Trump’s Economic D-Day Will Backfire | Robert Pape

[00:00:00] Good morning and welcome to the At the Water's Edge podcast, where we look for insights beyond the headlines to take a practitioner's view on national security and geopolitics. It's the 24th of August, 2026. Let's get started. We are back today with Professor Pape again. Lovely to have him back in the studio talking about the effects of Economic D-Day that is inbound, the end of the MOU, and where this conflict is going next. As always, if you've enjoyed this content series, please be sure to like, subscribe, and share an episode with a friend. It really helps get the show out to more people.

[00:00:29] Professor is doing a live briefing tonight via his substack. Go subscribe. There will be a link in the show notes and pinned in the comments. Also, the substack for this show and the email address for sending a question in for the professor will be provided as well. With that, thanks for being there, and let's get to Pape. All right, well, good morning and welcome back. How are you doing today? Oh, I'm doing great, Scott. It's great to see you as always.

[00:00:53] Pleasure as always. It was great seeing you in New York City. For folks who haven't had a chance to go to one of his live in-person events, please do it. They're awesome. I can vouch for that personally. Subscribe to a substack to find out when and where and all that good stuff. Yeah, and thank you for coming, Scott. It was really great to have you in the room. For folks, it was 25 people. It was packed, and Scott was there beginning to end.

[00:01:16] It went on. It was supposed to go two hours. It went over three, and it was just really, really something. And all the great questions here, same thing, just more intense. Yep, yep. And if you think he's fun on camera, you should hear him talk off-camera, folks. I'm just telling you. I didn't know he used to be a sailor. I'm just the language, anyway. Well, see, it's a not-recorded session.

[00:01:41] I showed up ready to live stream. I was specifically told I was not allowed to record or comment on anything that happened in the room. I'll just say it was very enjoyable, and I highly recommend other people to participate if they get the chance. That's right. All right, so the news of the day. Very interesting week to kick things off. We've been off for a little bit, even though we got to see each other live last week for the first time. But the MOU is officially over for anyone who is keeping track. The U.S. has announced an economic D-Day is imminent.

[00:02:10] Some lovely comments from Scott out there. Iran has, in turn, threatened to treat any nation in the region that cooperates with U.S. sanctions, which I was so surprised to find out there was more stuff we apparently had left to sanction, but apparently we found some more stuff. They're going to treat them as adversaries. They're going to treat them as enemies. What's this guy's title? The head of the Supreme National Security Council has threatened to target oil shipping routes out of the straighter for Hormuz. And Scott, just to interrupt you, it's important.

[00:02:39] Some folks from the Substack sent me this, but from the Financial Times and The Economist, this person you're referring to, there are now giant billboards of him in Tehran. So just to be clear, this is not somebody under the radar. There are more billboards of him than the Supreme Leader. Really? Just focus in context. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:03:05] Maybe I'll see if I can remember to forward you over what was sent to me on this, Scott. So, because I think it would be good to put it up on your thing so people can see it. But it is, it's, so this is not just another person. Even though we're going to have a hard time with the name, it's not so easy to say. And things like that. Mosah and Rasai, I'm sure I'm butchering that. And Rasai is how I've been saying it.

[00:03:27] But again, it's, we're just going to have to get used to the fact that there are people actually in charge in Iran, no matter how much we say nobody's in charge. And one of the ways you know that is gigantic billboards with pictures. And there you go. That's a good tell. Well, that actually colors the next update was that Iran's president, as all this is going on, has said that, you know, war offers no solution. And he's advocating, at least publicly, that now would be a good time for Iran to negotiate an end to the war. That doesn't appear to be a very popular position inside the country.

[00:03:56] And I got to say, though, the juxtaposition makes me feel very good about our government because our messaging is on point. Anyone who disposes what Trump wants to do ain't saying shit in public right now. I don't even know where J.D. Vance is. So I got to say, our messaging from the U.S. side is excellent. Excellent messaging discipline. At the Water's Edge is supported by Grayzone. Grayzone Advisory. Quick note for the small business owners out there. Tariffs, trade policy shifts, an overseas supplier that suddenly can't ship and goes dark on you.

[00:04:26] That's not background noise anymore. It's the top threat business owners have identified nationally in 2026. Grayzone Advisory was founded to help small and medium-sized businesses see that risk before it hits the bottom line. Head to grayzoneadvisory.com to grab your free geopolitical risk checklist. Five questions to know your exposure. That's grayzoneadvisory.com. That's right. So let's start with the most important points here.

[00:04:55] Scott, and I'm choosing my words carefully, is up against the weight of history. It's extremely important to understand that since World War I, no major war has ended. It's a political surrender.

[00:05:22] It's a political surrender, toppled to government through economic blockade and economic pressure alone. Economic blockades, economic pressure. These were a thing of an earlier period in world politics that really was quite effective and one of the ways the British ran the world in the 17th, 18th, 19th century and other empires before that. World War I, there's a key threshold.

[00:05:52] Key breakpoint in history. That's what's on the substack that you're talking about this morning. I'm going through the patterns so that you can see the British blockade in World War I of Germany. You can see the American sanctions, oil sanctions, then blockade of Japan in World War II.

[00:06:14] The U.S. economic and oil blockade and tightening blockade on Iraq from 1990 and 91 to 2003. Iran from 2010 to this very moment. These cases, and there's many more discussed, these cases all show high degree of economic pressure.

[00:06:41] The problem is not there was no pressure. Tactical success. They also show economic pressure alone failed. And in none of those cases did the war end until extraordinary military pressure was brought to bear on the target.

[00:07:04] Extraordinary military pressure, massive ground forces on the target. Case of Japan, nuclear weapons on the target. Case of Saddam Hussein, 150,000 ground force invasion of Saddam Hussein. So I'm not saying that our side, the American side, that we didn't win.

[00:07:32] Again, I'm saying that this idea that Scott Besant has put forward last week and has repeated that he has found an off ramp to heavy military pressure. This is not the reality of the pattern.

[00:07:51] So that post that I put on the substack is essentially a post that you might expect the National Security Council would send to the Secretary of the Treasury. This is the pattern of history.

[00:08:33] Now, it is not as if that after 100 plus years of something never working, the future could not be different. It's possible the future could not be different. But it's very important to understand what the pattern of history is.

[00:08:54] And then also the next levels that you see in the pattern, which is when states are confronted with this massive maximum economic pressure, they often lash back. They often lash back. For the audience that we have here, you know, I always try to talk, tailor it to our frontline folks serving in the military.

[00:09:20] It's important to know they know Pearl Harbor happened. You might not know why Pearl Harbor happened. What exactly happened is in 1941. And we have all the records. Because remember, we conquered. We occupied Japan. So we got all of the documents here. We know how Pearl Harbor happened.

[00:09:42] What happened in Pearl Harbor is in 1941, starting in early around January of 1941, the idea of Pearl Harbor started to crystallize in the Japanese Navy and in the upper reaches of Japanese decision makers. However, they did not go forward with the plan.

[00:10:03] Yamamoto, who was the key admiral at the time and also the key leader, ultimately, of what will be the Pearl Harbor attack, he was not in favor of going forward because he privately thought it was a bad idea to have a war against the United States. Sound like something that that president of Iran just said? Okay, almost identical. All right.

[00:10:23] But then what happened is we put on these airtight oil sanctions starting in July of 1941 on Japan. And these were crushing, maximum crushing sanctions. And Japan's an island. So Iran is not an island. It makes it even harder. So getting airtight. We'll talk about what Besson's really up to in a minute.

[00:10:48] But this is the case where you can get airtight sanctions here because it's an island. Okay. And so we did it. We actually did it. And it was maximum pressure for real. Well, then the Japanese came together in August. In August, we got the records. We got the meeting notes. Okay. So they come together and they talk. And what do they discuss?

[00:11:13] If these sanctions, the oil sanctions stay on Japan in two years, their government will collapse. And they will be forced to capitulate to the United States. There was one hope. A Hail Mary pass. Sound familiar? Escalation trap. They took a Hail Mary pass. They knew it was a gigantic risk. But they were losing.

[00:11:42] Fourth quarter of the game. They're down. What are they going to do? Are they just going to throw in the towel? Coaches don't do that. Okay. We don't do that. And by the way, our enemies don't do that. Okay. Not when we're talking about occupying them. So what happened is that's when Yamamoto flipped and went for Pearl Harbor. Gotcha. Why did the U.S. put sanctions on Japan in the first place?

[00:12:07] They wanted to limit Japan's game plan to become a world power by moving into the mainland. Very similar pattern to what's happening today. As you know, I've been explaining for months, Iran is on the trajectory to become the fourth center of world power. It's very similar to where Japan was in the 1930s.

[00:12:36] It has a game plan, which is to extend its sphere of influence on a mainland over water. That is the Gulf frontline countries, UAE, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, et cetera. So to Japan. Japan is an island. But going on the other side of the water was the Asian mainland. And that's where Manchu quo was.

[00:13:04] That's where they were developing all the resources. So why did they want to go on the Asian mainland? Resource rich place where their place was not so resource rich, the island. Very similar to Iran. If Iran's going to become the fourth center of world power, it's not good enough to be Iran 4% of the world's oil. It's not good enough to even control Hormuz.

[00:13:32] You want to extend that sphere of influence with actual physical control. Now, it could be in Iran's case, indirect imperialism, indirect occupation by putting and installing governments the way Putin was doing in Ukraine, installing governments that are favorable to Iran. So it's not exactly that Iran must use its military the way Japan was using its literal army.

[00:13:58] The mass of its army for Japan was not on the Japanese islands. It was in Manchuria. It was in the Asian mainland here. So that's why the end of Japan's surrender, and I have this embalming to win a whole chapter on this. There are several issues that come together. I'm going to skip over all that now. But this pattern that you're seeing is very similar because they were in the same situation.

[00:14:25] So what this means is that the very things that make the Scott Bessent D-Day plan that would be strategically successful are going to produce the lash back. They're not going to produce the collapse. That goes the other way. Now, Japan ultimately surrendered, and we ultimately occupied all 70 million-plus people. Think about that.

[00:14:50] With 100,000 troops because the emperor worked with us, so we actually turned the government. Five years. Atomic bombs. There's a lot going on there besides economic pressure. You see what I mean? So we seem to add two atomic bombs, 100,000 ground troops, and develop a relationship with the supreme leader, and this might all work out. And also the Soviet Union came in and totally decimated the actual army in Manchuria.

[00:15:17] So the whole idea that Japan's going to move the army, that option just goes. So there's a number of different ways here. Gotcha. And this is an island. This is an easy target compared to Iran. So Japan might sound like, well, that was a hard target. They were dug in. No, Iran's going to be more difficult than that. Iran's going to look like Germany, not Japan. Well, you just brought in Russia, too, for the Japan example. So I have to add to my checklist.

[00:15:44] We need to add two atomic bombs, 100,000 ground troops, and then we need to add Russia and China to our team. And then this playbook might work. Got it. That's right. No, you got it. You got it. And five years. Oh, well, hey. And five years. We're already halfway through year one. So, okay. Yeah, yeah. Don't forget the five years and the losing of all those tens of thousands of people.

[00:16:06] Our troops, my grandfather survived, but he was one of the people in the Pacific landing these troops on the islands to get slaughtered. And he'd have to do it time and time again. And this is what was so crushing here. It was so difficult, but this is what we did. So this idea that, oh, we would never do any of these things. No. A final way to say this, Scott, is this is actually the American way of war. So I just want to be clear.

[00:16:37] So what I'm explaining is that maximum economic pressure has not produced success on its own in all these cases. Okay. And you can go through it. You're going to see and the lash back. That doesn't mean we walked away. What happened in all those in all in those cases. And these are the famous cases. And there's many more is this set the stage for ground forces for a much more heavy pressure.

[00:17:05] And it became politically acceptable because one of the key points here, and this is true in World War Two in the 19, 19 30s. We have this big isolationist. Think of that as the no forever war crowd. Well, how do you overcome all this? I mean, what's going on here? As I've been explaining, you've got to study not just military action, but politics. They interact. They change over time. So this is not just, you know, undergraduate level. You know, we've got to move into graduate school.

[00:17:33] And the bottom line is that maximum economic pressure as it's working its way through and also as it actually harms the target. So the British blockade in World War One on the Germans killed over 700,000 German civilians, starved them to death, just to be clear.

[00:17:57] So once you starve those Germans to death, okay, somebody, you know, best in the sky, oh, great, we're on the way to victory. Well, after you then have to go through the future rounds of this because you're going to make them mad. The people are going to be angry. They're going to want to have payback. You thought there was 10,000, 10 million in the street for the Supreme Leader's death? Wait till we start having the deaths related to the maximum economic pressure.

[00:18:25] So a lot of the public think, oh, yeah, economic. I see this on the podcast and so on. Bombs aren't falling. It must be good. I'm going to go on Chris Hayes tonight. Well, at least maybe I'm going to go on MSN. And he does this to me all the time. Oh, yeah. So aren't we better off, Professor Pape? No, we're getting sucked in. It's getting worse, Chris. But Professor Pape, don't you see that it's better to do that? No, because you're looking at today. You're not looking at four months from now. You see?

[00:18:53] And so this is – but it's not just him. It's not a matter of being a Democrat or a Republican. This is just a smart person's mistake. This is what I say. They think very much because they kind of know a little bit, enough to be dangerous, I say. But not – but they – and they're very smart. But they're not fully understanding the patterns. And so this is how you get into the escalation trap.

[00:19:23] It's through these spiral stage of the escalation trap. The spiraling starts to suck people in. And even the pro-peace movement on both sides, by the way, gets sucked in. Let me ask you this about sanctions before we get to Scott Besson because I'm really interested in your thoughts on that. But the received wisdom, if you're in the policy community or the military around sanctions, what you're taught in the classroom, is that sanctions work.

[00:19:51] They just work slowly. Is there a difference between how – that's wrong? Yeah, it's just wrong. We just need – What about non-maximalist sanctions? No, no, just what's the case. No, so what – okay, so let me just say you're in the classroom. Mm-hmm. The professor, the leader of the discussion, he's saying they work slowly. So my question – and by the way, on my post on X here, I'm laying out for the reporters, ask Besson this question. Okay?

[00:20:20] And let's see if anybody picks it up. I've got 175,000 followers on X. You know, a ton of them are in the media. I know. Let's see if any of them has the guts to ask the question. Okay? And let's see then if Besson's got an answer. And then we can actually have a toe-to-toe on his cases. All right? So here's the problem. I hear this all the time.

[00:20:43] I may be debating one of the people who's a former admiral here that is very famous on this issue on CNN in a few weeks. Okay? Okay. This was before this. Okay? Because this isn't – again, these are people that have run big things. They're famous. And they're saying this stuff. All right? And so let's see. What are the actual cases they have in mind of, well, it didn't work quick. But after a few months or after a couple years, it really worked.

[00:21:13] And what worked has to mean is you didn't add the military force on top of it. So what the cases are, oh, sure, it mattered because we – then it was easier to conquer Germany with our ground forces. It was easier to conquer Japan and made the Soviet intervention, the atomic bomb, it amplified their – no, that doesn't mean economic pressure alone did it. That means it's the American way of war.

[00:21:42] And what you're really doing is you're sucking people into a forever war and years of combat. That's what this is about. So we've got to be up front with the American people of what we're really talking about here. You know, it's like you get in, you sign on the dotted line, and you buy a car, and here's your interest rate. And you didn't realize when you signed it, you thought it was a fixed rate at – I'll just make up a number – 7%.

[00:22:10] And you signed it at 7%, but you didn't notice, little asterisk, you know, back-end codicil, that this is a variable rate that varies every six months. So you wake up, and you had a certain payment, and suddenly it went from 7% to 9%. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Because 7%, 9% in interest with a car, everybody, I think, will understand. And that comes like a 50% increase in your monthly payment, something like that, that little, bitty 2%.

[00:22:40] Okay, you see what I mean? That's what we're talking about here. So this whole thing here of explaining to people this and then trying to do it in a way that is triangulation. Well, somebody says X, somebody says why, I'm just going to cut it in the middle because it must be 50-50. No, this is not a 50-50 thing. This is not a random walk on Wall Street or something like that where we have no idea, throw mud at the board. We're just going to do this.

[00:23:07] No, we understand that this is a massive failure in history since World War I, and it often produces a lash back. And victory often comes only when you add the military to it, not when you take the military away. And they're costly because you have now totally radicalized the public. So, yes, it's true.

[00:23:37] There's part of the public that is beaten down and so forth. But the fact is that British blockade did not pound the snot out of the Germans for, you know, this is where you could say many, many years. But you could say it makes it easier for us to conquer them here so that the 100,000 plus dead that we took in World War I is not 150,000 dead. That's what we're talking about.

[00:24:06] Which, by the way, if we're going to do World War I, I definitely want to have as few casualties as possible. I'm up for a reality check on what we're doing so we're not in for a dime and now in for a dollar. All right. So, Professor Pape is a no on sanctions. Let me just drop that down. Okay. In case anyone was curious out there. All right. Summary. Okay. So, you mentioned before, Scott Bessett, you know, what he's actually up to. What do you think this is actually about?

[00:24:35] Where do you think this is actually going? Or is the administration just making a terrible decision? At his news conference, which I'm going to watch. Okay. So, we can say a lot of things before his news conference, but there are things we can't say until the news conference. So, as you stated at the beginning, we have already been putting what are called primary sanctions on Iran for many, many years. This has been going on decades. So, this is not a new thing.

[00:25:03] So, what are these additional sanctions that he is talking about? There's two issues at stake, or you can think of them as two concentric circles around the bullseye of the primary sanctions. Okay. One concentric circle has to do with making the import-export cutoff, because that's what a lot of the sanctions are about, literally cutting off import-export trade.

[00:25:33] Making them airtight and cutting off the borders of Iran. Now, Iran has land neighbors, and it can export and import over land. That's expensive. It's difficult. So, most of what it does is oversee.

[00:25:56] But if you're going to get airtight sanctions, you're going to need to cut off that trade on the neighbors. And this is something that you have to not just look at the flow today, but how it could grow for Iran over time. So, with Saddam Hussein, once we put those sanctions on Saddam Hussein, this was mostly the maritime. And then he started to export over land.

[00:26:22] And then what we did is we had bases in Kuwait, and we ran no-fly zones because we started to try to cut off the actual flow on the border with short-range air power. So, what you're talking about here in one concentric circle is putting pressure on the neighbors. That would be Turkey. That would be Pakistan. That would be Azerbaijan. For example, those—and there are more—but to put pressure on them to seal their borders.

[00:26:52] Now, that is going to be a big deal. They may even say they'll put troops on the borders, but you've got to seal those borders. This isn't a matter of sign a piece of paper, air to one. Oh, yes, border sealed. That's like Biden saying, border sealed. No, you've got to seal the border. I mean, if Turkey was capable of sealing that border, they would have done it a long time ago. And I don't think Pakistan would even pretend they could seal the border in Balochistan. Well, let me just give a number here.

[00:27:21] Again, I want people to come to the live briefing tonight on Escalation Trap. You're only getting 10% of this right now, folks. It's not possible because I spent three days on this memo here. I mean, this is an actual government policy memo. It's going to be a—we're going to talk real Turkey here. We're not just going to do hand wave. Yeah, we don't know. Okay, so how long is the border in miles for Iran and its neighbors? 3,600 miles.

[00:27:49] That's twice as long as the U.S.-Mexico border. 3,600 miles. Okay? So this is where you are saying you're going to count on, like, the Mexican government's going to solve our problem? How did we shut down our border? Our troops shut down the border. I got news for you, President Trump. Okay? Our troops did that. Hey, first administration, wasn't Mexico supposed to cut us a check? Did that arrive yet? I thought—

[00:28:17] This is the same—so anyway, that's level one. Okay. And look, I'm going to be pretty forthright here and direct. This is not coming from politics. This is coming from—this is getting our country into a possibly crushing war. Much worse than what we have been expecting so far.

[00:28:38] So then there's another level, though, of issue, which is the financial support for Iran to continue the trade. So when you have trade, you buy and sell in some currency. Some currency. So we can do things to try to make it very difficult for Iran to do this with dollars. So we are working with that. That's one of the things we've already been doing in these banking sanctions.

[00:29:07] So when you say banking, what are we trying to do? We're trying to reduce trade by taking away the currency. But that doesn't affect the yuan. That doesn't affect how they do things in Dubai, which is a kind of a more complicated way to have currencies where we also don't have—so Muslims have this prohibition against interest. There's all these complicated issues when you get into some other cultures. Well, that's why China and Dubai are on the chopping block here. Okay.

[00:29:37] And notice China's got nuclear weapons. Okay. They got $600-plus billion in U.S. treasuries. They have AI. They have a lot of ways. They have rare earths. Okay. Which, by the way, aren't just important for our patriots and our interceptors because we talk about that. But they're important for the chips we put in my RAV4. Mm-hmm. Okay. Just to be clear, which is made in the United States, by the way. Okay.

[00:30:06] So these issues. China's got a lot of arrows in the quiver. My mother-in-law is actually in the market for RAV4 right now. So if China screws with our chips and she can't get one. I might get a new one at some point. I mean, we'll see. It's just been a phenomenal vehicle. I had one as a rental once. Toyota! Join the Substack. Become a sponsor. Exactly. Nice.

[00:30:32] I want to be respectful of your time, but do we have a moment for a couple questions from the audience? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. And then I want to make one final announcement while we're here. And then we'll... Oh, please. Because I've given you a lot of announcements, but I want to make one more and then take some questions and we're going to go. Okay. All right. This is from Mariana, who is retired now but used to work with one of the special missions units. Professor Pape, you've worked with multiple presidential administrations over the years and don't believe the economic D-Day plan will work.

[00:31:02] I guess you got the pre-read of your Substack. Is this what a death spiral in an administration looks like? Just one bad decision after another, and does it ever bottom out? It could be pretty bad. So, in the first two years of administrations, we have seen bad spirals before. Just to pick an administration we haven't talked much about in the last six months, the first term of the Clinton administration.

[00:31:27] So, you'll recall we had Somalia was a big problem, that Mogadishu issue. That led to such a crisis that Wes Aspin, who was Secretary of Defense, 53 years old, died of a heart attack over Somalia. So, people want to know why was he only there for a short period of time. Somalia killed him, just to be clear. Okay. All right. Now, he was only 53 years old.

[00:31:54] So, this is why when we look at President Trump, it is not crazy to wonder, is he okay? This is an enormous weight. When people go up against history, President Trump went up against the weight of history with regime change bombing. Scott Besson's going up against the weight of history with the maximum economic pressure campaign. And so, that – now, what happened is Clinton changed his team.

[00:32:24] Suddenly, he replaced the Secretary of Defense not with a political figure, but with Perry, William Perry. Just to give an example, William Perry was an arch expert. He was an – he knew what he was talking about. He wasn't somebody that just was a court politician that knew how to play politics and so forth.

[00:32:49] And suddenly, I wouldn't say things were absolutely perfect, but if you score the changes here – also, Sandy Berger replaced – and we got a new crowd at the national security. So, you got a new set, and things just got much, much, much better. Bosnia Civil War ended with our air power. That was one of the big examples. Now, Kosovo still happened.

[00:33:17] I'm not trying to tell you that you didn't have – you still have the president who calls the shots here. So, that just because you get a better set of advisors around doesn't mean you're going to get – every decision will be better. But that's really what's at issue here for President Trump. So, you know, if it turns out that we're already seeing some of the – you know, sort of the court leave already, Carolyn Bessa, things like – people like that. So, we'll see what happens in the future here.

[00:33:46] But this doesn't have – normally, you would expect this would happen in, say, December. But it's going to be tough if he is in the middle of an escalation trap. He's getting deeper into the trap. He's wedded himself now to certain plans and so forth. But that said, presidents, this is where the buck stops with them.

[00:34:07] They've got to figure out – and one of the big things I've been arguing for a long time is it's important for Trump – President Trump to stop thinking about how to pull a rabbit out of his hat by the midterms. And start trying to figure out how to prove some stability here by the end of his presidency. Gotcha. This is a question from David G. And note for folks out there, if you're emailing askprofessorpate at gmail.com, please use your personal email and not your work email. They can track that stuff, just so you know.

[00:34:36] It might annoy people in your chain of command. So, personal emails only, please, for your sake. I'm out. I don't care anymore. All right. From David G. Will the threat of Iran attacking anyone who supports the U.S. sanctions cause Saudi Arabia to abandon its alliance with the U.S.? Oh, yeah. This is what has already been at issue.

[00:35:00] So, when Saudi Arabia is forming this Mecca accord, this agreement with Turkey and Pakistan, notice the United States just not there. So, what Saudi Arabia is doing is looking for more big, big, big friends. Because it's got a bully. And so, it's on the playground. And there's a big bully there, Iran. And it already poked the bully in the eye. And so, that bully is mad at you.

[00:35:25] And so, it's looking for some other, basically, football players to come and join with them. So, that they don't get toppled on the playground or smacked on the playground. So, Saudi Arabia is already distancing itself. And this is really a way to think about what it means for a major power to rise and take power is to see the Soviet Union after World War II in Eastern Europe. All of those regimes changed.

[00:35:55] All of those regimes changed. Now, they didn't change on a day. Okay. And we had CIA, other things, trying to monkey with these plans and so forth. But this is a very different world once there's a sphere of influence with a power that's been victorious. And that's what Saudi Arabia faces. And we are just no— Iran has learned one big thing. And so has Saudi Arabia. And so has every country in the world.

[00:36:24] America can be beat. America can be beat. And this was why going into this war was the absolute most catastrophic decision that this president and really any president would have made to do this. This is that level of bad. And it's going to affect Saudi Arabia. It's going to affect others. It's going to affect all of those relationships here.

[00:36:52] And that's one of the big reasons why President Trump just can't let this go. It'll be interesting to see when, if the midterms come and the Democrats win and the Democrats take power, will they own the loss? You see, it's one thing for them to run on the loss of Trump. It's another thing for them to say, oh, yeah, we're going to now take the loss. We'll take the hit. I know which way I would bet on that, but that's—

[00:37:21] You can see how I'm pointing it out. It's not so—I want to see what was really going to happen with the Democrats here. Yeah. All right. Then we had another question from Emmett talking about other countries helping with closing borders around Iran, but I think we covered that pretty well. So Emmett, refer to the professor's previous comments. So you said you had another announcement you wanted to share.

[00:37:42] So this afternoon, inspired a bit by you, Scott, and also somebody on my sub stack that's doing the heavy lifting here, we are launching the Professor Pape YouTube. It's called Pape on the Politics of Force. And the very first thing—you can actually go to YouTube and you'll see Placeholder, but the very first thing is going to be a video by me, a five-minute video, commenting on Scott Besson's news conference.

[00:38:11] So Scott Besson will have a news conference shortly thereafter. This will be the launch. And there's going to be a bunch of things that we can do on the YouTube that is not so easy to do on the sub stack. So sub stack's not going away, okay? And you'll see. I'm going to talk a lot about the sub stack. We're going to build this together. But there are just strengths and weaknesses. And sub stack has enormous strengths. YouTube does not. And vice versa.

[00:38:34] So thanks to—and I don't want to say the person's name yet because I'm not sure he wants to be identified. But thanks to one of the key people on the sub stack, this is now possible. And this isn't just—yes, it's a very expensive thing, but this is also labor-intensive that I can't do. So something beyond simply this. So it's a lot of support here. And it just—just like you saw, Scott, with the law firm that supported us in New York City.

[00:39:03] I mean, people are coming out of the woodwork here to support this. And it's absolutely critical. So if you go to the sub stack and say, oh, my God, where does all the—how does he find the time to do it? Well, I'm—you're finding the time to do it because of all the massive support. And now that's about to happen on YouTube as well. That is awesome to hear. Very excited to check it out. Everyone go subscribe to the Professor sub stack if you get questions for him. Askrobertpape at gmail.com.

[00:39:29] Both links of those will be pinned in the first comment on YouTube and in the show notes for Spotify, Apple, and all that fun stuff. So, Professor, thank you so much again for your time. And thank you, Scott, for all you're doing. Thank you so much. And thanks to the audience. Pleasure.