look in Chapter 8, Bombing to Win. You can go see what those plans looked like. This is what we're talking about. And it's because we planned right from the beginning in World War II against Germany to invade Germany with an army.

[00:29:10] That's what we – and that meant you were going to have to smash the economy and society of Germany if you were going to do that, which we basically did. Yeah, in no small measure. In no small measure. That's what – we talk about World War II as a world war, but also we need to understand the intensity of the theaters here.

[00:29:39] They were very intense with the Pacific, with the Japanese, very intense with Germany, more intense on the eastern front against – with Russia and so Union Germany than the west, but nonetheless, west major, major, major intensity here. Yeah. I know we're at time. Do you have a moment for a couple questions? I do. I do. Cool. This actually ties into a bit what we're talking about. Question here, and I'm paraphrasing some of these. I got multiples.

[00:30:07] But if the Democrats win in the midterms, is Trump going to look at the time between the midterm elections and January when a new Congress is seated as his window to escalate the conflict further? He might, but I think he's going to have a real challenge here, which is that number one on his mind is going to be the Democrats being seated.

[00:30:34] So I think we don't want to just jump over this three-month window and say, oh, sure, President Trump's going to lose the House and the Senate. That's going to mean he's going to be impeached. That's going to mean if Secretary Hagsath is still in office, he will be impeached and removed from all—and this may be Scott Besson as well. This could actually be an enormous crushing blow to all that would exist with the last

[00:31:04] two years of the Trump presidency. And so I think that this is going to be, first and foremost, the issue. Now, if it turns out that the Democrats only win the House and they don't win the Senate, this then creates more—call it—space for coming back to Iran in that particular window. If it turns out that President Trump wins both the House and the Senate, which, of course, nobody is predicting right now, that would create even more—that would basically be

[00:31:34] viewed, I think, by Trump as legitimation, a kind of a rubber stamp by the public that go forward with the war, essentially a green light for the war. So I think what happens in the midterms is incredibly important. But I don't think we should just take for granted that the vote is going to be easy to count. It could be objectively close.

[00:31:59] It could be subjectively close, as we saw with the 2020 election, where President Trump claimed it was stolen. This is up for grabs. This is going to be the most dangerous period of the election in our lifetimes. It's not the run up to November 3rd, but from November 3rd, which is day of the election day, to January 3rd, which is when the Congress is supposed to be seated. This is going to be an incredibly fraught period of time.

[00:32:29] And we can talk about basic scenarios. But until we get into this November 3rd, it's really not going to be possible to know. So I think that's why what Iran is doing is they have a strategy for the midterms, and they want to impose as much pain on America as possible, knock America back as much as possible between now and the midterms.

[00:32:57] I don't think they'll turn that off during this November 3rd to January 3rd. But I do think that everybody is going to be very focused on that period. And possibly, if the midterms go well for Trump, then you can imagine the scenario where we come right back to the war in a more intense way.

[00:33:20] But I wouldn't just keep all these ideas that you're hearing from essentially political pollsters who advise the White House on politics here. They're not really strategists in this way. They're talking about scenarios where they just really want President Trump not to do anything worse with the Iran war between now and November 3rd. That's basically what's going on here, Scott.

[00:33:49] They're begging President Trump, whatever you do, don't do anything between now and November 3rd. There's plenty of time you can do. Yeah, right. Well, this is so that's what I see here. And so I'm analyzing the real situation that I think is much more important, which is after November 3rd, there's going to be a real priority here with American domestic politics for the for that next three months. That's going to be pretty important.

[00:34:17] And it's just not possible to identify exactly the whether the vote will be overwhelmingly one way or the other, in which case all this this counting stuff may not matter at all, or it's going to be close as most of our elections have been. And then is it objectively close like the hanging chads in 2000 Bush versus Gore? Or is it subjectively close the way it was in November 2020? Hmm.

[00:34:47] I said this doomsday scenario pop into my head where Iran's October surprise is something that looks like looks like a nuclear test. And they send in a brigade combat team to stop it. We'll talk about this as we get into October. See, I don't I think we're we're we need to think more like strategists. And I'm sorry to say Iran looks like it's read Thomas Schelling. It looks like it's read Jervis on the nuclear revolution. It looks like it's read bombing to win.

[00:35:14] I mean, it looks like it's just done, you know, Pozen's book on restraint. I mean, this just looks like they've actually gone to school for decades on real strategy, much like our military has, by the way. But I'm not seeing that reflected yet in our political leadership. Yeah. Well, other question. Speaking of fun things that Washington's up to, how do you think the trade war with Canada

[00:35:41] is going to impact our ability to maintain forces in the Middle East? Because, you know, Canada just is a key supplier of components for things like the F-35, as long as a bunch of other things in the defense industrial base. Over time, it will weaken. Over time, it will be a drag for for sure. The bigger issues here in the near term are about how the trade war with Canada that has

[00:36:09] just suddenly emerged on the horizon is emblematic of President Trump's overall strategy of punishment. He likes punishment, not denial. And he does punishment. It seems to be his default go-to approach to not just military affairs, but also the trade war. And it's producing the same results, which is it's producing backfire. It's producing lashing back.

[00:36:36] And what you're seeing with Prime Minister Carney is that he is just this is the economic equivalent of Iran. They are lashing back. And they're not just there and they're saying, hey, we've got some escalation dominance, too. You think that you're the ones who control everything. But, hey, we we've got some some things, maybe not as much rare earths as China does.

[00:37:04] But we've got some stuff you you really are going to want, especially I live here in Chicago. And one of the big things they have is they provide an awful lot of electricity, an awful lot of power. To Michigan and to some states in the north. So this idea that they can't they can't push back. They don't want to push back. But if you look at what Iran is doing, what are the options Iran is thinking about? As they lash back, economic targeting. What are you seeing with Carney?

[00:37:34] Economic targeting. It's it's with economic tools. OK, but you're seeing a very similar pattern in response to punishment. That's the big thing here. And this can likely go on. Now, President Trump has pulled back before. He's done this with the tariffs before. He may well pull back here. Maybe he wasn't expecting that Carney and the Canadians would have backbones. We often make all these jokes.

[00:38:04] In fact, I'm listening to I think it was Bill Maher on over the weekend say the Canadians. So so this is this has been the brunt of jokes for many, many decades. But the fact of the matter is it's a response to punishment. So that's what you're seeing. And the Canadians have even though they're only a tenth the size of America's economy, they are they really have. They can really open another economic front.

[00:38:33] And that's the bigger deal because we have 40 trillion dollars in debt. And so we keep getting attacked economically in different ways. And at some point you will break the camel's back economically. Another question here. I got two more for you. The Army secretary resigning. Do you think this is going to turn to another Joe Kent situation or is this just going to be somebody quietly? I don't know about that. That's also personality driven.

[00:39:02] Whether the Army secretary really wants to come out and go public about the reasons and so forth. Joe Kent was did did this in a I've watched a lot of resignations over the last 35 years. I've never seen one done as as thoughtfully as Joe Kent. He wrote a letter. He met with the vice president to explain this before he meets with the president. He meets with the president. I mean, this is, you know, look, I've had a lot of employees.

[00:39:31] I've never really had a situation where they were forced to vote. They were forced to resign. But I would hope that if that if I was really, you know, in that situation, I'd have somebody do it this way. Because you really can't say that Joe Kent blindsided anybody about his reasons. And so when he went public, you also can't say, well, gee, I'm awfully surprised he said that. But so the administration seemed to responded in the opposite direction. But I get what you're saying. Yeah.

[00:40:01] So anyway, so I don't know. This is really personality driven. What will happen with these resignations? And I can only imagine how fraught this is to be involved with a resignation at this point. It's in the middle of the war. I mean, oh, my goodness gracious. All the different tensions and so forth. There's probably personal issues involved we don't even know about. I mean, consequences here.

[00:40:25] So but I don't I think that what you are really seeing is, you know, they say victory is a thousand fathers. Defeat is an orphan. And that's what you're seeing. You're seeing that we're we are in a situation which is and I would call it beyond defeat because that's what it means to get run out of the Middle East. You know, so we're really the Persian Gulf. Let me be clear. The Persian Gulf to get run out of the Persian Gulf. Oh, my goodness. Great. I mean. Oh, my goodness gracious.

[00:40:56] This is just it's you know, I keep writing all these pieces and I keep thinking, oh, no, it won't be as bad as I'm saying. And there it is. It's it's the foreign affairs piece. The new rules of global power. It's just literally happening. Yeah. Doesn't it suck to be right? Well, I mean, it's I really appreciate all the support. I get I get an amazing amount of support from people and you and many others. And one of the things people do is they ask tough questions.

[00:41:25] You ask tough questions. You just did it a minute ago here. This is how you're doing me the favor. Don't do me the favor of of polite kindness here. Um, uh, it's intellectual Darwinism. And that includes to me. And if it turns out, uh, got a chance. I just literally wrote in two days this breaking analysis. I did it yesterday morning. I was talking about it. And then I felt, oh, my God, I got to say I got to do another one because I didn't really understand the full.

[00:41:54] So that's another way to say, um, here I didn't get it quite right the first time. I did a redo. All right. Well, final one here, uh, from a sailor on the, uh, USS Abraham Lincoln. Uh, you've mentioned being in China before. Have you ever stopped in Thailand? And do you have any recommendations? Oh, gosh, no, I've never been to Thailand. I wish I did. I've never been. That's so awesome. I'm going to tell my wife about that. She'll say, you're never going to Thailand.

[00:42:24] She's him up. You're just not going after that. Yeah. So I can't imagine why she would, uh, have trepidations about you going to Thailand. I don't, I mean, I don't think anything bad's going to happen while they're there. Yeah. That's what she's worried about. Wrap it before you tap it, folks. Wrap it before you tap it. So anyway, that was, that's a great way to end. And that's such a, uh, such an honor. Really? Uh, there was, um, about, um, this was about 10 years ago.

[00:42:54] I was, uh, traveling and, um, I was in the Middle East, uh, and somebody, I was at one of our bases and somebody, uh, saw me and recognized that I was Professor Paid bombing to win. And he came up to me and he said that there was a copy of bombing to win all dog-eared and underlined, uh, uh, sometimes with a few bad words on it in the ready room in the carrier.

[00:43:21] And I always thought, oh my gosh, what an, what an honor to have that, uh, someone who's literally on the front lines here. There's that, that really is just a tremendous honor, uh, because I'm doing what I can do my comparative advantage to, to help it. I'm not right there on the front lines, uh, paying that daily price that those folks are.

[00:43:46] And I can only imagine how, how, uh, what that, what that, that, that tour was like, uh, and still, and may still be going on. And I'm so glad that, uh, they're, they're getting some shore. Yeah. Well, really appreciate you talking with us as always. Uh, we'll see you in a couple of weeks, maybe earlier. We'll see, um, safe travels. Absolutely. Thanks for everybody. And thank you all for your service.